21 – 22 August The Edinburgh Interactive Entertainment Festival gets to the cultural and creative heart of games. With an expert team gathered from across the interactive entertainment business driving the festival, Edinburgh provides two days of stimulating and forward thinking debate, great networking and the chance to experience the wider context of games as part of the world’s biggest cultural festival. EIEF is designed with simple core objectives: to help you know more, to help you ask the right questions and to challenge the way you think about the future of games. From groundbreaking sessions to a wide ranging screenings event covering four major cinema screens, it is unrivalled in terms of value and benefit. Some of the world’s leading developers, companies and brand leaders will be in Edinburgh to share their thinking, their ideas and their vision. We went last year and were really impressed. Edinburgh, UK http://www.eief.co.uk/
Month: August 2006
Egrips For Smartphones, iPods, PDAs And More
Are you the owner of a pair of super slippery hands that seem unable to keep a firm grip on your mobile or PDA?
Or are you one of those people who like to multitask when you’re running around the office but have found the shiny surface of your phone a little too slippery on occasion – sometimes with disastrous results? (we know of at least two people who have managed to drop their phones down toilets).
If this sounds like you, then you may be interested in investing in some Egrips Appliques.
We’re not sure what the Frenchy-sounding name is all about, but the company offers a range of protective stick-on covers for a wide selection of electronic devices such as cell phones, PDAs, digital cameras, iPods, MP3 players, gaming devices etc.
Like many of the best ideas, it’s a simple one: simply stick on a pre-cut set of protective silicone grips on to your device and the thing should become much more ‘sticky’ and less likely to end up on the floor, under your brake pedal or floating in your karsey.
Made from a super thin material, the makers claim that the “specially formulated adhesive” won’t damage your precious gadget while the super-grippy material will prevent it from, “sliding around on dry surfaces, like car seats, centre consoles, counter tops, desktops, laptops and more.”
The grips are reasonably priced around the $10-$12 mark and are available from the egrips website.
Polycom Communicator Review: Handsfree Skype (83%)
The Polycom Communicator (C100S) first caught our eye at the Skype-day in London. It’s a well-formed handsfree speaker/mic kit that connects to your PC via USB, letting you make trouble-free calls on Skype.
Polycom aren’t new to the field of handsfree. You may well have used their SoundStation in telephone conferences. They’ve leveraged this experience to tune the Communicator to minimise feedback.
What’s it like to use
Getting it setup is breeze. When you’ve carried out the one-off process of installing the small piece of software on to the PC and authorised to allow it to work with Skype, you’re away.
We found it very easy to use, not only that, but were highly impressed with its performance.
Conversations flow more naturally, as if you were in the same room as the person, because you’re not holding a phone handset. The extra auto-echo-cancellation that has been built into it, also lets you use it without the other party realising.
For those who are keen on secrecy, there’s a standard 3.5cm headphone socket in the right by the mic.
When you’re travelling and need to make a series of calls from your hotel room, the Communicator will be a boon. Forget using the cellular with an ear piece, this lets you sit in your hotel room and make your calls while taking advantage of Skype’s low-cost calling too.
The Communicator also has a life beyond Skype calls. Due to its high quality speaker, it’s great to use to play your music through, or use during a presentation with audio in it. A great advantage.
Design
It’s a well designed solid piece of kit that’s had a lot of thought put into it. This is amply demonstrated by its surface-finish (which comes in either blue or grey), which just through its touch gives you confidence in it.
With its size being similar to two packs of cards sitting next to each other (3.24″ x 5.25″ x 0.85″/ 85 cm x 135cm x 25 cm), you would have no hesitation in chucking it in to your bag when you’re on a business trip.
The centre-top is dominated by a high quality (22 KHz) speaker, with twin microphones on either side of the bottom front corners. This not only gives excellent sound reproduction (actually beyond Skype 16KHz capabilities), but the dual mics make it easy for many people around a table to take part in the conversation. The microphones are independently balanced, so a person sitting a distance away from one would not be drowned out by another sitting close to the other.
The middle section of the unit has a collection of five buttons arranged within a circle. On the left is a blue Skype-logo’s button, that when pressed, makes the Skype software on your PC become active. The button on the opposite side of the circle connects and disconnects calls. Volume controls are at the top and the bottom, with a mute button in the centre.
Around these buttons is a circular LED that gives progress on the call – it flashes green when connecting the call, glows green when on a call and red when the conversation is muted.
The back is hinged to provide two features – holding the 79 cm (33″) long USB lead that wraps around the back, and to act as a stand for the unit when it’s in use. Like the rest of the unit, it too, has a reassuringly-solid feel about it, with a hinge that feels like it will last.
The intelligent design touches continues on this flapped hinge with its rubber corners, minimising movement where it rests against the table.
Summary
A great, quality device that works easily and well, providing you with a better way of making Skype calls.
Score: 83%
Ups
Great quality calls on Skype Superb speaker for music-listening Well designed and compact
Downs
No Mac or Linux support yet
Cost
US RRP $149
Buy it at Amazon UK (Blue)
More PE Takeover Talk At NTL
The much heralded NTL/Telewest merger, expected to be the saviour of the UK cable industry, has become the subject of another Private Equity takeover rumour and the likely winner, if it goes ahead, is Richard Branson.
A quick recap
Branson did a deal with NTL that saw Virgin mobile become part of a four-play (geddit?) proposition, allowing the operation to use the Virgin brand and in return received 10.6% of the company. The merger of the three companies has not yet bedded in, and customers across the country are still waiting for the promised improvements in the notoriously poor levels of customer support.
Flextech the programming arm of the company, which was up for sale at the time of the earlier merger (I hope you’re paying attention), is likely to again be offered up for acquisition to media companies. A great way for potential new investors to make a chuck of their cash back.
Market reaction
The market has viewed the possible takeover positively, as it considered the cable company is still under valued following its 20% share price drop in the last three months. More recently shares in the company, quoted in the US, gained around 8% last week, on the possible fresh takeover.
What would the impact be?
If a takeover goes ahead, then the focus will be on installing a strong management team to leverage the offering against well established competition from BT and the newer entrants to the market, like Tiscali whose purchase of Homechoice has put them in the triple-play space, and Sky who are rolling out a broadband proposition under their own well known brand.
Google Music Trends in GTalk
When upgrading their Instant messaging (IM) and VoIP software released earlier this week, Google has taken the opportunity to introduce a new feature – Music Trends.
The idea of letting people know what music you are and have been listening to has been around for a long time, with bloggers using various plug-ins to show the information on their blogs.
Through Google Talk, Google have taken it to an even more immediate level. With the latest version of the software on their machines and switching on the option, people who are listed as your friends within GTalk can see the music that you’re listening to at that moment, displayed on the status line.
It currently works with four pieces of music playing software iTunes; Winamp; Windows Media Player and Yahoo Music Engine, with is anticipated that more will be supported soon.
So what? you may say. Google say it’s an interesting way to discover new music, which we’re sure has nothing to do with one of the other features of GTalk, file transfer – “cool tune, man, can you IM it over?” Surely not. Would be a great way to get people buying music, through a long rurmoured Google Music-buying site though wouldn’t it?
Google are also grabbing all of the information of which tracks are being played and compiling them in to a chart of top songs, broken down into genre and country (only USA currently).
We can just hear the clatter of keyboards as memos shoot around record companies insisting that all of the employees load up the software, and play the latest boy band that they’re trying to promote.
Guardian g24, A PDF Newspaper: Overview
The UK’s national leading left newspaper, The Guardian, has been looking at what it thinks is the future of the daily newspaper. Since the successful launch of its Berlin edition in 2005, which rolls out of the presses somewhere between the size of a tabloid and the more traditional ‘quality’ broadsheet, it’s done a pile of blue sky thinking.
As well as producing lively Podcasts on media and business, it now brings the much heralded digital ‘Newspaper of the future’ to your computer – sorry paperboys and girls, looks like your days could be numbered.
The answer to the blue sky thinking that it’s put together is pretty radical and out there (literally) for you to try. A downloadable PDF newspaper. It comes as a group of 5 pdfs that are updated every 15 minutes throughout the day and it can be printed on your standard A4 desktop printer. The editions are compartmentalised as Top stories, World, Media, Business and Sport and offer a fairly amazing step forward for newspaper distribution, cutting out a whole tier of distribution. Only becoming physical when printed by the reader – and at the readers expense.
Since the eBooks.
The challenge for any venture like this is to keep the current revenue stream running while building a new wave stream. It’s a brave move and we hope it’ll give a challenge to the rest of the UK news industry.
UK Analogue Radio Gets A Bashing
DAB in the UK has had a good week with prices dropping to an all time low, with High Street retailers are now making available a DAB radio with CD player for under £50.
To add the icing to the digital radio cake, Dixons the domestic electronics giant that made its name in radio more than 50 years ago, has announced its decision to drop conventional analogue ‘steam radio’ from its portfolio (But they appear to make a habit of grabbing press about this type of thing, having done it with VCRs already).
Although a date has been set for UK analogue TV to closedown, no such decision has been made for radio, and with radios outnumbering TVs at something like 4 to 1 any planned switchover is bound to be some way into the future.
DAB radio coverage in the UK is approaching 85% but the rollout in the rest of the world is patchy, with markets like the USA favouring a pay-model satellite-delivered radio service with brands like Sirius. Competition from the drm (Digital Radio Mondiale) standard and commercial operators like Worldspace are also creating uncertainty in territories that are characterised by dispersed populations across large land masses.
There are now over 270 UK analogue radio transmitting licences issued and they’re still leaving OFCOM’s shelves as fast as they become available, but with a promise of a further national DAB multiplexes and a likely radio presence from Channel 4, the future of radio is looking increasingly digital.
Sky’s satellite hybrid gnome receiver has so far failed to dazzle and, like the semi-portable internet radios, it’s perceived as overly complex for the average punter who prefer the Freeview-like DAB proposition.
Not all retailers of radio see the disappearance of analogue radio as inevitable in the near future. There are important extra features to tempt people, like EPG, pause live and track identification, which make digital services far ‘sexier’ than conventional wireless,
What will show DAB has arrived? We reckon that once the DAB pirates hoist their Digital aerials, the technology will have well and truly arrived.
UK Government Jumps On YouTube
The UK Government have put two of their videos up on YouTube – for all the world to enjoy.
Senior executives at the UK Cabinet Office have posted their first two short films – ‘Transformational Government‘ and ‘Sharing the leadership challenge‘, a slightly longer clip concerning Whitehall plans to save money by consolidating service departments and the leadership challenges this poses for managers.
I know, I know … given that description, you all want to shoot over to the see them without a delay, but stay with a little while longer.
Ian Dunmore, Director of Public Sector Forums broke the news saying: “This looks like the first time a government anywhere has used YouTube in this way. It’s a ground-breaking move and one other governments might well follow.” We have to admire the him keeping his head by adding, “However we don’t expect the videos to surge to the top of the popularity chart just yet.”
The Death of YouTube?
Is this the death knell for YouTube? How could a service be any less cool than to have the government using it? The truth is, of course, that YouTube welcomes all no matter how stiff the video provider.
YouTube is becoming a cross-section of society, globally. This is borne out by Peter, the self-declared geriatric1927, the 78 year old widower, living alone in the county in the middle of England. His twelve videos documenting events of his life have been watch over half a million times in the last two weeks.
For a long time Governements have been looking around for way to get their ‘messages’ out to the public without the bothersome annoyance of journalists asking difficult questions. They may see YouTube as the fix for this.
What they may not have taken account of is the video replies or text comments that people can leave in response.
Extreme Sports Channel Added to Sky Mobile TV
UK satellite operator, Sky is building on their video offerings on the Sky Mobile service, by adding the Extreme Sports Channel.
Sky and Vodafone have been offering video content on their 3G network since October last year.
The latest addition will offer made-for-mobile content including a series covering the best and worst slams and profiles on the ultimate extreme sports legends as well as existing content such as the acclaimed Tips & Tricks series.
Sports has been popular content on Sky Mobile TV, so as Stephen Nuttall, Director of Business Development at Sky says, “we’re giving customers even more of what they enjoy.”
We suspect that Sky is adding the extreme sports to attract a different sort of subscriber to the service, which they’re not increasing the price of, leaving it at £5/month for unlimited access.
All of this content is currently only available to Vodafone 3G subscribers, but it is expected that other networks are in discussions with Sky and it’s expected that they may offer it on their networks.
Greenphone Announced by Trolltech
Trolltech may not be well known, but they make a software product called Qt (pronounced “cutie”) which is used by many. It’s a package that allows developers to write code that works across several platforms (Windows, Linux and MacOS X) so only one set of API’s (Applications Programming Interfaces) need to be learnt.
Qt is used both commercially and in the open source community (it’s the basis for the Linux KDE windowing environment). Commercially there are several well known programs using it, including Skype and various packages from Google and Adobe.
Qt has been around for quite a while and more recently introduced Qtopia a complete Linux development environment, using Qt as a basis for its user interface.
Qtopia comes in several editions including a phone edition which is used by several vendors including Motorola. It uses Embedded Linux (version 2.4) and then Qtopia sits on top, offering various standard interfaces (including the user interface and standard Qtopia applications like calendaring, contacts, etc).
Qt and Qtopia are designed to make writing applications easy, however it’s still a relatively complicated task. Supporting lots of flavours of hardware further complicates things.
Trolltech Greenphone
In addition to Qt and Qtopia, Trolltech have come out with a mobile development device, known as the Greephone. Unsuprisingly it has a green casing, just so you don’t forget. The phone only supports GSM/GPRS.
The Greenphone comes with Qtopia Phone Edition 4.1.4 and the Linux kernel 2.4.19.
The hardware consists of a touch-screen and keypad UI QVGA LCD colour screen, Intel XScale 312 MHz PXA270, 64MB RAM & 128MB Flash, Mini-SD card slot, Broadcom BCM2121 GSM/GPRS baseband processor, Bluetooth and Mini-USB port.
Though it’s not designed to be used in production, it is designed to allow developers to rapidly prototype applications that can then be moved on to a real phone before expensive prototypes are made.
Applications, new kernels and versions of Qt and Qtopia can be loaded on to the Greenphone through the mini USB connection.
The Greenphone comes with a complete Qtopia SDK (software development kit) which provides a complete environment for developing and modifying application software for Qtopia Phone Edition. It can produce packages that run on the Greenphone itself or run through the virtual phone included with the SDK.
There are already over 4 million Linux phones utilising Trolltech’s software, this just allows manufacturers to develop Linux applications and get them to market more rapidly.
The mobile phone market is already a crowded space with Microsoft Windows Mobile 5.0 and Symbian dominating the market. Maybe this will give Linux the mobile boost it needs to push it into the mainstream.