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?

Rod Stewart to Webcast Invite-Only Concert

Little did I know when I woke up this morning that I’d be writing an article about pretend Scotsman and sometime popular singer, Rod Stewart – but then life’s funny that way.

Rod will be webcasting his next gig – an invitation-only affair at Harlem’s Apollo Theatre – on AOL. The concert will also mark the release of his latest album, The Great American Songbook, Volume III. Some tickets are available through radio station competitions and give aways, and through his fan club also.

The concert will be webcast live on October 18th at 9pm EST on AOL Music and you can find it using the AOL Keyword “Rod Stewart”.

Rod Stewart

Tapwave Zodiac Joins European Market

Can’t decide whether to buy a DS, PSP, N-Gage QD or Gizmondo? Well, European gamers can not at the Tapwave Zodiac to their list of handheld consoles to check out.

The multimedia handheld will be available on the high street from 22nd October – and it’s at the expensive site end of the market. A 32mb Zodiac 1 will set you back UK£269.99 (€391), the 128mb Zodiac 2 will cost you UK£329.99 (€477). Its nearest functional equivalent, Sony’s PSP is expected to cost nearer UK£200. (€290).

Games, stored on SD cards, are priced at UK£29.99 and will include Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater 4, SpyHunter, DOOM II Duke Nukem Mobile. There will also be two compilation packs – Z Pak: Adventure, which will include Galactic Realms and Legacy; and Z Pak: Fun featuring Paintball, MegaBowling and Kickoo’s Breakout. More titles are promised for Christmas.

The Zodiac is built around an ARM9 processor and a ATI Imageon chipset, running PalmOS — and so is being pitched as considerably more than just a games machine: the hardware and OS used mean that users can play video, read ebooks and listen to music, and enjoy the huge library of Palm software that already exists. But will the public be willing to shell out for what appears to be a specialised Palm Pilot?

Nokia have already had their hands burned badly in the handheld games console market twice – and with two very compelling units from Sony and Nintendo, not to mention the Gizmondo GPS gaming, it’s going to be a very tough market for the Zodiac to survive in. Given that floor space is very expensive in the run up to Christmas, any new console will have to prove itself very quickly before retailers move it on in favour of something that will shift more units.

The Tapwave Zodiac

Sun and Kodak Settle Patent Dispute Out of Court – Software Industry Trembles

Sun and Eastman Kodak have settled a long running patent dispute with an out of court payment. Kodak has been chasing Java creator Sun Microsystems for the past two years, claiming that Sun’s wrtie-once, run-anywhere programming platform violates three patents owned by the film company.

Kodak, who don’t produce programming platforms, had been after US$1.06 billion (€859 million) in damages – or roughly 50% of Sun’s entire profit from its hardware sales from the three years from 1998 to 2001. Instead, they accepted US$92 million (€74.6 million) from Sun, without Sun accepting or denying Kodak’s allegations. From their behaviour, it certainly looks like they just harassed Sun until they were paid to go away.

The dispute revolves around three patents that Kodak acquired in 1997 from Wang Laboratories – specifically the way that one program can call another one to assist. This, they say, was similar to the way that Java works. That’s it – there was no identical source code, no dispute over look and feel: it was entirely down to the concept of one program calling another one to help. It’s actually similar to the way that all software works.

Obviously there are concerns amongst software companies that such vague patent claims might destroy the entire industry as companies turn to each other to extract licensing fees for vague and invalid patent disputes. Even if a claim is eventually thrown out, the entire process can be crippling to companies.

I believe that Kodak’s behaviour in this case is especially shameful given that the only reason they have a business in the first place is because they have relied upon the innovations and free exchange of ideas – from generous and insightful people who created the industry before Kodak even arrived. Kodak are old hands at this game given that, in the 70s, they themselves infringed seven patents belonging to Polaroid – an action that took five years for Polaroid to win.

A history of the innovations in photography

Sun’s statement on the dispute resolution

Nintendo DS’s Launch Line Up

Nintendo always make a big deal out of the software that’s available for their consoles when they launch – they know that the box itself isn’t any use on it’s own, and that customers need a compelling reason to walk out of the shop with a Nintendo console under their arm. The games company don’t always manage to get it right though – as was seen with the launch of the N64, and the US launch of the GameCube. Where were Mario, Samus and Zelda?

So, Nintendo have announced with great fanfare the titles that will be available around the launch of the DS – and whilst they’ve got a Mario title in there (they learned from that mistake then), not all titles will be in the shops on November 21st. Mario had better be, for their sake. The games announced are Madden NFL 2005, Tiger Woods PGA Tour Golf, the Urbz: Sims in the City, Ping Pals, Feel the Magic XY/XX, Raymand DS, Ridge Racer DS, Mr Driller: Drill Spirits, Asphalt Urban GT, and of course, Super Mario 64.

It’s disappointing that there will be no Animal Crossing, Zelda, Metroid or Advance Wars titles at launch, but Nintendo are promising that they will be along in the coming months. Nintendo need these titles to differentiate their handheld console from the forthcoming PSP which will have pretty much the same sports games on it. However, the DS has an advantage over the PSP when it comes to sports simulations games as it has two screens: for example in Madden NFL 2005, one screen will show all 22 players with the other zooming on the action.

With 120 titles in development for the DS, there certainly won’t be a shortage of software for it – and it’ll need every single game if it’s not to be trounced by Sony’s PSP.

Nintendo’s Launch Line-up

Google Via Text Message

One last Google announcement this week – US users can now send queries to the search engine via their mobile phones, and get answers back in about a minute. The service is another one of Google’s beta offerings, and as such is currently free, except for standard network charges – they’re just trying it out to see if people would use it.

Google SMS offers phone directory listings, product prices from Froogle, dictionary definitions … and a calculator. Somewhat strange given that most phones have calculator software in them already, but perhaps useful if it can deal with trigonometric functions. Oh, wait – I have a PDA for that.

Benjamin Ling, product manager for Google SMS describes the service on his blog: “Google SMS is a handy way to, say, get a listing for a nearby restaurant, find the definition of a word, or look up the price of a product, an area code or Zip code. You can even use Google SMS to calculate a tip. If your phone is enabled for text messages, just send your query to this 5-digit US shortcode: 46645. (It corresponds to GOOGL on most phones.) Your query results are sent as text messages, not links. Learn more about using Google SMS on our help page or by sending a text message with the word ‘help’ to 46645.”

SMS Google

Another Year, Another AIBO

Sony have announced another upgrade to their AIBO entertainment robot series, with the focus shifting away from cute tricks to becoming useful part of a household entertainment system.

The new ERS-7M2/W (white) and ERS-7M2/B (black) have the same style of casing as the previous top of the range AIBOs, but with a new finish and upgraded software and hardware under the hood, as it were.

AIBOs nose camera can now shoot video, which Sony says makes it an effective house-sitter. Given that AIBO will probably be the first thing in the back of the van if the owner gets burgled, I’m not sure if the robot’s ability to email a video clip of the view under a robber’s armpit will be especially useful. Regular emails of sound- or motion-activated photographs from home whilst you’re on holiday might bring peace of mind to some though.

AIBO can also play music from his speakers whilst dancing too – and can creak along to WAV, WMA and even MP3. Little pirate. AIBO’s Scheduler is compatible with Microsoft Outlook, so now he can remind you of any important appointments you might have via its text-to-speech interface. “Get head seen to”, for example.

The robot’s software has been optimised for much faster reaction times to spoken commands, along with better face tracking and obstacle avoidance routines – making it appear more lifelike and responsive.

All this canine robot fun will cost you US$1900 (€1545), and existing AIBO users can upgrade to AIBO Mind 2 software for $99 (€80).

Check out new AIBO

Google Launches Google Print

Researching things on the web is an essential part of everyday business – but too often books and other printed sources get left behind.

Google’s aim is possibly one of the the most daring and challenging I’ve seen announced by any company: “to organize the world’s information and make it universally accessible and useful.” To bring them another step forward, Larry Sage and Sergey Brin announced Google Print, at the Frankfurt Book Fair this week.

Designed to help people discover books , Google Print allows users to search across the full text of entire books. Sadly, as with Amazon’s own book search facility, users cannot read or download the entire book, but there are links to buy a copy. Printing and image copying is blocked on book pages returned from searches. So you don’t read an entire book for free by doing multiple searches on the same title, Google keeps a watch on the number of pages you’ve viewed from a particular book – though this is not associated with user information, so no one can tell what books you’re looking at online.

Google is encouraging publishers to send copies of their books to Google for scanning and indexing, free of charge – the company hopes that it will make revenue from advertising on the search pages, and from the links to online book sellers. Currently, McGraw-Hill, Scholastic and Penguin are amongst the first publishers to submit titles for inclusion in Google’s new venture.

Handy if you’re looking for something that might be contained in a book that’s in print, but what about the many thousands of books that are out of print? There’s no incentive for publishers to put books they don’t intend to reprint online, as there’s no physical book to sell through Amazon or Barnes and Noble. Making out of print titles available electronically for a fee really would be a step towards making the world’s information universally accessible as they account for millions of pages of text that is currently hidden from any search engine.

Try Google Print

StreamCast Announce Morpheus 4.5

StreamCast Networks chose the Web 2.0 conference to announce a major update to their Morpheus peer-to-peer client. Employing a new hash table technology from NEOnet (you know, I’m getting really bored with all these five-year-old Matrix references), Morpheus 4.5 claims more efficient searching and downloads across the major P2P networks.

If you listen really carefully, you can almost hear the RIAA’s lawyers phoning in yet another order for more champaign and Porches.

“This is not just another updated application from a technology developer. Morpheus 4.5 is a genuine leap forward in advancing peer-to-peer file-sharing and searching, thanks to the horizonless search capabilities of the NEOnet technology,” StreamCast Networks CEO Michael Weiss said in a statement. “For the first time ever, decentralized P2P technology delivers central server reliability in a completely decentralized architecture to provide a quality of service unparalleled by existing applications.”

So, what’s a “horizonless” search? It means that the new client will search across all P2P networks at once, all seven million simultaneous users, rather than just clusters of computers – reducing the number of hops that a peer-to-peer client takes before it locates a specific file.

Ben Wilken, Architect of the underlying technology to NEOnet, explains the benefit: “Morpheus with NEOnet allows users to find that file within three hops or less, significantly reducing the network congestion caused by peer-to-peer usage by up to 600 percent.”

Since Morpheus does not keep a central database of all files available, it doesn’t break any laws – indeed StreamCast claim it is the only P2P file sharing software ruled legal by US Federal courts. However, if users upload and then share content they don’t hold the copyright to, then they will have committed a crime.

Other enhancements to Morpheus include integration with users’ antivirus software, anti-spoofing technology (useful for detecting Overpeer’s handy work), parental controls and an integrated media player.

Morpheus

RealArcade Celebrates 150 Million Downloads

RealNetworks are celebrating the 150 millionth game download through their RealArcade service. Founded in 2001, RealArcade now serves about 1.8 million downloads every week, from a catalogue of over 250 titles. With RealNetworks claiming 45 million downloads of the Arcvade client itself, that means that the average user has downloaded just over three games each.

RealArcade’s games are aimed at casual, pick up and play gaming – you won’t find any Final Fantasy VIIs there as the company wants to cater to customers who just fancy a quick blast of something. Popular titles on RealArcade include Jewel Quest, Shape Shifter, and the favourite in August, Feeding Frenzy. I might download Insaniquarium Deluxe just for the title alone.

“Millions of everyday people are experiencing games for grownups because they find casual games to be simple, accessible, friendly entertainment for the whole family to play,” said Andrew Wright, vice president of games for RealNetworks Inc in a statement: “We’ve been able to capture a lot of that growth at RealArcade by offering a product that consumers consistently rank as one of the best on the Web.”

An internal survey from Real indicates that two thirds of Arcade’s customers are women, and two-thirds of those have children. Almost half of RealArcade’s users say they visit every day, showing that the site is definitely “sticky”.

RealNetworks quite research from IDC: “Against common expectations, this market isn’t comprised of the ‘typical’ gamer, but rather a diverse spectrum of players who would never consider themselves to be gamers. As a result, this market has grown explosively by successfully tapping into new markets,” said Schelley Olhava, of IDC. “Double digit growth rates in the paid downloadable games space alone will result in U.S. revenues of $760 million (€619 million) by 2007.”

The RealArcade platform is DirectX-based, making development of new games, and porting existing titles simpler, but limits the platform to Windows PCs only.

Real Arcade

Netflix’s Subscriber Growth

Netflix have released their latest subscriber numbers, and whilst the company’s user base has certainly grown, the future is certainly in online movie delivery.

Netflix had 2.23 million subscribers at the end of Q3 2004 – up 73% from 1.29 million on its books at the end of Q3 2003. Only 4% of its current subscriber base are on free trials, and those 96% of paying subs brought in a projected US$21 million in Q3 2004.

Netflix’s current business model is to rent up to three DVDs at a time to customers via the postal service. With the growth of home broadband, sending films out in the mail evidently has a limited lifespan, and so the company recently partnered with TiVo in a venture to designed to switch the delivery mechanism to online – finally putting the “Net” in “Netflix”.

However, the company believes that their 25,000 title DVD library still has some legs on it – CFO Barry McCarthy commented in a statement: “Three years ago we shortened the estimated useful life for our DVD rental library from three years to one year. For a young company with limited operating experience, that accounting estimate was management’s best judgement of the useful life of catalogue content at that time. However, with several years of operating history behind us and based on analysis of this historical data, management’s current best judgement of the useful life of catalogue content is three years.”

SG Cowen and Co. report that things won’t be so simple for Netflix, and that they will face stiff competition from Blockbuster when they go online – Blockbuster’s brand and market share will impact Netflix’s subscriber base, both in its DVD by post and online rental business, over the next few quarters.

Netflix