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BSkyB Moves Execs, To Enter ‘Adjacent Areas Of Business’
Sky has announced three of its top Exec will be altering roles, we suspect, as they prepare to become more than just a satellite TV company.
Using its best management speak, the UK Satellite-overlord is “aligning its organisational structure to support sustained growth towards its target of 10 million direct-to-home customers in 2010.”
The favoured three will be stepping it up a gear, and far beyond having the key for the executive toilet, we suspect they’ll be getting a whole suite of bathroom facilities.
- Dawn Airey, who has been Managing Director of Sky Networks since 2003, becomes Managing Director, Channels and Services with overall responsibility for Sky’s multi-platform content strategy. The existing Sky Networks structure will be joined in the Channels and Services group by an enlarged interactive team that brings together all of Sky’s new media content on interactive TV, online and mobile platforms. She’ll assume additional responsibility for Sky’s joint ventures, wholesale distribution arrangements with cable companies and commercial relationships with third-party channels on the satellite platform.
- Mike Darcey, who joined Sky in 1998 and is currently Group Strategy Director, becomes Group Commercial and Strategy Director with extended responsibility for a new group that combines Sky’s Strategy, Future Technology, R&D and Business Development teams. In addition, he’ll take on a further responsibility to manage and develop Sky’s major commercial relationships in support of the company’s strategic goals
- Jon Florsheim, who joined Sky in 1994, becomes Managing Director, Customer Group in addition to his existing title of Chief Marketing Officer. The Customer Group brings together all of Sky’s expertise in sales, marketing and customer operations to create a seamless brand, product and service experience for customers. This team will lead the continued development and implementation of Sky’s multi-product strategy, including the launch of the company’s broadband offering in the second half of calendar 2006.
We think Mike Darcey sounds like he’s going to have the most fun, and certainly the most toys to play with.
James Murdoch, Sky’s Chief Executive, touches on where BSkyB is planning on going, as they “exploit content on multiple platforms and expand into adjacent areas of business.”
With the strength of BSkyB’s relationships with their customers, fear will be struck into the heart of many execs in many industries by the words “adjacent areas of business.”
8 February, 2006
Get Free Entry to iTunes Music Store Billion Songs Countdown
Apple have announced a competition to become the downloader of the 1 Billion th music track on iTMS.
Just over a year ago we put out a brief piece expressing our frustration at Apple making a PR splash every time it sold another 100m tracks. Our plea … don’t worry about telling us until the next figure was significant.
Well it looks like that day is fast approaching.
At the time of writing, we see on the live track count that they’ve sold just short of 950,981,000 tracks.
The prize for the 1Bn th track is well worth winning
1 x 20-inch G5 iMac
10 x 60GB iPods (5 white/5 black)
1 x U.S. $10,000 iTunes Music Card (good for any media type)
On the back of the billionth hoopla, is the plan to reward track purchasers every time a 100,000 song is hit, which provides
1 x 4GB black iPods nano
1 x US $100 iTunes Music Card
which is also not to be sneezed at.
You know we like to save you money when we can and for those with sharp eyes, you’ll see near at the bottom of the page in light grey (thanks Apple), “*No purchase necessary to win. Click here to submit a free entry form.” Following the link takes you to the form telling that you can indeed make up to 25 free entries a day. We’re not sure on the US rules for competitions, but we know in the UK that free entry is essential when there’s no skill involved with entering the competition.
Best of luck – and let us know if you win!
iTunes Billion Songs Countdown
Free entry form – iTunes Billion Songs Countdown
7 February, 2006
M600 Handset Announced by Sony
Sony Ericsson have announced their new M600 handset, a tri-band (900/1800/1900 plus UMTS 2100 for 3G data outside the US) jobbie, with Symbian OS 9.1 and UIQ 3.0 operating systems.
Measuring a pocket unruffling 15 mm thick, the 3G-capable communicator sports a Blackberry 7100x style dual function QWERTY keyboard and a large, touch-sensitive, 2.6-inch 240×320 262K colour display.
The dual function thumb-board offers continuous spell checking and word completion, with input aided by a 3-way jog dial and handwriting recognition.
Touted as a “fully-specified email tool and mobile phone”, the handset offers true multitasking, so a user can, for example, browse the Internet while chatting away on the phone.
The onboard push email applications and remote synchronisation options should please the swivel-action office crowd, with support for AlteXia, Ericsson Mobile Office (EMO), iAnywhere OneBridge, Intellisync, Microsoft Exchange ActiveSync, RIM – BlackBerry Connect , Seven, Visto and standard email.
For road warriors and shuffling suits, there’s the facility to read and edit PowerPoint, Word and Excel documents and Adobe PDF files on the move, with the popular Opera 8 browser provided for surfing the Internet.
For storing email attachments and multimedia content, there’s 80MB of internal memory, with Sony bundling in an additional 64MB Memory Stick in their new, teensy-weensy, bound-to-lose-it-in-seconds Micro M2 card format.
The built in media player offers support for MP3, AAC, ACC+, E-AAC+ and m4a, streaming audio and video playback 30 fps with Stereo Bluetooth support.
In line with its business focus, there’s no built in camera, and Wi-Fi is an unfortunate omission too.
For some reason we kept thinking of a Spectrum ZX-80 when we looked at the phone, but I guess that’s no bad thing.
Sony Ericsson will be making the new phone available in Granite Black and Crystal White from Q2 2006.
Sony Ericsson’s M600i, A First Look [All About Symbian]
7 February, 2006
Sony Micro M2 Memory Stick For March Launch
If you’ve owned a few digital cameras or PDAs and switched brands a couple of times over the years, you’ll probably already have a formidable collection of non-compatible memory cards wasting away in your drawer.
Looking around our office, we’ve acquired a mighty pile of chunky compact flash memory cards, Sony memory sticks in various flavours, SD cards and the fairly obscure XD format that was forced on us when we fell in love with the Fuji F11 camera.
Lord knows how much that lot costs us, but it looks like we might have to be dipping into our pockets yet again after Sony have released yet another version of their Memory Stick.
Designed for use in cellphones, the new Memory Stick Micro M2 measures in at just 15 x 12.5 x 1.2mm (about 1/4 the size of the Memory Stick Duo) and is set to compete against similarly Lilliputian formats like the MicroSD, MiniSD and TransFlash memory cards (an ‘M2’ adaptor will let users fit the new cards into Memory Stick PRO slots).
Developed by Sony and SanDisk the new card will ship in March and initially come in storage capacities of 256MB, 512MB and 1GB. In theory, the new Micro M2 cards will eventually be able to offer up to 32GB capacity.
Much as we hate to give any kudos to yet another memory card format, that’s a mighty impressive capacity and offers enough storage space to turn mobile phones into fully fledged, iPod-worrying MP3 players.
As is often Sony’s way, we expect consumers are unlikely to be given much choice whether they want to use the format or not with forthcoming Sony Ericsson handsets already using the format.
With the exception of occasional appearances on third party cameras and laptops, none of the various Memory Stick formats have found much favour with other manufacturers, so anyone tempted by the Sony Ericsson’s new range will have to fork out for yet another memory card format.
Thanks Sony.
Sony
7 February, 2006
FON Global WiFi Venture Gets Google And Skype Investment
Internet big boys Google and Skype have teamed up with two venture capital firms, Index Ventures and Sequoia Capital, to invest a mighty wedge into Fon Technology, a Spanish startup looking to build a global network of Wi-Fi hotspots.
A total of €18 million ($21.6 million) has been invested in the Madrid-based company, with the cash being set aside to increase the number of Fon users and to support the growth of Wi-Fi worldwide, “particularly in countries where broadband is currently unaffordable to most people.”
Fon’s service allows subscribers to connect and/or share their WiFi connections with others and has notched up 3,000 registered members since launching a beta version of its service in November 2005.
The company hopes to establish a global network of 1 million Wi-Fi hotspots by 2010, allowing FON users, or “foneros,” to connect to the Internet via FON WiFi hotspots provided by other foneros (we’re already getting fed up saying ‘fon’ ).
For Google and Skype, a deal with FON makes their web-based services more ubiquitously available, with developers gaining access to a new platform for creating and delivering services on a global scale.
FON intends to scoop up revenue from a subscription model, where ‘foneros’ sign up as Linus members (sharing their home WiFi hotspot with the FON network and able to use any FON hotspot for free), Bill members (sharing WiFi hotspots with Alien members for a fee but unable to roam the FON network for free) and Alien members who pay to use the FON network on an as-needed basis.
According to FON, fifty-percent of revenue generated from ‘Aliens’ will be shared with ‘Bills’, with alien memberships currently available on a free-trial basis.
We’re not sure how he kept a straight face, but FON founder, Martin Varsavsky is quoting as saying, “Aliens are at the heart of our business model.”
“As we continue to grow, we will attract consumers for all three foneros categories and achieve our goal of creating a global WiFi nation. This is a great opportunity for ISP’s, bloggers, developers, early adopters, consumer electronics manufacturers and the ‘average Joe or Jane’ with a WiFi connection to make money by letting other foneros connect to the Net safely and simply,” he continued.
Skype CEO Niklas Zennstrom was also enthusiastic: “There is perhaps no more important goal for the industry than helping to make broadband Internet access available around the world.”
“FON has a great idea to help people share WiFi with one another to build a global unified broadband network, and we’re happy to lend support. Enabling more communities to tap into the power of the Web benefits us all,” he added.
FON
6 February, 2006
PDA Sales Plummet Again
It’s been spluttering and wheezing in its sick bed for what seems like an eternity, but the latest figures from research firm IDC confirm that the prognosis isn’t good for the Personal Digital Assistant (PDA).
The figures show the worldwide market for handheld PDAs continuing to plummet, with sales dropping for the fourth consecutive year in 2005.
IDC’s research reveals that just 2.2 million devices were shipped during the last three months of the year, with annual sales falling 16.7 percent to 7.5 million units – substantially down on 2004’s figure of 9.1 million.
Although a bright Christmas period saw sales grow 37.6% over Q3, the trend remains resolutely downward, with the declining market segment driving PDAs into a market niche.
Industry pundits put the slow but steady decline of PDAs down to the exponential growth of smartphones, with the convenience and features of converged handhelds proving more alluring to punters.
According to Gartner’s figures, a massive 72 million smartphones will be shifted this year, compared to just 6.6 million units in 2003.
But don’t go ordering flowers for the PDA funeral quite yet, as IDC research analyst Ramon Llamas insists that it’s not all over for the PDA market, with plenty of smaller vendors remaining committed to a more niche PDA market.
“The departure of other worldwide vendors has opened the door for smaller vendors to improve their position within the market. During the course of the year, several smaller vendors remained within striking distance of beating each other for the number four or five position, and even posed a challenge to some of the worldwide vendors,” commented Llamas.
Palm – whose market leading Treo 650 smartphone has just been ported to Windows in the shape of the Treo 700w – remains the most popular PDA brand, securing 43 per cent of the market last year, with HP in second place at 25 per cent.
Elsewhere, Mark Nelson, the founder of Ovid Technologies who owns 8 percent of Palm’s stock, has urged Palm to consider selling its business to big boys like Research in Motion, Dell or Hewlett-Packard while its stock is high.
With Palm winding down its PDA business and concentrating on its Treo smartphone range, Nelson argues that Palm will have difficulty competing against deep-pocketed rivals like Dell and HP who are currently ploughing big R&D budgets into similar products.
Palm declined to comment, but Todd Kort, an analyst at Gartner, reckons that Palm’s independence is a positive advantage, making them, “faster on their feet” with the ability to “turn on a dime a little faster than Nokia can.”
In Europe, Nokia still rule the smartphone roost, but as we reported last year, the Treo remains hugely popular in the States.
Kort suggested that Palm’s lean’n’mean size gives it the edge to adapt to quickly changing market trends and target high-end customers.
6 February, 2006
BMW Punished By Google For Porn Tricks
After trying to cheat its way to the top of the search engine pile, BMW has been dropped from global search engine, Google.
The German car manufacturer was booted off Google after it had employed the same kind of tactics used by porn sites to try and artificially inflate search engine rankings.
BMW’s dodgy practices were detected by Matt Cutts, a software engineer at Google who explained how the company had violated Google’s webmaster quality guidelines, specifically the principle of “Don’t deceive your users or present different content to search engines than you display to users.”
As he explains in his blog, search engine ‘bots’ arriving at the BMW site would see a page full of keyword-loaded text, which had been optimised to ensure a high search engine ranking.
But what the search engine saw and what greeted visitors were two quite separate things, as a piece of JavaScript would immediately redirect visitors to a completely different website.
Keyword-optimised ‘fake’ pages created purely to attract search engine robots are known as ‘doorway’ or ‘gateway’ pages and have long been employed by the porn industry to boost the profile of a site.
Google’s ‘delisting’ of BMW means that searches for terms like “BMW” or “BMW Australia” will now only return results for the global site and not regional sites.
Moreover, bmw.com.de’s PageRank – an algorithm used by Google to assign a ‘popularity ranking’ to every page on the web – has been reset to zero.
It’s probable that BMW enlisted the help of Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) experts who use a variety of cunning tricks to boost a client’s search engine ranking.
Although there are many perfectly fair and legal ways of optimising a site’s search engine ranking, it’s not unusual to see less ethical “black hat” tactics being employed, usually by dodgy gambling and pornography sites.
BMW now have the dubious honour of becoming one of the highest profile companies to have a website effectively blacklisted by Google, by having their all-important PageRank reset to Zero (German camera manufacturer ricoh.de are also set to be delisted).
Matt Cutts’ blog reports that at least some of the JavaScript-redirecting pages have already been removed from bmw.de, but before they can be ‘reincluded’, Google’s webspam team will need a ‘reinclusion request’ along with details on who created the doorway pages.
Although it’s good to see search engine cheats getting slapped down, in reality it’s not going to make a great deal of difference to BMW in the long term. But we suspect that some P45 forms are being handed out as we speak…
Matt Cutts Blog
6 February, 2006
Who Will Pay The Price For Google’s Stock Drop?
?The tumbrels are resounding for enemies of Google European head, and former T-Mobile boss, Nikesh Arora, following the “disappointing” financial results. In fact, the results were trivially down, but that was enough, and his head will be anxiously sought by Google in the US, say our stray packet interception team.
Your Network Sniffer has discovered that Google insiders are blaming the flop of Web’n’Walk (T-Mobile) and the low-key, reluctant Vodafone contract for making Google the default search engine for phone users. Both contracts, had they been successful, “would have earned the $40m that Arora promised the City he would have,” said one insider.
And what is $40m in the context of Google earnings? “Enough!” is the answer. As a pundit in the Telegraph remarked today: the reason for owning google shares is “it goes up every day” and this is the first time Google has been obliged to report figures below prediction.
And the City doesn’t like people it can’t cut down to size. Give them an excuse, and they will jump on you, which is what happened. That $40m is the excuse they’ve been waiting for. “Misled us with the forecast!”
Why has Nikesh been nominated as scapegoat? Well, apart from the fact that nobody inside Google Europe likes him, it seems that he committed the cardinal sin of not actually telling his US bosses that he was falling short.
“You’d think that a search company could find out what was happening inside its own offices in Europe!” was one quip which, apparently, bit deep. But that appears to be where it all went pear-shaped: instead of saying “I’m going to be $40m short, sack me if you aren’t happy!” to the financial world, Arora didn’t reveal the gap between prediction and reality until the quarterly results came out.
This story originally appeared on NewsWireless, a site read by those who really understand the value of quality journalism.
3 February, 2006
iPod fittings on HMS Darling: Still Valid In 2009?
You may have heard about yesterdays launching of the latest UK warship – HMS Darling (its ninth incarnation), a Type 45 Destroyer.
Now this is a serious bit of kit, that not only costs about £605m, but is 150-metres long and is a hefty 7,350 tonnes
We happened to hear the launching ceremony on the radio, and the reporter was fairly stunned by its pace down the runway into the water. Luckily there was over 160-tonnes of chains on each side of the ship to make sure it didn’t bash into the other side.
The constructors are putting it about that the the Principal Anti-Air Missile System (PAAMS to those in the know) “can trace and destroy hostile objects as small a cricket ball travelling at three times the speed of sound. Its range is effective over a radius of several hundred miles.” Which I’m sure is reassuring when you’re floating around in the middle of an ocean on a bit of metal, and people are throwing things at you, you rather they didn’t. The summary – don’t mess.
As well as all of the killing parts, it’s also got a cuddly side, which frankly is the side that interests us more. The 230 crew will be treated quite unlike any other Navy.
Not only will the accommodation be individual cabins, in the “Hotel Facilities”, but each of them will have an I-pod charging point, CD player, internet access and a five channel recreational audio.
The potentially embarrassing thing about the audio tech on board is that, when this monster is fully commissioned in 2009, it’s highly likely that both the iPod and its charging point will have been superseded and that the CD payer will be of very little use too.
If you’re interested in buying one, do let BAE Systems know that you saw it on Digital-Lifestyles, and we’ll hopefully get a referral payment.
If you’re interested in the technology on board, there’s a fair bit of detail at Darling.org.uk, as well as the Royal Navy’s own site, and the dedicated site on the via)
2 February, 2006
BBC World Now On Australian And Norwegian Mobile Phones
BBC World have been busy bunnies of late, signing distribution deals all over the globe.
Two of the most recent, in the last week are Telenor Nordic Mobile and Hutchinson/3 Australia. Both have signed deals to deliver the BBC’s commercial news service, BBC World, to mobile handsets.
Mobile subscribers who have compatible 3G handsets will be able to watch live running 24-house news, streamed to their handsets.
The video streams include the adverts that would be shown if BBC World were being shown on the TV in the region. As yet, BBC World aren’t charging their advertisers any extra to splash them on mobile screens – they’re seeing it as added value for them
As far as who pays what to whom (BBC World) varies on the mobile company and if the mobile subscribers are being charged to receive the service to their mobile, on top of data fees. Some of the mobile operators currently provide the service for gratis, while others include it in content bundles.
In general, we’ve found that there’s not too many Mobile companies that are charging for video content currently, as they are ~~desperate~~ very keen to get people to sign up to receive video so they get in the habit of watching ~~and get addicted~~. Having said that, things are starting to change and you can expect the freebies to start drying up.
In the 3/Hutchinson Australia deal, the subscribers are being asked to pay Au$4/month for unlimited access, Au$2/day or Au$0.50/two minutes.
The management and delivery of the service for Telenor is being handled by Rubberduck Media Lab, a subsidiary of the Mobile Media Company.
BBC World is a separate entity to the UK license-funded BBC, and its normal commercial cousin, BBC Worldwide. They’re free to do deals, as long as they’re outside the UK. They now distribute their service to mobile in eight countries – Finland, France, Germany, Norway, Switzerland, Bahrain, Malaysia and Australia.
BBC World
Mobile Media
2 February, 2006