Business

Changes to business digitisation brings

Virgin Radio Adds Another Podcast
After an encouraging response from listeners, Virgin Radio has announced that it will be making its Sunday afternoon programme ‘The Tim Lovejoy Show’ available as a podcast.
Virgin first experimented with podcasting earlier this year, with the ‘The Pete & Geoff Breakfast Show’ making Virgin Radio the first UK radio station to offer a podcast of a daily show.
The service, launched on the 9th March 2005, now receives 85,000 downloads a month.
Lovejoy’s sports and entertainment show is broadcast weekly from 4pm to 7pm, and Virgin have said that they’ll make the “best bits” available for consumers to download to their MP3 players from 28th August.
iPod-toting fans of the show will no doubt appreciate the new service, although they may not be pleased with having to put up with adverts for the podcast’s sponsor, Nivea, popping up throughout the download (see: ‘Podvertising’ Supports Virgin Radio Daily Podcast)
James Cridland, head of strategic development for new media at Virgin Radio was enthusiastic about the potential for podcasts, “The response shows us that people are more than willing to have a play with the technology if the content is good enough”.
“It also allows them to listen in at their own convenience if they don’t fancy getting up at 6am,” he added.
Cridland has stated that the radio station was also looking to make more of its content available as podcasts, describing the delivery method as “a great mechanism to get people to trial our flagship shows”.
Virgin Radio Podcasts
25 August, 2005
Warner Music To Launch E-Label
Warner Music Group has announced a new digital music distribution mechanism based on downloads rather than physical media like CDs.
Labelling the new mechanism an “e-label”, Edgar Bronfman Jr., Warner Music’s chairman and CEO, told the Progress & Freedom Foundation conference that they were “trying to experiment with a new business model” to “see where it goes.”
With music download services raking in the cash and sales of CDs slipping, Bronfman proposed that e-label artists could churn out music in clusters of three songs every few months rather than a CD every few years.
With far lower production costs, Bronfman claimed that the e-label will give recording artists a “supportive, lower-risk environment” (I think this means “less cash from the record company”) without as much pressure for huge commercial hits – something that could benefit artists with a more “selective audience”.
Interestingly, Bronfman added that artists signed to the e-label will retain copyright and ownership of their master recordings.
“An artist is not required to have enough material for an album, only just enough to excite our ears,” Bronfman said at the conference.
Warming up to the theme of the relationship between technology companies and the entertainment industry, Bronfman reminded attendees at the conference that recorded music has long been influenced by the distribution technologies available – pop songs were traditionally restricted to around 3 minutes because that’s as much music as a 45 rpm record could hold, he said.
Hastily compensating for his brief bout of nostalgia, Bronfman let the gathered suits know that he was a 21st century guy, unleashing two buzzword laden bon mots in quick succession: “Technology shapes music;” “Music drives technology adoption.”
Bronfman called on the technology industry to work on digital rights management (DRM) standards, arguing that compulsory licensing – with support from P-to-P vendors – would set a price for downloaded music while forcing music companies to make their products available online to P-to-P users.
“As a content company, we quite naturally want devices out there that permit consumers to seamlessly access our music without having to worry about the compatibility of operating systems or DRMs,” he said.
“The consumers’ digital music experience should be as seamless and rewarding as possible, but we would be hypocrites to suggest that the government should force interoperability standards on devices while at the same time insisting there is no need for compulsory licensing.”
The latest figures from the International Federation of the Phonographic Industry, reveal that around 180 million songs were sold online in the first half of 2005, up from 57 million in the same period last year.
Warner Music Group
23 August, 2005
Sony Offers Manga Comics To 3G Subscribers
Sony Pictures Entertainment is set to triple the number of comic books it offers as mobile downloads in Japan, making the company the number one provider of “manga” downloads.
Sony has brokered deals with 10 popular Japanese comic artists, letting comic-mad 3G mobile users download about 300 manga books.
Manga comics are huge in Japan, with the name being coined in 1814 after the famous Japanese artist Hokusai created a book of black & white sketches that he called manga (involuntary sketches).
In Japan, manga comics are targeted at all age groups and cover a wide range of genres, covering a far wider range of topics than Western graphic novels – subjects can range from fantasy & adventure, to sports & cooking.
Sony is hoping to tap into this widespread appeal, offering five stories per month for 315 yen ($2.90), with additional charges for further downloads.
Downloadable manga comics are displayed on mobile phones using a technology called Comic Surfing.
This displays mobile-formatted artwork at a predefined speed and sequence, with pop-up frames and vibration during action scenes adding interest to the stories.
Sony intends to offer more comic books than competitors like NTT Solmare, (unit of telecom firm NTT) and Toppan Printing.
Surprisingly, a spokesman for Toppan Printing opined that Sony’s downloadable manga offerings would prove a good stimulus for growth of the market.
“The market for comics through 3G mobile phone handsets just began to emerge last year, when handsets equipped with clear colour and movies on the screen were put on the market. But we expect it to grow more,” he added.
Competitors NTT Solmare were equally magnanimous about their new competitors, commenting: “We hope that Sony’s entrance will be a path to our mutual prosperity, as it could promote the lifestyle of reading comics by mobile.”
NTT Solmare’s catalogue of 80 comic books have already earned the company more than one million downloads this month alone, so Sony looks to be on a right earner.
Manga [Wikipedia]
23 August, 2005
Open Media Common: Sun’s Open-Source DRM
Sun’s Chief Operating Officer Jonathan Schwartz has been speaking at the Progress and Freedom Foundation Aspen Summit about how incompatible strains of DRM from different companies will not be good for the consumer.
Now, we don’t have the benefit of having heard his speech, but it strikes us that he’s a little late to this party. This idea is hardly news to anyone who’s spent more that half a day thinking about the future of digital media. Projects like Coral Consortium have been underway for sometime, exactly for this reason – but at this time Coral is proprietary.
Jonathan’s proposal to elevate the problems on incompatible DRM systems is Open Media Commons, which would be an open-source, royalty-free digital-rights management standard.
It appears that his idea is to launch the idea/project, not deliver a solution tomorrow. He’s offering to start it off by giving Project DReaM, to an internal Sun Labs project, to the initiative. The strange collection of capitalisation around Project DReaM is derived from “DRM/everywhere available.”
Where this type of headline-grabbing announcement is great, is in starting to bring the debate about who should own/benefit from the locking mechanism placed around digital media to the fore again.
It also panders to the media companies who are generally _totally_ paranoid/fed up with having to not only use a protection scheme they don’t own, but also to pay Microsoft for the pleasure of selling their snippets of media to the general public – each and every time they do.
Reuters, who broke the story, got this quote from Jonathan, “The industry generally falls into two camps: Those who support what we’re up to and others who want to collect a fee” for using their own DRM standards.
If it does nothing more that stopping or delaying a media company in making their decision to sign with one of the major DRM providers, then we suspect Jonathan would be pleased.
Jonathan has over the last year, been blog-tastic, writing long, detailed postings about many things – he’s clearly not someone who sleeps a great deal. A lot of his entries have been about open source, indeed in June Sun started to open-source their Operating System (OS) with the project OpenSolaris and Java server software, calling it Glassfish. Not only that, but they have an Open-Source Officer, Simon Phipps.
All of these actions are designed to attacking any income that their competitors (including Microsoft) derive from selling software. Sun, of course, is also in the hardware business, which conveniently will run the open source software.
What we do find a little strange is there are no references to Open Media Commons or Project DReaM on Sun’s Web Site.
While it is good that a company as large/established as Sun is talking about opening DRM up, not to be locked in to any single provider of DRM – we’re not yet convinced that this particular idea has a solid ring about it.
Open Media Commons – Updated
SunSource
The Progress & Freedom Foundation
Jonathan Schwartz’s blog
Sun Micro shows open-source DRM project
22 August, 2005
Google File For A Further $4Bn
The big news late yesterday was that Google announced a second round share offer – on the first anniversary of their IPO.
In their now-to-be-expected kooky way, their planning to sell 14,159,265 shares, which of course is derived from the value of pi.
At the current valuation for their stock, this would bring in another $4Bn, on top of the approximately $3Bn they have sitting in the bank currently.
Why do they need that money? Is the question on many lips. There’s been many project been floating around with Google’s name attached, among them, becoming a WiFi provider.
S&P analyst Scott Kessler view is that with Microsoft ($37.8 billion in cash) and Yahoo ($3.4 billion) having a ton of cash in the bank, Google needs the money to be able to compete in the global Internet market, in an “arms race” as he puts it.
Acquisitions would appear to be an obvious use of the money. To date Google hasn’t had to spent that much when it’s brought companies in to its fold, as it’s bought them at early stages, but perhaps their future targets are larger now.
Mary Meeker from Morgan Stanley clearly feels the same, “this cash balance could allow the company increased flexibility to consider large strategic acquisitions.”
Of the names that we’ve heard being knocked around as possible targets for a Google purchase including Tivo and Infospace and a number of Chinese companies.
Interesting extracts from the S-3 filing reveal some areas that they think are threats.
We face significant competition from Microsoft and Yahoo.
We face formidable competition in every aspect of our business, and particularly from other companies that seek to connect people with information on the web and provide them with relevant advertising. Currently, we consider our primary competitors to be Microsoft Corporation and Yahoo! Inc. Microsoft recently introduced a new search engine and has announced plans to develop features that make web search a more integrated part of its Windows operating system or other desktop software products. We expect that Microsoft will increasingly use its financial and engineering resources to compete with us. Both Microsoft and Yahoo have more employees than we do (in Microsoft’s case, currently nearly 14 times as many). Microsoft also has significantly more cash resources than we do. Both of these companies also have longer operating histories and more established relationships with customers and end users. They can use their experience and resources against us in a variety of competitive ways, including by making acquisitions, investing more aggressively in research and development and competing more aggressively for advertisers and web sites. Microsoft and Yahoo also may have a greater ability to attract and retain users than we do because they operate Internet portals with a broad range of content products and services. If Microsoft or Yahoo are successful in providing similar or better web search results compared to ours or leverage their platforms to make their web search services easier to access than ours, we could experience a significant decline in user traffic. Any such decline in traffic could negatively affect our revenues.
Other headline include
We expect our revenue growth rate to decline and anticipate downward pressure on our operating margin in the future.
We rely on our Google Network members for a significant portion of our revenues, and we benefit from our association with them. The loss of these members could adversely affect our business.
New technologies could block our ads, which would harm our business.
Google
Google’s S-3 filing document
19 August, 2005
Traffic Hacking, Mac Madness, Cosmonaut Sergei Krikalev , .xxx interference – Teenage Tech News Review
Traffic Light Hacking
We’ve had hackers doing all sorts of naughty things in the past, but one thing I heard about recently is new to me: Hacking traffic lights. You heard right: traffic lights. However, these traffic lights aren’t used to harvest credit account numbers of passers-by or to spam traffic: They are simply used to enable people to get to work that bit faster, if a little less legally. These hackers use technology originally intended for use with emergency vehicles and mass-transit systems. The way it works, is that a lot major traffic lights in the US have infrared receivers built into them. These receive one of two frequencies of infrared pulses: The first is a low frequency, and intended for use by mass-transit like buses. This low frequency makes traffic lights stay green for that bit longer, enabling the bus to pass through and thus speeding up public transport. The second frequency is intended for use by emergency vehicles, and switches traffic lights from red to green within two seconds of activation, allowing them (and anyone possessing a similar device) to pass through traffic lights unhindered.
These sorts of devices had a dodgy legal status in the States up until recently, when they were outlawed entirely and use of them declared a federal crime.
Mac Madness
It seems people are getting less civilized by the day: In a scene reminiscent of the riot caused by the opening of an Ikea store in Edmonton near London, there was another riot when a school in Virginia decided to sell its old laptops for $50 a piece. Apparently, “One woman went so far to wet herself rather than surrender her place in line.” The school was selling laptops that were worth around $1,500 dollars 4 years ago for a meager $50. This kind of event does showcase the fact that a lot of people are eager about technology as long as it is at the right price. Maybe if manufacturers decreased their prices by half, although they might initially make a loss, the hugely increased bulk of sales could lead to much lower production costs. Of course, they will never do this, as it will both cut their profit margins as well as saturating the market. Nice thought though!
Cosmonaut Capers
Russian Cosmonaut Sergei Krikalev is now the person who has spent the longest time in space, ever. The Russian is currently the commander of the ISS, and now has 750 days in space to his name. Spending this amount of time in space can be detrimental to a person’s health: 6 months in space typically leads to a loss of about 1.5% of bone mass, which can take years to grow back. 2 years of life in space could lead to a variety of problems when the Russian cosmonaut returns back to earth, but the extent of these remains to be seen. In the worst case, his bones could be unable to support his weight here, although NASA suspects it shouldn’t be anywhere near as bad. While in space, people must stick to a strict regime of exercise to simulate the stresses that bones receive during life on earth to ensure they lose a minimum of mass. This along with the increased danger of high radiation (which can lead to cancer), makes space have many more risks than the obvious danger of your vessel disintegrating. Maybe in the future these will be solved, but bar artificial gravity, I fail to see how this might work.
Although I of all people think Space is a pretty cool thing to explore, issues like this must be solved before any lengthy extra-planetary stays are considered.
They Couldn’t Give a .XXX
This week, it seems like we have another nice example of people in government being quite the opposite of liberal and interfering with technology: Various suit-wearing, self-important men/women of power have objected to ICANN’s newest top-level domain (things like .com, .net), .xxx: according to them and others, introducing a .xxx top-level domain will mean “Pornographers will be given even more opportunities to flood our homes, libraries and society with pornography through the .xxx domain.”
Apparently, the American Department of Commerce has received a “staggering” 6,000 emails and letters protesting about the creation of a .xxx domain. Ok, so 6,000 sounds a lot, but when you think about it, 6,000 people out of the approximately 600,000,000 who use the Internet worldwide, it isn’t quite so impressive.
Surely, the creation of a .xxx domain might even help people distinguish from a filthy porn site and a normal one: It would mean it would be easier for people to block these kinds of sites from opening, and would mean that classification of Web sites as containing porn or not would be easier, and thus the subsequent blocking of offensive content would be made easier.
Although this doesn’t directly affect me, as I am still under the age of 18, I still believe that political objectives should not be allowed to interfere with the running of the Internet. Besides, the Internet is a virtual, international, entity and as such shouldn’t be allowed to be governed by a single country and it’s respective governing body’s re-election agenda.
18 August, 2005
.xxx domain: US Gov Tells ICANN To Wait
Back in June this year, the .xxx domain appeared to be have been cleared by ICANN (Internet Corporation For Assigned Names and Numbers), the organisation that has control of domain names with world over.
Now Michael D. Gallagher from the US Department of Commerce (DoC) has now written to ICANN asking them to delay the ICANN Board of Directors wait for a week in what was to be a rubber-stamping of the final approval. Involvement of the US government with ICANN at this level is without precedence.
Gallagher sights nearly 6,000 letters and email from ‘concerned families’ that have been received to the DoC. In a country of over 296m people (assuming only US citizens have written in), 2.027e-5 is beyond a rounding error. It’s the rounding error of a rounding error.
We all know how easy it is to send an email – it takes seconds. And as the BBC found out when they received a flood of over 20,000 emails objecting to the showing of “Jerry Springer The Opera”. It’s no concern that very many of these mails were identical – as ‘the faithful’ from various religious groups were rounded up to form a virtual lynching posse.
The Bush administration doesn’t appear to have taken in to account any of this, and all of a sudden are interested in the views of the people. Wouldn’t it have been great if they’d listened to the view of the people before invading Iraq.
Gallagher’s letter draws to a close with, “Given the extent of the negative reaction, I request that the Board will provide process and adequate additional time for these concerns to be voiced and addresses before any additional action takes place on this issue.”
The Bush administration say that they have a concerns that the .xxx domains become a virtual red-light district, reserved exclusively for pornography.
Which way do you want it? Protecting those who don’t want to view porn, or not?
Porn on the Internet is a fact, and will not go away – just as porn in print will not vanish.
Surely it’s better to know where the porn is, rather than those not looking for it stumbling across it by accident.
Others see the creation of a separate TLD for ‘objectionable’ material as a step towards censorship of the Internet. Their concern is who becomes the arbiter of what is and isn’t ‘objectionable’, would a pencil drawing of nude be lumped in with hardcore porn, or would a slightly racy story be forced into the same category.
Is it just us, or do you feel that the steadily increasing involvement of Governments in areas which they really shouldn’t been getting involved with is a concern?
ICANN
17 August, 2005
Apple Cock-Up May Earn Microsoft $10 Per iPod
Apple may be forced to shell out royalties to Microsoft for every single iPod it sells after it emerged that Microsoft was first to file a crucial patent on technology used in its iPod.
With Apple selling more than 18 million iPods in the past year alone, the total bill could result in hundreds of millions of dollars pouring into Bill Gates’ coffers.
Someone at Apple must have royally cocked up because although the iPod was introduced in November 2001, they didn’t get around to filing a provisional patent application until July 2002, with a full application only being submitted in October that year.
In the meantime, Microsoft submitted an application in May 2002 to patent some key elements of music players, including song menu software, letting them claim ownership to some of the iPod technology.
The US Patent and Trademark Office rejected Apple’s application in July, saying some ideas were similar to an earlier application filed by John Platt, a Microsoft employee.
The application doesn’t identify the iPod by name (usual for such petitions), describing a “portable, pocket-sized multimedia asset player” capable of managing MP3 music files including “a song title, a song artist, a song album, a song length”
The dispute could lead to Apple having to pay a licence fee for the technology of up to $10 a machine
Microsoft, has magnanimously offered to licence the technology to Apple if awarded the patent with Microsoft intellectual property licensing and business development director David Kaefer smirking, “Our policy is to allow others to licence our patents so they can use our innovative methods in their products.”
Apple representatives have stated they will appeal the decision, a process that could drag on for up to 18 months.
iPod patent rejection shocks Apple
16 August, 2005
Silver Surfers Send Sales Soaring
The UK market for online shopping looks set to soar to £60 billion (~€88 billion, US$108 billion~) by 2010 according to a new report.
Research carried out by The Future Foundation for The Air Miles Travel Company claims that within five years 20% of all retail spending could be generated by items bought over the trusty Internet
The report also highlights the growth of silver surfers – old ‘uns aged between 55 and 64 – a demographic traditionally ignored by e-tailers.
According to the report, nearly two-thirds of people heading for retirement are currently clicking away on the web – up from only a third in 2001.
These figures suggest a silver surfer shopping boom is only five years away as there’s traditionally a two to six year delay between first using the Internet and whipping out the wallet online.
James Roper, chief executive of industry body for global e-retailing IMRG, warned that companies assuming that online shopping is only young hipsters could be restricting their growth.
“It’s essential for company growth to invest in this older online shopper,” he added.
The Future Foundation commented that websites sporting yoof-orientated design, teensy weensy text and kray-zee interfaces are likely to miss out on silver surfer sales.
Instead, the report stressed the importance of creating accessible sites with clear navigation, letting age-challenged users unleash their pensions and Spend! Spend! Spend!
Internet shopping continues to increase overall, with nearly 40% of people in the UK spending online during the past six months – up 100% from three years ago.
“Today’s online shopping market is certainly booming and is set to evolve dramatically over the next five years,” said Michael Wilmott, chief executive and head futurologist at the Foundation.
“If current trends continue, the proportion of Internet users among the general population could be as high as 85% by 2010 – with a whopping 80% of people shopping online.”
The Future Foundation
15 August, 2005
AOL Gives Away Spammer’s Bounty
AOL is giving away hundreds of thousands of dollars of gold, cash and goods seized from a spammer as a warning to anyone thinking of “making a living sending spam to AOL members”.
In a story sure to win the hearts of anyone who faces a daily deluge of spam, AOL will be dishing out nearly US$100,000 (£56,000, €80,550) worth of gold bars and cash along with a fully loaded Hummer H2 – all the former property of an email marketer.
The US internet giants scooped the bounty as part of a settlement against a New Hampshire resident in a lawsuit filed under the Can-Spam Act.
AOL sued the (then) 20 year old spammer in March 2004 after several months of investigation, accusing the spammer of making a career of mass mailing millions of messages offering “ephedra, male enhancement pills and other dubious products”.
The company said it managed to close down the dastardly spammer’s 40-computer enterprise thanks to help from its members, who enthusiastically clicked a “report spam button” to register their complaints.
The controversial Can-Spam Act provides Internet service providers with enough legal resources to get medieval on the outboxes of unsolicited e-mailers.
Under the Act, courts have the power to seize any property that a convicted spammer has obtained using money made through the offence, as well as grabbing computer equipment, software and technology used for illicit purposes.
AOL members and non-members living in the mainland US can sign up online for a chance at winning the goods until the 19 August, with the lucky winner announced shortly after.
“But this isn’t just a ‘thank you’ to members,” the company said in a statement. “It also serves as a message to anyone thinking of making a living sending spam to AOL members: AOL will find you and sue you.”
Thanks to its aggressive mo’fo’ antispam filters, AOL has claimed that spam on their servers has fallen by more than 85 percent since its peak in late 2003.
AOL hasn’t finished with the New Hampshire mob yet though, with one of the spammer’s co-conspirators – believed to have a cool US$500,000 (£277,450, €404,750) stashed away – declared the “next stop on our spammer treasure map,” according to company spokesman, Nicholas Graham.
The US District Court for the Eastern District of Virginia in Alexandria has also issued a US$13m (£7.21m, €10.46m) judgment against other members of the New Hampshire resident’s gang.
AOL plans to donate the “high-end” computer equipment seized from the New Hampshire spammer to public schools near its headquarters in Northern Virginia.
It’s been a bad time for spammers recently, with Microsoft reaching a US$7m (£3.88m, €5.64m) settlement with former “spam king” Scott Richter, with the US$1m (£0.55m, €0.80m) of the payout being earmarked for community centres in New York and US$5m (£2.77m, €4.03m) being invested in efforts to fight Internet crime.
AOL Spam FAQ
AOL Spam Decisions and Litigation
11 August, 2005