Simon Perry

Storm In A T(C) Cup: How Sam Sethi Was Sacked From TechCrunch UK: UPDATED
There’s a right kerfuffle going on in the blogosphere at the moment centering around TechCrunch UK, but with possible implications for two of the biggest names in the blogging world, Six Apart and the main TechCrunch (TC) site.
Here’s the background.
- TechCrunch was a partner in Le Web 3 conference, organised by Loic Le Meur, the European representative of blogging tool supplier, Six Apart.
- Many people have blogged that they were unhappy with the Le Web 3 conference in general, and specifically they were very unhappy with three French presidential hopefuls being parachuted in at the last moment. One of those was Nikolas Sarkozy, who was accused of racist comments, triggering the Parisian riots last year. The attendant bloggers reaction to this wasn’t very positive – to say the least.
- Sam Sethi, editor/publisher (you take your pick) of TechCrunch UK writes a review after the event saying it wasn’t that good. Attending bloggers write much stronger pieces saying that the event stinks. Even the BBC reported the dissent.
- Loic Le Meur (event organiser) leaves a comment calling Sethi an “asshole.”
- Mike Arrington (founder of TechCrunch) has a private discussion with Le Meur who said he commented in haste, being emotional.
- Arrington asks Sethi to remove the Asshole comment. Sethi refuses and posts his own comment mentioning the comment. Other parts of the Sethi comment disturb Arrington, particularly about conferences being organised by Sethi that he doesn’t know about.
- Private chat between Arrington asks Sethi – result Sethi is fired for non-“ethical behaviour.”
- Sethi posts this to Tech Crunch UK (TC UK). His comment is then removed by Arrington (these are later re-published elsewhere by bloggers who read them on their RSS feedreaders).
- Arrington posts a comment “Putting TechCrunch UK on Hold” on TC UK.
- Next – All hell breaks loose in the blogging world with everyone sticking in the comment on their blogs or on TechCrunch, CrunchNotes and Tech Crunch UK.
- Arrington comes back on the site and says that he doesn’t like the comments he’s been seeing and may well just shut down TC UK.
- Cue lots more comments on how ridiculous Arrington is – and the odd one supporting him.
- UPDATE:Mike Butcher got in touch with us to let us know that he’s now resigned as co-editor of TC UK. Lots of detail in his post.
Truly a storm in a T(C) cup, but it does raise a lot of interesting issues.
What’s the fall out?
Arrington has come off very badly in this and from reading the many comments posted about it, I think it’s highly likely that many of the previous fans of TechCrunch may well stop reading it, in disgust of the way they feel it’s been handled – particularly those from Europe who attended Le Web. TechCrunch UK may well have been terminally damaged through this.
Prior to this, not a bad word has been even whispered against TechCrunch. It was hugely widely read making it one of the most popular sites on the Internet – its RSS feed alone has 144,000 subscribers. Now, in the matter of a couple days it’s possible that it may struggle to maintain its position.
This also extends to Six Apart, because of the Le Meur connection. The size and success of Six Apart was built on support from bloggers – but it’s arguable that they are now sufficiently popular with the general public that they are beyond being damaged by bloggers railing against them.
Only time will tell if Six Apart stick by Le Meur. This could well be dictated by the reaction of the bloggers as they look to continue to rant on the subject and run out of things to say about TC. At the very least I suspect Le Web won’t be hitting number 4.
What issues are raised by this?
Again accountability and transparency of business relationships (many question the deal between Le Web and TC) have been shown to be of the upmost importance in the world of blogging – and quite right too.
It also raises the issue of who owns a comment once it has been posted to a site – is it the poster, or is it the owner of the site it is posted to?
If you want more details – and there’s plenty more of them, you can find them on TechCrunch UK; CrunchNotes or more generally on a search for Sethi on Technorati
On a much lighter note, well done to Jemima, writing for the Guardian, in digging out this photo of Mike Arrington, which we’re sure will be referenced many times over the next period of inevitable fuss around this issue.
Sarkozy Image courtesy of Feuillu
14 December, 2006
DRM-Interchange Alive And Living In Korea
As we’ve been covering for ages, Korea is super forward in many things electronic.
Now they’re leading in their treatment of DRM – making different DRM schemes interchangeable.
DRM systems are used to restrict what people can do with their digital media, normally audio and video. This pleases the content owners considerably, but consumers are finding it frustrating that media they are buying on one service will not play on all of their portable music players – eg music bought on iTunes cannot play on a non-iPod player.
By making DRM system interchangeable, the hope is that everyone remains happy – the content owner, because the content stays ‘protected’ by the DRM and the consumer because they have the freedom to move it to any playing device they have.
The Koreans are achieving this by the EXIM standard for online and mobile music service. EXIM stands for Export/Import which was developed Korea’s Electronic & Telecommunications Research Institute (ETRI) and INKA Entworks. It should be wide reaching as up to 90% of online music sites and 70% of portable music devices deployed in Korea at the moment use DRM solutions based on the EXIM standard.
What differentiates the Korean mobile music market is that all phones sold since 2003 have a USB connector, which is used to transfer music they download via their computers, to their mobiles. This is sometimes called sideloading.
SK Telecom, the largest mobile provider in Korea as finally agreed to open up their handsets and service to allow music from third party services to be used. Until now only content authorised by SK could be loaded onto their phones.
James Ahn, CEO of INKA Entworks, was clearly excited at the prospect, “SK Telecom’s decision to implement the EXIM standard is an important milestone because of its dominant position in the mobile phone services and online music services markets. We’re happy to have SK Telecom as a partner.”
ETRI
INKA
13 December, 2006
Napster Mobile: O2 Ireland Is First
O2 Ireland has become the first European mobile operator to offer Napster Mobile.
Napster Mobile lets people search, browse, preview and purchase content from Napster’s 2.2m+ track music catalogue.
The service is launching on O2’s 3G i-mode handsets with the hope that non i-mode handsets should be available by March 2007 on O2 Active.
From the beginning of next year O2 Ireland customers will also be able to access a copy of their mobile downloads on their personal computers giving them the flexibility of having their music downloads both on the go and at the PC, all from one universally recognised music brand.
One of the difficulties with moving a service like Napster from the large PC screen to a mobile handset could be the restrictions of the screen size. To alleviate the problems of navigating such a large number of tracks, the new Napster Mobile service also features a recommendation engine which makes content recommendations based on each customer’s personal taste in music. Nice.
Waking up to consumers demands, users of the service will also be able to access tracks that they purchase on the mobiles, on their PCs, from the beginning of next year.
Ericsson is powering the backend of the service – an interesting change from Nokia, who normally provide the technology to do this.
O2 has spend a considerable amount of money tying themselves to music, attempting to benefit from all of the ‘cool’ that it can bring. You only have to witness the party they threw at IFA last year to understand how successfully they’ve been with it – it was definitely the best party at IFA, rammed full of young things gyrating.
The service is already running at NTT DoCoMo in Japan (also i-mode), SunCom Wireless and Cingular in the US. Plans for further European operator are being finalised, with Portugal expecting to be the next.
O2 Ireland
Napster UK
13 December, 2006

New Memory Stick PRO-HG From Sony And SanDisk

New Memory Stick PRO-HG From Sony And SanDisk Sony are expanding their range of Memory Sticks further by adding the “Memory Stick PRO-HG.”

In a further collaboration with SanDisk, they’re increasing the available speed of transfer to a theoretical 480Mb/s, a significant step up from the previous 160Mb/s of the Duo. It’s no coincidence that 480Mb/s is the theoretical top speed of USB2.

The technical key to this, is the expansion of the interface from 4-bit to 8-bit and the increase of internal clock frequency from 40MHz to 60MHz.

The thinking behind the increase of transfer speeds is the consumer demand for media and that media itself is growing in size as its resolution increases. As with all technology, the consumer is impatient for speed, so not waiting for data to be written to the memory card is key. With this increase in transfer speed, a couple of gigabytes of data should be transfered pretty rapidly.

They plan for the PRO-HG to have a capacity of 32Gb, but there’s a slight caveat with this one. While the design will allow for this, Sony says that it does “not guarantee that Memory Stick PRO-HG 32 GB media will be introduced to the market.” Depends on the demand and price of production, we assume.

The PRO-HG will be compatible with Memory Stick PRO devices, although transfer speeds will be stepped down to the PRO.

Unsurprisingly the PRO-HG will feature content protection, which it’s not surprising to hear will continue to be MagicGate, Sony’s previous incarnation.

While the range of Memory Sticks has lived longer than many competing formats (it was initially announced in 1998), many consumers feel confused by the number of differently named products – Memory Stick, Memory Stick Duo, Memory Stick PRO, Memory Stick PRO Duo and Memory Stick Micro (M2). The addition of another type will only add to the muddle. While this may be the case, it clearly hasn’t held people back in buying them, as they’ve shipped over 200 million of the little blighters.

Sony expect to launch it in 2007 – pretty vague huh? One reason for the vagueness is Sony is only starting to license the development of compliant host devices from January 2007.

Memory Stick PRO-HG Specification.

Major Specifications of Memory Stick PRO-HG

Dimensions	Duo size (31 x 20 x 1.6) mm
Connector Pin	14-pin
Capacity	32GB (format maximum) *4
Max. Data Transfer Rate	480 Mbps (theoretical)
Min. Write Speed	120 Mbps 1 (As of 8-bit parallel transfer) 40 Mbps 1 (As of 4-bit parallel transfer)
Operating Voltage	2.7 to 3.6 V
Interface	8-bit / 4-bit parallel I/F and Serial I/F
Max. Clock frequency	60MHz *5
Copyright Protection Technology	MagicGate

12 December, 2006

BT Digital Cost Calculator: Value Your Digital Life

BT Digital Cost Calculator: Value Your Digital Life BT are pushing BT Digital Vault, their product to store all of your digital data on, to that end they’ve just launched a Web service to calculate the value of your digital output.

The site lets you enter the number of music tracks, photos and videos that you have and attach a ‘sentimental value’ to each format.

We threw a few numbers into it and it tells us the total monetary value of our digital doodlings is £3,490.

We’re confused as to how they’ve come to attach these arbitrary values to the various bits of media – Music tracks – 79p; Photos – 10p; Videos – £12.

The music pricing is based of the costs of tracks on iTunes. The other two? Photos based on BonusPrint.co.uk and films, Lovefilm.co.uk.

Frankly the valuation service is a bit hollow – but may draw attention to the fact that people don’t have a backup.

Backup your data
Our view is that you cannot attach a value to the photos of friends and family that you have – they can never be replaced, so we’re all for people looking after their data. BT’s Digital Vault is one way of doing this.

BT Digital Cost Calculator: Value Your Digital Life

One of the major advantages of an online backup service is you are protected against fire in your home, that may well wipe out backup that you hold at home.

BT offer a free service, the ‘Basic,’ which lets you store up to 2Gb of data, but you have to manually copy the data up there. With a price like that, why would you refuse? You’ll need to sign up for the service before 8 Jan 2007, after that you’ll only get 1Gb.

The pay-for service is £4.99/month, but gives 20Gb of storage and an automated backup manager. It’s this that provides the essential feature of any backup system – the ability to not to have to think about it – your data just gets backed up. Sadly the software only works on PCs though.

BT are far from unique from offering this, as there are many other services around.

Other services
One example that has been running for very many years is Iron Mountain Connected Backup, or connected.com as it used to be. Back in our PC days, we used the service on a daily basis as it was just so simple of use – the backup occurred automatically as the machine was shutting down. Prices range from $10 – $75/month for their 30Gb service.

When you look at the amount of storage BT offers for its price, it looks quite a bargain against the Connected Backup.

Vault Calculator
BT Digital Vault

12 December, 2006

More UK Mobile Broadband Possible Via Ofcom Spectrum Auction

More UK Mobile Broadband Possible Via Ofcom Spectrum Auction Ofcom has released a proposal for the UK’s largest single release of radio spectrum, to be auctioned.

It’s not the auction itself, but a consultation document seeking views on a proposal to auction licences – if that isn’t long-winded enough.

Initially 215MHz of frequency will be made available, with a plan to release 400MHz in total in the ‘next few years.’

Ofcom’s approach is not to dictate what the released frequencies are to be used for, or even the technology that should be used to operate on it. Once auctioned off, they plan to let it be used for whatever the bidder chooses for it.

Their suggested uses include:
* mobile broadband wireless services, offering high-speed, high-capacity mobile data connections using technologies such as WiMAX;
* mobile multimedia services, such as mobile television;
* advanced mobile services using technologies such as UMTS and its evolutions; and
* mobile broadcast, such as wireless cameras for outside broadcasts and temporary or portable video links.

They believe that the spectrum could be released by the end of 2007 although this is subject to on-going EU regulatory discussions. All licences are proposed to be tradable – this is key.

It’s likely that frequencies like this will be bought by a major player, who can then either use it all themselves (unlikely) or re-sell it, as a wholesaler would, to smaller organisations. It’s a pretty radical approach in the world of frequency regulation.

Ed Richards, Chief Executive of Ofcom, said, “Releasing more spectrum to the market will create new opportunities for innovation in wireless technologies, promoting competition and driving convergence.”

Ofcom’s suggestion is to release the spectrum though two separate auctions.

* The bands 2500-2690 MHz, 2010-2025 MHz will be packaged into a number of lots and auctioned together. Participants will be able to bid for multiple lots. The auction will be conducted online using a secure server and there will be a number of rounds to the auction.
* The bands 2290-2300 MHz will be packaged as a single lot and auctioned though a sealed bid process.

Better get started counting your pennies and getting your responses together. You’ve got until 9 March 2007 to get your comments in.

Full details at Award of available spectrum: 2500-2690 MHz, 2010-2025 MHz and 2290-2300 MHz

12 December, 2006

BBC Push-VOD Trial: The Story Is The Interactivity

BBC Push-VOD Trial: The Story Is The Interactivity The BBC has announced it is running a push-VoD trial in the UK.

Around 300 people, based in and around London, are taking part in the three month trial.

The trialists will get a box with a large hard drive in it, storing up to 100 hours of TV content from the previous seven days. Half of the hours will be automatically recorded by the device, with the rest available for the trialist to select. The content will arrive through a normal TV aerial, via DTT (Digital Terrestrial Television) as used by Freeview. Clearly in the future, content would be able to be added via broadband.

Rahul Chakkara, Controller of BBCi said: “As we move further into an on-demand world, where viewers are looking for more opportunities to take control of their viewing schedules, it is imperative that the BBC is at the forefront of exploring new technologies to meet their needs.

Just hearing that, you’d be fully entitled to excuse them that they’re grandly calling it Push-VoD, when in reality it’s a PVR. It appears that there’s more to it than that.

Push-PVR underplays it
The BBC is working with Bristol based UK company Cabot Communications, who will be providing expertise in MHEG (Multimedia and Hypermedia information coding Expert Group).

We think the story on this is actually about the BBC being able to trickle content to these boxes over the air (OTA), primarily overnight.

Translated to English, this means MHEG programs, elaborate graphics, sound files and even additional video can be delivered ready to be used for the interactivity – when the viewer presses the red-button.

With this level of additional assets the interactivity becomes very rich – far more like a broadband computer experience than people are used to with their TVs currently.

BBC Push-VOD Trial: The Story Is The Interactivity The potential for this is huge – both with general interactivity and specifically with games or educational material.

Cabot Communications have supplied the software and they have achieved all of this cleverness by extending MHEG, enabling the program to access the assets locally. It’s the first time this has been done..

The boxes for the trial have been provided by Vestel, the Turkish manufacturer.

Possible impact of the news
Those at BT Vision are probably fretting considerably as this news is likely to put off some people who are targets for the V-box. BT Vision’s approach is to pursue people who are interested in Freeview (the UK FTA DTT service) that going for the V-box will given them all of Freeviews content and functions, but will enhance it by offering a PVR and other content available over a broadband connection.

Many of those in the commercial sector will be shouting “Foul,” at the suggestion that they might be proposing their own device to receive content. The common approach is to say that the BBC should stick with what they’re known for – making great TV and radio programmes, and not spreading their attention to areas where the commercial sector already is.

We think although interesting, people shouldn’t get too excited about this. The BBC has often dangled interesting technology in front of people, only then to have them spoken about but for them to not emerge – see the Memorandum of Understanding with Microsoft.

Cabot Communications
Vestel

11 December, 2006

The European Wii Launch Reviewed

The European Wii Launch Reviewed Last Thursday saw the launch of the Wii across Europe.

As we’d detected after we saw the demand to play it at the Eurogamer has got some great shots form the UK launch.

11 December, 2006

4oD Review: Geo-Blocking Problems

4oD Review: Geo-Blocking Fails Channel 4 are having problems delivering their 4OD, Geo-restricted content to their UK-based consumers.

Following the launch of 4oD on wednesday, we were really keen to try the service out. It became available a little after the expected mid-day launch, but frankly who’s counting.

We got the software down and were really impressed with the way it looked. Channel 4 really know how to design stuff that looks good and is easy to interact with. Bold use of large graphics and well executed example pieces of video viewable, just my mousing over. A really good job.

We thought we’d initially test out service by using the freely available porgrammes, two of which are given away each week. Plumbing for Trigger Happy, we clicked with some excitement.

Disappointment hit when we found that Channel 4, or at least their geo-sensing service thought we were outside the UK, and therefore refused to deliver the content to us (see image).

4oD Review: Geo-Blocking Fails

Geo-sensing is used by a growing number of Web-based service, as it gives them knowledge of where users are coming from. By looking up the originating IP address, the theory is that they can tell which country you’re in, or in even more detail than that sometimes.

It’s features are all the more important to distributers of content that has a restricted license, like video content. If the content is licensed for UK use, the rights holds want assurance that it can only get to people in the UK.

This is all fine and dandy – if the geo-sensing is correct. We’re with Metronet, now part of Plus.net. They’re a significant player in the ISP game, so much so that BT has made a cash bid for them.

We reported the problem to Channel 4 a couple of hours after launch, providing various pieces of helpful information over a number of emails. We understood that they’d be getting right on to it. While we know that these things take a little time, we pretty surprised that it hasn’t been fixed two days later

We’re sure that other people with different ISP’s are able to view the content, just surprised that companies who are selling geo-sensing service are not correct as to what is in the UK and what’s outside.

We hope that Channel-4 and their geo-sensing provider can get their wrinkles ironed out – they’re missing income here.

Channel 4oD

8 December, 2006

PURE Hit 1m DAB Radio Sales

PURE Hit 1m DAB Radio Sales We like PURE, they create innovative products DAB radio – and they
e one of the few UK companies doing innovative things in hardware.

Hats off to them for getting to their first millionth DAB radio (or 1,000,000th if you want to be dramatic). The success of PURE is a reflection of the successful growth of DAB radio in the UK.

Rajar’s last figures (PDF) tell us that 15.3% of UK Adults own a DAB radio now. Pretty good figures, with clearly lots of room for growth.

PURE have been a little PR cheeky here, because the millionth radio was actually sold in October this year, but clearly at xmas time, it’s good for them to let people know that they’ve been so successful.

PURE Hit 1m DAB Radio Sales Given that they’ve given the chance, we just as well tell you that, there’s a whole range available …there and waiting for you to take them to their 2 millionth …

Pure One DAB/FM Portable Radio
Pure Evoke 1XT DAB Digital Radio
Pure EVOKE-2XT, Luxury DAB/FM Portable Radio with Alarm
Pure Digital Tempus DAB Radio
Pure Pocket DAB 1500 Personal Stereo
Pure Chronos DAB Alarm Clock Radio
Pure Elan DX20 Portable DAB Digital Radio
Pure TEMPUS-1XT , DAB Radio with Clock / Alarm
Pure Pocket DAB 2000 Portable DAB/FM Radio & MP3 Player
From the above it’s pretty clear that you daren’t say PURE haven’t stretched DAB to as many products as possible.

Congrats to them too for having gained the position of number one manufacturer of portable radios overall in the UK by value back in May this year.

Pure

7 December, 2006