Digital-Lifestyles

Simon Perry

  • The ZigBee Alliance Open House

    Everyone is cordially invited to attend the ZigBee Alliance Open House Wednesday, May 19, 2004 in Seattle, Washington at the Hotel Monaco. ZigBee will hold this event for press, analysts and any interested companies or individuals to come and learn what the ZigBee Alliance is all about. This event will begin at 1:00PM and be followed by an informal evening networking reception. Invite your co-workers, customers, and vendors to join and learn more about the ZigBee Alliance.

    REGISTRATION:

    To confirm open house attendance, please complete the online registration form.  Meeting registration does not secure you a hotel room.  Please complete one registration form for each individual attending from your company by Monday, May 10, 2004.  In order for us to provide comfortable accommodations, it is crucial that everyone register in advance.

    MEETING HIGHLIGHTS:

    • ZigBee Member Company Product Demonstrations
    • Promoter and Member Company Presentations
    • Networking Reception

    Hotel Monaco Seattle 1101 Fourth Avenue Seattle, WA 98101http://www.monaco-seattle.com/ Krista Burgess, Event Manager, ZigBee Alliance [email protected]

  • Streaming Media East

    At Streaming Media East, learn how to use streaming to create, manage, publish, and distribute digital media. Streaming Media East is where information technology professionals and business executives will get actionable information about using streaming and digital media technologies in the areas of marketing, advertising and promotion, corporate communications, education and e-learning, and customer relationship management. Currently accepting speaker submissions. Hilton NY, New York City http://www.streamingmedia.com/

  • NetWorld + Interop

    The networking community come together. Las Vegas, NV

  • SnapStream FireFly Media PC Remote Released

    One important area for addressing your media within the home will be the ability to operate computer that is holding your hundreds of films, thousands of music tracks and endless media sources will be the remote control. Clearly you will not want to be forced to use a keyboard and mouse.

    Many companies are starting to bring out products that address this market and SnapStream Media have released a product this week that they originally announced at the start 2004.

    The ‘Firefly’ remote integrates with more than 80 popular digital media applications like Microsoft Windows Media Player, online music download service Musicmatch, DivX, WinDVD and SnapStream’s own Beyond TV.

    The remote has many buttons on it including five programmable media buttons provide instant access to music, TV, video, photos or DVD applications. For programs that it cannot directly control it has a ‘Mouse Mode’

    By using Radio Frequencies (RF) the remote can transmit signals through walls and up to 30 feet away. It comes with its own media center software, SnapStream Media’s Beyond Media that has been designed with a ’10-foot user interface’, meaning that it has been designed to be used for easy viewing and across-the-room control.

    Currently it is only available through the snapstream online store for $49.

    Remotes are going to be a hot market and we understand from one of the market leaders that there are some special things in the pipeline for later in the year.

    SnapStream FireFly information

  • Nintendo DS and Sony PSP news hits mainstream

    E3, the LA games show, is on the nearly upon us and it’s a reflection on the level of competition within the games industry these days that lots of news is coming out prior to the show. Yesterday we covered the pre-show news of EyeToy:Chat and today Reuters is covering the upcoming battle between Sony and Nintendo with their new handhelds.

    To those who have been following the gaming market, the arrival of the Sony PSP and Nintendo DS are not news. What will be news is the exact specification and capabilities of them, as most discussion on the subject has been conjecture.

    What is known is that the PSP will be more than a games machine, it will also play music and films. The DS will have two screens – DS stands for Dual Screen.

    Nintendo has tempted furious discussion in how the DS will be operated, with some who may know more added to this. “This will not be a machine where you push the ‘A’ button or ‘B’ button and move the direction pad, but a completely different way to interact with the device,” said Hirokazu Hamamura, president of “Famitsu” game magazine publisher EnterBrain.

    Nintendo has been very strong in the past in getting their gaming platforms working together. The portable GameBoy Advance (GBA) can connect to the GameCube games console, and in fact games such as Animal Crossing let the game characters pass between the two to ‘live’ between them. As we’ve previously covered, Sony is planning to mirror this with the PSP, PS2 and PSX connecting.

    Before either the PSP or DS are released, Nokia will be releasing its new version of N-Gage, the QD. We will be testing and reviewing it at the end of May.

    Reuters – Sony, Nintendo Aim to Wow Gamers with New Handhelds

  • Apple iTunes hit 3.3m song in 1 week

    Apple are very proud that they have reached their record sales of 3.3m paid-for music tracks in one week. We feel it is no coincidence that they are keen to tell everyone about it in the week that Sony launch their Connect music service.

    They are putting it down to the introduction of iMixes. iMixes is a clever idea, which combines a recommendation list and old-school mix tapes, encouraging purchasers to widen their musical choices and in the process opening them up to buying a lot more songs. Apple report that over 20,000 of the have been uploaded already.

    The big sales figure might also be down to attracting more people to the service by giving away free tracks to mark its one year anniversary. More that 500,000 tracks were downloaded.

    The iTunes Music store now has 700,000 song and is adding to them all of the time. They have just done a deal with Motown, who are marking their 45 year anniversary, are to make the “vast majority” of their albums available digitally for the first time.

    Apple iTunes press release

  • Dixons to promote Napster 2.0 in the UK

    The now-legitimate music download service Napster has signed a multi-faceted deal with UK electronic retailing giant Dixons. Dixons will install Napster 2.0 software on all the own-brand computers (Advent, Ei System and Patriot) and sell Napster-branded blank CDRs, CD wallets and CD labelling kits in store. Dixons have also committed to promote the service on its Web site and in stores, with the campaign starting in two weeks.

    Despite announcing the closure of 300 stores around the UK Dixons are the dominant electronics retailer in the UK with more than 1,100 outlets in the UK, including the PC World, The Link and Currys chains.

    The costs of the UK version of Napster are not known but at current exchange rates the US equivalent would be singles at $0.99 (£0.53) and full albums for around $10 (£5.33).

    Napster have also announced that they will launch their service in Canada, claiming it to be the first legitimate offering there. They will be provding Canadian consumers a localised version of Napster 2.0, complete with Canadian-specific radio stations, promotions and content from domestic acts. Details of the UK offering have not been revealed.

  • Sony EyeToy gets Sociable

    Slowly and steadily, Sony is building on the usage and application of the ground-breaking EyeToy webcam add-on for their Playstation 2. The latest announcement is EyeToy:Chat, which expands the tool into a far more social area.

    As you probably already know, EyeToy is a low cost Webcam that plugs into Sony’s Playstation 2 and is placed on top of the television, pointing into the room. The player controls the game by moving their arms, body and head around, which in turn interacts with the games. There is no need to use a joypad. It was originally released as EyeToy:Play and came with twelve mini-games; Kung Fu – chopping opponents, the inevitable dance games – Saturday Night Fever-style arm waving, even Keep-up – using the head to keep a ball in the air and knocking it into objects.

    EyeToy: Chat brings voice, chat, video mail, video chat and a selection of video-enabled simple games such as chess and checkers. Utilising the broadband adaptor the text chat rooms allow 256 people to talk together, with 16 people able to converse at one time in the voice chat rooms, as well as real-time video. When people are in one-on-one video chats, the options to play the simple games are presented. The video mail feature will allow users to send 30-second video messages to anyone on their buddy list.

    Clearly safety will be a big concern for parents and Sony’s London Studios, the original inventors of EyeToy, who developed Chat and have spent considerable efforts in trying to make the product as safe as possible. User will need to register with Playstation Net to use it and will only be bale to take part once they enter the PIN that is send to their home address. With Chat rooms being moderated and a clear processes for grievances Sony feels “‘EyeToy: Chat’ is one of the safest communication packages available on any system on the market.”

    The whole of the Digital-Lifestyles office is looking forward to its European Summer release.

  • Data-over-DAB: GWR/BT partnership announced

    The widespread understanding of DAB is in its use to provide the next generation of radio and many have found the advantages that the CD-quality audio broadcast bring.

    We at Digital-Lifestyles have been excited about using DAB to broadcast data efficiently to many devices since 2002 when it first came to our attention. DAB has a theoretical total output of up to 1.7 Mbits per second and has the major advantage that is broadcast. The costs of distribution of content is fixed, no matter how many people receive it, – the opposite to other data delivery channels such as GRPS or 3G.

    Last year we saw a number of devices being demonstrated at IBC2003, some which used GSM and DAB, others combined GPRS and DAB, all featured the receipt of data over DAB and the provision of a back channel over the cellular services.

    A number of trials have also been run. There was a six month trial in the UK which started in October 2003, run by Capital Radio PLC, NTL Broadcast and RadioScape Ltd which delivered Dolby 5.1 surround sound over live Internet Protocol (IP) datacasting using the Windows Media 9 Pro CoDec.

    Today we are pleased to see that UK broadcaster GWR and BT wholesale have come together to create a new digital multi-media UK broadcast operation. The new entity will create mobile broadcast services to deliver multi-media content such as news, sports and entertainment. They plan to launch a London-wdie service during 2005, and expand across the Uk in 2006.

    The new venture will utilise Digital One’s digital broadcasting capacity, running alongside eight national digital radio stations. Digital One is 63% owned by GWR. The rest of details for the deal are fairly complex and we would suggest reading the press release to get a full understanding, but GWR are confident of additonal earnings from it with an estimated £5m in the year ending March 2008.

    Data over DAB sounds like a great idea – it is but sadly there are currently a couple of obstacles to everyone receiving broadband-type delivery speeds of content to portable handsets.

    The most significant is that enshrined in UK law is a restriction on the balance between the bandwidth that must be used audio broadcast and that for data. The original 1996 Broadcasting Act specified that data must take up no more that 10% but in a 1998 review by the Secretary of State this was changed 20% of the multiplex over a 24 hours period. Glyn Jones, Operations Director of Digital One told Digital-Lifestyles that through negotiation with the UK regulator OFCOM they have agreed to alter their licence by changing two of the radio services original included Digital One’s licence – a rolling news service from ITN and a financial information service from Bloomberg – which were withdrawn in 2002. They will be replaced with the GWR/BT wholesale service and Digital One is confident that this will not exceed their 20% data allocation.

    DAB receiver cards have been developed as add-ons for portable devices, but there will be a delay before it becomes mass market as the DAB chipsets need to be incorporated into mobile phones and devices before it can really fly.

    Keep your eye on this one. We feel it is still a very exciting means of wide spread delivery of content.

     

    Examples of possible services provided by GWR/BT:

    News and sport: – There would be no need to dial-up to find out the news & sport. Every time the user picks up the device the very latest information will be available to browse. It is similar to having a news portal on the phone without the need to pay each time the user wants to look at it nor the wait to dial-up and down load information. It is already there and can be used 24/7 for a low fixed fee.

    Traffic congestion: – Breaking traffic and travel updates would be always available on the phone or PDA, ready to be checked when the user is on the move. There would be no need to dial-up each time to discover delays, the information is constantly pushed onto the phone memory and can be accessed for a low fixed cost. The latest information replaces out of date information automatically making it very efficient and simple to use.

    Live entertainment device – the mobile phone or PDA becomes a live entertainment device as it will automatically receive games downloads and movie previews to be played at any time. Games can be played at any time with others using the mobile phone connection as well as movie clips forwarded.

    Stock market information – the PDA could have a stock market ticker and share updates constantly refreshing. There is no need to dial-up for the latest business and financial information as it is directly broadcast to the device.

    GWR Press release – GWR and BT create mobile digital datacasting operation

  • Voice World

    3rd annual exhibition and conference covering the use of voice technology. London, UK http://www.voice-world.com