Digital-Lifestyles

Simon Perry

  • Big Brother Slashes Phone Voting Costs: What About Previous Years?

    Big Brother Slashes Phone Voting CostsThe dreadful television programme, that those involved have tried as hard as possible to turn in to an ‘event’, Big Brother, comes on to some UK TV screens tonight. That isn’t of interest really, is it?

    What is worth noting is how Channel 4 and Endemol have dropped the price of the phone calls that the show relies on to provide the votes that influence if contestants stay or leave the programme. Being ‘interactive’ with the audience they call it.

    By way of a background to the price reductions, it’s relevant to understand that the UK has seen a large and considerable kerfuffle about how TV stations and production companies have been ripping off viewers who have called in to premium rate phone lines. Often the calling contestants had no chance of winning.

    Big Brother Slashes Phone Voting CostsThe call price drops
    This year eviction votes on Big Brother will drop from 50p per call to 25p (from a BT landline). Of this, 10p will go to charity and the reminder to Channel 4 for ‘administrating’ the calls.

    Big Brother SMS voting will be dropped completely.

    External vote monitoring
    There have for years been unsubstantiated claims that the voting for Big Brother has been rigged by the production team to try and spice up things when it’s looking too flaccid.

    This year the voting will be monitored by an external law firm.

    Summary: Investigate Previous Years Voting
    All of these changes that are being made around Big Brother appear like they’re being made to clear the decks before this years show.

    With these moves, especially the SMS voting, is it just us who thinks that there are questions to be answer about the previous years voting, if those votes cast were properly taken account of and whether income generated over those years was legitimately gained.

  • First Tuesday Returning: Warning Bubble Burst 2.0

    First Tuesday Returning: Warning Bubble Burst 2.0A little bird has told us that they have received an email from Christer Holloman of … shock, horror … First Tuesday. It’s time to sell up and ship out of any and all Internet-touching businesses as Christer tells all that they are to carry out a “secret launching event in London after the summer.”

    First Tuesday, the Bastard child of Nick Denton (See picture) and a couple of others, quickly became a byword for greed in London back at the end on the ’90’s.
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  • Big Brother UK Drops SMS Voting Completely

    Big Brother Drops SMS Voting CompletelyFor years Big Brother has been actively encouraging the audience to vote using SMS messages from the mobiles.

    No more. They’re completely dropping the SMS voting, claiming “the mobile phone operators cannot process the votes within a time frame suitable for the voting procedures on the programme.”

    When did this change? Is this a new development?

    The failure of SMS voting is NOT news
    I remember speaking to the tech wizards at the Australian Broadcast Company (ABC) back in 2004 at Broadcast Asia who told that they decided that they could not legitimately use SMS voting as the delivery of it was not reliable enough, especially if there was a need to do it within a certain time period – like gathering votes before a deadline.

    They opted for another mobile-based technology, that although slightly more involved for the viewer to use, at least gave a truthful representation of what was going on.

  • SanDisk microSD 1GB: Gosh It’s Small

    SanDisk microSD 1GB: Gosh It's SmallWe received our first Micro-SD memory today. The SanDisk microSD/Transflash is _tiny_. Truly minuscule.

    Obviously we’d seen a few press shots of them around, but that doesn’t prepare you for actually getting them in your hands – or fingertips.

    It’s not news that the capacity of memory in increasing and that the amount of physical space needed for that memory is reducing, so we thought it would be fun to do a comparison.

    We dug out some old memory – NEC D41256C-12 to be precise – which was the state of the art circa 1979/1980. It has been bought on eBay five or so years back as parts insurance for the in-house Stargate Defender machine we love sooo much.

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  • Moo Mini-Cards Review (88%)

    Moo Cards Review (88%)It came as a surprise to me how excited I was about receiving my Moo cards today.

    I’ve been meaning to get some since they first surfaced, but my upcoming trip to the Broadband World Forum in Beijing next month brought the need further into focus.
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  • Two Way TV Acquired By Ingenious

    TwoWay TV acquired By IngeniousLong-lasting interactive TV and new media company, Two Way TV has just announced that Ingenious Media Active Capital Ltd (IMAC) have bought 84.3% of their shares – a controlling stake – which Two Way TV are reporting as costing “up to £5.34m.” This would value the company at approx £6.33m.

    Two Way TV pioneered interactive TV in the UK, describing themselves as “a leading interactive TV production company,” supplying many of ITV’s red button services on major shows like X Factor and Dancing on Ice, as well as SMS premium text games on shows such as Love Island.

    When we spoke to Two Way they said they were pleased to be working with Ingenious, particularly because of the other companies under Ingenious’ wing.

    The investment will be used to expand its creative and production teams for interactive entertainment shows and open a new office in Los Angeles to target the rapidly emerging US market.
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  • Sky Probed Over ITV Share Holding

    Sky Probed Over ITV Share HoldingThe UK Department of Trade and Industry has referred Rupert Murdoch’s Sky purchase of nearly 18% share holding in major UK broadcaster ITV.

    In the words of Alistair Darling, the Secretary of State for Trade and Industry, “My decision reflects consideration of the reports I have received from both the Office of Fair Trading and Ofcom and of other representations I have received about this matter.”

    This action won’t be unexpected at Sky, Ofcom and the Office of Fair Trading recommended this back on 27 April this year.

    Sky has released the following statementSky notes today’s announcement by the Secretary of State for Trade and Industry. We look forward to engaging with the Competition Commission as the ongoing regulatory process enters its next phase.Translation: Bring it on.

  • Gmail: Now 20Mb Attachments

    Gmail: Now 20Mb AttachmentsGmail, Google’s Web-based email service, has enlarged the size of attachments that can be sent, doubling the previous 10Mb limit to 20Mb.

    On hearing this news, creators of bloated powerpoint presentations all over the city were seen to be dancing in the streets rejoicing.
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  • DreamStripper Cabaret: I have seen the future – and it takes its clothes off

    DreamStripper Cabaret: I have seen the future - and it stripsWell, if there’s one area of convergence that we haven’t been keeping up to date with, it’s obviously virtual stripping.

    We remember seeing a one-inch high wiggling dancer than stood on the same spot on a Windows desktop and was a dancer, not a stripper. That was about five plus years back, but since then it’s dropped off our radar.
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  • Optiarc BD-M100A: Blu-ray Burner First From Sony NEC

    Optiarc BD-M100A: Blu-ray Burner First From Sony NECOptiarc, the product of the joined Sony and NEC’s optical storage divisions, has released the BD-M100A, their first Blu-ray Burner.

    It burns single and dual layer BD-R and BD-RE Blu-ray discs, giving a storage capacity of up to 35Gb and 50 Gb respectively. It also supports BD-ROM and BD-AV discs.
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