October 2006

VideoJug And The Sun Does Video Content Deal
Video howto site VideoJug has signed a deal with UK tabloid, The Sun, to provide ten video clips to them weekly.
This will be a big traffic boost for VideoJug who has been publicly available for the last two and a half months.
The owners of The Sun, Rupert Murdoch, has been embracing video and bring it together with his other publications like MySpace is now well known.
Background on VideoJug VideoJug’s strap line is Life Explained on Film and have been labelled “YouTube for HowTos,” and was launched in August.
Much of the production of the video is carried out in Spain where they aim to produce up to 500 clips per month. They are also soliciting members of the public to upload their videos to add to the pile.
The clips cover from the useful (How to Make a Hangover Juice) to the frivolous (How To Pull A Tablecloth From Beneath A Dinner Service). They can be viewed either from the VideoJug site or downloaded to portable video players like iPod or PSP.
One neat addition to other services is the option to print out instructions.
VideoJug
The Sun
27 October, 2006
Mission Impossible 3: Parallel Mobile and DVD Release on Nokia N93
Nokia is to have Mission Impossible 3 released on memory cartridge in parallel with its releases on DVD – making it the world’s first mobile premiere.
The complete film will be on a 512Mb miniSD card, running at 25fps and be exclusively available with the N93. As of next week purchasers of the N93 will get the film included.
Given the gadget fest that M:i:III is, it’s pretty appropriatte.
It’s a European deal between Nokia and Paramout Pictures, making it available in the UK, Finland, France, Germany, Hungary, Ireland, Italy, Portugal, Spain and Turkey. The content will be protected, so it cannot be watched on a PC or transfered to another memory card,
Nokia has been trying very hard to its launch, this is the first deal to link it with watching films.
Tuula Rytilä-Uotila, director of Multimedia at Nokia buzzed, “With this package, we want to highlight that the Nokia N93 is not only a fantastic movie-making device, but that it is also a portable video player, allowing users to enjoy movies wherever, whenever.”
27 October, 2006
London Media Summit 2006
27 October 2006 New technologies are undoubtedly changing the way we produce and consume content. Today an unprecedented range of entertainment and information is available on a multitude of formats, each supported by unique business models and revenue streams. However, one key question remains unresolved: what content will consumers truly value in this brave new world? Presenting at the Media Summit in 2005Are consumer tastes evolving in line with the advancements in distribution? Are the big content brands transferable across multiple channels? Who will be the primary generators of content in the future? Will there be a power shift from traditional media companies to smaller niche producers, or even to users themselves? In a world where free content is becoming ubiquitous, what bastions of premium content will survive? Are traditional content packages such as music albums, feature films and radio shows set to be replaced by single tracks, video clips and podcasts? On October 27th, senior executives, investors, consultants and thought leaders in the media industries will come together at the annual London Business School Media Summit to debate these and other issues. http://www.londonmediasummit.com/
27 October, 2006
UK Digital Radio Figures Up Again
The latest digital radio listening figures have come out in the UK. Everyone involved in the DAB radio business as they’ve all gone up.
The digital reach is up 17% from the previous year and the number of hours listened to has gone up 15% from last year.
Something rather pretentiously called the “Digitally Enabled Universe,” ie the number people who fall within the DAB radio reception, has stayed at 54% of the UK population.
The percentage of adults who own a DAB set at home remains at 15.3%.
DRDB chief executive, Ian Dickens, says: “This is great news and proves that digital radio continues to grow in popularity with listeners. Rajar’s research bears out our own findings which show that people who buy a DAB digital radio enjoy the new stations it offers and value the added choice that comes with digital listening.”
The BBC has five national DAB radio station, four of which have increased their listenership. The most popular commercial radio station is Emap’s The Hits with 1.182 million listeners.
Rajar
27 October, 2006
Odeo Bought By Founder: Obvious Corp Opens
Odeo, the audio blogging company formed by Evan Williams of Blogger fame, has been bought by one of its founders, Evan Williams.
He’s formed a new company, Obvious Corp, with a number of people he worked with at Odeo, and used his own money to purchase all of the assets Odeo and Twitter, placing them in Obvious Corp.
Evan plans that the organisation will be compact and fast acting. Building a number of Web-based businesses that mutually support each other, passing traffic and users amoung themselves.
Background on Odeo
Starting a couple of years after Google bought Blogger, Odeo provided tools to help those wanting to create podcasts – the intention was to replicate the success of Blogger in the (then) forthcoming world of podcasting.
Evan formed Odeo with what was originally his next door neighbour, Noah Glass, in the days before Blogger was bought. Noah had started a Web service called AudBlog which let people post audio recordings to their blogs using a telephone.
By Evan’s own admission, Odeo lost its way and he’d taken a long, hard look at what he was up to.
Odeo had plenty of money in the bank. We could have held out for a couple years. But we had to look at the risk and the opportunity cost. Just because we could spend the money doesn’t mean we should. Did it seem like continuing on the path we were on would be the best use of both the money and the time of everyone involved? It did not.
Odeo was started with a $5m VC investment from Charles River Ventures and a number of angel investors. It’s understood that they have regained their original investments.
26 October, 2006
Happy ‘Birthday TV’ To Me
No it’s not the time for you to throw me a lavish surprise celebration ‘do’ (mark 9th August in your diaries for that one), it is time to tell you about the gift for those who have nearly everything … or nothing.
Hidden away in the schedules of the Wrestling Channel (where else?) is another sign of the converging of old and new medias .. Birthday TV.
As they say in their schedules.
Birthday TV is the brand new, magical TV channel that lets you celebrate your friends’ and family’s birthday by broadcasting your special messages to them on live TV.
The Wrestling Channel has identified that the User Generated Content (UGC) so successful for the guys behind YouTube, is the key to getting their cash registers ringing. As well as inviting viewers to submit (legal) wrestling-related material for ‘my TWC,’ it’s decided to sell off some of its airtime for celebratory purposes.
The intention is that this new programming will start with Birthdays and then open up into other anniversary days to help it fit its ongoing remit ‘as your big day tv’ and it’ll also put the content on the Web for further targeted enjoyment. Merry Christmas TV and Happy New Year TV are already in planning.
There’s been a market in TV airtime for quite a while but buyers have generally used their slots for TV Infomercials. Channels like Open Access on Sky Digital have also experimented with making time available to purchase in their schedules, as channels look at alternative revenue streams expect to see more of this type of programming.
BirthdayTV prices start at the pretty reasonable level of £30 for 15 seconds, with a minute coming it at £100. Booking is via an online form, with video being sent in by post, at least ten days before broadcast.
Birthday TV
26 October, 2006
AMD Complete ATi Purchase
AMD, the second largest microprocessor manufacturer has complete the purchase of graphics, chipset and CE specialist ATi Technologies in a deal worth around $5.4Bn.
From day one they’re talking a new game – “Fusion.” The integration of the central processing unit (CPU) and graphics processing unit (GPU) at the silicon level. Interestingly they claim this will give them a significantly increase in performance-per-watt – benefitting both portable devices, by giving them longer results from batteries, and more efficiencies for mains-powered computers, vital in the world we’re entering with a need to keep an eye on power consumption. The Fusion products are expected late 2008/early 2009.
Phil Hester, AMD senior vice president and chief technology officer summed it up, “With the anticipated launch of Windows Vista, robust 3D graphics, digital media and device convergence are driving the need for greater performance, graphics capabilities, and battery life.”
The capabilities of graphics processors have been gathering pace over the recent years to the point where they come close to rivaling the main processor themselves.
To get hold of ATi, AMD are splashing $4.3Bn in cash and also handing over 58m AMD shares. $2.5 billion of the cash mountain comes courtesy of a term loan from Morgan Stanley Senior Funding. The intention to do the deal was made in July this year.
At the time of the original announcement there was some speculation that ATi rival, nVidia would sell to Intel. This didn’t come to pass, possibly because already has a strong graphics chip division. To minimise the impact of todays deal on nVidia, Mike Hara, Nvidia’s vice president of investor relations, told Reuters, “It reinforces our philosophy that we don’t want to be tied up. I don’t think anything changes. In fact, what we’ve already felt and seen I think gives us the energy to push faster.”
AMD
26 October, 2006
BT’s Digital Vault Opens
BT has launched a ‘virtual vault’ offering a secure online location for broadband users to safely stash personal files.
The service comes in two flavours, with the free BT Digital Vault Basic service letting users manually upload photos, emails, music, video files and contact information up to a storage capacity of 2GB.
The free service is open to anyone, not just BT Broadband customers.
For users requiring more storage space and automated back-ups, the full BT Digital Vault service costs £4.99 a month and includes a generous 20GB online storage capacity.
Automatic back ups
Billed as a quick and easy way for home users to securely back up their data, the package includes the BT Digital Vault Backup Manager which automatically detects when users have updated the content of files flagged for backing up.
The manager then synchronises the data with the copy stored in the Digital Vault, with no user intervention needed.
Data uploaded from the user’s PC is encrypted as it is transmitted with the password-protected files being stored in BT’s secure data hosting centre, which is accessible from any Web connection.
“People are often unsure about how to keep their online data safe… if you want to share your holiday snaps with a friend, retrieve important files, or backup files on your laptop when you’re away from home, it’s all possible with BT Digital Vault,” said Gavin Patterson, managing director of BT Retail’s consumer division.
Currently, only the service is only available to PC users, running Windows 2000 and XP.
BT Digital Vault
25 October, 2006
T-Mobile HotSpot Phone Merges WiFi/Cellular Services
Cellular phone provider T-Mobile US is offering a service, HotSpot @Home, giving unlimited calls to US phones via WiFi. This in itself isn’t big news, but what is significant is that callers leaving the range of the WiFi will automatically switch to their cellular service. Initial roll-out is limited to Seattle.
This type of service has been long-discussed, but several technical barriers stood in its way, primarily handing the call from the WiFi-connected call over to the cellular network, without losing the conversation, or a break in the speaking. It’s pretty complex.
Beyond the mechanics of the call hand-over, the riddle of when and how the subscriber would be billed when transferring to the cellular network – and stopping that billing when they reconnect to WiFi has also caused great confusion for a long time.
Cellular reception within peoples home is often pretty ropey, so using their WiFi service will give considerably better reception – making them happy bunnies.
To use the service, three items are required – two pieces of hardware and a service plan. Once the special cellular/WiFi handset has been selected (which look surprisingly decent) and the Wireless hotspot router is installed on the home network, all that is required is the add-on ($19.95/month) on top of the normal $39.95.
The two handsets currently available are the Samsung T709 slider or the Nokia 6136 flip.
BT has been offering a similar service in the UK for a while under the product name BT Fusion. The difference with BT Fusion is it uses Bluetooth to handle the wireless calls at home rather than WiFi.
T-Mobile is the mobile communications subsidiary of Deutsche Telekom, the German telco incumbent.
They have spent considerable effort over the recent years not only building and owning their cellular service, but doing the same with their WiFi network, clearly understanding early on that WiFi would be a significant threat to cellular services.
T-Mobile HotSpot Phone
25 October, 2006
Apple: All MacBook Pro’s Now Intel Core 2 Duo
Apple has updated its whole MacBook Pro range of laptops to run Intel’s Core 2 Duo range of processors. They claim a 39% speed improvement.
There may be a few who will be a little peeved with this. Many people jumped on to the new Apple range of laptops when it was launched back at the start of this year. At that time they were using the plain-old Core Duo chips but even those gave a considerable speed improvement – two to three times the previous G5 equivalent. They were universally celebrated.
Those keen little things, who shelled out for them, might be a little down in the mouth to find a new, even whizzier version coming out.
The rest of the specs of the machines have remained the same, including the outside casing. We covered the specs in detail at the original launch, or if you want to delve into the depths of the specs, take a look at the Apple site.
Pricing
2.16 GHz 15-inch MacBook Pro – £1,349 (inc. VAT)
2.33 GHz 15-inch MacBook Pro – £1,699 (inc. VAT)
2.33 GHz 17-inch MacBook Pro – £1,899 (inc. VAT )
25 October, 2006