Content in its shift to become digital
This morning my daughter was having a look around for some pictures of medieval castle’s on Google Images. She’s six and a half.
My Wife was sitting with her while she browsed the index, and as the results looked quite reasonable, she left the room to let her browse around the search results.
Next thing, our daughter was calling out that she didn’t like what was on the screen – and seeing what was there, no wonder. It was a porn site.
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We’ve all seen the video of Microsoft showing off the surface table that lets you interact in what is now a novel way.
We’ve found a video that brilliantly mocks it.
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Quick catchup news. China has modified their content blocking – or Great Firewall of China as it’s sometimes called – to allow through the English language version of Wikipedia to be seen in China.
This change only took place at the beginning of this week. My experience the week before (while in Beijing), was that results were show in Google, but when clicking on the Wikipedia links, they would timeout with nothing displayed – classic firewall blocking behaviour.
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With just over a week until the whole of humanity is saved and we shall never have to worry about disease again launch of the iPhone in the US, Apple have let it be known that they have been getting even closer to YouTube.
YouTube have been busily re-encoding lots of their videos to H.264 and the Apple iPhone (aka Mankind’s Saviour) will be the first phone to make use of them. The advantages to Apple is PR (You’re reading this) and the playback of H.264 should be more battery efficient, as it doesn’t need the whole of a Flash player to render the videos on the handset.
Over 10,000 video will be available on the 29 June (iPhone day) with all of the other videos following suit, it’s expected, by Autumn (Fall) this year.
By way of a lovely tie-up, it’s also the day that sees the YouTube on Apple TV go live – after they do the download update to their little boxes.
BeeBird, another FM transmitter reaches us, this time with a pretty decent look about it.
The Chinese manufacturer, netSharp, got in touch with us give us the heads up.
There’s a not-insubstantial 199 channels available for transmitting your fave sounds. The frequency range that can be chosen between, is 88.1 – 107.9MHz.
The chosen frequency is displayed on the LCD display, while the simple up/down shuffle changes the frequency.
It’s got FCC approval, and as long as its output is under 50 nanoWatts, it will be legal in the UK under OfCom rules too.
It looks at light as it is at 30g excluding the one AAA battery it runs on (there’s also a car power adaptor available). As you’d expect, it has a 3.5mm headphone jack, so will play from any sensible music source.
Price? Not clear yet. We hadn’t heard back before going to press.
The British Board of Film Classification (BCCF) have ruled that Manhunt 2, the second version of the game from Rockstar Games, has been banned in its current form from sale or rental in the UK.
Originally scheduled for release during July 2007, the BCCF today made it pretty clear that they really didn’t like it – at all. David Cooke, Director of the BBFC said, “Rejecting a work is a very serious action and one which we do not take lightly. Where possible we try to consider cuts or, in the case of games, modifications which remove the material which contravenes the Board’s published Guidelines. In the case of Manhunt 2 this has not been possible. Manhunt 2 is distinguishable from recent high-end video games by its unremitting bleakness and callousness of tone in an overall game context which constantly encourages visceral killing with exceptionally little alleviation or distancing. There is sustained and cumulative casual sadism in the way in which these killings are committed, and encouraged, in the game.”
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Global mobile gaming end-user revenue is set to skyrocket from $2.9 billion in 2006 to $9.6 billion in 2011, with popularity growing as consumer awareness increases and more games are released.
The figures were released in a new report from research analysts Gartner who calculated that worldwide mobile gaming revenue looks set to hit $4.3 billion in 2007, up nearly 50 percent from 2006.
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Speculation is growing that YouTube will be launching local versions of their video sharing service for European countries.
The rumours come in the wake of YouTube owners Google announcing a mass herding of top executives in Paris for an international press conference next week.
Elementary
France 24, a French public TV channel, confirmed on Friday that it’s been sitting on the chatty sofa and getting chummy with Google, leading pundits to predict that the search engine giant could be lining up local content for its video-sharing service.
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Looks like there’s a danger of some of the open-source software world and Microsoft breaking out into a huge big love in.
Linspire, which started life as Lindows in an effort to antagonise Microsoft, has announced an agreement with the Redmond giant to co-operate in a number of areas.
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In a long line of partnerships deals, designed to improve their standing – and income – within Mainland China, Google has signed a deal with China’s number one portal, Sina.com.
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