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?

Dating on Demand

Video on demand: reasonable state of health, no proven business model, WLTM  established internet commerce concept for  broadband fun, and maybe a bit of transactional  processing, apply at www.hurrydate.com

I seem to be writing another of those “It had to happen” stories this week.

Dating On Demand is launching this summer – in Philadelphia, of all places. A series of events will allow singles (or at least people claiming to be single) to record five minute video profiles which will then be available on demand on Comcast Digital Cable.

Recording the profiles is free and even includes the services of professional television production crews. The profiles will be available to view free on cable and interested potential partners will be able to register anonymously through the HurryDate website.

Interviews and features will attempt to draw out interesting glimpses into singles’ personalities and will even include video “bloopers” and tales of dating disasters. HurryDate operate a speed dating service and are hoping that this will expand their market somewhat.

“This service is as close as you can get to meeting someone over a cup of coffee,” said Adele Testani, co-founder of HurryDate. Except with out the coffee, two way communication, body language and bare-faced lies, presumably.

“Dating ON DEMAND adds a personal touch to meeting potential dates by presenting ‘real singles’ – how they move, how they speak, their true appearance. Best yet, it all happens in the comfort of your home with the touch of a remote control and the click of a mouse.” HurryDate are keen to point out in their press release that no extra equipment is needed.

Is it me or does the name HurryDate add an extra air of desperation to the whole thing, like “Budget Bride”?

HurryDate

Budget Bride – Money Saving Wedding Solutions … I didn’t realise weddings were a problem

WiFi in Court

Bored when waiting to be called as a witness? Need to brush up a bit on public decency laws before you get called into the dock? Then if you’re at one of the seven UK courts that have just rolled out public WiFi access, then you’re in luck.

As a pilot that might lead to a national deployment, seven courts have installed BT Openzone WiFi access. Ostensibly to assist court staff in research and communications, the access points are open to the public too, and standard OpenZone pricing will apply (about UK£6, €9 for an hour).

“The hot spots should enable lawyers to access information held at their offices or receive emails and have information sent to them while they are attending court,” said Lord Justice Thomas, the senior presiding judge of England and Wales.

“When new points of law arise during the course of the hearing, they should be able to carry out the necessary research without leaving the building.”

Obviously the service will not be available in the courts themselves.

The pilot runs until 2006, and echo a similar WiFi trial in UK public library also announced this week.

The Court Service

Copy-protected CD Reaches Top of US Chart

A copy-protected CD has reached the top of the US album charts for the first time. Velvet Revolver’s “Contraband”, published by BMG uses the MediaMax copy protection system from SunnComm.

BMG have stated that they intend to release more protected CDs over the year, but is carefully choosing which ones get the treatment. So far, the label has released 12 DRM-protected disks, with about 2.5 million units out in the wild.

The disk stops PCs ripping the audio part of the disk to MP3s, but has copy-managed WMA format versions of the music on another section of the disk. This of course means that consumers are getting a lower fidelity product because the full capacity of the disk is not used to store the original music. The Windows Media files also tend to be encoded at a lower bit rate than audiophiles usually prefer. Because of the mixed format, these disks are no longer strictly CDs because they don’t adhere to Phillips’ Redbook standard for Compact Disks.

The WMA/copy protection scheme used by MediaMax makes it all but impossible to transfer music you have legally acquired to an iPod, as Apple’s music player will not play Windows Media Files. Given that it’s the most popular music player out there, SunnComm are working with Apple to provide a solution, though this seems to be centred around petitioning Apple to incorporate other formats into the iPod rather than getting their own house in order.

You can of course circumvent the whole copy protection scheme by simply holding down the Shift key when inserting the CD. This technically means that American readers will be breaking the Digital Millennium Copyright Act and could end up in prison.

SunnComm

PSX Gets an Upgrade

Despite disappointing sales and no release date for Europe, Sony’s PSX home media centre – a unit consisting of a home media centre, a PVR, and a PS2 – has had a couple of new models added to the range.

The DESR-5100 has a 160mb hard drive, the DESR-7100 has a 250mb drive. Both look the same as the original PSX, though there will be a limited edition silver 5100.

Scheduled for release on July 1, the main enhancements are related to the PSX’s DVD recording features – users can now manually set the bit rate for recording, meaning that longer movies can fit on a disk. There are also 50 templates for creating DVD menus, along with much-demanded DVD+RW/DVD-RW compatibility.

Online PS2 capability has been improved ever so slightly – you can now browse the Central Station bulletin board – but that’s it. No online Twisted Metal Black for PSX owners then. If you have one of the older PSXs, a firmware upgrade coming along on the 15th will add all of the new features, minus the disk upgrades of course.

The units are expected to sell for about 74,000 and 95,000 yen respectively (€562 and €722), but there is still no release for Europe and the US.

Sony Style

Neilsen Report: Game Websites Provide Stickiest Content

Websites offering online games like Solitaire and Bingo are the stickiest places on the internet, according to a new report from Neilsen//NetRatings (whatever committee thought up that cheesy // gets a slap from me).

46 million (that’s 1 in 3) Americans visited sites like Slingo to buy and download mini-games like Crazy 7s and Amazing Snail. Slingo is now one of the stickiest sites on the internet with surfers spending an average of four hours a month playing cards and throwing turtles. Even jigzone.com, offering free online jigsaw puzzles manages to trap people for an hour and a half of picture-rearranging fun per month.

But it’s not just playing the games, people like to read about them too – which explains why EA Online and MSN Games are so popular.

“The diversity of online game offerings showcases the popularity of games in the U.S.,” said Kaizad Gotla, an internet analyst at Nielsen//NetRatings. “Ranging from sites that offer original games to content sites that offer the latest information on popular console and PC games, the gaming industry’s presence online is indisputable.”

And who is it that’s playing cards, being amazed by snails and lobbing these turtles around? Middle aged American women: 15% of visitors to mini-games sites are American women between the ages of 35 and 49.

“Contrary to popular belief, the online games category is not dominated by males or by teens,” says Gotla. “Rather, the popularity of online games appeals to a broad demographic online, especially among middle-aged women.”

So look out for some exciting new games coming from Digital Lifestyles: first up Cat Food Challenge and Polyester Panic.

Jigzone – strangely relaxing

Slingo

Neilsen NetRatings

Hosting Provider Pulls 3000 Blogs Without Notice

weblogs.com, a free hosting service for bloggers, has closed 3000 sites without giving the users notice. Citing health, bandwidth, name server and other problems, the founder Dave Winer has offered to give site owners their data back next month – but the handling of the whole affair has angered many.

Blogging has become an incredibly popular past time – so much so that Bill Gates is encouraging it at Microsoft, and the company is rumoured to be bringing out a blogging product at some point.

Winer, now a research fellow at Harvard, found that running the service took too much time and effort, and pulled the plug.

Scripting News – Dave’s site

Weblogs.com

Microsoft Planning Paid Anti-virus Service

In a move that is sure to be unpopular with many, Microsoft quietly let slip that it is working on an anti-virus subscription service. MS recently acquired anti-virus company GeCAD in June 2003, and this is the first sign that it is working to release a product based on its acquisition.

Mike Nash, corporate VP for security at Microsoft said at a dinner with journalists in Seattle “I want to make sure customers have another choice. Some people will continue to use Symantic, and some will use ours.” Symantic’s share price then slid down 5% almost immediately.

Many people are furious that Microsoft is looking to make money out of a problem that is related to the many security flaws in its products, and considered to be perpetuated by poor coding in MS software such as Outlook and Internet Explorer.

Microsoft will have to tread carefully with this one – even if they make their product free and bundle it with Windows, thus providing maximum protection, they will probably be accused of anti-competitive practices and end up in court.

Oh, the irony.

Microsoft’s security site

AVG – free anti-virus software

Euro iTunes – The Next Day

There are, I’m told, 700,000 tracks available in iTunes. That certainly does sound like a lot. What are they, though? I must confess, my first few searches came up blank. There I was, yesterday, having just subscribed, thinking “I’m 35. Technologically savvy. iPod owner. Credit card. I AM the physically embodiment of the demographic that iTunes is aimed at.”

But I couldn’t find any of my favourite artists. Later on in the day, my friend Neil happily told me what the problem was: I listen to weird stuff that no-one is going to put in a music store launch.

That’ll be it then. No Autechre. No God Speed You Black Emperor. Certainly no Plaid. Oh well.

But plenty of the Darkness and the Corrs. But where’s The The? Only four tracks from Brian Eno?

Anyway, on with the shopping. I adjusted my expectations that iTunes would offer me every track I’d ever wanted and started to treat it like a mid-sized branch of Fopp.

And suddenly it became a lot better.

Signing up was a little random – I entered my details on no less than three separate occasions during the day, seemingly without a hitch. But after the service was finally happy that it really did have my credit card details, I was off to hit Mastercard for lots of multiples of 79p.

Perhaps Apple would care to explain why British subscribers pay 79p (€1.19) for a track and our European neighbours pay €0.99? Is it a reward because they’re better at football, or is it because British music execs have more expensive lunches to pay for?

Navigating through the iTunes store is incredibly easy – and a handy breadcrumb trail will lead you back down each level, from track to artist to genre to home. You can’t get lost, and this has to be the easiest music store navigation out there. Compare it to MyCokeMusic, which had me punching my TFT before I gave up and wrote the rest of my £10 off.

Celebrity play lists are a great idea – featured artists list a CD’s worth of tracks and they’re right there to buy – though there are only five playlists at the moment, and one of those is from Moby.

And that’s it, really – that’s all you can say about it: it works fantastically well and it’s easy. Click on the track you want and it’s downloaded. Then it’s on your iPod and you’re listening to it on the bus.

I suppose it’s expected with a catalogue this size, but there are a few howlers in the track information – weren’t they given the info directly from the labels, or did some work experience person at Apple US shuffle 70,000 CDs into a PC? Even the most casual scout through the store throws up listing errors frequently – my personal favourite being the David Sylvian track “Taking the Evil”. It is, in fact, called “Taking the Veil”, and is about a completely different thing altogether. Freudian slip?

In short, if your music tastes are similar to 95% of the nation then you’ll get along just fine here – iTunes really is an amazing achievement. If you normally buy your music in a petrol station, then you’ll be laughing. You know who you are, Dido fans.

If you’d had an iPod since day one, then suddenly it all makes sense.

Definitely the best and cheapest (but not by enough) music store out there.

Apple iTunes

Real Networks and Starz Launch Broadband Film Service

Real Networks and Starz Encore Group have launched a new service delivering films over broadband to US subscribers. A US$12.95 (€10.68) subscription to Starz Ticket gives viewers access to a library of major films encoded in RealVideo 10 with download times of as little as 20 minutes. Titles include such reasonably recent fare as Pirates of the Caribbean, and comedy fish movie Finding Nemo.

Content providers seem to like subscription models, either charging a flat rate for access to all content, or a lower subscription with content priced individually. It’s a good way of locking in customers.

“In the cable and satellite world the ‘all you can eat’ subscription business model has proven to be much more popular than the transactional pay-per-view model,” said Starz chairman, founder and CEO, John J. Sie.

Subscriptions are a cheaper business model too, as lots of small individual transactions cost money to process and unless all your customers suddenly jump ship one month, month to month income is more predictable.

It’s a shame that geographical boundaries still apply to distribution rights – there’s no other reason why Starz Ticket should be US only.

Starz

Real Networks