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 Broadband Goes Up a Notch or 20

We have long been envious of broadband users in Japan who have access to the Yahoo’s 45Mps broadband service, but some who live in Central or West London could have the chance of getting to near to half those speeds when Bulldog DSL launch their 20Mbps service in the fourth quarter of 2004. The cost of the service is rumoured to cost around £300 per month.

This announcement comes hard on the heals of Bulldog talking about a 4Mps service for home users priced at £72.99 per month (inclusive of VAT). Richard Greco the Bulldog CEO was reported as saying he expects other areas of the UK could also be reached as the network coverage is expanded.

Prior to this announcement, the faster broadband service in the UK was from EasyNet, who currently provide a 6Mps service for £199 per month.

Speed to 5Mps are significant as they allow the transfer of broadcast quality video, held in MPEG2 video to be displayed TV resolution.

We hope this kind of announcement will embarrass BT into upping the speed of their offering, particularly as most DSL customers in the UK run at a barely acceptable 512Kbps. Frankly we are not hold out much hope.

Bulldog

ADSLGuide on Bulldog

EMI Deal Helps Peer to Peer Go Legit

With 60,000 recordings from 182 record labels, Wippit is a new attempt at a legal, profitable P2P network. Their business model is based on subscription – currently priced at US$49, the one year pass allows you unlimited downloads of all material on the service. The client guarantees no spyware or RIAA lawsuits, which is refreshing. Amongst the material available on the network are tracks from Underworld, the Stereophonics and FC Kahuna. They also have the Cheeky Girls.

The EMI deal includes artists like Radiohead and Pink Floyd, but excludes The Beatles, whose music is not available for download currently.

Fans of Shazam can forward Shazam SMSs of ID’d tracks to the Wippit Wireless number, and have the track forwarded to them for downloading later, if Wippit have the track.

Wippit are based in London, and led by Paul Myers, formerly of X-Stream.

The client is currently Windows only, but they’re considering Linux and Macintosh ports if there is enough demand.

About Wippit

Arcade Game ROMs Finally Available for Legal Download

Arcade game ROMs have long been a popular download from the internet, due to the popularity of arcade cabinet emulators like MAME (Multi Arcade Machine Emulator). The files are basically software images of the games, which used to be stored on hardware chips before files became bigger and other storage mediums (such as optical drives) became popular in arcade cabinets. Many arcade games have not been ported to home consoles, so players have no legal way to acquire games that they may have nostalgic feelings towards, or have kudos for acquiring. These factors, coupled with the fact that some publishers no longer exist, or the games are seen as old and therefore (erroneously) in the public domain, mean that ROM sites spring up all over the internet. Many downloaders don’t think they’re doing anything wrong by downloading these files, but they are still in copyright.

So, just like the music industry promoting legal downloads, StarROMs Inc has released 60 licensed ROM images, from as little as $2 each – and we bet that people will be downloading these classics, just like iTunes. If the StarROMs initiative takes off, gamers will be able to download many more of their old favourites legally.

Sixty titles isn’t much to begin with – but StarROMs has titles ranging from 1978 to 1992: titles like Asteroids, Millipede and – oh my goodness!!! – Crystal Castles and Marble Madness!

Will other publishers follow? We hope so – there are many, many gaps in the collection. Since the ROMs are images of the original software, they are essentially platform independent – but they rely instead on an emulator to provide all of the functions that the arcade cabinet once supplied. Emulators have been developed and ported to many platforms – so you’ll be able to play perfect arcade classics on a wide variety of platforms: PC, Palm, phone and perhaps even set-top box. Given that many set-top boxes and TiVo devices run a modern Linux kernel, and MAME has long been available on Linux, it’s not too far fetched.

StarROMs

Mame

Micro MP3 Roundup

Although Apple’s iPod is definitely the portable music player to have at the moment, there are plenty of other options out there to fit your criteria: cheaper, better battery life, lighter.

The Register has a round up of the current crop of MP3 players, link below. Devices like Sony’s ATRAC-based Memory Stick Walkman aren’t covered as they’re not proper MP3 players.

The Register on micro MP3 players

Memory Stick Video Recorder

The snappily named (as all Sony products are) PEGA-VR100K uses a built-in tuner to record TV programmes using the Quick Time 6 codec to a Memory Stick. You can then pop the stick into your VAIO for editing or for watching on your Clié when it’s convenient. The VR100K can also be attached to a monitor for use as a TV tuner.

Included are utilities for scheduling recording, so you can record that episodes of Fame Academy to watch surreptitiously in meetings.

Sony report that a 1gb Memory Stick will hold more than 16 hours of video in Long Play mode – though we’ve yet to see what the quality is like. Resolutions are given as 320×240 and 160×120, at 15fps. Bear in mind a 1gb stick will set you back about £400.

Sony Style on the PEGA-VR100K

New UK Channel in Pipeline

Channel 4’s new channel, tentatively called More4, will focus on history, property series, documentaries and drama. More4 will also feature some original programming, spin-offs from Channel 4 shows and drama and entertainment bought in from the US.

"This shouldn’t be thought of as a factual channel. It’s more based on a demographic," a Channel 4 spokesman said. "If E4 targets the younger end of the Channel 4 audience demographic, More4 will be aimed at the older end of that demographic," he added. "At launch there will be less origination, more narrative repeats of Channel 4 shows – ‘another chance to see’ – and archive programming. There will be entertainment and drama, as well as factual programmes, and some acquisitions. You could also see More4 doing live streaming of some of our more upmarket Channel 4 factual stuff, like Regency House."

The Guardian speculates that More4 will have an annual budget of £10m-£20m, and the channel is not expected to launch for at least a year.

More4 is likely to broadcast for around 12 hours a day, probably from early evening to early morning, when it launches. The launch will be welcomed by the government, as it is another incentive for viewers to move away from analogue boradcasts.

Channel 4 is expected to broadcast More4 on Freeview but also seek carriage on Sky Digital and digital cable services NTL and Telewest.

Commercial and creative development of More4 will be led by the managing director of 4Channels, Dan Brook, and the head of digital programming, Murray Boland.

Sky also admitted publicly for the first time yesterday that it has plans to launch a mainstream channel to compete with BBC1, ITV, Channel 4 and Five.

4Ventures

Billboards that Use Digital Ink

Magink have unveiled a low-power billboard in New York that uses digital ink to display a changing image.

The Magink billboard uses a paste of tiny helix-shaped particles, the orientation of which is changed by electrical fields. When the helix changes orientation, the amount of light reflected changes so they can be used to build up full colour images. Incredibly, the display can run at 70 frames per second.

With a dot pitch of 5mm, the technology isn’t yet suitable for replacing paper (or even television), but it’s an exciting step. Currently the display can handle 4096 colours and only consumes power when changing the image – like paper, it doesn’t require a backlight.

Magink

IBC News: Windows Media 9 on Mobile Phones

With an estimated 50 million capable handsets in use, Oplayo intend to bring Windows Media 9 streaming to existing 2.5 and 3G phones.

Oplayo currently offer the popular Oplayer application for Symbian mobile phones which offers MVQ compression and throughput from about 10kbs up.

The Java-based Oplayer will adopt WM9 and they will be releasing a number of tools to support content providers – including encoding software, server software and a playlist generator.

Oplayo

Palm Introduce New Accessories

Our iPaqs were getting a bit old and scratched anyway, and we’ve had them for ages – and these new accessories make a Palm even more interesting.

The first accessory that caught our interest was the foldable infrared keyboard. People have been getting excited about Palm foldable keyboards for a couple of years, but being able to use the device without connecting the keyboard to it definitely has advantages. We wonder if a Bluetooth one will be next, though.

Somewhat cheesy, but we’re sure someone will love it, is the multifunction stylus: it’s a stylus and a pen. And a laser pointer. And a torch. The first three functions we can kind of see the point off, but the torch has us baffled. Definitely an “Executive Gift”.

Palm have also announced a 1.3 mega pixel camera card that will take 1280×1024 24-bit colour photographs and store them on a Palm in JPEG format. The camera is fully functional and isn’t just a pin hole lens with a CCD: it has a digital zoom and adjustable lens for close ups.

Palm Store