Content

Content in its shift to become digital

Wikia: Wikipedia In Disguise?
What’s the difference between a Wikia and a Wikipedia? Trivia, mostly – but also, Gil Penchina (pictured below). Penchina has spent eight years running eBay as a general manager and told me it was “like a whole career with any ordinary company, and I want to stop.”
So Gil has started his own gang. He’s the new CEO of Wikia, which is (at first sight, anyway) exactly like Wikipedia, right down to being founded by the same guy – Jimmy Wales – but it’s designed to relieve the pressure on the main site to cover trivia like soap TV shows.
The company announced itself in a Wiki entry on its own site saying: “Wikia enables groups to share information, news, stories, media and opinions that fall outside the scope of an encyclopedia.”
But it’s not all Star Trek, as you might deduce from that. Try “Archaeology” for example: “The archaeology Wikia is for any archaeology related content, and for the archaeological community to share ideas on this topic.” Why isn’t that on Wikipedia? or “Astronomy”? – “The astronomy Wikia is for all astronomy topics.”
But a little roaming around exposes the difference: it’s a “community thing.” According to the Astronomy Wikia, “The wiki was started with a focus specifically on topics related to the Mid Atlantic Star Party and will include reports from MASP attendees.”
Is there a real need for this? Gil thinks yes, definitely – but the way he talks, it’s not altogether clear who exactly is needing it. For example, try the “Buffyverse” Wikia which was founded on 15 October last year.
That’s got to be a goodie, right? Buffy the Vampire Slayer and the spinoff, Angel, are two of the most cult-like of cult-media TV shows. It’s not only got meaningless violence by cute, tight-busted teens, but also supernatural demons and Powers That Be – and any true Buffy fan will also assure you, a line in wry comedy that rivals anything the best of British TV comedy could offer.
And despite all that, there’s nothing there. Hit the button “article” for and all you get is: “You have followed a link to a page that does not exist yet. If you are here by mistake, just click your browser’s back button.” And off you go, kid; you’re effectively going to found the Buffy Wikia.
Why would you do that? In Gil’s view of the future, of course, it would be to prevent the more serious Wikipedia from being cluttered with Buffy trivia. Too late, surely? – but even if it isn’t, is “good for Wikipedia” the same as “good for Wikia?”
Out in the real world, of course, people run fan sites without feeling any need to use a Wikipedia entry. If they think a Wiki is a good way to do a fan site, the software for running a Wiki is available – many are free. All you need is a nice URL like (say) BuffyGuide or BuffyWorld and in that case, the “community” can create advertising and subscription and screensaver revenue – and you get to keep the money, not give it all to Gill and Jimmy.
Gil accepts that the financial success of Wikia isn’t yet assured. He’s not pouring cash into it. It’s not flooded with expensive staff; it’s going to grow as it grows, he says.
On the other hand, lots of people have made lots of money out of supporting groups and communities. And a lot of people have been pouring scorn on the trivial content of the Wikipedia – and saying “it’s not a Real Encyclopaedia, is it?” in mocking tones – a criticism that deeply offends Jimmy Wales.
If the Wikia concept does catch on, it looks like it may be slow. As one disappointed visitor to the “Doom” Wikia complained: “wow, I just came to the main page of this wiki and got excited to read about Doom, it’s got coverage of the games, the mods, everything I’d want to know. Then I got to the end of the paragraph on the main page, and had no idea how to access any of this cool content. how about a link or two on the main page to get people started? a table of contents or something perhaps? there’s just nothing there.”
Doom isn’t the only empty cupboard. There are some obviously promising Wikias, but far more that are not yet.
Gil just nodded and smiled. “I’m not looking for instant frenzy,” he conceded. “I was really thinking of retiring, but Jimmy said this needed doing, and it may suit me after the stress of eBay for the last eight years…”
9 June, 2006
Billy Bragg vs MySpace
There’s mutterings of some discontent around MySpace, the insanely popular social site.
Billy Bragg, well known in the UK for his rebel-rousing tunes, has taken a stance against MySpace by removing his music in protest of MySpace’s Terms and Conditions.
Bragg and ‘his people’ posted a comment on their MySpace blog (we do love it when a companies tools are used against them), decrying what they say are completely unreasonable terms.
TERMS: (as of 17th March 2006)
By displaying or publishing (“posting”) any Content, messages, text, files, images, photos, video, sounds, profiles, works of authorship, or any other materials (collectively, “Content”) on or through the Services, you hereby grant to MySpace.com, a non-exclusive, fully- paid and royalty-free, worldwide license (with the right to sublicense through unlimited levels of sublicensees) to use, copy, modify, adapt, translate, publicly perform, publicly display, store, reproduce, transmit, and distribute such Content on and through the Services. This license will terminate at the time you remove such Content from the Services. Notwithstanding the foregoing, a back-up or residual copy of the Content posted by you may remain on the MySpace.com servers after you have removed the Content from the Services, and MySpace.com retains the rights to those copies.
The summary? MySpace can exploit the music/content that is put on the site, worldwide, without payment – and sub-license it infinitely.
The original Bragg posting was made back in mid-may, but was highlighted when it was picked up by the New York Daily News this week.
Since then, there have been many announcing the impending death of MySpace with thoughts that all musicians would follow suit and MySpace would implode. As yet we haven’t seen any signs of this.
It appears that MySpace didn’t intend to own everything and are putting it down to sloppy lawyering and say they intend to straighten things out. MySpace spokesman Jeff Berman, told the New York Daily News, “Because the legalese has caused some confusion, we are at work revising it to make it very clear that MySpace is not seeking a license to do anything with an artist’s work other than allow it to be shared in the manner the artist intends,” adding the all important. “Obviously, we don’t own their music or do anything with it that they don’t want.”
There’s a difficult balance to be had here. Clearly MySpace is putting out millions of musicians tracks daily and needs to be able to do this, without having a separate contract with each artist. Running alongside this need is the equally important need not to terrify the musicians into thinking that all of their music are belong to us (MySpace).
Billy Bragg’s MySpace
9 June, 2006
Freeview TV Homes Exceed Analogue For First Time
We wouldn’t normally bore you with tales of how many more percent of the UK population have joined the Digital TV-owning army, but this one is a significant one.
For the first time, the number of households having the BBC-backed Free-to-Air service, Freeview, has exceeded their analogue cousins. Nearly 7.1m have Freeview and 6.4m are still analogue only.
Freeview will also be pretty pleased that for the third successive quarter their sales have exceeded the 1 million mark, achieving 1.2m between January and March, up 40% over the same period last year.
Digital satellite is still the Digital Daddy, with 7.7m homes subscribing to Sky and the remaining 645,000 receiving free-to-view satellite.
There would have been relief at the recently-merged UK cable companies when they saw that there’d been an increase in the number of subscribers. The gain for NTL is only 5,000 subscribers in real terms as the additional new now-digital 70,000 digital cable subscribers were laid off against the 65,000 analogue subscribers who switched. These figures relate to the pre-merged companies.
Interestingly there still around 500,000 analogue subscribers out of the 3.3m total cable subscriber-base. Changing these has got to be a priority if NTL want to start making the returns they need from subscribers.
TV over ADSL First
For the first time Ofcom has reported separate figures for TV over ADSL services. Currently this is only London-focused HomeChoice, but they will be joined in short order by other IPTV companies like BT Vision. HomeChoice gained at a rate of 21.4% over the same period in 2005, ending with 48,545 subscribers.
Breaking down Sky’s figures
There’s some interest to be had comparing Sky’s Q4, 2005 figures with Q1 2006 – a couple of surprises lie in there.
Churn (number of subscribers leaving the service) is up to 11.4% over 10.6% and ARPU (Average Revenue Per User) is down £5 to £392 from £397. This doesn’t sound like a lot until you look at it in terms of income loss – over £38m.
On the positive front there was a gain of 87,000 households, with multi-room households gain 84,000 and Sky+ users up 149,000, now hitting 1,430,000.
Additional TV Sets – Ongoing problems
Ofcom are estimating that 38% of Freeview sales are intended to secondary TV sets which will start to allay a lot of fears.
The big hurdle for the UK digital switch-over gang is the replacement of the non-primary TV set, the bedroom TV & video, little Johnny’s TV and the spare that the babysitter uses. When the analogue-broadcast lights go off is when these people start to yell.
Ofcom UK Digital TV Q1 2006 report (PDF)
8 June, 2006
Mobile Consumers Are Lapping Up Convergence
Sad but (supposedly) true: a new study by Nokia has found that over one in five mobile owners said they’d find losing their phone more upsetting than their wallet, credit cards and – unbelievably – even their wedding ring.
Tempted though we are to find those people and give them a reality-introducing slap around the face with a wet fish, the survey does reflect the growing importance of mobiles in everyday life.
Clicking ticking mobiles
Nearly half (44 per cent) of mobile owners now use them as their primary camera – 68 per cent in India – with over two thirds predicting that music-enabled mobiles will soon rule the world, replacing MP3 players like iPods.
It doesn’t look like a good time to invest in Timex stocks, with the study finding that seventy two percent of mobile users no longer own a separate alarm clock – and nearly three quarters use their phones as their main watch or clock.
Nokia commissioned the research in 11 countries around the globe to discover people’s attitudes towards current and future mobiles, and generally found that people *heart* the things the planet over.
Such is the love for mobiles that users want to see them integrated even closer with their lives, with 42 per cent wanting their phones to be able to chat to their home networks, printer, PC, stereo, TV and mobile devices.
Curiously, 72 per cent of Saudi Arabians also wanted their fridges to be included in this network.
Surfing on the move
Mobile surfing continues to rise in popularity, with over a third (36%) of respondents browsing on their mobiles at least once a month, with Japan going for it big time, with 37% going online daily.
“The results strongly demonstrate that people are buying into the idea of convergence – they really do want one device that does it all, from taking quality images, to storing their music collections and operating a digitally connected home,” commented Tapio Hedman, senior vice-president of marketing, multimedia at Nokia.
Nokia
7 June, 2006
A Third Of UK Business Employ Email Snoopers
New research from messaging security specialists Proofpoint has revealed that more than a third of blue-chip companies in both the US and UK hire dedicated staff to snoop on their employee’s emails.
Their survey of 112 “email decision makers” at UK enterprises with 1,000+ employees found that 38 per cent of firms employed staff to read, analyse or generally sniff about outbound emails from staff (a figure that rises to 40 per cent for companies with more than 20,000 employees.)
A total of nearly 62 per cent UK companies were found to perform regular audits of outbound email content.
UK companies estimate that nearly 1 in 5 outgoing emails contains content that poses a “legal, financial or regulatory risk” with the most common form of non-compliant email content containing “adult, obscene or potentially offensive” content (or, more likely, staff trying to lighten the misery of their dull jobs by sharing a joke).
With companies becoming more concerned about internal security breaches rather than external threats, 34 per cent of companies claimed that their business was impacted by the exposure of sensitive or embarrassing information over the last year.
With all this secret email snooping going on, bosses have been delivering “You’re Fired!” messages with gusto, with more than one in three sacking an employee for violating email policies in the past 12 months.
There’s also been lots of finger wagging going off in the boss’s office, with over 70 per cent of UK companies disciplining an employee for violating email policies in the last year,
The report goes on to sat that just over a fifth of UK companies have given employees a shoutdown for violating blog or message board policies in the past 12 months, with 3.6 per cent getting the boot for their troubles.
Fear the email
Nearly half of UK companies declared themselves to be concerned about Web-based email being used to send confidential or proprietary information, with 81.3 per cent saying that it is “important” to reduce the legal and financial risks associated with outbound email in the next 12 months.
Of course, it’s worth noting that the folks who commissioned the survey – Proofpoint – just happen to run a business offering secure/filtered messaging systems, so it might be an idea to seek out the saltcellar when reading their report.
Email-free workzones
Looking to the future, Graham Titterington, principal analyst at Ovum, sees the automated blocking of outbound mail as the future security choice for most companies, as it would sidestep the current grey area concerning the legality of monitoring personal emails.
Quite how they’d the deal with terminally bored employees deprived of a lifeline to the real world may be another matter though.
Proofpoint
7 June, 2006
Windows XP SP1 Support Ends October 2006
If you’re still running Ye Olde versions of Microsoft Windows XP Service Pack 1 (SP1) and Service Pack 1a (SP1a), you’d better get your modem in gear as Microsoft will be ending support for these products on 10 October, 2006.
From that point onwards, you can kiss goodbye to security updates for these service packs, with Microsoft recommending that customers still running SP1 or SP1a upgrade to Windows XP Service Pack 2 el pronto.
What version have I got?
You can check what version of XP you’re running by right-clicking the My Computer, and then clicking Properties.
If “Service Pack 1” appears under System, you are – believe it or not – running Windows XP SP1, so it’s time to get downloading (by the way, don’t bother installing SP1a – go straight for SP2).
Out of the goodness of their altruistic hearts, Microsoft have extended the SP1 support end date a whole three weeks from the original 16th Sept, 2006 to 10th Oct, 2006. Gawd bless ’em.
A little bit of history
The SP1 release sure has been around a long time, first seeing the light of day on the 9th September, 2002 (blimey, was it really that long ago?).
This added USB 2.0 support and a Set Program Access and Defaults utility, letting users control the default application for activities such as web browsing and instant messaging.
Service Pack 1a came out later as naughty Microsoft were forced to remove their Java virtual machine as a result of a lawsuit with Sun Microsystems.
Service Pack 2 (SP2) came out on August 6, 2004 after the usual delays and added new functionality to the operating system, including an improved firewall, better Wi-Fi support, a pop-up ad blocker for Internet Explorer, and Bluetooth support and the rather good Windows Movie Maker 2.
Service Pack 3
Crawling over the horizon at Microsoft’s leisure is Windows XP Service Pack 3, currently with a “preliminary” release date of “2nd half 2007.”
Scheduled for release after the launch of Windows Vista, Service Pack 3 looks set to include their Firefox challenging Internet Explorer 7 browser and Windows Media Player 11 (both already available in beta form), and many other changes.
But don’t hold your breath on this one.
Microsoft
7 June, 2006
Google Spreadsheets Heads Into Excel Territory
Google is ready to shove its size nines deep into Microsoft territory with the launch of a free Web-based spreadsheet program, Google Spreadsheets.
The new program will allow people to view and simultaneously edit data online while conducting what Google describe as “in-document” chat.
This new spreadsheet product looks sure to put the heat on Microsoft, who have long ruled the roost with their desktop-based, spreadsheet app Excel long being the de facto office tool.
Google’s announcement comes hot on the heels of their purchase of Writely, a Web-based word processor, and puts them in direct competition with the Redmond mob who are busy prepping their new online-focused Windows Live and Office Live services.
Launching in beta form today, Google Spreadsheets supports the import and export of documents in the .xls format used in Excel and the .csv (common separate values) format, although it is not yet compatible with many of Excel’s more powerful features – the program can’t, for example, create charts or serve up control menus by right clicking on the screen.
Jonathan Rochelle, the Google Spreadsheets product manager, explained that the new service will be able to handle several hundred formulas used to manipulate data in Excel, but it won’t be able to handle more complex functions like Excel macros.
He explained that the program’s main goal is to make it easier for family, friends or co-workers to read and work on the same spreadsheet from different computers at different times, letting authorised users add and edit data without having to keep sending e-mail attachments back and forth.
“When people want to share and collaborate, we think this product fits in well,” he added.
Users must have a Google account to use the new service, which will initially only be offered to a limited number of users.
Google
6 June, 2006
Disney to Sell Movies Over Internet
Purveyor of fluffy, family-friendly feature films, Walt Disney has become the latest Hollywood studio to offer movies for sale on the Internet, with a new service offering films via the CinemaNow online service.
CinemaNow, based in sunny Santa Monica, California, has announced that Buena Vista Home Entertainment – Disney’s home video division – will be offering movies on a download-to-own basis for PCs/portable devices on the same day they are available on DVD.
Starting from today, Disney will be offering both new and back catalogue fillums via CinemaNow, with pricing set around the same price as DVDs (roughly $20 for a new release, and $10 for older films.)
Of course, studios tend to have a different concept of ‘ownership’ than the rest of us when it comes to all things digital, and in this case punters still won’t be able to do what they actually want to do, and that’s to burn their downloaded copies onto DVDs.
Instead, the movies can only be copied to a total of three other devices (including laptop PCs and handheld electronic devices) supporting CinemaNow’s copyright-protection technology.
Disney’s shuffle into the world of online film flogging follows a 3rd April announcement by rival studios to offer movies for sale via Movielink, a joint venture owned by big-league competitors Universal Pictures, Sony Pictures Entertainment, Warner Bros., Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer and Paramount Pictures.
Visibly purring with satisfaction, Bruce Eisen, president of CinemaNow, rubbed up against the mic, saying, “The main thing is Disney chose us to be first for them to go out with electronic sell-through.”
“We take that as a real nice vote of confidence,” he added, before trotting off to the litter tray.
A Disney spokesman said their deal with CinemaNow is a non-exclusive one, so they’re free to make similar deals with other online services in the future.
CinemaNow
Disney
6 June, 2006
Sony Alpha 100 SLR Camera Specs Leaked
Some details of Sony’s eagerly-awaited debut into the dSLR market have begun to emerge online.
The Australian Digital Photography Blog website has revealed that Sony’s new Alpha 100 dDSLR will offer 10.2 million effective megapixels and be fitted with an APS-C size CCD sensor.
As previously announced, Sony’s first dSLR camera will use an updated lens mount compatible with Konica-Minolta Alpha/Maxxum/Dynax lenses, with Sony expected to reveal a slew of new Sony G lens using the highly regarded Carl Zeiss optics.
The camera is expected to carry a large 2.5 inch format Clear Photo LCD Plus Screen with AR coating and a resolution of 230,000 pixels.
The bright optical viewfinder comes with a Spherical Acute Matte screen, 20mm eye relief, 0.83x magnification, dioptre adjustment and an interesting EyeStart Auto focus.
This feature – inherited from Minolta -begins autofocus and auto-exposure as soon as it detects your peeper gazing through the viewfinder. Neat
The camera is also rumoured to be incorporating Sony’s Super SteadyShot Picture Stabilisation technology, which employs horizontal and vertical motion sensors located inside the lens assembly area.
Although there’s no firm details of pricing yet, some pundits are estimating a street price of $1,000 (body only) which places it in the highly competitive enthusiast market.
Other leaked details include an Anti-dust protection system (We like these – a lot!), 1600 ISO equivalent, Burst shooting, advanced flash modes and BIONZ Image Processing Engine.
The onboard high-speed autofocus is said to sport 4 focus modes – Single-shot AF; Direct Manual Focus; AF Automatic; AF Continuous – with centre-weighted, spot and 40-segment honeycomb pattern metering modes.
The Sony Alpha 100 looks to weigh in at 545g without battery, with dimensions of 94.7 x 133.1 x 71.3 mm (L x W x D).
We should point out that Sony don’t actually call it the ‘Alpha’ in print, preferring to use the arty squiggly symbol (a bit like popstar Prince and long forgotten 80s nobby band Freur), but we couldn’t be arsed to try and find that on our keyboards.
Sony is expected to make an official announcement about the Alpha 100 later this month, but if these tempting specs are on the money, Sony could be set to make a big splash in a market currently dominated by Canon and Nikon.
Digital Photography Blog
Sony dSLR
5 June, 2006
Adobe NoteTag Revealed
Adobe has made available a proof-of-concept version of their new productivity tool, NoteTag. NoteTag harnesses Web 2.0 standards (such as RSS and tags) and integrates them with social software services. It allows users to take electronic notes and share them in a multi-user, collaborative environment. NoteTag users can quickly record, assign and update tasks locally from within the Web-based system but can also access them on Blogger, Typepad and del.icio.us.
The really clever bit of NoteTag is that Blogger, TypePad and del.icio.us are the back end of the system. There are no proprietary file formats or technologies; instead, NoteTag is built on current tagging standards and so can interface with anything that supports the Atom Publishing Protocol.
NoteTag is the first release from Adobe’s Kiwi Project which aims to create rich Internet content using Flex2 technology. The software is open source and free, and the project is keen for users to feedback their experiences and comments.
As bloggers Stowe Boyd and Steve Rubel and have noted, NoteTag is somewhat complex to get up and running and needs to be hosted on a server, but its integration with Web 2 services points to interesting new directions for Adobe.
A NoteTag demo and a Kiwi Project blog are available.
2 June, 2006