Simon Perry

Zoran COACH 9: DivX Record Coming To Digital Cameras: CES 2007
Everyone and their uncle are making digital cameras these days and companies like Zoran help them to do that by providing the chips for capture and processing.
The news from the floor at CES is that the COACH 9 will now support the popular DivX video format, giving the benefit of video compatibility with the tens of millions of DivX Certified DVD players.
Zoran’s COACH 9 is already capable of capture images at up to 16mpx for still images and capturing and playing back WMV MPEG-4 video of VGA resolution at 30 frames/sec including audio and 20 frames/sec at SVGA resolution.
When it first arrived, DivX was used by many to encode copied videos, including a considerable amount to p0rn. They’ve worked hard to shift that image and this support is a boost for DivX furthering its aim to become a global standard for video encoding.
DivX certification
9 January, 2007
Second Life Going Open Source
Wow. Linden Labs, the owner, creator of online gaming smash Second Life have announced that they’ll be placing their front end software, The Viewer, under an open-source GPL license.

We think it’s a pretty brave move, which Linden Labs will lead to innovation in the front end – highly likely, given the passionate and highly technical nature of a large number of their players, or Residents, as they call them.
The move marks Linden Lab’s continued commitment to building the Second Life Grid as an open, extensible platform for development, rather than a closed proprietary system.
Linden Labs are right to recognise that their income comes from the $9.95 subscription fee, not the software that is used to access the ‘world.’
Going open source was inevitable and vital in the view of Linden Labs, as CTO Cory Ondrejka explained, “Open sourcing is the most important decision we’ve made in seven years of Second Life development. While it is clearly a bold step for us to proactively decide to open source our code, it is entirely in keeping with the community-creation approach of Second Life.”
Second Life’s open source code
Linden Labs blog entry
9 January, 2007
IGF: Independent Games Festival 2007
Moscone Center, San Francisco, CA
The CMP Game Group established the Independent Games Festival in 1998 to encourage innovation in game development and to recognize the best independent game developers. They saw how the Sundance Film Festival benefited the independent film community, and wanted to create a similar event for independent game developers.
The competition, now in its 9th year, awards a total of over $50,000 in prizes to deserving indie creators in Main Competition, Student Competition, and Mod Competition categories at the IGF Awards Ceremony, which will be held the evening of March 7, 2007 at the Moscone Center, San Francisco, CA, and is one of the highlights of the Game Developers Conference.
Link
4 January, 2007
Games Gone By: A history of video games – GameOn
Game On exhibition, Science Museum, London
Most people think that video gaming starting in the 1970s and 1980s with classic games such as Pong, Space Invaders and Pac-Man, but the real story of video games goes back even further. Come along and discover the machines, the people and true stories behind the birth of the games industry as speakers from the International Game Developers Association delve deep into gaming’s past.
Link
4 January, 2007
Video Games: Look of the future – GameOn
Our computers and consoles have an amazing amount of processing power, creating realistic lighting, textures and characters. How is this done and are there limits to what can be re-created on a screen? Discover, with Dr Chris Doran of Geomerics, what the games of the future will look like.
Held at the Science Museum.
Link
4 January, 2007
Merry xmas … and see you soon.
I do hope you don’t mind, but we’re taking off for xmas and a bit more.
It’s been a hell of a year, and we need a pause. I suspect that you know that, news can be tiring. It’s incessant.
While we’re away, we pray to the mighty Google that our page rank doesn’t drop below our much-prized 7 (amen) and that the Google News bot doesn’t drop the frequency of its visits to our site.
I wanted to put out a special thank you to the fellow writers on Digital-Lifestyles, with the big-up to Mike, he’s got a great style – and never lacks a comment on his much loved Treo.
Many thanks also to the other contributers, and the same with gold knobs on to Tim Bourne, Mark Harris, Steve Kennedy and Scott Russell – your respective expertise’s are appreciated. Finally a big recent welcome to our current youngest writer, Huw Leslie.
Last and first (but no means least, surely?), thanks to Sal for her committed support.
If we feel inspired, there _may_ be the odd piece popping up every now and again over the time, so if you haven’t already, try subscribing to our RSS feed. You’ll see them when they pop up.
Please join us on 3.Jan.07 when normal service will resume, and, after the novelty of 07 starting dies down a little, await the changes.
I hope you’re own break is everything you plan it to be.
Now … time for sleep ….
22 December, 2006
The Venice Project: Overview
The rumours of Niklas Zennstrom of Sweden and Janus Friis of Denmark next project have been whirling around for about six months since sold Skype to eBay for $2.6Bn, the two are focusing their talents on TV with The Venice Project.
To date, the pair and their team have had a lot of success in disrupting industries. They’ve had a pop at the music business with Kazaa, the telephone business via Skype and now the television business. Time for the TV world to take note.
This weekend, the Financial Times has picked up on the story, re-igniting the media interest.
The Venice Project (TVP) employed their first programmer on 1 January 2006, so have had nearly a year to get the software to the point where it’s ready to be noticed. The beta release came out on 12 December and since then they have a reported 6,000 on the beta program.
We suspect the FT piece was part of a carefully-managed media campaign, as TVP will need to start attracting the advertisers that will support the content being show for free to the users of TVP.
What does TVP do?
On their blog, the TVP team outline their desires/drivers for the project. The founding idea – TV isn’t good, so it needs fixing.
It’s not Skype TV as some publications have reported.
TVP is headquartered in Leiden in The Netherlands it also has other offices in Toulouse, France; London and New York. Its CEO is Fredrik de Wahl, and it looks like they’ve built up quite a few employees.
The FT are reporting it will carry “near high-definition” programmes, while TVP speak about TV-quality.
We’ve seen some screenshots of the service and, even despite its early beta-stage, it looks pretty slick. The video runs in full screen, with a high quality image being shown. Additional content and EPG features are laid on top, with the video still viewable underneath.
Content for the beta-trial is coming from some pretty big names in the media business including Warner Brothers.
The adverts that are shown on the service, allow it be free. We understand from one of the beta testers that the adverts are not too intrusive and pretty short.
It’s not just the P2P
On a simple level, TVP is software that enables the delivery of video content to individuals using P2P to ease the distribution, while radically reducing the price of getting it out there. Indeed most of the mainstream media are focusing their attention on TVP using P2P.
We think this misses the biggest change the TVP could bring about. Recommendation and tagging of content will make the content findable – one of the biggest headaches when the worlds content is available to a viewer.
Once programmes have been selected to watch, we understand that there will be tools to let people discuss the shows as they are going on – thus bringing a community around the TV shows. There are add on services that offer this, but its inclusion as an integral part of the system will make it second nature to contribute to.
It appears that TVP will avoid the need to apply DRM to the content as “the bits and bytes being collected on your computer are fragments of a stream,” as Fredrik de Wahl, the project’s chief executive told the FT. We can see that there is logic behind this, but doesn’t address the fact that, for the programme to be shown, they need to reside on the machine while they are being shown. In truth, all that needs to be achieved with the technology is to pursue the content owner to put their content on it.
The Venice Project is definitely one to watch. We hope to get on the beta program soon, to give you a more in-depth view and understanding of its impact.
The Venice Project TVP
Images courtesy of Choose Chris
19 December, 2006
Google Zeitgeist 2006 – Social Software Rules
Google have just released their top searches in 2006 for their normal search and news service.
Social software rules the roost in their standard search with BeBo beating MySpace and video sharing sites also doing very well.
We find it amazing that people use search engines to search for a site, when all they needed to do was to type .com after it to gain direct access to the site, but ho, hum. The only comfort that we can draw from this is that at least people aren’t entering in the whole domain for the search, as many used to.
What are we to think of the top search in the news – Paris Hilton? Who knows, and we guess we can’t ask her as she doesn’t call any more, after that Oscars party at Soho House in LA.
Here’s the full list …
Google.com – Top Searches in 2006
1. bebo
2. myspace
3. world cup
4. metacafe
5. radioblog
6. wikipedia
7. video
8. rebelde
9. mininova
10. wiki
Google News – Top Searches in 2006
1. paris hilton
2. orlando bloom
3. cancer
4. podcasting
5. hurricane katrina
6. bankruptcy
7. martina hingis
8. autism
9. 2006 nfl draft
10. celebrity big brother 2006
Google Zeitgeist
19 December, 2006
Skype Offers US Unlimited Calling Plan
While announcing the release 3.0 of their VoIP software, Skype have unveiled the US Unlimited Calling Plan.
Don’t panic – this doesn’t affect Skype to Skype calls, but calls to US landlines and mobile.
The offer to US Skype users is $29.95 per year. Those who sign up for the new plan before 31 January 2007 will get it for half price – $14.95 per year. Pay per call SkypeOut will continue.
Skype will be sweetening the deal further by giving 100 minutes of SkypeOut credit for making International calls and over $50 in discount coupons for purchasing Skype-certified hardware products.
Those Europeans who are surprised that calls to mobiles are included, should know that in the US owners of mobile pay to receive calls, so callers don’t pay extra to make them.
Until now, calls to landlines from Skype have been paid on a per calls basis, whenthey’re not offering free calls for a limited period which ends at the end of this year.
Skype are really doing rather well, with claims of over 11m Skype users, way in excess of any other VoIP services.
15 December, 2006
3.2m Wii-mote Straps NOT Recalled By Nintendo
There’s been quite a few stories flying around the Internet that Nintendo will be recalling 3.2m Wii remote safety straps.
We’ve been contacted by Nintendo to clarify the situation. They tell us that a _very_ small number of Wii remote straps have broken. How small? Well, they claim it’s 0.001% of the machines they’ve sold.
When we asked where the 3.2m figure came from, they said that it was unclear and they’re trying to trace the source.
If there have been breakages, they suspect that it’s been down to unusually active playing. It makes us think that if people are using their controllers that violently, they must be pretty passion game players.
Despite their view that their isn’t a problem, they’re offering an exchange service for those who are worried about their straps. UK owners should either contact them through [email protected] or on 0870 60 60 247.
They’re also passing on the “useful” tips for “safe play”
- Always wear the wrist strap while playing.
- Keep a firm grip on the Wii Remote at all times.
- Make sure people and objects are out of the range of movement before play begins.
- Players should keep at least three feet/ one meter from their televisions and dry their hands if they become sweaty or wet for any other reason.
- Remember that the Wii Remote is responsive enough to detect minor movements – so excessive and forceful actions are not necessary. Therefore we recommend not to use excessively rapid, violent or wide swinging motions while using the Wii Remote during game play.
All new Wii machines will be shipped with the new-style strap, which Nintendo say is to alleviate the fears of the public..
15 December, 2006