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?

UK’s Progress Towards Digital Switch-over “Astonishing”

The UK’s culture secretary, Tessa Jowell described the country’s progress towards digital Switch-over as “astonishing”. The statement was prompted by a new BBC report, “Towards Achieving Digital Switch-over” which confirmed that the country could switch over to digital broadcasting by 2010. The new BBC report has similar findings and recommendations to the Ofcom paper we covered last month.

There are some caveats contained in the BBC document, as there are several issues that need to be straightened out – but if the industry and the Government work together, then the 2010 date should be achievable. If left to market forces, it may take until 2013 for 95% of the country to be ready.

Issues that need to be addressed cover areas like ease of recording from digital broadcasts, telling unconverted households about digital television and simplicity of use for new services.

Tessa Jowell said in a statement responding to the report:

“This Government is absolutely committed to working with the industry to achieve digital switchover. The potential rewards, including more choice for consumers and more space for new services, are too great for us not to be.

“The fact that half of homes in the UK now have access to digital TV shows there is a considerable appetite for the product out there. This provides a solid foundation for continuing the drive towards full switchover.

“Of course there are obstacles along the way, many of which are highlighted in this report. We are working closely with stakeholders to determine the actions needed to overcome these in the journey to switchover. This report will help us focus on the challenges ahead.”

UK Government’s Digital Television site

Find Legal Free Music Easily

Funnily enough, just last week I was looking for some free music just for the hell of it – and I soon discovered that locating gratis tunes that are also legal tunes, is really not that easy.

Using the the popular search engines will provide you with plenty of links – but very little music, and a lot of undesirable stuff too. Enter CNET’s new service: music.download.com.

The site is incredibly easy to use – registration is not required, so you can simply browse to the music you think you might fancy and download it straight away. Within seconds I had downloaded and installed to my iPod some dreadful bit of ambient noodling that was obviously recorded by a bunch of deaf chimps after they’d be smashed in the face with hammers. The quality of many of the offerings is extremely good.

The site has an option for music creators to upload and comment on their tunes and thus should create a community around free content – a feedback function to artists is currently missing, but CNET hope to add more functionality, and get the recommendation engine going, soon. It is expected the archive to grow quickly, but is already quite expansive considering they’ve only been acquiring tracks for a couple of months.

Scott Arpajian, senior vice president of CNET Download.com said “While commercial music services have proliferated, we are the first large-scale provider to offer free music downloads in a discovery-focused environment, saving music fans valuable time in finding tunes that match their tastes. Our goal is to provide music fans free digital fuel for their devices, and exposure to original artists and songs that can become their new favourites.”

The new CNET site is another thorn in the side of the major labels – for the time being anyway, until they come up with a way of either competing with it or crippling it.

CNET bought the MP3.com domain name last year, but sadly the archive of tracks hosted by the site was destroyed as Vivendi Universal claimed it did not fit with any of their business initiatives.

On a related note, the charity Warchild have a music site, linked below, that allows subscribers to download music whilst donating to the organisation.

CNET Music Download.com

All-new MP3.com

Warchild Music

HP Announce New RPN Calculator – the HP33s

Good news calculator fans! HP have announced a new Reverse Polish Notation calculator – the HP33s. Priced at a very reasonable US$49 (€41) the non-graphic calculator is intended to replace the old 33sII. Purist are already bemoaning the inclusion of rubber keys on this new model, and sneering at it’s funky v-shaped styling.

It’s nice to know that the tradition of hearing “Can I borrow your calculator?” followed by confused swearing will continue for a while yet.

sheet data HP +++

HPCalc.org

Windows Media 9 Continues to Make Progress

Microsoft’s Windows Media 9 platform is going from strength to strength – it’s being adopted by more broadcasters, it’s being incorporated in more players and MS are making more refinements to the platform codecs for High Definition media.

Microsoft are watching the platform’s popularity in the film and television world and are building on this by partnering with media companies to develop its range of functions. Work with Adobe, CineForm and BOXX Technologies has demonstrated WM9’s multi-stream High Definition capabilities, and companies like USDTV have adopted 9 as their broadcast format.

It’s not just all broadcast work either — Sonic solutions are introducing DVD Producer WMV HD Edition for producing High Definition DVDs later this year.

Microsoft is also submitting an update to its WM9 compression codec to the Society of Motion Picture and Television Engineers

Tandberg Television are currently demonstrating their EN5920 encoding platform – the only hardware encoding solution for WM9 available. Companies like NTL Broadcast and Swisscom’s Bluewin are trialling the EN5920 to provide real-time encoding and decoding of WM9 streams to domestic digital TV customers.

Windows Media Home

Disney License Soundtracks to iTunes

Disney have licensed popular soundtracks to Apple’s iTunes service – but they’ll only be exclusively available there until the end of September. Short licensing deals are a popular tactic with online music retailers: they allow flexibility in an evolving market, allow labels to pick and chose the most popular download service and permit licensors to distribute music from their own stores once the agreement has expired.

Amongst the music that will be available will be the soundtracks from Disney classics such as The Lion King, Snow White and the Little Mermaid. More recent films will also feature with music from hits like Toy Story and Finding Nemo.

Apart from this compelling content being licensed to a download service for the first time, the deal is interesting because of Apple’s connection with Disney: Steve Jobs runs iTunes and Pixar, and Pixar recently broke off their deal with Disney.

Jobs said in a statement “Now iTunes users can add these timeless Disney songs to their music libraries and enjoy them wherever they go with their iPods.”

Apple on the news

Forgent Networks Sues 31 Companies Over JPEG Patent

Forgent Networks are claiming ownership for a patent filed in 1986 by Compression Labs – a dormant company acquired by Forgent in 1997

Forgent Networks are now suing, amongst others, JVC, Matsushita, Fuji Photo, Agfa, Dell, HP, Apple, Adobe … the list goes on.

The suddenly flurry of activity could be something to do with the fact that the patent was filed 18 years ago, and Forgent have less than two years to milk some revenue out of it. However, since the defendants have now been notified, Forgent can now take their time seeking damages, and they can claim damages all the way back to when the claim was issued.

Unisys and Compuserve began to seek royalites on their LZW compression algorithm in the late 90s as that patent neared its expiry. Hence, 20th June 2003 was known as “GIF Liberation Day” when the patent finally expired.

If these suits are successful, everyone will have to charge more for software that uses the JPEG format (i.e. Almost everything) or the file type will just be abandoned for something less controversial. This will suit Microsoft, as the PNG format will be most likely benefit.

We ran an April Fool on a company who claimed to own the patent for plain text in programs – but now we’ve seen this story, we rather wish we hadn’t.

Forgent Networks

The Register comments

Picsel – Better Web Browsing on Mobile Phones

Browsing the web on a mobile phone is still a less than satisfying experience – and that’s without taking connection speeds into account. Mobile phone browsers have always been simpler, less featured affairs due to memory and processor limitations. Consequently phone users are missing out on a lot of the internet: many site architects don’t bother testing with mobile browsers, or can’t be bothered writing for them. We can’t blame them either – often the browsers themselves are inconsistent, or writing for them is unimaginably painful. We wrote a WAP application a couple of years ago and we’re sure it’s responsible for some of the bad dreams we have still.

Picsel Technologies have a browser that uses their ePAGE multi-media content engine to give phone users a better experience on the web, without site providers having to write special portals for phones.

Instead of staring at tiny text on a page, the Picsel browser allows users to zoom in on any content and pan it about with Live Pan and Zoom. LPZ is compatible with a range of input methods, so you’ll be able to use it with a stylus or phone joystick.

The browser will also resize content to fit the width of the screen, avoiding all that tedious back and forth scrolling, just because someone doesn’t know how to properly set table widths in Dreamweaver. File filters for Microsoft Word and Adobe’s PDF are welcome additions, and should ensure that you can read the majority of things you get sent at the last minute for reading on the train to your meetings.

The first phone to feature the browser is Motorola’s A768 smartphone. The A768 is based on Linux, but Picsel will also be providing their browser for Motorola’s MPX smartphone which is based on Microsoft Windows Mobile.

How the browser works Picsel’s information sheet

Stream Ripping Gains Popularity

We never did it of course, but many people remember sitting by their cassette radio as a child, waiting to tape favourite songs off the charts to a fresh C90. Stream ripping is basically a 2004 remix of that old Sunday evening tradition, and it’s providing music sharers with a “new” way to acquire content – and it’s untraceable.

Stream ripping applications allow users to capture multiple streams all day, amounting to several thousand songs. In fact, one program, StationRipper will record 300 streams simultaneously and make a separate MP3 for every song played. It will even skip broadcast tracks that you’ve already recorded.

We tried StationRipper this morning as a bit of reaseach and found it almost unbelievably easy to use. It works best with Shoutcast, but you can access any radio station stream you have a URL for.

One feature that particularly impressed us was the ability to buy whatever music was being played in a stream – simply click on the station and then the buy button: StreamRipper takes the track details to Amazon and presents you with the album featuring the track, if it’s found.

Greg Ratajik wrote StationRipper after he saw the limitations in other programs like StreamRipper32, and estimates that the program has been downloaded over 350,000 times.

Whilst not quite as user friendly as many P2P packages, and with many of the problems associated with recording traditional radio stations (lower broadcast quality, DJs prattling over the top of music), programs like StationRipper present a convenient way of time-shifting internet radio broadcasts.

Acquiring music from ripping radio streams is untraceable, unlike logging onto P2P networks and downloading tracks. The radio station will have a listener’s IP number, but since users aren’t required to log into most stations, it’s extremely difficulty to ID them. Besides, they have no way of telling if someone is listening to a stream or archiving it.

But is it legal? Stream ripping software has lots of non-infringing uses, so it looks like the programs have nothing to fear … yet. It’s really up to what the user then does with the music – if they are using it as a way to acquire music without paying, or then go onto to share streams or tracks that they have ripped, then that’s illegal.

Stream ripping applications go to further demonstrate that if labels insist on crippling music with restrictive and untrusting DRM, then inventive consumers will find ways to defeat it until they get a fairer system.

StationRipper

Shoutcast

US Wireless Broadband Market Grows – But Which Standard Will Survive?

One thing is for certain – demand for wireless broadband is going to increase rapidly in the US. However, perceived competition between the three main access technologies means that many companies don’t know how to meet that demand.

WiFi, WiMAX and 802.20 are three technologies for providing broadband network connections wirelessly, and it’s difficult to tell which one to back in this race.

WiFi is well established, has a reasonably large installed base and is in use globally. As McDonalds have already named their WiFi provider, you can tell it’s reached mainstream.

WiMAX is backed extensively by Intel and Nokia, and is rapidly emerging as a favourite, though cards employing the technology and WiMAX-enabled laptops are not expected to reach the market until 2007.

WiMAX, based on the 802.16 standard, has huge bandwidth – typically more than 30 times that of 3G data services – and it allows subscribers to receive broadband network access simply by attaching a receiver to their home. This method is being trialled by BT in rural areas as an alternative to digging up fields. The standard is also suitable for people on the move as WiMAX can be used in vehicles up to a speed of 150 Km/h.

The 802.20 wireless networking standard will let you travel at 250 Km/h and still keep a network connection, and so is ideal for deployment on high speed trains.

There are some overlaps between the two technologies, but they are not meant to compete. WiMAX is intended for fixed locations like houses, or a mobile user with a PDA or laptop. 802.20 is intended for high-speed mobility, and can be overlaid on top of an existing WiMAX network.

The WiMAX forum

Senza Fili Consulting’s report on wireless broadband

Inside 802.16

Police Seize 200 Computers in Anti-Piracy Raid

Law enforcement agencies in 11 countries have seized 200 computers in raids on piracy networks around the world. No arrests have been made yet, but charges are expected to be brought.

The 120 synchronised raids were targeted at illegal operations in 27 US states and also in Belgium, Denmark, France, Germany, Hungary, Israel, the Netherlands, Singapore, Sweden and the UK. The raided groups are suspected of distributing games and films as “warez”. The US Customs Department estimated (and we suspect this is a real finger in the air guess) that the 100 participants identified were responsible for 95% of all pirated material online. We think that is highly unlikely.

The raids, part of Operation Fastlink, were described by US Attorney General John Ashcroft as “the most far-reaching and aggressive enforcement action ever” against online piracy. Amongst the equipment seized were 30 file servers. Looks like someone won’t be downloading that copy of Half Life 2 they were hoping to.

John Malcolm, chief of antipiracy operations for the Motion Picture Association told the Associated Press: “Today is a good day for creative artists. Without copyright protection and enforcement, piracy will dramatically and deleteriously impact the future of the American film industry.”

ZDNet on the story