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?

iTunes in Indie Deal

After the protests of indie music fans clogged up Apple’s music store with bogus iMixes, the company is close to completing a deal to get more indie music on the service.

Hundreds of artists have not been able to get their music on iTunes because lengthy, piecemeal negotiations with individual indie labels. Sony and Napster managed to get round this by doing a single deal with the Association of Independent Music, the UK trade body that represents many of the labels in question.

This means that popular acts such as the White Stripes will finally be available for download, and music fans will be able to download Franz Ferdinand rather than Franz Liszt. Not that there’s anything wrong with Franz Liszt – other than he didn’t come from Glasgow.

iTunes

Japanese School Authorities to Tag Children

School authorities in the Japanese city of Osaka are to begin tagging the pupils of one of their primary schools with RFIDs. Radio Frequency Identification tags are tiny transceivers capable to broadcasting their location and other data to nearby receivers. The tags have generated controversy in recent years as supermarkets and clothes retailers have begun embedding them in their products.

Once just a jacket accessory for retrieving the posh out of snow drifts after skiing accidents, RFID technology can now track goods around a store – and in the case of clothing, can inform Gap’s data mining operation that you’re wearing previous purchases the second you walk in the store.

Keeping privacy considerations in mind, the Japanese have evidently decided that the negative side of tagging is now outweighed by the increased security of their children.

The Wakayama primary school will install RFID readers on gates and around the school, and will be able to track the movements of children around the building. It is expected that the scheme will be employed in other schools later, and you can bet that the eyes of the world’s school boards will be watching this very closely.

We reported a similar child-tracking story a few weeks ago with Lego’s introduction of RFID child tracking at their Billund theme park.

Wikipedia on RFID

Spy Chips – RFID security concerns

Sony Connect: Video Content Within 12 Months

Sony is to extend its Connect music download service to cover video downloads within the next twelve months. The chairman and and chief executive of Sony Pictures Entertainment, Michael Lynton, said: “Sony Connect will not be just a music service but also a video business within the next year.”

Of course, no-one dropped their latte at that announcement, but this is the first time that the move has been confirmed.

Sony’s consumer electronics business is developing devices that will be able to download and play videos from the Connect store, in exactly the same way that their new range of audio devices do now. The new service will be called Movielink, and given Sony’s enthusiasm for DRM, will probably only be compatible with Sony devices and PCs.

Movielink is a joint distribution venture with Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer, Paramount, Sony Pictures, Universal Studios and Warner Brothers, and will feature content from all five studios and others.

Sony Connect

CacheLogic Survey: P2P Accounts for 10 Petabytes of Data

CacheLogic, the P2P technology company has conducted a survey of global internet traffic using network monitoring tools to find out more about the size of the file sharing community.

In June, an average of 8 million P2P users were online at any one moment, with 1 petabyte of data available to share.

The growth of broadband means that users are now downloading larger files than before, so movie downloads are becoming a more attractive proposition to those of that inclination. Separately, the OECD has announced that video has just passed music as the most popular download, echoing this. Indeed, BayTSP report that “The Day After Tomorrow” was the top downloaded film of June, and Digital Lifestyles predicts that “Spiderman 2” will be July’s most popular pirate victim.

For some bizarre reason “The Passion of the Christ” was the second most ripped-off film in June – which doesn’t strike me as very Christian.

CacheLogic

Windows XP Service Pack Hits Delay

Windows XP Service Pack 2 will now not be appearing until August. Citing a need for more stability checks, Microsoft have delayed the patch for the third time – it was originally scheduled to appear in June, then July.

The new service pack has been described as more than just a few bug fixes – some sources say it’s more like a new version of XP.

XP users can look forward to a number of enhancements when the service pack does appear, including a new firewall, spyware blocking and security revisions to Outlook Express and Internet Explorer.

The download will be about 70mb, if beta test versions are anything to go by – you’d better make sure that broadband link is in by then.

Microsoft Windows

London Gets a TV Channel

Claiming to be the first channel of its type in the world, London TV is a new channel designed to help Londoners get the most out of their city.

NOP have carried out a survey citing 33% of Londoners “worry constantly that they are not making the most of their free time”. I must be in that other 77% slice, presumably.

The channel revolves around “bite-sized” (i.e. short and cheap to produce) snippets of entertainment designed to inspire Londoners to get over their fear of mugging and burglary and to leave their ludicrously priced homes and venture out for some fun.

David Campbell, chief executive of Visit London, said: “If you live in the capital, you often feel guilty that you’re not making the most of everything the city has to offer. Now you don’t even have to get off the sofa to get some inspirational ideas delivered straight to your living room. London TV provides one of the best ways to deliver up to the minute information in a fast moving city like ours. Television brings the capital to life in a way that a guide book could never do and with digital uptake increasing all the time, there has never been a better time to launch a channel dedicated to the greatest city in the world.”

The channel has cost some UK£2 million (€3 million) to set up, financed through Visit London’s marketing budget.

Visit London

PlayStation3: 2006, Playable Demo at E3

Ken Kutaragi has said that Sony plans to have a working PlayStation3 console at next May’s E3 show – so if you’re not doing anything between 18th and 20th of May next year, you might as well get yourself to Los Angeles.

Kutaragi told a meeting of PlayStation developers, suppliers and journalists: “There has been some talk that development is not going well, but we expect to have a playable version at E3. We are pushing ahead with that schedule in mind.”

Sony have been receiving a lot of criticism lately for their PlayStation brand – the PSX has been discontinued in Japan after selling only 100,000 units, and the PSP is under scrutiny with developers citing concerns battery life and screen quality. Sony have yet to confirm what the battery life of its new handheld console will be, and it has emerged that the screen in the demonstration model costs 70,0000 Yen (€520) alone. Clearly Sony will not be able to produce a console with the same screen and will have to source another, cheaper component.

Last week Sony Computer Entertainment announced that they had changed the memory chips in in the PS3 to 256 megabit chips, down from 512. This does not necessarily mean that the console has had its memory capacity halved, doomsayers – it could mean that, with the same memory and twice the number of chips that the bandwidth has been doubled: from 25.6 gigabits to 51.2 gigabits per second.

Sony are expected to follow their usual release pattern with PlayStation hardware – the console may well become available one year after its demonstration at E3, making that May 2006. US release will follow a couple of months later, with a European launch three months or so after that. Expect worried parents queuing up trying to get one of the few models released in the UK for Christmas 2006.

SCEE

T-Mobile’s Ear Phones Service

T-Mobile have launched the Ear Phones music service, hoping to have 250,000 full length music tracks available for mobile phone download and play by Christmas.

The service hopes to capture the imagination of those for whom even iTunes is too slow, who want to download music and listen to it immediately when they are out and about.

T-Mobile have outlined their vision of the future in a press release that was written by someone who objects to sentences longer than five words – although there are no full tracks on the service yet, phone owners can download and play 90 to 120 second samples of 500 tracks, with full tracks being added soon.

The service will really need 3G coverage to be usable – a short sample track takes 2 minutes to download, which is a slightly longer time span than most youths own a particular model of phone. 3G networks will take this down to about 30 seconds – roughly the amount of time it takes to disrespect someone’s trainers at the bus stop.

The service is backed by Sony and Warner music, and Amy Winehouse is even scheduled to release her next single on Ear Phones.

T-Mobile have five new compatible handsets for the service launch, and are planning on 12 by Christmas. They “conservatively estimate” that they will have sold over 1 million Ear Phones by June next year, 4 million by the end of 2006.

No estimate on the number of full music tracks paid for and downloaded, I note. I suppose we’ll just have to do a little follow up on that in a little while.

The key stumbling block here is that people will be lumbered with a piece of content that is stuck on their phone and is not transferable to another device – home, car, personal stereo – the Open Mobile Alliance 1.0 DRM will keep it locked up and immovable.

The service is in danger of dying out after the novelty has worn off and customers realise they still have to carry two music players – and worse still, keep buying content over and over.

T-Mobile

Ofcom’s Renumbering Plans

Ofcom, the UK’s communications regulator, has published their plan for renumbering Greater London’s telephone system.

Under Section 56 of the Communications Act, Ofcom is required to publish a National Telephone Numbering Plan and review it when required. Telephone numbers have been revised three times over the last fifteen years, and usually the public’s response is one of groans and howls, followed by trips to the printers to get all the stationery redone, and the tiny tapping on phones and PDAs to input the new codes.

There’ll be none of that this time – Ofcom is assuring residential and business customers that they will not need to change their numbers. The major change is the release of the 020 3 code for new numbers in Greater London, though 020 7 and 020 8 will stay the same.

A campaign to inform the public will begin in Q3 2004, and it is expected that the new numbers will start appearing next summer.

Ofcom’s plan

UK Film Companies Launch New Anti-Piracy Offensive

“Piracy is a Crime” is the new UK£1.5 million ( €2.25 million) campaign from the UK film industry, launching today.

Film makers have grouped together with retailers like Asda and HMV to form the Industry Trust for Intellectual Property Awareness, and have predicted an annual loss of about UK£1 billion (€1.5 billion) to the film industry in 2007.

To combat this, the new campaign has a tough new message for the public.

A new trailer seeks to educate the public that film piracy has links to organised crime and funds terrorist activities. By issuing posters featuring a gunman, the ITIPA is hoping to capitalise on the public’s fear of terrorism to discourage the public from buying dodgy DVDs down the market.

The majority of public opinion seems to be that piracy is a “soft crime” with no real victims, whereas low risks and high returns are making it an attractive option for criminal gangs – raids to premises involved in piracy have also unearthed drugs, pornography and weapons.

FACT