Content

Content in its shift to become digital

i-Mate Preloaded Skype on Smart Phones
Skype has announced a partnership with i-mate, industry innovators of wireless device solutions.
i-mate will launch the first dual-mode wireless mobile handset preloaded with Skype software and demo it for the world at 3GSM in Cannes from Monday 14th February through Thursday 17th February.
The new i-mate PDA2K and PDA2 handsets will come preloaded with Skype’s award-winning software, allowing users to fire up Skype and get phonin’ as soon as they’ve wrenched the unit out of the box.
The handsets, expected to retail at a wallet-draining price of $850 (€660, £455), are enabled in dual modes – GSM/GPRS and Wi-Fi – and both use the Windows Mobile Pocket PC Phone Edition.
The two companies worked for several months to integrate the software with the handsets and have provided a solution that will, in some circumstances, enable calls made over GSM and GPRS technology to be free, while others will be subject to small charges.
Skype users can call other Skype users for jack diddly squat, while another service, called SkypeOut, enables users to call to public-switched telephone networks for slightly more than two cents a minute.
The VoIP market is currently growing faster than Billy Bunter’s waistline on Bun Eating Day, with businesses and individuals keen to get a slice of the cheap call action.
The Skype service is already making noticeable inroads into traditional phone traffic, with more than one million users on the Skype service at any given time.
The peer-to-peer software is available on Windows, Linux, Mac OS X, and Pocket PC platforms and is the fastest growing voice communications offering worldwide with over 67 million downloads, since its launch in August 2003.
So the program is a hit. Everyone wants it. But how are they going to make money out of something they’re giving away for free?
It seems that Skype’s solution is to create an income stream through licensing their software on to other platforms.
Skype
iMate
11 February, 2005
Industry Giants Stick it to Viagra Spammers
In a litigious pincer movement, Pfizer, makers of the anti-impotence drug Viagra, have filed lawsuits against two online pharmacies selling the drug, while Microsoft has sued the same two pharmacies and the firms that promoted the Websites via email.
It’s the first time Pfizer and Microsoft have teamed up for such an action in a move that should prove mutually beneficial: Pfizer’s civil suit may curb the illegal sale of generic drugs while Microsoft’s legal action is aimed at reducing spam.
“We want to take back our inboxes,” said Aaron Kornblum, Microsoft’s Internet safety enforcement lawyer. “Spam can lead to fraud, it can lead to identity theft and, in this case with Pfizer, it can lead to possible physical harm.”
Pfizer has taken action against CanadianPharmacy (cndpharmacy.com) and E-Pharmacy Direct (myepharmacydirect.com) for allegedly selling unapproved drugs – claimed to be Viagra – to U.S. citizens.
Despite their name, the exact whereabouts of the people behind CanadianPharmacy is unclear.
Kornblum said orders for cndpharmacy.com were received by a computer server in New York that relayed the information to a call centre in Montreal. The drugs were made in India and then mailed back to rumpy-pumpy seeking customers using a US freight forwarding company.
Pfizer took action after receiving complaints from shareholders who wrongly assumed that the company was responsible for the daily deluge of Viagra-related spam cascading into their inbox.
Levine said that Pfizer was also concerned about the safety of advertised products being sold online, although he conceded that he was yet to receive any reports from disappointed customers (or their partners).
In the notoriously nefarious world of Web identities, it’s open to question whether this action will succeed or not.
Dodgy Internet trading companies can move physical and virtual locations faster than Casanova on steroids, but many suspect that this legal move is more about firing a warning shot over the bow of Web based spammers.
With Viagra-based bulk emailing currently accounting for more than 14 per cent of all spam (Commtouch Spam Lab, 2004) we live in hope that this action may reduce the amount of emails bearing the title “VIAGRA”, “v1AGRA” AND “V*GRA” etc arriving in our in boxes.
But we’re not holding our breath.
Microsoft, Pfizer to tackle fake Viagra sales (Reuters)
Microsoft and Pfizer fight fake Viagra spammers (Guardian)
11 February, 2005
Dead Granny sued by RIAA – A Serious Own Goal
If they weren’t already unpopular enough with a large part of the online music file sharers, the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) has managed to score a spectacular PR own goal by suing a dead woman for swapping music files.
The Associated Press reported that investigators at the RIAA identified Gertrude Walton as a prolific sharer known as “smittenedkitten” and set about bringing this evil distributor of music to justice.
A federal lawsuit was duly filed, with the RIAA claiming that Mrs Walton had shared more than 700 songs through P2P networks.
But there was a slight problem: the defendant was a computer-illiterate 83-year-old grandmother who has never owned a computer.
And there was an even bigger problem: she had died the month before the lawsuit was filed.
After being notified of the upcoming legal action, the dead woman’s daughter, Robin Chianumba, faxed a copy of her mother’s death certificate to RIAA adding, “I am pretty sure she is not going to leave Greenwood Memorial Park (where she is buried) to attend the hearing”.
This king size cock-up does nothing to RIAA’s bully boy reputation. In 2003 the association successfully sued a twelve year-old girl for copyright infringement after her hard drive was found to be harbouring an MP3 file of her favourite TV show. Her working class parents were forced to shell out two thousand dollars in a settlement.
RIAA
Boycott RIAA
8 February, 2005
DAB Brings Multimedia to Mobiles
In an announcement apparently penned by a writer playing buzzword bingo, the WorldDAB Forum promises to demonstrate “the growing synergy between DAB digital radio and mobile technologies”.
Reading between the acronyms and industry double-speak, let us translate. DABsters are getting pretty darn excited about the future and in our view, rightly so. The possibilities of using the data segment of DAB (Digital Audio Broadcasting) to economically send out data to large groups of people has a huge potential.
Following the tremendous growth of DAB digital radios in UK homes (over a million units sold), and sales of audio products growing across Europe, the telecom industry is looking to get a slice of the action.
With the ability of DAB chips to be integrated into new mobiles (or added by software tweaking to existing handsets), telecom operators are being enticed with the prospect of increasing their ARPU (that’s ‘Average Revenue Per User’ to normal people).
And what better way to get their ARPU soaring than by developing DMB (Digital Multimedia Broadcasting) technology to use the DAB platform?
Within the industry they discuss such things as “early investment offering operators the opportunity to position themselves strategically and gain a market advantage for the future” as well as enthusing about “DAB offering audio and video streaming over DAB based on both MPEG 2 transport streams and IP”.
Or to put it another way, the new technology will allow telecom providers to transmit television, video and data to mobile devices alongside existing DAB radio services and charge punters for the privilege.
The market is large. There’s already a well established DAB network infrastructure reaching 80% of Europe, with over 600 DAB services capable of reaching 330 million people in 40 countries.
LG Electronics has already launched the first DMB mobile and several countries in Europe are already lining up to start DMB trials as early as Q2 2005.
The technology sounds great. When we hear more, we’ll attempt to translate it into English again.
If you fancy a weekend talking in acronyms, pop along to the World DAB forum, Hall 5, Stands M42 – M56 at 3GSM 2005, February 14 – 17 in Cannes.
WorldDAB Forum (PDF file)
8 February, 2005
4 Gigapixel Camera – Voyeurs Beware.
Physicist Graham Flint is working on an ultra-high-resolution portrait of America, creating a series of truly enormous gigapixel images taken with a camera made up of decommissioned Cold War hardware and Wired has discovered him (link below).
(more…)
7 February, 2005
Live TV Streamed Worldwide to Reporters Phones by GMTV
Video streaming specialists, Forbidden Technologies have announced a deal with GMTV to stream the breakfast programme live to its network of field reporters on location across the world.
GMTV trialled the broadcast application during the US elections, with international correspondents watching the show live via a standard (but secure) Web browser.
With the new streaming application offering the precise camera angles and comments made by studio guests and presenters, on-location correspondents can tailor their own pieces to reflect the mood in the studio.
This solves the problem of foreign correspondents having to deliver reports ‘blind’ to the debate in the studio, and should increase the consistency of reporting.
The technology uses Forbidden’s ground breaking FORscene live compressor, that utilises advanced digital compression techniques to deliver a live video feed to PCs, Macs and laptops via the Web.
The technology also allows news camera crews in the field, to hastily compress and publish digitised content directly onto the Web, in a matter of seconds – definitely useful if you’ve got some mad bloke with a gun coming your way demanding you hand over the tapes.
Nestled up like a pair of love birds, Forbidden and GMTV are full of praise for each other and have pledged to work together during 2005, with their union bringing forth “new innovative streaming projects”.
Forbidden Technology
GMTV
4 February, 2005
Napster To Go Launches – Will It Go with the Public?
Napster UK has launched what they’re claiming to be the “world’s first portable subscription music service”.
Backed up by an aggressive multi-million pound marketing campaign, Napster is talking big with bold claims of “changing the music industry forever” after their service rolls out after its UK launch, with Europe following close behind.
Priced at £14.95 a month, the Napster To Go service allows users to download as much music as they like from Napster’s one million-strong catalogue and save it to a compatible portable media player.
Unlike the pay-per-track/album services offered by rivals such as iTunes, Napster users can download an unlimited number of tracks and listen to them on and/or offline so long as their membership is active.
Unlimited music? Over a million tracks? Sounds like the original Napster. Well, there’s the catch. Once you stop shelling out the monthly fee, you’ll be listening to a hard drive full of silence, courtesy of Microsoft’s new Janus digital rights management (DRM) system turning off your access to the tracks.
There’s currently only five compatible music players – Creative Zen Micro MP3 player; iriver H10 MP3 player; iriver Portable Media Centre; Creative Zen Portable Media Centre; and Samsung YH999 Portable Media Centre – with a further 18 devices are expected to hit the market in the next three months.
Napster is predicting a veritable onslaught of compatible devices to follow on within the year.
With the hugely popular iPod notably absent from that list (strangely they don’t support Microsoft’s DRM) and users still able to download DRM-free content from music-sharing sites like Soulseek, we’ll have to wait and see if users are prepared to go along with a monthly subscription where they don’t get to keep the music.
For non-subscription members, Napster also offers the Napster Light a la carte download store that sells individual tracks for 79 pence and albums for £7.95.
Napster
3 February, 2005
Gran Turismo 4 day – 22 February US, 9 March EU
The anticipation around the release of Gran Turismo 4 has been, to put it mildly, huge. Sony are hoping this Playstation2 only game will be their Halo2 type blockbuster.
Sony has announced that it will be releasing it in the US on 22 February. Europe will have to wait until 9 March, but will gain from having an additional 10 cars on top of the 700 or so that are in the Japanese version, which launched on 28 December last year. We’re not sure that an extra 10 cars will actually make up for the delay.
The Gran Turismo series has to date sold more than 37 million and this will be the first version that has networked play, which is one of the reasons we’re covering it. At release it will come with LAN play, the ability to play it between a number of machines on the same network. This will be followed ‘later’, possibly late 2005, by the full network play, letting people play across the world. This was knocked back after Sony experienced difficulties with inter-country gaming.
Reaction so far has been that it looks stunning, easily the graphically best title to appear on the Playstation 2.
You can tell that a game is going to make a big impact – and have a significant marketing campaign behind it, when a company like Nissan decides to launch a special version of a car to coincide with the launch. The 350Z Gran Turismo 4 Edition will be limited to 700 cars in Europe and feature things like extra power in the engine and specific wheels. The features we’d really like to see on this very quick car – a pause or reset button, if you get in to trouble when driving it – are unlikely to be provided.
Gran Turismo 4
Nissan launch 350Z Gran Turismo 4 Edition (PR)
3 February, 2005
Microsoft Search Squares up to Google
After receiving a sound pummelling in previous rounds against the mighty Google, Microsoft has produced a leaner, meaner more bad-ass search engine – and this one looks like it might go the distance.
Ditching their previous reliance on the Yahoo/Inktomi search index, the all-new MSN Search service has been created from the ground up using a Microsoft-designed proprietary index (although the company are still using Yahoo-owned Overture to deliver Pay-Per-Click (PPC) advertising).
With a spartan, advert-free interface straight out of the Google school of design, the minimalist screen lets users search for keywords from a rich range of sources including web pages, news feeds, images, news headlines, Encarta, music downloads and files on user’s PCs.
All the usual gizmos are on board too, with MSN Search offering word definitions, mathematic calculations, conversions, sports information and just about everything else that their competitors provide.
The new product reflects the intense competition in the increasingly important Internet-based search technology market. With Google already offering a free e-mail program, photo-editing software and a desktop search program for finding files on Windows computers, this development can be seen as Microsoft trying to protect their turf.
But will it be good enough to provide a viable alternative to the current search industry big boys, Yahoo! and Google, both of whom have more market share than Microsoft in the search business?
Danny Sullivan of searchenginewatch.com isn’t completely convinced:
“The core search engine is good and a welcomed new “search voice” in the space. However, it does not make a massive leap beyond what’s offered by Google, Yahoo or Ask Jeeves — the other three major search companies that provide their own voices of what’s deemed relevant on the web.”
This week’s MSN Search launch probably won’t have much of an immediate impact on the search-engine market, but backed by an advertising budget the size of a small country’s GDP, we can expect things to heat up nicely in the coming months.
The timing of the launch, the day before Google announce their first full year trading results may also not have been coincidental.
MSN Search
Wikipedia: Pay per click
searchenginewatch.com
2 February, 2005
MP3tunes – Robertson Returns to MP3
Michael Robertson, one of the founders of MP3.com, is to return to the world of downloaded music.
Full details will be coming out next week, but the essence is, Robertson feels ‘compelled’ to make paid-for music available in MP3 format. In his words ‘certain market forces are trying to drive consumers away from MP3 towards proprietary systems, which lock out some consumers and force everyone to buy a particular company’s player or software program.’ Can anyone think of who he’s might be aiming his comments at?
The new venture, MP3tunes, will sell high-quality music downloads online, in MP3 format – therefore not protected by DRM (Digital Rights Management). Customers will be free to do as they will with the track once it’s been paid for and downloaded.
Bleep.com has been selling MP3’s for close to a year and many were surprised to hear Steve Beckett, managing director and co-founder of Warp Records and Bleep.com say, “We still don’t know if it was the right decision,” at the recent Midem music conference in Cannes, France.
Currently it’s unclear where the music for MP3Tunes will be coming from. Given the records companies keenness on DRM, it’s unlikely to be them. It could be new artists that MP3.com promoted in its heyday.
It’s quite surprising that Robertson has friends in the music business. He irritated them considerably during the days of MP3.com and ended up being sued for an estimated $118 million in damages in a copyright infringement lawsuit brought by Universal Music Group.
Since leaving MP3.com when it sold to Vivendi Universal, with a few wheelbarrows of cash, he’s been pushing Linux as a desktop replacement with his company Linspire, originally called Lindows. It’s highly possible that he’s been locked out of being involved with music download since the sale of MP3.com
2 February, 2005