BT Rich Media has cuddled up to Sportfive, a French sports marketing group, and announced a partnership to make 2006 Football World Cup qualifying and friendly games available to fans streamed over broadband on the Internet.
Under the terms of the agreement, Sportfive – owners of the largest portfolio of European qualifying games – will use the BT Rich Media platform for publishing and distributing the video content.
Football bonkers viewers will be able to choose between 250Kbps or 500Kbps quality streams for approximately £7 (~US$13 ~€10), or alternatively download the entire match to keep forever for around £5 (~US$9.50 ~€7). As a long suffering Wales fan, I have to admit that there’s several games which I never wish to see again!
Not every match will be available online though, with only untelevised games being available to stream/download.
The games will be served up on http://www.qualifiers2006.com and promoted to over 10 million users via a range of affiliate sites such as soccernet.com,.teamtalk.com, sportinglife.com and rivals.net .
BT Rich Media will also be using the same technology to stream the forthcoming Scottish BT Cup Final at ScottishRugby.org.
Nokia has launched three new Nseries mobile multimedia handsets, capable of taking print-quality pictures, playing MP3s, reading e-mail, browsing the Web sites and viewing mobile TV. 
Nokia N90 
Images, videos and sound can be stored on the phone’s internal 31 MB memory or on the supplied 64 MB RS-MMC 
Joe Coles, Director of imaging product marketing at Nokia, stressed the consumer demand for camera-enabled mobiles: “The number one reason why people today purchase new handsets is the camera. Indeed, we foresee that by the end of 2005, over half a billion people worldwide will own a camera phone.” 
After several years of delays, Microsoft has assured computer-makers that Longhorn, the next version of Windows, is on track for release by the end of next year. 
Longhorn aims to boost security by placing cryptographic keys in special silicon chips built into PCs – a more secure solution than the current practice of storing encryption locks as data on a hard drive. 
This would offer a built-in method to let users view and print graphical documents, without the need to install the application that created the original file – in other words, a rival to Adobe Systems’ popular PDF technology and PostScript page description language. 
AbbiTalk, a West Sussex-based provider of Voice Over IP (VoIP) telephony services, is talking tough about its cut-rate broadband call packages, that offer customers extra telephone lines with discount local and UK call charges and no line rental. 
Prices start at £149 for “AbbiTalkBasicOne”, which provides one extra phone line, a unique number with Pre Pay phone account, an adaptor and a DECT digital cordless phone with digital answering machine. 
No line rental is charged and there’s no need to use a computer to make the calls as these are accomplished through the standard cordless handsets. 
Sweatband-toting sporty types will be pleased to learn that Nokia has introduced a new handset for active-minded consumers, the Nokia 5140i camera phone. 
Water-bottle clutching joggers will appreciate the ‘Fitness Coach’ application, offering an ‘always-on’ personal trainer that (apparently) “encourages users to go the extra mile or finish the last set.” 
The phone also includes the 
BBCi has launched a programming service for digital satellite viewers showcasing short films made by ordinary folk across the UK. 
Video Nation broke new ground when it first hit UK TV screens – running in short slots dropped in to the programming schedule. 
Content on the ‘Your Stories’ service is divided into daily themes, each with its own title. “My Music”, for example, featured an eight-year-old trumpet player and a blind pianist. 
BBCi controller, Rahul Chakkara, explained the reasoning behind Your Stories service: “The BBCi audience is maturing, and is looking for content that is social and highly involving, available to them whenever they want.” 
Big sighs of disappointment are heard all around Europe, as Sony officially announce the released date of the handheld gaming/media dream machine, the Sony PSP. It’s going to be 1 September 2005. 
Sony have announced the PlayStation Portable Value Pack at €249 (£179/US$323), which includes headphones, a 32Mb Memory Stick Duo, power supply, protective pouch, etc. The hit film Spider-Man 2 will be available on a UMD disc, free to early purchasers of PSP when they register on YourPSP.com. 
There are many tales of PSP-owners modifying their pride and joy to browser the Internet via Wi-Fi, or indeed run Instant Messaging client software. 
Ericsson has reported a thumping great rise in quarterly profits, helped by the deployment of 3G networks. 
These figures fly in the face of predictions from investors and analysts that sales would drop steadily for the big telecoms firms as Chinese manufacturers took over the industry. 
In a quest to blast their already soaring profits further up into the stratosphere, Google will test a cost-per-impression bidding model for AdWords ads, letting advertisers specify groups of sites or specific sites in Google’s ad network. 
Google has, however, promised limitations on the animated advertising fluff that can appear on their adverts, with blinking ads that continuously loop already declared verboten. 
The search engine heavyweights are hoping that the approach will appeal to advertisers who are fussy about where their brand appears or are aiming for a certain niche demographic. 
In an astonishing volte-face, Sony Online Entertainment (SOE) has announced that it now endorses the auctioning of virtual items from its massively popular online game, Everquest II – with the electronics giant pocketing a cut of the cash, naturally. 
Personally, we’d rather buy a round of lovely real ale than shell out for the Dark Lord of Deltronia’s Mystical Turbo Sword of Mwegneli, but as we’ve reported before (
“There already is a ‘virtual class system’ within the game itself – you earn status and faction standing, money, prestige, titles, fancy clothes and transport, you start living in a hovel but can move on up to luxury apartments etc – But at least till now you could assume that most people had ‘earned’ those things by playing the game. 
“I’m not sure of the mechanics in EQII, but in WoW (World of Warcraft) they have mitigated the potential for selling items somewhat by introducing the concept of having things bind to that character when it is picked up, meaning you can’t transfer items to other players, hence no selling though eBay and the like.” 
For some gamers, an officially sanctioned auction site is an inevitable consequence of the growing popularity of virtual gaming, with Sony’s cut, a reasonable price to pay for eliminating a lot of scams.