Mike Slocombe

Ofcom: Is the Internet Killing the TV Star?
Big glasses-toting Buggles sang about ‘Video Killing The Radio Star’ back in 1979, but new figures from Ofcom suggest that the while Internet may not exactly be killing TV, it’s certainly giving it a bit of a duffing behind the bike sheds.
The research reveals that ‘TV reach’ (defined as a minimum of 15 minutes of consecutive TV viewing in a week) declined between December 2003 and December 2005, with the biggest fall amongst young people.
Over the two years, TV reach fell by 2.9% for 16-24 year-olds and continued to decline by 2.2% over 2005, with reach falling by 1.9% among 25-34 year-olds.
Industry pundits are collaring the Internet as the reason for this decline, along with DVDs and gaming.
ITV1 slumped the most in multi-channel homes (i.e. homes with terrestrial and other channels), falling by 3.6% during 2005, while BBC2 managed to be the only terrestrial channel to increase its reach in multi-channel homes, rising 1.6%.
BBC channels hogged the TV action in multi-channel homes, snaffling 30.8% of the audience, way ahead of ITV at 22.6% and Channel 4 at 8.6%.
Digital growth
Digital TV is now accessible to two thirds of UK households, with 6.5 million viewers potentially launching a coastguard boat every time they turn on their sets.
Consumer broadband continues its exponential growth, exploding from zero to 10 million connections in just over seven years, with some 70,000 new connections being added per week.
Digital radio remains a boom industry, with sales of DAB radios passing two million in the third quarter of 2005, and pushed on by a busy Christmas, hitting 2.7 million by the end of the year.
Ofcom report
2 March, 2006
Wikipedia Hits One Million Articles
The English version of Wikipedia has now notched up more than one million articles, according to the Wikimedia Foundation, the fellas who run the free online encyclopedia.
Comprised of articles largely written collaboratively by its thousands of users, Wikipedia lets readers get involved by contributing their own articles or modifying existing entries, not always with the best intentions in mind.
Wikipedia’s reach is truly global, with versions of the encyclopaedia currently available in 125 languages, containing a total of 3.3 million articles.
The lucky millionth article (on March 1st) was an entry on Jordanhill railway station in Scotland, written by Ewan Macdonald, a Wikipedia contributor who posts under the tag, Nach0king.
Writing on his Wikipedia homepage, Macdonald admitted that he’d been coveting the honour of the millioneth post: “While I am, of course, delighted at being the one to hit this milestone, I must confess that, along with many others, I timed my contributions tonight to give me a chance at being the lucky one.”
With the million-article mark passed and the Wikimedia Foundation estimating that new articles are coming in at a rate of 1,700 new articles every day, our back-of-a-beer-mat calculation reckons they’ll be hitting 2 million sometime 2009.
Started in 2001, Wikipedia is now the largest reference website on the Internet and along with text articles, the English Wikipedia includes graphical timelines, subject-specific portals, four hundred thousand images and hundreds of full-length songs, videos, and animations.
Wikipedia
Wikipedia: Jordanhill railway station
2 March, 2006
904SH Phone From Vodafone Offers Face Recognition Security
Vodafone’s new high end 904SH (Sharp 904) 3G handset may look like any other twisty clamshell phone, but it has a cunning twist or two lurking inside its attractive, squared off lines.
The first is a novel inbuilt security system that works by face recognition – so when Peter the Pesky Phone Pickpocket tries to make a call on his purloined phone, a quick scan of his thieving face will tell the phone to shut up shop.
The system uses the sub-camera by the main display to authenticate owners by sensing the position of their eyes, eyebrows, mouth and other facial features.
Once a customer’s face is registered with the phone, the camera will automatically activate when the handset is opened and scan the phizog while keeping the keypad locked.
If it likes what it sees, it will ask for the answer to secret question (already inputted), and if that’s correct the phone will be ready for use. Vodafone say the whole validation process should take less than a second.
How effective this will be in real life is anyone’s guess, but it’s an interesting concept that could go some way to reducing phone theft (until someone comes up with a crack for the system, of course).
The other unusual feature is a built in 3D motion sensor which measures the handset position in all directions in 3D, plus directional acceleration (like the Nintendo Revolution controller).
Designed to work with the Japanese Vodafone Live! NAVI service, the phone comes with a pre-installed trial version of “Seiza o Sagaso”, a frankly bizarre application that displays constellations in real time depending on how you’re pointing your mobile at the sky
We’d rather have a program that points us in the direction of the nearest pub or taxi to be honest, but we guess there must be a market for it in Japan.
Back to the phone itself, the design uses a smart flip and swivel screen with the large screen packing in a massive VGA display – that’s 480×640 pixels, the same resolution as old 14″ monitors!
Although the screen measures a relatively modest 2.4″ diagonally (61mm approximately), it can display four times the pixel count of QVGA (240×320 pixels) models – which must make it highest resolution screen of any clamshell handset currently available.
There are loads of other goodies onboard too, with the camera boasting an impressive 3.2 megapixel camera with 2X optical zoom, miniSD card slot, twin speakers and a secondary camera for video calling.
There’s also support for funky new Bluetooth services which let users share instant messaging and multiplayer games within an approximate 10-metre radius, all for nowt.
The 904 also comes with a WAP browser, email client, e-wallet, various games and multimedia playback applications, plus some of those crazy things that the Japanese go berserk for, like a comic book viewer and karaoke application.
With all that gadgetry inside it’s not surprising to find that the 904 is a bit of a pocket bulging beast, measuring 104 x 50 x 28mm and weighing 151 grams.
Talktime on 3G is around 3 hours with 15 days standby time and with support for UMTS 2100 (3G) and GSM 900/1800/1900 with GPRS, the phone can be used pretty much anywhere
Exclusively built by Sharp for the Vodafone network, the phone will be available in Japan in April 2006, with no set date for a European release yet (although there’s a good chance that this one will make it over here).
1 March, 2006
Global Mobile Phone Sales Soar 21% In 2005
The Big Six handset suppliers increased their rottweiler-like grip on the global mobile phone market, accounting for 84 per cent of all sales in Q4 2005.
The figures were revealed in a report by market research company Gartner who estimated that worldwide mobile phone sales totalled 816.6 million units in 2005 – up 21 percent from 2004 (and slightly up from Gartner’s Nov 2005 prediction)
Finnish fiends Nokia now hog a hefty 32.5 per cent of the world market in Q4, twice that of its nearest rival, Motorola (17.7%).
Samsung sit in third place with 12.7 percent of the global market, followed by LG on 6.7 percent, Sony Ericsson on 6.3 percent and Siemens on 3.5 percent.
Breaking the figures down, Western Europe saw 49.1 million units sold in the fourth quarter of 2005, compared to 164 million units in 2005.
In Central Eastern Europe, the Middle East and Africa (CEMEA), annual mobile phone sales reached 153.5 million units, while in North America, fourth quarter mobile phone sales reached 41.3 million units with a 2005 total of 148.4 million units.
There was a veritable tango of phone flogging going down Latin America way, with sales reaching nearly 102 million units in 2005, a maraca-shaking 40 percent increase from 2004.
In Asia/Pacific 56.4 million mobiles were shifted in the fourth quarter of 2005 and 204 million units in 2005, with sales fuelled by lucrative markets like China and India.
Carolina Milanesi, principal analyst for mobile terminals research at Gartner, commented: “As competition continues to drive price pressure in the low-end, and a design and technology ‘arms race’ in the high-end, the survival of the fittest depends more and more on economies of scale, or very carefully cut out niche markets.”
“The industry experienced record sales due to continued strong growth in emerging markets, where falling prices for cellular connectivity – phones and subscriptions – resulted in higher-than-expected sales. In more mature markets, such as Western Europe and North America, replacement sales were driven by users that gave into the charm of highly fashionable devices,” she added.
Such was the rabid enthusiasm for trendy feckers to get their grubby mitts on the latest ‘must have’ phone, some were happy to shell out for new contracts before their previous one had expired, with the Motorola pink Razr and Siemens CL75 Poppy being particularly sought after.
Gartner
1 March, 2006
Axia A308, World’s Smallest Windows 5.0 Wi-Fi Smartphone Announced
Fifth Media have announced the forthcoming unveiling of their AXIA A308 PDA Phone, proudly proclaimed as the (deep breath), “world’s smallest PDA Phone on Microsoft Windows Mobile 5 featuring Wi-Fi connectivity.”
Due to be seen at the CeBIT exhibition in Hannover next month, the quad-band AXIA A308 packs in GSM, GPRS and EDGE connectivity – as well as the all-important Wi-Fi connectivity – into its diminutive proportions.
Running on Microsoft Windows Mobile 5.0, the pocket-rocket PDA also offers Bluetooth and IrDA-enabled connectivity, with the whole caboodle measuring just 20.8 x 48.8 x 113.3mm and weighing 128g.
Powered by a surprisingly nippy Intel PXA272 CPU 416 MHz processor, the Axia comes with a reasonable 128 MB of flash memory an 64MB of RAM, with a decent sized 2.2″ Transflective TFT LCD 262K colour running at 240 x 320 resolution.
Multimedia is taken care of with WAV/WMA/MP3 support and a basic, built in 1.3 MegaPixel CMOS fixed focus camera. Memory can be expanded via the miniSD flash memory slot.
The all-important battery life is claimed at 4 hours talktime with the removable/rechargeable 1500mAh Li-Polymer offering 120 hours of standby time.
On the initial specs, this looks like a very attractive phone – we like the ‘proper’ keypad and the fact that they’ve wedged in so much functionality into such a small form.
The built in Wi-Fi is already getting our wallets twitching and with a processor powerful enough to run Skype, we’ll be looking out for this one at CeBIT.
SPECIFICATIONS
PROCESSOR Intel PXA272 CPU 416 MHz
MEMORY Flash 128MB; RAM 64MB
DISPLAY 2.2″ Transflective TFT LCD 262K colour with 240 x 320 resolution White LED Touch Screen
AUDIO Microphone Loudspeaker for speaker function 2.5mm stereo headphone jack Support WAV/WMA/MP3 stereo
CAMERA 1.3 MegaPixel CMOS Fixed focus
BATTERY Removable/rechargeable 1500mAh Li-Polymer
Talktime: 4 hours*
Standby Time: 120 hours*
CONNECTIVITY
Quad-band GSM (850/900/1800/1900 MHz)
Integrated GSM/GPRS/EDGE
Wireless LAN (IEEE 802.11b compliant)
Bluetooth (1.2 compliant, Class 2 transmit power)
IrDA
OPERATING SYSTEM
Microsoft® Windows® Mobile 5 Pocket PC
OS Microsoft® Pocket Internet Explorer
Windows® Media Player 10
Windows® Messenger
Transcriber software
DIMENSIONS 20.8 (D) X 48.8 (W) X 113.3 (L) mm
WEIGHT 128g
EXPANSION Mini SD slot
1 March, 2006
Apple iPod Hi-Fi Speakers Announced
With a multitude of third party manufacturers making a mint from a multiplicity of iPod accessories, Apple has decided to cut itself a slice of the action with their own high-end Apple iPod Hi-Fi speaker system.
The high-fidelity speaker system comes in at a premium price and looks like an attempt by Apple to scare off the competition from upmarket speaker manufacturers like Bose and Denon, both of whom have done very nicely thank you very much from their iPod accessory ranges.
Powered by the mains or six D-cell batteries, the shiny white box has a slot to accommodate iPod players at the top with an Apple Remote letting users control the player from the comfort of their sofa/bed/hovel.
The all-in-one design features an isolated enclosure, with two custom designed wide-range speakers lurking under the speaker grill and a tuned ported bass system claimed to minimise vibration.
With portability in mind, the iPod Hi-Fi features big handles on either side (but no central grip which is a bit odd).
There’s also a removable front grille with precision-mounting clips, touch-sensitive volume control buttons and a dock connector for all iPod flavours.
While docked, the iPod Hi-Fi automatically recharges the player, with the player’s display showing Tone Control, Large Album Art mode and volume mirroring.
There’s also a handy dual-purpose 3.5-mm auxiliary input that accepts either analogue or digital signals for connection to a wide range of audio sources and third party players.
Initial reports say that it sounds good, but weighs so much (14.5 lbs without batteries) you’ll be unlikely to drag it down the beach.
That shiny finish looks a bit scratchable to us too and we can’t imagine many death metal loving teenagers wanting a great big white box in their satanic bedrooms either.
Our initial impressions: not good
We’ve got to say we’re unimpressed. It looks too bulky to be a take-anywhere beatbox, too delicate to be taken outside the house and with the speakers so close together, unlikely to produce the kind of hi-fi we’d expect for the top-tier price – US$349 (~e292, ~£198) in the USA market.
Mind you, Steve Jobs was suitably enthusiastic, declaring it as the, “home stereo reinvented for the iPod age”.
Smell the leather
Also announced was an eye wateringly expensive leather iPod case, yours for just $99 (~e83, ~£56).
Personally, if we desperately needed a case with a little Apple logo on it, we’d head down to the local street market and get something that would do the job just as well for about £5. But hey! Maybe that’s because we’re just a bunch of cheapskates!
Apple iPod Hi-Fi
1 March, 2006
Microsoft Confirms Windows Vista Operating System Line-Up
Microsoft has unveiled the official line up of the Windows Vista packages, with no less than six versions being available, all in 32 and 64-bit flavours.
The full roll call comprises of Windows Starter 2007; Windows Vista Enterprise; Windows Vista Home Basic, Windows Vista Home Premium, Windows Vista Ultimate and Windows Vista Business.
There’ll also be two additional releases – Windows Vista Home Basic N and Windows Vista Business N – which are sold without Windows Media Player, as ordered by European Union antitrust regulators.
All versions of the new OS will come with Internet Explorer 7.0, Vista desktop search, parental controls and Windows Defender anti-spyware technology.
Windows Vista Starter
Aimed at developing nations, Windows Vista will be customised for users in particular countries and offer reduced functionality and a stripped down feature set, and will only be available preloaded on cut-rate PCs.
Windows Vista Home Basic
As the name suggests, Windows Vista Home Basic is the version for casual PC users who only want to surf the Web, blast out a few emails and create, store and share basic documents. To keep things simple, there’ll be no support for the groovy Aero Glass user-interface effects seen in the full Vista version.
Windows Vista Home Premium
Offering the kind of functionality currently seen in the Windows XP Media/Tablet PC Editions, the multimedia-tastic Home Premium version bundles in support for digital photography, “mobility-focused technologies,” movie-making and high-def TV.
The super-slick redesigned Windows Aero GIO promises to provide a ‘transparent glass’ design, with subtle effects such as dynamic reflections and smooth animations, along with Windows Flip and Flip 3D desktop navigation features.
Windows Vista Business
Offering the full bells’n’whistles Aero user interface, Vista Business is designed for organisations of all sizes and comes with Tablet PC functionality built-in.
Windows Vista Enterprise
Aimed at corporate business users, Windows Vista Enterprise comes with all the Windows Vista Business features, plus BitLocker drive encryption; Virtual PC Express virtual-machine support and the Subsystem for Unix-based Applications (SUA), designed to allow Unix applications to run on Vista machines. This version will only be available to Enterprise Agreement (EA) and Software Assurance (SA) volume-licensing customers.
Windows Vista Ultimate
Aimed at single home/office users and small business bosses and managers, the high-end Vista Ultimate combines the multimedia whizzbangery of Vista Home premium with the security and functionality of Vista Business.
All versions of Windows Vista are scheduled to be broadly available in the second half of 2006, with pricing to be announced.
Windows Vista
28 February, 2006
YP-Z5: New Samsung MP3 Player Designed By Apple Whizz
Due to hit the shelves in March, Samsung Electronics’ new YP-Z5 MP3 player is causing a stir because it was designed by Paul Mercer – the very same programming genius who created the interface for Apple’s runaway success, the iPod.
The veteran Mac software designer led a team of programmers at Iventor Inc to create a user interface to match the iPod’s well regarded touch-sensitive scroll wheel approach.
Samsung is confident that through his skills their YP-Z5 can succeed where a zillion ‘iPod killers’ have failed and make a real dent in the download music market currently dominated by his old employers.
Samsung is already making a big noise about the YP-Z5’s interface, which apparently offers super-duper transparency effects and other interface treats.
The Z5 is pitched directly against the iPod Nano and comes with a 1.8-inch colour screen and a claimed 38-hour battery life.
At $199 (~e167, ~£113) to $249 the pricing is similar Apple’s product, and – crucially – Samsung is promising a seamless connection between player and download service via Microsoft’s PlaysForSure digital music standard.”
Measuring 1.66″ x .45″ x 3.54″, the Samsung YP-Z5 comes in 2BG and 4GB flavours and offers an extended feature set over its rival, with MP3, WMA, WMA-DRM10 (PlaysForSure) and OGG support.
Sadly, there’s no FM tuner to be found (an order-canceller for us), but it comes with photo viewing and DNSe Digital Natural Sound Engine 3D audio processing if that floats your aural boat.
Samsung
28 February, 2006
K800 and K790 Camera Phones From Sony Ericsson Earn Cybershot Status
In a reflection of the growing convergence between phones and digital cameras, Sony Ericsson have declared their new K800 and K790 phones to be worthy of the Cybershot brand.
In line with their photographic aspirations, the two handsets come with integrated 3.2 Megapixel digital cameras offering autofocus, Xenon flash and Sony Ericsson’s BestPic imaging technology.
Taking pictures on the phone is easy. Once you’ve finished yakking, turn the handset on its side, slide the active lens cover downwards and you’ll be presented with a ‘proper’ camera interface, similar to that found in Sony’s Cybershot models.
Using the 2.0″ QVGA 262K TFT display as a viewfinder, users can take advantage of the new BestPic technology, a fancy-pants burst mode which blasts out 9 full-resolution pictures in rapid succession.
Once the shutter is pressed, the camera presents the user with four pictures before and four pictures after the actual image was captured, with the option to scroll through the selection and save the ones that look best.
There’s also an auto red-eye reduction and PictBridge support for shunting your pics direct to a printer.
To help share your photographic masterpieces, Sony Ericsson have struck a deal with Google to enable easy photo blogging with the search engine’s Blogger service.
Photo storage is taken care of with onboard capacity for 100 pictures and a Memory Stick Micro expansion slot.
Both Cybershot phones come stuffed with useful mobile features, with the dual-mode UMTS/GPRS K800i boasting 3G connectivity with video calling, a stereo FM radio with RDS, Bluetooth 2.0 with stereo audio streaming and USB 2.0 for uploading pics to PCs.
The near-identical K790i knocks a few quid off the price by eschewing the 3G and video, offering tri-band GSM with EDGE connectivity instead.
Other gizmos to be found on both phones include video recording/output, HTML browser, an e-mail client with P-IMAP support; an RSS reader, 3D gaming and a music player with MP3 and AAC support.
Both products will be commercially available in (ahem) ‘Velvet Black’ and start shipping globally during Q2 2006.
Sony Ericsson have also announced two additions to the K series along with a new phone in the Z range.
The K510i comes with a 1.3 megapixel camera phone, Bluetooth, push email and fun imaging effects (whatever they are), while the entry level K310i offers a VGA camera with practical tools for viewing, storing and sharing images.
Finally, the Z530i clamshell camera phone offers a basic feature set including an 0.3 Megapixel camera, music player with MP3/AAC support, Bluetooth, 28 MB of onboard memory, RSS reader and WAP 2.0 browser.
K800 and K790 – Features and specifications
Imaging & Messaging3.2 Mega pixel with Auto Focus Camera
Xenon Flash
BestPic™
Video and image stabilizer function
2.0″ QVGA 262K TFT display
Active lens cover
Photo keys
Cyber-shot™ user interface
Memory for 100 pictures (at 3.2MP), 64 MB internal user memory
Video recording/playback
Adobe picture/video PC SW
16x Digital zoom
Auto red eye reduction
DPOF & PictBridge
Time line view of pictures
Picture Blogging (powered by Blogger)
PictureDJ ™ and VideoDJ
Standard push e-mail (P-IMAP) support
VGA camera for Video Telephony (no VGA camera in K790)
EntertainmentMusic Player (MP3, AAC, AAC+, eAAC+ support)
Video Player
Music DJ™
OMA DRM phase 1.x
Streaming Audio/Video
3D games
A/B buttons for horizontal games support
RDS FM radio
ConnectivityBluetooth® 2.0
IrDA
HTML Full Browser with RSS readers
USB 2.0 Mass storage
External antenna connector
Memory Stick Micro (M2) slot
Flight mode
Multitasking
USB cable, stereo portable handsfree and PC software in the box
Talk time: up to 7 hours GSM/2.5 hours UMTS
Standby time: up to 350 hours
Size: 106 x 47 x 18 (22) mm
Weight: 115 grams
Sony Ericsson
28 February, 2006
SPH-B1300 DMB Phone From Samsung, Flipping ‘eck
More flexible than a Russian athlete in a vat of oil, Samsung’s double-flipping DMB phone offers a novel twist on the clamshell format.
Naturally, we’re talking about a Korea-only release at the moment, but Samsung’s SPH-B1300 looks an interesting number serving up a DMB handset that flips two ways. A bi-flip-sexual, if you will.
The Samsung can function like a regular clamshell phone, with the colour display viewed in portrait orientation, or, with a clever bit of flipology, the screen can shuffle around into a landscape format – ideal for watching TV and videos.
As well as the DMB functionality, the Samsung SPH-B1300 serves up the usual advanced mobile feature set, complete with a two megapixel digital camera and built-in MP3 player.
It looks like the handset will be taken up by KTF in Korea (DMB is huge in Samsung’s home country), although those waiting for a UK release may be in for a very, very, very long wait (think, “eternity”).
We can expect more details about the Samsung SPH-B1300 to be revealed at the CeBit 2006 show in Hannover next month.
Glossary:
DMB (Digital Multimedia Broadcasting) is a digital transmission system for sending data, radio and TV to mobile devices such as mobile phones.
Operating via satellite (S-DMB) or terrestrial (T-DMB) transmission, DMB is based on the Eureka 147 DAB standard and shares similarities with the competing mobile TV standard DVB-H.
Samsung
CeBit 2006
28 February, 2006