Business

Changes to business digitisation brings

Age Concern Launches Digital Inclusion Network
New research has revealed that seven out of ten old folks aren’t down with this new fangled keyboard- compu- interwebby thing, and Age Concern is worried that their lack of PC skills is making them miss out on workplace opportunities.
Age Concern’s figures have been released to tie in with the launch of their UK-wide Digital Inclusion Network which is tasked with “plugging the gap in opportunities” for crumblies and getting them up to speed with Information and Communication Technology (ICT).
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1 May, 2007
Vint Cerf Wants YOU In ICANN
Vint Cerf is well known as being one of the founders of The Internet.
One of his roles (besides being Google’s ‘Internet evangelist’) is as chairman of ICANN.
ICANN performs a number of central roles in the inner workings of the Internet (explained), but is best known for handling and controlling domain names.
Well, this years he’s stepping down and is taking the intervening period to try and encourage many other people to get involved with ICANN.
Vint has issued a video giving an overview of ICANN and the sort of people he’s looking for to join. He calls it “a grand experiment”, and underlines its need to co-ordinate standards as, “in the absence of interoperability, we don’t have an Internet.”
There’s nine places becoming available within ICANN this year, including three at board level. Those hoping to jump from their jobs and join the ICANN payroll will be frustrated as the roles are “uncompensated effort,” although the travel arrangements look pretty good (see vid below).
We found it interesting that Vint referred to ‘Internets’, in the plural, a few times in his video (about 3:10 in), where most people rarely think of it as more than a blob called ‘The Internet’.
If you’ve got a bit of downtime, take a watch, or listen to Vint, may be you’ll be inspired, but act quickly because you have to get your application in by 16 May.
I’ve been on committees of this sort before, so here’s some personal advice – Getting change to happen through them can sometimes be like walking through thick mud, so make sure you’ve got a whole heap of patience.
ICANN
30 April, 2007
TMT Companies: Lacking Diversity At The Top? (Exclusive)
Grace Borrelli is Managing Partner of the TMT Practice for Europe at CTPartners. She gives us her view of the diversity, or lack of it, in senior management in the TMT (Technology, Media & Telecommunications) companies that deliver services and products to us.
One of the key issues in TMT currently is whether executive teams have the right skill mix. As head-hunters, we were concerned by the apparent lack of diversity on both European and US Boards and decided to undertake research to look into this issue more thoroughly.
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30 April, 2007
Nine Inch Nails Release Tracks Via Pirate Bay
Rockers Nine Inch Nails have released three tracks from their new album, “Year Zero” via the controversial BitTorrent mega-site, The Pirate Bay.
Although the band has already acquired a reputation for dishing out the freebies – new Nine Inch Nails (NiN) content has been available for free both online and on their website for some time – it’s the first time that they’ve released material directly via the torrent protocol.
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30 April, 2007
NetLog Euro Social Network Gets €5m For Future Expansion
Netlog, who claim to be “the first truly pan-European social networking site,” have had a couple of changes recently.
Firstly they’ve rebranded themselves from FaceBox (perhaps the fear of legal action from FaceBook or confusion between the two might have been behind it), to a more relevant Netlog.
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26 April, 2007
Miglia Introduce TV To The MAX
Miglia who are known for their TV dongles have introduced two updated models, TVMini Express and TVMax+ which are really the same as the TVMini and TVMAx but with new software.
Bye Bye Elgato EyeTV
The products used to ship with EyeTV but this has now been dropped in favour of their own software. Miglia say this is due to Elgato not supporting their real time encoding on the TVMax (i.e. EyeTV takes in a video feed, stores it and then converts it, while TVMax supports hardware encoding to a variety for formats).
The new software works with all the Miglia decoders and offers similar functionality to EyeTV.
TVMini Express
This is a standard USB 2.0 DVB-T tuner, the software now bundled is known as “The Tube”. It can play and record Freeview channels and also works with the Apple Remote.
The price has been dropped to £39.95.
TVMax+
The box is around the same size as a Mac Mini or AppleTV and is in the same white and aluminium sides. It has a TV tuner (with aerial and cable connectors) but also video and s-video connections so it will work with a DVD or other video source.
It connects back to a Mac using USB 2.0.
Various video formats are supported including MPEG-2, MPEG-4 and DivX. Since compression is performed inside the box using hardware it will save to disk immediately in the right format without having to go through a software compression phase.
The software also works directly with iTunes so stored video will appear on any connected AppleTVs.
Current price is £149.00.
H.264
This is the MPEG-4 variant that iPods and other devices use. Miglia are coming out with a USB 2.0 dongle that does hardware compression. This will work with Miglia software, but should also allow other developers to utilise it for their own software, so a DVD could be ripped and on-the-fly converted to H.264 for use on an iPod.
Unfortunately details on this are scarce as it hasn’t been released and only a prototype (in black rather than Miglia’s normal white) was seen.
Verdict
The TVMini has always been a useful DVB-T tuner, it needs a good signal and the supplied aerial isn’t much. The new software works but as it was only briefly demo’ed it’s hard to tell how well it compares to EyeTV. The price drop is welcome though.
The TVMax+ is a new product, again only briefly demo’ed but the new software will make a huge difference as it utilises the hardware compression in the TVMAx itself, cutting down the time it takes to make an iPod or AppleTV compatible video.
The H.264 hardware dongle will be very useful when released.
19 April, 2007
Kate Modern: Bebo’s English LonelyGirl
Bebo have signed the team behind YouTube LonelyGirl.
YouTube watchers will be well aware of LonelyGirl 15 and her eventual unveiling as the product a small drama-writing team, rather than a troubled fifteen year old.
When that all came out (as it was eventually bound to), many thought LonleyGirl15, or Bree as she’s named would fade away, but the pretense of the story was kept up and ‘her’ video pieces have continued, in fact her channel remains the most subscribed channel of all time on YouTube.
Well, the 31 million member strong social networking site Bebo, have got the LonelyGirl team onboard now to create Kate Modern for them – an English LonelyGirl.
This time they’re being upfront from the start that Kate Modern isn’t real. There will be video pieces and posts made to her Bebo profile.
Mashable reported that it will all be going live in July with the episodes will be aired multiple times per week on Bebo.
The Times spoke to Miles Beckett, a San Diego medical studies drop-out who co-created Bree, to get the background, “Kate Modern is a 19-year-old university student in London. She wants to fit in with her friends and has problems with her parents — but yes, Kate is fictional and will be played by an actress.”
As The Times points out in their coverage
the innocence of LonelyGirl has been replaced by hard-nosed commerce. Joanna Shields, Bebo’s international president, said: “Kate Modern is a great proposition for advertisers and brands. Bebo users average 41 minutes per session and that can’t be ignored.”
Bebo
18 April, 2007
Phantom Back In News
The company behind the Phantom console is back in the news.
Word of the Phantom games console started way back in February 2004, when the industry couldn’t work out if it was real or an elaborate hoax.
In May 2004 it was ‘made flesh’ and was shown at E3 and we heard about them gaining $50m credit investment.
It was all quiet for about a year, then there was an interesting twist in the story as it appeared to be re-born as a content console, as the Chinese coalition-backed IDV Global Media On-Demand platform. At that time we were told that it was expected to launch in China early 2006.
Since then, we can’t recall hearing about it, until today, when we hear that the renamed body, Phantom Entertainment, has signed a deal with Ione Technology to manufacture the Phantom Wireless Lapboard and Wireless Laser Mouse under Ione’s brand name throughout Asia and through Ione’s distributors in the US and Europe in return for royalty and design fees.
Greg Koler, President and CEO of Phantom Entertainment, said Ione plan to “begin production and distribution of the Ione wireless lapboard and Ione wireless laser mouse in the third quarter of 2007.”
Where’s the console?
From what we can tell, the Phantom console itself has hit the dirt – it’s not listed under their products on the Web site, but the Phantom Game Service does look like it’s alive.
The fate of Kevin Bachus, founder of Phantom and ex-Microsoft Xbox game console designer, is unknown as he doesn’t appear to be on the list of the companies officers.
The Phantom Lapboard
17 April, 2007
24/24 Video By Orange France Gets Paramount Deal
Orange France have picked up a deal with the US studio Paramount Pictures, to distribute their content in France.
It’s not just old content that will be available, but new productions from Paramount including DreamWorks titles, which will be among the latest films available.
Orange France customers with a broadband digital television package or a High-Speed Internet package will be able to enjoy a Video-On-Demand programming schedule including the studio’s latest releases, such as Mission Impossible III, Over the Hedge and World Trade Center, among others.
There’s over 2,500 films, in French or original language versions with subtitles, available on the 24/24 Video service currently, which costs from 3 Euros to rent for 24 hours. Usual features such as unlimited viewing, pause functions and fast forward and rewind are available.
12 April, 2007
Guinness World Records Joost Deal Live
Guinness World Records TV have been in touch to let us know that they’ve just completed a deal with Joost.
We weren’t expecting to be so Joost-tastic today, but when the news arrives, you’ve got to tell it.
Initially 35 hours will be made available comprising of their UK show, Ultimate Guinness World Records. It’s available to Joost viewers globally.
They haven’t hung around either in getting the content out. Checking the latest incarnation of Joost, we see that the content is up there already.
Additional content will be added on a monthly basis, with Guinness World Record (GWR) making the point that they’ll be “controlling its programming line-up on the platform.”
They’ve got 400 hours of it, so there’s plenty more to come.
Both sides are in back-slapping mode with Rob Molloy, Director of Television at Guinness World Records keen to keep the door open to deliver their content to other platforms by saying “We are thrilled to be partnering with a company as exciting as Joost, once again this shows how easily Guinness World Records content can be adapted to fit into so many areas of new media and for such varied audiences.”
Yvette Alberdingkthijm, EVP of content strategy and acquisition Joost took the pun-ing route of “We are delighted to have Guinness World Records on board and look forward to offering our viewers record breaking content.”
It’s interesting to realise that GWR TV is part of the HIT Entertainment who own the hugely popular children’s content Bob the Builder, Barney and Thomas the Tank Engine.
We wonder if this GWR deal is a tester for HIT, opening the doors for a much bigger deal to be coming out.
Guinness World Records TV
11 April, 2007