Content

Content in its shift to become digital

Sony Mylo Wi-Fi Media Player Introduced
Sony has released details of the Mylo, a groovy new Wi Fi-enabled personal communications device aimed at Instant Messaging nutters.
Available in black or white, the curvy handheld comes with 1GB of built-in flash memory and features a slide out QWERTY keypad, 802.11b Wi-Fi and three free instant messaging services pre-installed.
A cringe worthy video on the Sony site declaring the Mylo to be the “the easiest, raddest broadband device” makes it clear who this device is aimed at: dA K1dZ.
Instant Messaging
With Skype, Yahoo Messenger and Google Talk onboard, Sony is hoping to attract Instant Messaging addicts, although with only Wi-Fi connectivity and no SIM cards onboard, users are going to need to find free wireless networks to enjoy the fun.
The device ships with JiWire’s hotspot directory, which lists more than 20,000 WiFi networks across the US (but nowt for UK users), and there’s an avatar-enabled “What’s Up” screen which lets users check the online status of up to 90 friends.
For teens who, like, don’t find email too slow for their hyperactive needs, there’s also an e-mail client, compatible with services such as Yahoo! Mail and the Gmail web mail service.
So long as there’s a free Wi-Fi connection within range (not always an option here in Britland), the Mylo looks to be a capable wireless device, offering predictive typing, the excellent Opera Mini browser, and a fun option to share playlists and stream songs between other Mylo users.
Multimedia support
Sporting a 320 by 240 pixel 2.4-inch LCD screen, the handheld offers a full suite of multimedia support (music, videos and photos) with a Memory Stick Pro Duo slot allowing up to 4GB of extra storage (Sony is set to introduce a 4GB Memory Stick this month for $170).
There’s also a built in speaker for annoying bystanders, with the Mylo supporting MP3, ATRAC, WMA (inc DRM stuff), MP4 (Advanced Simple Profile) and JPEGs formats.
Battery life looks pretty good too, with a claimed 45 hours of music playback and around seven hours of instant-message chatting/Web surfing.
This drops to just three hours when the Mylo is used for Skype telephone calls – mere moments for teenagers.
The device comes with a microphone, stereo headphones, a USB cable and a neoprene case and is expected to retail for around $350 (~£183, ~e272) in September.
Oh, and the name ‘Mylo’ supposedly stands for “my life online,” in case you were wondering.
Mylo
8 August, 2006
Google Adds New Security Features
Search engine giants Google have introduced a new feature which alerts punters about search results that could potentially lead them to dodgy sites with malicious code.
Using data from the Stop Badware Coalition – a non-profit organisation who also enjoy support from Sun Microsystems and Chinese PC maker Lenovo – Google will now flag up sites that could be hosting malicious software.
Whenever a suspect link is clicked on from Google’s search engine results, punters will be whisked off to a warning page which says, “Warning – the site you are about to visit may harm your computer!”
If that hasn’t already scared the bejesus out of surfers, the page suggests that users trot along to StopBadware.org in double quick time and, “learn more about malware and how to protect yourself.”
The ‘interrupt page’ also offers options for users to return to the search page and select a different result, try another search, or – if they’re feeling brave/stupid enough – continue on to the potentially dodgy site.
In time, Google says it will replace the generic “DANGER WILL ROBINSON!” alerts with pages containing more specific information about the iffy Web sites.
285 million dodgy clicks a month
It is hoped that this new initiative will go some way to solving the problem that is partly created by the search engines themselves.
With search engine results routinely displaying links to sites stuffed full of spyware and adware, it is reckoned that US surfers arrive at on malicious sites about 285 million times per month – all from clicking on search results from the five major search engines.
Curtain twitching for surfers
John Palfrey, a professor at the Harvard Law School and one of the main movers behind the scheme, explained the Coalition’s motives: “We’re not going to say don’t do it. What we want to do is basically give people some more information about what might happen to their computer.”
Likening the scheme to a “Neighbourhood Watch” programme, the program is a collaborative effort between Harvard and Oxford University, and invites surfers to report sites that have malicious code on them whenever they find them.
All reported sites are then checked by a human before being flagged as a wrong ‘un.
So far, Google is the only major search engine to sign up to the Stop Badware Coalition, but Palfrey hopes that others will start to use their database of dodgy sites too.
StopBadWare
7 August, 2006
Boxon MP3 Player Bolts On VoIP
When it comes to convergence, we’re always on the look out for shiny new smartypants devices, even if we’re not always totally convinced about their usefulness.
A good case in point is the new Boxon VoIP gadget from Korean electronics manufacturers Hyunwon (who are better known as Mobiblu).
As the name suggests, the Boxon is an MP3 player a VoIP telephony system built in, letting you plug it into any Internet-connected PC and start talking for free.
To get chatting, simply slam the player into any available USB port on a desktop or laptop PC, and then the (unspecified) VoIP software should automatically load up on the host computer.
Of course, the idea of a converged MP3 player/VoIP device isn’t a new one – in fact, we wrote about a very similar device, the Ezmax EZMP4200P VoIP MP3 Player, way back in March 2005.
The wave of disinterest that followed that particular product announcement suggests that perhaps the public aren’t quite yet ready to shell out for VoIP MP3 players that need to be plugged into a computer before you can start chatting.
As a MP3 player, the Boxon looks to be a fairly middle of the road affair too, sporting a 1.71-inch full colour OLED display, with e-book reading, video playback, photo viewing, and an English-Korean dictionary.
We’ve no idea if (or when) this thing is going to be arriving in Europe, and we can’t say we’re particvularly bothered either because, well, it’s a rubbish idea, isn’t it?
Mobiblu
7 August, 2006
Goggles 0.9 – Google Maps-Powered Flight Sim
We love it when people adapt Google Maps to create fun new applications, and the “Goggles Flight Sim” is one of the best we’ve seen for a while.
Created by London designer Mark Caswell-Daniels as a piece of viral marketing (it’s working, Mark!) for his Flash-scripting talents, the flight sim uses aerial images loaded in from Google’s mapping service.
After selecting your city from a drop down list (which currently offers London, New York, Paris, Toyko and Washington DC), you find yourself in charge of a cartoon biplane flying over a rolling landscape created by seamless Google Maps images.
The controls are pretty rudimentary, with keyboard arrows controlling direction and height, letting you sweep and soar around cities – and plunge earthwards in a kamikaze crash if you feel so inclined.
There are – not surprisingly – some rough edges, the most annoying being the inability to climb very high.
Without an accompanying map overview or sign-posted landmarks, this means it can be hard to work out where you are, which can be rather frustrating (we found that following railway lines or major rivers usually got us to the centre of cities in the end).
Still, as an office timewaster it’s second to none, and well worth a go.
We emailed Mark about his flight sim and he told us that it was still in beta at the moment, and that it wasn’t actually meant to be released quite yet.
He explains, “a mate interpreted ‘don’t tell anybody about it’ as ’email all your friends with a link’ so the cat got out of the bag before I finished it!”
Still, Mark acknowledges that, “all publicity is good publicity,” and we’ll look forward to playing with the finished version soon!
Nice one, Mark!
www.isoma.net/games/goggles.html
7 August, 2006
Cricket Mobisodes On The Ashes To Launch
The mobile division of TV production company Twofour and Player One Sports are working together to create a weekly short form TV show covering the Australian portion of the Ashes tour for portable devices.
The six minute shows will be formatted for mobile phones, iPods, or PSP’s. They’ll be chunked into one to two minute blocks, “for ease of use on different delivery mediums.”
Coming this Winter, sports presenter, Mark Durden-Smith (no we haven’t heard of him either, but when it comes to sport, that’s doesn’t mean anything) will be fronting the show where they plan to cover analysis of the action and try to give an understanding of life on tour in Australia.
It appears that they’re hoping to pull in the interest of posh types who like cricket, and more than likely don’t care how much it’s going to cost them to keep up to date. It may be of course turn out that these are the sort of people who don’t currently have the kit to play the content.
Twofour are clearly planning to flog the maximum amount of ‘media’ to lighten with heavy-wallets of their punters. Alongside the mobisode (and we suspect, cross-promoted during it), there will be a range of associated content including Freddie Flintoff’s Allround Cricket, a Web and mobile fantasy cricket game and a range of other downloadable content such as wallpapers, ring tones and video blog.
A rather over-excited Mr Philip Bourchier O’Ferrall, Director of Twofour Mobile gushed, “We are in the midst of a media revolution and I’m excited that Twofour is leading the way.”
Twofour mobile
4 August, 2006
Domesday Book Goes Online
Today, a rather old book from the late 11th century England (1086 to be precise) will be brought online to be searched. The Domesday Book, is the earliest surviving survey and valuation of the King, his senior supporters, the land they owned and their resources.
If you’d wanted to look through it previously, you had to drag yourself over to the National Archive in a rather calm building in Kew West London, or cough up a couple of thousand pounds to get them on CD.
By going to the Domesday Web site, you can search and get an idea if there’s anything in The Book about your chosen subject. If you want to see a scan of the page, you, me and anyone in the World will be able to pay £3.50 per page to see it.
Those not wanting to pay for the documents can head over to Kew where they can be printed out for nothing.
You might think that there’s a little difficulty in using it, as many of the surnames used by people and names of areas have changed substantially over the last thousand-odd years. Luckily they thought of that one. Simply enter the modern name in the Place Name box, if you’re a boffin with knowledge of ye-olde world, you enter the old name in the Other keywords box.
We don’t want to cast a shadow over this notable event, but we wonder if it’s right that UK residents, who already fund the National Archives through their taxes, should pay the same amount to access the info as those from abroad.
There’s a couple of theories as to why it’s called the Domesday or Doomsday Book (depending on your preferenece) – Biblical Day of Judgement or when some bloke called Christ will return to judge the living and the dead. Neither of them particularly jolly.
Those long in the tooth will remember the BBC launch the BBC Domesday Project, to put the book on the 12-inch laserdisc. Sadly, these days, this project is remembered as an example of information lost to an old format that cannot be retrieved.
Get going and research your family or local area at the National Archive Web site at domesday Book
Background on the Domesday Book
4 August, 2006
Vodafone Admits That Video Calling Has Flopped
Vodafone is hotly denying that its enthusiasm for 3G has waned, after rumours began circulating that the operator was cutting handset subsidies and abandoned all hope of the technology ever becoming a lucrative commercial success.
What are your thoughts/actions about Video calling on your mobile? Take 10 second survey
Reports that the rumours began to circulate after Enders Analysis revealed that sales of 3G phones had crashed from 20 per cent of all handsets bought to a mere 12 per cent, in just one quarter, CNet tells us.
Vodafone insisted that the figures were “definitely an overestimate,” before the spokesperson engaged industry-speak overload:
“The share has dipped as we’ve rebalanced investment across our customer base. We’re now perhaps seeing lower ARPU (average revenue per user) from lower ARPU customers, so the kind of commercial investment we were making into customers is no longer justified.”
What this means in a language approaching English is that Vodafone is no longer keen to plough its own cash into subsidising 3G handset sales, because punters aren’t shelling out for enough of their extra services to make it worth their while.
Video calling
Vodafone hoped that its 3G-equipped customers would be making use of what was supposed to be one of the great selling points of 3G, video calls, but yesterday the company admitted defeat, sighing, “Video calling is not a service that is used by a lot of people.”
Mobile TV
Mobile TV has, however, proved popular, with Vodafone claiming that, “more than 50 per cent of people who buy a 3G phone in our UK stores are taking a mobile TV package, and most are adopting the [premium] £10 package.”
This claim is rather at odds with the Enders report, which found that 76 per cent of all phone users surveyed said they had no interest whatsoever in mobile TV.
Alice Enders, the big cheese of the analyst firm, explained that this disparity may be down to the very small number of people using 3G services being the ones interested in mobile TV.
3G obsessed
Enders suggested that Vodafone’s “obsessive over-engagement in 3G” – reflected in the less popular 3G handsets sharing the same amount of store-space with non-3G devices – had led to the company suffering financially because most punters simply weren’t interested in anything other than voice and text services.
Not surprisingly, the UK’s only 3G-only network, 3, were quick to quibble about the claims, insisting that the wild popularity of their downloadable music and mobile TV services is proof positive that the demand is there – if the technology is marketed correctly.
Frothing like a cappuccino machine on overdrive, 3’s spokesperson insisted that, “Uptake is phenomenal and growing day by day…..We’re even rivalling traditional music suppliers. We’re second only to iTunes in terms of downloads… and the World Cup really put mobile TV on the map.”
The spokesperson went on to blame a “lack of maturity” from the other 3G operators, claiming that “some incumbent operators” had found it could “suit their commercial model to keep some of their users on old technology.”
With Vodafone rapidly cooling on 3G, it begs the question whether any of the operators who invested vast amounts of moolah on 3G licences and infrastructure will ever get to see their flthy lucre again.
What are your thoughts/actions about Video calling on your mobile? Take 10 second survey
Vodafone
3 August, 2006
DVD Recorders Drop Below £50
It’s amazing to watch the price reduction of consumer goods. First we saw the free fall of the VHS machines, then DVD players which got to the ridiculous level of £19.99 – with 10 DVD’s.
Now, of course, it’s DVD recorders. Three years ago DVD recorders were costing around £400. Today we were stunned to see that DVD recorders have already got to under £50.
OK, we’ve never heard of the manufacturer, Cello, but what do you expect for that sort of money. We’ve also got no idea what the quality of it is like, or how long it will last. That’s not the point. Here’s something that will let you backup your video material to DVD – either from your video camera, or other Firewire equipped equipment; from S-Video and if you’re really desperate, composite video, or TV.
Product Details
Features
Recording Format
– DVD+RW, DVD+R
Recording Time
– HQ-1 Hr.; SP-2 Hr.; LP-3 Hr. EP-4 Hr.
Playback Format
– DVD±RW, DVD±R, DVD-Video, VCD, CD, MP3, CD-R, CD-RW.
TV Tuner
– For PAL I 05 Modulator Output: CH.21 ~ CH.69
- Variable Speed & Zoom with Real-Time Playback
- IEEE1394 (DV Input) for Camcorder, S-Video, CVBS (AV Input)
Rear I/O: Input
– Video: Composite Video, S-Video, TV Tuner Audio: R/L Stereo Output: Video: Composite Video, S-Video, YUV / P-SCAN, Audio: 2-CH, Coaxial One Key Recording
IR Remote Control
– 53 keys, 3V infrared Panel keys: Power, Record, Source, CH up, CH down, Play, Stop, Open / Close
- NTSC & PAL Playback
- 21-Pin Full Scart Socket with RGB Output x 1 15 21-Pin Scart Socket Input x 1
See the Cello R100B DVD Recorder for £48.99 at SavaStore
2 August, 2006
Online Banking In The UK Leaves Customers Short-Changed
UK banks may be gleefully reporting big fat profits every quarter, but new research from eService provider Transversal claims that online customer service from Britain’s banks has sunk to an all time low.
Their study found that fifty per cent of the major banks surveyed were so rubbish that they were unable to answer a single one of ten basic customer questions asked via their websites (these questions were based on typical customer enquiries about credit card offers, borrowing and mortgages etc).
A minority of banks, however, achieved excellent results, revealing the growing gulf between the best and worst performing banks.
Taken as a whole, the sector registered a lamentable average of 2.5 out of ten, managing to answer just 25 per cent of common questions.
Although this looks like an utterly abysmal score, things have actually got worse over the past year, with only two banks scoring nul points in 2005, and the sector mustering up a mighty average of three questions answered.
Despite 56 per cent of Brits now using online banking, these results suggest that banks are more interested in increasing profits by closing down High Street stores than serving their customers, with further cost-cutting measures seeing call centres shunted offshore into unknown foreign lands, often increasing customers’ frustration.
No email contacts for customers
As if to wind up their customers further, sixty per cent of bank websites didn’t allow consumers to contact them via email, forcing them to ring up and face the horrors of ‘on hold’ phone music.
Of the forty per cent that bothered to provide an email address, there was clearly no rush to answer their customers’ questions, with the banks taking a leisurely average of 22 hours to respond.
The fastest response was a still-casual 8 hours – a whole working day – while the slowest was a massive 69 hours: enough time, the report noted, for the beleaguered customer to hop on a plane and travel to the offshore centre to ask the question personally.
The study also noted that only half of the major banks troubled themselves to provide a Frequently Asked Question (FAQ) page, and in many cases these were lurking in dark corners of the site, and not clearly marked for users.
A summary of the overall 2006 average banking results is as follows:
Average number of questions answered online: 2.5 out of 10 (2005 findings: 3)
Percentage of companies that responded to email correctly: 40% (2005 findings: 55%
Average email response time: 22 hours (2005 findings: 17 hours)
Percentage with customer FAQ pages: 50% (2005 findings: 60%)
Percentage with customer search: 60% (2005 findings: 40%)
Transversal
2 August, 2006
BT Change From Per Second To Per Minute Billing
As of today BT is reshuffling its phone pricing structure. In a typical move of a power-crazed ex-monopoly, it’s giving with one hand and taking away with another.
The ability to get going on this was given by Ofcom when they lifted restrictions on BT’s UK landline pricing structure.
The ‘giving’
BT hasn’t had the take-up with its bundled packages that it had hoped. From today, subscribers of its Option 2 & 3 package will receive around a third price cut. The included-evening/weekend calls to landline packages will move to £3.95 & the all landline calls to £9.95. This is the packages that they’re trumpeting – shame that most people won’t benefit from it isn’t it?
The other part BT is drawing attention to, is the reduction in price of calls to 0870 and 0845 numbers – the sort of numbers most people have been forced to call to speak to their banks. Oh … and they tell us that they’ve reduced the price of calls to mobile phones.
Almost to add insult to injury, BT is offering all of their 16m subscribes 25p off their monthly line rental at the end of the year- TWENTY FIVE PENCE! We’ve just wasted that typing this. Of course, much to our distress, most broadband services (supplied by BT Wholesale) need to pay the line rental. Why should we? and how much longer can this be allowed to continue? Come on Ofcom.
The ‘taking’
The majority of BT’s 16m customers pay per call on the Option 1 scheme. Sadly for them, things won’t be such a bargain. BT is changing their standard charging unit from per second to per minute – not something that we’ve seen since the wild-west days of early mobile phone companies, where the cowboy operators tried to extract the maximum amount of money from the ~~suckers~~ customers.
We think it more than sneaky that BT have given people Call Minder, their free phone answering service, then charge people a fixed fee (3p) or ‘setting up’ the call, then charging whole minutes. When many people get an answer phone, they hang-up because they don’t want to leave a message, or to try to call their mobile – in the meantime BT will collect the setup fee PLUS a whole minute charge, for a couple of seconds.
As to how much the minute will be – we don’t know. We’ve looked, really we have, pretty hard too – we’ve even tried to use their price list search – but to no avail. Isn’t it a bit of a give away that if you need a search engine for your price list, you’re possibly going to be confusing the customer.
Interestingly, for the first time, BT have listed Skype on their pricing structure on the press release. Welcome to the future BT.
If you’ve got a couple of hours to spare, and fancy trying to extract pricing information, you can have a look at the BT Together site.
1 August, 2006