Content – Page 180 – Digital-Lifestyles

The Matrix Online

Admittedly, we’d be a lot more excited about this had the last two films been any good, but Monolith Production’s new massively multiplayer online role-playing game (MMORPG) based on the Matrix series of films is set to go public in November. The new game will be published by Warner Bros. Interactive and Sega, Monolith have already produced two respectable titles based on licenses: No-one Lives Forever and TRON2.0.

Set directly after the Martrix: Revolutions, Matrix Online (MxO) boasts a story line written by the Wachowski brothers. Mind you, so did Enter the Matrix and look how good that was. The MMORPG is meant to be seen as a fourth instalment, rather like Enter the Matrix being another part of the second film.

MxO is set in a city environment and incorporates the films’ distinctive martial arts fighting theme, but players will also be able to command their own hovercraft and form factions for and against other groups. Bullet time will be incorporated in the game play as apparently there are some people out there who don’t think it’s been completely overused.

Characters’ appearances can be completely customised, so you don’t have to worry about turning up at an event wearing the same sunglasses and trench coat as everyone else.

“Ability codes” seem intriguing, where players download sources of information to create Matrix items and learn special abilities. If you don’t fancy PvP (player versus player combat), then you can create Matrix code and distribute it in the game.

We’ll give it a try when it appears and let you know how we get on.

The Matrix wants you

RIAA’s Sales Claims “Suspect”

Neilsen Soundscan is reporting that CD sales are increasing, yet the Recording Industry Association of America claim that business is bad. So what’s actually going on?

As reported in Digital Lifestyles last month, Neilsen is celebrating a 10% increase in sales, whilst the RIAA is still telling us that CD sales have plummeted because of copying and downloading.

It turns out that the RIAA’s claims are based on the total number of CDs shipped to record shops – not the numbers sold to customers, so this has no reflection on sales at all. Record shops are ordering less stock, but selling the stock they have faster. Having lots of cash sitting in your storeroom doing nothing isn’t good business sense when economies are suffering. Additionally, the RIAA also has a measure of control over the number of CDs shipped to stores, so it can influence the figure in any way it likes.

Soundscan recorded 146 million CDs sold in Q1 2003, against 160 million in Q1 2004 – an increase of nearly 10%. Figures for Q2, released this summer are expected to show yet another increase. The RIAA, on the other hand, are claiming a 7% decrease in revenue – but that’s purely through managing shipments and returns.

RIAA Radar

When Search Engines Strike Back: Yahoo and Google Block Adware Company

Influential search engines Google and Yahoo has disabled links to WhenU, a adware manufacturer that they’ve accused of using “cloaking” to trick search engines into favourably ranking decoy pages that redirect visitors.

Avi Nader, chief executive of WhenU said that the questionable practices were the result of an external search engine optimisation company, and that they expected to be relisted now that they’ve stopped working with that organisation.

WhenU produce an application that keeps tabs on browsing habits – they’re currently embroiled in a debate as to whether this practice is in fact legal.

Adware, sometimes called spyware, are applets that are installed on your PC, sometimes without your consent or even knowledge, and can do a number of things: they can tell companies which webpages you’ve visited, what you’ve been typing on your keyboard (including bank details and credit card numbers), flash ads up on your screen or redirect you away from competitors products. Some people install them by choice (it’s the old “people will do anything for a discount thing”) but often the applications are malicious. There are a number of free tools for ridding yourself of these pests, and we’ve linked to a good one below.

Scan and get rid of adware on your PC free – Ad-aware 6

E3: America’s Army Recruiting Gamers for Special Forces

“America’s Army” is a battlefield simulation aimed (ouch) at promoting the US Amred forces to potential recruits – and now it’s one of the five most popular games hosted online, with 3.3 million registered users.

The US Army find that prospective soldiers who contact recruiters after playing the game have a much better follow-through rate than any other form or advertising or promotion, and is a much more efficient method of providing information to young people.

That’s right: this is a game actively encourages children to use guns and learn to kill people, and society is actually pleased for a change.

All of the scenarios in the game give a realistic view of Army life and require employing real-life tactics – if you go in blasting as if you were playing HalfLife, then you won’t last very long.

If you shoot one of your own, then you end up in prison – though this feature seems to have been omitted in “real life”.

E3 was the first showing of a new follow up to America’s Army: Operations, called America’s Army: Special Forces. Players attempt to earn Green Beret status by completing individual and collective training missions drawn from the Special Forces Assignment and Selection (SFAS) process.

Players who complete the SFAS process have the opportunity to take on elite Special Forces roles and are qualified to play in multiplayer missions with units ranging from the elite 82d Airborne Division to the 75th Ranger Regiment.

The British Army’s two attempts at recruitment games “Britain’s Army: Deepcut” and “Britain’s Army: Blown Up in Our Troop Carrier by an American A10 Warthog” were dismal failures.

My hope is that The Last Starfighter might actually be true and I will be contacted by aliens to save them because of my skills at Ikaruga. Knowing my luck though, it’ll be Super Monkey Ball.

Rumours that a certain group of footballers use Grand Theft Auto: Vice City to brush up their prostitute beating skills are unfounded.

Get your copy of America’s Army here

New HomeChoice Service Launches

The HomeChoice set top box Video Networks have launched the latest iteration of their HomeChoice service, available in the UK from 1st June.

The basic package includes 1mb of broadband (capped at 1gb per day downloaded – about 20,000 light web pages or 200 mp3s), more than 60 TV channels and a video on demand service. Films available on the on-demand service cost between £0.99 and £3.50 (€1.47 to €5.19) for the standard 24 hour rental.

The TV channels available are an extension of the standard Freeview fair, and include channels unavailable on Freeview such as E4, Discovery, CNBC Europe, UKTV Style and UKTV Gold. The are also some music offerings exclusive to Video Networks such as V:MX Hits and V:MX Dance. Interestingly, the service carries Club Zebra – a sort of exercise on demand (EOD – you heard it here first) channel where you can interact with keep fit and health programming.

The broadband component of the service can be upgraded to 2mb for an additional £15 (€22.26) per month – this takes the download cap to 45gb a month. The HomeChoice box comes with an Ethernet port in the back for connecting to your home network, but a rather smart wireless option is available for an extra £125 (€185.53). Including an Ethernet port makes the service a true competitor to existing broadband services. Beforehand, HomeChoice was really “VOD with broadband”, as the broadband connection from the box was USB: this iteration is more “broadband with VOD and content”, a much richer and flexible offering.The service is initially launching in West London to those with a BT phone line.

HomeChoice

VideoNetworks

In-Game Advertising with Massive

I must confess, the first time I fired up WipeOut in 1995 and sailed under that Red Bull banner (scraping my way along the barrier), I was impressed by this new collision of real products and virtual worlds. Even though it’d been done before, this was, to me at least, the most impressive example at the time. Mind you, I’ve only just ceased being amused by the Dole logos in Super Monkey Ball.

Fast forward a few years and product placement and advertising is everywhere in games – sometimes it works, sometimes it’s intrusive. A football game without any ads on the pitch would look strange, yet fantasy RPGs with soft drink product placement would break the sense of immersion.

Massive Incorporated, a New York based company have come up with a solution for games development houses keen to acquire revenue through placing adverts in their games, and for advertisers desperate to reach all those gamers that don’t watch TV any more.

Massive Ad Server is a service for streaming advertising into games live through an internet connection – allowing more adverts in games, and hopefully keeping them focused. Advertising is traditionally hard coded into games, and so the ad is never updated – this gets fresh advertising in to games, and allows the sponsor and products to be changed and updated.

Massive back the service up with a sales team that have advertisers keen to reach gamers in-game, using information gathered about the game and its demographics. No point in streaming Barbie ads to young adults playing Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas, is there?

I’m not entirely sure how I feel about this one really. Given that 20% fewer men between 18 – 24 are watching TV these days, advertisers need new ways to reach audiences. Gaming is a good way to do it – but the second I see Link wearing Nike, I’m taking up croquet.

Massive Incorporated

Napster Signs Distribution Deal With the Association of Independent Music

Napster will have just acquired another 50,000 tracks for their summer launch in the UK in a new deal with the Association of Independent Music (AIM). AIM is a UK body of 800 independent music companies, and Napster have licensed tracks from 50 of them. US Napster users will have access to the music too, once it has been uploaded.

“Napster creates the ultimate community experience for music fans and the variety, quality and originality of music from the independent UK sector is a vital to delivering this experience,” said Napster president Brad Duea. “The Association of Independent Music has shown great foresight in joining forces with Napster at this time and has underlined its reputation as an influential player on the international music scene.”

“Napster is going to make a big difference to music fans in the UK. At last we have a legitimate service from the world’s leading online brand, which offers flexibility in streaming and downloading to music fans. It also takes our music to fans around the world, confirming the promise that the internet can deliver a global business to independent artists and record companies,” said AIM chairman and chief executive Alison Wenham.

Artists made available through the deal include darlings of Hoxtonites such as Coldcut and Kruder & Dorfmeister. Billy Bragg will also be available.

Wippit, a subscription-based music service previously reported here has also just licensed tracks from Sony Music for distribution in the UK and Ireland. Sony Music’s artists include Bruce Springsteen and Beyonce.

It looks like the battle for legal music downloads is hotting up with Napster and iTunes launching almost simultaneously in the next few weeks.

Napster UK – get five free tracks when it launches

AIM

Picture Messaging Slow in the UK

Although picture messaging seems very popular with troops in Iraq at the moment, the service is yet to make any impact in the UK, says a survey by NOP.

Texting took a while to take off – but look what happened when it eventually did. Network providers are hoping for much the same thing – in fact, Sicap, who provide messaging products to mobile operators are rather hoping that Euro 2004 and the Olympic games will lure customers into MMS adoption.

There are two main reasons given for the lack of messaging: 45% don’t have a handset (kind of crucial, really – and also applies if your friends don’t have any either), and 17% don’t know how to send them. Odd then, that they would go to the expense of buying such a well-featured phone. But given that I still receive text messages THAT LOOK LIKE THIS, then it’s not surprising that people only have a limited amount of patience in learning how things work.

Indeed, on the rare occasions when I venture out, there seems to be little use of picture phones in real life situations. Phone users tend to take a few snaps when they first get their new phone, but after a while apathy, privacy infringement fears and the hail of tutting from those nearby soon dampen any enthusiasm for sending your mates a picture of the great time you’re pretending to have.

“The findings of our survey highlight that we will still have a lot more to do as an industry to encourage consumers to embrace MMS in the same way as they have SMS,” said Per-Johan Lundin, Head of Marketing, Sicap. “The first goal is to drive as many MMS compatible handsets into the hands of users as possible. Secondly, the services need to extremely user friendly like Vodafone Live. But the final piece of the jigsaw puzzle is compelling content. Some of this will be generated by users themselves but a lot will need to be generated around the content that consumers are really interested in like sports.”

If picture messaging is this slow in the UK, then you can bet it’s nowhere in the US, which tends to drag behind Europe in the mobile market.

Sicap

Google Revamps Blogger Service

Google has completed a revamp of its Blogger site, adding a number of new features and another 27 design templates to the service.

Possibly the most exciting feature is the addition of email posting, so now bloggers can update their site from anywhere where they have email – handy for updating blogs whilst on the move if you have a PDA.

Google are keen to build a community between bloggers with new facilities for adding comments to blogs and setting up blogger profiles. Profiles can automatically link to other bloggers with similar interests.

Evan Williams, Blogger program manager at Google said: “We are focusing on helping users connect to one another, and that has always been a core part of blogging, with the combination of profiles and comments, we make it more built in than it’s ever been before.”

Blogger

Are There Really 1.67 million Illegal Movie Downloaders in the UK?

The British Video Association (BVA) has surveyed 16,000 people between 12 and 74 and extrapolated that there are 1.67 million illegal film downloaders in the UK, as they believe that 4% of the population are indulging in the practice.

We think this gives an inaccurate picture. The entire population doesn’t have internet access, and downloading all of Kill Bill Volume 1 on a dialup is frankly insane, limiting this kind of piracy to broadband subscribers. Ofcom estimates that there are around 4 million broadband homes out there – so perhaps 4% of them are downloading, making it roughly 160,000 pirates (which we feel is more accurate), or perhaps 25% of broadband subscribers are pirates (which we doubt).

The BVA goes on to estimate that this downloaders cost the video industry £45 million (€) in lost revenue. A quick calculation on the back of an HP48 shows that this is roughly two full price DVDs per downloader – yet the BVA goes on to say that the average downloader grabs some 30 films and TV episodes a year. Since many downloaders like to collect and share files for kudos, we suspect the picture in the UK is of around 160,000 pirates downloading 30 films.

Interestingly, according to the survey, the average downloader is under 35, male, and lives in the south of England – presumably because broadband is more prevalent there and not because they’re more prone to thieving.

The BVA’s report