Simon Perry

Constant Contact: Problems Galore
We’ve had it with Constant Contact, the service that offers to manage your newsletter mailing.
We’ve been using it for the Digital-Lifestyles newsletter for the last 18 months and initially found it good to use. Over time its performance has dropped lower and lower, to the point that we now feel we have no alternative but to find another solution.
We only use it once a week while we’re editing the content of the newsletter, which we’re pretty quick at doing these days. Even in this short amount of time we’re exposed to it, we’ve found in the last few months that the service simply stops responding, with the server just timing out.
We’ve been taking this up with Constant Contact over the last month. Over a lot of emails, their approach is to simply refuse to accept that they have a problem with the service, trying to tie us up with question of unrequited detail, which we felt was an attempt distract us from answering our questions.
For us, it appears that they’ve grown so large that their servers are falling over with their attempt to keep up with demand.
The long and the short of it? – We’d suggest that you steer clear of it. Watch these pages for our quest to find an alternative, hopefully from the open source world.
We’d be really interested to hear from you if you have had problems with Constant Contact too.
1 December, 2006
WorldSIM Targets British Muslims For Low Cost Mobile Calls
WorldSIM is offering a reduced-price phone service aimed at British Muslims who may be travelling to Saudi Arabia for the Hajj, their annual pilgrimage.
During the next month it’s estimated that 25,000 British Muslims will be making pilgrimage which falls over xmas and New Year this year.
As anyone who has travelled knows, roaming rates in foreign countries can be pretty horrendous – with charges being levied to _receive_ calls as well as significantly increased prices to make calls back home.
The WorldSIM offering is offering free receipt of calls with calls back to the UK costing ‘as little as’ 45p/min.
Using the Pay As You Go global roaming SIM card, users of the service are given a UK landline number to give out to be contacted on. We suspect WorldSIM has hooked up a VoIP service to transfer the calls Internationally.
Contacting the pilgrims is of particular value given the huge loss of life at last years gathering when over 345 Hajj pilgrims were killed in a stampede in Mina as they sought to complete a farewell stone-throwing ritual before sunset.
WorldSIM
Hajj images courtesy of Space and Culture
30 November, 2006
Interview With Barry Hitchens About Game On (Podcast)
I had a fascinating conversation with Barry Hitchens, the exhibition consultant of the excellent Game On exhibition, which is currently at the Science Museum, it’s eleventh venue in a world tour that started in the Barbican in 2002.
You can listen in to Barry’s vast knowledge of video games and hear about the trials and tribulations of touring the show around the world.
The show has changed over the years, and Barry gives a lowdown on what has worked and what hasn’t, while outlining the history of significant stages of video gaming.
If you like video games, you’re going to love this.
Interview with Barry Hitchens – Exhibition consultant Game On
30 November, 2006
Excitement Building For UK Wii Launch
Following the success of the launch of the Nintendo Wii in the US where 600,000 units were sold within the eight days – that’s nearly one per second, the buzz about the UK launch continues to heighten.
First came Amazon.co.uk selling out its pre-order allocation of Wii’s within seven minutes – although the number of actual units sold were never disclosed.
During our coverage of its early public unveiling at the Game On exhibition, we noted that the people were really rather excited about the Wii coming out. It looks like it’s going to do pretty well here.
News of a tie up between HMV shops and Nintendo will see the now-expected midnight launch at their Oxford Street flagship store of the gaming platform.
Starting at 11pm the great-unwashed (that’s you and me) will be able to play against some ‘celebrities’ called Ian Wright, Jodie Kidd, Pat Cash and Ricky Hatton (whoever they are).
Globally Nintendo is planning to ship 4 million console before the end of 2006, a record for them.
Surprisingly the shipping in Japan starts on 2 Dec (the home country normally gets the product first) with the Europe-wide launch following on the 8 Dec.
The retail price of €249/£179 with Wii Sports game including Tennis, Bowling, Boxing, Golf and Baseball included in the box.
Included with every Wii console is one wireless Wii Remote, a Nunchuk, Wii Sports game, Stereo AV Cable and the sensor bar for Wii’s unique control system.
We can’t wait.
30 November, 2006
AutoRama Makes Panoramic Phone Photos Easy
Some clever-types at a Swedish company called Scalado have launched add-on software for mobile camera-phones that they say makes taking panoramic photos on a mobile a doddle.
The fantastically-named AutoRama takes up to 10 high-resolution images in succession and features eight different stitching mode. The photo stitching process is automatic.
The way it works does sound remarkably cool – “It’s made so simple, you don’t need to be an expert as you just point and shoot as the phone automatically does the rest for you, vibrating to tell you when to take the next shot to create the perfect high-resolution multi mega pixel panorama,” explained Mats Jacobson, CEO of Scalado.
Scalado don’t claim to be the first to do this, but they say theirs is the first to do it simply and at high resolution – but they would, wouldn’t they.
The self-declared secret of AutoRama is its patented RAJPEG technology that they say reduces memory requirements by up to 25 times. It’s also claimed that it increases performance and the speed for image manipulation by a factor of up to 10x.
We’re looking forward to getting our hands on it and testing it out.
Andrew Ball, PR for Scalado tells us “The images shown were taken by AutoRama installed on a Nokia N70 (1.3 mpix) phone. The images were created by pressing a button and the camera shoots 3 frames and stitches them together. The examples here also shows a Clearshot filter applied for improving backlight, which is another of Scalado’s new CAPS features.”
Scalado
30 November, 2006
UK Meets Brazil (Mobile)
Date: Thursday 30th November 2006
Lunch: 12:30 pm – 2:00 pm
Presentations: 2:00 pm – 5:00 pm
Location: Think London , Level 35, 25 Canada Square Canary Wharf , London E14 5LB
Think London , the foreign direct investment agency for London , in association with UK Trade & Investment and the DTI’s Global Watch Service invite you to attend an informal networking lunch and an afternoon of presentations with some of the most exciting companies in Brazil ‘s mobile industry. The event will be chaired by Mike Nutley, Editor of New Media Age and will feature speakers from significant mobile players such as Informa Telecoms & Media. You will have the opportunity to hear about the latest developments in Brazil and the UK from senior representatives from both countries. The Brazilian delegates will include specialists in R&D, content development and distribution. They will be in the UK to explore opportunities for bilateral trade, investment and technology-based collaboration. The companies attending will include, C.E.S.A.R, SupportComm, Tec Toy Mobile, Meantime, LocZ and Mowa. Location: Think London , Level 35, 25 Canada Square Canary Wharf , London E14 5LB http://www.thinklondon.com/brazil
30 November, 2006
MediaTech 2.006
30.nov.06Library House’s MediaTech 2.006 event puts the convergence of media, technology and communications in one room: gathering the innovators, the disruptors, the investors and the corporate players face-to-face. Sponsored by Microsoft and Intel Capital, this one-day event is about making connections: between industries, between technology and opportunity, but most of all between innovators, corporates and investors. Bringing together some of the hottest upstart companies and mixing them up with the incumbent giants and the key investors, the panel sessions, the presentations and networking opportunities at MediaTech 2.006 are a must for anyone interested in doing smart business in the future of content-driven, technology-enabled businesses. With contributions from top entrepreneurs such as Bob Young (CEO, lulu.com and co-founder of Red Hat), from giants such as Google, SKY and Yahoo, from Sequoia’s latest investee company, and from top investors such as Index Ventures, now is the time to register your place. Places are limited. Imax Theatre, London
Charlie Chaplin Walk
London, London SE1
http://www.libraryhouse.net/www/mediatech/index.php?view=all
30 November, 2006
Digital Hollywood Europe In London
29.nov.06 – 1.dec.06 Digital Hollywood Europe in London: The Global Conference for the Entertainment, Media and Technology Economies “The premier event for transforming entertainment, technology & the global communications network: TV, cable, telco, mobile, broadband, consumer electronics, search & email, VoIP, RSS, blogs and websites Three days of presentations, panels and workshops. ExCel
Royal Victoria Dock
London, London
http://www.digitalhollywood.com/DHEurope.html
29 November, 2006
Play PS3 and Wii Now At The Science Museum (Podcast)
The organisers of Game On, clearly have amazing contacts with the games industry having been running the exhibition for the last four years around 11 venues around the world. It’s contacts like this that has led to them getting hold of Sony’s PS3 and Nintendo before it’s launched in the UK – four months in the case of the PS3.
The Science Museum is currently the only place in the UK where Joe Public can play the PS3. There’s a couple of places around where the PS3 can be seen, but like the venue off Brick Lane, they’re invite only.
Even if you could get to see the PS3, not other venue has the PS3 right next to the Wii, so you can compare them.
So what are they like?
The PS3 is playing Motor Storm and it looks stunning, with amazing photo realism. The action is intense and it’s very clear that this is a major leap forward in gaming. The controller can be set in a mode where its physical movements control the action of the onscreen action. Being used to playing the PS controller without this, it take a little while to get used to the sensitivity on the movements needed to control it.
The Wii clearly has the movement sensors built-in (it’s the big selling point of the whole console). Playing with them is near-instantly understandable – feeling natural to wave your arms around to control a tennis racket or box the hell out of your opponent. The graphics are far simpler, delivered in the normal Nintendo cartoon style.
It is of note that the PS3 has a significant number of venting holes in its casing and a large fan under nearth to cool it – it draws 350w. The Wii doesn’t have any venting.
Who’s going to win?
If sales are going to reflect the public interest here at the Science Museum today, Sony need to look out, because the Interest in the Wii far outweighed that in the PS3. This could be down to the affordable price of the Wii, or indeed that the public actually have a chance of own it this side of xmas.
Speaking to the punters here, the feeling was that the Wii would give far more of a gaming experience, not just the gloss that the PS3 gives.
It’s no exaggeration to say that some people were literally running into the exhibition hall, shouting, “is it here, is it here?” as the made their way to the Wii. I had thought it would have been the other way around, with the PS3 being the big draw.
The rest of the exhibition is well worth the visit alone – charting the history of video games from the start, and put together with a lot of intelligence. With the Wii and PS3 added to it, you can expect large queues at the weekend.
We had a chat to the event organiser, Gaetan Lee to get an overview of how he got the hold of the Wii and PS3 before their UK release and the background to the Game On exhibition.
Click below to play the interview …
[audio:https://digital-lifestyles.info/media/audio/Wii-PS3-game-on.mp3]
Game On – Science Museum
29 November, 2006
Get Ready To Play PS3 And Wii At The Science Museum
The Nintendo Wii and Sony’s Playstation3 (PS3) will be available for play at the Game On exhibition at the Science Museum from Wednesday. Expect queues.
Don’t bother flying to the USA and queueing for three days to be the first to get your PS3, or splashing out £1,000 to buy one from eBay, that may, or may not actually turn up. If you live in the UK, it couldn’t be simpler – just get yourself down there when the doors open at 11am to get your hands on the first publicly available PS3 in the UK and the attention-attracting Wii.
The PS3 is scheduled for launch in March in the UK, while it’s emerging that only around 150,000 were shipped at the recent US launch. The Wii’s UK launch is much closer – 8th December, having had its US launch already.
The two new boys will be alongside the current exhibition, which cover the history of video games, starting back in the early 1960’s.
We went to the first Game On exhibition when it was at the Barbican in 2002 and were highly impressed with it. Not just the number of games and platforms covered, but the sheer depth of the knowledge on show.
We’ve spoken to the organisers and hear that quite a few of the exhibits have changed from the early days, including items that have been picked up over the years as the show has travelled over the world.
When you get bored of all the new stuff, by way of a stark contrast, you’ll be able to play the world’s first computer game, Spacewar!, from 1962 as well.
To book tickets or find out further details contact 0870 906 3890 or take a look at the site. The exhibition ends Feb.07. Ticket prices Adults £8.50; Children and concessions £6.50
Science Museum Game On Exhibition
The Original Game On Exhibition
28 November, 2006