April 2007 – Page 4 – Digital-Lifestyles

Phantom Back In News

The company behind the Phantom console is back in the news.

Word of the Phantom games console started way back in February 2004, when the industry couldn’t work out if it was real or an elaborate hoax.

Phantom Console Back In News In May 2004 it was ‘made flesh’ and was shown at E3 and we heard about them gaining $50m credit investment.

It was all quiet for about a year, then there was an interesting twist in the story as it appeared to be re-born as a content console, as the Chinese coalition-backed IDV Global Media On-Demand platform. At that time we were told that it was expected to launch in China early 2006.

Since then, we can’t recall hearing about it, until today, when we hear that the renamed body, Phantom Entertainment, has signed a deal with Ione Technology to manufacture the Phantom Wireless Lapboard and Wireless Laser Mouse under Ione’s brand name throughout Asia and through Ione’s distributors in the US and Europe in return for royalty and design fees.

Greg Koler, President and CEO of Phantom Entertainment, said Ione plan to “begin production and distribution of the Ione wireless lapboard and Ione wireless laser mouse in the third quarter of 2007.”

Where’s the console?
From what we can tell, the Phantom console itself has hit the dirt – it’s not listed under their products on the Web site, but the Phantom Game Service does look like it’s alive.

The fate of Kevin Bachus, founder of Phantom and ex-Microsoft Xbox game console designer, is unknown as he doesn’t appear to be on the list of the companies officers.

The Phantom Lapboard

Joost Invite Winners

After the great response to your Joost Invite posting last week, we’re pleased to announce the winners. Sorry we didn’t get around to posting this yesterday, but better late than never, eh?

We’ve noticed that a few people had laid their hands on invites in the intervening period, like Sano.

It was tough to choose between all of the other entries, so we thought it would be best to let geographic distribution be the decider given Joost offers different content in different parts of the world.

Reese in the US is getting because he gave up TV a long time back and it will be interesting to hear his perspective … and he gets bonus points because of the “Ricky Gervais & The Serpent” posting on his blog.

Rogerio in Brazil for his corny joke and gs because it’ll be interesting to have the Taiwanese dimension.

We’re looking forward to their reviews.

Thanks to everyone for the comments and sorry you didn’t get one this time. Stay tuned, and when we get some more, we’ll let you know.

Nokia’s WiMAX Phones To Hit The Shelves Next Year

Nokia's WiMAX Phones To Hit The Shelves Next Year The world’s top handset maker Nokia has announced that it expects to start shifting mobile devices using the WiMAX Internet technology by early 2008.

WiMAX (or Worldwide Interoperability for Microwave Access if you’re a spoddy type) lets laptops, phones and other suitably equipped mobile devices access the Internet at Billy Whizz speeds.

The technology uses a licensed spectrum to offer long-range (we’re talking kms), point-to-point connections to the web from the service provider to the end user, with Nokia saying that they plan to bring their first WiMAX enabled mobile device to market in early 2008.

Nokia's WiMAX Phones To Hit The Shelves Next Year Nokia’s numero uno handset rival, Motorola, has announced that it fancies a piece of the WiMAX action too, saying that they’ll also be bringing a WiMAX enabled mobile phone to market in 2008.

Intel, Nokia, Samsung and Motorola are all feeling the love for the open-standard WiMAX. The technology can be used as an alternative wireless broadband Internet connection for 3G users, which is handy because net access on 3G mobile networks can slow right down if networks fill up with yakking voice callers.

WiMAX should considerably reduce the cost of wireless broadband – up to 10 times cheaper than current third-generation cellular telephony networks – but the technology isn’t apparently too hot for handling wireless voice calls.

WiMAX looks good when it comes to pricing: the radio spectrum for WiMAX networks is rented out at cheaper rates by regulators than the 3G mobile phone spectrum, and WiMAX equipment vendors reckon that infrastructure and handheld devices work out cheaper than 3G systems too.

WiMAX forum
WiMAX on Wikipedia

Toshiba Introduces First 200GB USB 2.0 Portable Storage

To old school computing bods like us, it doesn’t seem that long ago that floppy disks were the main way you lugged your data around.

Toshiba Introduces First 200GB USB 2.0 Portable Storage With its feeble 1.44MB storage space, that often meant you had to cart around great boxes of the things.

And with its gnat-like storage capacity, installing programs like Photoshop meant a lengthy spell sat by your machine, patiently feeding in a vast amount of grinding floppies and hoping that the last one in wouldn’t display a dastardly disk error.

Come 1994, the hi tech hotshots around town were sporting Iomega Zip drives, which served up a comparatively capacious 100MB of storage space (rising to 750MB in the final versions).

Although we felt the love for the increased capacity, the drive was quite a bulky beast, the disks weren’t cheap and folks lived in fear of suffering the dreaded click of death.

By the late 1990s, recordable CDs, cheap flash memory and external hard drives had become the modus operandi for portable storage users, although bigger and bigger files meant that the things soon filled up.

Toshiba Introduces First 200GB USB 2.0 Portable Storage With this in mind, Toshiba – the world’s fifth-largest hard drive manufacturer – has decided to elbow its way into the portable drive market with its 2.5-inch USB 2.0 portable external hard drive offering a positively palatial 200GB of storage space. That works out at 57,000 digital photos, 52,000 MP3 songs or 88 DVD videos all wedged into its slimline case (approx 6″x4″x0.9″).

Claimed to offer the highest capacity of any backup solution in the compact 2.5-inch hard drive class, the 200GB beastie comes clad in a sleek vented black aluminum exterior, backed by a patent-pending shock mount system for extra protection.

The USB 2.0 drive also comes bundled with the NTI Shadow software which makes it a cinch to set up a back up schedule.

The full range of drives come in 200GB, 160GB, 120GB and 100GB capacities and the pricing looks good too, with suggested retail prices running from $229.99 (£115) for the 200GB model down to $129.99 (£65) for the 100GB.

Toshiba

Intel Preps Linux Powered UMPCs

Intel Preps Linux Powered UMPCs Intel is getting ready to release its own version of the mini-tablet, with CNN reporting that it will be announcing a new Linux-based ultra-mobile PC (UMPC) platform at this week’s Intel Developer Forum in Beijing.

Dubbed a ‘Mobile Internet Device’ (MID), the devices will sport 4.5 to 6.0 inch screens offering resolutions up to 800 x 480 and 1024 x 600 pixels, with the target audience described as “consumers and prosumers” and not mobile professionals.

There’s clearly some work to do on the platform name, with the devices currently codenamed ‘McCaslin’ while teams of whiteboard scrawlin’, flipchart flippin’ brainstormin’ types work on a more user friendly name.

Intel Preps Linux Powered UMPCs Expected to be released next year, the UMPCs are tipped to be an extension of the successful Centrino mobile brand, with the CPU components (codenamed Stealey) packing dual-core processors clocked at 600-800MHz.

Although capable of running Windows XP and Vista, Intel is looking to kit the devices out with an embedded Linux OS supplemented by a mix of open-source and proprietary code.

Who’s it for?
Intel Preps Linux Powered UMPCs Intel’s new gizmo is looking to woo punters with a seductive mobile mix of email, web, entertainment, information and location-based services, including the trusty Google Maps application and Web-based “office and enterprise applications.”

Connectivity will come in the shape of Wi-Fi and 3G HSDPA.

Interface
The new MID tablets will offer a simplified “finger-friendly” user interface, tweaked for big fat fingers on diddy screens. Based on the Gnome desktop, the OS will come with a “master user interface” desktop layer developed by Intel.

Developers will be given a peek at the first MID-specific OS next week (an updated version of China’s RedFlag Linux known as RedFlag MIDINUX), and slides of the interface have already made their way on to Engadget

City of London Wi-Fi To Become Europe’s Biggest Hotspot

The City of London is due to become the biggest Wi-Fi hotspot in Europe next week, as we trailed last year.

City of London To Become Europe's biggest hotspot A planned rollout will veritably bathe the City in luverly Wi-Fi rays, letting around 350,000 workers wander all over the Square Mile with uninterrupted wireless access.

The system comes courtesy of wireless network big boys, The Cloud, and dishes up continuous wireless access thanks to ‘mesh technology’ and a series of base stations strategically located throughout the area.

Although there’s something like 2,000 conventional Internet hotspots scattered around London, virtually all of these require users to keep on logging every time they walk into a new zone. The new City system means that users will only have to log in once and then be able to retain access at locations throughout the city.

“This is the biggest hotspot of its kind in Europe as far as we know and is unique as users keep the signal wherever they are,” enthused Niall Murphy, chief strategy officer at The Cloud.

City of London To Become Europe's biggest hotspot “We have been meeting a lot of the big financial institutions in the area and have even found that the network is available in a lot of their boardrooms, so we think there will be a corporate use for it as well,” he added.

Perambulating freeloaders hoping to nab some free City-based Wi-Fi access action will be disappointed though. Unlike the mile long wireless freebie served in uptown Islington, users will have to shell out around £12 per month for unlimited access – quite a drop from the £5/hour they spoke about in February last year.

With its infrastructure able to support secure public and private applications concurrently, The Cloud are targeting consumers and municipal workers, although there’s also support for telemetry, traffic surveillance and security systems.

The Cloud say that they plan to extend coverage into Soho and eventually extend the infrastructure across all of London.

The Cloud

SxS Memory Cards From Sony And Sandisk Announced For Camcorders

If you’re the kind of person that thinks to themselves, “Hey, I’ve already spent hundreds of pounds on a load of different proprietary memory formats, and I’d love some new ones,” then you’ll be cheered by today’s announcement from Sony and Sandisk.

SxS Memory Cards From Sony And Sandisk Announces For Camcorders The two companies have revealed details about their Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) to develop a new SxS memory card format for professional camcorders.

Designed to replace the long serving CF card, the SxS memory cards are half the size of their predecessors (width: 34mm, height: 5mm, length: 75mm), can hold much more data – up to 16GB so far – with Sandisk and Sony optimising transfer protocols up to a blistering 800 megabits per second.

So comparing the two formats is a bit like putting Torquay United up against Man United then.

This SxS technology is basically a PCI Express memory card using flash memory with the card connecting directly to computer systems through the high-speed PCI-Express bus.

SxS Memory Cards From Sony And Sandisk Announces For Camcorders Although the card is too much of a heffalump to fit into digital compact cameras, it may appear in some high end medium format still cameras and other specialised snappers.

For camcorder users owning laptops with PCI Express memory card-compatible slots, we can see the SxS cards being a real boon as they’ll be able to whip the memory out of their camera and slap it straight into their lappie.

Sony is expected to adopt this high-speed SxS memory card specification for its XDCAM EX series professional camcorders, with the memory cards available later in 2007.

Apple Final Cut Server Launched

Apple has also announced the summer release of Final Cut Server, a cross-platform (Mac+PC) piece of software designed to serve the Final Cut’s 800,000+ users, alongside its announcement of Final Cut Studio 2.

Apple Final Cut Server Launched We think that given the Mac OS is based on a form of Unix, and Apples dislike for Microsoft, it’s surprising that Apple hasn’t released a Linux-based server.

The software automatically catalogues large collections of assets and lets editors collaborate and share videos with each other, supported by keyword searching of video clips, access controls and workflow templates.

This is an aggressive move by Apple into the area that has until now been dominated by highly specialised video editing packages.

Final Cut Server will cost $999 (£649) for a 10-user license or $1999 (£1,299) for one server and unlimited concurrent users.

It is expected to be released in Summer 2007.

Apple Final Cut Server

Apple Final Cut Studio 2 Announced

Apple has released a significant upgrade to its Final Cut Studio package, a high-end bundle of video editing applications for pros and rich enthusiasts alike and Final Cut Server.

Apple Final Cut Studio 2 Announced The Final Cut Studio 2 package includes Final Cut Pro 6, Motion 3, Soundtrack Pro 2, Compressor 3, DVD Studio Pro 4.2 and a new app called Color, described as a, “professional colour grading and finishing application.”

Also new is ProRes 422, a new full raster, 10-bit 4:2:2 post production format that produces stunning HD quality at “SD file sizes,” with Apple claiming that industry heavyweights like Panasonic, Sony and RED are also feeling the love for the format.

Motion 3 now offers a 3D environment, paint and new drag-and-drop camera behaviours, vector based paint tools, and a match moving tool for mapping images or effect to the path of any other object.

Apple Final Cut Studio 2 Announced The Soundtrack Pro 2 audio editor adds tools for multitrack editing and surround mixing with a new Conform tool which makes it easier to precisely align effects and dialogue with footage.

Apple’s encoding tool, Compressor 3 offers a more streamlined interface with a simplified workflow, and extends support for codecs such as MPEG-2 and H.264 with presets for television, Web, iPod, Apple TV, DVD and mobile phone delivery.

Apple Final Cut Studio 2 Announced Finishing off the package is DVD Studio Pro 4.2 which takes care of SD and HD DVD authoring.

In line with its professional status, Final Cut Studio costs a ruddy packet, retailing for a whistle-inducing £849 (current version users can upgrade for £329, otherwise it’s £449 for all other Final Cut Studio users).

Apple Final Cut Studio 2

Backgrounder on Local Loop Unbundling in the UK Pt 3/3

With all of these moves towards digital delivery in entertainment, we thought it would be worthwhile understanding one of the key items in this process – how to get the digital content to UK households.

Steve Kennedy is an acknowledged expert in the telecoms and data networks field, so it was an obvious choice for us to ask him to write an overview of how other IP operators can compete with BT – by creating their own data network. To do this, they need to put their own equipment into the telephone exchanges that connect to peoples houses. That process is Local Loop Unbundling (LLU).

Over three parts, we’ll give you a full background in LLU in the UK.

The two previous pieces gave an overview of LLU and which companies are players in the UK; and LLU Penetration in the UK and the (un)Economics of it.

OpenLLU
The operators should have joined forces and built a single LLU infrastructure between them and then competed on service. This would have meant a second national network to compete with BT’s 21CN allowing operators to compete with BT on their own terms.

Wales First For BT's 21CN Next-Gen Network Rollout Also a single network would have meant it could go to many more of the 5,600 DLEs than the 1,200 everyone’s competing for at the moment.

Unfortunately competition is so fierce between the telecoms operators it will never happen – much to their joint detriment.

Broadband Competition
BT is still the biggest player by far and they’ll try and increase market share when they launch their 21CN. Many operators are underestimating the effect of BT’s 21CN and how quickly BT can launch it.

When they do launch, they are trying to get back to a situation whereby everyone else once again becomes a BT reseller.

Virgin Media have around 4m customers, but they have little money for expansion and are likely to use LLU in future to provide broadband services. They’re stance is even worse now Sky have pulled their basic channels, which is likely to cause customers to migrate to Sky and if enough go, then Virgin Media may be in a sticky situation (the city won’t look kindly on a reduced customer base).

Wireless is the next big hope
Unfortunately there’s very little spectrum available for wireless broadband in the UK, though 2.5GHz is going to be made available for auction later this year, but it wont be cheap. It was reserved for 3G use, so there may be bids from 3G operators but it’s also bang in the middle of the frequencies WiMAX can use (BT have already said they’re interested in bidding for it).

Other companies who do have spectrum are: –

* PCCW (UK Broadband) who have a national 3.4GHz license.

* Pipex Wireless who have a national 3.6/4.2 GHz license.

It’s not clear whether the recent Pipex sale announcement covers the wireless side or not.

Future
Content will be key, access will just be a delivery channel for content and broadband will just be a commodity item (making it even more uneconomic to roll-out).

There’s going to be even more consolidation in the industry and BT will win either way (more LLU customers mean BT get more customers, if it fails, BT Wholesale get more customers).

BT will also dominate when they roll-out their 21CN, they want to be the Sky of fixed networks i.e. use them to deliver the content and they take a big chunk for the customer charge for doing so).

The future’s bright – but only for BT.