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?

Pfizer Gets Hard On Viagra Spammers

Research undertaken by Pfizer has prompted the pharmaceutical company to take legal action against the hundreds of spammers selling fake or generic Viagra on the internet. A survey revealed that 25% of men thought that the emails actually came from Pfizer. If that really is the case, then I’d say that erection problems aren’t their only problem – they need to buy some clever pills too.

There is no such thing as generic Viagra (known as sildenafil citrate) because the drug has not be approved by the Food and Drug Administration in the US – makes you wonder what it is these people are buying.

Pfizer are now working with US law enforcement agencies and the FDA to track down and prosecute those illegally selling, or claiming to sell, Viagra. They already have organisations and 24 websites targeted. Alongside all of this legal activity, they have a new public awareness campaign to educate the public on the dangers of buying random, unprescribed pills off the internet.

“Pfizer is taking these steps to help raise consumer awareness about the problems posed by illegitimate online ‘pharmacies’ and to directly address the source of these problems,” said Jeff Kindler, Executive Vice President and General Counsel at Pfizer. “We want it clearly known that Pfizer does not send or support the sending of spam, which comes from websites that illegally use the Viagra name to promote and market unapproved ED products that may contain ingredients that either do not provide optimal efficacy or may pose health risks.”

Research shows that younger men are now taking Viagra recreationally as a lifestyle drug, and this coupled with the fact that some people are still stupid to buy things they read about in spam, means that there will be no quick end to impotence-related emails any time soon.

Worryingly, Pfizer have just lost patent protection for Viagra in China, so look forward to a sudden flood of legal sildenafil spam coming from there.

Pfizer

Disney’s Dream Desk PC

Disney have released their Dream Desk PC – a US$600 (€500) 2.6 gHz Celeron-based computer that comes complete with digital pen and suite of software. A 14” flat screen monitor with the characteristically round Mickey ears is a US$300 (€250)optional extra – but if you’re going to buy the PC, you have to have the ears too, right?

The striking blue computer was designed by Frog Design and made by Medion AG, a large German manufacturer. It even has a child-sized mouse for those little hands, and a unique cable management system to keep tempting electrical cables away from curious fingers.

To protect children, the PC comes with the EmailProtect and ContentProtect email and internet filtering applications. Plus on the entertainment side, the PC comes preloaded with several Disney games and tools for playing with Disney media (just play fair with the DMCA, kids!). A DVD player and CD writer is included for budding pirates.

This is Disney’s first attempt at a PC aimed at children. Bob Iger, Disney President said at the unveiling yesterday: “We’ve travelled a long way since that first Mickey writing tablet hit the market in 1929. At the core of Disney is our mission to entertain and enlighten audiences through products that spark the imagination. With the launch of the Disney Dream Desk, a computer designed with kids in mind, we’ve developed a tool box for children to unleash their imaginations and expand their minds.”

Disney Consumer Products

Google IPO: Let the Backlash Begin

Google may have chose a bad time for its IPO – the market for technology stocks is slowing and companies like Nanosys are cancelling their own offerings.

Analysts believe that members of the public will invest in Google because of the brand, and the Dutch auction scheme has a populist appeal. Indeed, the New York Times has even reported that Jerry Kaplan, has warned his mother not to buy Google stock. Many institutions are taking the tried and trusted “wait and see” approach.

With MSN breathing down Google’s neck with new features and Windows integration, they have tough times ahead.

Google’s 24.6 million shares are expected to raise US$3 billion (€2.5 billion) for the company, and documents filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission reveal that Google executives believe that the company will be worth up to US$36 billion (€29.8 billion) on the day of the IPO.

It also transpired this week that Google has issued 30 million shares to staff, but failed to register them. This may be a serious breach of stock market regulations, and the company is now planning to buy the shares back – though at prices much lower than the US$108 to US$135 (€90 to €112) estimates for IPO stock. A rescission of the unregistered stock would only cost Google about US$26 million (€21.5 million) out of their US$0.5 billion (€0.4 billion) cash reserves.

Google’s IPO

Nintendo’s Response to Microsoft Sale Rumour: No.

Nintendo have replied to rumours floating around since yesterday that Microsoft wants to buy the Japanese games company with a big flat No.

Nintendo’s chief of public relations Yasuhiro Minagawa said “Nintendo is not on sale, and there is no such talk at all.” In fact, Microsoft have not even contacted Nintendo about a possible deal.

So where did the rumours come from? German finance magazine Wirtschaftswoche reported Bill Gate’s comments from the sidelines of a press conference: “If Hiroshi Yamauchi phones me, I will pick up at once,” he said.

Nintendo are a very Japanese company – America is a reasonably large market for them, Europe have historically not been a priority, but they are unstoppable in Japan. Microsoft, on the other hand, are a very American company – they have no understanding of the Japanese market. The size of the XBox, the games they’ve released in Japan, even the games they’ve cancelled in Japan, demonstrate this. Even if they had a hands-off approach in their home territory, the brand would be irrevocably damaged. Western gamers, all too aware of the rubbish that gets released under the Atari brand these days, would also know the difference.

Larry Hyrb from XBox Live’s blog

Curt Marvis, CinemaNow – the IBC Digital Lifestyles Interviews

We interviewed Curt Marvis, a key player in IP-based video delivery and CEO of CinemaNow.

CinemaNow have the distribution rights to the largest library of on-demand feature films available on the internet. CinemaNow’s distribution model is one of the most flexible in the industry: films are available with pay-per-view, download or subscription licenses.

The company’s library comprises content from more than 150 licensors, including 20th Century Fox, Disney, MGM, Miramax, Warner Brothers and Lions Gate Entertainment.

CinemaNow have not restricted themselves to films, however – their catalogue includes music concerts, shorts and television programmes.

CinemaNow’s technology platform is essential to their business, and so they have developed their own proprietary content distribution and DRM system: PatchBay. They’ve also turned PatchBay into a product, and has licensed the platform to other content distributors. PatchBay allows distributors to manage, track and syndicate content whilst enforcing DRM solutions and territorial restrictions. CinemaNow’s entire business is built around the Windows Media 9 platform, which has simplified their business model somewhat, whilst at the same time allowing them to take advantage of the sophisticated features built into Microsoft’s platform.

Curt Marvis has been CEO of CinemaNow since the company was created in July 1999, arriving there from 7th Level. He was also a founder of Powerhouse Entertainment, and in the 80s and early 90s was CEO of The Company, the Los Angeles production organisation.

Digital delivery of video has been slower to arrive than many industry players predicted in the mid-90s, but with the adoption of broadband and improvements to codecs and DRM systems, it looks like mainstream is around the corner. There are still many hurdles – broadband isn’t quite broadband enough, consumer rights over moving content to other devices is unclear at best, content can be lacklustre and customers are confused by the many competing codecs, DRM schemes and formats in the market.

We spoke to Curt about CinemaNow and his hope for the future of digital content delivery, and the advantages of Windows Media 9.

Some of the visitors to Digital Lifestyles might not know about Cinema Now. Can you give me some background on that for our readers?

CinemaNow has been around for five years. We started the company in mid-1999, which of course was during the dot.com hayday. We started the company then do to the same thing that we continue to do today, which is to offer movies and other video content on demand over IP Networks.

What do you think has kept Blockbuster out of the part of the market in the US for so long?

Blockbuster is actually a small investor in our company and I think Blockbuster feels that when they get into a new marketplace they look for a market which is very, very big which the IP on demand marketplace still is not.

I think their philosophy is that they will enter the marketplace at a moment in time when they feel there is a sufficient amount of revenue.

You have to keep in mind as well that Blockbuster do not own the rights to distribute content in this window yet, so they have to negotiate that through a studio.

They are sort of dabbling with it in the UK, but not in a very high profile way.

Yes, I know Steve Middleton and they have had that trial in Hull. So I’m familiar with that. They are actually doing more in the UK than they are in the US market.

Tell me a little bit about your IBC session. What sort of things are you going to be covering?

We have a sort of technology platform we call PatchBay. PatchBay is the sort of central nervous system of CinemaNow, and it’s a completely Windows based platform.

We deliver our movies exclusively in Windows Media format, but that’s not to say that couldn’t use other codecs or other players, but we chose that as our primary platform when we started the company.

We used the installed base for that choice as well as the specific functionality of the platform, for purposes of what we can do to add additional delivery and content.

Could you tell us a bit more about your Patch Bay product?

Patchbay is a versatile, user-friendly, API and tool for managing all facets of online content distribution. With Patchbay, you can manage six major tasks for successfully distributing content online including: Content Management and Distribution; Content Syndication; Rights Management; User Profiling and Ad Targeting; Pay-Per-View, Subscription and E-Commerce Management; and Comprehensive Reporting.

It’s a tested, real-world application currently being used to manage millions of streams per month over disparate networks. With Patchbay’s scalable infrastructure, CinemaNow maximizes its revenues while protecting and retaining control over its assets, even those syndicated to third-party websites.

Windows Media 9 it has been a terrific platform for delivering and viewing and protecting your content. What excites you most about it?

That is a big question. Is there something that Windows Media excites me?

The Windows Media Platform is directly compatible with the dominant operating systems and you know, EU concerns and other concerns notwithstanding we felt that having a player that was most used with the operating system it was running on was best. We also frankly think that beyond that specific issue the Windows Media Platform and Windows Media Player are the superior player and platforms for digital delivery. That is why we chose them.

Who is the typical Cinema Now subscriber? Who are you actually reaching?

We definitely have a male dominated audience – over 75% of our users are male. They tend to be slightly older than you might initially think. Our typical user is probably between 25 and 40 years of age. Generally speaking they have a higher than average income, higher than average education – you know that sort of thing. That is the kind of profile that we have in general, although it is changing all the time, as we have more and more of the mainstream business.

You have 455 films in your library at the moment. How many are you aiming for?

That’s what you’re seeing in the UK. We have territorial rights which protect our content from being viewed outside of the US for films that we do not have rights to – for example the collection of movies that you see in the UK is significantly inferior to what we offer in the US. In the US on our website right now we have almost 2000 films available. By the end of this year that will grow to probably close to 4000/5000.

In the UK, I am hopeful that we will be up well over 1000 films by the end of the year including the films from major studios.

How long do you think it is going to be before digital delivery becomes mainstream then?

Well, I think there are a number of factors that are sort of the driving part right now. One is the problem of availability; one is broadband penetration; one is hardware device availability and penetration in terms of everything from portable devices, media centre devices etc. etc.

I think there has got to be an alignment if you want to drive fast market adoption. When we started the company in 1999, we thought that by 2004 that time would have arrived. I can tell you now that is just the beginning and we will probably see this become a mass market over the course of the next two to four years – somewhere in that timeframe.

You mentioned that you don’t have the rights to distribute all of your films in all territories – what kind of problems are you facing in getting rights clearances for content in different markets?

No real problems, but rather an issue of needing to be set up in these countries with strong distribution partners before it is worthwhile to spend money acquiring local content and preparing it (encoding and storage) for distribution. Keep in mind that content is distributed on a territory by territory basis and with each version comes new contracts, payments and prepping.

Are you considering a global pricing model or will you be pricing the same content differently on a market by market basis?

We will try to keep it as consistent as we can, but we will definitely need to follow pricing schemes that are consistent with differences in the traditional distribution businesses.

Many content providers are getting excited about supplying content for mobile phones — when you do see serving media to mobiles becoming a mainstream business? Will there be a point when consumers will want to watch long media streams like films on their mobiles? Is there a maximum length that consumers will watch?

I think mobile distribution is really a business in the next few years for portable devices such as tablet PC’s, Portable Media Centers, etc. Cell phones for full length content seems a long ways away, if ever.

What of the content that is being delivered to people the films and content that they are buying has quite often incompatible DRM schemes behind it. What do you think is going to happen in that space over the next four years?

Windows Media has DRM that has been adopted by a lot of different people. I think there will be a shake-up in the market very shortly and one DRM system will be adopted by 95% of the content delivery industry.

What worries you about the future of digital delivery? What keeps you awake at night?

Well, I think, I sleep very well actually. I think the biggest concern is that people will jump into the marketplace prematurely – before there is a high quality user experience to be had, and that consumers will be turned off on the concept if it doesn’t work properly at first or it is not a compelling product offering.

I hope that companies recognise that this is still very much a virgin market, and that when it really begins to take off I think it’ll dwarf the size of what is happening in the DVD industry, and it’ll open up avenues for huge amounts of libraries, great content opportunities etc. I think you will see people consume more and more content and I think there will be plenty of room for a lot players to get into the business.


Curt is a panellist in the ‘Understanding the Range of Platforms – A Multitude of Destinations’ session between 14:00 and 15:30 at the IBC conference on Sunday, 12th September in Amsterdam. Register for IBC here

CinemaNow

Apple Settles EU Online Music Patent

E-Data and Apple have settled a patent case over selling music online in Europe. E-Data’s “Freeny” patent was established in 1985 and covers the transmission of information to a remote point-of-sale location, where the information is then transferred to a physical object. Basically, if you have a music service that allows tunes to be dropped onto any physical medium – CD, iPod, robot dog – then you’ll be hearing from E-Data.

You can bet that the person who thought the patent up back when Phil Collins was in the charts with Sussidoo was probably only dimly aware of ARPANET, if at all. Since MP3 didn’t exist then either, no doubt they dreamed of the 150 hour wait it would take for one of these new, exciting “CD” things to come down a high-technology 14k modem line.

E-Data have also settled with Microsoft in the past and, buoyed by these successes have launched no less than 14 more infringement suits against companies including Amazon and the New York Times. E-Data don’t actually make a product or operate their own music service.

E-Data Chairman Bert Brodsky said: “This settlement with Apple marks another important milestone, as we aggressively pursue companies that are infringing upon our intellectual property. We have identified additional companies that are infringing upon our intellectual property, both in the U.S. and abroad, and will seek the necessary legal actions to ensure that our rights are enforced worldwide.”

Tantalisingly, none of the financial details of E-Data’s settlement deals have been made public – we’d like to know how much they’re charging.

E-Data

FCC Approves TiVo Content Sharing

The Federal Communications Commission has approved TiVo’s new content sharing facility, TiVoToGo. Possibly the ugliest neologism I have ever seen TVTG (I’m not typing it again), allows TiVo owners to share recorded programming with a limited number of approved associates and friends over the internet. The FCC has approved the security features that only last week were causing the MPAA and NFL to throw their toys out of their prams.

The FCC is now satisfied that digital broadcast television is adequately protected by TiVo, and that content should be made conveniently available to users – but without indiscriminate distribution all over the internet.

TVTG limits sharing to nine other users, who must have a certificate and be registered with the host TiVo before they can view content.

The MPAA is still disappointed though – they’d like to see tighter controls as programmes can be streamed to users outside the intended market: “technologies that enable redistribution of copyrighted TV programming beyond the local TV market disrupt local advertiser-supported broadcasting and harm TV syndication markets.”

A breakthrough for consumers? Not so fast. Even if the FCC has approved the technology there are still plenty of opportunities for the MPAA or anyone else who doesn’t like TVTG from reaching the market, or crippling it when it gets there.

TiVo on the FCC news

IceRocket Takes on Google

Who’d have thought that, at least a couple of years after people thought the search engine battle was over, companies old and new are fighting for your searches and eyeballs. Of course, it helps that Google have shown that there is money to be made out of a successful search engine after all.

Talking of Google, Mark Cuban has invested in a start-up, IceRocket, in the hope that they can beat them at their own game.

Any search engine appearing on the web today has to do considerably more than just retrieve pages featuring the words you typed into a little box, and IceRocket hope that they have a range of features that will change the whole search market around.

IceRocket’s offering looks, shall we say, rather like Google and uses a combination of the company’s own search technology, plus a meta-search agent that queries other engines. After all, why not take advantage of the fact that some of the larger engines have already done much of the cataloguing for you?

I tested IceRocket’s image search – and am still laughing a bit. Naturally, I thought I’d look for a picture of myself. The results for “Fraser Lovatt” were basically thumbnails of an enormously fat man, and a trombone. Yes, that is entirely wrong – thanks for asking. Looking out the window, I tried for further inspiration – and searched for images of pigeons. That search also turned up a very fat man and a trombone. As did a search for cars. Early days yet, though, eh?

Now to the good bit – the web search seems to be very good indeed. It found loads of things that even I’d forgotten about. I tired some of my favourite, regular searches on Google with impressive results. The image thumbnails of the page that your result features on is very useful and provides a lot of information to help you decide whether or not you want to visit that site.

IceRocket also has an email search agent – searches can be emailed to the engine and the results are sent back. Handy for PDA users. A blank email to [email protected] with “monkey furniture”in the subject line returned five reasonably relevant results a few seconds later.

As Marc Cuban says on his blog: “So try it out and let me know what you think and if there are any other features you would like to see added.. If we can do them, we will !!! This is just the beginning, Watch out google, here we come :)”

One to watch out for.

IceRocket

Marc Cuban’s Blog

FCC Votes to Wiretap VoIP

The Federal Communications Commission has voted 5 – 0 to subject voice over IP communications to the same laws that apply to eaves dropping over conventional telephone calls.

Whilst VoIP is cheap alternative to making standard telephone calls, especially over long distance, it is rather difficult to tap. The vote means that VoIP is now subject to the 1994 Communications Assistance for Law Enforcement Act (CALEA), and that assistance is basically a requirement that your VoIP chat has a back door in it so that federal law enforcement agencies can listen in without telling you.

FCC chairman Michael Powell said: “Our support for law enforcement is unwavering. It is our goal in this proceeding to ensure that law enforcement agencies have all of the electronic surveillance capabilities that CALEA authorizes to combat crime and terrorism and support homeland security.”

The FCC’s statement

HP’s Linux Notebook

The HP Compaq nx5000 is the first laptop PC from a major manufacturer to come preloaded with a Linux distribution. In this case, HP have chosen SuSE Linux as an easy to use desktop operating system alternative to Windows. The laptop is priced at about US$1,140 (€950) – which in turn makes it roughly US$60 (€50) cheaper than the same model with Windows XP installed.

The nx5000 is fully featured and includes a CD burner, DVD player and wireless networking. OpenOffice is included as a replacement for Microsoft’s Office suite.

A sixty dollar saving is hardly likely to tempt a Windows user to try out a new, unproven OS, but having Linux preloaded and preconfigured will please a lot of established users who want a Linux laptop without having to buy a Windows license and do all of the configuration themselves. Laptops are notoriously difficult to run Linux distributions on because of the amount of proprietary hardware and tricky drivers involved. This is obviously not a problem for HP as they’re the hardware maker!

Power management, often an issue with Linux, is fully enabled – and the laptop comes with HP support. Other specifications include a Celeron or Pentium processor, 30 to 60 gb of disk space and a 15” screen.

Linux distributions are now second place behind Windows, with Macintosh a close third for the title of most popular desktop operating system – with more and more manufacturers providing Linux alternatives, the open source OS will increase in popularity over the next few years.

HP on the nx5000