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?

A US$500 PS3?

A new report from industry analysts Wedbush Morgan is predicting that the usual things will happen when a new games console is released: it’s be very expensive on début, and decline in price afterwards.

WM’s report, The Definition of Insanity: Why the Next Console Cycle Will Start Off With a Whimper, bases its pricing of the PS3 on an assumption that it will be like Japan’s PSX – full of extra functions. I think this won’t be the case at all.

The PSX has a digital tuner, has PVR functionality and a DVD writer and is marketed as a home media centre that plays games. Gamers aren’t too worried about having a PVR that plays Killzone 2, PVRs appeal to a slightly older audience. Gamers aren’t too bothered about their games console having a DVD writer in it either – they have PCs for that.

WM predict that the PS3 will be priced on its US début at US$500 (€411) in 2005. I say it’ll be more like US$300 (€249), and because we always get fleeced here in the UK, call it UK£300 (€450) on its UK début.

The report predicts that PS2 games will be produced through 2008, which when you consider that PS1 games are still being made ten years after the original appeared, is not too much of a stretch of the imagination.

WM feel that the PS2’s backwards compatibility with PS1 titles was a key factor in its success, and with doubts over XBox 2’s compatibility with older titles we might just get to see this replayed and confirmed.

The report also attacks discounting of games, and they certainly have a point: gamers have come to expect prices of titles older than six months or so to drop dramatically, and so just wait until they do. WM’s recommendation to combat this isn’t going to win them any friends: keep supplies scarce at the beginning, and keep the price up.

See, I told you analysts were evil.

The report

Mobile Operators Define the Open Mobile Terminal Platform

Baffled by the sheer range of application user interfaces on mobile phones? I certainly am – but then the rich diversity of cash point interfaces leaves me standing there confused and moneyless on the best of days.

To combat the confusion and fragmentation that comes with the diversity of mobile applications and their use, mm02, NTT DoCoMo, Orange, SMART Communications, Telefónica Móviles, Telecom Italia Mobile, T-Mobile and Vodafone have grouped together to form OMTP – the Open Mobile Terminal Platform.

Their aim is to define the requirements necessary for mobile devices to deliver openly available standardised application interfaces – so you’ll at least have half a chance next time you try to fight your way round your new phone address book, because it’ll work much like the last one you saw.

They’ll do this by establishing an open frame work for device manufacturers like Nokia and Siemens, plus their software and hardware suppliers, inviting them to develop OMTP compliant products.

Of course, there is a slim chance that phone manufacturers could tell the OMTP group to go and take a jump.

The OMTP

EasyGroup, UK Newspapers, Entire World to Launch Music Services

EasyGroup, the company better known for being the parent of easyJet, has announced that it too will be getting into the online music store business. The difference is that the music will be free.

Imaginatively called easyMusic, the service will feature tracks from unknown artists who need a bit of publicity. Customers who want to download tracks form better known acts will pay a fee.

As always, Stelios was out with a statement:

“Music is another example of a market which will grow if the price is lowered. Only this week we have seen that independent labels and artists, accounting for 20% of the UK market, do not wish to join the iTunes penny jukebox for fear of the commercial terms. easyMusic will allow them to advertise their music for free to get a bigger fan base and if they think they have become popular enough they can switch to the pay-for-download side of easyMusic.com. Market forces will decide on the value of their work and the result to consumers is that the price of music will come down, something which will increase the number of musicians and fans in this market place.”

Ah, Stelios, the penny jukebox thing is OD2, but otherwise we broadly agree with you.

Did you know there’s actually an easyPizza? I take it they arrive in orange boxes.

Is that the sound of a bandwagon’s axles about to snap? Well, yes it must be because here comes the Sun, the Guardian, the Times, the Daily Mail and the Daily Mirror with plans for their own online music download stores!

First up is the Guardian in a deal with EMI, planning a service at the end of June, with the Daily Mirror considering a music service as part of the relaunch of their website later in the year.

Scorching!

EasyMusic

Daily Mirror

Busy Times for Vivendi

Vivendi Universal Games has announced a restructuring that will mean the loss of 350 jobs.

Blizzard, VUG’s key games developer, is said to not be affected, which is just as well as the studio’s forthcoming Worlds of Warcraft MMORPG (repeat after me: massively multiplayer online role-playing game) has many gamers in an absolute froth of goblin-smashing anticipation. If WoW doesn’t revive the parent company’s flagging fortunes, then nothing will.

If you think that’s bad, it gets Messier.

The former Vivendi Universal chairman Jean-Marie Messier was arrested on Monday for his part in a massive share buyback scheme. It’s alleged that the company spent at least €1 billion (UK£1.5 billion) propping up its share price in 2001, buying back 21 million shares in September 2001, just 15 days before publishing its financial results.

Messier has been taken into custody in Paris and is expected to cool his heels there for a couple of days before being charged.

Messier’s woes began around the time he was booted out of Vivendi in July 2002 after the billions of euros of acquisitions he made nearly destroyed the company.

Vivendi Universal

US “Family Movie Act” Will Approve Parental Content Filtering

The Motion Picture Association of America is unhappy about HR4586, the “Family Movie Act”. The act will allow companies like Clearplay to manufacture software for filtering content from DVDs, without film studios suing over their product being tampered with.

As always, censorship is an emotive issue: parents should have the right to protect their children from inappropriate material… but then perhaps they should be more selective about what finds its way into the DVD player when their kids are parked in front of it?

“The technology my legislation allows does not alter any movie’s violence, sex and profanity,” said Lamar Smith, the Republican sponsoring the bill through Senate. “But it does allow parents to skip over the movie’s violence, sex and profanity. If they choose to designate a technology company to help them accomplish this, more power to them.”

Not being a parent, I’m somewhat baffled here: why would you want to sit your child through a film based around the themes of sex, violence and profanity, even if it is filtered?

Nevertheless, the studios are unhappy about someone else, the consumer with some software, having the final cut on their films. So this is all about artistic integrity is it? No, this is Hollywood.

Jack Valenti, MPAA CEO testified that legislation wasn’t necessary because studios are already working with movie filtering companies and directors to create new, edited versions of popular films that are more family friendly. Of course, having two versions of a film in the shops means more sales for the movie industry, whereas just one version means that it’s the filtering company that makes the money and not the studios.

Valenti’s statement

Lamar Smith on the Family Movie Act

Yahoo Launch Yisou Search Engine for China

Yahoo have launched Yisou! (which apparently means Number 1 Search! in Chinese, wonderfully compact language) to China’s 95.8 million internet users.

Yahoo, whose services are available in 36 languages, claim that their search technology is behind nearly half of all internet searches. Note that the Yisou portal offers a cheeky little MP3 search tab right on the home page, whereas the European and American versions don’t.

The Chinese market obviously has massive potential for internet companies – with a population of 1.2 billion, of which 88% have yet to get on the internet, growth is all but guaranteed. Google have already got in on it by buying a stake in baidu.com, another search engine. By the end of the year, there are expected to be some 111 million internet users in China.

Yisou

Baidu

UK Broadband Take-up Almost Doubles in a Year

New figures from the Office of National Statistics show that the UK broadband market has almost doubled in the past 12 months. In April, 27.2% of internet connections were now broadband, compared to just 14.5% a year earlier.

Broadband connections continue to increase their market share rapidly, whilst dialup connections decline – there are now less dial up subscriptions than when the index started in January 2001.

“The year-on-year decrease to April 2004 was 6.8 per cent for dial-up connections with a decrease of 1.9 per cent from March 2004 to April 2004,” the ONS said in a statement.

The growth is being driven by new pricing plans, increased availability and more demanding applications such as music, video and online gaming.

Dial-up internet access still accounts for 72.8% of internet connections, so there is still a lot of growth for broadband still to come.

The Office for National Statistics

Happy Birthday, DNS

The domain name service, DNS, is 21. If the service hadn’t been invented by Dr Paul Mockapetris, you’d be looking up internet protocol numbers manually, almost like using a phone directory.

“The idea was to devise a way for Internet users to communicate freely with each other through an easy to operate system. Having to remember a long numerical code was not feasible as more users joined the Internet community,” said Dr Paul Mockapetris. “One of our goals was to develop a system that would allow global networking and information exchange. One of the ultimate successes of the domain name is that it is a universal every day language for Internet users across all continents.”

Dr Mockapteris (now I’ve told you his name, you’re not going to forget it, are you?) worked on the system with the late Dr Postel as part of ARPANET, and is now chief scientist and chairman of Nominum, an internet address management provider.

He predicts even greater things are yet to come for his offspring: “This year alone more than a billion users will interact with DNS to do everything from send emails, to browse web pages, or track inventory through RFID. In the next five years, I expect to see a dramatic increase in the number of ways in which the DNS is used, reaching far beyond what we have seen in the past twenty-one.”

Nominum

Nokia Invests in Mozilla Mobile Browser Project

Nokia has funded a new mobile phone browser project at Mozilla, giving a boost to the browser company and launching a new front in the battle for the mobile internet.

Minimo is already at pre-alpha stage, and looks like it will be available by Autumn.

Mozilla have had a stormy time in their six years or so of existence, including three mergers and a dwindling market share. However, their new product Firefox has been generating a lot of interest, though nine out of ten surfers still use Microsoft’s Internet Explorer.

This new browser is a big opportunity for Mozilla: the battle for the most popular mobile phone web browser is still to be won, particularly in the USA where cellphone internet browsing is nascent. Phone browsers have unique technical difficulties to surmount to make them useful – small displays, low bandwidth, less memory, less processing power. Yet despite these hurdles Microsoft, Opera, Fusion, NetClue and many others are fighting to make their own particular browser the market winner.

Up until Firefox, Mozilla browsers were not known for their compact size and speed – their first effort drew howls of derision and claims of bloated code, and so everyone just went back to using IE or Safari.

Hurt by all the shouts of “tubby” and “porker”, the 9mb Mozilla suite hid itself for a few months before appearing back on the scene after a makeover – and as the Firefox browser, it wowed critics with its svelt responsiveness and dedication to web standards, all in less than 5mb.

To be in with a chance at winning the phone web browser beauty contest, Mozilla will have to get the chainsaw out and start slashing away at its codebase.

Mozilla

Nokia

Universal to Launch “New” CD Format

When someone near the top at Universal Music asked in a meeting “Why are people buying less singles these days?” what do you suppose the answer was?

Was it “Because the growth in DVDs and video games, which we also publish, mean that consumers are buying other, more expensive products instead, and so our profits are increasing anyway”?

Was it “Because music download sites are increasing in popularity, so singles are now less relevant in the connected age. We license our music to online stores, so we’re still raking in the money – we should encourage downloading because we don’t have to manufacture, design and ship a product”?

No, sadly, it looks like the answer was neither of these two well accepted facts. Insight and informed views kept their hands down that day, and chose instead to munch quietly on the chocolate Hob Nobs, dreaming of home time.

Instead, it looks like someone with a history of dizzy spells, and perhaps head injuries, stuck their trembling hand up straight into the boardroom air and squeaked “Because the singles are too large and they don’t have enough ringtones on them.”Well, someone give that bright spark a promotion, because Universal plan to delay the inexorable slide of single sales by bringing out a “new” single format, based on one that died on its arse more than a decade ago, although with the tiniest of twists.

The Pocket CD is the same size as CD singles were for a while in 1990, 8 cm, and carries codes for ringtones. That’s it – that’s how they imagine saving the CD single.

Lucian Grainge, chairman and chief executive of Universal Music UK, predicts that his rivals are going to love the idea: “If it works, everyone else in the industry would be crazy not to join in.”

Yes, they’d be crazy alright.

The Pocket CD will be piloted in Germany and the UK, and Asda is expected to be one of the launch outlets.

Universal Music