Simon Perry

Pigeon Enabled Internet Faster Than ADSL
This has Friday Story written all over it. A few Israeli geeks set up a test to compare the speed of delivering data via pigeon (PEI – Pigeon Enabled Internet, as they’ve labelled it) compared with ADSL.
They’re building on Wi-Fly research carried out in Bergen, Norway a few years ago, when paper was used as the data medium. The latest version uses memory cards, 20-22 distributed over three pigeons, enabling much more data to be carried.
In total, 4Gb of data was transferred over 100Km – which, as they point out, is far superior to WiFi. Despite one of the pigeons being delayed, initially appearing to get lost on his journey (packet loss as they refer to it), they achieved a transfer rate of 2.27 Mbps, exceeding the commercially available ADSL rates in Israel of 0.75 – 1.5 Mbps.
As you know, the A in ADSL stands for Asynchronous, so the transferred rates listed equate to the speed that information is received. Upload rates are significantly lower. By their calculations, uploading 4Gb of data on ADSL would take around 96 hours – making the pigeon transfer significantly more efficient, equivalent to a T1 connection at 1.5Mbps.
As they point out, the pigeon gives pretty high latency (it takes quite a while for the first bit of data to arrive), but once it arrives, all of the 4Gb is delivered at once.
I’d often thought how price efficient the postal transfer of DVD’s was. 4.7Gb transferred overnight for around 50 pence – try buying bandwidth at that rate.
Chat around the office lead us to wonder what the next in the endless list of variation on creatures being used to transfer information would be. Nicolas Nova has provided the answer – Snail power.
PEI (Pigeon Enabled Internet) is FASTER then ADSL (via Nicolas Nova, through engadget)
Credit for images: Gil Pry-dvash, Gilad Reshef, Shai Vardi and Ami Ben Bassat
29 April, 2005
PSP UK/ European Release Date, 1 September: Sony Official
Big sighs of disappointment are heard all around Europe, as Sony officially announce the released date of the handheld gaming/media dream machine, the Sony PSP. It’s going to be 1 September 2005.
The only cheers will be from the companies that are supplying imported PSPs from the US and Japan, where is has been available since the start of the year.
The PSP, or PlayStation Portable to give it its full title, not only plays games, but can show films (playing from its UMD disk) and play music using MP3 or Sony’s proprietary ATRAC-3 format.
Many current users have been finding that by applying a little ingenuity and using the built-in WiFi support, they are able to use the machine as a Web browser and more.
I had my hands on one a little over a week ago and can attest that it is indeed a product of desire. Not only is the design of the device great, but it’s solid feel only accentuates the flimsyness of the Nintendo DS. The screen performance is highly impressive, making the graphics look stunning. We think it will sweep all in front of it.
The DS has its own market of enthusiasts; the Nokia N-Gage QD has the benefit of being a mobile phone and Nokia behind it. Sadly the Gizmondo has none of these advantages and despite our best wishes, we can’t see anything but hard times ahead for them.
Sony have announced the PlayStation Portable Value Pack at €249 (£179/US$323), which includes headphones, a 32Mb Memory Stick Duo, power supply, protective pouch, etc. The hit film Spider-Man 2 will be available on a UMD disc, free to early purchasers of PSP when they register on YourPSP.com.
Sony have created a new disk format with the 60mm wide UMD discs which holds 1.8Gb of data. Initially, Sony were very secretive with it, not even disclosing the capacity of the disc. Following a major change of heart when they opened their music players up to MP3 format, Sony has now opened the format of the disc, letting anyone put their content on it, providing they aren’t a rival games company. Many feel by not letting the public write their own data to these discs is a mistake – but perhaps following this line will boost the sales of the Memory Stick Duo.
There are many tales of PSP-owners modifying their pride and joy to browser the Internet via Wi-Fi, or indeed run Instant Messaging client software.
It’s unclear if this opening up to the PSP as a homebrew platform was intended by Sony. What is sure, is they’re not doing anything to try to stop it. We’re waiting for the release of the Skype client for the PSP – that would really put the cat among the pigeons.
With the almost unbearable delay for the PSP in Europe, London chuck-away free “newspaper”, Metro, has been running a competition to win the PSP – Looks like those lucky winners have turned out to be more lucky than was originally thought.
Your PSP
26 April, 2005
YP-T7: Samsung Yepp Music Player – Compact Review
Samsung have made their intentions clear. They want to be the number one in portable music players.
The YP-T7 is a new generation player, designed as an attention grabber, to play to Samsung’s strengths – they are one of the three companies that actually manufacture LCR screens and they produce Flash memory.
It’s very small, light and packed with wowee features. Music formats support is broad (MP3, Ogg Vobis, Windows media) and the quality of playback is strong, as are the included headphones.
The potential of the 65k colour screen is well demonstrated by the graphically-rich menuing, but when you try to display photos and text files on it, its limitations are highlighted – it’s just too small, and when loading images, slow.
The on-board microphone and adjustable recording quality really impressed us, making it ideal for interviews and podcasts. The FM radio is among some of the best we’ve used on a portable player. The USB-rechargeable battery appears reasonable, with the official running time being listed as 10 hours, as would be expected from a Flash-based player over an HD-based one.
We’re impressed with this beauty. Compact, highly competent player with quality mic-recordings.
Specification
Weight – 36g
Dimensions – 37 x 62.5 x 14mm
Colour screen – 65,000 colours
Music formats – MP3, Ogg Vobis, Windows media
Interface Type – USB 1.1, USB 2.0
Battery Life – 10 Hours (Samsung figures)
Price – US$190 (€147/£102)
Stars – 4 out of 5 Pro
Very compact, Strong, quality mic recordings, Good radio, decent battery.
Con
Photo support not great
Summary
A very competent player who features raise it slightly above the rest of this crowded, fast-moving sector, and will impress your mates … but for how long?

22 April, 2005
NAB2005
Rapid changes in media technology, the evolution of cross-digital platforms, the need for increased creative inspiration and cost-efficient execution, HD, IPTV, 24P… Where can you turn to keep up? How can you hone your skills to remain competitive into the future? Where can you go to see what’s ahead, talk to the experts, and get hands on access to the technology that will shape the future of media and entertainment? With more than 95,000 media professionals and 1,400 exhibiting companies from 130 countries gathering to network, collaborate and learn, NAB2005 is the only place where you can find all of tomorrow’s solutions…today.
Las Vegas Convention Center http://www.nabshow.com/
16 April, 2005
Advertising In Games Forum
Advertising in Games Forum is the first event of its kind focused solely on understanding the factors surrounding the important and rapidly emerging market for placing advertising in video games. The huge growth in game playing audiences among key demographics offers a new and an unprecedented opportunity for agencies to connect brands with content savvy consumers. The conference program features pioneers and practitioners from both the agency/client and game developer perspectives and will provide critical information on how advertising can add realism and revenue for new games and offers insights on the range of options and ROI available when considering games as a new medium.Metropolitan Pavilion, New York City http://www.AdvertisingInGames.com
14 April, 2005
Sony W800 Walkman Phone First European Showing
I had a Sony W800 Walkman Phone in my hands for the first time today at the Sony Media Experience in Bordeaux. There’s already been a terrific buzz about this camera and it was great to get my hands on the thing during what Sony claims was its first European outing.
First impressions – good. Its weight is just right, light enough to make it carriable but sufficiently weighty to make it of substance.
The central music button is the focus of the handset and, not surprisingly, pressing it takes you straight to your music selection.
Once tracks have been selected, there are separate buttons on either side of the handset. The button on the left is play/pause and the right control volume. Again, without having to dive into the menus of the phone. A smart move.
The software comes with the handset will take music CDs straight from the player on your machine to handset, without intervention.
It follows on from other Sony camera phones, in that taking photos is easy. Simply sliding the switch at the rear of the machine, takes the horizontally-held phone straight to camera mode, again without having to devle into menus.
The W800 should retail for €500 (US$644/£341) pre-operator’s discounts.

Single button to access music

Volume controls

Headphones attach at the bottom
12 April, 2005
Vision Of The Future: NGN@Home Workshop
The workshop is intended to stimulate debate and build consensus on how industry should work together today, in order that we can move towards the ‘Vision of the Future’ for delivery of personalised services both within the home and associated domains. The workshop will explore three main themes:
· “User Centric – NOT Location Centric” · “Service creation and delivery to and within the Home domain” · “Adding value in a multi-access network and multi-service provider environment”
ETSI Secretariat
650, route des Lucioles
06921 Sophia-Antipolis Cedex
FRANCE
http://www.etsi.org/plugtests/NGN.htm
7 April, 2005
EuroSport, RTL Nieuws Launch TV on Vodafone Netherlands UMTS
Vodafone Netherlands have added two further ‘channels’ to their current 20 plus channel UMTS (3G) service.
The first provides live access to the Eurosport channel where subscribers can listen to Dutch commentary. The version running on the Vodafone UMTS handsets is exactly the same as what is shown on TV, with a slight delay to allow for the encoding of the video.
Vodafone are a significant sponsor of sport around the world, covering F1 motor racing, a number of football teams, cricket, rally championships, Sking, even hurling and football in Ireland.
The second additional service is RTL Nieuws, RTL’s news channel. Rather than take a live stream, the news is packaged in to a 20 minute show, comprised of items of between 30-seconds and 2 minutes. The on-demand service is refreshed six times a day.
This joins the news service NOS-journaal, the public service news channel that has been running on Vodafone Live! for some time.
To date, Vodafone has EuroSport and RTL Nieuws exclusively and their addition brings the total number of TV channels available to 23, joining CNN, Playboy Channel, 2GOTV and MTV.
The charging for TV service over UMTS is worth spending a short while looking at. For data transfer 3G/UMTS services have been charged on a price per kilobit transferred basis.
Seeing the confusion this would cause with the consumer watching TV (how would they have the faintest idea how much they had spent watching a TV show), Vodafone took the decision to charge TV viewing by the minute.
In Holland, Vodafone customers pay 2.5 Eurocents for each minute they watch, so a 10 minutes session costs 25 Eurocents (US$0.32/£0.17). Time for another acronym? What You Watch Is What You Pay, WYWIWYP? No, we can’t see it catching on either.
As yet there are no bundles available, but we would imaging this is just a matter of time and competition. As yet, there’s no competition for this service. Vodafone were the first provider in Holland to launch UMTS with their Connect Card in Feb 2004 and followed this up with the first launch of the consumer service.
TV over UMTS works on all eight of the 3G handsets available on Vodafone Netherlands.
Vodafone Netherlands
NOS-Journaal
1 April, 2005
Space Invaders Revolution Coming To Nintendo DS
Everyone’s heard of Space Invaders haven’t they? Those who haven’t, will surely have been sitting in a very dark room with their fingers in their ears, singing “La, la, la, la” very loudly to themselves since 1978.
It’s a game with fantastical legends surrounding it, like the one about the Bank of Japan having to increase the circulation of 100-yen coins to cope with them sitting in Invader machines.
Since the original release, it’s been remade a quite a few times with varying success. Until now, the most recent release was the 25th Anniversary edition in 2003, where they went hell-for-leather releasing all sorts of branded goods as diverse as watches, bags, shoes and even cushions.
Not wanting to let a good thing go by, Nintendo has announced the latest version of Invaders – Space Invaders Revolution for the Nintendo DS.
The games original creator, Mr Tomohiro Nishikado, oversaw the development of the DS version at his development company, Dreams – how times have changed, he was originally responsible for creating the whole of the game.
It’s not just a copy of the original, Nishikado describes it accordingly, “With Space Invaders Revolution, I wanted the team to take the game back to its roots – whilst at the same time adding features which would appeal to modern gamers.”
The new version sounds like it has some of those interesting features, such as rules that change as you pass between levels.
Of course, for fans of the original, there’s an exact duplicate, rewritten for the DS, not a version running the original code in an emulator as we assumed.
We’re pleased to report that some of the scoring strategies from the first version, work in Classic mode. The Nagoya-uchi (the “Nagoya attack”), or “death row” technique works perfectly (this is when the invaders have reached the very last row, just before the ground, the player’s base is immune to bullets from the bottom row of invaders). We can’t report the same for the 22 shots = 300 points from the UFO technique, as each attempt to date has lead to a loss of counting.
In normal play, the DS version doesn’t make a great use of the dual screens. You can use the lower, touch screen as a controller, tapping the on-screen buttons, in some of the games and sometimes graphics do pass between the two.
New Era Mode has plenty of challenges in it, as you fight your way through 60 levels, bringing in puzzle elements to the tried and tested formula.
It’s published by Rising Star Games with a license from Taito (the original developers) and will be available in the shops during Q2 this year.
Nintendo DS
Taito
Space Invaders, 25th Anniversary edition
1 April, 2005
IF… TV Goes Down The Tube – The Media 2016
I was asked to be lead technical advisor to a TV show, that was originally called IF … Media 2012. Over the last six months of script alterations and shooting the direction has changed, but finally the docu-drama is airing at 11:20pm BBC2.
It’s part of the highly respected BBC’s IF … series and it examines where TV may go in the next seven years. The piece is designed to give you some further background.
There’s little doubt that the media is changing significantly … and we haven’t even reached 2012.
Computers turned office life upside down. Now they’re focused on changing entertainment.
Each stage of the process – creation, distribution, and consumption is being altered, apparently inextricably leading us to the realisation of the long-held digital mantra (repeat after me) – What You Want, When You Want, Where You Want or WYW3 as it’s may become known as.
For those of you who haven’t downloaded and faithfully listened to the podcast of this chant on your media player, let me clarify – you will be able to access/consume any piece of media (text/audio/video/etc), on what ever device you have handy, no matter where you are.
Sadly the dream starts to falls apart at this point, because your commercial music or videos will only play on equipment approved by the owner of the content (more on that later).
Change is Afoot – High Definition
The Consumer Electronics companies have been spending a huge amount of effort promoting High Definition TV (HDTV) around the content production industries. They’re telling everyone that 2005/2006 is the year that HD will start to become a major driver for buying new TV equipment.
For those who haven’t watched HDTV on a large screen – let me tell you, it’s impressive. It looks far more real that Standard Definition (SD) and makes a return to watching SD difficult.
Will the dazzle of HD blind the buying public to the loss of control they will have over what they previously thought of as “their media”?
What do I mean, loss of control? Well, there are changes underway which mean that what you previously did without thinking (eg. recording a TV show, backing up a DVD) will become difficult, and in a lot of cases illegal.
Encrypted to the Eyeball
The companies that produce/own audio recordings, video, TV shows and films don’t trust the general public (a director of a large film distributor used those very words to me). Because they don’t trust you, they want to ensure that throughout the value chain (their words – meaning from production, to you watching it), the content will remain encrypted. The only time it’s not encrypted, is when it leaves the screen or speakers and hits your eyes/ears.
This way of locking the content, called Digital Rights Management (DRM), can also restrict other factors such as, whether you can record or how long a recording can be kept for.
DRM protection is intrinsically flawed. It can be broken and traversed. Aware of this, Governments have been lobbied and they‘re making it illegal to examine how a DRM scheme might work.
In Europe this legislation is called the EU Copyright Directive (EUCD), and in the US, it’s the DMCA (Digital Millennium Copyright Act ).
Given this, it will be illegal and you will be open to prosecution, if you use a program to take a copy of disc if it has copy protection on it., unless you use an approved application. What you can do with your media will be directly controlled by its rights holder.
If you want to watch films in HD resolution in the future, you will need to ensure that your equipment (Set Top Box, screen, etc) all have a HDMI interface and are able to support HDCP (High-bandwidth Digital Content Protection).
After 1 July this year, it will be against US law to manufacture or sell equipment that is capable of handling/recording HD material, if they do not recognise what is referred to as the Broadcast Flag – a copyright flag that is controlled by the broadcaster. Indeed to qualify for a European “HD Ready” label equipment must support HDCP.
Old equipment might have problems. All those who have bought their dream 42” plasma screen, had better check around the back. If you don’t have full HDMI/DHCP support, your £5,000 screen will be of no use for HD content.
The Content Explosion
While content created by the current commercial entities, like studios, will become more restricted, the good news is that the places that we’ll be able to source media from will increase substantially. It won’t just be from what are currently thought of as “normal” sources.
With a TV connected to a broadband connection (and they will be broad by 2012), you will be able to access the content from around the connected world. Any subject you imagine will have content available about it.
If you’re finding it hard to visualise, think WH Smiths in 1970. Back then the whole range of magazines available to you would have been about 20. These days the groaning shelves take up half of the shop and there are 100’s of regular magazines available to you.
User Generated Content
We are in a period of an explosion of User generated content. It’s no news that this type of content is going to be huge, but it will also be diverse, plentiful and importantly, quite well indexed.
The first few rungs on the Bandwidth Ladder have been reached. Blogging tools, essentially word processors for the Web (they print Web pages not paper), have enabled people to simply generate huge amounts of content online.
Audio content is currently seeing a lot of increase through Podcasting. Already the breadth and depth of the programming available is impressive.
Video is less prevalent and some way off. The delivery and receipt of it are all possible. It’s the generation of original content that is very time consuming, as it is currently cumbersome.
The public creating programming by using pre-made segments of content, is far more achievable. But where do the segments come from?
The BBC Creative Archive is important
The Creative Archive – started as an inspirational idea. The BBC has thousands of hours of content (audio & video) in its archive, This content has already been produced and paid for by the licence payers of the UK.
The inspiration of pioneers of the project was to make this archive content available for people to be able to download, watch, re-edit and create new programming from, to share with the UK. Ideal.
Since the project was floated the BBC has been very good at making the right sounds about it – and have generated interest in the idea around the world.
I hope that the loss of Paula LeDieu a joint- head of the project will not be too big a blow. I also hope the BBC delivers what it has spoken about – a wide range of free programming, which can be freely edited.
To maintain its highly regarded position in the world, the BBC must not continue to make bold new media statements, only to not deliver them. Failure to do so will reflect badly on the whole of the BBC.
Ofcom – Hands off the Internet
Given the restrictions that will be hoisted on to users of media, it is all the more important that there is no restriction on flow of information that can come down your Internet connection. By 2012 this will include your radio and TV.
Having been technical supervisor for the show, seeing the script going through the twists and turns before coming to life – the decision to bring the dark side of IPTV (Internet delivered TV) to centre stage disappointed me.
I felt the programme helps the argument of those who want to control and restrict the Internet and the video/audio it could provide, missing the opportunity to highlight the many great advantages about having a free IP-based media.
I feel it’s important that the limitation of what people can access over the Internet is decided by the individual or household, not an external, overseeing Quango like OfCom.
Conclusion
As with any massive change, there are going to be advantages and disadvantages. I think the advantages of a new form of media, where everyone is able to contribute is a good thing. Any objectionable programmes like The Cage, while they may generate a lot of headlines, are ultimately insignificant when weighed against the advantages against a freer media.
It is vital to a healthy society that expressions are freely available to all, without restriction.
If you see the show, it would be great to hear your thoughts simon(at)Digital-Lifestyles.info.
>BBC IF …
21 March, 2005

Simon Perry

Change is Afoot – High Definition

Encrypted to the Eyeball

The Content Explosion

User Generated Content

The BBC Creative Archive is important

Ofcom – Hands off the Internet

Conclusion