August 2006

MySpace To Hit 100 Million Accounts
Currently listed as the fourth most popular English-language Website on the planet and the sixth most popular in any language, MySpace has become a social networking phenomenon, and looks set to notch up an amazing 100 million accounts in the next few days. As we publish, it’s sitting on 99,677,398 after being on 99.4m yesterday.
A little bit of history
The Website first started life back in 1998, offering a small amount of online storage space to members, which increased as they referred new members to the site.
The idea failed to generate enough revenue, and closed down in May 2001, with a senior analyst at Nielsen/NetRatings commenting that online storage sites were “having a hard time surviving.” How times have changed.
The return of MySpace
The MySpace service we all know and (possibly) love now was launched in July 2003 with Tom Anderson and Chris DeWolfe at the helm, backed by a small team of programmers.
The site quickly became a hit with new bands trying to make a splash, and with music fans looking for new sounds, as well as teenagers looking for a bit of social interaction and networking.
To the chagrin of many of its users, Rupert Murdoch whipped out his fat wallet in July 2005 to the tune of $580 million and added MySpace to his News Corporation empire.
News that he’s signed a deal with Google and extracted a minimum of $900m from them, will be one in the eye for those were asking how he was going to make his money back. He’s nearly doubled his money with that one deal.
MySpace becomes part of pop culture
MySpace’s compelling mix of user-submitted blogs, profiles, bands, photos, MP3s, videos backed up by an internal e-mail system has seen the site become an integral tool for new bands and filmmakers, making it an increasingly influential part of modern pop culture.
In July 2006, MySpace was the most popular site in the United States, accounting for 4.5% of all Website visits and 80 percent of all visits to online social networking Websites.
According to Nielsen//NetRatings, MySpace enjoyed a hefty 45.7 million unique visitors in June 2006, with users spending an average of nearly two hours on the site at a time.
Now boasting 300 employees, MySpace claims 500,000 new members each week.
Commercial synergy ahoy!
With such a high profile, it’s not surprising to see marketing types crawling all over the site, with a popular ruse being to create real-looking profiles for fictional characters in commercial TV and film offerings.
Ricky Bobby’s profile on MySpace has 47,000 “friends” and has a profile listing his favourite music and movies.
Users looking to hook up with Ricky might be in for a disappointment though as he’s a made-up character, with the MySpace profile being used as a marketing tool to promote the movie he appears in.
To further increase the popularity of the page and increase the movie’s profile, Ricky’s page also offers inducements (badges, comps) to get users to add him as a ‘friend.’
Ricky isn’t alone either, with the lady-charming John Tucker character from the “John Tucker Must Die” film also boasting his own MySpace page (as do each of his equally fictional four girlfriends).
All these fake pages bring in extra income for News Corp, who let marketers add extras like longer videos, more pictures and movie trailers for a fee.
Other media outlets have chosen to create profiles to promote themselves, including the new Murdoch-owned television broadcast networks The CW and My Network also looking to get hip with the kids via their own MySpace pages.
It’s also getting quite popular with call girls and purveyors of porn. Surprising that they were so slow on the uptake really – they normally lead the industry in developments.
The future
Although we can’t see MySpace disappearing any time soon, in the fickle world of online social networking things can change every quickly indeed.
Last month, Web measurement site Hitwise were reporting that the fast-growing new boys YouTube had already overtaken MySpace – a site that was virtually unknown this time last year.
With YouTube fast becoming the new place to hang out, recent reliability issues haven’t helped MySpace either.
MySpace
8 August, 2006
Apple Mac Pro Announced
Apple has announced the new G5 PowerMac, a quad Xeon, 64-bit desktop workstation stuffed with two new Dual-Core Intel Xeon processors running up to 3.0 GHz which are claimed to deliver “up to twice the performance of the Power Mac G5 Quad.”
The new desktop sees Apple completing its move to Intel processors, with Steve Jobs, Apple’s CEO enthusing, “Apple has successfully completed the transition to using Intel processors in just seven months – 210 days to be exact.”
The shiny new Mac Pro features two Dual-Core Intel Xeon processors running up to 3.0 GHz, each sporting 4MB of shared L2 cache and independent 1.33 GHz front-side buses.
Apple says that there’s “more than 4.9 million possible configurations” of the Mac Pro available (who works out this nonsense?), with a new “direct attach storage solution” allowing snap in installation of up to four 500GB Serial ATA hard drives up to a total of 2TB of internal storage.
The machine offers support for two optical drives to simultaneously read and/or write to CDs and DVDs with space for three full-length PCI Express expansion slots and one double-wide PCI Express graphics slot.
On the front panel of the Mac Pro there’s a FireWire 800 port, a FireWire 400 port and two USB 2.0 ports, with extra FireWire 800, FireWire 400 and three USB 2.0 ports lurking on the back panel.
Wrapping up the connectivity options, there’s also dual Gigabit Ethernet ports, optical digital input and output, analogue audio input and output, and optional built-in support for AirPort Extreme and Bluetooth 2.0+EDR.
Graphics are taken care of with a NVIDIA GeForce 7300 GT with 256MB of video memory, with dual-display support.
Users keen to take advantage of the zillions of configuration options, can upgrade to beefier ATI Radeon X1900 XT or NVIDIA Quadro FX 4500 cards that both come with 512MB of video memory.
The standard configuration of the Mac Pro is shipping, priced at £1,699 (~$2,499, ~e2,522), without a monitor.
Mac Pro standard configuration:
Two 2.66 GHz Dual-Core Intel Xeon processors;
1GB of 667 MHz DDR2 fully-buffered ECC memory expandable up to 16GB;
NVIDIA GeForce 7300 GT with 256MB of GDDR2 SDRAM;
250GB Serial ATA (3Gb/s) hard drive running at 7200 rpm;
16x SuperDrive with double-layer support (DVD+R DL/DVD±RW/CD-RW);
Four PCI Express slots: one double-wide graphics slot and three full-length expansion slots#
Ships with Mighty Mouse and Apple Keyboard.
Leopard OS
During his annual speech yesterday, Apple CEO Steve Jobs briefly previewed the next version of Apple’s X operating system.
Known as “Leopard” and scheduled for launch in spring of 2007 (and thus failing to capitalise on Vista’s delays), Jobs teased the audience by saying, “There’s some top secret features we’re going to keep a little close to the vest.”
He did, however, reveal some of the new features the operating system, which include a ‘Time Machine’ option that automatically backs up a Mac, enhanced videoconferencing options, improved Mail and the bundling of the Front Row and PhotoBooth programs.
Apple
8 August, 2006
Sony Mylo Wi-Fi Media Player Introduced
Sony has released details of the Mylo, a groovy new Wi Fi-enabled personal communications device aimed at Instant Messaging nutters.
Available in black or white, the curvy handheld comes with 1GB of built-in flash memory and features a slide out QWERTY keypad, 802.11b Wi-Fi and three free instant messaging services pre-installed.
A cringe worthy video on the Sony site declaring the Mylo to be the “the easiest, raddest broadband device” makes it clear who this device is aimed at: dA K1dZ.
Instant Messaging
With Skype, Yahoo Messenger and Google Talk onboard, Sony is hoping to attract Instant Messaging addicts, although with only Wi-Fi connectivity and no SIM cards onboard, users are going to need to find free wireless networks to enjoy the fun.
The device ships with JiWire’s hotspot directory, which lists more than 20,000 WiFi networks across the US (but nowt for UK users), and there’s an avatar-enabled “What’s Up” screen which lets users check the online status of up to 90 friends.
For teens who, like, don’t find email too slow for their hyperactive needs, there’s also an e-mail client, compatible with services such as Yahoo! Mail and the Gmail web mail service.
So long as there’s a free Wi-Fi connection within range (not always an option here in Britland), the Mylo looks to be a capable wireless device, offering predictive typing, the excellent Opera Mini browser, and a fun option to share playlists and stream songs between other Mylo users.
Multimedia support
Sporting a 320 by 240 pixel 2.4-inch LCD screen, the handheld offers a full suite of multimedia support (music, videos and photos) with a Memory Stick Pro Duo slot allowing up to 4GB of extra storage (Sony is set to introduce a 4GB Memory Stick this month for $170).
There’s also a built in speaker for annoying bystanders, with the Mylo supporting MP3, ATRAC, WMA (inc DRM stuff), MP4 (Advanced Simple Profile) and JPEGs formats.
Battery life looks pretty good too, with a claimed 45 hours of music playback and around seven hours of instant-message chatting/Web surfing.
This drops to just three hours when the Mylo is used for Skype telephone calls – mere moments for teenagers.
The device comes with a microphone, stereo headphones, a USB cable and a neoprene case and is expected to retail for around $350 (~£183, ~e272) in September.
Oh, and the name ‘Mylo’ supposedly stands for “my life online,” in case you were wondering.
Mylo
8 August, 2006
Broadband Barmy Brits Online For Fifty Days A Year
A new survey by service comparison firm USwitch.com claims that Britain’s 10 million broadband users are spending an average of nearly a whole day online every single week.
The research revealed that broadband addicted Brits are glued to their modems for 23.5 hours online each week, which works out to a total of 50 days out of a whole year.
The same survey – which involved 15,323 people taking part in an online poll by YouGov – revealed that 87% of broadband users shop online with 78% using the Web for their banking – even if the service is crap.
According to USwitch.com’s figures, 40% of people now listen to online radio, with almost as many (39%) using their connections to download music.
Internet telephony looks to be continuing its explosive growth, with one in eight people of those surveyed saying that they’d used net telephone calls using technology like VoIP software such as Skype.
Lies, Damn Lies, and Statistics
As is almost always the case with these flaming surveys, completely contradictory results can be found in a recent survey by the regulator Ofcom.
According to their findings – based on interviews with adults across the UK – broadband users spent just 12 hours online a week, with just 12% of users saying they spent more than 25 hours a week online.
USwitch.com
Ofcom
8 August, 2006
Google Adds New Security Features
Search engine giants Google have introduced a new feature which alerts punters about search results that could potentially lead them to dodgy sites with malicious code.
Using data from the Stop Badware Coalition – a non-profit organisation who also enjoy support from Sun Microsystems and Chinese PC maker Lenovo – Google will now flag up sites that could be hosting malicious software.
Whenever a suspect link is clicked on from Google’s search engine results, punters will be whisked off to a warning page which says, “Warning – the site you are about to visit may harm your computer!”
If that hasn’t already scared the bejesus out of surfers, the page suggests that users trot along to StopBadware.org in double quick time and, “learn more about malware and how to protect yourself.”
The ‘interrupt page’ also offers options for users to return to the search page and select a different result, try another search, or – if they’re feeling brave/stupid enough – continue on to the potentially dodgy site.
In time, Google says it will replace the generic “DANGER WILL ROBINSON!” alerts with pages containing more specific information about the iffy Web sites.
285 million dodgy clicks a month
It is hoped that this new initiative will go some way to solving the problem that is partly created by the search engines themselves.
With search engine results routinely displaying links to sites stuffed full of spyware and adware, it is reckoned that US surfers arrive at on malicious sites about 285 million times per month – all from clicking on search results from the five major search engines.
Curtain twitching for surfers
John Palfrey, a professor at the Harvard Law School and one of the main movers behind the scheme, explained the Coalition’s motives: “We’re not going to say don’t do it. What we want to do is basically give people some more information about what might happen to their computer.”
Likening the scheme to a “Neighbourhood Watch” programme, the program is a collaborative effort between Harvard and Oxford University, and invites surfers to report sites that have malicious code on them whenever they find them.
All reported sites are then checked by a human before being flagged as a wrong ‘un.
So far, Google is the only major search engine to sign up to the Stop Badware Coalition, but Palfrey hopes that others will start to use their database of dodgy sites too.
StopBadWare
7 August, 2006
PDA Shipments Notch Up Record High in Q2, 2006
Like the Black Knights in Monty Python’s ‘Holy Grail,’ PDAs are refusing to be beaten, despite almost monthly declarations of their impending obsolescence.
Far from shuffling off into that big technology dustbin in the sky (or, more likely, some landfill site somewhere), Personal Digital Assistants managed to register the highest PDA shipment total of any second quarter on record.
The new research from Gartner saw PDA shipments totalling 3.7 million units in the second quarter of 2006, up 2.7 percent from the second quarter of 2005.
Much of the growth is coming from GPS-enabled new kids on the PDA block like Mio Technology, Motorola and Danger Research, while old boys like Research In Motion (RIM), Palm, Hewlett-Packard and Dell all saw steadily declining shipments.
When it comes to PDA operating systems, Microsoft’s Windows Mobile kept pushing ahead with 54.2 percent of PDA OS shipments, followed by RIM OS with 22.5 percent of the market and Palm OS with 13.4 percent.
“The ongoing integration of WAN technology into PDAs, and the marketing push of these devices by wireless operators has produced most of the growth compared to one year ago,” said Todd Kort, principal analyst in Gartner’s Computing Platforms Worldwide group.
Although shipments are up, revenues are down, as Kort explained: “The average selling price of PDAs fell by 6 percent from one year ago to $373, mostly due to aging product lines, the increasing impact of wireless operator subsidies and relatively few new PDAs being launched thus far in 2006.”
This explains how worldwide PDA end-user revenue fell by 4.1 percent last year to $1.38 billion in the second quarter of 2006.
The report breaks down PDA shipments by manufacturer, Q2 2006 shipment estimates, market share and 2Q05- 1Q06 growth.
Research In Motion 830,720 shipments, 22.5% market share, -1.1% growth
Palm 470,458 , 12.7%, -26.7%
Hewlett-Packard 382,653, 10.4% -15.1%
Mio Technology 303,377, 8.2% 65.4%
Nokia 163,600, 4.4%, -40.5%
Others 1,545,596, 41.8%, 27.8%
It’s worth noting that these totals don’t include smartphones, such as the hugely popular Palm Treo phones (which shifted 656,000 units over the same quarter) and BlackBerry 71xx (467,000 units excluded), but include cellular PDAs, such as the iPAQ 69xx and Nokia E61.
Which rather makes the results a bit confusing to our eyes.
Gartner
7 August, 2006
Boxon MP3 Player Bolts On VoIP
When it comes to convergence, we’re always on the look out for shiny new smartypants devices, even if we’re not always totally convinced about their usefulness.
A good case in point is the new Boxon VoIP gadget from Korean electronics manufacturers Hyunwon (who are better known as Mobiblu).
As the name suggests, the Boxon is an MP3 player a VoIP telephony system built in, letting you plug it into any Internet-connected PC and start talking for free.
To get chatting, simply slam the player into any available USB port on a desktop or laptop PC, and then the (unspecified) VoIP software should automatically load up on the host computer.
Of course, the idea of a converged MP3 player/VoIP device isn’t a new one – in fact, we wrote about a very similar device, the Ezmax EZMP4200P VoIP MP3 Player, way back in March 2005.
The wave of disinterest that followed that particular product announcement suggests that perhaps the public aren’t quite yet ready to shell out for VoIP MP3 players that need to be plugged into a computer before you can start chatting.
As a MP3 player, the Boxon looks to be a fairly middle of the road affair too, sporting a 1.71-inch full colour OLED display, with e-book reading, video playback, photo viewing, and an English-Korean dictionary.
We’ve no idea if (or when) this thing is going to be arriving in Europe, and we can’t say we’re particvularly bothered either because, well, it’s a rubbish idea, isn’t it?
Mobiblu
7 August, 2006
Goggles 0.9 – Google Maps-Powered Flight Sim
We love it when people adapt Google Maps to create fun new applications, and the “Goggles Flight Sim” is one of the best we’ve seen for a while.
Created by London designer Mark Caswell-Daniels as a piece of viral marketing (it’s working, Mark!) for his Flash-scripting talents, the flight sim uses aerial images loaded in from Google’s mapping service.
After selecting your city from a drop down list (which currently offers London, New York, Paris, Toyko and Washington DC), you find yourself in charge of a cartoon biplane flying over a rolling landscape created by seamless Google Maps images.
The controls are pretty rudimentary, with keyboard arrows controlling direction and height, letting you sweep and soar around cities – and plunge earthwards in a kamikaze crash if you feel so inclined.
There are – not surprisingly – some rough edges, the most annoying being the inability to climb very high.
Without an accompanying map overview or sign-posted landmarks, this means it can be hard to work out where you are, which can be rather frustrating (we found that following railway lines or major rivers usually got us to the centre of cities in the end).
Still, as an office timewaster it’s second to none, and well worth a go.
We emailed Mark about his flight sim and he told us that it was still in beta at the moment, and that it wasn’t actually meant to be released quite yet.
He explains, “a mate interpreted ‘don’t tell anybody about it’ as ’email all your friends with a link’ so the cat got out of the bag before I finished it!”
Still, Mark acknowledges that, “all publicity is good publicity,” and we’ll look forward to playing with the finished version soon!
Nice one, Mark!
www.isoma.net/games/goggles.html
7 August, 2006
Why I love the Palm: Conclusion
For a self confessed, gimme-gimme-shiny-new gadgets nutcase like me to be using a phone several years old speaks volumes of the strengths of the Treo 650.
It’s not a perfect phone by any means, but after trying out various Nokias, Pocket PCs, Motos, Sony Ericssons and other wannbe contenders, I’ve come to the conclusion that the Treo remains the best smartphone on the market.
It’s not for everyone of course, but after a recent weekend in Wales, I realised that I had in my possession the first smartphone that was actually clever enough for me to leave my laptop at home.
Despite being out in the wilds of lovely Cymraeg (with ne’er a wisp of Wi-Fi in the air), I was able to download images for approval from a client; download, edit and send off a Word doc; surf the web; chat with some friends on IRC; send and receive a ton of email; download weather forecasts; read RSS feeds; play some games; update my blog; send text messages; take pics and a few silly videos and, of course make and receive calls – and the Treo performed faultlessly throughout.
If I’d have taken my Windows Mobile phone I dare say I would have been very well acquainted with stylus (and the reset button) by this time, but the Treo’s fabulous one-handed operation and rock solid performance made it a practical laptop replacement.
The future
After Palm decided that it wasn’t worth the outlay to re-jig the Treo to fit incoming European regulations, there sadly won’t be any more 650s shipping to the UK, although there still should be plenty about – especially on ebay.
In the US, Palm has already released the 650’s successor, the Treo 700p, but it looks like us here in Euro-land are going to have to wait till around Christmas for an updated, antennae-less Treo to appear. Possibly.
Palm has remained tight-lipped about their European product roadmap, with the web rife with rumours of both Windows and Palm new models going under ggroovy codenames like Hollywood, Lowrider, Nitro and Lennon.
Vodafone UK, however, have recently confirmed that they will be launching a Windows Mobile 5-powered 3G UMTS Treo at an unspecified date, but we’re not interested in that.
We want a much needed fix of new Palm gadgetry, running a Palm OS!
4 August, 2006
Cricket Mobisodes On The Ashes To Launch
The mobile division of TV production company Twofour and Player One Sports are working together to create a weekly short form TV show covering the Australian portion of the Ashes tour for portable devices.
The six minute shows will be formatted for mobile phones, iPods, or PSP’s. They’ll be chunked into one to two minute blocks, “for ease of use on different delivery mediums.”
Coming this Winter, sports presenter, Mark Durden-Smith (no we haven’t heard of him either, but when it comes to sport, that’s doesn’t mean anything) will be fronting the show where they plan to cover analysis of the action and try to give an understanding of life on tour in Australia.
It appears that they’re hoping to pull in the interest of posh types who like cricket, and more than likely don’t care how much it’s going to cost them to keep up to date. It may be of course turn out that these are the sort of people who don’t currently have the kit to play the content.
Twofour are clearly planning to flog the maximum amount of ‘media’ to lighten with heavy-wallets of their punters. Alongside the mobisode (and we suspect, cross-promoted during it), there will be a range of associated content including Freddie Flintoff’s Allround Cricket, a Web and mobile fantasy cricket game and a range of other downloadable content such as wallpapers, ring tones and video blog.
A rather over-excited Mr Philip Bourchier O’Ferrall, Director of Twofour Mobile gushed, “We are in the midst of a media revolution and I’m excited that Twofour is leading the way.”
Twofour mobile
4 August, 2006