Simon Perry

MySpace Face Four Child Lawsuits
MySpace is being hit with compensation claims by the families of four children who allege sexual assault by adult MySpace members after finding out personal information about them on their MySpace pages.
The families from New York, Ohio, South Carolina and Texas have filed seperate cases in Los Angeles. They’re being represented by Arnold & Itkin LLP of Houston, Texas and Barry & Loewy LLP of Austin, Texas.
They allege “negligence, recklessness, fraud and negligent misrepresentation” by News Corp. and MySpace.
These cases don’t appear to fall into the ‘oh this might have happened’ category. Three of the cases have lead to the incarceration of the attackers, one whom is serving ten years in Texas. In the other case the two men have been arrested and are awaiting criminal prosecution.
Not the first claim
This isn’t a first for Barry & Loewy LLP. Back in June 2006 they filed the first lawsuit of its kind against MySpace, for a 14 year old girl who was also allegedly assaulted after contact through MySpace.
They claimed MySpace was “negligent in protecting teenage users despite numerous warnings of the dangers” and “had full knowledge that sexual predators were contacting young children on the website but did nothing to stop it.” The financial claim was $30 million in damages.
Concerns like these aren’t new to MySpace. Back in Feb 2006, parents were voicing their concerns.
MySpace have taken action. In December last year MySpace took action to kick off known sexual predators.
Be careful
Cases like these will bring into focus the potential dangers to those who reveal details about themselves online, although with a few simple rules, horrible incidents such as these should be avoidable. Most of them being the same rules you would apply in normal, non-online life.
19 January, 2007
Nintendo Wii _Does_ Get You Fit
Mickey DeLorenzo is a man on a mission – to prove that it’s possible to lose weight just by playing his Nintendo Wii.
He’s been the same weight for the last two years and while maintaining his normal diet, complete with the usual Christmas indulgences in food and drink, he managed to lose nine pounds and nearly 2% of his body fat by playing for 30 minutes a day.
He’s been pretty fastidious in his self-monitoring over the six week period, keeping a close eye on his Weight; Body Mass Index (BMI); Calories burned per session/per game; Body fat %; Heart Rate at rest; Wii Fitness Age; and Additional Notes/Soreness.
By his own description, he played it in a “semi-aggressive way.”
I moved my feet, I used full body motion, and I swung my arms to mimic the real thing. If you just stand there and make small moves or sit on the couch and play, I don’t think you’ll see much, if any results regarding exercise.
Oh the pain
It wasn’t without pain, but as they used to say in the 80s, no pain, no gain.
He got hit with two types of pain – physical pain as well as tech pain. On the physical pain side, he report that “my first 3-5 days were brutal. I was sore from shoulder to wrist, I even went as far as purchasing an Icy/Hot patch to sooth my pain.”
The tech pain was him smashing the screen off his girlfriend’s laptop during a game of Wii bowling. We suspect this accident then lead to further physical pain inflicted by his missus.
The details that he presents on the site are pretty extreme, with obligitory graphs too. Those things combined with the subject make it ideal Digg food, and as we write this, we see the article has been Dugg 3655 times.
I did a similar test with the Sony EyeToy a couple of years back, using Kung Fu that came with EyeToy Play. It really got me feeling good, but my appoach was _far_ less scientific. Reading this gives me the impetus to try it again.
Nintendo must be jubliant about this story – providing the perfect excuse for children to pester their parents to buy a Wii.
Hats off and well done Mickey.
19 January, 2007
Skype: Calls To Landlines Go Flat Rate & Skype Pro Announced
Skype are on the move again, this time changing the way that they bill for calls to landlines.
As is their want, it will be brought to in Europe, then rest of world during 2007.
The new charging scheme does away with per-minute charges for SkypeOut calls to domestic landlines, replacing it with a connection fee. This fee changes depending on the currency, with Europe paying 3.9 Euro Cents and the UK being spanked 2.9 pence per call, against the current exchange rate equivalent of 2.56 pence. All of these prices exclude VAT.
After the first five seconds of a SkypeOut call, the connection fee will apply.
Some countries will be cheaper, running at 1.7 Euro Cents, these currently include … Czech Republic (including Prague), Guam, Hungary (including Budapest), Israel (including Jerusalem), Luxembourg, Malaysia (including Kuala Lumpur), Puerto Rico and both Alaska and Hawaii in the United States.
This shift around isn’t a bolt out of the blue. Back in December a Skype Executive talked about these connection rates that became effective from 13:00 CET today.
The Skype Unlimited Calling plan in the US and Canada and the Talk for Britain campaign in the UK do not include a connection fee for national calls. Skype to Skype calls continue to be free and calls to mobiles will continue to be charged on a per minute basis.
Setup fees are usually bad news for people who make short calls, as the cost is front loaded, with the nattering classes gaining the biggest benefit from the flat rate.
Skype Pro
To have the privilege of a Skype Pro account punters will have to pay €2 per month. The new Skype Pro accounts also come with free Skype Voicemail and €30 off a SkypeIn number.
Skype Pro
18 January, 2007
The iDontWantOne: Private Eye Mocks The iPhone
The brilliant Private Eye, satirical magazine of the UK, has a fake advert for the Apple iPhone.
The headline? At last, from Apple – The iDontWantOne with a photo of the iPhone underneath it.
The gist of the jest is that it’s over-complicated for normal mortals and is highly likely to malfunction. After you’ve used the phone to call Apple customer support and tried to text them and failed, you can use it as an iBrick with a paper note attached to it saying “Why doesn’t your stuff work properly?”
Full copy is
The ultimate in hand-held technology! Now using the all-in-one device you can take a photo, download songs, play videos, access the internet and then with the iPhone you can ring up Apple to complain that none of the above facilities work. And if the phone doesn’t work you can text the customer services department – unless that doesn’t work either, in which case you can use it as a brick (the iBrick facility) to throw through the window of the Apple store, attached to a lo-tech hand-written note saying, “Why doesn’t your stuff work properly?”
Referring to the oft-used phrase of bad support departments, they have an insert with “Try turning it off and then on again,” underneath a photo of The Steve.
Given Apple’s legal-happy status currently, they may be contacting The Eye – not something that will phase them, they’ve had far bigger legal battles and won before.
Besides the great jests that Private Eye have against the irrelevant, they also carry out real journalism – actually investigating wrongs and exposing them – something of a rarity in most publications.
Private Eye
Private Eye subscriptions
18 January, 2007
Singapore WiFi ‘Thief’ Gets Probation
A 17-year old Singaporian male has just escaped a jail sentence, for piggy-backing on someone else’s WiFi connection without their permission, AFP have reported. In place of ‘time in the can’, he ended up with 18 months probation, including a period in a boys home and 80 hours of community service.
Pretty severe for securing “access at about 02:00 on May 13 last year to a wireless router belonging to a person identified as Amos Leong “for the purpose of obtaining computer service” and specifically for Internet access.”
The poor fellow, Garyl Tan Jia Luo, was apparently addicted to online gambling the court was told. This lead him to jump on to someoneles connection, after his Mum took away his modem. He was sitting outside using his computer when someone became suspicious and called the boys in blue to get him arrested.
Back in December he pleaded guilty and had a possible maximum three years prison sentence hanging over him over the whole Xmas period.
There’s another case coming to the Singapore courts soon, with the bod facing some 60 charges of the same.
We could sort of understand it if someone was having to pay for the access, like the 20c/min service that SingTel WiFi service started back in 2002, but what makes this whole thing even stranger is that the Singapore government are planning to give the population free WiFi access soon.
While this is the first case of this sort in Singapore, there have been other examples around the world, including the UK and US. As you can see, it was particuarly popular to run these bods through the courts in 2005.
What’s up with these people?
Whenever we hear about these cases, we’re frankly amazed that these people get done at all. Who is it hurting when a little bandwidth is borrowed?
We’ve had first-hand experience with this at our previous office in Hanson Street, London. We had naturally left our WiFi connection open, just incase someone wanted to check mails as they were passing by. Sadly someone nearby decided that they were going to abuse it and cane the heck out of it to download huge amounts of content on P2P networks.
Once we found out about it, it wasn’t a call to the law, but a tightening of the setting on the router to make sure the uninvited guest wasn’t able to abuse our generosity anymore.
[via]
17 January, 2007
Joost: The Venice Project Renamed
The next-market-to-disrupt target of the Skype/Kazaa founders – TV – has it’s latest news. The Venice Project’s working name has been changed to Joost, continuing their penchant for picking weird names – always a benefit when you want the domains(!).
As to the source/root of the name … ? Well it could be that their massive fans of ’80s video game Joust or perhaps it’s a reference to the German for a friendly ‘goodbye’, Tschüss. Who knows? FYI – It’s actually pronounced Juiced.
We’ve been fiddling with the ~~Venice Project~~, sorry, Joost for a couple of weeks now, since Christopher Wood very kindly sent us an invite to join up.
We whacked it on an older (1.5GHz) machine and found that it really didn’t have the horsepower to run it properly. It’s a pretty greedy little number, even running out of steam on a 2.5GHz. The buzz around us beta testers is that currently, it _loves_ taking power/resources.
Clearly the Joost crew are seeing this as a product for the future (not a bad assumption), that will need to have a current processor to run it on. Queue computer and chip makers cheering and clapping.
A couple of beta testers are pointing and declaring that Joost will be the first failure of the founders. We think that it’s waaaaay to early to be calling that. Be patient my headline grabbing-friend and see how it turns out.
Let’s not forget 1) this is still in Beta, 2) Windows Media Centre was a total dog throughout many of its incarnation, taking years to get to the point where it was even usable.
Joost
17 January, 2007
Nokia Intellisync Wireless Email now on Sony Ericsson M600 and P990
Nokia are extending their relationship with Sony Ericsson as they take their Intellisync Wireless Email to two more Sony Ericsson devices, the M600 and P990.
Nokia’s Intellisync Wireless Email is their counter to RIM’s Blackberry and Microsoft’s mobile email service, covering wireless email, synchronization for calendars, contacts, files, data and applications.
Where as the competition only works with their own devices, Nokia claims that theirs works with any device and any backend system. This extended deal with Sony Ericsson makes this real.
This solution is primarily aimed at business users, but as people become dependent on digital communications, it’s highly likely that every man (and woman) and his (or her) dog (or cat) will be wanting this kind of thing.
Around the Digital-Lifestyles office we are not big email fans, given that it’s laden with so much junk these days. We, like many others use IM to communicate.
16 January, 2007
TiVo: Broadband Music Deals; TiVoToGo For Mac; Emmy Award: CES 2007
TiVo has been shipping their PVRs with an Ethernet port since their series 2 model, promising content delivered over broadband.
At CES this week they told the world a bit more about what they’re going to do about it.
TiVo have signed deals with both Music Choice and RealNetworks to deliver music videos and songs to their panting subscriber’s TVs starting “later in 2007.”
The Real Networks deal is self-described as a “first-of-its-kind integration of the Rhapsody digital music service with the TiVo service,” which will give TiVo subscribers access to over 3 million songs on-demand only using their TiVo remote.
TiVoToGo for the Macintosh
TiVoToGo – the Tivo add-on service that lets subscribers burn the content they have on their TiVo to DVD and transfer it to portable devices – is now available on the Mac, a year after it was introduced for the PC.
They achieved this through a joint venture with Roxio, utilizing their Toast 8 Titanium software, letting subscribers transfer programmes either one episode at a time or automatically as soon as the TiVo DVR has recorded them.
The standard charge will be $99, but for a limited period it can be bought through the Roxio site with the bonus of getting a FREE TiVo Glo remote.
Emmy Award
TiVo has had a pretty long path to where they are now, which at times has been a little bumpy, so we imagine there is much happiness when they heard that its Interactive Advertising Platform was presented with the Emmy Award for Outstanding Innovation and Achievement in Advanced Media Technology.
The collective ears of the advertising business must be ringing when TiVo’s CEO, Tom Rogers said, “We have proven that consumers will opt in to an advertising message if relevant and provided the ability to not miss their favorite shows.” The Ads-types will see grasp hold of this, praying that this will lead them out of the valley of (income)-death.
TiVoTVToGo
12 January, 2007
Apple Fans Are Nuts. The iPhone Launch Proves It
OK, we all know the details now. Apple are releasing a phone – and it’s a looker. Hurrah.
For anyone who has the slightest interest in technology, this isn’t shocking given their track record.
What we found strange watching the video of the iPhone event, even disturbing, was the reaction of the audience.
For an English, or perhaps more widely, a non-American audience, the reaction of the crowd at the MacWorld event is odd – religious even.
As Ryan Block of Engadget said when covering the event live
10:29 – People are rapt, everyone is actually literally leaning forward and on the edge of their seat. We’ve never seen a presentation like this before.
There’s a huge imbalance here.
Let’s try and get some perspective on this – these are just products. Objects that you buy and use.
Yes the phone looks great; Yes rumours of it have been circulating for years and the anticipation was high; Yes the usage of the phone looks well thought out – but it it just a phone.
The reaction of the crowd is as if The Steve was announcing a significant medical break through, or the end of a war.
Strangely, the most enthusiastic reaction from the crowd was before any of the details of this were known, it was just after the mention that they would be releasing a phone.
Apple is a master at PR, so a lot of this excitement has been managed … and it’s been built up for a long time – all designed for a reaction like this. And judging by the recording of the event, it’s worked well.
10 January, 2007
Brave New Digital World Conference
Salford, Gtr Manchester, UK
Now in its 14th year, the Salford Conference is the most important forum to discuss television from a non-metropolitan perspective.
The 2007 Conference, to be held on 11 January 2007 at the Lowry Centre, Salford Quays, will focus on the opportunities presented by the new digital world for the industry outside London. It will look at the effect on the rest of the country of the BBC’s proposed move to Salford, and as the commercial TV industry changes at bewildering speed it will look at the future of ITV in the Nations and Regions. There will be discussions on the new platforms and interactive media and a chance to meet the experts, The Conference will showcase new platforms and technologies, offer a scriptwriters’ master class, and provide an opportunity over lunch to “Speed Date the Commissioners!”
Brave New Digital World Conference
9 January, 2007