Simon Perry

VoIP On PSP Offered By BT And Sony
Sony and BT have just signed a four year deal to extend the function of the Sony PSP to have it act as a Wi-Fi video and voice ‘softphone’.
We’ve been digging a bit as the initial information offered by BT was sketchy to say the least.
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23 May, 2007
A Fair(y) Use Tale
Professor Eric Faden of Bucknell University has been a clever bunny. He’s used clips from many of Disney’s films to explain how copyright law and fair use works in the America.
Even if you’re a copyright nut who thinks that these rights should be extended indefinitely, excluding others from benefiting for the same advantages that Disney had, of building on others works that came before, you’ll appreciate the skill and patience that were required to make it.
(Watch it after the jump)
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22 May, 2007
Legal Action Against Apple Over MacBook Displays
Just after the back-patting of the release of the upgraded Apple MacBooks last week, there news that Apple is the target of a class-action in the US.
The case for false advertising and misrepresentation centers on the claims by Apple that the MacBook and MacBook Pro notebooks display supports “millions of colors” and offer views “simply unavailable on other portables.” The plaintiffs say this isn’t the case and that they are only capable of displaying the “illusion of millions of colors through the use of a software technique referred to as ‘dithering.”
To get all medieval on your arse with the numbers – the monitors is only capable of 6 bits per channel (18-bit colour), rather than 8 bits per channel. This enables the displaying of only 262,144 colours without dithering, as opposed to the 16 million colours that 8-bit could do.
More when we hear it.
(via Appleinsider, where you can find a PDF copy of the complaint)
21 May, 2007
Sky+ Subscription Charge Ending
Sky has made the decision to scrap the subscription charge for the Sky+ PVR service starting 1 July 2007.
Since its inception in 2001, Sky has been charging users of the Sky+ service £10 per month to keep using it, this includes receiving the EPG information, required to drive the service.
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21 May, 2007
PSP Online Store Coming
Sony is adapting their idea of the PS3 online store, taking it to their handheld games machine, the PSP – in the US at least.
It’s expected that a wide variety of content could be downloaded to it – demos, full games, possibly even music and videos.
With a planned start date of Autumn, or Fall for our US readers, access will be via the handheld’s Wi-Fi, using the Web browser that comes built-in.
It’s not exactly a lightening move, given that the UK release date of the PSP was September 2005 – and that was behind the US and Japan. This was acknowledged by Jack Tretton, Sony Computer Entertainment America president, “I think the advent of a long awaited and quite frankly long overdue ability to deliver a downloadable service for the PSP will help us out a great deal.”
18 May, 2007
British Visa Data Blunder: Why The Government Shouldn’t Have Your Data
The UK Government has been exposed to a very embarrassing technology related problem – revealing the personal details, and travel plans, of people hoping to visit the UK from India.
A schoolboy programming error on the VFS-UK application site, which exposed the application data details, simply by changing the reference number in the URL, was first discovered by Sanjib Mitra.
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18 May, 2007
Xbox Soundtracks Competition: UK Bedroom Musicians Awake!
Life as a bedroom DJ or budding band member has taken a number of twists over the last few years. After ages of playing to themselves (or in some cases, with themselves), they now find that the world wants to know them.
Microsoft are casting their large net out to pickup up some music skillz, which they’ll use to fit specially composed tunes to Xbox 360 game trailers.
Entering sounds like a cinch. Simply grab a trailer or two from the site (there’s twelve available), apply your musical talents to it and re-upload it.
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17 May, 2007
BT Shout “We’re Number One” In Broadband
BT are rather pleased with themselves today as they’ve gained the number one position, as Britain’s most popular broadband retailer.
They now got 3.66m broadband customers which, in their words “leapfrogs” them over Virgin Media (NTL/ Telewest as was).
BT are of course running a reduced price scheme for the first six months of sign up – as are Virgin Media. The big difference between the two offers is the entry price – BT £8.95/month and VM £14.99. We would suggest that this has had a major impact in achieving BT’s current number one position (as well as buying PlusNet a short while back).
We’ve just a little, quick maths on the number of BT’s subscribers.
There’s healthy cash flows for BT in this game. Even taking the customers to be on the lowest package, they’ll be clawing in £66m _per month_. This rises to £91m if people are on the highest package.
On a yearly basis that’s broadband subscriptions earning for BT of between £792m and 1.092 Billion a year! Don’t forget you also _have_ to have a phone line with them to have their broadband, so extra earning there.
Not a bad little business broadband has turned out to be for them really. Makes you wonder why they were so reluctant to get going back in the late ’90’s/early 2000’s.
17 May, 2007
Personal Audio Space: Microsoft Research
We spotted an interesting ditty about Microsoft Research getting excited about an array of speakers that they hope will irradicate the need for headphone wearing.
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17 May, 2007
Tivo Swivel Search Launched: Content Beyond The Box
Tivo have released a new search function that searches over not only the content on the box or that provided by the broadcaster subscribed to, but stretches beyond this to encompass relevant results from the TiVoCast service and Amazon Unbox™ on TiVo.
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16 May, 2007