Author: Fraser Lovatt

Fraser Lovatt has spent the last fifteen years working in publishing, TV and the Internet in various capacities, and believes that they will be seperate platforms for at least a while yet. His main interests at the moment are exploring where Linux is taking home entertainment and how technology is conferring technical skills on more and more people. Fraser Lovatt was born in the same year that 2001: A Space Odyssey was delighting and confusing people in the cinemas, and developed a lifelong love of technology as soon as he realised that things could be taken apart, sometimes put back together again, but mostly left in bits or made into something the original designer hadn't quite planned upon. At school he was definitely in the ZX Spectrum/Magpie/BMX camp, rather than the BBC Micro/Blue Peter/well-behaved group. This is all deeply ironic as he later went on to spend nine years working at the BBC. After a few years of working as a bookseller in Scotland, ("Back when it was actually a skilled profession" he'll tell anyone still listening), he moved to England for reasons he can't quite explain adequately to himself. After a couple of publishing jobs punctuated by sporadic bursts of travelling and photography came the aforementioned nine years at the BBC where he specialised in internet technologies and video. These days his primary interests are Java, Linux, videogames and pies - and if they're not candidates for convergence, then what is?

XP Light for Developing Markets

Microsoft is about to release a stripped-down, low-cost version of Windows XP into five developing markets. Indonesia, Malaysia, Thailand and two unspecified countries will receive Windows XP Starter Edition in October.

The move is to combat the two main threats to Windows in these markets: piracy and Linux. Microsoft hopes that a low-cost, properly licensed copy of Windows will dissuade users from simply buying a copied disk for a couple of dollars and that the company’s brand and software support will tempt users away from trying out a Linux distribution.

Aside from major changes to the OS, Microsoft has localised screen savers to include local landscape scenes, flags and traditional designs to encourage users to adopt XP Starter Edition.

Microsoft may have misjudged the market, however – XP Starter Edition apparently features lower resolution graphics, crippled networking and bizarrely, only allows users to run three programs simultaneously.

Given that most Linux distributions perform excellently in all of these areas, it is unlikely that Microsoft will be tempting anyone away from the penguin with less functionality rather than more.

Microsoft on XP Starter Edition

Sharp’s Glasses-free 3D Display

We haven’t had a glasses-free 3D display story for a while, so expect another two later. Sharp have announced the LL-151-3D display – a 15” LCD that gives a 3D image without requiring the user to wear special glasses.

The screen has two displays built into it at different angles, and uses a parallax barrier to make these present a depth of field effect, by presenting a slightly different image to each eye.

I’ll let Sharp’s boffins explain it themselves: “Sharp’s TFT 3D LCD technology works on the principle of displaying left and right eye views that are separated so that the left eye sees only the left eye image, and the right eye sees only the right eye image,” explained Matthew. “Since these images have perspective and are offset in the same way that the human eye normally sees the two images, the brain naturally interprets the image disparity and creates a ‘sense of depth’ effect. The result is a 3D, ‘out of screen’ display,’ that provides users with a visual experience previously unattainable without polarized or liquid crystal shuttering lenses.”

The display can be easily switched between 2D and 3D modes, but can auto detect content and switch automatically.

At US$1500 (€1226) the display is aimed at designers, medical imaging systems, education and gamers with deep pockets. It could just conceivably find its way into someone’s ultimate Half Life 2 rig. NVIDIA even have a list of games that are compatible with the LL-151-3D. Or I suppose you could just stare at molecules all day.

LL-151-3D

Felcia Payment System Goes Live

The Felicia payment system has gone live in Japan this week, after successful trials last year. Running on the NTT DoCoMo network, the service allows users to pay for goods and services securely using their mobile phones. Customers can also check in for flights and withdraw cash from their bank accounts.

Felcia is based on a Sony smart card of the same name that stores persona details about the user, and runs on the Symbian operating system.

NTT DoCoMo’s 46.6 million subscribers will have access to the service if they can get their hands on a compatible phone.

One of the first phones to support the service is the Fujitsu F900ic, which even incorporates a finger print scanner for security. Additionally, the phone has a 1.2 mega pixel camera, an additional low-res camera for video calls, a 2.4 inch high resolution display, plus an additional one 1 inch OLED display for people who still don’t think it’s gadget-y enough.

Felcia

TiVo Cuts Prices to Increase Demand

Fresh from getting the nod for their TiVoToGo content sharing service, PVR manufacturer TiVo have cut the price of their digital recorder. With competition from cable companies looming, this could be TiVo’s last chance to grow, or even hang on to, their market share.

A TiVo PVR is now only US$100 (€82) for the 40 hour model, with the subscription costing US$13 (€11) a month.

The company has launched a US$50 million (€41 million) ad campaign in the hope of growing sales from US$141 million (€115 million) last year to US$1 billion (€820 million) by 2008.

“This will set the stage and give us a chance at profitability by the end of our next fiscal year,” said Brodie Keast, TiVo’s executive vice president and general manager.

Rival cable firms are threatening TiVo’s market share by launching services with cheaper monthly charges. Although TiVo hope to grow their installed user base form 1.6 million subscribers to 10 million in four years, the outlook does not appear good: the company’s share price has recently fallen by 10% to a 16 month low.

As Forrester Research analyst Josh Bernoff has said.”This is it. This is their shot to get a whole lot of new subscribers before cable DVR subscribers really take off.”

TiVo

Roxio to Sell Software Division and Change Name to Napster

Roxio is to get out of the software industry and concentrate solely on digital music – even to the extent of ditching its name and becoming Napster. Online music services are so popular, and the Napster brand still so well known, that it makes sense to to them get out of the software business completely by selling their software business to Sonic Solutions for US$80 million (€65 million).

Napster is making Roxio just under US$8 million a quarter, and will bring in between US$30 million (€24.5 million) and US$40 million (€32.5 million) in the financial year. More than half of Roxio’s income comes from Napster subscriptions, and Napster-branded MP3 players brought in US$1.1 million (€900,000). Napster subscriptions are a good revenue stream for the company – margins on downloaded songs are only 10%, but are as high as 40% on subs.

Roxio can see that there is limited life in the CD burning software market, especially now that operating systems like Windows XP have disk burning facilities built into them, and are getting more sophisticated all the time. Whilst there will be a market for specialist software for recording CDs for some time, many consumers’ needs are already satisfied by the disk burning capabilities already integrated into iTunes or their OS, leading to reduced demand for their products.

Napster CEO Chris Gorog said during a conference call announcing the sale: “With the news today, we are on a path to become a very well-funded pure play in one of the hottest sectors in the consumer technology market.”

Roxio will be testing Microsoft’s Janus DRM technology this year, allowing subscribers to move their content to portable players for the first time.

Sonic are quite pleased with their new acquisition – Roxio has a well-established consumer brand with high-profile distribution channels. Try buying a CD writer that doesn’t come with a Roxio product.

Roxio

Napster

Ringtone Market Now Worth Frightening US$2.5 billion; WAP Use Doubles, But Still Rubbish

Research groups are estimating that the worldwide ringtone market is now worth at least US$2.5 billion (€2 billion), with some groups claiming that it’s nearer US$3.5 billion (€2.85 billion).

The US market makes up just a tiny proportion of the US$2.5 billion figure, accounting for just US$140 million (€114 million) of ringtone sales – the bulk of the market is in Europe and Asia.

Like text messaging, ringtones are another completely unexpected mobile phone success story – ten years ago, mobile networks thought they’d be making their money from obvious things like phone calls.

Perhaps those guys in the panda outfits weren’t so daft after all.

WAP, however, was an unexpected failure – adoption of the difficult to use, worse to implement internet browsing protocol has been extremely slow. Slow to the point that it will soon be bypassed by traditional internet access on phones. Like teletext but slower and less interesting, figures from the Mobile Data Association indicate that 1.11 billion WAP pages were viewed during June 2004, up from 784 million in June 2003. The MDA estimate that the year total will be 13 billion for the year.

Mobile Data Association

China Issues Digital TV Licenses

China’s government has issued digital television broadcasting licenses to four companies, ending the state monopoly. The move is also intended to increase competition and innovation in China’s nascent digital broadcasting industry.

However, the move is not as open as first appears – the four companies are themselves state owned. The companies are CHC Home Cinema, China Broadcast Network Company, Shanghai TV, and a five company consortium including China National Radio.

By opening up digital broadcasting in this way, the government hopes to create more opportunities for private and foreign-funded ventures, though foreign companies are not allowed to hold broadcast licenses. Regulators have approved a small number of overseas channels for broadcast on cable in Guangdong and hotels, though much of the overseas investment is likely to take the form of creating content, developing platforms and infrastructure.

A recent project in Qingdao converted 600,00 homes to digit television, with 60 government channels. China is expected to have 30 million viewers by 2008.

Digital TV in China

Microsoft Releases XP SP2 to Manufacturers

Microsoft have finally sent Windows XP SP2 off for disc manufacturers. The update, the biggest ever security fix to Windows, has been hotly awaited by many. Not least black-hat hackers who will be pouring over the code to see what vulnerabilities it has fixed.

SP2 has been described by analysts as much more than just a series of bug fixes, and has been likened to an upgrade to Windows.

‘Service Pack 2 is a significant step in delivering on our goal to help customers make their PCs better isolated and more resilient in the face of increasingly sophisticated attacks,’ said Bill Gates, chairman and chief software architect at Microsoft.

‘It is the result of sustained investments in innovation and extensive industry collaboration. It also reflects a broad recognition that as the security environment changes, the industry needs to work together to respond,’ he said.

The update includes an improved firewall, one that is actually switched on by default this time. Other enhancements include a long overdue popup blocker for Internet Explorer and better e-mail security.

The service pack was originally planned to be released in June, but further enhancements were needed. Microsoft is keen to get it completely right this time. Available as a free CD, the update will also be available for download – though dial up users may shrink from terror at its vast 90mb bulk. To alleviate this, Microsoft are encouraging users to switch on automatic updates in Windows, so that the fixes can be downloaded in smaller chunks.

The pack will be released in English first, with 25 other languages on their way shortly.

Windows Update

PlayStation3 Will Use Blu-ray

Sony has a announced that its forthcoming PlayStation3 console will include a Blue-ray drive DVD drive. Blue-ray is a higher density DVD technology, and will be able to store around 50gb of data by the console’s release at the end of 2005.

The inclusion of the Blue-ray drive is sure to guarantee mass market acceptance for the format, in the face of competition from other high density DVD technologies. Sony are particularly keen to see the format flourish as it is one of the founders of the Blu-ray group and has invested heavily in the technology. The main competitor, HD-DVD, has recently received a boost from Microsoft when they announced that their next version of Windows, codenamed Longhorn, would support it.

Blue light optical disks can store more data on them because the wavelength of blue coherent light is shorter, and therefore can read smaller pits, which are also packed closer together.

As Blu-ray is not currently compatible with standard DVD technology, this means that the drive will not be able to play standard red laser DVDs, or run Playstation2 software. It remains to be seen if Sony will be using a special dual-format drive, of taking the expensive step of including two drives in the console.

Blu-ray Home

Nokia Partners with Loudeye on Mobile Music

Nokia have signed Loudeye to develop and advanced wireless digital music platform for their range of mobile handsets. The announcement comes days after Motorola and Apple got together to bring iTunes to mobile phones.

No details on the platform have yet been released, but the deal is for several years.

“This agreement with Nokia represents a significant strategic opportunity for Loudeye to work with the leading mobile communications company in the world to develop an advanced wireless music platform,” said Jeff Cavins, Loudeye’s president and chief executive officer. “We are very excited about our relationship with Nokia and look forward to sharing more details in the future.”

This is another early step showing that online music services and handset manufacturers believe that mobile phones have tremendous potential as tools for listening to, and buying, digital music.

Loudeye recently acquired OD2, Europe’s leading white label music download service and claims to have the world’s largest music archive. We’ll be interested to see how the service ties in with Visual Radio, if at all. If Visual Radio gets a proper European or worldwide launch, then it may form the basis of a service for radio listeners to buy and download music heard during broadcasts.

Loudeye