Content – Page 64 – Digital-Lifestyles

Nokia S60 3rd Edition Challenge Winners Announced

Nokia has announced the winning entries in the Forum Nokia S60 3rd Edition Challenge global developer competition, dishing out a cool €100,000 in prizes to winning mobile applications developers.

Co-sponsored by Forum Nokia and software monoliths Adobe, the winners in four categories were selected from 117 entries after a 10-month selection process.

The categories were enterprise, music, Macromedia Flash Lite and location-aware applications, with each winner pocketing a €25,000 top prize and a one-year free membership in Forum Nokia PRO developer support program, which is apparently worth €4,000.

Selected by a jury made up of Macromedia and Nokia Business unit reps, the winners were selected from the 20 finalists announced in September this year.

Nokia S60 3rd Edition Challenge Winners Announced Quickoffice Premier 4 scooped up Best Enterprise Application, with the product allowing users to open, view and edit Microsoft Office documents on the move.
www.quickoffice.com

The best Macromedia Flash application was Foreca – Flash Weather, a natty program that can not only advise you whether that brolly is really necessary, but can offer comprehensive weather forecasts, weather radar, temperature and precipitation forecasts.
www.foreca.com.

Nokia S60 3rd Edition Challenge Winners Announced InfoTalk Corporation’s Music Finder grabbed the honours for Best Mobile Music Application. The program provides a speedy way to use search for music files using voice commands, with users able to speak a song title, artist’s name or playlist in response to an audio prompt instead of scrolling through zillions of MP3s.
www.infotalkcorp.com.

Finally, the Best Location-Aware Service/Application prize went to Augmentra, whose smarty-pants ViewRanger application offers a unique mapping, navigation and information tool for mobile phones, providing information about immediate surroundings through an intuitive display.
www.viewranger.com.

Forum Nokia S60 3rd Edition Challenge

CCleaner Review: Windows Optimisation And Privacy Freeware (90%)

CCleaner Windows Optimisation And Privacy Freeware Review A long time favourite in Chez Digi Lifestyles, CCleaner is a superb system optimisation and privacy tool that comes with the best price of all: nothing!

A featherweight 1.42 meg download, CCleaner is short for ‘Crap Cleaner’ – a perfectly appropriate name, with the program doing an excellent job of turfing out unused and temporary files from your system.

Although the program is freeware and comes with no lurking steenkin’ spyware or adware, it does invite you to install the Yahoo toolbar on installation – just tick no if you don’t want it (we didn’t).

Cleaning out your dutty PC
Once fired up, a click on the ‘analyse’ button will get the program racing through your machine’s folders looking for files that can be removed.

CCleaner takes a high speed shufti in your Internet Explorer Cache, History, Cookies and Index.dat; as well as rummaging about in your recycle bin, temporary files, log files and lists of recently opened URLs and files.

CCleaner Windows Optimisation And Privacy Freeware Review Unlike some similar commercial products we’ve tested, CCleaner proved to be incredibly fast in use, with a full system scan taking a matter of seconds. Very impressive.

Once the program has completed its scan you’re given the option of deleting the files or going back and fine-tuning your scanning options.

Third-party application temp files and recent file lists (MRUs) can also be vamoosed from a long list of applications, including Firefox, Opera, Media Player, eMule, Kazaa, Google Toolbar, Netscape, Office XP, Nero, Adobe Acrobat and WinZip.

We managed to clear up over 1.5 gig of space when we first ran the program, and it continues to clear out junk at an impressive rate with each scan.

Registry
There’s also a powerful built in Advanced Registry scanner which helps you get rid of unused and old entries cluttering up your system.

CCleaner Windows Optimisation And Privacy Freeware Review Bashing the ‘scan for issues’ button will produce a list of problems with File Extensions, ActiveX Controls, ClassIDs, ProgIDs, Uninstallers, Shared DLLs, Fonts, Help Files, Application Paths, Icons and Invalid Shortcuts, with the option to individually fix them or just let CCleaner work its magic automatically.

Wisely, the program prompts you to make a registry back-up before it takes off its gloves and starts sorting out the errant entries.

There’s also a handy ‘tools’ interface letting users uninstall programs or simply remove programs from their start up menu, with an ‘options’ menu allowing more advanced functions like user-defined cookie removal.

Conclusion
This is a fantastic program for quickly and effectively zapping unwanted and private information from your PC.

The program’s easy to use interface and support for a wide variety of applications surpasses many of the commercial offerings we’ve seen, and regular use should help you get Windows running faster and more efficiently, while grabbing back precious hard drive space.

Although the program is freeware, those who donate £10 ($20) or more get new releases in advance of regular punters and they can also enjoy the warm glow of knowing that they’re contributing to the continued development of this fine product.

Features: 85%
Ease of use: 85%
Value For Money: 90%
Overall: 90%
CCleaner.com

Five Download VoD Launches With CSI

Five Download VoD Launches With CSI UK Broadcaster Channel Five have launched their Five Download, Video on Demand (VoD), service with US series CSI. They’ve previously offered downloads of the car show, Fifth Gear.

The new service is offering straight CSI: Crime Scene Investigation; CSI: NY and CSI: Miami.

This isn’t Just-Another-VoD-Service (JAVS), as there’s some innovation in here. CSI fans are mad keen on the programme (so we understand) and understanding this, Five is offering the episodes seven days ahead of the TV broadcast date. Fans will pay a premium price for this £2.49 vs the usual £1.49 per episode. We suspect that once hooked on receiving the content early, fans using the service will have to continue paying to stay ahead.

Engaging in some mutual back slapping Jane Lighting, Five’s Chief Executive, said: “I’m delighted that we are launching the service with CSI enabling us to offer the highest quality content to viewers with a viewing window which exceeds anything currently in the marketplace,” to which Ted Riley, Executive Managing Director, International Content Distribution, Alliance Atlantis whooped “The first-ever CSI Franchise VoD service outside the U.S., is both a thrilling proposition for U.K. fans,” adding that it “heralds the roll-out of other new media opportunities for this fantastic franchise internationally.”

One of the challenges for this service, as it is with all others – they’re competing against the same content being available on file sharing networks near-instantly available after they’ve been shown in the US – yonks before they hits the UK. Fanatical fan’s will more than likely not wait for the legitimate source and go the file-sharing route. The fact that the programmes won’t cost them anything will be incidental.

Five will be charging either £1.49 or £2.49 per download which we think it pretty steep given the episodes are only available for 14 days and is restricted to one computer. If you’re impudent enough to try the content that you’ve paid for on another machine, you’ll be completely locked out of that content.

Five Download VoD Launches With CSI

To use the service you’ll need to download and install the Five Download Manager and Player which has been provided to them by BT Media & Broadcast, but the base level technology is from Entriq. Entriq’s MediaSphere is used by other companies such as BT Vision and with download services.

As Five are using Microsoft’s DRM, the service is only available to those in the UK who run Windows XP or 2000 and browse through Microsoft Internet Explorer 6.0 and enable ActiveX. Users of Windows XP must use Windows Media Player 10 and 2K users must use Windows Media Player 9.

Microsoft has steadfastly not introduced their latest DRM on the Macintosh, so they’re excluded.

Those of you lucky/unlucky enough to not have the above, can still view the trailers (well we could on a Mac anyway).

Five download

Spoof David Cameron Video Brouhaha

Spoof David Cameron Video Brouhaha Some MP’s are trying to create brouhaha (fuss) about a spoof video put out by labour MP Sion Simon mocking the first video of Conservative party leader, David Cameron on his Webcameraon site.

If you’ve not seen Cameron’s first piece, which was put out in advance of the Tory party conference, take a trundle through – it’s only just over a minute long.

When we saw it, we found it pretty contrived, with “Dave” just about to do the “washing up” – clutching his Ecover washing-up liquid (look how green I am), without rolling his sleeves up!

Sion Simon’s video repost parodies Cameron’s “hey, I’m just like you” approach and ~~can be seen below~~ can’t been seen on YouTube anymore as someone has pulled the video. To see it now, you’ll have to watch it via the BBC.

The criticism of Simon is being lead by Peter Luff and given Luff’s comments, it appears that he’s not too secure in his position, “When you go over the top like this, you bring all of us in politics into disrepute.” If you’ve watched the film I think you’ll agree that the video is hardly over the top, just gently mocking.

Criticism of the video isn’t just restricted to the opposition. Labour MP Stephen Pound said he thought Mr Cameron’s wife Samantha would be “hurt and insulted” by remarks made by Simon, referring to his comments suggesting that Cameron would be fine with people sleeping with his wife.

It’s not just MPs that are creating spoof videos. Someone calling himself WebCameraOn has created a number of videos pocking fun as well.

Cameron is playing the “am I bovvered” card. 2:49 minutes into this piece, Cameron mentions that there had been a number of spoofs of his piece, calling them “The greatest form of flattery, imitation.” Bizarrely Cameron also says, “Hope that you people are enjoying the Web site,” “You People”?

Cameron – or at least someone in his team – has clearly seen that he now has the ability to bypass the media and the filter that they apply to his comments.

Orb MyCasting on Nokia N80 In US

Orb MyCasting on Nokia N80 In US Orb MyCasting has been grabbed by Nokia to be bundled in with the Nokia N80 Internet Edition, in the US only.

When US N80 owners are swanning around, they’ll be able to watch live TV, videos, listen to music and podcasts and video images on their PC. Not just that, but they can set programs to record on their PC from their mobiles.

The TV and media companies have not, to say the very least, been particularly keen on letting people do this. We’ll see if they come out against Nokia.

Back in August this year, Orb MyCasting were keen to “share”, that 19 months after the service was launched, they’ve had over 1.5m hours of digital media transfered over their service – equivalent to 125 years of media-idge. Interestingly up to 45 minutes per user per day, on average.

Orb has similar deals with companies such as AMD, Vodafone, Hauppauge, Intel and Creative Labs.

Programming video recordings is not unique – Sky TV has been offering this since July this year through their Mobile Sky+ Programming

Orb Networks

Writely and Spreadsheets Combined By Google

Writely and Spreadsheets Combined By Google docs.google.com is the new destination for Google’s Web-based Writely word processor and their companion spreadsheet.

Given both of the apps are Web-based, anyone with a Web browser can use these apps, no matter where they are. It’s not surprising that Google also offers extensive searching within the documents that are created.

Just how long the Writely name will survive, now it’s being referred to as Google Docs?

Google bought Writely back in March and got to work with bringing it into Google-dom.

Back in June, Google let it be known that they’d matched Writely with a spreadsheet, causing waves of discussion as to them treading on Microsoft’s toes.

One of the nifty features is the ability to collaborate with other people in your Google address book and choose to share the documents in an area created with anyone on the Web. Once created, the authors can attach tags to the content to locate them again.

This is great for Google, not just because they are knocking one on the chin for Microsoft, but because they’re giving people tools to generate content … for them to search on Google. Pretty cyclical init.

Google Docs & Spreadsheets

Ofcom Should Force Sky To Open Its Platform: Opinion

Ofcom Should Force Sky To Open It's Platform: Opinion In an ideal world, waiting near the top of the new OFCOM boss Ed Richards’ in-tray, there should be a folder marked ‘Sky Monopoly’ and on it a brightly coloured post-it with the words anti competitive clearly inscribed.

Digital Television is a standards based system with the majority of the world using a system called DVB (the Americans have something called ATSC but that’s a story for another day), the UK’s Sky TV uses the DVB standard in most respects.

Pay TV operations rely on a system of Conditional Access (CA) where channels are encrypted, viewers with a suitable viewing card can decrypt the services they subscribe to, those who don’t subscribe don’t get.

To enable the pay services to operate with the use of ‘viewing cards’ the DVB system has a standard, the standard allows for different viewing cards to co-exist and for TV services to be encrypted by more than one encryption method at a time, the so called Simulcrypt (Simultaneous encryption, get it?).

Ofcom Should Force Sky To Open It's Platform: Opinion The area where Sky has decided not to use DVB is for its Conditional Access encryption.

Sky TV which is controlled by News Corporation, the large multinational media company with Rupert Murdoch at the helm, uses a special tailored version of Conditional Access a variant of Videoguard which is produced by a company called NDS that is in turn, majority owned by News Corporation.

Now you might be curious to know why this matters, well as the majority of UK householders who watch digital TV, watch via a Sky TV satellite ‘digibox’ and to have a channel that can be easily received via Sky TV the channel must contract with Sky TV to appear on the Sky Electronic Programme Guide, commonly referred to as the EPG.

Ofcom Should Force Sky To Open It's Platform: Opinion If that TV service then wants to charge the subscribers to their service they have to use that special version of Videoguard CA.

So what can be done about it? Well OFCOM can and should mandate Sky TV to open up its platform to other DVB CA systems and new entrants can then offer smaller niche services and a new competitive platform to Sky should emerge.

The BBC has for some time been promising a Freeview alternative to the UK’s dominant pay TV operation Sky Digital, but with it’s struggle with the government to secure a long term above inflation licence fee settlement and its desire to start a High Definition TV service, this cause has been relegated to the back burner.

As the government ordained switchover date looms ever closer, viewers who can only receive digital TV by satellite should be able to choose a non Sky alternative even at the risk of upsetting a powerful media mogul.

Microsoft Vista Reaches Final Beta

Microsoft Vista Reaches Final Beta It’s been a long, long wait, but it looks like the release of Microsoft’s new operating system, of Windows Vista is finally set to happen soon.

The company has just released Release Candidate 2 (RC2) – or build number 5744 if you’re counting – and the Redwood boys are sounding chirpy that this will be the last beta version of Windows Vista before the product is unleashed for manufacturing.

The previous test release of Vista, RC1 was tested by no less than three million users, with the company claiming that it received “excellent feedback.”

Microsoft Vista Reaches Final Beta With Microsoft now saying that just has to add the finishing touches to the overall quality and performance of the eagerly awaited operating system, the company looks set to meet it targets.

Vista has a scheduled roll out date for business customers next month, with consumers getting to play with the new desktop in January 2007.

Microsoft has already missed several release deadlines, although leading financial analysts like Rick Sherlund of the Goldman Sachs Group reckon that things are looking good for an on-time release:

Microsoft Vista Reaches Final Beta “We had been sceptical of the launch schedule after Beta 2 shipped with problems in May, but the team seems to be making great progress in addressing issues of performance, reliability and compatibility,” he wrote in a research note.

Sherlund also noted that he expects Microsoft to start dishing out Vista discount coupons to customers who buy new PCs capable of running the OS in the run-up to the release.

Already, fanboy websites are buzzing with screen shots of the shiny, sleek new OS and we have to say the new desktop looks mighty purdy to our eyes…

You can check to see if your system wil be able to handle all the whizz bang glitz here: windowsvista.com/getready

Microsoft Vista Upgrade Advisor:Our Experience

Microsoft Vista Upgrade Advisor Runthrough With Windows Vista steaming over the horizon at a rate of knots, users are being encouraged to see if their steam-powered Windows machines will be capable of running the new bells’n’whistle bonanza of the new OS.

We thought we’d check out how our three year old Athlon XP2800+ PC loaded with a once-impressive 1GB of RAM would fare under the new OS, so headed off to the Vista Upgrade Advisor website.

The page told us to plug in any regularly used USB or other attachable peripheral devices (like printers, external hard drives, or scanners) before clicking on the ‘download Windows Vista Upgrade Advisor RC’ link.

No .Net, no chuffin’ install
Our first attempt to run the install program was greeted by a curt insistence that we had to first install Microsoft Net framework before the program would play ball.

Microsoft Vista Upgrade Advisor Runthrough Unchuffedly (or perhaps that would read better as, “in a less than chuffed manner”), we dutifully shuffled back to the Microsoft site and downloaded the user-unfriendly sounding “Microsoft .NET Framework Version 1.1 Redistributable Package” installation – all 22 meg of it – and tried again.

This time the program deigned to install itself and after a little hard drive grinding, presented a ‘scanning system’ interface, resplendent in a shiny faux Vista look.

The Advisor quickly set about rifling through our PC, with the interface offering a set of five info pages, all telling us how great Vista was (huzzah!) and outlining the differences between the various versions (Vista Ultimate, Home Premium, Business and Home Basic)

The program insisted that it “might take a few minutes” to complete the scan, but time must have stood for a bit because it sure seemed more like 7-8 minutes had drifted by before the hard drive finally stopped grinding .

Computer says yes
However, it was good news at the end with the Advisor telling us that the PC was all ship-shape to run Windows Vista, and even went as far as recommending that we use the Business edition.

Microsoft Vista Upgrade Advisor Runthrough But it wasn’t all good news as we caught sight of some yellow warning triangles further down the page.

The first told us that we needed to create a ton more hard drive space as the great bloated beastie that is Vista demanded 15 GB of hard drive space (yes, 15GB!) before it would flop its elephantine ass on our system.

It went on to suggest alternative system drives that we could install the OS onto – if only they had acres of free space too.

Vista also got sniffy about our graphics card, warning us that the “current video card will not support the Windows Aero™ user experience.”

Microsoft Vista Upgrade Advisor Runthrough Drivers
The second warning tab banged on about missing drivers, instructing us to scuttle off to the Windows Update website for new drivers for two listed items once we’d upgraded.

There then followed a list of seven items it claimed to know nothing about, and these included our Epson Perfection 1200 scanner (a fairly mainstream component, we would have thought), our UltraMon display drivers and NetDisk XIMETA external network drive.

For these items it seems we were out on our own or, more accurately, at the mercy of the software developers.

Happily, Vista liked the cut of our ViewSonic VP191s monitors – good job too because they’re quite new.

Microsoft Vista Upgrade Advisor Runthrough Looking down to the final warning tab entitled ‘programs,’ we were presented with a refreshingly short list considering that our machine is stuffed to the brim with programs old and new.

Despite the huge popularity of the Norton Systemworks utilities suite, the Advisor reported the likelihood of running into problems when running the program on Vista and it didn’t like WinZip 8.0 much either.

It also disliked Adobe Acrobat Reader for Pocket PC 1.0 so much that it simply wouldn’t allow it to run under Vista.

Task list
Finally, the Upgrade Advisor wrote out a ‘Task List’ of things we needed to attend to before, and after, installing Windows Vista.

At the final tally, this amounted to forking out for a new graphics card, freeing up more hard drive space (or, more realistically, buying a new drive), downloading some new drivers and dumping Norton if they’re not forthcoming with a fix.

All in all, we expected to find a lot more problems so we’re kind of impressed this far, but the real test will come when we get to (finally) install Vista.

With Vista still in beta, we’ll be sure to run the Advisor again when we’re closer to the OS release date.

Windows Vista Upgrade Advisor RC

Google Signs Up With Sony & Warners To Offer Free Music Videos

Google Signs Up With Sony & Warners To Offer Free Music Videos Google will soon be offering free music videos on its Google video Web site after striking a deal with industry bigwigs, Sony BMG Music Entertainment and Warner Music Group.

The deal will see the search engine giant – which has just scooped up the video sharing sensation, YouTube for $1.65bn – offering users the ability to stream content from Warner Music and Sony BMG music video collections for nowt.

There will also be behind-the-sceens footage and other artist-related content made available through two separate revenue-sharing arrangements.

Google’s advertisers will sponsor the music video offerings, with the resulting booty being split between Google and its content partners.

Google Signs Up With Sony & Warners To Offer Free Music Videos “Our partnership with Google is rooted in the pioneering approach we’ve used to offer fans more music, while benefiting artists and protecting copyrights,” gushed Warner Music in a press release.

As well as the freebie video content, Google will also be flogging Warner music video downloads for US$1.99 a pop.

Google Signs Up With Sony & Warners To Offer Free Music Videos Google has said that it will be offering further access to Sony and Warner’s hefty audio-visual catalogues in the coming months through partner Web sites in its AdSense network.

The Sony/Warner deal comes hot on the heels of several content partnership deals announced by YouTube, including one with – wouldyabelieve it! – Sony BMG.

Google