Digital-Lifestyles

Content

Content in its shift to become digital

  • Blockbuster Launch Online DVD Rental Service

    Blockbuster have launched Blockbuster Online, as service that allows subscribers to choose films from the company’s 25,000 title catalogue – and then have them posted to their home.

    Not quite the giant leap we were all hoping for, and a bit late, but it’s a step forward. This is essentially the same service that Netflix and others have been providing for, well, months. Years, even.

    Blockbuster don’t think they’re late to market at all: “We think now is the opportune time for Blockbuster to enter the online rental business, and we plan to quickly establish ourselves in this arena by aggressively marketing, pricing and combining our online program and in-store capabilities,” said Shane Evangelist, Blockbuster vice president and general manager of BLOCKBUSTER Online. “Very simply, we plan on providing the best online movie rental service available. To this end, the BLOCKBUSTER Online monthly fee is currently priced below our biggest competitor for the three-out rental plan. Plus, we are offering 25,000 new release and catalogue titles. We believe that all of this, combined with our marketing savvy, should help Blockbuster to develop a substantial share of the online rental business by the end of next year.”

    Certainly, recognition of the Blockbuster brand should make it easier for them to gain ground in an already established market.

    Subscribers can rent unlimited films, up to three at a time, for US$19.99 (€16.30) a month. As they’re paying a subscription and can only hold three titles at a time, there are not late fees – so that copy of Three Weeks Notice can sit there unwatched for as long as you like, just because you can’t get to the post office.

    Blockbuster will be offering free rental coupons valid in its stores to encourage subscribers to still pop into the local branch now and again – of course, posting DVDs means that customers won’t be buying so much high-margin popcorn and chocolates anymore.

    Blockbuster Online

  • eBay Anywhere

    Bad news for people with eBay addictions – Volantis Systems have launched a service that allows subscribers to keep close tabs on auctions from their mobile phones. Bad news for everyone else too, because it means that some of the more extreme eBay junkies might feel liberated to leave the house and wander about a bit.

    The service is currently very simple, but they have big plans to turn it into a full eBay portal. Revolving around SMS text messages, eBay Anywhere sends users text messages when they are outbid on an item, win the auction or an auction ends.

    eBay have offered a similar service for a while, but eBay Anywhere has a feature that stops addicts from having to leap into cybercafes at random times during the day or night: subscribers can text bids straight back if it looks like a long-coveted blackbird pie funnel is about to go to someone else.

    Messages cost UK£0.25 (€0.37) as they are premium texts. Volantis hope to be able to include photo uploads direct from camera phones as well as a fully-featured version of the My eBay portal for providing feedback and checking payments.

    eBay Anywhere

  • The BBC’s Digital Olympic Coverage

    BBC Sport have released details of the scale of their coverage for the 2004 Olympics, covering more than 1,200 hours of television and 200 hours of radio. Digital television and broadband internet means that the BBC will be able to broadcast much more Olympic footage than in previous years – so this year you might not miss out on the canoeing after all.

    The Olympic Games generally create about 3000 hours of television – the BBC will broadcast 250 hours on its two main channels, and another 1,000 hours will be shown on digital TV.

    Digital services will include constantly updated results and medal tables, and a scheduling tool so that viewers can see if the softball finals and table tennis events are on at the same time.

    BBC Sport will be showing live and on-demand coverage of events on their web site for UK residential broadband customers. The service will feature the same streams carried on interactive channels, so users will be able to watch five events simultaneously.

    The BBC Sport player can sit on your desktop whilst you’re working with your computer, and the site even includes other activities that you can enjoy whilst the video player is running. The Flash games provided are a nice touch and have a lovely SNES feel to them – I managed to out swim the calamari in 12.1 seconds, but the B and N keys on my keyboard will never be the same.

    Watch the Olympics live online

  • XP Light for Developing Markets

    Microsoft is about to release a stripped-down, low-cost version of Windows XP into five developing markets. Indonesia, Malaysia, Thailand and two unspecified countries will receive Windows XP Starter Edition in October.

    The move is to combat the two main threats to Windows in these markets: piracy and Linux. Microsoft hopes that a low-cost, properly licensed copy of Windows will dissuade users from simply buying a copied disk for a couple of dollars and that the company’s brand and software support will tempt users away from trying out a Linux distribution.

    Aside from major changes to the OS, Microsoft has localised screen savers to include local landscape scenes, flags and traditional designs to encourage users to adopt XP Starter Edition.

    Microsoft may have misjudged the market, however – XP Starter Edition apparently features lower resolution graphics, crippled networking and bizarrely, only allows users to run three programs simultaneously.

    Given that most Linux distributions perform excellently in all of these areas, it is unlikely that Microsoft will be tempting anyone away from the penguin with less functionality rather than more.

    Microsoft on XP Starter Edition

  • TiVo Cuts Prices to Increase Demand

    Fresh from getting the nod for their TiVoToGo content sharing service, PVR manufacturer TiVo have cut the price of their digital recorder. With competition from cable companies looming, this could be TiVo’s last chance to grow, or even hang on to, their market share.

    A TiVo PVR is now only US$100 (€82) for the 40 hour model, with the subscription costing US$13 (€11) a month.

    The company has launched a US$50 million (€41 million) ad campaign in the hope of growing sales from US$141 million (€115 million) last year to US$1 billion (€820 million) by 2008.

    “This will set the stage and give us a chance at profitability by the end of our next fiscal year,” said Brodie Keast, TiVo’s executive vice president and general manager.

    Rival cable firms are threatening TiVo’s market share by launching services with cheaper monthly charges. Although TiVo hope to grow their installed user base form 1.6 million subscribers to 10 million in four years, the outlook does not appear good: the company’s share price has recently fallen by 10% to a 16 month low.

    As Forrester Research analyst Josh Bernoff has said.”This is it. This is their shot to get a whole lot of new subscribers before cable DVR subscribers really take off.”

    TiVo

  • Roxio to Sell Software Division and Change Name to Napster

    Roxio is to get out of the software industry and concentrate solely on digital music – even to the extent of ditching its name and becoming Napster. Online music services are so popular, and the Napster brand still so well known, that it makes sense to to them get out of the software business completely by selling their software business to Sonic Solutions for US$80 million (€65 million).

    Napster is making Roxio just under US$8 million a quarter, and will bring in between US$30 million (€24.5 million) and US$40 million (€32.5 million) in the financial year. More than half of Roxio’s income comes from Napster subscriptions, and Napster-branded MP3 players brought in US$1.1 million (€900,000). Napster subscriptions are a good revenue stream for the company – margins on downloaded songs are only 10%, but are as high as 40% on subs.

    Roxio can see that there is limited life in the CD burning software market, especially now that operating systems like Windows XP have disk burning facilities built into them, and are getting more sophisticated all the time. Whilst there will be a market for specialist software for recording CDs for some time, many consumers’ needs are already satisfied by the disk burning capabilities already integrated into iTunes or their OS, leading to reduced demand for their products.

    Napster CEO Chris Gorog said during a conference call announcing the sale: “With the news today, we are on a path to become a very well-funded pure play in one of the hottest sectors in the consumer technology market.”

    Roxio will be testing Microsoft’s Janus DRM technology this year, allowing subscribers to move their content to portable players for the first time.

    Sonic are quite pleased with their new acquisition – Roxio has a well-established consumer brand with high-profile distribution channels. Try buying a CD writer that doesn’t come with a Roxio product.

    Roxio

    Napster

  • Ringtone Market Now Worth Frightening US$2.5 billion; WAP Use Doubles, But Still Rubbish

    Research groups are estimating that the worldwide ringtone market is now worth at least US$2.5 billion (€2 billion), with some groups claiming that it’s nearer US$3.5 billion (€2.85 billion).

    The US market makes up just a tiny proportion of the US$2.5 billion figure, accounting for just US$140 million (€114 million) of ringtone sales – the bulk of the market is in Europe and Asia.

    Like text messaging, ringtones are another completely unexpected mobile phone success story – ten years ago, mobile networks thought they’d be making their money from obvious things like phone calls.

    Perhaps those guys in the panda outfits weren’t so daft after all.

    WAP, however, was an unexpected failure – adoption of the difficult to use, worse to implement internet browsing protocol has been extremely slow. Slow to the point that it will soon be bypassed by traditional internet access on phones. Like teletext but slower and less interesting, figures from the Mobile Data Association indicate that 1.11 billion WAP pages were viewed during June 2004, up from 784 million in June 2003. The MDA estimate that the year total will be 13 billion for the year.

    Mobile Data Association

  • Microsoft Releases XP SP2 to Manufacturers

    Microsoft have finally sent Windows XP SP2 off for disc manufacturers. The update, the biggest ever security fix to Windows, has been hotly awaited by many. Not least black-hat hackers who will be pouring over the code to see what vulnerabilities it has fixed.

    SP2 has been described by analysts as much more than just a series of bug fixes, and has been likened to an upgrade to Windows.

    ‘Service Pack 2 is a significant step in delivering on our goal to help customers make their PCs better isolated and more resilient in the face of increasingly sophisticated attacks,’ said Bill Gates, chairman and chief software architect at Microsoft.

    ‘It is the result of sustained investments in innovation and extensive industry collaboration. It also reflects a broad recognition that as the security environment changes, the industry needs to work together to respond,’ he said.

    The update includes an improved firewall, one that is actually switched on by default this time. Other enhancements include a long overdue popup blocker for Internet Explorer and better e-mail security.

    The service pack was originally planned to be released in June, but further enhancements were needed. Microsoft is keen to get it completely right this time. Available as a free CD, the update will also be available for download – though dial up users may shrink from terror at its vast 90mb bulk. To alleviate this, Microsoft are encouraging users to switch on automatic updates in Windows, so that the fixes can be downloaded in smaller chunks.

    The pack will be released in English first, with 25 other languages on their way shortly.

    Windows Update

  • Nokia Partners with Loudeye on Mobile Music

    Nokia have signed Loudeye to develop and advanced wireless digital music platform for their range of mobile handsets. The announcement comes days after Motorola and Apple got together to bring iTunes to mobile phones.

    No details on the platform have yet been released, but the deal is for several years.

    “This agreement with Nokia represents a significant strategic opportunity for Loudeye to work with the leading mobile communications company in the world to develop an advanced wireless music platform,” said Jeff Cavins, Loudeye’s president and chief executive officer. “We are very excited about our relationship with Nokia and look forward to sharing more details in the future.”

    This is another early step showing that online music services and handset manufacturers believe that mobile phones have tremendous potential as tools for listening to, and buying, digital music.

    Loudeye recently acquired OD2, Europe’s leading white label music download service and claims to have the world’s largest music archive. We’ll be interested to see how the service ties in with Visual Radio, if at all. If Visual Radio gets a proper European or worldwide launch, then it may form the basis of a service for radio listeners to buy and download music heard during broadcasts.

    Loudeye

  • Pfizer Gets Hard On Viagra Spammers

    Research undertaken by Pfizer has prompted the pharmaceutical company to take legal action against the hundreds of spammers selling fake or generic Viagra on the internet. A survey revealed that 25% of men thought that the emails actually came from Pfizer. If that really is the case, then I’d say that erection problems aren’t their only problem – they need to buy some clever pills too.

    There is no such thing as generic Viagra (known as sildenafil citrate) because the drug has not be approved by the Food and Drug Administration in the US – makes you wonder what it is these people are buying.

    Pfizer are now working with US law enforcement agencies and the FDA to track down and prosecute those illegally selling, or claiming to sell, Viagra. They already have organisations and 24 websites targeted. Alongside all of this legal activity, they have a new public awareness campaign to educate the public on the dangers of buying random, unprescribed pills off the internet.

    “Pfizer is taking these steps to help raise consumer awareness about the problems posed by illegitimate online ‘pharmacies’ and to directly address the source of these problems,” said Jeff Kindler, Executive Vice President and General Counsel at Pfizer. “We want it clearly known that Pfizer does not send or support the sending of spam, which comes from websites that illegally use the Viagra name to promote and market unapproved ED products that may contain ingredients that either do not provide optimal efficacy or may pose health risks.”

    Research shows that younger men are now taking Viagra recreationally as a lifestyle drug, and this coupled with the fact that some people are still stupid to buy things they read about in spam, means that there will be no quick end to impotence-related emails any time soon.

    Worryingly, Pfizer have just lost patent protection for Viagra in China, so look forward to a sudden flood of legal sildenafil spam coming from there.

    Pfizer