Category: Content

Content

Telewest Float Surf & Sniff Smell Generator

It being Friday and we thought we would bring you a light-hearted piece.

UK cable company, Telewest, has suggested that they may release a computer add-on that generates aromas that can be controlled software. Sound like an urban myth/joke, but it is not without precedent. The first time a computer-controlled device was suggest was in 1999 by a start-up called DigiScent. Prior to that it was on the grander scale of whole cinemas, when in the last 50’s two similar ideas, AromaRama and Smell-O-Vision, were introduced to US cinemagoers.

AromaRama used the theatres ventilation system to get their scents out and Smell-O-Vision far more expensive approach was to place units under each cinema seat.

DigiScent was a serious, scientific approach to the subject that was started by two Stanford graduates that had made some serious fortunes from software for genetic databases.

One of the founders, Joel Lloyd Bellenson looked into previous scientific research around the subject to discover how humans perceived smells. His explanation was detailed in an article by Wired at the time.

“The explanation for this proved relatively simple. When odour molecules drift into the nose, each of them binds with a particular protein on the surface of a neuron. There are about 1,000 odour-matching proteins, each with a slightly different configuration, scattered across a human’s 10 million odour-detecting neurons. (By comparison, a mouse has about 1 million neurons of this type, while a pig boasts 100 million.) When the shape of an odour molecule matches the shape of a protein, the molecules lock together, triggering the neuron, which sends a signal that the brain recognizes as a smell. DNA is relevant because its instructions – its genes – tell the body how to build the proteins that receive odour molecules and activate the neurons. ”

Calling on his previous software experience, Bellenson wrote software to simulate the binding of odour molecules with proteins. By using this he felt he could generate billions of odours simply by selecting different proportions of 100-200 “scent primaries.”

DigiScent’s business was to licence its software to the creators of  other media, to synchronise aromas with them. Web pages would be able to trigger them, as would TV shows, video games and films. The scent generators would be plugged into the serial port and sit on the desk – Reekers, instead of speakers.

Like many ideas around 1999, sadly DigiScent is not around anymore. One possible reason for that could have been is the name they chose for their product – iSmell.

Telewest say they have tested the idea in their labs, calling email using the device ‘ScentMail’, or on a wider scale, ‘Aromanet’. They plan to bring out a domed device that plugs in to the serial port of a computer or set top box, that takes dispoable cartidges to generate the aromas. They say the intial range of smells will be around 60 by mixing the palette of 20 oringial aromas.

Appearing to be designed to get them a few column inches for their broadband service, it is not clear how serious Telewest are about it. When discussing the cost of the dome they are less than exact, ‘Hardware for a surf & sniff set up might cost around £250 for the basic equipment’. We are sure Telewest is not trying to create news during the time their managing director, Charles Burdick, has left the company to “pursue other opportunities.”

Telewest corny press release

Wired 1999 article on DigiScent

Europe’s first mega-pixel camera phone launched by Vodafone

Vodafone has beaten the rest of the market to be the first to bring a mega-pixel camera to Europe. In a further development of their relationship with Sharp, it will be Sharp GX30.

Not content with being just a mega-pixel camera, this quad-band (GSM) phone of many features incorporates an MP3 player, offers Bluetooth support, has a removable SD memory cards and provides video message functionality. The screen on the handset has been significantly uprated to be capable of displaying 262,144 colours, four times its previous model, the GX20. It will be available in retail stores from March 2004.

Breaking the mega-pixel barrier is significant. At this resolution the photographs start to become useful beyond simply sending them other phones. The quality is sufficient to print them out and services such as Pixology (We QuickLinked earlier), are planning to take advantage of the always increasing resolutions.

The other direct benefit for Vodafone in higher resolution cameras’ becoming the norm is in increasing their call income – the higher the resolution, the more data there is to transmit, the higher Average Revenue Per User (ARPU). Raising ARPU is the mantra for mobile operators.

Vodafone’s global presence means it has tremendous clout and purchasing power enabling it to secure exclusive deals with phone manufacturers. It is known in the industry that Vodafone is keen to develop its own, branded phones in an attempt to break the power of Nokia on the phone market. They want to move their users from identifying with the make of handset, “I’ve got a Nokia” to “I’ve got a Vodafone”. Extending the relationship with Sharp is a further step towards that.

Vodafone

Sharp phones

Legal Music Downloads Reach New Highs

There were more than 150,000 legal music downloads in the UK in January 2004, putting downloading in second place behind buying singles for the first time. Although there were still about 341,500 singles sold in in that month, these figures show that legal music downloads are increasing in popularity all the time.

We feel that if there were more options for people to easily download music, then the CD single would die even quicker – it will be interesting to see what happens when iTunes eventually opens up shop in the UK later this year.

Of course, now that record labels are producing “copy protected” CDs with deliberate errors that do not play in many CD players (owners of car CD players be especially wary), and are difficult to rip, this may have the effect of driving more users to download sites.

MyCokeMusic has been an enormous success prompting many more people to download music, the January 19th launch was followed by 50,000 downloads in one week – we’ll be watching to see what the figures will be for February.

The Official Chart Company is now compiling figures on music downloads, and intends to issue a download chart in the future. Hopefully when this appears users will be able to buy music directly from the chart listing itself and will increase sales even further.

The Offical Chart Company

The Register on this week’s launch of “copy crippled” CDs

These Are Not the DVDs You’re Looking For

Although not confirmed by a press release, Fox have announced that they will be releasing the original Star Wars films in DVD in September. Apparently, George has found some time in his busy schedule.

These will be the Special Editions released in 1997, as LucasFilm regard these as the definitive versions. So, what about all those rumours floating around that further changes are being to the films for re-release in the future?

We at Digital Lifestyles couldn’t really care less if Han still shoots first – we were just miffed that they took such liberties with Sy Snootles band.

Straight from the Bantha’s mouth

Nothing but sane, well structured debate at Harry Knowles’ site

EVE Breaking Records for Concurrent Users in a Single Persistent On-line World?

EVE is a MMORPG (Massively Multiplayer Online Role Playing Game), and is unique from other on-line games in that every player experiences the same game world. The premise of the game is rather like that of the old BBC Micro favourite, Elite: trade, kill pirates (or be a pirate) and upgrade your craft and equipment, all in a galaxy of several thousand stars, planets, stations and asteroid belts.

MMORPG games such as EverQuest and Star Wars Galaxies have more subscribers, but run several game worlds across their server farms, with each instance of the game world holding perhaps as many as 3,000 players.

As not everyone is in the same instance of the game, then if you are on a different server from your friends (or enemies) then you can’t meet them, and your experience is different from theirs. As EVE has one game world, it is possible to interact with every player – which has very interesting implications for economics and social interaction in such large simulation.

EVE is the first title from CCP, an Icelandic company founded by Reynir Hardarson, formerly of OZ.COM and reached its current incarnation last year. Interestingly EVE’s “high water” marks for most connected users seem to be occurring on Sundays – possibly a valuable snippet of information if any market research companies out there can decode what it means.

The MMORPG market is now becoming, not exactly crowded but, well-served with a variety of differently-themed games. Because of the time commitment such games demand and the monthly fee payable (typically from $9.99 to $14.99) users are reluctant to hope from game to game, losing carefully built-up characters and items. As broadband use expands and the games lose their somewhat nerdy image this could potentially be a huge and innovate sector of the On-line entertainment industry.

EVE Online

CCP

Apple Start a Garage Band

One of the highlights of iLife ’04, GarageBand is Apple’s new music application. It follows a similar paradigm to other loop-based music programs: samples are dragged to a timeline and arranged to form tunes. However, GarageBand goes beyond that – each professional quality sample’s key and tempo is automatically adjusted to fit, and you can plug in a MIDI keyboard (or use the one on screen) to control the range of software instruments provided. More loops, samples and instruments are available in a “Jam Pack” expansion pack.

We think the program deserves a mention because GarageBand performs a very useful function – not only can you export your creations into iTunes to listen to and share, but you can also use them as the soundtrack to your iDVD projects, giving far more professional results.

GarageBand homepage at Apple

MovieLink Offer Re-rental

MovieLink, the on-demand film service that delivers films via broadband Internet connections, is experimenting with different pricing models. They have launched an offer that permits their viewers to re-watch films that they have downloaded, paid for and watched. They call it MultiPlay.

If a viewer has the urge to watch a film again within 30 days of the original rental, they can pay a normally reduced price to have another 24 hours access to it and have the advantage that the film does not have to be downloaded again. Not all films that MovieLink carry are included, presumably because of licensing restrictions, and the cost of re-renting varies but start at 99c.

MovieLink

Midem Report: Focus on the Mobile Music Forum

By Paul Hosford, partner, New Media Law

In another crammed auditorium full of music industry and mobile phone industry delegates, keynote speaker, Takeshi Natsuno, MD of i-mode strategy at Japan’s NTT DoCoMo in revealed that its straightforward, entertainment-based service had attracted 40 million users to its subscription based model, because it is an utterly consumer focused offering. He urged his European and North American counterparts to leave behind current industry specific perspectives and to develop viable marketplaces for mobile content, where the key to overall success would be equal roles for all types of hardware manufacturers, content providers, and service providers.

His advice to the music content owners was to translate pricing models into the world of the packaged IT product – lower price higher volume, but to consider that the mobile operators need business models that address their industry’s concerns as well. Service providers should stay user-centric ensuring that even the most unsophisticated user is comfortable with, and enjoys using the product, for it to be properly commercially viable. DoCoMo’s model is to only take 9% commission on sales for themselves – preferring that “the revenue must go to the content providers”. In fact Natsuno said when other people within his organisation had suggested that they took a higher percentage, “I fired them”. This is a refreshingly different approach to current income sharing with many mobile service providers, particularly in the UK, where the operator takes as much as 40% of some services. His expectation is that their 40 million paying subscribers in Japan and 1.5 million active subscribers outside Japan will grow to a target of 100 million by 2010.

“Making Money from Mobile Music, Today” panel
In the panel session “Making Money from Mobile Music Today”, these different industry perspectives were apparent in the lively discussion of how ringtones and their increasingly musical offspring, “Hi-Fi tones”, had proved to be massive money spinners for the mobile operators. HiFi tones are near perfect reproductions of music. Representatives from T-Mobile International (Germany), Comverse (Israel), Musiwave (France), EMI Music Publishing (UK), Sony Music (UK), and Faith West (US) debated the future growth of “real” mobile music content with the development in mobile technology and the increase in personalisable ring-tones of various kinds beyond the mono and polyphonic tones that most of us are used to hearing. From the music industry’s side, as the quality of ringtones reproduction increases, record companies and publishers will overcome their initial reluctance to put their music on what they say has, up to now, been a platform with inadequate reproduction quality (they say they have been protecting their artists from low quality renditions of the music). The operators and service providers view is that it is clear that business models that take into account airtime and subscription considerations may or may not work for the rights owners. The record labels and publishers whilst obviously keen to collect revenues for themselves and artists from this potentially massive distribution opportunity will have to continue to develop open licensing policies across many territories. And if the operators follow Takeshi Natsuno’s advice, they will lower resale rates from the 10 to 40 % currently talked about.

Conclusion
As in the online environment, the on-demand mobile music world that will come to consumers in the near future will require the multiple rights relationships that exist within the music industry to be simplified and standardised – this in itself is a large task. As ever, what is all too apparent is that there are many expecting their slice of the pie – at an extreme the list could be as long as record company/label, music publisher, possibility the artist (depending on their contract), content aggregator, mobile service provider and payment system provider. One of the challenges facing the mobile music industry is whether the pie will be as big enough for everyone to get their slice.


         

MidemNet 2004 report

By Paul Hosford, partner, New Media Law

The fifth MidemNet 2004 opened the week long international music industry’s conference in Cannes. In heavily attended sessions this year, it appears, at least on the surface, that the industry is at last grasping on-demand digital distribution of music – the legal variety that is.

MidemNet is the music industry’s international forum that attracts players from every corner of the business to get together and discuss the issues confronting an industry severely impacted by the illegal distribution of millions of copies of its product.

Ted Cohen, EMI Music’ s senior VP of digital development and distribution, opened with the positive pro-industry message – commercial downloads represent the ultimate way forward for music consumers. He feels that it will come of age in 2004, and when legal battles are overcome and the consumer is empowered by commercialised P2P delivery, the industry’s bad reputation will begin to improve.

Keynote interviewee Eddy Cue of Apple’s Internet services announced what everyone suspected, the iTunes Music Store would launch in Europe at some point. iTunes throws into relief these challenges for the music business. Launched in April 2003 as a proprietary platform download service, the Music Store leverages Apple’s existing back-end infrastructure to offer a flat fee of 99 cents per track, and now offering 0.5 million tracks, made available by the Major record labels under recent licensing, but only available to US consumers. The delay in the European launch has been put down to resolving licensing across countries.

Setting out to develop “a better Kazaa” by 5 January 2004, iTunes has sold more than 30 million tracks in all kinds of genres, predominantly to an over-21 demographic. This has moved the Majors on from a proposition that only 2 and a half years ago was not on their list of potential licensing opportunities.

Whilst we all know and covet that beautifully packaged piece of must-have hardware that is the iPod, the reality is that Apples share of the 99 cents may not, in isolation, be sufficient to rev-up their share price. What is clear is that sales of iPod are going through the roof.

There has been a lot of discussion here about iTunes downloads not being platform-independent and that ultimately this may become a sticking point for the device-rich consumer who wants the flexibility to listen to their paid-for music on any device they own. In the meantime, iTunes sales still represent small numbers when compared to the world of illegal P2P sharing.

The European iTunes delay has highlighted a major problem. What will remain firmly as the principal challenge for any pan-European initiative is an industry with differing product release dates, differing licensing and rights collection mechanisms across the European territories – and differing price models. The message is clear – the industry must push through change in these licensing and publishing practices across the major markets.

In the panel sessions representatives of OD2, EMI Music, RealNetworks, French ISP Wanadoo and mmO2, debated the very real technical problems of delivering to consumers a single product where the industry’s marketplace and accounting mechanisms are territorially divergent and a very long way from uniformity. Whilst EMI’s goal is obviously, to sell more music by making it available in multiple formats on any platform, corralling all the various rights holders that share in recorded music remains the Major Labels most immediate challenge.

For the content aggregators, the ISP’s mobile networks and digital music intermediaries, the problems are different, but equally complex. They must deal with multiple payment mechanisms, differing pricing regimes and a complex value chain that makes it very challenging to deliver cost effective alternatives to paying consumers demanding of quality content. What will be critical to delivering a successful consumer experience is cross-platform transferability of the downloaded track that is paid for once.

In the meantime, the disc media formats are very much alive and kicking representing over 90 percent of music bought today. Your correspondent for one is looking forward to experiencing SACD recordings – real surround sound.