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?

Korean Music Industry Demands Poor Quality MP3 Phones

Manufacturers like Samsung and LG are of course resistant to the idea, but the Korean Association of Phonogram Producers (KAPP) and Korean Music Copyright Association (KMCA) are demanding that new phones can only play MP3 music at low-fidelity, radio quality.

This demand is after a compromise – KAPP and KMCA originally required phones to only play MP3 files that had been purchased legally. In a market where 95% of MP3 files are said to be illegal, phone manufacturers felt that this would put consumers off.

The battle has become so embittered that Samsung has decided to delay the launch of their new MP3 Anycall handset.

Amid claims that MP3 players and pirated CDs have halved the value of the Korean music market, phone with music playback are expected to be extremely popular – there will be 150 new phones launched in Korea next year, and half the population already carry a mobile.

Yoon Seong-woo, a director of the Korea Association of Phonogram Producers said in a statement: “Our industry has been in a nose-dive since the release of MP3 players in 2000. At that time, we felt hopeless because Korean people were insensitive to copyright issues and we did not have any unified organization that could cope with the situation. Because the MP3 phone market is big enough to destroy the music industry, we’re struggling to defend it.”

It’s somewhat striking that the music industry should expect handset manufacturers to develop and sell inferior product to save their dwindling sales.

There are no currently legal download music services in Korea – surely giving consumers the option of buying music from an attractive, easy to use, reliable source would be far better? Samsung certainly think so and is looking to partner with a music site to provide a download service for its phones.

The Korea Herald on the story

Simputer Finally On Sale

With computer ownership in India running at ~0.9%, the market for a cheap device to get users on the internet and provide them with email and note taking software is potentially huge. Enter Bharat Electronics and the Amida Simputer, the first computer to be designed and manufactured in India.

Sadly, the development and launch of the device was hampered by a lack of interest and investment by large computer manufacturers.

With a 206MHz processor, six hours of battery life and 64mb of Flash memory, it’s a lot like a PDA – and is ideal for bringing the internet to rural India. The cheapest of the three models has a monochrome screen, but with pen input interface and Linux OS it’s just like an early Handspring. Apart form understanding Hindi and Kannada, the interface is purely point and click – the Simputer Trust believes that this will increase accessibility: “It has a special role in the third world because it ensures that illiteracy is no longer a barrier to handling a computer.”

Internet access is through a land line or Reliance CDMA phone – the browser is fully-featured and beautifully thought out. It even allows tabbed browsing! Connectivity is through two USB ports – so owners can expand memory with a USB key and connect it to other devices: a very neat solution.

Retailing at US$240 for the basic model, sales projections are still modest at 50,000 in the first year – we hope that this device takes off as the potential is staggering and we can’t wait to see what new uses people think up for it, and create with it.

Amida Home

Simputer Home

BBC Live Quiz Show First to Use Java on mobile

Broadcasters have flirted with interactivity in quiz shows for a long time – and there have been a few examples lately using mobile phones to SMS answers. However, the BBC has teamed with Tailor Made Films to develop the next stage – proper interactivity on multiple platforms, including a mobile phone and web-based Java applets. The game can also be played on Freeview and through satellite set-top boxes.

The project has been on the go for about 18 months, and has evolved since its inception. SMS was considered in the early days, but was rejected as it was too restrictive.

Neil Pleasants, Managing Producer at Tailor Made Films told Digital Lifestyles why they favoured Java: ” Java is portable – you can take it to other countries and it’ll work. Digital TV platforms might as well be written in Martian, they don’t transfer — the platforms differ wildly as their capabilities.”

The BBC website explains the format of the quiz: “Come And Have A Go… offers viewers the chance to challenge the studio winners head to head. Playing on interactive TV, Java, or web, teams at home answer the same questions as the studio teams. At the end of the first part of the show a satellite camera is whisked off to join the top scoring home team – wherever they are in the UK. In the second part of the show, the home team competes live against the studio team for the cash prize.” The cameras are on motorbikes distributed around the country.

Neil went onto explain how Java has enabled them to sell the programme into other markets with the minimum of trouble: “We’re taking the programme worldwide. When we went into countries and explained the idea, they loved it. But they didn’t know about the actual technology. We’ve made the technology as simple as possible and that’s the key, because that is so essential everywhere.” Tailor Made films even have an idea for a branded phone.

Their first phase was getting the programme into Western Europe, America, Australia and Scandinavia – the second phase will be Eastern Europe, Middle East, Japan and China.

Java also allowed Tailor Made to build high levels of security into the quiz applet to prevent cheating, including timestamping. This is just as well: the guaranteed minimum prize is UK£30,000 (US$55,000, €45,000) the largest ever weekly prize ever given out on a British television programme.

Neil believes that content is maturing to match the platforms available: “This is as interactive as it gets.”

The official website

Tailor Made Films

Sun’s Java home

International Federation of the Phonographic Industry Takes Action Against 247 Music Swappers

The International Federation of the Phonographic Industry (IFPI) has begun taking action against 247 alleged illegal music sharers in four counties. They are targeting individuals making a large number of files available on a range of P2P systems including Kazaa, DirectConnect, WinMX, eMule and iMesh.

Although much of the action consists of letters threatening a legal response, individuals in Italy and Canada are already being taken to court.

Jay Berman, Chairman and CEO of IFPI. said: “Today’s announcement should come as no surprise. Over the past year the record industry has been extremely active internationally and locally, educating the public about the huge damage being done by illegal file-sharing, explaining the laws and promoting all the sites where large catalogues of copyrighted music are available for consumers to access legitimately.”

The IFPI is promising legal action against more illegal sharers in coming months – but is keen to stress that this first round of action comes only after an extensive attempt at educating the public. Yet, and independent survey reveals that some 45% of respondents did not know that downloading music from P2P sites like Kazaa is illegal.

The industry is getting tough: Peter Zombik, CEO of IFPI Germany said in a statement: “The unauthorised distribution of music on the web has increased to such an extent over the last few years that it is threatening the livelihood of the German music industry. Whilst we have so far concentrated our legal actions on illegal music offers on websites – in the last two years we were able to close down more than 2000 such websites in Germany – we also carried out an extensive public information campaign in the last year in order to increase the awareness for the legal and technical dangers involved in illegal file swapping. Excuses about being unaware of the legal position are no longer acceptable. ”

IFPI’s press release

Embedded Linux All Around You

Linux is appearing in the wild more and more – unbeknownst to most consumers. If you have a Linksys router, it’s the box’s embedded OS. If you have a Volvo, the engine management system is Linux-based. It’s even employed to enable pacemakers to transmit data wirelessly to warn of a heart attack. There’s even a Linux-based watch, but Sesame would kill me.

Linux-based kernels are favoured in these smaller systems for three key reasons:

  • they make the most of limited hardware
  • Linux is cheap (often free)
  • it is well documented and understood, not relying on proprietary code that is protected

We’d like to gather together some links here for you to explore, to find out more about Linux in the devices you use every day.

Linux is not without its problems though – some of the code in the kernel is flaky to say the least, and many things that users take for granted, such as Firewire support and drivers for common hardware, are either nightmarish to enable, or just non-existent. However, kernel support for hardware is improving and much of the more imaginative code is being weeded out rapidly.

Away from the purely embedded side, Sony have had success with the Linux development kit for the PlayStation2 – a product that only demonstrates how flexible the operating system really is. Sony produced the kit to encourage home development for the system – much like the Yaroze version of the PS1. Sadly, though, we can’t remember the last time we popped into Game and bought a title that was written on either dev system – to an extreme with the PS2, the two platforms are enormously complex and hardly the sort of things that bedroom coders will be able to produce a top-flight title with. Oh, bring back the days of Braben and Bell and Elite.

With the number of devices growing daily, Linux seems to be expanding just as fast as the whole Digital Lifestyles world – and we’ll keep you up to date with the pros and cons of this fascinating growth area.

Linux is popping up all over

Embedded Linux – see how many Linux-based items you own but didn’t know about

Building Embedded Linux Systems

Operate Your Video Recorder From Your Mobile Phone

Norwegian software developer Opera, responsible for a couple of the best internet browsers around, have announced the Mobile Interactive Programming Guide (mobileIPG) – which allows users to record TV programmes on their video recorders, even when you’re out and about and have forgotten to set the timer.

Christen Krogh, vice president of engineering at Opera said in a statement: “The mobileIPG means full freedom to see what you want when you want it, it takes just a few seconds to look up the program on the mobileIPG on your handset, and then activate your recorder at home with just a click.”

Opera hope that the new service will attract paying clients from TV operators to mobile phone networks.

Digital Lifestyles have yet to try the product out, but we’re sure they’ve come up with an imaginative was to eject the Mystery Science Theatre 3000 tape we left in the recorder last night and put a blank in.

Get your hands on an Opera browser here

Harvard University and North Carolina: Music Sharing Doesn’t Harm CD Sales

Harvard University and the University of North Carolina have just published what they claim to be the most detailed economic modelling survey using direct data from P2P networks. The report’s authors claim: “We find that file sharing has only had a limited effect on record sales. While downloads occur on a vast scale, most users are likely individuals who would not have bought the album even in the absence of file sharing.”

The survey used 17 weeks of logs from a pair of OpenNap servers in 2002, taking a random sample of 500 albums and comparing the sales of these albums in shops.

Record labels have seen sales of CD albums and singles fall dramatically in recent years, and are keen to blame this on P2P sharing and other illegal downloads. Could it be that the real reason is that people just have more things to spend their money on, and are less interested in buying CDs than they once were? DVD and video game sales have rocketed over the past five years – and there’s only a finite amount of cash in disposable incomes – so something has got to give somewhere.

The study seems to lend weight to the argument that downloading actually helps CD sales. “Participants could substitute downloads for legal purchases, thus reducing sales. Alternatively, file sharing allows users to learn about music they would not otherwise be exposed to. In the file sharing community, it is a common practice to browse the files of other users and to discuss music in file server chat rooms. This learning may promote new sales”, says the report.

The RIAA was quick to disagree: “Countless well-respected groups and analysts, including Edison Research, Forrester, and the University of Texas, among others, have all determined that illegal file sharing has adversely impacted the sales of CDs. Our own surveys show that those who are downloading more are buying less,” spokeswoman Amy Weiss said in a statement.

The report

XBox: Huge US Price Cut

Microsoft have generally been slower to cut XBox prices in the US than they have in Europe – possibly because it started out at a much lower price there in the first place. Now, they’ve made a massive cut – possibly because sales of video games in the spring/summer months traditionally slump.

The XBox has been cut by $30 (UK£16.50, €24.60 ) to $149 (UK£81.75, €122.12). This makes it cheaper in the US than a GameBoy Advance SP is in the UK (a GBA-SP is currently UK£84.99 on Amazon, making it nearly US$155).

Microsoft are planning similar price cuts for Canada and Mexico, but would not say if other markets could look forward to a discount.

Many games such as Counter Strike and Project Gotham Racing will also see price cuts to $29.99.

Microsoft also released a rather striking limited edition “Crystal” XBox in the UK this week – it’s entirely transparent and is only £139, which sounds like good value until you compare the Dollar price with the new US price for the ordinary model (US$253, €207).

Crystal XBox

AT&T Introduce DIY VoIP Service

Initially only available to New Jersey residents, AT&T’s new CallVantage service allows subscribers to call other areas of the country using their broadband connection.

The service comprises of a plug in adapter that allows the user to make calls to any other telephone – and interestingly the adapter can be moved to other locations with a wired broadband connection, though the user’s number and area code stay the same.

The service is being introduced at US$19.99 (UK£11, €16.40) for the first six months, rising to US$39.99 (UK£22, €32.80) thereafter, for unlimited domestic calling. Other features to be introduced include voice mail, presence (being able to ring the phone closest to a user) and video conferencing capabilities for up to nine callers.

More details from AT&T

Asus Announce WiFi Hard Drive Enclosure

Asus have produced a hard drive enclosure with a built in 802.11g adaptor and two 10/100 Ethernet ports: the WL-HDD. At 54 Mps on the wireless connection, it’s not really fast enough for heavy corporate use on the 802.11g connection only, but it is ideal for a home server – and is priced accordingly: approx US$150 for the enclosure, you supply the ATA-100 drive.

Like many network attached storage systems, the device is managed through a simple HTML interface, enabling administrators to grant access to files on the drive.

Matt Jones comes up with an interesting idea

Techworld on the WL-HDD