Business

Changes to business digitisation brings

Bent Bulgarian Border Officials Caught By GPS
Two thieving Bulgarian border officials were caught red-handed after their attempt to steal a high tech phone from US ambassador John Beyrle was foiled, thanks to the handset’s built in GPS tracking device reports The Inquirer.
Apparently, Beyrle was travelling from Varna to Hungary and it was during the customary x-ray inspection of hand luggage that his expensive phone went walkabout.
The Ambassador kicked up a fuss, but airport staff and customer officers all claimed that they hadn’t found the phone.
The purloining picaresque pair looked like they’d got away with pocketing the phone until Beyrle flipped open his laptop, activated the phone’s GPS (Global Positioning System) and waited to see where it would appear onscreen.
It turned out it wasn’t far away, nestling deep inside the pocket of the bent customs official.
Bulgaria’s Interior Ministry said the two policemen would be fired and prosecuted and their superiors disciplined following the incident.
The Inquirer Website also reports that it’s considered fair game for dastardly bureaucrats to swipe the electronic gadgets and expensive gizmos from foreigners passing through Bulgaria, with a large amount of foreign post regularly disappearing.
Faced with such large scale larceny, regular travellers to the country may be wise to consider fitting GPS tags to all of their belongings.
GPS underpants anyone?
The Inquirer
19 October, 2005
Frans Bauer DVD Debuts On Mobile Before Shops
Call us cynical if you like, but when we get a press announcement trumpeting some kind of ‘world first’ or another from someone we’ve never heard of, our eyebrows tend to arc skywards.
So when we heard that “popular singer” Frans Bauer was slapping up a mobile version of the (ahem) “most breathtaking scenes” from his DVD and making Norris McWhirter troubling noises, a mass outbreak of chin-stroking followed.
Despite being boldly hailed as the “first time that scenes from an as of yet unreleased music DVD will make their debut on a mobile phone,” there were unimpressed noises emanating around Chez Digital-Lifestyles as we suspected the over-eager hand of a hyperbolic publicist at play here.
It is significant that content is breaking on mobiles before it’s in the shops and we’ve no doubt that mobiles will continue to play a greater part in the distribution of music and video, but we can’t really get excited about someone (even if they have got dazzling teeth) releasing a few snippets of a DVD for mobiles and then expecting the Guinness Book of Records to be calling them up.
After all, all they’ve really done is just make the equivalent of a film trailer available a few days before the full release. Big bloomin’ deal.
In fact, we’re so unimpressed that we can’t even be bothered to give you the name of the video, but you can find it somewhere on Vodafone’s Dutch Live TV website, or just click around chirpy Frans’ website.
Whose the winner from this? Well, top marks to the music company who we suspect will be getting a slice of cash from Vodafone NL, as well as getting them to promote the artiste with all of the PR power they can muster, giving tons of free promotion to the new release of a DVD that many of us wouldn’t have heard about otherwise.
The fans of Frans ‘The Teeth’ Bauer will probably also be falling off their Zimmer frames in excitement. There’s no doubt that Frans will be flashing a smile too, but he probably can’t help that.
But this transparent marketing exercise does reflect the growing importance of the mobile music market – and with sales of mobile music surpassing CD single sales this year in terms of volume, we can no doubt expect to be troubled with more attention-seeking press releases.
Vodafone.nl
Frans Bauer
17 October, 2005
“Internet Spam Gang” Gets $37m Fine
Leo Kuvayev, the leader of the largest Spam gang, and six of his business partners have been handed a $37m (~E30m, ~£21m) fine by the courts in Massachusetts.
They were prosecuted under the CAN-SPAM Act (Controlling the Assault of Non-Solicited Pornography and Marketing Act) and the Massachusetts Consumer Protection Act.
Running the two businesses, 2K Services Ltd. and Ecash Pay Ltd, from both a Boston Post Office and Russia, he was helped to court by information supplied by Microsoft. The spammers had used many different Hotmail accounts to blast the unsuspecting world with their spam, where they sold counterfeit Vioxx, Zoloft, Paxil, Lipitor, and Viagra; copy-software; and Casino playing.
This was no small operation. Microsoft collected more than 45,000 spam messages believed to be from the Internet Spam Gang in just 22 days between 12 June and 4 July 2004. Not bad, with an average of 2,000 emails per day.
These boys had permanently itchy feet online as well as in real life. They registered domain names in Monaco, Australia and France, and used computer servers located in China, Korea, Brazil and Taiwan.
Massachusetts Attorney General Thomas Riley took civil action against the collection of companies and obtained an emergency court order, bringing down a number of websites including BadCow.com.
Leo’s been known about for a while. A glance to the ever-helpful Wikipedia, shows information that was collected about Leo Kuvayev, or Leonid Aleksandorovich Kuvayev to give him his full name, as far back at June 2004. Wikipedia reports that all of this information was then passed to the Head of Macromedia anti-piracy unit, and eventually made it to the FBI.
From this, we can see that Mr Kuvayev didn’t limit his business activities to just being the worlds largest spammer, but ran software copying organisations and online casino’s and most frighteningly credit card processing.
He appears very enterprising, does’t he? He’s also listed as the 2nd worst spammer on the Spamhaus top ten – (thanks to them for the photo).. Not bad for a 32 year old (if you like that sort of thing) .
On the amusing side, In what we assume must have been his less wealthy days, Leo looks like he tried to sell a few of his possessions on usenet. Interestingly the ad says that they ‘Must sell by 5/31/96’ – on the move again?
We suspect that the chances of him being caught is pretty slim, and those of him clearing his $37m fine, slimmer still.
We also wonder how long it will be before Viaden.com removes the testimonial from Kuyayev!
Case information from Massachusetts Attorney General
14 October, 2005
Spielberg/EA: 3 Game Development Deal
The world of film and video games come ever closer as Electronic Arts (EA) team up with Steven Spielberg to develop three original video games.
This isn’t a simple ET, the video game idea. Spielberg (and his team we suspect) will be sitting down with EA in their LA offices, hammering out completely new titles, directly working on concept, design, story and artistic visualisation.
Terms aren’t divulged, but we hate to think how much The Spielberg will be pocketing for this privilege.
We’re sure the possibility of this has no bearing on the The Spiels’ flattery of EA, “I have been playing EA games for years and have watched them master the interactive format.” it’s true, they do have a seemingly never ending flow of polished titles jumping on to the market.
The mutual-appreciation society didn’t break up there. EA Chairman and CEO Larry Probst, went on, “There is no greater storyteller than Steven Spielberg. In addition to his gift for pleasing movie audiences, he has an innate understanding of games and how to immerse players into a fantastic world of action and characters.”
EA has been, how shall we say, “inspired”, heavily by The S before, as anyone who’s ever played the opening scene of the first Medal of Honor, and heard of a film called Saving Private Ryan may have noticed.
In this crazy, lawyer-driven business world, some are wondering if the similarity was the basis for the start of discussions – rather than sue the pants off us, why don’t we do a multi-game deal? No … that would never happen, would it?
We’ve said it before, and we’ll keep saying it until it becomes true – once video games develop depth of personality and back story for its characters, TV and film is in serious trouble. Why would you want to just watch a film, when you can be in it?
King S clearly thinks the possibility of this is drawing closer. Well done to EA for snagging him.
Steven Spielberg image – thanks to Wikipedia
EA
14 October, 2005
iTunes 6 Tested: Your Next TV Supplier?
Russ takes us those who haven’t got a US credit card through iTunes 6 with the downloading of video and contemplates its impact.
I’m sure by now everyone has heard that the new version of Apple’s iTunes (version 6) permits the U.S. user to download music videos and television shows (the U.K. user gets the music videos, but not the television shows). Apple’s announcement, released yesterday, says:
iTunes 6, the next generation of the world’s most popular music jukebox and online music store, lets fans purchase and download over 2,000 music videos and six short films from Academy Award-winning Pixar Animation Studios for just $1.99 each. Customers can also now purchase and download their favorite television shows from iTunes the day after they air on TV, watch them on their Mac or PC and Auto-Sync them onto the new iPod for viewing anywhere.
So, I tried it today. Here’s a snapshot of my experience and my hastily-drawn conclusions for media and communications policy.
My experience:* I downloaded and installed iTunes6. Takes 5-10 minutes. No big deal. iTunes6 has the same basic interface and purchasing/sampling system as previous versions of iTunes.
* I do not own the new video-ipod. Some of the press coverage makes it sound like the video-ipod is required to enjoy the video downloads. It’s not – you can play them on your PC or laptop.
* The product selection is not bad, for the second day of availability. There were episodes from 5 Disney TV shows available (including Lost and Desperate Housewives) and what looks like hundreds if not more music videos. There were also 6 Pixar films available. I think they are short films. By the way, the ‘Apple Music Store’ is now a misnomer.
* I purchased two items for about $4.00 – a music video (All These Things That I’ve Done, by The Killers) and an episode of Disney’s Desperate Housewives (first episode of season 2). I don’t mind paying $1.99 for a music video (something that I will likely play frequently), but it’s a steep price for a television episode that I might never watch again. I suppose it depends on the product selection and whether sports and news ever make their way on to this service.
* File sizes: Killers video: 20.1 mb; Desperate Housewives episode: 208.6 mb. Both were MPEG-4 video files.
* Both downloads completed in about 2 minutes each. I’m on a high-speed connection, and obviously times will vary depending on what’s under your PC’s hood.
* Both video products were of good—but not great—quality and played in what looks like a Quicktime video window. You can manipulate the screen size, so smaller screen = better quality.
* Unlike the BBC’s interactive media player (IMP), I ‘own’ these videos and may keep them on my PC just like music files for as long as I want. The IMP really seems to serve a different purpose and seems more like a DVR than the Apple product. We’ll see.
Hastily-drawn policy conclusions:* The EC should put off serious consideration of any proposed revision of the Television Without Frontiers Directive for at least one year. The EC should see where the market heads before acting. Really, folks, it’s absurd for an intelligent regulator to be developing ex ante rules that may be seriously missing whatever developments occur in the marketplace. Viviane Reding might want to rethink her linear / non-linear distinction if the marketplace offers nothing much by way of linear services, or offers something that is not easily pigeonholed into a category being created at this time. Ms. Reding’s actions may actually have the Oedipus-effect of encouraging IPTV players to avoid linear products. Madness.
* I attended an IPTV conference earlier this year and the focus was completely on telcos offering IPTV service (in a triple play with internet and telephony) that resembles a cable or satellite offering. Well, Apple’s not a telco and iTunes6 does not resemble a traditional multichannel video offering. Same for Major League Baseball, the other important IPTV offering available at this time. Again, we’ll see what happens.
* Broadband, broadband,broadband. The number one priority for policy-makers should be to get faster, cheaper broadband to more areas of the country. With these types of services and free PC-to-PC VoIP, is there any policy goal more important than broadband if you really have the interests of consumers at heart?
* I’m sure there are some underlying copyright / “rip-off Britain” issues at play here. I’m just not smart enough to figure them out. But there is a problem when the popular television shows are not available on iTunes-UK and the same music video is 1.89 GBP or about $3.30 – that’s $1.30 extra for each music video that UK customers must pay.
* Public service broadcasters (PSB) in Europe beware. The ‘quality and universality’ arguments you’ve made over the years to avoid true competition are about to be seriously put to the test.
UPDATE: I forgot to mention that the Desperate Housewives video had no adverts in it. There appeared to be quick gaps where adverts would normally be placed.
14 October, 2005
iPod With Video; New iMac; FrontRow; iTunes 6: Apple Summary
We’ve now had change to absorb this and ponder its impactAfter weeks of frantic speculation that a video-capable iPod was on the way, Apple have sure enough announced the very thing at their event in the California Theatre in San Jose and BBC Television Centre in the UK.
Steve Kennedy has been at the UK event for us. There was no live updating allowed during the event, so updates have been patchy and details were slow to emerge.
Here’s the highlights …
New iMac G5. A bit faster, but the big thing is FrontRow. It’s Apple’s Media Centre-killer. The new Apple Remote, a svelte 6 button remote control that looks like a shuffle, controls any media you have on your iMac. Makes the MS Media Centre 26+ button remote look very wrong – too tech. Simplicity reigns. iSight camera is built in. Parallel output to bigger screen, projector. Price is very tempting starting at $1,299 (17″ £899 inc vat, €1379) (20″ £1199, €1799).
Video-capable iPod. Next gen iPod with 30% thinner than current generation player but with a bigger 2.5″ colour screen. 320×240 QVGA (quarter VGA), but not wide screen as rumoured. Video playback supports MPEG-4 and h.264 playback. 30Gb & 60Gb. S-vdeo out through the doc, but video will appear pixelated on full size TV screen. The 30GB should go for $299 (~£219~€349), and the 60GB for $399 (~£300~€469). They’re on the Apple online Store and will be shipping next week.?
?Not quite the world shattering device that was expected, but from those who have seen it “sexy.”
iTunes 6 – Upgraded again after the 5.0 release of a few week ago. The big change. As expected from our first video of itms, downloadable video. A deal has (~£227~€331) been done with ABC/Disney to let five shows (Desperate Housewives, Lost and three disney shows currently) to be paid for and downloaded the day after they’re on TV – only in the US currently. Is there any co-incidence that the UK launch happened in the BBC TV centre?
“It’s never been done before, where you could view hit TV shows and buy them online the day after they’re shown,” Jobs said. While this may be true that people have not been able to _Buy_ it, but let’s not forget that the BBC has the iMP trial running, where you can get shows straight after they’re shown – but for nothing.
We imagine there’ll be lots of lost sleep in Redmond tonight.
We’ll have a more considered piece on the impact of the announcements once it’s sunk in.
Apple
13 October, 2005
Digital Music Grabs 60% Of Single Market
BPI, the UK record label industry association has released its third-quarter report revealing that it’s boom time for the Brit digital music industry.
There’s a veritably frenzy of digital downloading going on, with UK single track download sales totalling 25 million since the format launched, with 5.7 million sales in 2004 and a thumping great 16.9 million sales already notched up this year.
According to the BPI, weekly sales regularly top half a million, with digital downloads accounting for over 60 percent of the entire singles market – compare that to the 3.6 percent market share at the beginning of 2004.
Digital is also claiming a bigger share of the Top 75 singles chart, growing from 15.9 percent when the combined chart launched in mid-April to 25.5 percent at the end of August.
But with the Yin of the increased digital music sales comes the Yan of declining retail sales, with the BPI reporting a 21.8 percent decline in physical single sales.
This decline has, however, been more than offset by the hefty growth of digital song purchases – up 288 percent – helping the overall singles market grow by a massive 49 percent. Significantly, these figures do not include subscription sales or paid-for streams.
Once again, the death of vinyl has been exaggerated with the 7-inch physical singles market registering 80 per cent growth with 800,000 sales.
A clearly chuffed BPI Chairman Peter Jamieson said: “This year digital made the transition from mere potential to becoming a significant revenue stream. But this is just the beginning.”
“While the record label model of investing in the best new music talent remains the same, the emergence of innovative new digital services means that the record companies can offer consumers even greater choice as to how to access their music.”
The report also highlighted figures from The Official UK Charts Company which suggested that digital punters are taking advantage of increasing consumer choice, with 81% of all download sales being non-chart titles.
Out of the 1.5 million different songs available legally online, around 80,000 different tracks are being sold each week – up from 55,000 last August.
BPI
11 October, 2005
Top UK Cop: iPods Fuelling Crime
Like a big flashing sign above the listener’s head saying “Mug Me!” the distinctive white headphones of iPods continue to attract the unwanted attentions of ne’er-do-wells in the street.
With the latest Home Office crime statistics expected to reveal that muggings rose by almost 40% in some parts of the country last year, police are blaming the sharp rise in the street robberies on the increasing popularity of iPods, MP3 players and expensive mobile phones.
Chief superintendent Paul Forrester of Merseyside police said students and teenagers strutting around with expensive gear were virtually asking for it, commenting: “Some children carry phones and iPods worth over £600 and they are making themselves walking targets.”
Metropolitan police chief Sir Ian Blair was equally quick to point the finger of blame at all things Apple Mac: “It is very obvious when someone is wearing an iPod. That is what is fuelling this.”
Figures from the Metropolitan police revealed that the practice of purloining iPods increased more than fivefold since last November 2004, with incidents rising from ten a month to 52 in May this year.
Similarly, the number of iPods pinched from motors went in an equally upward direction, leaping from 178 cases in November 2004 to 395 in May this year.
Insurance company Norwich Union have found themselves shelling out for pilfered iPods by the bucketful, replacing 1,721 lost or stolen iPods between January and September this year, compared to just 36 during the same period last year.
Our advice to iPod users: forget about making a style statement, dump those daft white headphones in double quick time and get yourself something more discrete!
11 October, 2005
One In Five Americans Has Never Been Online
A new study has revealed that one in five Americans is without home Internet access and have never been online, potentially hindering their access to crucial information and services.
The survey by the non-profit Pew Internet & American Life Project has highlighted the existence of a digital divide running along lines of age, race and income.
American wrinklies are lagging far behind in Internet adoption, with only 26 percent of folks 65 and older going online, compared with 67 percent of the 50 to 64 group.
One in five American adults (22 percent) remain completely untouched by the Internet and have never been online or received an email – roughly the same percentage of the population as in 2002.
Not surprisingly, the study also found that people with lower incomes and less education also registered lower percentages of Internet adoption.
Although around 70 percent of white Americans use the Internet, only 57 percent of African-Americans are online, with an emerging divide among those who have high-speed “broadband” Internet access and those on cranky old dial up.
The Pew study found that the majority of those using broadband are affluent and well-educated and that 66 percent of households earning $75,000 (~£42,260, ~€61,825) or more annually have a high-speed broadband Internet service at home.
This compares to just 21 percent of households on low incomes ($30,000 a year, ~£16,900, ~€24,730) possessing a high-speed Internet service.
Broadband makes it easier for surfers to whiz around the Web and download music, view videos, enjoy free VoIP calls and access online services and important information on topics like health and finance.
The differences are similar between those who have college degrees and those who have high-school degrees with Susannah Fox, associate director of the Pew project, commenting, “What’s starting to emerge … is an elite group of people who are pulling away with what they can do online.”
Fox added that businesses and governments should not forget the needs of the unconnected population and ensure that offline sources for health and government material is made available.
The study estimated that 53 percent of Internet users now have a high-speed connection at home, up from 21 percent in 2004, while a separate report last week by Nielsen/NetRatings, estimated that around 42 percent of the US population has broadband Internet service, up from 36 percent in January.
Pew Internet & American Life Project
7 October, 2005
Free Mobiles; Technology Terror?; RIAA Boycott – Teenage Tech News Review
Handy… Literally!
Engadget has a story on how Montclair State University in New Jersey is handing out free phones to it’s students to enable them to easier communicate with each other. The handsets feature software which allows them to receive “channels” of information, which users sign up for. These channels include things like the dinner menu and the location of the university’s shuttle buses, as well as channels students have set up of their own.
I can admit I am actually kind of jealous of this: I would love the ability to be able to do this at school, checking up on when holidays are, what’s on the menu, and what my time-table’s like. Sadly, I think my school would have some difficulty in preventing the chavs from selling them on eBay, which of course is an entirely different issue.
This is the problem with technology like this: Those most likely to adopt it are, by default, young people, who therefore can’t afford it. Give it to them instead then, and a select few will take advantage of that. Technology like this, for now, is only for older people I think. This isn’t to say it isn’t exciting though: I still find socio-technological implementations, usually referred to as MoSoSo (Mobile Social Software), fascinating, as although there isn’t yet much of a market for these sorts of services, there will inevitably be, and when there is, it could well change the way we communicate with each other forever.
Sounds nasty!
Everyone over here in Europe likes to text, or “txt” for short. I’m not entirely sure how popular the practice is over in the US, but in the UK it’s used mainly by teenagers, although others use it too, because of it’s extremely low cost in comparison to making voice calls.
The New York Times is reporting that apparently, using SPAMming techniques, it should be possible to flood a cities GSM infrastructure by sending as little as 165 text messages a second into the network. This is made possible because text messages use the same communications infrastructure and network that voice calls are made to as well. Imagine what could happen if someone flooded a network, so that no calls could be made, and then at the same time a co-ordinated terrorist attack occurred. People would be unable to call the emergency services, and wide-spread carnage and destruction would occur.
This is particularly scary for me, as I would be at a loss in an emergency without my phone: It’s central to how I find people and communicate with them, and when I really need to get in touch with them, I wouldn’t be able to. This reliance and taking for granted of technology is something that most of my generation are likely guilty of, and when everything does kick off and there’s no electricity, phones or water, I would have severe doubts that a lot of them would be able to cope with it.
It was only really recent events (London bombings) that brought this to my attention, but it has made me realise that reliance on technology could be very turned around and be used against us.
That lot again
Yes, that’s right, the RIAA are at it again: A short time ago, a case against a mother on her daughter’s behalf of file sharing was dismissed in court. Now, the RIAA are back, but this time, they’re not suing the mother but her 14-year old daughter.
People like the RIAA make me so, so angry: At 14, no-one really knows what they’re doing. So a little girl downloaded some of her favourite songs from the Internet. That little girl was probably a paying customer as well, but her pocket money just wasn’t enough, and she just wanted to hear one more song by her favourite artist, but couldn’t afford it. Her friend said “you can get it for free from here”, and so that’s what the girl did. Next thing she knew, the very company she was a customer of, was sending threatening letters to her, demanding thousands of dollars in compensation.
Is this the right way of treating your customers? I know for sure it is one great way of driving them away. If you are in my position at the moment, of having a good few thousand songs you enjoy, then stop buying music unless it is from your local bands or from an independent label. It might sound an unrealistic expectation, but I have found so many great bands on the Internet and locally at pubs and other music venues, that I am quite confident I will never be giving another penny to those greedy folks over at the RIAA.
You can do something about it though, by going to www.boycott-riaa.com. Every little helps!
That would be my rant for the day, have a nice weekend :-)
7 October, 2005