Jens MP-X: First All-Weather MP3 Player

Jens MP-X: First All-Weather MP3 PlayerOne of our Digital-Lifestyles favorite digital media entrepreneur Swede, Jens Nylander has extracted himself from recent problems and brought out a new mp3 player called MP-X.

You want firsts? Well, it’s the first all-weather mp3 player. A smart selling point in damp areas like much of Northern Europe, especially in Sweden, where their public weather monitor say that more than half of their days over the last 30 years have had an average of 0.1mm of rain or more.

Aimed at fit-types, another good move given the amount of outdoor fans there are in Sweden, it’s made of soft and durable urethane rubber which repels all of that sweating and doesn’t get knocked around.

Two versions are available. It comes in 512 Mb and 1 Gb versions (150 or 300 songs), only weighing the equivalent of six A4-pages of paper and cost €68 (~£46, ~$79) or €85 (~£57, ~$99) respectively excluding sales tax.

As with previous Jens players it supports MP3, WMA, ASF, OGG-Vorbis music files.

We’re glad to see Jens back on his feet, following his bankruptcy after a miscalculation of import duty (they should have paid 10% because of built-in FM radio, not the 2.5% they’d calculated at). They tell us that all of the debts have now been met and the $25k that they still owe to the post office will be made up through new trade.

Jens of Sweden

UK Gov Wants Your Views On Content Protection And More

Ladies and Gentlemen, start your word processors …

ofcomwatch-logoThe House of Commons’ Culture, Media and Sport Committee today announced a new inquiry into the challenges and opportunities for the creative industries arising from the development of new media platforms.

For the purposes of the inquiry, the term “creative industries” includes music, visual broadcasts, sound broadcasts, film, graphic art, design, advertising, fashion and games software.

The Committee is particularly interested in receiving evidence on the following issues:

  • The impact upon creative industries of recent and future developments in digital convergence and media technology
  • The effects upon the various creative industries of unauthorised reproduction and dissemination of creative content, particularly using new technology; and what steps can or should be taken – using new technology, statutory protection or other means – to protect creators
  • The extent to which a regulatory environment should be applied to creative content accessed using non-traditional media platforms
  • Where the balance should lie between the rights of creators and the expectations of consumers in the context of the BBC’s Creative Archive and other developments

Written submissions are invited from any interested organisation or individual by Thursday 19 January 2006.

UK Gov Wants Your Views On Content Protection And MoreSubmissions should give the name and postal address of the person sending the memorandum and should state whether it has been prepared specifically for the Committee. If the memorandum is from an organisation rather than an individual, it should briefly explain the nature and membership of the organisation. The Committee may publish some of the submissions it receives.

For more guidance on the preferred format, see http://www.parliament.uk/commons/selcom/witguide.htm

Submissions should be sent to the Clerk of the Committee at the address below.

Kenneth Fox
Clerk of the Culture, Media and Sport Committee
House of Commons
7 Millbank
London SW1P 3JA
[email protected]

Luke Gibbs writes for Ofcomwatch.

Google Analytics: Where’s The Data Google?

Google Analytics: Where's the data Google?CRASH! Did you hear that? Any idea what it was? That was the sound of the Web traffic analysis market crashing to the floor following the no-charge release of Google Analytics.

Well it was until today, when a number of people were finding that the data that should have been collected on site for over 24 hours hasn’t appeared for analysis. Google quote that data should be available after only 12 hours.

The delay in reporting will give some thin hope to charge-for analysis service. We’d imagine that it will be short lived as we’re pretty certain that Google will get the service pumping out the stats soon and suspect that the delay has been due to a huge demand.

How much? Free
The service is generally, of course, available at no charge as it is, as with everything that Google does, designed to drive additional sales for Google’s advertising.

Google Analytics: Where's the data Google?Always remember, Goggle may look like a search engine company, but it is, in fact, an advertising company.

The only exception to free usage of the service is sites with over 5m page views per month. Hey guess what? If you have an active Google AdWords account, you’re given unlimited page view tracking. There is no mention of how much it might cost if you don’t have an active AdWords account. Do you see a pattern here?

It looks like the service is comprehensive both in the breadth of reports available and in its thoroughness of reporting. Examples are that Google enable the tracking of external links, something of great use to many media companies, by simply adding some JavaScript to the link. It even easily tracks events within Flash files.

Google Analytics: Where's the data Google?The history
Google bought Urchin Web Analytics for an undisclosed amount back in March this year. At the time, many in the online reporting world started to tremble.

They already had a number of big name customers like GE, NBC, Procter & Gamble, NASA and AT&T. Prices they charged varied from $495 (only covering 100,000 pageviews/month) to $4,995 for their Profit Suite. Prices increased depending on the number of Websites that were monitored.

Google’s free offering is based on Urchins online reporting offering.

Pressure on reporting companies is coming from other directions like, Microsoft with their AdCenter and eBay which has just launched a subscription-based service.

Google Analytics

BT Results Analysis: Stuck Between Rock And Hard Place

Telco Analysts Study The Runes On BT ResultsPoor old BT. Now that it’s reached a settlement with OfCom that allows it to keep retail and wholesale arms under one, some would say, severely stretched umbrella, commentators emerge from cover and say it might be better if it’d spit into two (or more) parts. The cost of Openreach has been put at £70m so far and in terms of efficiency in the UK telecoms market this could well be an ongoing sore.

BT has announced an IPTV offer for the retail market that some say offers too little too late. Early adopters of Digital TV are, in the main, already committed to Sky, who will look to rapidly integrate an Easynet download capability in an attempt to beat off the challenges from BT and a combined resurgent UK cable monolith formed by Telewest and NTL. The remnants of the consumer markets’ move to digital TV that BT will attract, are likely to be those less inclined to convert to a pay TV proposition, and they’re likely to be operating with tighter disposable incomes than those who have already left analogue TV behind.

Sky’s upcoming purchase of Easynet adds considerably to the pressure on BT.

Major Telcos in Europe have, by and large, a coherent mobile strategy and BT’s deal with Vodaphone is viewed as little more than a stop gap.

Telco Analysts Study The Runes On BT ResultsWhere does this leave BT?
Interestingly enough, Telefonica’s bid valuation of O2 put the value of the former Cellnet constituent of BT above that of the remainder of the UK’s juggernaut Telco- perhaps BT Group could be of interest to another global suitor?

At present there’s a danger that not only will wholesale be delivering utility-style performance but that retail may be moving into a period of decline and could it be that the future of BT is again up for a re-evaluation by it’s major stakeholders?

Shoreditch Digital Bridge: Linking Residents

Shoreditch Digital BridgeA project starting early next year in East London hopes to bridge the digital divide by broadband-enabling a number of housing estates.

The first stage of the Shoreditch Digital Bridge (SDB) will link-up 1,000 tenants of the Haberdasher and Charles Square Estates, Shoreditch before rolling out to the remaining 20,000 residents. Video Networks, who are best known for the broadband and IPTV service Homechoice, will be providing the connectivity.

Shoreditch/Old Street/Hoxton is a highly mixed area. It’s probably best known as a hip and cool area, mocked by some, celebrated by others and the source of the now-self parody Hoxton Fin haircut (pictured below). The flip side is deprivation. The apparent contrast makes sense. Artists moved into the area _because_ it was run down and the space they needed to paint in was cheap to rent, then over a ten year period it changed into a ‘destination.’

Shoreditch Digital BridgeHappily, this project is focused on the original residents, not the ones who live in the £1/2m flats – sorry, apartments.

The functions available to the residents will be wide and ambitious.

The Education Channel will provide online learning, allowing students to submit homework assignments and work with virtual tutors. When this was used in Kingston upon Hull by KIT working with Kingswood school, it was a huge success.

One key part of closing the digital divide is the provision of a PC on TV, which will be operated adding a wireless keyboard using software such as Citrix. When we spoke to Homechoice about it, they told us this will be able to used with their current Set Top Box.

Interestingly, residents will be able to watch the CCTV cameras around the area – something that for years ‘the powers that be’ have said would never occur.

Shoreditch Digital BridgeAdditional services include a Health channel allowing patients to book GP appointments, provide virtual consultations and on-line health and diagnosis information; a Consumer Channel, allowing on-line group buying of common services such as gas, electricity and mobile phone tariffs; and an Employment Channel, providing on-line NVQ courses, local jobs Websites and virtual interview mentoring.

Satellite companies have for a long time had problems providing services to built up urban areas. Providing TV services over a broadband connection has for a long time made sense. The icing on the cake will be the Homechoice IPTV and broadband service, available at an additional charge.

We hope the SDB project will build on succeeded and lessons learned of previous pioneering work will be integrated.

The Shoreditch Trust
Shoreditch Digital Bridge

Hoxton Fin image courtesy of LondonCircus
Charles Square Image courtesy of Hackney Council

John Lennon: All Digital Release Soon

John Lennon: All Digital Release SoonThe whole of John Lennon’s solo catalogue will be made available digitally, for the first time, on 5th December – Oooo, just in time for xmas.

Working Class Hero, the latest greatest hits album, is already available for digital download. This album is described as ‘definitive’, but it strikes us that many greatest hits albums are spoken about in these glowing terms.

Some Lennon tracks will also be available for mobile download in the coming weeks.

Pricing has not been discussed, but we hope they won’t be as inflated as the recently announced Rolling Stones album. It’s coming out on SanDisks TrustedFlash and was priced at just short of £40.

John Lennon: All Digital Release SoonYoko Ono, John Lennon’s wife, told of her views on if John would have been an Internet fan, “New technology is something he always embraced and this is something he would have loved. I always say that he would have been very excited by all the opportunities offered by the development of new means of communication.”

We’ve spoken to someone very close to the main rightsholders of The Beatles work and were told they had, about a year ago, been very close to signing a digital distribution deal. This fell apart over the amount of money being put on the table – and their view is “What’s the rush?”

If this John Lennon deal moves The Beatles any closer to releasing their tracks on digital formats is unclear, but many Beatles fans will have their fingers crossed.

John Lennon

HowTo: Google Local For Mobile Beyond The USA

Google Local For Mobile: Not Just The USAWe thought that it was worthwhile breaking out the following information that we gain in researching two article; GPS Discovered In Google Local For Mobile and Google Local For Mobile: Not Just The USA Surprise

  • Download the app to your mobile using the ‘Other” option
  • Select a handset close to your own (we’ve found that it doesn’t need to be your exact handset)
  • Download and run the app
  • Shift to satellite view and you’ll see the whole of the USA
  • Scroll right towards Europe
  • Zoom in to the desired location
  • Select 2 (Directions) to find route
  • Use ‘Select point on map’ to select the starting point, then finishing point
  • The route will be calculated
  • Click 3 to start stepping through your route
  • Have fun

Google Local For Mobile

Google Local For Mobile: Not Just The USA

Google Local For Mobile: Not Just The USAFor those who have better thing to do with their lives than fanatically watch every twist and turn of online technology, or if you’re living outside the US of A, you may well not have been using Google’s recently launched Google Local For Mobile (GLM)- or even have heard of it.

Here’s the heads-up – it’s a service that runs through a downloaded Java application on a number of mobile phones, giving on-the-move mapping, route planning and local information.

As with their browser-based mapping services, you can view either a map, satellite view or a overlaid combination of the two.

Superimposed on this is local business information, currently, but we can see that with Google’s penchant for adding advertising to everything, this may be soon added to.

Google Local For Mobile: Not Just The USAYesterday we revealed how GLM has GPS hidden inside, but isn’t currently enabled and it was while playing around with this, we discovered another interesting undocumented feature.

Google are telling everyone that it just covers the US. Quoting from their FAQ

Does Google Local for mobile work everywhere?
Not yet. Local for mobile is currently available in the US only. We’re working to increase its availability as soon as possible.

We found that with a little playing around, you can investigate around Europe and plot routes using the click to select mapping.

So, how do you explore Europe?
Here’s how we discovered it, there may be other ways.

  • Download the app to your mobile using the ‘Other’ mobile provider option
  • Select a handset close to your own (we’ve found that it doesn’t need to be your exact handset)
  • Download and run the app
  • Shift to satellite view and you’ll see the whole of the USA
  • Scroll right towards Europe
  • Zoom in to your desired Euro location
  • Select 2 (Directions) to find route
  • Use ‘Select point on map’ to select the starting point, then finishing point
  • The route will be calculated
  • Click 3 to start stepping through your route
  • Have fun

Google Local For Mobile: Not Just The USAMore detail than the browser version
The discovery doesn’t end there. After chatting further to Cristian Streng, we now also realise that there’s detail on the Mobile version that isn’t available via the ‘normal’ Web-based Google Maps.

To illustrate it, he sent us some screen grabs showing mapping data of Germany that is currently only available in GLM.

If you fancy having a look around too, but want to save the mobile phone data charges, we’ll pass on a tip from Cristian. He very sensibly did his investigation using a PC-based Java Virtual Machine rather than spending money on GPRS charges. Smart.

If you didn’t know it already, this makes is clear that software is there to play with, and if you do, you may find lots of areas and features that you’re officially told aren’t there. So, go, explore.

Google Local For Mobile
Cristian Streng Mobile GMaps app

GPS Discovered In Google Local For Mobile

GPS Discovered In Google Local For MobileDespite their emphatic denial, Google appear to be planning to bring GPS to the recently announced Google Local For Mobile.

Clever clogs, Cristian Streng has been digging around in his Google Local For Mobile .jad, the downloaded binary file for his Nokia 6600 and he found the following “GpsEnabled: false.” Well I never.

Just to refresh you, here’s what Google say in their FAQ

Does Google Local for mobile use GPS to figure out where I am?
Google Local for mobile doesn’t use any GPS technology, even if your phone has a built in GPS location device.

It looks like v2.0 could well be different.

GPS Discovered In Google Local For MobileCurrently the users of the service have to key in or select the desired starting and destination points, and press a key to mimic their progress in the real world. Using GPS eradicates the need to tell the system where you are, or update the system to your progress.

With GPS Google’s service becomes a huge threat to many of the companies that already sell handheld navigation system like TomTom and Navicore. The disadvantage of Google’s approach is that the phone must be connected to the network, racking up data charges for the mobile owner. This disadvantage vanishes when the phone user had an all inclusive data rate.

GPS Discovered In Google Local For MobileThe GPS feature could well be waiting for a second release of the service, or waiting for next-gen handsets with aGPS built into them, to become more widely used.

Google isn’t alone in their desire to provide mapping services to mobiles. Guy Kewney tells us that there have been mutterings about Yahoo Maps linking up with mobile phone companies too.

Google Local For Mobile
Cristian Streng Mobile GMaps app

Is Mobile TV Currently Just A Big ‘Love In’?

Will BBC have a TV to go?The BBC needs to move fast to create suitable partnerships to be able to ride the new wave of ‘TV on the go’. That’s my conclusion after attending a recent IIC event last week (that’s the International Institute Of Communications to you). There I can reveal I was drawn into what felt very much like a mobile content ‘love fest’.

Representatives from a diverse group of media industries including MTV and BT were prophesizing mobile TV is the saviour of TV. Trials in Europe have indicated that across the continent viewers can’t get enough of TV on a tiny little display on their phones and this isn’t just the ‘bite sized’ mobile episodes that commentators had been predicting. It appears that mobile TV is able to actually increase the number of hours that viewers consume, which many thought had peaked.

With this new form of TV, it is said ‘you no longer need to be a couch potato, you can be a potato anywhere’ so expect many hours of work to be lost to must watch TV phenomena like ‘I’m a celebrity’ and ‘Big Brother’.

Channel 4 New Media has recently announced the launch of a mobile TV channel dedicated to Channel 4 content on mobile phones. Sky is planning a 19 channel launch in conjunction with Vodaphone and an ITV mobile service has been announced.

The mobile manufactures need to provide the right interface with an easy to navigate EPG and the content needs to be held securely on the device it’s downloaded to minimise the potential for sharing.

All the big players have a keen interest in the success, from the handset makers, the telcos and of course, the content owners who will expect to negotiate a premium for their programming. The players are going to have to effectively perform a ‘land-grab’ to make sure that an ‘ipod’ like solution does not steal their planned-for bonanza.

Where though does a Public Service Broadcaster fit into this increasingly monetized market? The BBC has been looking at DAB technology providing ultra local TV, but this is unlikely to the drive young affluent consumers who are the usual early adopters of new gizmos.

We are consistantly drawn back to the same conclusion with Mobile TV. This content may be offered; handset makers can produce the equipment; consumers may dabble with it if it costs them nothing.

The still unanswered question is, will the consumer put their collective hands in their collective pockets to pay for it?