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Content in its shift to become digital

Yahoo Buys DialPad VoIP Phone Service
Yahoo has whipped out its wallet and snapped up DialPad Communications, a company making VoIP software allowing users to make cut-price calls over the Internet.
Yahoo will use DialPad to expand its product array in the Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP) sector.
Based in California, DialPad is a six year-old company with around 40 employees competing in the hot potato sector of rerouting calls from computers to servers to telephones.
The company offers a selection of VoIP subscription plans to users – including prepaid VoIP calling cards – with charges ranging from as little as 1.7 cents per minute for calls to more than 200 countries.
DialPad has been offering calling plans for about two years and boasts more than 14 million users.
Although the specifics of the deal are yet to be released, Yahoo spokeswoman Joanna Stevens said that the new products integrating the DialPad technology could be debuting within a month. Pricing has yet to be announced.
In its announcement, Dialpad served up a bit more information about the deal: “Yahoo plans on leveraging Dialpad’s PSTN calling capabilities to add to Yahoo Messenger’s recently enhanced PC-to-PC voice calling offering. These products are very complementary and by combining our strengths, we are better positioned to take advantage of the fast growing IP telephony market and build a range of exciting new services.”
The acquisition comes hot on the heels of Yahoo introducing a test version of its instant messaging software which bundled an Internet telephony component that allowing users to make free computer-to-computer calls.
With rumours recently circulating the Web about Yahoo scooping up Skype, it now seems that Yahoo is looking to take on the VoIP upstart head on. Fight! Fight!
DialPad
Yahoo
15 June, 2005
Skype Voicemail Out Of Beta, Now Live
After several weeks in beta, Skype has officially launched the Skype Voicemail service, the company’s second pre-paid premium offering.
The new Skype Voicemail service allows callers to leave unlimited voicemail messages for Skype users when they are unavailable or offline.
Unlike bog-standard voicemail systems, Skype Voicemail also lets users send pre-recorded voice messages to other Skype users – even if they’re not a subscriber to the service.
The SkypeIn beta ran in eight countries, and testers in those countries can also receive Voicemail messages from ordinary fixed or mobile phones.
Users of the service can personalise their Skype Voicemail by setting their answer preferences, adding their own witty and kray-zee greeting and electing to receive messages up to 10 minutes long.
Skype Voicemail subscriptions are available for €5 (~US$7~£4.00~) for 3 months or €15 (~US$19~£11.00~) for one year. Orders may be pre-paid with a credit card or via PayPal or Moneybookers at the Skype Store.
Also rolling off the Skype production line is the latest Skype for Windows v1.3, incorporating several feature improvements, including enhancements for importing new contacts to contact lists and a more customisable user profile area.
Skype v1.3 allows bolts on the ability to populate Skype contact lists from desktop applications including MSN, and auto-populate exact matches from Microsoft Outlook.
Skype for Windows also offers an “enhanced visual experience” (whatever that is) with streamlined user interfaces and improved upgrade and premium notices.
There are also some new animated emoticons which, apparently, give instant messages “more expression”. Or maybe just irritate people more.
The company’s first premium offering, SkypeOut, allowed Skype users pre-paid calling to traditional and mobile phone numbers for local rates, attracted more than 1.5 million paid users since its launch in July 2004.
All of the company’s premium services – Skype Voicemail, SkypeOut, and the beta version of SkypeIn – are compatible with the latest versions of Skype for Linux, Mac OS X, Pocket PC and Windows platforms.
The company boasts more than 42 million registered users increasing by approximately 150,000 new users a day.
In the last few days, Internet rumours have been rife about Skype being the subject of a possible merger, commercial partnership or buy-out by Yahoo. Nothing’s been confirmed – or denied – yet, but we’ll keep you posted!
Skype
14 June, 2005
IE7 Adds Spyware Protection As Firefox Grows
Smarting daily from the soaring popularity of its upstart rival Firefox, Microsoft is hoping to stem the exodus by bolting on new security features to their next version of Internet Explorer browser.
According to Rob Franco, lead program manager for IE security at Microsoft, Internet Explorer 7 for Longhorn will contain a feature called “low rights IE”, designed to resist hijacking attempts by spyware and other malicious software.
The new feature effectively removes administrator rights, ensuring that unknown applications – like dodgy software, iffy code and lurking spyware – can’t be installed without express permission from the user.
“When users run programs with limited user privileges, they are safer from attack than when they run with administrator privileges, because Windows can restrict the malicious code from taking damaging actions”, wrote Franco in his personal blog.
“Any programs that the user downloads and runs will be limited by User Account Protection, unless the user explicitly gives the program administrator privileges”, he added.
The idea is that by restricting administrator rights for Web surfers, they’ll be protected even if they visit a bad bwoy website that tries to exploit vulnerabilities in their browser.
Without enough privileges to copy files to start-up folder, install software, hijack the browser’s homepage or search provider, the surfer should be protected.
Although IE7 will be made available for Windows XP SP2, the low rights browsing feature will be available only on the next version of Windows, known as Longhorn.
With Internet Explorer losing friends fast because of its unsavoury reputation as a honeypot for homepage hijackers and skulking spyware, these new security features can’t come too soon for Microsoft.
A new study by NetApplications revealed that Microsoft, the market leader, is fast losing ground to Firefox, with the open source browser now accounting for 8% of the global market; up from 7.38% in April.
The browser has eroded Microsoft’s market share by nearly one percentage, down to 87.23%, following month-on-month advances from Firefox.
Dan Shapero, the company’s chief operating officer commented that although Microsoft’s 87% share “may seem like market dominance,” the browser is suffering an average of 0.5 to 1% loss of users each and every month.
Shapero feels that Firefox is now appealing to a mainstream audience rather than early adopters and tech-savvy surfers: “FireFox is gaining traction with early adopters and its popularity and adoption rate are starting to tap into mass-market acceptance as buzz continues to build.”
“The message for Web masters is clear: Make sure your Web site is compatible with Firefox, because more and more of your visitors are using it to go to your Web site,” Shapero finger-wagged.
The only other browser to record significant gains is Apple’s Safari which extended its share by a tenth of a percentage.
Once Microsoft’s fiercest rival, Netscape is now humbled with a lamentable 1.64% market share, followed by Safari at 1.91% and Mozilla with 0.58%.
Microsoft Longhorn
NetApplications
14 June, 2005
Nokia And Apple Develop Series 60 Browser
Finnish mobile phone giants Nokia have launched a new Web browser for their Series 60 smartphones.
The browser was developed in partnership with Apple and uses the same open source components – WebCore and JavaScriptCore – that are used in Apple’s well-regarded Safari Internet browser.
The new Series 60 browser, based on KHTML and KJS from KDE’s “Konqueror” open source project, will let ambling Nokia mobile users enjoy “a rich Web browsing experience that takes full advantage of today’s fast wireless networks and advanced mobile devices”.
“Nokia is excited to enrich Series 60 with optimised mobile Web browsing. Open source software is an ideal basis for development since it enables Nokia to leverage and contribute to speedy software innovation and development. As a result, the entire Series 60 value chain, from manufacturers and operators to end-users, will benefit from the flexible architecture, full Web compliance and a truly enjoyable user experience,” enthused Pertti Korhonen, Chief Technology Officer, Nokia.
Web browsing on mobiles is a key money-spinner both for handset manufacturers, who need to keep producing punter-tempting feature-rich handsets, and for telecom operators who rely on revenues from mobile browsing.
With a Nokia-backed study among consumers declaring that over 50 percent of data traffic was generated by web browsing on mobiles, the quality of the handset’s browsing experience could become a critical purchasing factor.
Philip Schiller, Apple’s senior vice president of Worldwide Product Marketing reckons the new browser is the dog’s nadgers: “The Safari Web Kit’s blazing performance, efficient code base and support for open standards make it an ideal open source technology for projects like Nokia’s new Series 60 browser.”
It seems that both Nokia and Apple enjoyed their mutual browser-based love in, with Nokia indicating that they intend to continue their collaboration and actively participate in the open source community.
The new Series 60 browser will be available to all Series 60 licensees during the first half of 2006.
Nokia
Series 60
13 June, 2005
Gorillaz Launch ‘Next Generation’ Enhanced Video
Animated UK act, Gorillaz, are proudly claiming a world first for their ‘next generation’ enhanced video for ‘Feel Good Inc.’
Using new “template technology” brewed up by MTV and its partner Ensequence, the video for ‘Feel Good Inc’ utilises the technology’s modular capabilities which – apparently – allow “more in-depth, bespoke, multi-layered content to be added behind the red button.”
After consulting our buzzword translator, we’ve worked out that their next-gen video will allow viewers to call up more interactive content, including track info, competitions and artist biogs, as well as each band member’s audio commentary on the video.
“The new Gorillaz video takes the extended relationship interactivity offers and takes it a step further, giving fans a much richer experience, “offered Lisa Gower, Digital Media Manager at Parlophone.
“The new technology allows fans to get closer to their favourite artists and brings interactive content closer to the quality and choice found with the ‘extras’ on DVDs,” she added.
Bundling in a host of interactive freebies is clearly being seen as a useful marketing tool for record companies, keen to discover new ways to part loyal fans with their cash.
Matthew Kershaw, Head of Interactive, MTV Networks UK & Ireland, explains, “Offering greater flexibility, we now have the creative freedom to create bespoke interactive layers that complement each video and can be different depending on when the viewer accesses them, giving fans a far richer and more enhanced experience than they have had before”.
Elsewhere, the Gorillaz have confirmed details for an innovative virtual US tour, with unique performances being streamed via the Web sites of radio stations across the country.
The Demon Detour virtual tour starts on June 6 at KNDD Seattle’s 1077theend.com and will go on to ‘visit’ the sites of 39 US radio stations and include two national broadcasts.
The band – brainchild of Blur’s Damon Albarn (aka 2D) and Tank Girl” creator Jamie Hewlett (aka Murdoc) – are already celebrating the US success of their second album, “Demon Days,” which has debuted at No. 6 on The Billboard 200.
“It’s not enough that we’ve just recorded and released the defining album of the century, now we’ve gotta go tell the world about it,” quipped. “We’re gonna play some live songs, maybe talk a little about the album, crack some jokes.”
Gorillaz
Ensequence
10 June, 2005
People Prefer Real Live Customer Service
It’s hardly revelatory stuff, but a study by J.D. Power and Associates has revealed that customer service issues dealt with by living, breathing human beings create significantly higher customer care ratings than those with computer-generated interaction.
The 2005 Wireless Customer Care Performance Study, now in its third year, examines customer experiences in three point-of-contact methods: on the blower with a service representative and/or automated response system (ARS); walk-in at a retail store; and online Internet connection.
The men in the white lab coats examined processing issues such as problem resolution efficiency and the time customers were left listening to cheesy on-hold music and drew up a customer satisfaction index.
Customers dealing with service representatives over the phone registered an average index score of 109, well above the industry average score of 100.
At the retail store, things weren’t quite so positive, but still returned an above-average score of 102.
However, when it came to customers contacting their carrier with a problem and being left to deal with a gibbering box of wires in an ARS system, the index score plummeted down to 85.
Trying to get an answer online proved to be even more frustrating, with the index score plunging down to just 75.
The study reveals that customers didn’t like the inflexibility of automated systems, noting that a service representative-either over the phone or in person-can answer customer questions and clarify answers given.
Not surprisingly, this compares favourably to spending an eternity on the phone being told to endlessly bash different numbers on a keypad.
“As more companies encourage customers to contact Internet and computer-based customer service programs to save operating costs, they run the risk of increasing churn [techie word for a customer switching carriers] as the number of contacts needed to resolve a customer complaint or issue rises,” said Kirk Parsons, senior director of wireless services at J.D. Power and Associates.
“Since future churn levels are four times as high among those who rate their wireless carrier below average in customer care, the challenge for wireless providers is to offer an easy and efficient customer care transaction experience.”
Contrary to my personal experience, T-Mobile US ranked highest among the six big-boy wireless service providers in “creating a positive experience among customers who contact their providers for service or assistance.”
Victorious for the second consecutive year, T-Mobile notched up an index score of 108, and was seen as performing particularly well across all factors, especially hold-time duration and problem resolution efficiency.
Additionally, T-Mobile customers’ average hold times before waiting to speak with a service representative were an impressive 34 percent less than the industry average (2.27 minutes versus 3.44 minutes).
Verizon Wireless, Nextel and ALLTEL were also noted as performing at or above the industry average.
The study also found that more 54% of wireless users have contacted the customer service department for assistance within the past year – up slightly from last year’s 52%.
Most customers prefer to contact their carriers via the telephone (71%), with 26% using email and only 3% using e-mail/Internet contacts.
The 2005 Wireless Customer Care Performance Study was based on responses from more than 8,600 wireless users who had contacted customer care over the past year.
JD Power
9 June, 2005
GNER Publishes Passwords In Customer Magazine
Hot on the heels of yesterday’s story about the ‘world’s greatest military hacker’ comes this tale of advanced doltery from train operator Great North Eastern Railway (GNER), who managed to publish their system passwords in a magazine available to thousands of passengers.
The April/May edition of their freebie passenger magazine, Livewire, positively invited hackers to come and do their devilish work, with an article on their operator’s control centre in York being illustrated with photographs showing mainframe and computer passwords written on a whiteboard.
Red faced and flapping like Fred McFlapster wearing flares in a gale force wind, William Higgins, editor of Livewire, surprised us all by declaring that including the picture was a mistake, insisting that the highly competent GNER technology team had already rectified any problems.
Martin Grey, technical services manager in GNER’s information systems department, claimed that passwords were changed before the magazine was published, ‘We quickly changed the passwords and user accounts so no one outside could get into our corporate data.’
‘The procedure in terms of our internal security was not being followed and we took quick steps to remedy that,’ he added.
A GNER spokesman later confirmed passwords were no longer being written bold and large on whiteboards and – presumably – their photographers will no longer be invited to go around snapping confidential information for free magazines.
GNER, owned by the Sea Containers Group, provide high-speed intercity train services along Britain’s East Coast main line, linking England and Scotland along a route of almost 1,000 miles.
Of their annual 15 million passengers every year, eight million are calculated to be business travellers, with the free magazine enjoying a circulation of more than 100,000.
A deeply unimpressed Phil Robinson, chief technology officer at security specialist Information Risk Management, commented that it was unusual to see passwords emblazoned on whiteboards, although it’s commonplace to see office monitors flapping with Post-it notes containing security information.
‘Mainframes are a sensitive part of any organisation and contain the crown jewels of data a business might want to protect,’ he warned.
Robinson suggested that companies need to work out a coherent security password policy and insist that employees use secure – but memorable – passwords, with a lock-out policy stopping repeated wrong password entries.
Microsoft’s ‘At Work’ site offers a series of tips for creating passwords, advising against using combinations of consecutive numbers or letters or adjacent letters on a keyboard such as “qwerty.”
The site also recommends avoiding any word that can be found in the dictionary, in any language, or replacing letters with numbers or symbols that look like the letters such as M1cr0$0ft or P@ssw0rd as hackers are wise to these tricks.
Instead, Microsoft advises coming up with a passphrase – a sentence you can remember, like “My son Aiden is three years older than my daughter Anna” – and then using the first letter of each word of the sentence to create ‘msaityotmda.’
It then advises mixing and matching a combination of upper and lowercase letters, numbers, and special characters that look like letters to come up with a hacker-challenging password like M$8ni3y0tmd@.
(Your writer now hastily goes off to change his own passwords…)
GNER
Creating stronger passwords
9 June, 2005
AIM Mail: AOL Free 2GB Webmail Service Launches
America Online is taking on the likes of Yahoo, Hotmail and Google’s Gmail with its new free 2GB email service in the US, launched yesterday after trials earlier this year.
In a hope to lure storage-space spoilt customers in this highly competitive sector, AIM Mail is bundling in spam and virus protection and tight integration with AOL’s AIM Instant Messenger Service.
In a turnaround from previous policy, the freebie Webmail account will be available to all and sundry rather than just AOL members, a move AOL hopes will reverse faltering revenues and crashing subscriber figures.
Users will be able to log in with their existing AOL IM screen name as their e-mail address, with an updated version of the AIM 5.9 software offering one-click access to AIM Mail.
A system-wide auto-upgrade will begin rolling out over the AIM network this week, with AOL trying to tempt the 22 million AIM users subscribers with an online advertising campaign and a gift-tastic US-wide sweepstakes promotion.
AIM users activating their AIM Mail account can register for the opportunity to get a piece of the prize draw action, with daily giveaways including Starbucks gift cards, T-Mobile Sidekicks, Apple iPod Shuffles and Sony PlayStation Portables.
One lucky AIM Mail user will get to rev off in a 2005 MINI Copper S.
The new free service represents a hefty shift in AOL’s business strategy which has traditional involved charging users subscription fees for its services. Instead, the company is expecting to generate revenue from AIM Mail through banner ads – hence the punter-tempting monster giveaway promotion.
In a separate announcement, AOL has also announced that it will be dishing out unlimited email storage to its US ISP customers .
AOL
AOL AIM
7 June, 2005
TalkTalk Attacks BT Landline Market
There’s a big battle going on for your landline, with the Carphone Warehouse limbering up to get in some telling punches into BT’s sector dominance.
TalkTalk UK – Carphone’s fixed line subsidiary – is looking to snaffle ten per cent of the UK’s fixed line market within the next three years, after recording what they describe as an “outstanding year”.
The company has soared into profit in only its second year of operation, despite hefty investment and marketing costs, with more than 920,000 fixed line users generating revenues of £123.6m (~US$225m~€183m).
Heady on success, sharp suited TalkTalk execs have sent the flipcharts flapping and come up with an ambitious target of signing up two million residential consumers by March 2008 – that’s one in ten of the UK’s fixed line market.
TalkTalk also plans to simplify the process for customers paying their call charges and line rental on a single bill – or “terminating the billing relationship with BT” as they like to call it.
Chief exec Charles Dunstone was ready with a quote: “We are now well on the way to developing a broad-based telecoms group, providing mobile and fixed line services to individuals and businesses across ten countries.”
“We have now proved that TalkTalk has all the ingredients to become the major alternative force in UK residential communications, and further regulatory change over the next year should allow us to move to the next level in both scale and range of service.”
The parent company, Carphone Warehouse, have also released bumper figures, reporting a 33.8% rise in pre-tax profits to £102.1 million (~US$185m ~€151m) in the 12 months to the end of March, against £76.3 million (~US$138m ~€113m) for the same period a year ago.
Turnover hopped, skipped and jumped up 27% per cent to £2.35 billion, operating profit soared up 45% to £107 million (~US$195m ~€158m), with Carphone Warehouse signing up 6.5 million new customers to mobile and fixed-line telephone services during the period (21.6 per cent higher than new connections for the previous year).
Crucially, revenues from telecoms services were up 45% to £804 million (~US$1,462m ~€1,190m), with operating profit flying up 50% to £22.5 million (~US$41m ~€33m).
“Our year-to-date connections growth of 20 per cent is particularly encouraging, especially in the context of a weaker consumer environment in the UK,” purred Charles Dunstone. “We remain confident of the outlook,” he added, before announcing that he was selling his first tranche of 6 million shares, or 2 percent, in the company.
Talk Talk UK
Carphone Warehouse
7 June, 2005
Video4skype From Dialcom adds Video To Skype
Skype users can now gaze at each other’s ugly mugs (and other body parts) while they waffle online, thanks to a new free plug in from Dialcom.
The Spontania Video4skype plug-in uses the Skype P2P engine and allows Skype account holders with broadband access to plug in their webcam and start making free video-calls through Skype.
The plug-in offers a full screen mode, end-to-end encryption and is billed as being “firewall, NAT and proxy friendly”, so there should be no need to start rummaging around in your network configuration settings.
Dialcom’s Sponania video plug-in hasn’t been specifically written for Skype – it’s designed to be integrated with any third party VoIP system – but Skype has benefited from being the first to use it.
There doesn’t seem to be any obvious business model for Dialcom yet, but we suspect that they may introduce paid versions with extra features and add-on sales at a later date.
Skype’s VoIP system has now scooped up nearly 40 million registered users, with take-up rolling along at a healthy 150,000 new users per day.
Skype’s recent affiliate program trials have proved something of a success, signing up more than 1,800 affiliate Websites to share Web traffic with Skype during the test period.
The deal for Webmasters is that Skype will dish out commissions of up to 10 per cent of its own store purchase revenues when a buyer is referred from their site.
The 30-day referral period starts after the first click, and credits site owners for all purchases made from return visits to the Skype Store.
“We look forward to rewarding our most ardent online evangelisers by creating an avenue to increase profits from their websites,” buzzworded Skype CEO and co-founder Niklas Zennström last week. “A strong affiliate program not only opens up a revenue stream for Skype devotees, but also provides an interactive communications tool for Website publishers to engage in dialogue with their audiences.”
There’s also a back-scratching reverse synergy deal (I’ve wanted to say that for years) with Skype able to direct its zillions of users to other sites through advertising links.
Skype’s ‘super affiliate’ partnerships include 192.com, Firstream, LunarStorm Sweden, LunarStorm United Kingdom, and MyFamily.com.
Skype recently released the latest beta of Skype 1.3 for Windows, but with their ‘known issues’ list stretching to fourteen items, many are advising holding back for a while before installing.
Video4Skype
Skype
3 June, 2005