Author: Mike Slocombe

Like Music from Philips Offers Intelligent, Mood Based Music Sequencing

New Philips MP3 Players Offer Intelligent, Mood Based SequencingIn an increasingly crowded marketplace, heavily dominated by iPod products, rival MP3 manufacturers are constantly foraging around to unearth new Unique Selling Points.

After Apple scored another direct hit with the iPod shuffle – a simple player offering randomised MP3 playback – the boffins at Philips were dispatched to their techie bunker and told not to come out until they’d come up with something Very Special Indeed.

And it seems that they might have come up trumps, with the new Philips HDD093 and HDD095 models.

Although they may not look too revolutionary, sporting the usual feature set (small form factor, 3GB drives, ten hours of battery life, MP3/WMA playback, greyscale and colour screens) the killer stroke comes with an intriguing new feature regaling under the deceptively simple name of ‘Like Music’.

This smarty-pants widget has the ability to ‘thread’ songs based on common attributes, including genre, tempo, and overall mood.

So, if you’re swinging your pants to some crazy punk music, engaging the ‘Like Music’ feature should get your MP3 player to intelligently serve you up 20 more tracks that it thinks sounds similar to what you’re currently listening to.

And it doesn’t just serve up any old stuff either – apparently, the player uses 40 metrics to locate tracks with a familiar beat, instrument line-up, and tempo, so you shouldn’t find a Kylie track wedged between Green Day and the Pistols.

Although we’ve yet to be sent a player to test for ourselves (excuse us while we deliver a loud cough in the direction of Philips), this looks like a really compelling feature, and one that could give Philips an edge over their rivals.

After all, with MP3 players increasingly being stuffed full of thousands of tracks which are often mislabelled or just lumped together in over-flowing folders, mood-based sequencing could prove to be the best way to keep the party going.

The players will debut in the late summer for around £200. Drunk MP3 DJs will love them.

iPod shuffle
Philips

Photo credit: Engadget.

Sandisk Announce Clever USB Enabled SD Memory Card

Sandisk Announce Clever USB Enabled SD Memory CardSanDisk today introduced the less-than-snappily entitled SanDisk Ultra(TM) II SD(TM) PLUS, an innovative SD flash memory card with built-in USB connectivity.

The card has a built-in USB connector for instant connectivity – users can flip the card to expose the USB connector and then plug it into any USB port and watch the blinking LED do its thang as the data is transferred.

The neat folding design eliminates the need for an easily-lost cap too.

This dual functionality could prove to be an alluring selling point, as consumers wanting to download images to their computer currently have to invest in external card readers or mess about with a connecting cable.

Travellers will find the twin functionality particularly handy, with the USB connection making it easy to download their holiday snaps onto cyber-café computers and mail them off to jealous chums back home.

The Ultra II SD PLUS is targeted primarily at the professional digital camera and prosumer market where 4 mega-pixel or higher resolution digital cameras are requiring significantly faster flash memory film cards.

It’s quite a nippy card too, offering a respectable write speed of 9-megabytes per second (MB/Sec) and a 10MB/sec read speed.

Sandisk Announce Clever USB Enabled SD Memory CardSanDisk expects the card to initially be available in two capacities with the 512MB card having a suggested retail price of $109.99 (£58, €84) and the 1GB version carrying a suggested price of $149.99 (£79, €115)

Shipping to stores is expected in April. We might even be tempted.

SanDisk

Voice-controlled EPG on your TV from Opera

Talk to your TV with EPGPunching endless buttons and shouting at your video recorder could become a thing of the past thanks to Opera Software’s new voice-enabled Electronic Program Guide (EPG) for home media.

The perfect complement for Homer Simpsons everywhere, the new EPG means that couch potatoes won’t even have to exert themselves to pick up the remote – instead they can simply bark commands at the home media unit and crack open another beer.

Traditionally, navigating through the labyrinth menus and sub menus of videos and DVD players was on a par with aligning the damper sprockets on a nuclear fission engine, involving a multitude of remote controls and key combinations.

The new Opera software (self-declared as ‘the future of human-computer interaction’, but we think they’re getting a bit carried away there) helps make navigating complex data structures easy by using simple voice commands.

Talk to your TV with EPGOpera will also be rolling out a new voice-enabled edition of the Opera browser for PCs.

The voice-enabled EPG is written in XHTML+Voice or X+V multimodal programming language with initial targets aimed at enterprise customers and developers. You can see a demonstration of X+V multimodal speech applications at www.ibm.com/pvc/multimodal.

This release forms part of a project to raise awareness in the consumer electronics sector of the benefits of voice-enabled Web technologies

We like the idea of being able to bellow at the TV, although we have to wonder how effective the voice commands may be after a skinfull on a Saturday night.

Perhaps you can also program in slurred versions of the commands for full weekend compatibility?

Opera

Burglar Caught on WebCam Jailed

A 19-year-burglar is now enjoying an eleven month stretch at Her Majesty’s Pleasure after he was photographed burgling a house by the owner’s Webcam.

Software engineer Duncan Grisby, 30, set up the movement-activated surveillance system following a previous burglary three years before.

The Webcam was set to start filming once it registered motion, with images of the hapless burglar being safely transferred from the computer to a remote server.

The Webcam captured every movement of Benjamin Park, 19, including a handy close-up when he stared straight in the Webcam before going on to steal the computer and other equipment worth £3,719 ($7,000, Euro 5,300).

When 30-year-old Mr Grisby returned from holiday this month, the pictures were handed over to police, who instantly recognised Park, a very naughty boy already on bail for an attempted burglary in Ely.

Police tracked down Park, who was already boasting 33 previous convictions for theft, to a block of flats in Cambridge, where he was arrested as he tried to leg it from the long arm of the law.

Travers Chalk, the chairman of the Cambridge bench, sentenced Park to 11 months in prison after he admitted the offences. “You have a record which is awful, dreadful,” the magistrate told him.

Understandably, Mr Grisby wasn’t too chuffed with what he felt was a lenient sentence for a serial burglar, saying, “It is a rather pathetic sentence to hand someone like that, a career burglar.”

Although photographs of the burglar in action have been published by the police, one piece of footage that hasn’t been available was the look on Park’s face when Det Sgt Al Page, who leads the Cambridge burglary squad, showed him the Webcam shots.

Burglar snared by computer Webcam (more pics)

Envisional Report:: UK Biggest Downloaders of Copied TV Shows

UK users biggest pirate downloaders of TV showsWe may not win many things these days, but when it comes to downloading pirated television, us Brits can puff out our chests and proudly declare, “we’re number one!”

The UK has emerged as the world’s biggest market for downloading pirated television, driven by tech-savvy fans unwilling to wait for popular U.S. shows such as ’24’ and ‘Desperate Housewives.’

Britain’s status as the big cheeses, head honchos and numero unos of TV downloading was revealed on Thursday in a study by UK technology consultancy Envisional.

The report could pose problems for UK broadcaster BSkyB, which is counting on high-profile US shows such as the new “24” series to draw new subscribers and entice advertisers to its satellite TV service.

According to Envisional’s report, devilish Brit downloaders account for nearly one fifth of TV downloads through file-sharing networks such as BitTorrent and eDonkey. In second and third place were Australia and the United States.

“Because there’s such a demand for US TV, the UK is going to be the main downloader,” said Envisional research consultant David Price.

UK users biggest pirate downloaders of TV showsThe downloading frenzy has been driven by the consumer-annoying practice of releasing popular US TV shows such as “The West Wing,” “The Sopranos” and “Friends” months after they’ve been seen by our American cousins.

Broadband-connected UK fans keen to get the latest fix of these shows have – not surprisingly – elected to download the programs instead, with episodes of popular shows like ’24’ showing up on the popular file-trading network BitTorrent minutes after airing in the United States.

According to Envisional, a typical ’24’ episode is downloaded by about 100,000 users, with “The Simpsons,” “The OC” and a host of sci-fi programs including “Stargate SG-1” and “Enterprise” also being firm favourites with the UK pirates.

Other TV networks airing large amounts of US shows are monitoring the growing popularity of online TV downloads, although insiders feel that the level of technical knowledge required will keep it a minority interest.

For now.

Of course, in the US, Hollywood is already putting in the boot, with the Motion Picture Association of America dishing out lawsuits like they were going out of fashion.

Several sites providing links to movie and TV download sites have already been closed down, with LokiTorrent being a major scalp last week.

The broadcast industry’s failure to learn from online music sharing means that without a legitimate TV download service, consumers will continue to use file swapping sites while lawyers get fatter.

Envisional
Motion Picture Association of America
BSkyB

Sony PSP UMD Movie Pricing Announced

Sony PSP UMD movie pricing announceKids today, eh? Spoilt rotten they are.

When I were a lad, an ‘entertainment system’ would take the form of a wobbly cassette player or perhaps a racy CD/radio combination for the well-heeled, but these young ‘uns today are positively spoilt for choice.

Not only can they loll around in their messy bedrooms all day and play state-of-the-art video games and music CDs on their PlayStation Portables, but now the little blighters can watch the latest movie releases too, courtesy of Sony’s proprietary Universal Media Disc (UMD) format.

Within weeks, weary parents around the country will soon be nagged into submission by persistent teenagers demanding the $28.95 (£15.30, Euro 21) to buy the cult classic, ‘The House of Flying Daggers’, scheduled for release on 19th April, 2005.

New films published on UMD will share a simultaneous release date as US/Region 1 DVD releases, with a price of $28.95 (£15.30, Euro 21) or thereabouts with a lower price of $19.95 (£10.50, Euro 15) for films that have already been released.

Accordingly, the other four previously announced UMD titles – Hellboy, Resident Evil: Apocalypse, XXX and Once Upon A Time In Mexico – will all retail for $19.95 when they go on sale on 19th April.

Following the initial flurry of releases in April, Sony plans to annoy parents further with the release of new titles at monthly intervals thereafter.

As a special bonus, the first million PlayStation Portables sold in the US following its 24th March release will also come with a UMD movie copy of Spider-Man 2.

Although the pricing appears attractive to the target audience, it’s the same price as regular DVD and some may feel that they’d be better off buying something with greater compatibility.

PlayStation Portables

TrustyFiles Claims First P2P Software to Report Child Pornography

TrustyFiles Claims First P2P Software to Report child Pronography File SwappingThe Internet! It’s stuffed full of evil kiddie fiddlers and dodgy geezers out to grab our children!

Well, that’s what some aspects of the media would have us believe, but there’s no denying that there is an unsavoury side to the Internet, and that peer to peer file swapping networks have made it easier for paedophiles to share their filth.

Well, thank goodness for the crime-busting heroes at RazorPop who have released their new TrustyFiles 2.4 High Performance File Sharing, billed as the “peer-to-peer (P2P) file-sharing industry’s first child-pornography file-reporting solution”.

TrustyFiles claims to makes it easy for file-sharing users to report child pornography by simply clicking on a dodgy file and selecting the “Report Child Exploitation” command. This then fires off an anonymous report to P2P PATROL’s child-pornography lead processing resource [http://cphotline.org].

TrustyFiles Claims First P2P Software to Report child Pronography File SwappingTrustyFiles also keeps an eye on users’ Web habits, spawning a warning message when a user enters a search term known to be associated with child pornography.

“Razor who?” “Trusty what?” do we hear you say?

Well, that’s we thought too. They describe themselves as “the leading multi-network client with Kazaa, Gnutella, Gnutella2, and Bit Torrent search and download, as well as personal, private, and public file sharing” but we’ve never heard of them.

So we took a look at their Websites.

RazorPop’s homepage is a very weird affair, featuring a photograph of a woman in a doctor’s coat holding a CD aloft. A jagged line connects the picture to a woman unhappily holding a big picture of herself, which in turn connects to a guy frozen in an action pose trying to grab a CD. Most odd.

Suitably baffled, we clicked over to the TrustyFiles homepage, a garish affair festooned with glowing testimonials from conveniently anonymous customers – and some of those were a bit, well, strange.

Listen to what David V from who-knows-where has to say about the product, “If I’m posting this, it means my message has a real good meaning…its really easy to use ..I see why 100% users vote thumbs up”

Err, thanks for that, Dave.

5 star awards from obscure shareware sites are proudly plastered all over the homepage, although none of them were linked to the actual sites so we couldn’t check them.

So we looked up Trustyfiles on Usenet to see what people were people were saying about them. And the answer is: not a lot. Try as we might, we couldn’t find anyone even remotely as enthusiastic about the product as the mysterious David V.

By now you’ve probably worked out that we’re more than a little cynical about this release.

It’s not that we don’t feel that child pornography is a serious issue, but we’re concerned that companies who appear to be exaggerating and exploiting this issue for commercial leverage may encourage further legislation that will harm legal users.

We’ve never heard of RazorPop or the daftly-named ‘Trustyfiles’ software so, frankly, whatever they do isn’t going to make a tot of difference to the surfing habits of the Web world.

Now, we’re not saying that they’re not an honestly committed company, but we’re less than convinced about this product, and their unconvincing Websites don’t help their cause.

Without an industry-wide initiative, we don’t see the point in releasing restrictive P2P software that is unlikely to make users switch from far better-known programs, particularly when it’s hard to find much enthusiasm for the Trustyfiles product.
http://RazorPop.com
http://TrustyFiles.com

3 Exceed 10 million Mobile Video Plays

3 announces impressive music download figures and new deal with SonyUK 3G operator 3, proudly trumpeted the fact that more than 10 million music videos have been watched by its customers on their mobiles since the launch of its Video Jukebox service only six months ago.

Cocking an industrial-sized snoot at all those naysayers who declared that people were more likely to poke their eyes out with a rusty nail than watch videos on phone, this represents a huge growth in the market.

Naturally, 3 are keen to build on their success and have announced a new agreement with SONY BMG Music Entertainment UK which will double the list of artists whose music videos are available for fans to download or stream onto their video mobiles.

Sony has a bumper pack of artists on its rosters, allowing 3 customers to shake their mobile booties to the likes of Destiny’s Child, Lemar, Manic Street Preachers, Natasha Bedingfield and the Zutons. And, err, Britney Spears.

3 announces impressive music download figures and new deal with SonyNot all of these videos will be available concurrently, however, as 3 have an editorial team selecting popular content for their ‘Today on Three’ service. This normally gives users the choice of between 40-60 videos, with the video selections changing regularly. 3 told us they found customers are interested in videos that are “the latest, and then they move on”, only being interested in “what’s current.”

3’s Chief Operating Officer, Gareth Jones enthused: “Thanks to our innovative jukebox service, we’ve created a significant mobile audience for music videos in just six months. We’re offering the latest music videos, on demand, straight to your mobile, and our customers are lapping it up.”

Clive Rich, Senior Vice President, SONY BMG Music Entertainment UK also underlined their company’s support for mobile music downloads, “It’s clear now that there is huge consumer demand for mobile music and it is our policy to deliver our artists’ videos and music to their fans anyway, anyhow, anywhere – at any time. This market will continue to grow.”

We asked 3 for a breakdown of how many people were paying each time they played a video, and how many had taken advantage of the fixed price, “all you can eat”, five pounds a month deal. Surprisingly they didn’t have that information yet.

We have to admit that we were surprised by this enthusiastic uptake, but questions remain as to how many of these downloads were simply people taking advantage of the free video deals currently offered to new subscribers. We’ll have to see if they continue to download at such an enthusiastic rate once they have to start paying for it.

3

PacketVideo Ships on 17m Mobile Phones in 2004

PacketVideo Ships 17 Million Multimedia Handsets in 2004In their 2005 “State of the Company” address just made public, PacketVideo bigged up their successes in 2004 and mulled about the future of mobile multimedia.

Clearly, 2004 was a time of happiness and joy for PacketVideo, with the company announcing that 17 million phones embedded with PacketVideo media software were shipped by top handset OEMs worldwide in 2004.

PacketVideo also helped launch five 2.5G and 3G multimedia services, including the recent Verizon V CAST video-on-demand (VOD) service in the US, and the OrangeWorld service on Orange Signature phones in 2004 and early 2005.

PacketVideo is the numero uno supplier of embedded multimedia communications software for mobile phones with more than 60 ‘design wins’ and 17 million handsets shipped in 2004.

The company’s software enables mobile phones to take digital pictures, record home movies, play back digital music and videos, and make two-way videophone calls.

PacketVideo Ships 17 Million Multimedia Handsets in 2004PacketVideo specialises in building and ‘commercializing’ (we think that’s American for “selling”) multimedia capabilities such as VOD, music on demand (MOD) and two-way video communication and messaging.

“These much-anticipated multimedia services, made possible by the growing availability of 3G networks, are finally a reality for millions of people around the globe,” trumpeted Dr Jim Brailean, CEO of PacketVideo. He continued, “PacketVideo’s software is at the heart of delivering these new and innovative services that let customers download, play, and share streaming audio, video and live broadcasts on their mobile phones.”

Looking to the future, PacketVideo expects continued growth and technology innovation, and anticipates an increase in both lovely lolly and market share.

“We believe 2005 will be the year of multimedia services such as VOD, MOD (Movies On Demand) and two-way video telephony. We will see the multimedia technologies permeate all levels of handsets, allowing more and more consumers to take advantage of the multimedia capabilities,” enthused Brailean.

PacketVideo

SIPassure, VoIP Firewall First from Borderware

Borderware introduces first-ever firewall protection for VoIP communicationsBorderWare has unveiled a new application-level firewall, SIPassure, which it claims is the first firewall to protect against Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP) security exploits.

As the take-up of VoIP increases, individuals or businesses that reply on VoIP for all of their phone calls potentially leave themselves open to being cut off from an inconsistent service from the ISP and potentially malicious hack attacks. SIPassure hopes to address the latter.

Announcing the product at the annual DEMO conference in the US, the SIP-based technology is designed to protect VoIP communications from hackers, spoofers, phishers and other malicious threats.

With VoIP proving attractive to both consumers and businesses (nearly one out of five US Internet users saying they are likely to upgrade their traditional phone service to VoIP), industry vendors and researchers have begun to sound the alarm bells that VoIP is vulnerable to a number of potentially disastrous security exploits.

“With SIP, your firewall is like a Swiss cheese,” says Jean-Louis Previdi, senior vice president and research director, EMEA Meta Group. “For SIP to work effectively, you have to open all ports of the firewall, so the protocol can browse and choose a port to initiate a session, which compromises security.”

In response, vendors have formed the VoIP Security Alliance (VOIPSA) to raise awareness, offer research and product security testing.

“As the VoIP revolution unfolds, users need to be aware of the many exploits that could compromise their next Internet call,” says Chris Shipley, DEMO executive producer.

“BorderWare’s VoIP security technology guards against many of the pitfalls associated with the adoption and deployment of this new communications technology. BorderWare’s SIPassure has the potential to make VoIP a safe option for everyone,” he adds.

BorderWare claims to protect users against Denial-of-Service (DoS) and Distributed Denial-of-Service (DDoS) attacks that can eat up large amounts of bandwidth in a VoIP network.

There’s also security against eavesdropping and “man-in-the-middle” attacks that allows hackers to become part of a VoIP call without the communicating parties knowing someone is listening.

The software also offers protection from Call Redirection, which enables a hacker to automatically call-forward a connection to their system as well as providing protection against Malicious Calling, VBombing and VoIP Spam, which are attacks that flood the receiver with hundreds of false voice mails within seconds.

Finally, SIPassure also claims to keep users safe Fake Caller ID, in which a hacker can masquerade as a trusted person making legitimate voice calls to an unsuspecting patron.

John Alsop, Chairman, BorderWare explains the risks:

“While the industry works to secure voice communications at the transport layer with VPN-type encryption, hackers are developing tools that attack Internet calls at the application layer, gaining unauthorized access to a VoIP connection.”

“To protect VoIP communications at the application layer you need a SIP firewall that is able to authenticate the user attempting to make a connection and to provide systems administrators with the ability to easily set and enforce their VoIP security policies.”