The definitive games show. The Electronic Entertainment Expo (E3), “Where Business Gets Fun,” is the world’s premiere trade event exclusively dedicated to showcasing interactive entertainment and educational software and related products. E3 2006 will be held at the Los Angeles Convention Center from May 10 — 12. Conferences are held May 9 — 11 and the show floor is open May 10 — 12. The worldwide annual focal point for the computer and video game industry, E3 draws tens of thousands of professionals to experience the future of interactive entertainment. The most influential people leading the most innovative companies in the business attend E3 to showcase and see groundbreaking new technologies and never-before-seen products for computers, video game consoles, handheld systems and the Internet. Show attendees also have the opportunity to participate in a variety of learning workshops and conferences focused on the specific interests and educational needs of professionals in the interactive entertainment business. Los Angeles Convention Center, USA http://www.e3expo.com/
Month: May 2006
Samsung Unveils SGH-X820, The World’s Thinnest Phone
Samsung have unveiled their new SGH-X820, proudly labelling it the ‘world’s thinnest phone’.
Making Motorola’s SLVR look like a pie-gorging slab o’lard, the SGH-X820 model is a wafer-thin 6.9 millimeters thick, yet still manages to fit in a full set of features – and look great.
Weighing just 66 grams, the SGH-X820 has a media player supporting MP3, AAC, AAC+, eAAC+, and WMA music files, with 80MB of onboard storage.
Apparently using Victorian corset techniques, Samsung’s designers have also managed to wedge in a 1.9″, 176×220 pixel display (262k colours), Bluetooth connectivity, USB support, a TV-out jack and a 2 megapixel camera that records video into its 113mm x 50mm (4.4″ x 2″) dimensions.
The display can also be conveniently viewed in landscape mode for some functions.
The super-slim device supports GPRS/EDGE data on 900MHz, 1800MHz, and 1900MHz GSM bands and, unlike Motorola’s futuristic designs, comes in a traditional format with individual keys.
“The Samsung ‘ultra-slim phone’ has set a record in the mobile handset history by breaking the wall of 7-millimeter thickness for the first time in the world,” the company purred.
Samsung expects to release the SGH-X820 in the Russian market next month, with us poor punters in Europe having to wait.
BlackBerry Hacks Review (92%): Tips & Tools for Your Mobile Office
Another in the “hacks” range of O’Reilly books, where hacking is doing interesting things with something, rather than the unfortunate media convention of breaking into computers (which has some relevence as you’re getting into the guts of the BlackBerry in ways RIM, the manufacturer, may not have expected and/or indeed intended).
It’s a mainly techie book, so a casual BlackBerry user who gets their IT department to configure everything, or a consumer who goes to their mobile outlet and buys one off-the-shelf probably should stay away, though there are some useful bits for them.
It covers: –
- Using Your BlackBerry
- Games
- The Internet and Other Networks
- Free Programs
- Shareware Apps
- BES Adminstration
- The Web and MDS
- Application Development
The chapters get more technical as they go on. General users will definitely find some help from the first two which go through basic BlackBerry functions and how to optimise things, including your Email settings and accessing multiple accounts. There’s a good introduction to using mail through a BES (BlackBerry Enterprise Server), the Desktop Redirector and BWC (BlackBerry Web Client).
Installing programs (including games) might be easy, but you’ll either need access to the Desktop Manager for some, or access them over-the-air and install through the browser. If your BlackBerry is locked down by your IT department, you may not even get that far. Assuming yours isn’t, there’s a wealth of software out there and the book highlights some of the “really useful” stuff, with links to more.
Accessing the Internet is also not as easy as you might think, and the BlackBerry can actually get network access via a variety of methods including through the BES (which is the corporate way of working, and is like a virtual private network to the inside of the firewall) and accessing the Internet directly from the device itself through the GPRS connection of your mobile network.
Administrators (who actually enjoy adminstering systems) will love this book. There’s a very good section on how to do interesting things that an administrator wouldn’t normally be expected to be able to do (like import/activate lots of BlackBerry users at once) and all sorts of scripts to make life easier.
It’s even possible to make the BES “push” applications and content to all an organisations BlackBerry users (or groups of them) over air and so in a business environment all the users can have the same versions of software running on their systems and access to the right corporate applications and data.
The book also gives a good insight into programming the Blackberry and describes the tools that RIM provide and how to go about using them (and what other things you need to do). RIM originally made the BlackBerry for corporates and the last thing they wanted was nasty virii and programs infecting them, so when a program tries to access some of the BlackBerry’s inner workings the BlackBerry actually checks that the program is valid and should be doing that. RIM force programmers to “sign” programs and there’s info on how to go through that process.
Summary
As a techie book for techie users and administrators it definitely meets its objectives and there’ll be things that even hardened BlackBerry users will find new and useful.
As a newbie corporate user, get your IT department to sort it out.
As a casual Blackberry user or if it’s a corporate issued Blackberry, stay away – though the first couple of chapters might seem relevent and give you some tips, most of the book will be over the top and very hard to wade through.
Score
For the intended audience: 92%. It hits the mark.
Author: Dave Mabe
ISBN: 0-596-10115-5
RRP: (GBP)17.50
Buy it
Buy it on Amazon UK – £11.55
Buy it on Amazon US – $15.72
Pantech PG-2800 Mobile Offers ‘Finger Writing Recognition Phone’
Pantech Group, South Korea’s second biggest mobile phone company, has announced that it’ll be wowing the crowds with the new PG-2800 GSM ‘finger writing recognition phone’ at the Moscow SVIAZ Expo Comm trade show this week.
Even with the help of a bevy of cat-eared beaming beauties in black to wave the phone around, it has to be said that the PG-2800 GSM isn’t exactly a looker.
But underneath that dull exterior lurks a nifty dual action keypad, which lets users write text messages (or look up words in the built-in electronic dictionary) by bashing individual keys old-school style, or by drawing the characters on the keypad.
The unique ‘finger writing recognition’ function is claimed to make it easier to input Russian and Chinese text characters.
Sung-Kyu Lee, President & CEO of Pantech & Curitel Communications was on hand to big up the handset: “We expect the unique PG-2800 handset to reinforce our credentials as a provider of attractive, stylish yet ultra-modern handsets for consumers, both in Russia and around the world”.
Pantech has proved to something of a hotshot in Russia, growing sales by more than 100% over the last two years, with plans to introduce 15 new models during the year.
The company is also aiming high worldwide, with expectations to shift 27 million unit sales globally in 2006.
And that’s a lorra lorra phones.
PG-2800 specifications
·Intenna type clamshell
·Finger writing recognition function
·90x45x18.5mm, 87.9g
·Band: 900/1800/1900 MHz
·Display
-Main 2.0″ 260K color TFT LCD
-Sub 1.17″ 65K color TFT LCD
·1.3 mega pixel camera with white balance functionality
·MP3 player
·Electronic dictionary
·SMS/EMS/MMS/E-mail
·External memory card slot
Judge Harry Edwards Attacks FCC Broadband Wire-Tap
EFF-fans and electronic freedom groupies have a new poster boy who comes from an unlikely profession. They’re normally attracted to open-source code-a-holics, or white hat hacker, but this one’s a judge.
On Friday, Judge Harry Edwards tore a few strips off the associate general counsel, Jacob Lewis, representing the Federal Communications Commission (FCC). He was one of three judges at a hearing of the federal appeals court, investigating whether the US government have the same right to tap VoIP phone conversations as they currently have with ‘normal’ phone lines.
The quotes that Reuters are reporting are pretty choice. In a response to hearing their arguments, he replied, “This is totally ridiculous. I can’t believe you’re making this argument.”
He didn’t stop there, later letting them have it with both barrels.
“Your argument makes no sense,” Edwards told Jacob Lewis, an associate general counsel with the FCC.
“I’m sorry I’m not making myself clear,” Lewis said.
“You’re making yourself very clear. That’s the problem,” Edwards replied.
Wow, that is cutting.
The ride wasn’t so rough from the other two judges, with the second, David Sentelle, appearing to side with the FCC, especially for Internet phone services. The last, Janice Brown kept her thoughts to herself.
We await the T-shirts flooding the market.
Beatles Lose To Apple Computers
As is now part of computer-lore, Apple Computers were called so because of the founders loves of the Beatles and their record label, Apple Corps.
Then money got involved and the love started to fade.
Back in 1981 Apple Corps and Apple Computers came to a legal agreement over the use of the Apple trademark, but this was on the condition that Apple Computers didn’t enter the music business.
It all got a bit heated back in 1989 when both parties must have spent a fortune on a case that dragged out over two years at London’s High Court. The precise details of the settlement weren’t made public, but money was have though to have passed to the record label from the computer company.
Latterly Apple Corps, with some justification, felt that Apple Computers had now entered the music business, through their iPod players and iTunes music store, so they brought legal action again.
Today we got judgement. The Judge of the case, Mr Justice Edward Mann, came done on the side of Apple Computers saying that they used the Apple logo in connection with their iTunes stores not the music, so there had been no breach.
Slightly confused? The Judge said that the Apple logo isn’t ever directly tied to specific music titles or artists. The judge agreed, and noted that the Apple logo was integrated into the store, not the music sold.
The more sharp-eyed among you will have noticed that iTunes doesn’t have a great deal of Apple branding on it (but it does have the bitten-Apple logo), perhaps for the very reason of the chance of legal action. Following this verdict, it will be interesting to see how or if this changes.
What drove the legal action?
We’ve been wondering what the driver for this was this action down to macho pride or an attempt at financial gain?
OK, there has been a history of Apple computers and Apple Corp with their logo, but don’t the Beatles have enough money already – I mean they’re swimming in the stuff aren’t they?
Please tell me something funny
What can we tell you that’s a bit fun about this story which is frankly pretty dry? Geoffrey Vos QC who represented Apple Corps, downloaded Chic’s Le Freak (1978 version) when demoing iTunes to the courtroom
(Please let there not be another legal battle between these two again, I’m really bored in having to type out Apple Corp and Apple Computers)
Pixar And Disney Wed
A quick catchup. We’ve been covering the Pixar/Disney, will they/won’t they get together for a while now and see that it’s finally come to pass that the Pixar board have voted to join Disney.
In the all-stock transaction, 2.3 Disney shares will be issued for each Pixar share. The most senior Pixar people will be taking interesting, senior roles at Disney reporting directly to Robert A. Iger, President and Chief Executive Officer Disney. Jobs will be joining the Disney’s Board of Directors as a non-independent member.
As we’re sure you know, Pixar has been providing Disney with computer-generated (CG) masterpieces for 11 year.
It all got going when Steve Jobs, after getting kicked out of Apple by John Sculley, the man he brought in to ‘take Apple to the next level’ (who in fact nearly killed it), bought the computer graphics division of Lucasfilms in 1986 for a cool $10m.
Initially Pixar survived by making adverts such as the boxing Listerine bottle, picking up a hamper of awards in the world of CG.
Big things started to happen in 1995 when Pixar simultaneously went public in the US, raising $140m, and their first film with Disney, Toy Story, hit the cinema. It became the highest grossing film of 1995 taking $362m worldwide at box office alone. We’re sure you all remember the masses of merchandising, making Disney huge amounts of extra income.
In 1998 A Bug’s Life came along also bringing $362m in worldwide ticket sales, 1999 saw Toy Story 2 ($485m). The following years saw Monsters Inc, Finding Nemo, The Incredibles all do very well, sealing Pixar as _the_ CG animation stuido.
Pixar and Disney had a very public spat where Pixar said that they wouldn’t supply their films to Disney exclusively. Disney played it all cool, effectively saying ‘see if I care?’ We can plainly see from the purchase that they did actually care quite a lot.
Cybersonica 2006
8-26.May.06 Cybersonica is back. Now in its 5th year, the festival is a celebration of audiovisual performance and sonic arts – a meeting point for digital artists, musicians, software developers and anyone interested in contemporary audiovisual experimentation. Cybersonica presents the most exciting approaches to creative interactivity – moving beyond the ‘screen, keyboard, mouse scenario’ to works that respond to physical input, proximity, sound, kinetics, elapsed time and the surrounding environment. The 2006 festival is being supported by the Arts Council England and will feature 5 newly commissioned sonic artworks. These will be presented alongside existing pieces from emerging practitioners, in a two week exhibition at the Vinyl Factory Gallery (Phonica Records, Soho, W1), from Monday 8th – Saturday 20th May. Details of the exhibition will be announced from 10th April. Further details about the call for work are below. www.vinylfactorygallery.co.uk Two days of FREE talks and workshops will be held at Science Museum’s Dana Centre – an ambient and acclaimed bar and café in the heart of South Kensington dedicated to discussing contemporary science, health, medicine and technology in a cultural context – on Friday 19th and Saturday 20th May. Presentations from Soundtoys.net, Trampoline’s Radiator festival, Threshold and Toplap are already confirmed. London & Bradford, UK http://www.cybersonica.org/
Vodafone Pre-Empts Viviane’s EC Rip-off Roaming Action
She’s got a mission to eliminate mobile phone roaming rip-off charges. She’s Commissioner Viviane Redding of the EC, and today, Vodafone took PR action to keep itself out of her sights, by promising to “cut roaming by 40%” by this time next year.
Vodafone’s announcement says: “Average European roaming costs for Vodafone customers will be cut by at least 40% by April 2007, when compared to last summer.”
This, it says, “will benefit over 30 million Vodafone customers who roam every year, and will see the average cost of roaming in Europe fall from over €0.90 to less than €0.55 per minute.”
Ironically, Vodafone is probably not highest on Commissioner Redding’s hit list. It’s certainly possible to pay over the odds for Voda phone calls when overseas – pick the wrong contract! – but amongst the giants, Voda actually scores quite well on fair use, especially if you’re a Passport subscriber.
Arun Sarin, Chief Executive, Vodafone, said: “Customers want simplicity and value for money when they’re travelling abroad. They get it with Vodafone Passport, which we launched last year, allowing customers to take their home tariff abroad with a small additional per call fee. Today Passport provides savings of at least 30% for more than 6 million Vodafone customers.”
But like many of the giants, Vodafone is suffering from the cost of providing phones. All the European operators, traditionally, subsidise handsets; they give them away, or sell them for a fraction of their cost, in the expectation of making substantially more out of phone call charges – and it works.
Unfortunately, we’re changing our phones too often. It’s mostly the shops that do this, because they are incentivised to do it by the networks.
The networks all pay a premium to a phone shop who “steals” a customer from a rival network. At the same time, paradoxically, they’re trying to make contracts longer: 12 months minimum, 18 months or even longer, as standard.
So the trend is to pay as you go phones – which tend to be paid for. And it’s PAYG agreements which most heavily penalise you when roaming. That is, assuming that your PAYG phone even makes it possible to use it overseas; many don’t.
Sarin said: “The success of Passport shows the demand for simple, great value roaming in Europe and today we’re showing that Vodafone will continue to lead the industry in providing it.”
What he probably means, is that Passport needs to be able to compete with PAYG, and Vodafone sees no harm in ingratiating itself with the Commissioner for Information Society and Media while doing so.
NTL, BT Nowhere In Premier League Football Bids
There had been some excitement, well amongst UK media analysts at least, that BSkyB might loose its dominance of the control of UK football’s Premier League.
Today we learned who the winners were.
Following pressure from the European Union (EU), who had stated that all matches couldn’t be controlled by the same broadcaster, the games for this round of bidding were split into six packages of 23 games each. The EU threatened legal action against the Premier League if their will wasn’t complied with. Not surprisingly, they did.
Clearly BSkyB bid. Having exclusive right to the football was one of the cornerstones that built the success of Sky in the UK.
Other bidders included NTL, fronted by the bearded-wonder – Richard Branson, who had been acting the big I AM, threatening to out bid Sky for the available six packages. BT made some noises too.
Finally the other company, Irish broadcaster Setanta, had thrown its hat into the ring, originally saying they were going to bid for two of the packages. Those not in the broadcast world wouldn’t necessarily know who Setanta are, but most people will know of their 40% owners, Benchmark Capital.
The results of the bidding? Sky got four of them and Setanta the other two. With only six on offer, the other pretenders got nothing.
For the UK Football Association, it’s a giant payday with the total amount paid rising from £1Bn three years ago, to £1.7Bn covering the next three years. Not bad work if you can get it. Expect many more overpaid footballers and lurid stories in the tabloids. The Cristal champagne will be flowing tonight.