April 2007 – Page 5 – Digital-Lifestyles

Palm Releases Backup Program For Treo Users

Palm has unveiled a new beta app for Palm Treo users letting them back up their data over the air to Palm’s secure servers, without the need to connect to a desktop computer.

Palm Releases Backup Program For Treo Users The Palm Backup Beta service can be downloaded from here and lets users back up data from the core handset applications; Contacts, Calendar, Memos, Tasks, Blazer (web browser) bookmarks, quick dials and the call log.

Once the app is downloaded on to the Treo (a 300k .prc file), users are prompted to open a new account with Palm, and select their resident country (only the US and Canada were listed as being currently available, so – sssscch! – we lied and still managed to set up an account with no problem).

Palm Releases Backup Program For Treo Users An activation letter is sent to your email account, but you can start the back up on your Treo straight away (but you must activate your Palm account within 7 days otherwise your account will be closed).

The first screen asks you how often you want to schedule your Treo back ups (daily/weekly/monthly or manual) and at what time of the day or night.

Palm Releases Backup Program For Treo Users A back up of your data will then be saved to Palm’s secure server as scheduled – so long as there is wireless data coverage available (if it fails to find a connection, it will try again at the next scheduled time).

Palm warns that if your Treo is stuffed full of data, the initial back up might take quite a while – something we discovered with the process taking something like 20 minutes over GPRS – but then we have over nine years worth of contacts, calendar and memo data filling up our much-used Treo 650. Subsequent backs up should be quicker.

Palm Releases Backup Program For Treo Users
Note that with all that data flying about, you’ll need a generous data allowance with your mobile service provider otherwise you might face hefty bandwidth bills.

With its obvious benefit to business users, this new backup service reflects Palm’s determination to start clawing back sales from high flying competitors like Blackberry and Windows Mobile.

Palm Releases Backup Program For Treo Users Palm Backup Beta service currently supports Palm Treo 700p, Treo 680 and Treo 650 and there’s no news yet about release date or pricing.

Palm Backup Beta service

Ricoh GX100 Digicam Packs In The Innovation

Last time we looked at one of Ricoh’s upmarket cameras, the Ricoh GR, we went all Victor Kyam and liked the camera so much we went out and bought the thing, and Ricoh’s new GX100 has got our wallet hand twitching again.

Ricoh GX100 Digicam Packs In The Innovation Never a company to run with the pack, the new Ricoh Caplio GX100 serves up an innovative feature set, with a super wide 24 to 72 mm wide zoom lens (35mm film equivalent), a fast F2.5 aperture and 10.01 Megapixel CCD sensor.

Billed as the successor to the popular Caplio GX8, the GX100 has inherited some of the features of the GR, including the fabulous two mode dial system which makes up what Professional Photography magazine recently described as the ‘best control system of any compact camera’ (once you get used to it, Canon and Nikon compacts seem clunky in comparison).

Ricoh GX100 Digicam Packs In The Innovation Another innovation that has set photo-nerd hearts a-fluttering in Chez Digi Lifestyles is the optional removable electronic viewfinder.

This clips on to the hotshoe (yes, it’s got one of them too) and offers a high resolution LCD display including all the necessary exposure information. If they get the quality right, this will be as close as you can get to a real street shooter experience in a camera this size.

Architecture and landscape fans will also like the optional ultra-wide-angle 19mm lens for those big panoramic shots, with spot-on exposures guaranteed via a host of manual and scene modes and RAW file recording.

Ricoh GX100 Digicam Packs In The Innovation As with the GR, macro focussing goes all the way down to a frankly ridiculous 1 cm (any closer and you’ll be burrowing into the subject), with a built in CCD shift method offering vibration reduction.

Ricoh claim that their ‘Smooth Imaging Engine II’ image-processing engine will keep the noise down, but with so many pixels packed onto such a small sensor, we expect the processor will be kept busy.

Ricoh GX100 Digicam Packs In The Innovation With the Ricoh Caplio GX100 measuring up at just 25mm, this looks to be a great carry everywhere camera, and with a claimed battery life of 380 exposures, this looks to be a very, very interesting camera.

European pricing hasn’t been announced yet, but a Japanese site is quoting a retail price of 80,000 Yen (approx $670, 500 Euro, £340).

Specifications:

CCD Effective 10.01 million pixels (total 10.30 million pixels ), 1/1.75-inch primary-colour CCD
Lens Focal length f=5.1 to 15.3 mm (equivalent to 24 to 72 mm for 35 mm film cameras)
Aperture (F value): F 2.5 – F9.1 (Wide-angle) , F4.4 – F15.8 (Telephoto)
Lens structure 11 glass elements in 7 groups
Shutter speed 180, 120, 60, 30, 15, 8, 4, 2, 1 to 1/2000 sec. 1/30 – 1/2000 sec.
Picture modes F (Fine) / N (Normal) / RAW *2
Exposure adjustment TTL-CCD Metering Method: Multi Light Metering (256 segments),
Centre-weighted Light Metering, Spot Metering
White balanced Auto, Fixed (OUTDOORS, CLOUDY, INCAND., FLUORES., MANUAL) / White Balance Bracket
Ricoh GX100 Digicam Packs In The Innovation Memory SD Memory Card ( 32, 64, 128, 256, 512 MB, 1, 2 GB), SDHC Memory Card (4 GB),
Multi Media Card, Internal Memory (26 MB)
Recording modes Still image modes (Still Image, CONT., S-CONT, M-CONT), Program Shift, Aperture-Priority,
Manual Exposure modes, Scene modes (Portrait, Sports, Landscape, Nightscape,
Skew correction, Text, Zoom macro, High Sensitivity) , Movie mode, My setting 1&2
LCD 2.5-inch Transparent Amorphous Silicon TFT LCD (approx. 230,000 pixels)
Dimensions 111.6 mm (W) x 58.0 mm (H) x 25.0 mm (D) (excluding projections parts)
Weight Approx. 220 g (excluding batteries, Memory Card, strap), Accessories: approx. 30 g (battery, strap)
Battery Rechargeable battery (DB-60) x 1, optional AC adaptor (AC-4c), AAA battery (alkaline/oxyride/NiMH) x 2
Shooting capacity Conforms to CIPA standard: using the DB-60, approx. 380 pictures
(Using AAA alkaline batteries: approx. 35 pictures *4)

Ricoh GX100

Backgrounder on Local Loop Unbundling in the UK Pt 2

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 days we’ll give you a full background in LLU in the UK.

Yesterdays piece gave an overview of LLU and which companies are players in the UK.

LLU Penetration
All the large operators are going into around 1,000 DLEs (those being the most densely populated), since there are only around 1,200 of them, all the operators are targeting the same DLEs and there’s a lot of overlap.

Backgrounder on Local Loop Unbundling in the UK Pt 2 Since the operators all want to get into the same exchanges, there’s overcrowding and BT have to install new hostel space (the space where operators can put their own equipment into) which causes delays. It can take more than 6 months from when an operator puts an order in to being granted access to an exchange.

LLU (un)Economics
When LLU was announced it was prohibitively expensive, mainly due to Ofcom (or Oftel as it was then) allowing BT to set the pricing models.

Over time the economics have become fairer to operators, with BT being forced to set-up BT Openreach which looks after the physical infrastructure. If they hadn’t formed Openreach, it’s likely Ofcom would have pushed for a split of BT.

Ofcom then made BT not reduce wholesale pricing for their broadband services to give LLU operators a chance to gain a foothold. BT would have to maintain their pricing until April 2007 or 1.5m unbundled lines, whichever came first.

In Dec 2006 there were 1,000,000 unbundled lines and last week Ofcom announced that 1,700,000 unbundled lines had been reached (there was no distinction between Option 2 and 4). BT Wholesale has over 9m broadband customers.

Also Carphone Warehouse (CPW) released their interim results showing they had 2.31m broadband customers, 700,000 utilising LLU.

So out of the 1.7m unbundled lines, CPW have .7m which means there’s 1m split between the rest (mainly the big players, Wanadoo, C&W, Easynet Pipex and Tiscali).

As a rough model that’s 1.7m lines, spread over 1,000 DLEs which makes 1,700 lines unbundled per DLE. There’s 6 big players which means around 280 customers per operator per exchange.

Backgrounder on Local Loop Unbundling in the UK Pt 2 Unfortunately the economics of LLU only work if there’s a lot of customers per exchange i.e. massive scale.

Now that the milestone of 1.5m unbundled lines has been reached, BT Wholesale will be allowed to reduce their pricing (which they’ve said they want to do) which will make the economics even worse.

To get the scale, further consolidation will occur which means fewer LLU operators in the future (Pipex has already put itself up for sale with CPW rumoured to be the front-runner for buying them). They need to do this in order to get the customer penetration per exchange.

The next and final section will cover the possibility of competition to BT and what could happen in the future

Images are courtesy of wb-internet and the BBC, respectively.

Joost Invitations Up For Grabs

We’re fans of Joost, the full-screen, P2P TV service still in beta.

Joost Invitations Up For Grabs You’ll know from our Joost coverage that we think it’s definitely one to watch and to that end we want to share the love a little.

We’ve got three invitation available to you, our valued readers and we’re only asking for two things in return.

1 – When you’re posting your interest in the comments below, please complete the following – I’d love the Joost Invite, because …

2 – After you’ve been using Joost for two weeks, write a review for us, giving us your impressions of the service and what you think the impact of it will be.

Simple eh?

Full Version of Wii Internet Channel Now Available

To celebrate the release of the Wii Internet Channel
Digital-Lifestyles now is formatted specifically for
the Nintendo Wii. To see it, just look us up on your Wii.

Since the launch of the Wii there’s been a beta version of the Opera Web browser available for the surprise success active console.

That all changes today when the full version becomes available for download through the Wii Shop Channel – the area on the console where additional applications and services are accessed.

Nintendo are really pushing the Family Web browsing feature of the new setup – wisely in our view. Multiple controllers can be used during a Browsing session, letting many members of the family point out areas of interest

The release version adds features such being able to set the resolution of the browsing to the size of your monitor; having no margins when browsing; two types of zooming when browsing (continual zooming is now included); fonts now remain anti-aliased no matter how deep the zoom; searching Google and Yahoo is offered by default; scrolling using the up-down-left-right control pad. The comprehensive list of these and their description are available at the bottom of this article.

Full Version of Wii Internet Channel Now Available

What’s it like to use?
Travelling to and through the Internet Channel is remarkably easy on the Wii. Given its built in Wi-Fi connectivity and simple menuing, getting it running is simple.

This is added to by navigating the Web pages being a doddle using the position-sensing pointer device known as the Wii-mote. In fact, we found it makes you wish you always had something that simple available when you have to navigate your computer from a sofa.

If you’ve not used the Wii (we recommend that you do, if you haven’t), take a look at the video that Opera has created to show the experience

[QUICKTIME http://www.opera.com/products/devices/nintendo/wii/video/wii-demo.mov 320 240]

Strangely the download is only free until 30 June this year, but once downloaded will remain free for “the lifetime of the system.”

Checkout the feature at the Opera site

New Internet Channel features

Zoom – The Internet Channel features two types of zoom: manual and automatic. The automatic zoom was first introduced in the trial version and allows users to select a point with the remote and zoom into that point at an auto-detected level. Manual zoom now gives the user the option to zoom the entire page at self-determined intervals. Nintendo also introduces the “outline font” feature which prevents fonts from appearing blurred no matter the zoom level in use.

Search – A search button has been added to the start page and to the browser toolbar. Choose between Yahoo! Search and Google as preselected search engines. Your selection can be changed at any time, or a different search engine can be used by typing the address of the search engine you wish to use.

Scroll – To help users understand their scrolling motions, a new scrolling display guide has been added to the Internet Channel that indicates the direction and speed of the scroll. In addition to scrolling by pressing the B Button, users can also scroll by pressing the +Control Pad, for four-directional scrolling. This allows you to scroll the screen without having to point the remote at the TV.
Ease of use – The Internet Channel now offers more user feedback when surfing. Users will encounter new sounds, animations and loading cursor graphics, creating a more complete browsing experience.
Multiple cursors – The Internet Channel now displays the cursors of multiple Wii remotes. The primary Wii Remote can control actions on the screen, while the other Wii Remotes can point out interesting content.
Hide the toolbar – Users are now given the option to display or hide the toolbar in the settings menu. Also, there are new advanced key presses for each toolbar function allowing users to surf with the toolbar off.

.B Button + Left Arrow = Search
.B Button + Right Arrow = Enter web address
.B Button + Up Arrow = Reload
.B Button + Down Arrow = Favorites
.B Button + (+) key = Page forward
.B Button + (-) key = Page backward
Response time – The Internet Channel now sports improved performance and response times upon start up, when loading the favourites menu and in the toolbar.
Parental Controls
Parents who want to control access to the Internet Channel should refer to the Parental Controls options available in the Wii System Settings. To access these settings, return to the Wii Menu and select the Wii icon.

24/24 Video By Orange France Gets Paramount Deal

Orange France have picked up a deal with the US studio Paramount Pictures, to distribute their content in France.

24/24 Video By Orange France Gets Paramount Deal It’s not just old content that will be available, but new productions from Paramount including DreamWorks titles, which will be among the latest films available.

Orange France customers with a broadband digital television package or a High-Speed Internet package will be able to enjoy a Video-On-Demand programming schedule including the studio’s latest releases, such as Mission Impossible III, Over the Hedge and World Trade Center, among others.

There’s over 2,500 films, in French or original language versions with subtitles, available on the 24/24 Video service currently, which costs from 3 Euros to rent for 24 hours. Usual features such as unlimited viewing, pause functions and fast forward and rewind are available.

Backgrounder on Local Loop Unbundling in the UK

Over the next three days we’ll give you a full background in LLU in the UK.

Backgrounder on Local Loop Unbundling in the UK What is Local Loop Unbundling (LLU)?
LLU is the ability to put equipment into BT exchanges (know as DLEs – Digital Local Exchange) and take over the copper line into the premises.

There are two forms known as Option 2 (metallic path facility as BT call it) and Option 4 (shared metallic path facility).

Option 4 characteristics: –

Operator takes over the line and only offers broadband services (of course they can offer services on top of the basic connectivity).
BT retain control of voice services.
BT send out the “Blue Bill”, this includes line rental and voice traffic which means they can still market their services to the customer.

Option 2 characteristics: –

Operators takes over the line completely.
No BT blue bill.

Once the operator has put the equipment into the DLE, then they have to connect it back to their own network. BT can provide this using BES (Backhaul Extension Services) or the operator can use their own connectivity solution. Most operators don’t have the coverage to provide their own connectivity solutions.

DLEs
BT have around 5,600 DLEs across the UK (i.e. telephone exchanges) and these have customers connected to them. Around 1,200 are in densely populated areas, another 800 or so with medium populations and the rest in rural areas.

Backgrounder on Local Loop Unbundling in the UK Any operator wanting to offer broadband (and possibly voice) has to put their equipment in these DLEs. However there is a cost to unbundling an exchange (around 100,000 including backhaul) which means operators are only targeting the most densely populated ones.

LLU Operators
Operators who have unbundled exchanges are: –

Any operator with a “-” after has been acquired by another player.

* AOL (UK) Ltd – CPW
* Be Unlimited – O2
* Bulldog Communications Ltd – Users to Pipex, LLU C&W
* Cable and Wireless Ltd
* Computacenter PLC
* Easynet – Sky
* Eaton Power Solutions
* eXstream Networks Ltd
* Groestar Ltd
* Kingston Communications (Hull) Plc
* Lancaster University
* Leanwood Communications Limited
* Lumison
* Nestor Electronics Ltd
* Opal Telecom (CPW)
* Pipemedia Ltd
* Pipex Internet Ltd – who knows, up for sale
* Tiscali
* T-Mobile
* UKBB
* Unisys Ltd
* Updata Infrastructure UK Ltd
* Videonetworks Ltd – Tiscali
* Wanadoo
* WB-Internet Ltd
* Zen Internet Limited

Some of the smaller players are conducting trials and some are just offering private services (like Updata who offer connectivity solutions to councils etc).

Tomorrow, the penetration of LLU in the UK and the economics of it.

Skype Call Transfer Feature Shows On Macs First!

Skype for Mac 2.6 beta version has hit the downloads.

Skype Call Transfer Feature Shows On Macs First! While they’ve been tightening out various bits and pieces, they’ve launched an important new feature, Call Transfer on the Mac first, going against the other Skype releases that have dragged behind the PC.

In their words, “You can now transfer ongoing calls effortlessly to other friends and family on your Skype contact list.”

This is a strategic advance for Skype, opening the door for businesses to start using Skype as a central point of contact, then letting the receptionist pass the call over to the intended call destination. Perhaps they thought that business users were far less likely to be using Macintosh, hence launching it on there first.

They also claim to have improved the call quality as well as the other bits added to the latest beta below

Join public chats
Chat typing indicator – see when others are writing a message
Call any Skype Prime premium services provider and pay with Skype credit
Automatic Updates – get new features and updates without having to go to Skype’s website to download
DTMF tones for automatic answering services available also during Skype-to-Skype calls

While they’re working on the bigger things, they’ve also been working on the small things like handling birthday reminders or other notifications that are important for Mac users too.

Download Skype for Mac

Guinness World Records Joost Deal Live

Guinness World Records TV have been in touch to let us know that they’ve just completed a deal with Joost.

Guinness World Record Joost Deal Live We weren’t expecting to be so Joost-tastic today, but when the news arrives, you’ve got to tell it.

Initially 35 hours will be made available comprising of their UK show, Ultimate Guinness World Records. It’s available to Joost viewers globally.

They haven’t hung around either in getting the content out. Checking the latest incarnation of Joost, we see that the content is up there already.

Additional content will be added on a monthly basis, with Guinness World Record (GWR) making the point that they’ll be “controlling its programming line-up on the platform.”

They’ve got 400 hours of it, so there’s plenty more to come.

Both sides are in back-slapping mode with Rob Molloy, Director of Television at Guinness World Records keen to keep the door open to deliver their content to other platforms by saying “We are thrilled to be partnering with a company as exciting as Joost, once again this shows how easily Guinness World Records content can be adapted to fit into so many areas of new media and for such varied audiences.”

Guinness World Record Joost Deal Live Yvette Alberdingkthijm, EVP of content strategy and acquisition Joost took the pun-ing route of “We are delighted to have Guinness World Records on board and look forward to offering our viewers record breaking content.”

It’s interesting to realise that GWR TV is part of the HIT Entertainment who own the hugely popular children’s content Bob the Builder, Barney and Thomas the Tank Engine.

We wonder if this GWR deal is a tester for HIT, opening the doors for a much bigger deal to be coming out.

Guinness World Records TV

Joost: SSL Certificate Runs Out – v0.9.2 Released

Joost went ‘off air’ yesterday – ie. no one could use it to access TV programmes.

Joost: Another Update. Now 0.9.2 All was revealed today as to why. The SSL certificates that are used to encrypt all communication between the clients and the Joost servers ran out, as certificates do each year.

Much to their embarrassment, Joost had hard-coded the details of the certificate into their client software. Now they’ve extracted it, they need to release a new build, hence the 0.9.2 release.

Knowing they’d be offline while the software was being rebuilt, they’ve upgraded their Long Term Storage machines replacing them with ones that are four times more efficient. They’re hoping this will straighten out any problems that might have been present with stuttering video delivery.

As Dirk-Willem from Joost says, “this is all part of being a beta.”

Joost Download