Christian – Page 4 – Digital-Lifestyles

Taipei Bathed in Wi-Fi in 2005

Taipei plans to make wireless Internet access available across the Taiwan capital by the end of 2005, joining a small number of cities offering Wi-Fi networks. According to a Reuters article, the network will reach almost 90 per cent of the capital’s population of 3 million and aims to make accessing the Internet as easy as using a mobile phone. The system will enable subscribers to easily access information and services from governmental agencies and other service providers wherever they may be in the city – either by 3G mobile phone, personal digital assistant (PDA) or laptop computer.

Joining a handful of cities offering Wi-Fi networks, a connecting system may soon become vital in attracting and retaining businesses, as well as catering to students and other youngsters. City-backed wireless networks also help to ensure that all neighbourhoods have equal access to the system. The downside is that government-backed projects like this will hurt the private sector, and many will believe that installing Wi-Fi using tax-payers money is a waste when most would rather see taxes go towards putting more police on the street or cleaning up the city – especially those who already have broadband in their homes.

“In most cities in the world the coverage is small, but Taipei’s [network] is designed for a population of 2.6 million,” said Andy Lai, project leader for a Hewlett-Packard consulting team working with the Taipei City Government. Taiwan’s Q-Ware Systems, which won Taipei’s tender to build the network, plans to spend US$70 million on infrastructure, setting up 15,000 to 20,000 access points around the city, according to HP. Other companies involved in the project include Intel, Microsoft and Cisco Systems.

Q-Ware will charge users for access. Qware has to foot the expense of installation and pay the Taipei City Government royalties for the right to run the subscription business for a period of nine years, while the Taipei City Government must provide administrative assistance and give Qware Systems the right to use public facilities such as utility poles, bus stations and overpasses for system installation.

The number of subscribers of the new WLAN system is expected to reach 500,000 by the time the system is completed and increase to 1.1 million by the end of 2006. It will provide a platform for the government to better serve citizens and for the citizens to obtain information easily at a very low cost, which in turn should attract more subscribers and thereby generate more online business opportunities. New York, San Francisco, Amsterdam and Jerusalem are among cities offering or planning city-wide networks.

Sales in Virtual Goods Surpasses $100m

Real-world trading based on virtual items is at least three years old, but it’s only now that researchers have estimated that online trading already rivals the gross domestic product of some small countries. According to an article publishing on NewScientist.com, the real figures are likely to be much higher, where virtual worlds are booming in China and Japan

The technology of real-world economies is based on the value of persistent world game characters and items. For example, you can buy Ultima Online and EverQuest characters on eBay, exchanging actual money for ‘imaginary’ game items, such as clothing and weaponry. Nevertheless, trade in these digital goods continues to grow, and it has already gone from being a pastime pursued only by a handful of hardcore gamers, to being a fledgling industry in its own right.

There’s even an online service to help players of online games trade their commodities more easily and freely. The Gaming Online Market (GOM) is a Canada-based online venture founded by Jamie Hale and Tom Merrall that aims to be the first true stock brokerage for online worlds. GOM currently allows players of online games to pay in US dollars, or exchange currency from one game to another at the current going rate. Before now, these have been trades restricted mainly to eBay auctions, along with all the risks associated with such transactions. Having said that, eBay facilitated the selling of $9 million in trades for Internet games last year (excluding Sony’s Everquest).

The coming together of real and online worlds has a far more widespread reach than games. For instance, virtual spaces will increasingly be used as assembly points to carry out business meetings and as physics simulators to experiment with building physical objects. Some companies are also using virtual worlds to try out design products, such as clothes, before attempting to market them in the real world.

Nokia Pleases Operators with Midrange Handsets

According to a story published today on tech Web site The Register, Nokia is in the middle of an 18-24 month transition to offer customised mobile phone designs and software that will make it easier for network operators to differentiate their offerings. In a move that looks like submission for the world’s largest mobile phone manufacturer, almost 90 per cent of the company’s 2005 phone line-up will support software customisation and 25 per cent will have exclusive operator designs.

Nokia has also indicated that handset margins would stay under pressure, forecasting a 17-18 per cent operating margin in two to three years’ time – well down from 25 per cent in its heyday a few years ago and reflecting tougher competition from the likes of Samsung Electronics. Whilst going through a turbulent year, plugging gaping holes in its product portfolio and fighting off competition by cutting prices, Nokia’s turnaround has already helped it to deliver results, driving forth its goal of eventually grabbing 40 per cent market share – up from a current share of around 30 per cent (Source: IDC).

Since April, Nokia has launched a number of new phones, including clamshells, and said half of its handset sales would come from new and foldaway designs by the fourth quarter of next year, up from some 19 per cent expected late this year and virtually zero at the beginning of 2004 when all designs had the shape of a candybar, according to Yahoo! India. Of the 40 new handsets Nokia plans to launch in 2005, more than half will be clamshell, slider or other factors, compared to just three at the start of this year.

We can expect to see more high-end multimedia devices and enterprise solutions, as well as Nokia driving the software standards agenda with platforms such as Series 60 and the new content framework, Preminet. High-end phones will offer full Internet browsers, integrated stereo music players, video playback and recording features, FM radio, and megapixel digital cameras. In 2006, the company will announce its first mobile phone with a built-in television receiver, which is being tested in the UK and Finland now.

Vodafone’s betting heavily on 3G this Christmas

Vodafone live! with 3G enhances Vodafone live! by providing customers with faster access to content and the ability to see more and share more with the use of video. The company’s 3G services will further add video calling, video messaging, a richer music experience, new games, as well as video clips.

A return on investment is critical for Vodafone, who has spent some £8 billion on top of the £14 billion it had to fork out for 3G licenses (Vodafone and its four UK rivals paid around £22.5 billion for the 3G licences). Of this investment, The Observer newspaper reckons that £8 billion has been spent on network infrastructure, with a little more going on R&D, and some £100 million earmarked for advertising. David Beckham will feature prominently as the mobile giant launches a pre-Christmas advertising blitz, promoting video downloads and other bandwidth-hungry services made possible by advanced colour-screen handsets and the higher connection speeds of 3G networks.

The new high-speed service uses a completely different network to the standard Vodafone live! service. The company has built it so that whenever you are outside a 3G service area, you will continue to access all the services, but the speed to access will be reduced. Video calling or streaming content will not be possible and the service will stop if moving off the 3G network. You should know when you’re in a 3G service area because a small 3G symbol will appear on the screen of your handset.

As well as content, 3G service providers will have to distinguish themselves with coverage. For instance, Vodafone claims about 60 per cent population coverage, but much of that will be in London and a few other metropolitan areas. Orange, which also plans to launch its 3G offering before Christmas, said its initial network deployment would be more extensive. Alexis Dormandy, Orange’s chief marketing officer, told The Sunday Times:: “We have a much larger, broader network because it’s supposed to be a mobile network rather than a ‘stay-in-one-place’ network.”

With such a big financial commitment to 3G, it’s vital that Vodafone has to get its 3G marketing right. Thankfully, it will be launching its service with no fewer than 10 mobile handsets (as we’ve covered), a problem Hutchison encountered when it launched its ‘3’ service a year or so ago.

Vodafone

Cisco CTO challenges WiMax

Cisco Systems CTO Charles Giancarlo has announced that his company will not be backing WiMax (IEEE 802.16) technology. The announcement came during his brief keynote address at the Next Generation Networks conference in Boston, where Giancarlo asserted that Cisco will only be “providing the backbone infrastructure that may be behind any WiMax deployment. Cisco has not invested in WiMax. DSL and cable are already there, and they are much more deterministic.”

WiMAX is a third-generation wireless technology that provides high-throughput broadband connections over long distances. Wi-Fi and WiMAX are actually complementary technologies, according to Intel, as WiMAX is a ‘last mile’ technology – it connects businesses and homes to the high-speed Internet. Wi-Fi provides the wireless LAN connectivity within a building or a home. The two technologies have been built as close cousins, and should work together to provide the best connection for the users needs. The technology may well find its way into airport hotspots, for instance, but it’s unlikely service providers will invest in building two parallel wireless broadband networks.

An implementation of the IEEE 802.16 standard, WiMAX provides shared network connectivity at speeds of up to 75MB/s and as far as 30 miles, which should be enough bandwidth to simultaneously support more than 60 businesses with T1-type connectivity and hundreds of homes at DSL-type connectivity. However, on the average a WiMAX base-station installation will likely cover between three to five miles, so home networking is not the compelling application for WiMax. Today, last mile connections are typically made through cable, DSL (digital subscriber line), fibre optic connections and even standard phone lines. The ability to provide these connections wirelessly, without laying wire or cable in the ground, promises to greatly lower the cost to provide these services.

A further benefit of the WiMAX standard is that it relies mainly on 2GHz to 11GHz bands as opposed to the ‘overcrowded’ 2.4GHz band used by WiFi. The specifications of WiMAX avoided many of the mistakes that went into the WiFi standard, allowing longer reach, Non Line Of Sight (NLOS), greater bandwith, and better encryption. However, the 30 mile radius should be taken with a grain of salt, as it would most probably only apply to a true line of sight point-to-point connection under ideal atmospheric circumstances.

Giancarlo reminded listeners at his speech that many wireless technologies have come and gone over the years without finding success. “This is what went wrong with MMDS (multichannel multipoint distribution system) and LMDS (local multipoint distribution system). The economics became very bad very quickly.”

However, this hasn’t stopped Telabria, who has already announced plans to build the first WiMAX network in the United Kingdom. The network, which is now under construction, will deliver high-speed wireless broadband services to residential, business and enterprise customers in the South East of England, and provide backhaul for Telabria’s growing installed base of WiFi hotspots in the region. The service will commence trials in January, with a commercial launch by mid 2005. “We’re extremely excited about the network we’re building,” said Jim Baker, Telabria founder and Chief Executive Officer, speaking at the WiMAX World Conference in Boston. “WiMAX is a revolutionary standard which, over the next few years, will fundamentally change the structure of broadband networks”.

Movie Studios to Sue File Sharers

The major Hollywood studios have vowed to sue people who illegally download movies from the Internet. In a similar move, to the way the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) is using lawsuits to fight online piracy (they have filed more than 6,000 lawsuits against file sharers since September 2003), the Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA) announced that the major Hollywood motion picture studios would be filing hundreds of lawsuits against individuals using peer-to-peer (P2P) file-sharing software to share films online.

Rather than embracing P2P technology by looking for new ways to generate revenue, such a lowering the cost of movie rentals and DVDs, Hollywood is intent on further imposing its iron fist on movie fans. However, help is at hand. In connection with the music industry lawsuits, the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) has intervened in court to defend the privacy and due process rights of the individuals being sued, although it’s not yet clear whether the MPAA lawsuits will make similar actions necessary. Hollywood is pinning its hopes on federal legislation that would target file-sharing technology. If passed, the so-called Induce Act would close the legitimate-copying loophole and empower the MPAA to sue P2P file-sharing services such as Kazaa, Grokster and Morpheus.

The MPAA announcement comes on the heels of a recent study by the University of California, Riverside, and San Diego Supercomputer Center that shows that the music industry lawsuits have had no effect on the popularity of file sharing among US users, estimated at over 20 million. Movie studios can’t exactly argue that file sharing is about to put them out of business, as DVD sales grew 33 per cent last year and box-office receipts have never been stronger.

“These lawsuits are misguided,” said Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) Staff Attorney Wendy Seltzer, who has been involved in the music industry suits. “The music industry experience shows that the lawsuits don’t reduce the amount of file sharing. And it’s certainly not good PR to sue movie fans for non-commercial sharing when the studios are rolling in record profits.”

“In the end, what protects the studios from piracy is the what attracts people to buy or rent movies in the first place – a good product at a good price point,” said EFF Legal Director Cindy Cohn. “As long as you can rent a movie on DVD for $2, movie file sharing is not likely to take a major bite out of studio revenues.” www.mpaa.org

Bizmondo: Gizmondo For Business Users

Tiger Telematics, the US-based manufacturer of the recently-released Gizmondo handheld games console, has already announced plans to grow its business by moving into the corporate handset business. Set to take on the likes of Nokia, PalmOne and Research in Motion (RIM), the Bizmondo (code name) handheld will be an enterprise-focused version of the Gizmondo, offering the same level of mobile connectivity (GPS, GSM/GPRS and Bluetooth) and multimedia features (MP3 audio and MPEG-4 video playback features).

The company has been active in other areas, too. On 19 October, it announced that games developer Warthog had signed an agreement to provide Gizmondo with ‘top class’ game content. Warthog’s first product for the Gizmondo will be Richard Burns Rally, a rally simulation game that promises to offer the most realistic and exhilarating rally experience on a handheld to date. Other games companies are also backing the platform, including SCi Entertainment Group Plc, who will develop and publish twelve products for the new Gizmondo platform.

Tiger Telematics also acquired UK-headquartered Integra SP on 29 October, bringing its real-time front-end product AltioLive onboard. With the integration of AltioLive software, Bizmondo will be pitched as a mobile trading tool and access point for business users. The deal brings together two organisations that will work on real-time functionality for deploying enterprise applications in a browser and next-generation services. Mike Carrender, CEO Tiger Telematics said, “This acquisition and creation of the Bizmondo device using the Altio platform is further evidence of our technology leadership position. With Integra SP’s rapidly expanding sales and customers that include Deutsche Bank, HSBC, The NASDAQ Stock Market and Deutsche Borse, we are adding a strong, established business entity in its own right, to the Tiger Group.”

Gizmondo is also getting its own high-profile retail spot in London’s chic Carnaby Street, a move which the company hopes will align its relatively expensive new device to Apple Computer’s trendy outlets. Carnaby Street will be the firm’s flagship store, as it attempts to push the handheld into an increasingly competitive market. The store is planned to open soon for the run-up to Christmas and will act as a showcase for the device itself, software and accessories. “We don’t see this flagship store as competition to other retailers. The store’s primary function will be to promote the device and the brand as a whole, which in turn, will drive more traffic to every retailer stocking Gizmondo,” commented Carl Freer, European Managing Director, Gizmondo Europe.

VoIP Threatens Traditional Telcos Revenue

It comes as little surprise that a new report from Analysys, global advisers on telecoms, IT and media, reports that over 50 million broadband users in Western Europe could potentially be using private Voice over Internet Protocol Applications (PVAs) by 2008. As a result, the impact on traditional telephony providers’ revenues could reach 6.4 billion euros (~$8.23Bn, ~£4.47Bn) in 2008, representing 13 per cent of the residential fixed-line voice market.

VoIP technology – used in excellent applications such as Skype – works by digitising voice in data packets, sending them over the Internet using TCP/IP networks, and then reconverting them into voice at the destination. As well as offering a ‘free’ alternative for voice conversations compared to traditional fixed lines, you can also compress voice packets, route them, convert them to a new better format, and so on – bypassing the existing PSTN network.

Digital signals are also more noise tolerant than analogue ones – a feature appreciated by users communicating overseas. With VoIP, you can also talk all the time with every person you want (as long as the other person is also connected to Internet at the same time) for no call charges. And, in addition, you can talk with multiple people (conference call) at the same time.

Analysys advises that incumbent public switched telephone network (PSTN) operators are highly vulnerable and should assess the weaker segments of their market and create targeted packages to retain valuable customers. They also advise that service providers should also make subscriptions the core of their service packages.

“The recent rapid take-up of Private Voice Applications (PVAs) using free downloadable software from providers such as Skype raises the possibility of the appearance of a critical mass of PVA users that could unleash a significant structural change in the voice market by the removal of a large proportion of PSTN revenues,” says report co-author Stephen Sale. “In the residential market, PVAs are typically used to make longer calls to friends and family, the core telephony business of fixed-line incumbents. In combination with increased mobile usage, this could render the PSTN subscription worthless for many broadband users. Fixed-line voice would face not only mobile substitution, but PVA substitution as well.”

The report, Voice Communications: From Public Service to Private Application, examines the potential impact of these applications on the residential voice market. It uses new market models to show that, given favourable future regulatory and other conditions, the rapid adoption of PVAs could generate direct revenues of over 3.5 billion euros (~$4.5Bn, ~£2.44Bn), the bulk (about 85 per cent) stemming from subscriptions, not call charges.

This emphasises the huge importance that the subscription element will have in a future multiservice mix and in establishing PVAs in the mass market. Further research from consultancy firm Mercer has suggested that Internet-based phone services could be in use by up to 30 per cent of homes in the UK and the US in the next three years.

The report is available to purchase online at http://research.analysys.com/stor, priced at £1,700 (approximately 2,500 euros).

First Jailed Spammer Gets 9 Years

Thirty-year-old Jeremy Jaynes, a US citizen settled in North Carolina, has been sentenced to nine years in prison for sending junk e-mails with fraudulent and untraceable routing information. His 28-year-old sister, Jessica DeGroot, has also been ordered to pay a fine of $7,500 for buying domain names to use for spamming, although a third defendant, Richard Rutkowski, was acquitted of similar charges. Formal sentencing has been set for February next year.

Prosecutors said Jaynes and DeGroot took advantage of the Internet and America Online (AOL) members to sell bogus products and services, such as a ‘FedEx refund processor,’ which they claimed would allow people to earn $75 an hour working from home. According to evidence, Jaynes received 10,000 credit card orders, each for $39.95, for the ‘processor’ during one month alone. They were convicted under a Virginia state law that limits the number of e-mails mass marketers can send, and like the federal CAN-SPAM Act, forbids them from using fake e-mail addresses. Each was found guilty on three felony charges.

David Oblon, Jaynes’s attorney, was shocked at the severity of the sentence. ‘Nine years is absolutely outrageous when you look at what we do to people convicted of crimes like robbery and rape,’ he said. It’s been suggested that this ‘excessive punishment’ was because it was the first time the law had been prosecuted. However, during the trial, Jaynes was said to have accumulated a fortune of some $24 million by selling via spam.

The ‘harsh’ sentence shows the US is serious about spam, a nuisance to millions of users worldwide. But it’s also a major problem for large and small businesses because the thousands of unwanted e-mails can create havoc on company e-mail servers. Some surveys have even suggested that spam represents as much as three quarters of all e-mail traffic, despite laws in several countries seeking to curb unsolicited e-mails. Spam is believed to cost billions of dollars to businesses in software aimed at blocking the messages.

Hantro Claim Better Mobile Video Compression

Finland-based Hantro has made further advances in the mobile video market with its new H.264 hardware accelerated video decoder. The technology can be implemented into regular consumer mobile handsets and promises to enable a dramatic improvement in the quality of video clips.

Hantro’s H.264 player runs on Series 60-powered handsets and is based on the 6100 software decoder and PlayEngine middleware. Running on a Nokia 7610 handset, full-screen video is capable of being played back at a resolution of 208×176 pixels (supports resolutions up to 720×576 pixels) at up to 15 frames-per-second. Unfortunately, the frame rate is still half of that of standard video playback, but it provides an important step forward in the development cycle of technology that will soon become standard on all phones.

H.264 is the latest video coding standard for improved compression over existing standards, such as MPEG-4 and H.263. With comparable bitrates, the increase in visual quality is significant, according to the company, which also means that you can maintain acceptable video quality (comparable to MPEG-4) with up to a 50 per cent reduction in file size. This makes the application ideally suited for wireless transmissions as it expands the potential of applications such as streaming video to mobile over GPRS, video downloads and mobile TV.

For instance, with improved transmission speed and playback quality, businesses could leverage their marketing to potential customers by sending short video clips instead of SMS alerts. By adhering to the existing file size limitations for MMS, the improved compression ratios should allow for approximately twice the length of video clip at the same visual quality to that of MPEG-4.

The software’s multimedia engine provides a high level API for fast application development, a completely modular design, support for both hardware and software MPEG-4/H.263 video codecs, as well as GSM-AMR speech and AAC audio encoding/decoding. Compatible with 3GPP streaming protocols (RTP/RTCP/RTSP/SDP), its core modules and application logic are OS independent, and are therefore easily ported to numerous operating systems and devices, if multimedia APIs are available. It can also encode 4-megapixel JPEG still images, which will further appeal to manufacturers of battery-operated handheld devices.

“We are very pleased with the performance that we have achieved with this product”, said Sami Niska, Product Manager, Hantro. “This software implementation clearly demonstrates the capability of H.264. By providing a short time-to-market, the 6100 software decoder is an ideal solution for device manufacturers and network operators looking to leverage the immediate potential of applications made possible by this new coding standard.”

Decoding H.264 with general purpose microprocessors and digital signal processors (DSPs) is much more complex than that of existing video standards, which can lead to trade-offs in supported image sizes and power management. To overcome this problem, Hantro has also developed silicon designs which, once integrated into a chip, support higher resolutions and will reduce power consumption considerably when compared to software implementations.

Hantro