Business

Changes to business digitisation brings

US Gamers Watch Less TV non-Shock
We’ve all known for a long time that TV as we knew-and-loathed-it was under pressure, as people discovered there were things more rewarding in their lives than passively sitting in a darkened room, being bathed in light from a box in the corner of the room, watching whatever the channel controller decided to ‘entertain’ them with.
In a rather self-serving survey, “Digital Gaming in America”, Ziff Davis Media attempts to further fan the flames of this long lasting discussion, as they reveal that video gamers are watching less TV than they did previously, and will continue to reduce the amount they are consume.
Before you run to your boss, waving a printout of this story in your hand, proclaiming the near-death of TV. The results of the survey do reflect the general trend of what is happening, but do bear in mind the size of survey – 1,500 households (ie people who happened to be in, answered the phone, and had nothing better to do than answer a series of questions), compared with 295m people that live in America isn’t what you’d call statistically robust.
What did they find? About a quarter reduced their TV watching over the last year, with about a further fifth planning to do the same in the coming year. To put some hours against that, they estimate that there’s been a two hours per week drop over the last year to 16 hours a week this year, around a 10% drop.
The wolf isn’t quite at the door of TV. Looking at the hours/week, the reduced figure is still over 2.25 hours of TV a day, quite considerable when you consider what other task people do for that period of time, beyond working and sleeping.
In 2003 the BBC did some far more interesting research in this area. Of course they found that numbers of hours watched dropped, but what we found significant was that those hours that were being spent in front of the TV, weren’t dedicated to watching it.
This was particularly true of the younger viewers (34 and under) who were doing other things – texting their friends, Web browsing, talking on the phone, playing games on portable games systems – while in front of the box. They would dip in and out of the TV programme as it was on, occasionally letting it grab their attention – treating it far more like radio. It doesn’t take a great deal of imagination to figure that their attention would be elsewhere during the advert breaks.
Where the Ziff Davis survey does become more interesting is looking at gaming on mobile phones, particularly as this report is US-centric and the market isn’t very mature. A surprising 42% of surveyed gamers had bought games for their phones, and that they’d spent an average of US$13 (~€10, ~£7) each over the last three months.
An additional surprise for us was the length of time the games had been played on the mobile phones – 19 minutes per gaming session. Given the size of the display and general difficulty of playing games on such restricted controls, this is a revelation.
The split of games played was Arcade (57%), Card (44%) and Puzzle (37%) – another suprise for us given the device’s restrictions mentioned in the paragraph above. We suspect that the dominance of arcade games will reduce as players realise thinking games will be more rewarding than twitching with little buttons.
Oh … by the way Ziff Davis just happen to publish the games magazine, Electronic Gaming Monthly, Computer Gaming World, Official U.S. PlayStation Magazine and 1UP.com – and their ad sales people are just sitting there waiting to hear from you if you want to shift your advertising budget from TV to their mags.
Ziff Davis Video Game Survey: Gamers Continue to Cut TV Viewing
BBC – TV’s Tipping Point: Why the digital revolution is only just beginning
10 August, 2005
Yahoo Unveils Audio Search Facility
Yahoo is testing a new Audio search facility to let users find audio files on the Web.
The free service, available online at Yahoo Search, claims to have indexed more than 50 million audio files including music downloads, albums, spoken word newscasts, speeches, interviews and, notably, podcasts.
Additionally, the search engine has indexed other audio related information including music videos, album reviews, artist images and artists’ Websites.
Although other internet search engines have the capability to find audio files, Yahoo claims that theirs is the dog’s bollo’s because the company has received permission to index downloadable songs offered by almost all of the biggest mainstream and independent providers.
These include iTunes, Napster, eMusic, GarageBand.com, Napster and RealNetworks’ Rhapsody, letting users click to buy once they’ve found the tunes they’re looking for.
Although the service is still in beta we were impressed with its speedy and simple interface: typing in the name of one of my (sadly) obscure old punk songs immediately brought up the album details, a list of download locations and links to reviews and other released albums.
For many of the songs, you can preview tunes before buying, with a ‘Preferred Audio Service’ option letting users select their, err, preferred music service from a comprehensive list.
Impressive!
This latest offering from Yahoo reflects the growing trend by search engine companies to expand their services into multimedia as well as text-based searching.
With all of the major players already offering some kind of video search facility, the race is on to provide a true, one-stop search engine capable of indexing everything on the Web.
Yahoo Audio Search
5 August, 2005
Identity Theft Hits One In Five Americans
Almost a fifth of US consumers have admitted falling victim to identity theft, with younger adults at greatest risk, according to new figures.
The Experian-Gallup Personal Credit Index revealed that the young ‘uns were the most gullible, with twenty-five per cent of American consumers under the age of 30 admitting to having their financial information stolen.
This compared to about 18 per cent in the middle-aged group and just 11 per cent amongst the wise old silver surfers aged 65 and older.
Of course, this imbalance could just be reflecting younger consumers’ greater interaction with sites that require financial information to be input (e.g. e-bay, PayPal, iTunes, online merchandise etc).
“The public’s perception about how many consumers have suffered identity theft appears fairly accurate, according to the poll, with the median projected percentage at 15 per cent, not very far off from the 18 per cent measured in the poll,” observed Ed Ojdana, group president at Experian Interactive.
“This makes it all the more concerning that so few consumers are being proactive in protecting their information,” he finger-wagged.
Experian-Gallup found that around two-thirds of consumers who have yet to experience identity theft felt that it was unlikely to happen to them, with only six per cent taking the precaution of purchasing some form of identity theft protection.
An even smaller percentage – four per cent – had purchased identity theft insurance but then not bothered to check their bank to see whether anyone had been dipping into their hard earned savings.
Despite so few punters taking preventive action to avoid becoming a victim of identity theft, 62 per cent expressed concern that their financial information could be stolen online.
It wasn’t just online banking that got the punters fretting, with more than half worrying that their personal information could be stolen in the post (55 per cent) or at a shop (53 per cent) or while they’re filling their faces at a restaurant (47 per cent).
However, it’s worth bearing in mind that the company who commissioned the survey, Experian, are in the business of – would you believe it?! – selling protection against identity fraud.
Pinch of salt, anyone?
Experian
Preventing Identity Theft – a guide
5 August, 2005
Mobile Firefox; Microsoft Hacking; 2.6bn UK SMSs – News Round-up
Mozilla Works On Mobile Version Of Firefox Browser
The Mozilla Foundation has released a technology preview of a mobile-phone browser, based on the same code that powers the popular Firefox browser.
With a release name of Minimo 0.007 there’s no doubting that we’re in deep into early beta stages here, but Mozilla promises to be first handheld browser to feature tabbed browsing and Web services support.
With an interface built in XUL (Extensible User Interface Language), the browser will support cascading style sheets (CSS), JavaScript and resource description language (RDF) for storing dynamic content.
Mozilla hinted that it’s been chatting to phone manufacturers about using Minimo, but there doesn’t seem to be any official announcements on the horizon yet.
Mozilla
Hackers Crack Windows Genuine Advantage Anti-Piracy Controls
Hackers have made chumps out of Microsoft, successfully bypassing their Windows Genuine Advantage (WGA) Programme only days after the anti-piracy scheme was activated.
The service was supposed to force users to join the WGA authentication program if they wished to receive software updates from the Microsoft Download Centre or from Windows Update.
Users were asked to download an ActiveX control which checked the authenticity of their Windows software and, if validated, would store a download key on the PC for future verification.
Quick-off-the-mark hackers quickly developed a simple one line hack which turned off the trigger for the key check – thus negating the need for users to verify their serial number before using Windows Update.
Doh!
Boingboing
SMS-Mad Brits Send 2.6 Billion Text Messages In June
Figures from the Mobile Data Association (MDA) reveal that U.K. mobile phone users sent an astonishing 2.6 billion text messages in June.
This works out at an average of 86.7 million text messages sent each day throughout June – 24% higher than in the same period last year.
There’s already been 15 billion text messages sent in the first half of this year in the UK, with the MDA expecting the year’s total to reach 30 billion, compared with 26.2 billion in 2004.
Text.it
29 July, 2005
CinemaNow Take High Def Content From HDNet
Online broadband film distributer, and latterly video content provider CinemaNow, has announced that they will be carrying some high-definition from HDNet on their Internet to PC delivery platform. It’s the first time that HDNet’s content has been made available on-demand through an online broadband service.
CinemaNow are long-standing pioneers in the area of delivering licensed films to PC over a broadband connection, starting as they did in 1999, a long time before the home user broadband audience existed. They weathered the storms and could be well placed to take advantage of growing broadband usage.
Mark Cuban, the CEO of HDNet, has been slowly gathering HD content to the point where HDNet now lay claim to having more original high-definition content than any other network. We at Digital-Lifestyles.info have had our eye on him for years, as we think he’s a smart cookie. He not only spots upcoming trends, but turns them into businesses. He made a fortune when he sold broadcast.com to Yahoo for billions of dollars at the peak of the market.
Cuban has publicly stated that HDNet content will not be DRM-protected, infact he thinks his refusal to use DRM will give HDNet a competitive advantage.
This agreement between HDNet and CinemaNow gives their customers the chance download and own the HD content.
Further deals along these lines are inevitable in time, with the only question mark over HD content being delivered over broadband connections being the current speeds of what is defined as broadband. HD content, because of its extra resolution produces larger files, these take extra time to come down to the computer being used for playing it back. As regular readers will know, we think calling a 512k DSL connection “broadband” is insulting to the customers.
CinemaNow
HDNet
Marc Cuban’s blog
28 July, 2005
Amazon Revenue Rockets, Income Slips
Amazon.com’s revenue soared internationally in the second quarter as electronics and other non-book bits’n’bobs made up more of its business.
The cash tills rang loud to the tune of US$1.75 billion (~£1bn, ~€1.45bn) in the quarter ended June 30, up a healthy 26 per cent from US$1.39 billion in last year’s second quarter.
Amazon’s international segment – which includes its UK French, German, Japanese and Chinese units – climbed 33 per cent from last year to reach US$793 million (~£456m, ~€661m).
The behemoth of online book floggers saw its sales of electronics and general merchandise grow to 26 per cent of its worldwide sales from 23 per cent a year earlier.
Amazon.com’s chief financial officer, Tom Szkutak, announced that third-party sales accounted for 28 percent of Amazon.com’s total items sold, sprightly stepping up from 24 percent for this time last year.
Szkutak said that the company was chuffed with the “heavy shopping” undertaken by Amazon Prime customers who have been clicking madly for electronics, tools, kitchen supplies, and health and personal care products.
“Though expensive for the company, Amazon Prime creates a premium experience for customers who join, and as a result we hope they’ll purchase more from us in the long term,” Szkutak said.
It wasn’t all pearly-white grins, as Amazon announced that net income declined to US$52 million (~£30m, ~€43m) from US$76 (~£44m, ~€66.3m) million in the second quarter of 2004.
This includes US$56 million (~£32.25m, ~€46.6m) in income tax expense, which was up from US$5 million (~£2.87m, ~€4.16m) a year earlier.
Amazon’s earnings were US$0.12 per share, slipping down from US$0.18 per share in last year’s second quarter, but still ahead of analyst’s predications.
Amazon said it expects sales to increase of 20 percent to 31 percent in the current quarter compared to last year.
Amazon
27 July, 2005
Music File Sharers Spend The Most
Illegal music downloaders shell out more for legitimate music downloads than goody two-shoes music fans.
The results of the ‘2005 Speakerbox’ study by market researchers The Leading Question revealed that music fans who download music illegally via file-sharing networks also fork out four-and-a-half times more on legitimate music downloads than average fans.
The survey asked 600 British PC and mobile-owning British music fans about their downloading activities and discovered that music pirates spend substantially more on legally downloadable music through sites like Apple’s iTunes Music Store or Napster
According to the report, pirates who regularly download or share unlicensed music spend an average of £5.52 (~US$9.63, ~€7.99) per month on legal digital music, while average music fans only spend £1.27 (~US$2.21, ~€1.84) on digital tracks.
How much both groups spend on CDs wasn’t specified.
“Music fans who break piracy laws are highly valuable customers,” said Paul Brindley, director of The Leading Question.
“Legal actions are making something of an impact but unlicensed file sharing will never be eradicated. The smart response is to capitalise on the power of the p2p networks themselves to entice consumers into more attractive legal alternatives,” he added.
The research also revealed that illegal downloaders were mustard keen to try emerging music services, with 60% wanting to get their hands on a MP3-enabled phone, compared to just 29% of other music fans.
“There’s a myth that all illegal downloaders are mercenaries hell-bent on breaking the law in pursuit of free music,” Brindley continued. “In reality, they are often hardcore fans who are extremely enthusiastic about adopting paid-for services as long as they are suitably compelling.”
The survey highlighted that phones still have some way to go before they can compete with dedicated MP3 players as de-facto music playing devices.
Only 8% of punters surveyed were planning to buy a music playing mobile phone in the next 12 months, compared to 33% ready to rip out the readies for an iPod or dedicated MP3 player during the same period.
Respondents cited built-in cameras, organiser functions and video cameras above music players in their preferences for mobile phone features.
Punters expressed concern about the low battery life of music playing phones, with some fearful of losing their music collection if they lost their phone.
With many consumers getting their phones for nowt through contract deals – and often replacing them regularly – the survey concluded that most punters have a low “emotional attachment” to their phones.
Despite this, 38% of those surveyed liked the idea of downloading full-length tracks direct to their mobiles, with the figure rising to over 50% for punters already downloading tracks to their computers.
Mobile phone manufacturers trying to tempt new users with bigger onboard memory will note that only 4% of the survey respondents wanted more than 1,000 songs worth of music to take with them on holiday.
Online file sharers ‘buy more music’ [Guardian]
The Leading Edge
27 July, 2005
White PSP: Microsoft Patent Emoticons: Google Rule – News Catch-Up
Microsoft Wants To Own Emoticons
Microsoft has filed an application with the US Patent & Trademark Office to safeguard its rights on “methods and devices for creating and transferring custom emoticons.”
In case you’ve been living under a rock, emoticons are representations of faces made up by keyboard characters and originally all looked like this :) and :-/.
Nowadays, many mobile phones and computers automatically replace the text characters with an appropriate custom image when it spots emoticons in text messages and emails.
It’s far from clear what makes Microsoft think they should own Emoticons – there again, it’s never held them back before.
Microsoft’s patent application
Microsoft emoticons
Sony Whips Out A White PSP
Sony has confirmed that it will be launching a groovy white version of its PSP, but – surprise, surprise – only in Japan.
Sony has a long history of serving up different coloured units in different territories, with the PS2 being released in Aqua, White, Yellow and Silver in the past.
The company has also announced a firmware update (in Japan, natch) so that users can surf the Internet directly from the console.
Some techie users have already been enjoying Web access on their PSPs after a hack was discovered that took advantage of a hole in the operating system used by certain games.
There’s no date set for a US and European patch, although Japanese firmware updates traditionally precede roll-outs in other markets. Sony White PSP
Google Grabs 47% Of All Searches Online
Nielsen//NetRatings “MegaView Search” report has ranked Google as the Big Cheese of search engines, registering 47% of all searches conducted online.
Lagging some way behind was Yahoo! at 22%, with MSN limping into third place at 12% and AOL Search only managing a comparatively feeble 5% of all searches.
Image searching grew hugely in popularity across all the search engines, with MSN seeing the largest increase in its image searches with a massive 90% surge. AOL’s image search zipped up 74%, Yahoo!’s soared 55%, and Google’s jumped by a rather modest 12%. Nielsen//NetRatings
25 July, 2005
UK Wi-Fi Freeloader Fined £500
A British court has fined a man £500 ($870, €720) for using a residential wireless broadband connection without permission.
In what is believed to be the first conviction of its kind in the UK, a jury at Isleworth, Middlesex court found Gregory Straszkiewicz, 24, guilty of dishonestly obtaining an electronic communications service and possessing equipment for fraudulent use of a communications service.
The case was brought under the Communications Act 2003 with the Crown Prosecution Service saying he was guilty of ‘piggybacking’ a household wireless network.
Police officers nabbed Straszkiewicz after he was spotted by locals wandering around a residential area looking for “free” net connections.
He was reported to have attempted this several times before the Old Bill invited him for a date in the cells.
In addition to the fine, Straszkiewicz was also sentenced to a 12 months conditional discharge and had his laptop confiscated.
We have to say this seems a little harsh as there appears to be no evidence that there was any hostile motive behind his actions.
Earlier this month, we reported on a Florida man being arrested for a similar offence.
It remains unclear whether mobile Wi-Fi users accidentally connecting to another party’s unsecured, unencrypted connection would risk prosecution.
The fact that many cafes and bars now offer free Wi-Fi Web access surely make it difficult to enforce this law, although there’s clearly a different case to answer when individuals are persistently wandering around residential streets with their laptops flipped open.
As ever, the solution is simple, and that’s for people running Wi-Fi connections to use the encryption tools provided.
And if you don’t know how to do that, here’s a tutorial: Wireless Home Networking, Part III – Wi-Fi Security
25 July, 2005
Google Profits Rocket Another 300%
Champagne corks were firing off at Google like a military salute as the Internet search engine kings revealed that their profits had jumped more than 300 per cent in the second quarter this year.
Fuelled by continued growth in Web advertising, Google raked in a revenue of $1.38 billion (~£788m ~€1.13bn) its second 2005 fiscal quarter, up 98 per cent compared with the same period last year.
Once you take off the $494 million (~£282m ~€406m) paid by Google to its ad network partners (known as traffic acquisition costs), revenue racked up to a wallet-delighting $886 million (~£506m ~€728m).
Net income came in at $343 million (~£195m ~€282m), favourably comparing with the $79 million (~£45m ~€64m) recorded in 2004’s second quarter, while revenue from Google sites totted up to $737 million (~£421m ~€606m) – up a thumping great 115 per cent.
Revenue from Google ad network partners was similarly rosy, totalling $630 million (~£359m ~€518m), an increase of 82 per cent.
“We are very proud of our results. Business is very good here at Google,” said chief executive Eric Schmidt, dodging the flying champagne corks. “It’s really because we’ve figured out ways to stay focused on end users and innovation.”
Although the vast majority of Google’s revenue comes from paid advertisements on search results pages and on partner sites, the company has been diversifying with new products and services like video search and mapping.
The company’s fortunes are currently on a stratospheric trajectory, with April’s first-quarter profit almost six times higher than a year earlier.
Not surprisingly, Google’s share price has soared, nudging above $300 (~£171 ~€246) a share for the first time last month and giving the company the honour of being the world’s biggest media group by stock market value.
Recent figures from Nielsen/NetRatings revealed that Google has attracted in excess of 78.5 million US visitors last month, up 25 per cent from a year ago, with the Google and Blogger brands ranked numbero uno in search and Web hosting, respectively.
Meanwhile, Yahoo had to make do with cheapo Cava as figures posted on Tuesday revealed a higher second-quarter profit but with revenue falling short of analyst expectations.
This news sent Yahoo! shares tumbling down as much as 10 per cent in after-hours trading.
Google
22 July, 2005