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?

Clear Channel Entertainment Acquires Restrictive Patent on Live Concert CDs

Clear Channel has purchased a patent relating to the recording then sale of a CDs at a live performance – and are claiming that it relates to every venue in the US.

Clear Channel operate a service in their venues called Instant Live, where fans can pre-order a recording before a gig and then pick it up at the venue. Clear Channel purchased the patent for this from DiscLive, who have a similar set up. Now Clear Channel are asserting that the patent doesn’t just cover their 130 venues, but all venues in the US.

This all might have something to do with the fact that DiscLive recently predicted it would gross about US$500,000 (€412,600) selling live recordings at gigs this spring.

Clear Channel, (somehow recently nominated by the Fortune 500 as one of America’s Most Admired Companies) have granted US$1 licenses to small bands using the DiscLive service, but are telling everyone else that they can’t sell live CDs at gigs. Apparently, the patent doesn’t apply to bands who sell their disks days after the performance, only when the recording is sold immediately afterwards.

Steve Simon, Clear Channel executive vice president and the director of Instant Live told the Rolling Stone without a hint of irony: /2We want to be artist-friendly. But it is a business, and it’s not going to be ‘we have the patent, now everybody can use it for free.'”

Expect test cases to begin soon.

The Rolling Stone covers the story

Oxfam Launches pan-European Music Service Today

Oxfam have launch their own OD2-backed music service, Big Noise Music, on 26th May. Instead of scratched vinyl records of ELO’s Out of the Blue, the charity hopes to lure customers with 300,000 pristine tracks. How they’re going to recreate the musty charity shop smell and the insane elderly volunteer staff is anyone’s guess.

Tracks cost the usual UK£0.75 to UK£0.99 (€1.12 to €1.48), with UK£0.10 (€0.15) from each going to Oxfam’s good causes. The site is pan-Europe, but the genius move is that all the prices are in Sterling.

Adrian Lovett, Oxfam’s Director of Campaigns and Communications said in a statement, “Bignoisemusic.com works for everyone. Music lovers get great tracks and artists see their music helping some of the poorest people in the world, through real cash support and by building the worldwide movement to Make Trade Fair.”

The site has received plenty of endorsements from stars, featuring exclusive tracks from George Michael and Coldplay.

Big Noise Music

OECD Urges Governments to Drive Broadband Growth

A new OECD report urges governments to use competition rather than subsidies to promote the growth of broadband in remote areas. Subsidising national operators to roll out broadband in these areas reduces competition and innovation, and may mean that subscribers get stuck with an expensive, yet poor quality, service.

The OECD report, The Development of Broadband Access in Rural and Remote Areas, claims that the arrival of new start-up companies offering wireless broadband at low prices is causing established telecoms companies to speed up their broadband delivery process and cut prices. Indeed, this has already been seen in the UK to an extent, with BT’s suddenly rapid exchange upgrades and dramatic cuts to broadband subscriptions and local loop unbundling.

The number of broadband subscribers in OECD countries is expected to reach 100 million by Q3 2004, up from 82 million at the end of 2004 and 56 million at the end of 2003. Broadband penetration now extends to 75% of OECD household, with 1 in 4 already enjoying a service.

However, the report details that availability will continue to vary widely for at least the next few years:

Over 90% of households in Belgium, Denmark, Japan, Korea, Luxembourg, Spain, Switzerland and the United Kingdom can connect to broadband services. Other countries expected to join this group by the end of 2004 include Finland, France and Germany.
Countries with larger geographical areas such as Australia, Canada, and the United States are likely to have DSL coverage of between 80% and 90% over the next few years. In Canada and the US, broadband via cable modem already reaches 85% and 80% of households respectively.
A number of countries– such as the Czech Republic, Greece, Hungary, and Ireland – have only recently launched broadband services.

The OECD report

Microsoft’s Crack at Federated Identity

Microsoft will be showing off their new federated identity software shortly – a service that will allow users to log in and then carry their identity from site to site, securely allowing businesses to extend applications and intranets to external clients. The technology won’t be available until Q3 2005 with the release of Windows Server 2003 R2.

Michael Stephenson, lead program manager for Windows Server 2003 said “Federated identity lets companies securely extend their applications to suppliers and external users… We are showing how a user at one site might log on to a portal and then they can enter a purchase order at another location without having to sign on again. Today it is very expensive to provide this type of functionality.”

MS’s previous attempt at federated identity, Passport, never quite realised its potential, and so it’s back to the drawing board.

There’s already a W3C standard for federated identity, but Microsoft, along with IBM, want to push the WS-Security specifications put forward by OASIS (Organisation for the Advancement of Structured Information Standards).

Microsoft’s system will also be up against the Liberty Alliance set of open standards, led by their best pals Sun.

Federated identity is of importance to everyone – not only do you need to know what information is being held about you in your “ID passport” and what site and application owners do with that information, but that your personal details are secure and cannot be compromised.

Liberty Alliance

Microsoft and IBM’s original white paper

RIAA Sues Yet More People

As part of its programme to deter the public from sharing music, the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) has just launched legal action against another 493 people.

The RIAA has already settled 486 cases, for and average US$3000 (€2486) each. That represents an income of about US$1,458,000 (€1.2 million) – not a bad return, really.

These new actions are “John Doe” cases as the RIAA doesn’t know who they are prosecuting – their identities will be revealed when the courts issue subpoenas.

However, it doesn’t seem that the RIAA’s action against users of P2P applications like Kazaa and Overnet is having much success. Although the RIAA has now sued 2,947 people peer-to-peer client usage is increasing. Research firm BigChampagne claim that 9.5 million people were logged in to P2P networks in April this year, up from 7.4 million concurrent users six months previously.

What’s wrong with the music industry in one long sentence – Thanks to Simon for sending me this link

Google Names 31 Underwriters For IPO

Google has named another 29 underwriters for its forthcoming IPO – these are in addition to the two lead underwriters Morgan Stanley and Credit Suisse First Boston. Amongst the new crop are JP Morgan Chase, Lehman Brothers and Deutsche Bank.

The sale is expected to raise US$2.7 billion (€2.26 billion) later this year, the biggest new technology stock sale since the wheels fell off the new economy in 2000.

Google’s sale will be unusual in that they are going to use a open auction process – investors will be able to bid for shares at a price they are willing to pay, a method that Google believes will be fairer to small investors. Since whoever pays the most still wins, that remains to be seen.

The Unofficial Google IPO Site

IDC: Mobile Applications for Consumers is Where the Money Is

IDC’s new study “Western European Consumer Mobile Data Applications” analyses opportunities for consumer mobile data applications in the market – and I can’t say that we were very surprised by any of the findings. IDC believe that the current state of the market is a good reflection of what to expect in the future: mobile operators will be making cash out of selling small applications, ringtones and other widgets to phone owners, in a market worth an estimated €6.67 billion (US$8 billion).

“This underlines that the wireless industry will not see the one killer application that many are still seeking and talking about,” said Paolo Pescatore, senior analyst for IDC’s European Wireless and Mobile Communications Service. “It is very much a cocktail and these applications will drive usage over GPRS, EDGE, UMTS, and HSDPA. All these applications – ring tones, gaming, video, and music – will eventually find their place on a mobile.”

IDC rightly report that demand for video is not very high, currently – and is certainly dwarfed by consumer interest in games, ringtones and SMS “texting”. As video is not very satisfying on phones at the moment, the industry must be careful not to over-hype the service or mislead consumers into thinking that they will be watching TV quality visuals on their mobile any time soon.

Operators will need to offer engaging content, the report says, and that means that they’re going to have to spend considerable amounts of money and resources securing the rights for that material, whilst partnering up with content houses.

IDC express surprise at the lack of music services for mobile users, and believe that people’s interest in music, coupled with mobility, presents a compelling reason to offer music services. IDC believe it will just take a bit longer, with operators rolling out services towards the end of the year.

The IDC study

Gates Says Blogs Are Good For Business

Blogging is entering the mainstream – Bill Gates thinks they’re a useful business tool, so expect one of your directors to pop up with the idea of corporate blogs at your next board meeting.

Blogs are online diaries, usually collections of links, thoughts and illustrations kept by one person who wants to share information about themselves or their enthusiasms. They can be purely personal, or a day-to-day update on a business project.

Gates says that blogs are a good way to share information, both inside and outside of organisations and have considerable advantages over older forms of communication such as email (email is old now?). Emails can miss out the right people or be too imposing, and websites are too passive. People forget to visit websites, and get frustrated when they make the effort to go there and the site hasn’t been updated.

The solution? A blog with an RSS feed. Real Simple Syndication is a feed that allows stories to be pushed to other sources like news readers and even other websites. This way, changes and new information come to the reader, not the other way round.

Over 700 MS employees keep project blogs, to share information and keep others up to date on projects they are working on.

Microsoft doesn’t have a blogging tool yet – but it can’t be long before one appears, tied in with MSN, Messenger and quite possibly FrontPage and MS Project.

Blogging Platforms

Blogs

BT and Microsoft Team Up to Offer Broadband in Scotland

BT and Microsoft are trialling a new service in Scotland that offering software and broadband to small and medium-sized businesses. Connected And Complete is a package consisting of broadband installation, Microsoft Office Small Business Edition, twice yearly health checks, a help desk and tools for making a website.

Jerry Thompson, BT’s head of business broadband, said: “There are well developed IT and financial services sectors in Scotland and we think they will be early adopters.”

If successful, the service will be offered to businesses throughout the UK.

BT are doing quite well out of broadband at the moment – year end results show a 30% jump in turnover for their new services, bringing in UK£3.4 billion (€5 billion) in revenue.

Nice to see something nice being tried out in Scotland for a change, since other trial runs in the past have included nuclear waste, intercontinental ballistic missiles, the poll tax and Malcolm Rifkin.

Microsoft on Connected And Complete

Sony’s LocationFree Wireless Broadband TVs

We got very excited about this when we first wrote about it in January. Sony have introduced two new LCD TVs that allow you to enjoy media wherever you like at home without running wires. You don’t even need mains as they can run for a couple of hours on their internal batteries.

The LF-X1 display has a 12.1” screen with a resolution of 800 x 600 pixels, whilst its smaller sibling, the LF-X5 has a 7” display with a 800 x 480 resolution. Prices are US$1500 (€1247) and US$1000 (€831) respectively.

The two screens come with a base station which you connect to your video source, and then the station transmits to the screen using any one of the three main WiFi protocols. The TV itself can chose which WiFi variant is most appropriate for the quality of video you wish to watch or amount of interference in your immediate environment.

You don’t even need to be at home – if your content is on a network you can stream it over the internet to the TV using 802.11b, as long as your upstream transfer rate is greater than 300kbits/s.

The TVs are very well catered for with other connections – each features a built-in tuners, ethernet port, two video inputs, USB port and IR port for remote control. For viewing photographs, the LF-X1 has a Compact Flash socket, the LF-X5 has a Memory Stick port.

AkibaLive