Mike Slocombe

Ikivo, Adobe In Mobile Content Deal
AB (formerly ZOOMON), has announced Ikivo Animator for Windows, a Mobile SVG software application for producing high-quality SVG Tiny animations.
Designed to work with the industry-standard Adobe Creative Suite, Ikivo Animator offers tools to let designers and developers rapidly design, animate, test, and deploy rich Mobile SVG content to mass-market devices.
“Adobe Creative Suite has revolutionized print and Web workflows and is now poised to have a similar impact in mobile content authoring,” said John Brennan, senior vice president of business development at Adobe.
“Designers have previously been hampered by the lack of visual design tools for authoring mobile SVG content. Working with Adobe, Ikivo is introducing an effective mobile content creation workflow based on Ikivo Animator and Adobe Creative Suite, enabling designers and developers to create extraordinary content for mobile distribution.”
Ikivo is hoping that their software will soon become an integral tool in a mobile designer’s armoury and we’ll all soon be grooving to Ikivo-created cray-zeee animations on our handsets.
SVG content created in Illustrator CS can be imported into Ikivo Animator where a set of tools will allow designers to move, scale, rotate, and change their attributes over time; embed interactivity; and output the finished animation in SVG Tiny.
In-between cappuccinos, designers can use the preview tools in Ikivo Animator to see how their work will look on different targeted mobile devices.
Designers can then incorporate their animated SVG Tiny graphics into XHTML pages or MMS presentations using GoLive CS.
This new workflow enables designers and developers to prepare animated SVG Tiny graphics, such as comics, infotainment, location-based services, maps, financial services, and – more than likely – really irritating cartoons for distribution to mobile consumers.
Ikivo CEO Stefan Elmstedt comments “Ikivo solutions are being used by major phone manufacturers, such as Siemens, Sony Ericsson, and network operators throughout the world. Now we are extending that value by partnering with Adobe to provide strategic mobile solutions.
The combination of Adobe’s design and publishing power and Ikivo’s unique Mobile SVG software applications create a fantastic push for overall support of Mobile SVG within the emerging market for 2D based mobile graphics.”
Ikivo Animator for Windows is available immediately with Ikivo Animator scheduled for release in the first quarter of 2005.
Ikivo
Adobe Creative Suite
SVG (w3.org)
11 March, 2005
‘Podvertising’ Supports Virgin Radio Daily Podcast
Virgin Radio is making highlights of its breakfast show available for digital audio players like the iPod, in what it claims is a first for “podcasting”.
The station began making its Pete and Geoff show available to download today, saying it is the first UK station to podcast a daily show.
Podcasting allows audio programmes to be downloaded and later replayed on a computer or popular digital audio players such as iPods, Creative Zens or Walkmans.
The BBC has already been experimenting with the new audio distribution model, introducing weekly podcasts of Five Live’s weekly sports quiz Fighting Talk after a successful trial using Melvyn Bragg’s ‘In Our Time’ series on Radio 4, downloaded by more than 70,000 users.
Listeners can sign up to the service on Virgin’s Website, with a link encouraging users to download the free iPodder desktop software for Windows, Mac and Linux.
Once subscribed to the service, listeners will get the latest show highlights every time they synchronise their MP3 player with their computer.
The Virgin podcast sidesteps the still-unresolved copyright issues of distributing music via podcasting by simply editing it all out – Virgin will serve up a half-hour edit of its four-hour breakfast show with all the music, news, weather, traffic and travel cut out.
Interestingly, the UK government Central Office of Information and online travel company Expedia are sponsoring the service via what Virgin cringingly describes as “podvertising”.
Virgin Radio sales director Lee Roberts said: “Radio stations have to adapt to the changing market and new platforms in order to create new revenue channels. We’re proud to be the first with podvertising.”
The Virgin sponsorship deal ensures that their podcasts will be relatively ad-free, although some advertisers may be reluctant to invest too heavily in a format where the ‘fast forward’ key only an iPod twitch away.
Pod casting has already taken off in the United States but has been slow to find an audience in Europe.
Although the format is already creating a few podcasting stars, it has to be said that most of the thousands of personal radio broadcasts currently available to download are home-made, rough-edged, and, frankly, pretty crap.
With increasing sales of MP3 players sales, there’s every possibility that Virgin’s commercial initiative may help push the format into the mainstream.
Virgin Radio Podcasts
Adam Curry Wants to Make You an iPod Radio Star (Wired)
iPodder
10 March, 2005
DVR Sales Rise, But VCRs Still Currently Dominant
DVRs may well be the hot product in the home entertainment industry, but dusty old video cassettes still rule the roost in the US.
A survey from iSuppli Corporation reports that DVRs are still a long way from challenging VCRs as the dominant method for recording TV in US households, but strong growth is predicted through to 2009
Only 3.8 million units were sold in 2003, but sales almost tripled in 2004 to 11.0 million units.
iSuppli estimates that sales will continue to grow, rising to 16.3 million by the end of this year and 45.5 million by 2009.
CENTRIS research also found a large increase in the DVR market last year, with the number of DVR units owned by US households rising 119% to 3.5 million from 2003 to 2004.
The company noted that the increases in DVR were mainly due to consumers taking advantage of units offered with digital broadcast satellite (DBS) and cable subscription services.
However, take up is still very low compared to many other consumer electronics products: just 6% of all US households have a DVR, compared to the 87% with a VCR, 60% with a DVD console and 12% with Video on Demand (VOD).
The squeeze is going to be on for PC-based DVR makers and standalone players like TiVo.
Despite extremely loyal user bases and a market share currently at about 40% (TiVo dominates this with a market share between 20% and 30%), JupiterResearch is predicting that this market share will decline to 20% by 2009, with cable and DBS DVRs accounting for the remaining 80%.
These companies can offer their products very cheaply (charging only a fee for renting the machine with no extra subscription cost) and introduce consumers to an affordable DVR experience.
In an effort to maintain their market share, TiVo is planning to branch out its services early next year by allowing subscribers to download movies from the Internet to their machines, along with a partnership with DVD rental company NetFlix.
DVR Dilemma (emarketer.com)
iSuppli
Jupiter Research
Centris
9 March, 2005
Virgin Electronics Discontinues MP3 Product Line?
Unconfirmed reports are suggesting that Virgin Electronics, the consumer electronics division of Virgin, have become an early digital music casualty with the division discontinuing its product line.
The word filtering through the wire is that Virgin will not be supporting the devices already out in the market and that their PR people have been quietly making calls and asking reviewers to return the units.
Virgin’s range includes a wearable, “teeny weenie” flash-based mp3 player, originally introduced last autumn in 128MB and 256MB flavours, with the latest product update issued in January of this year.
The company had pinned their hopes on the well-reviewed “Virgin player 5GB”, which had the audacity to try and take the iPod mini head-on.
That strategy seems to have failed miserably, with a Virgin spokesperson recently confirming the cancellations to Digital Music News. However, Virgin Digital is not thought to be affected by the Virgin Electronics discontinuation, as each Virgin division is essentially an independent entity.
Virgin Electronics have already been through one metamorphosis, dumping their Pulse line of home electronics gear (including DVD players and cordless phones) last year in favour of focusing mainly on MP3 players.
The Virgin Electronics product halt could be part of a larger industry shake-out, with several portable mp3 player manufacturers under-performing against Apple’s mini-marvel.
Serious contenders like Creative and iRiver look set to go the distance, however, and there’s always the chance that the Virgin brand may reappear at a later date.
Virgin Electronics
Digital Music News
Virgin Electronics, RIP (Om Malik)
9 March, 2005
Apple Shares Fall As Sony And Napster Bite
Apple Computer shares dropped Tuesday as Sony relaunched its famous Walkman line amongst concerns that increased competition from Napster might impact its dominance of online music and portable players.
The soaraway success of the iPod music player has transformed Apple’s balance sheet and its stock price, with the company shining as one of the best performers in the Nasdaq technology index over the past year.
But some industry pundits are predicting that Apple is being damaged by serious competition from a new generation of smaller, sleeker and cheaper MP3 players from the likes of Sony, Rio and Creative and a host of online music services led by Napster.
Shares of Apple have dropped 8.5 percent since the announcement of the stock split on 11 February, and have fallen some 6 percent this week alone.
“Competition concerns are certainly going to influence how this stock trades,” said Warren West, principal at Philadelphia-based GreenTree Brokerage Services, which executes trades for institutional investors such as asset managers and hedge funds. “Investors in general have enjoyed the stock moves, there’s a lot of money that has been made, and people are going to start taking profits _ especially after the split.”
Over the last twelve months, Apple’s share price has gone from US$23 (€17/£12) to an all-time high of US$81.99 (€61/£42) just before the split was announced.
Investors must now decide if the company’s share price can maintain its strength in the face of a market getting becoming increasingly crowded with rival products.
Sony are aggressively targeting the iPod with their Walkman line of digital music players, hoping to woo customers with lightweight and compact flash memory players instead of bulkier, hard drive-based units.
In fact, many of the new iPod alternatives aren’t trying to compete with Apple’s player at the high end but are focussing on consumers who are choosing between cheaper, lower-storage-capacity flash-media players and pricier, entry-level hard-drive players that hold more than 1,000 songs.
The Sony flash-media players will be knocked out for as low as US$130 (€97/£68) – not as cheap as the new iPod Shuffle, but considered to be better value because of a longer battery life and more features.
“Flash is going to be here for a while, because it’s more affordable,” Kelly Davis, product manager for Sony Electronics, says. “People are trying to get more capacity for their dollar.
The new Sony players are expected to give the company the No. 2 position in the portable music player market by next year.
Apple’s iTunes service is also coming under attack, with rival Napster recently boosting its sales outlook with growing demand for its new “Napster To Go” subscription service, expected to generate US$15 million for its fiscal fourth quarter.
Apple is also experiencing competition from music services offered by rivals such as Microsoft Corp., Real Networks, and Yahoo.
The company still remains in good shape though, with Piper Jaffray analyst Gene Munster predicting continuing good sales for the iPod line.
“Our checks have left us more confident that demand for Apple’s key products most notably iMac, Powerbook, Mac mini and various versions of the iPod continue to be ahead of expectations,” Munster told clients in a research report. “We anticipate that strong demand across various segments of the company will allow Apple to exceed Wall Street estimates for overall revenue and earnings.”
Munster expects the company to report earnings of US$1.04 (€0.77 /£0.53) per share on revenue of US$12.81 billion in 2005, up from previous expectations of a 98% share profit on sales of US$12.25 billion.
Piper Jaffray told clients it expects Apple to sell 3.8 million iPods during the second quarter, including 1 million iPod shuffle models, followed by 4.6 million iPods during the third quarter, with the Shuffle model accounting for 1.8 million of the sales.
Apple Shares Fall on Sony, Napster Fears (PA)
Sony MP3 players
Apple iPod
9 March, 2005
Mobile Virus: MMS Spreads On Symbian
Symbian OS anti-virus specialist SimWorks, has announced that it has identified the first virus targeting the platform, that is capable of spreading itself via MMS messages.
The virus – named CommWarrior by SimWorks – uses MMS to send itself to any MMS compatible mobile phone, but will only infect phones based on Symbian OS platforms.
Multimedia Message Service (MMS) is a more advanced version of SMS messaging (aka ‘texting’) which allows users to send multimedia content – pictures, sounds and video – as well as applications and text via their handsets.
The virus affects Series 60 smartphones based on Symbian OS 6.1 or newer, such as the Nokia 3650, 6600 and 6630, but devices running on the UIQ platform, such as the Sony Ericsson P900/P910 and Motorola A925/A1000 are unaffected.
The CommWarrior virus works by scanning the infected phone’s address and periodically blasting out MMS messages to randomly selected contacts, including a copy of itself and one of several predefined text messages designed to encourage the recipient to install the application.
To add insult to injury, users will be punished financially by the virus, with MMS messages typically costing between $0.25 and $1.00 a pop.
With the virus doing its devilish work silently in the background, it could be some time before the user becomes aware of the potentially hundreds of MMS messages sent from their handset.
Not happy with trying to propagate via MMS, the sneaky CommWarrior virus also has another tool in its satanic armoury – it attempts to infect nearby devices by means of Bluetooth.
According to SimWorks, CommWarrior is the first mobile virus to use such a low-down, two-pronged distribution strategy, which may allow much faster and more geographically widespread infection of vulnerable devices.
The good news is that like previous Symbian OS-targeted viruses, users are still required to accept the installation of the virus whether receiving it via Bluetooth or MMS.
The traditional problems of MMS interoperability amongst mobile network operators could also play a part in slowing the spread of the virus.
But before you all start staring at your mobiles in fear, it should be stated that we don’t know anyone affected by this virus and there’s more than a few cynical voices out there suggesting that that anti-virus software companies are prone to exaggerate the threat in an attempt to shift more products. As if! (cough)
SimWorks
Symbian
8 March, 2005
CeBIT Exhibition: Anticipation And Our Coverage
The world’s leading technology tradeshow, CeBIT, starts this Thursday in Hannover, north Germany with pundits expecting the show to reflect the recent stellar growth in the $2 trillion technology industry.
After three slow years, net exhibition space is up from last year at over 316,000 square meters and the organisers are expecting the number of visitors to exceed 510,000 people.
Naturally, Digital-Lifestyles will be there on the ground too, so watch for updates from the show as they happen.
Signs for the industry have been good over the last year with mobile phone unit sales up 30 percent last year and computer shipments rising 15 percent, spurred on by customer-wooing new features such as wireless Internet access, built-in radios and high-quality digital cameras and price cuts.
CeBIT is one of the largest electronics exhibitions in the world – so big, it’s close to frightening. As a guide, there are 6,117 companies from 72 countries taking part this year.
Within the 27 hanger-sized halls, visitors can expect to find a veritable Aladdin’s cave of the latest technologies and services that may well become standard features in a few years time.
Amongst all the technological marvels on display will be Samsung’s humongous 102-inch plasma display panel TV – the world’s largest – LG Electronics’ world’s first 55-inch LCD television, and a 3D monitor display from the German Fraunhofer Institute that allows objects to be manipulated by gestures recognised by bio-sensors.
Naturally, the telecom industry will be out in force, showcasing DMB (digital multimedia broadcasting) phones, 3rd generation camera phones, 3D game phones and a clutch of mega-pixel camera phone.
As VoIP (Voice over Internet Protocol) continues to gain in popularity, there’ll be dozens of companies showcasing devices to make free calls as well as displays of corded and cordless Skype phones by Siemens, Motorola, Good Way Technologies and Greatwall Infotech.
Sony Ericsson will unveil its first phone with a built-in Walkman while Nokia, Samsung and Motorola will be showing off their latest designs.
Naturally, the place will be awash with Wi-Fi and Bluetooth devices so, in theory, we’ve no excuse for not getting our reports out to you on time!
CeBIT
8 March, 2005
DVB-H: Mobile TV Pilot Begins In Finland
Finnish telecommunications equipment giant Nokia has announced a mobile television pilot, bringing live television broadcasts to mobile devices, starting in Finland today.
The pilot is a result of a collaboration between Digita, Elisa, MTV, Nelonen, Nokia, Sonera, YLE (The Finnish Broadcasting Company) and Nokia.
The project tests mobile TV services and consumer experiences, as well as the underlying technology, with 500 users taking part in the trials around the Helsinki capital region.
This trial follows on from a smaller test in Finland in late 2004, where Nokia learned that people liked watching mobile TV just about everywhere – on the move, in work, in pubs/cafes and at home – with news, weather, sports, entertainment and drama and comedy series proving popular.
This new trial employs a selection of Sonera and Elisa mobile phone customers, using specially equipped Nokia 7710 smartphones capable of receiving mobile TV and radio broadcasts.
The Nokia smartphone also enables direct links to the Internet for access to background information on TV programs or sports results, with access to a host of channels including MTV, YLE and Nelonen, CNN, BBC World, Euronews, Eurosport, ViVa Plus and Fashion TV.
Putting together this service has involved the cooperation of several companies, with Elisa and Sonera being responsible for customer service, invoicing and connections to the new interactive supplementary services.
Digita – who designed and built the digital TV network needed for the distribution of mobile TV services – will be responsible for managing the network, while Nokia will develop the mobile TV service management and smartphones that can receive mobile TV broadcasts.
The mobile TV test uses IP Datacasting (IPDC), which conforms with the DVB-H standard.
At the end of 2004, the European Telecommunications Standards Institute (ETSI) adopted DVB-H as the standard for European mobile television services, enabling the simultaneous transmission of several television, radio and video channels to mobile devices.
The pilot continues until 20 June 2005. We’re already salivating at the prospect of being able to sit in the pub and get all-interactive with the football action!
Nokia
8 March, 2005
New BBC Dr Who Episode Leaked Onto Internet
An episode of the new series of the sci-fi drama Doctor Who has been leaked onto the Internet, three weeks before the series is expected to begin on BBC One.
The 45 minute episode was being downloaded from at least three bit torrent sites yesterday, although is unclear whether it was the final cut or mid-production ‘rushes’.
Dr Who was first shown on BBC1 in 1963 and its cheap’n’cheerful props, low tech production values and less-than-convincing monsters managed to terrify several generation of viewers.
Under a hail of protests from its hardcore fans, the series – the world’s longest-running science-fiction television programme – ended in 1989, with a one-off movie reprise in 1996.
Reuters are reporting that the BBC is looking into the possible today, “This is a significant breach of copyright which is currently under investigation,” a BBC spokeswoman told Reuters. Commenting on where it came from, they said, “The source of it appears to be connected to our co-production partner,” she added, referring to the Canadian Broadcasting Corp.
In 2003, Dr Who was voted the show people would most like to see back on TV.
The eagerly awaited new series, filmed in Wales, features the well respected actor Christopher Eccleston as Dr Who, with former teen pop singer Billie Piper as his assistant.
Naturally, we wouldn’t get involved in illegal downloads, but reports suggest that the new series has lost none of its kitschy appeal, with a bizarre plot involving man-eating dustbins and animated mannequins.
Apparently, the Doctor is still flying around the Universe in his trusty Tardis, although the interior has changed with a darker interior and more hi-tech gadgetry.
In one scene, the Doctor watches the Kennedy assassination – a knowing reference to the first-ever episode of the series, which was screened on that fateful day.
Some American sites who have viewed the episode are already giving it less than flattering reviews, but we suspect that’s as much to do with the cultural differences as anything else.
After all, if you haven’t grown up under the threat of the evil Daleks, how could you ever expect anyone to ‘get’ Dr Who?
Dr Who
Reuters:BBC Probes ‘Dr Who’ Internet Leak
8 March, 2005
Google Desktop Search, Full Release, Searches Audio and Video
Google has taken its free desktop search tool out of beta and unveiled a finalised version capable of searching the full text of pdf files and the metadata of multimedia files.
The beta version could only index the names of such files, but the all-singing final application can index the entire content, including useful data such as song and artist names in music files.
Google product manager Nikhil Bhatla explains: “We’ve taken the product out of beta because now we have all the file types and features that were high on the list of user requests”.
Bhatla also explained that Google hoped that more people would be encouraged to download and install the product now that it’s no longer described as a beta app.
Google introduced its desktop product in October of last year, promptly followed by big search engine providers such as Microsoft, Ask Jeeves, Yahoo and AOL who are all keen to grab a slice of the desktop search market.
Desktop searches are one of the key battlegrounds for search engine companies, who hope that users installing desktop apps will extend their loyalty to the tool maker’s Internet search engine – and thus increase profits from the lucrative, keyword-related online ads market.
Other improvements in the Google desktop tool are support for Mozilla’s Firefox and Thunderbird applications and AOL’s Netscape browser and e-mail application (previously, the product only supported Internet Explorer and Outlook/Outlook Express).
The program can now index a veritable army of multimedia files including MP3, WMA, WAV, JPG, GIF, PNG, BMP, AVI, MPG and WMV.
There’s also a growing range of plug-ins available, letting users index content from a wide variety of sources including instant messaging (IM) conversations from Cerulean Studios’ popular Trillian Pro IM application, mIRC, music metadata files acquired from Apple’s iTunes music store and OpenOffice.org and StarOffice documents.
Interestingly, Google are also looking to a third-party developer to create a speech-to-text plug-in to allow the product to transcribe the content of audio and video files and make it searchable – increasing the indexing capabilities of those files beyond metadata.
Although this desktop search tool is designed for use by consumers, Google have their eye on the workplace too, with the program able to recognise Microsoft group policy parameters on a PC.
Google desktop
Google desktop plug ins
7 March, 2005