Content

Content in its shift to become digital

Sky High Vlog: The Army On Everest!
Sky News are very proud of what they’re billing as the Highest Ever Video News Podcast (or HEVNP to all of you acronym manufacturers out there).
We genuinely do admire reporter Gerard Tubb and producer Jon Gripton who are doing the video pieces from the slopes of Everest. They’re joining the 21 UK Army mountaineers from the regular UK and territorial armies (Special forces of some sort, we’d wager) who are aiming to get to the top via one of the toughest routes, The West Ridge – also worthy of huge admiration.
Tubb and Gripton have been in training for three months and have been using oxygen-reducing respirators to alter their blood so it can cope with life at high altitude. Tubb has also been to the Alps to be taught ice-climbing and crevasse rescue techniques by legendary mountaineer and mountain guide, Twid Turner (great name), who trained the expedition team.
From the report we’ve already seen, it’s rather cold there, especially at night where temperatures are dropping to -1c. Even if you don’t happen to freeze to death, we don’t envy finding yourself waking up every 10 mins during the night with the feeling that you’re drowning. As Tubb’s says on the blog “the depressed CO2 levels can make you stop breathing until it builds up and triggers a fit of hyperventilation.” Nice.
We’re not ones to pick nit (well, OK we are), and we’re certainly not deriding the amazing accomplishment of what they’re doing, but as to whether they’re the highest? Rumours are abound that people have seen higher vodcasts shot on location in Amsterdam, and others insist that they’ve seen other shot in planes (but that’s not on the Earth is it).
What kit to take to Everest?
OK … We’d imagine that after reading this, you all planning your own assent of Everest, right?
Question number one, before you get to pick a splendid new jacket, is what tech kit you need to take with you? Clearly it’s pretty specialist.
You’d imagine that it would be something with a huge keyboard, so you can type while wearing huge mittens. Well you’d be wrong clever sticks.
The laptop of choice is the Panasonic Toughbook. We’d been really impressed when we’d had this at Digital-Lifestyles towers. It’s got great features like the hard drives sit in a bath of oil that gets pre-heated to a temperature it can work at. In this case they’re not using those drives. They also chose them as reliability is top priority, as there aren’t too many laptop repair shops on the Everest slopes.
The video is being shot on two cameras, both Sony’s, the HVR-Z1, or Z1 as it’s know in the trade and the HVR-A1 (A1), having the advantage that it’s really small – pretty useful when you’re having to lug it up Everest.
Once shot, the video has some light editing done on the Toughbooks using Avid Express. The video is then fired back via a satellite dish at Base Camp to Sky HQ.
Cool bits from the Army
The army’s really gone to tech town on this one, with great stuff like providing Google Earth place holders showing things like the teams routes and amazingly cool, dynamically updated team positions.
The army aren’t just leaving the videocasts to Sky, they’ve got a lot of their own sitting on the podcast section of their site. Some of them are pretty interesting.
Good to see that even the army uses the tried and tested ‘hold your comms device in the air to get reception’ trick that we’ve all used at one time or another.
Also pleasing to see that the Junior team contains a fair number of women in it.
To top it off, they’re also doing exclusive videos to your mobile for free.
12 May, 2006
Internet Useful For Shopping (Non) Shock Report
Yahoo have released a report with communications company OMD today that looks into how the Internet influences peoples shopping habits. Not surprisingly it covers online purchases, but far more interesting is how people are using the Internet and other technology to inform their ‘real-world’ purchases.
They describe it as follthows
The Internet offers a collaborative environment where consumers turn for advice and the experience of others in weighing brands, discovering alternatives and distilling prices, as they weigh their purchase decisions
We think what they mean to say is people have a look around online and read stuff, helping them to make up their minds.
They found three things that are looked up online before people cough up the cash
- Trusted information. Consumers say the Internet is the most trusted shopping information source (54 percent), followed by magazines (34 percent) and TV (23 percent). Seventy-four percent of people use trusted, familiar Web sites when purchasing online, and 55 percent opt-in for e-mail marketing messages from companies they trust.
- Choices. On average, consumers consider three brands before making a purchasing decision. Many “comparison shop” using the Internet, but 38 percent of consumers still want to be able to see and touch products before they buy. The Internet helps narrow down options before they purchase either online or offline. In addition, 61 percent agree that Internet search engines are one of their favourite tools for finding product information.
- Price. The research shows that 61 percent of people consider themselves to be serious bargain shoppers. The Internet is changing the concept of fixed pricing by enabling consumers to search for the same product at myriad prices, as well as actively monitoring a product for price discounts or finding coupons and rebate offers.
Other tools in the consumers tech-arsenal
Interestingly they’ve found that camera phones and text messages are powerful tools in the consumers tech-arsenal. Shoppers are now text messaging each other, sending pictures of merchandise and using Internet-enabled phones to compare prices, all from the point of sale (shop to you).
One of the ‘old fashioned’ methods that we’ve often used, is to call up a mate who you know will be in front of a Browser and ‘speak to them’, asking if they can check something online for you while you wait. Perhaps they didn’t mention it because it wasn’t hi-tech enough.
They also found that this has ‘given consumers a new kind of “social empowerment”‘ Oh, but of course.
Internet now first point of reference
The surprising shift is towards the Internet being the first point of reference to find out stuff. Surprising because it’s above friends and family which were always the golden choice. Less surprising is that offline reviews and traditional media sources are losing out, perhaps because people generally don’t even believe the news that they print.
Having come from a communications agency, this report, “Long and Winding Road: The Route to the Cash Register”, won’t surprise you in using all sorts of language in a way that hasn’t ever been seen in English before. They’ll also grab hold of words that you have heard before and use them to create comfortable categories. Oh and tell you things that really are patently obvious but wrap them up in a different way ….
Consumers Travel Four Distinct Paths
The findings from the Long and Winding Road research can help advertisers connect with consumers online at crucial stages of the decision-making process. The study uncovers four distinct paths that consumers take on their way towards making a purchase:
- QUICK: This path involves little consideration. Consumer packaged goods are often quick paths.
- WINDING: Comparison shopping between different channels, including online and offline retailers, typifies this path. Retail goods are often winding paths.
- LONG: This path involves researching various options over an extended period of time. Technology purchases are often long paths, particularly if the price tag is high.
- LONG AND WINDING: This path requires investing a considerable amount of time researching across several channels. Many big ticket items — including automobiles and financial services — follow a long and winding path. These paths offer marketeers the most opportunity to impact and possibly sway a purchase decision in their favour, because consumers of these products are the hungriest for information.
That’s funny
We found it pretty funny that a ‘worldwide media communications specialist’ that OMD proclaim themselves to be, is the third search result for omd on Google, behind ’80s UK pop phenomenon Orchestral Manoeuvres in the Dark (OMD) and the On-line Medical Dictionary.
Soak yourself in the delicious detail.
11 May, 2006
UK e-Shoppers To Spend £26bn In 2006
UK shoppers are set to spend an average £1,000 each online in 2006, according to the yearly report by the Interactive Media in Retail Group (IMRG).
The ‘industry body for e-retailing’ has forecast that mouse-clicking Brits will shell out £26bn online in the UK in 2006, as online shopping goes stratospheric.
According to IMRG’s figures, online shopping has grown by 2,600 percent over the last five years, with the £2bn sales notched up in November and December 2005 representing a hefty 50 percent rise the same period in 2004.
Moreover, IMRG predicts that 2006 will see ten percent of all purchases being made online.
The explosive rise in Internet shopping is seen as a result of more consumers having broadband and retailers making better use of the Internet, but the report warned of online retailers still facing challenges.
According to IMRG’s own research, usability, customer retention, and interactive marketing were cited as the biggest concerns by over half of their members, with e-crime and delivery fulfilment seen as high-priority issues by around a third.
IMRG
Why-aye Big Spender!
Elsewhere, web testing firm SciVisum’s recent research on regional e-commerce spending found that consumers in the north east of the UK spent the most online, and were also the most likely to fork out for high-value goods.
The survey found that a third of consumers in the NE spent between £50 and £100 per month and had no qualms about dishing out sums as large as £5,000 for a single online purchase.
Compare that to stingy shoppers in the south who said that they’d spend no more than £50 per month online, and wouldn’t dream of shelling out sums as high as £5,000.
Not surprisingly, the most popular online purchases were books and CDs, purchased by three quarters of shoppers.
Around fifty per cent of shoppers said they would buy holidays and electrical goods online, while a quarter do their grocery shopping and finances online.
SciVisum
10 May, 2006
BBC Hots Up High Definition (HD) TV: Starting May
The BBC is making its first steps into the super-crisp world of high definition television (HDTV) with transmissions of Planet Earth and Bleak House in the new format at the end of this month.
The transmissions – the first free-to-air HDTV shows in the UK – will be available to satellite and cable viewers armed with an HD-ready television set and a decoder (or set top box).
Cable company Telewest are already screening hi-def BBC shows, but things should heat up in the summer when Auntie Beeb starts to tempt sports fans with HDTV transmissions from this summer’s football World Cup and Wimbledon championships.
HD TV broadcasts can also beef up the whole big match experience by incorporating 5.1 surround sound and displaying the (Rooney-less) stadium action in widescreen.
The BBC will limber up its HD programming by broadcasting a promotional preview for users of Sky’s electronic programme guide on 11 May, with Bleak House and part one of Planet Earth following on 27th and 29th May.
“These are small but exciting first steps in the BBC’s ambition to offer the option of high definition to all in the future,” said Jana Bennett, BBC director of television.
“We really feel that high definition will be the standard definition of the future,” she added.
Although high definition broadcasts contain four to five times as much picture information than a standard television signal, BBC research has found that you’ll need a giant sized screen (28 inches/69cm and up) to really notice the difference – so there’s not much to be gained by watching it on your dinky portable TV.
Q&A: High-Definition TV [BBC]
HDTV [CNet]
10 May, 2006
BlackBerry Hacks Review (92%): Tips & Tools for Your Mobile Office
Another in the “hacks” range of O’Reilly books, where hacking is doing interesting things with something, rather than the unfortunate media convention of breaking into computers (which has some relevence as you’re getting into the guts of the BlackBerry in ways RIM, the manufacturer, may not have expected and/or indeed intended).
It’s a mainly techie book, so a casual BlackBerry user who gets their IT department to configure everything, or a consumer who goes to their mobile outlet and buys one off-the-shelf probably should stay away, though there are some useful bits for them.
It covers: –
- Using Your BlackBerry
- Email
- Games
- The Internet and Other Networks
- Free Programs
- Shareware Apps
- BES Adminstration
- The Web and MDS
- Application Development
The chapters get more technical as they go on. General users will definitely find some help from the first two which go through basic BlackBerry functions and how to optimise things, including your Email settings and accessing multiple accounts. There’s a good introduction to using mail through a BES (BlackBerry Enterprise Server), the Desktop Redirector and BWC (BlackBerry Web Client).
Installing programs (including games) might be easy, but you’ll either need access to the Desktop Manager for some, or access them over-the-air and install through the browser. If your BlackBerry is locked down by your IT department, you may not even get that far. Assuming yours isn’t, there’s a wealth of software out there and the book highlights some of the “really useful” stuff, with links to more.
Accessing the Internet is also not as easy as you might think, and the BlackBerry can actually get network access via a variety of methods including through the BES (which is the corporate way of working, and is like a virtual private network to the inside of the firewall) and accessing the Internet directly from the device itself through the GPRS connection of your mobile network.
Administrators (who actually enjoy adminstering systems) will love this book. There’s a very good section on how to do interesting things that an administrator wouldn’t normally be expected to be able to do (like import/activate lots of BlackBerry users at once) and all sorts of scripts to make life easier.
It’s even possible to make the BES “push” applications and content to all an organisations BlackBerry users (or groups of them) over air and so in a business environment all the users can have the same versions of software running on their systems and access to the right corporate applications and data.
The book also gives a good insight into programming the Blackberry and describes the tools that RIM provide and how to go about using them (and what other things you need to do). RIM originally made the BlackBerry for corporates and the last thing they wanted was nasty virii and programs infecting them, so when a program tries to access some of the BlackBerry’s inner workings the BlackBerry actually checks that the program is valid and should be doing that. RIM force programmers to “sign” programs and there’s info on how to go through that process.
Summary
As a techie book for techie users and administrators it definitely meets its objectives and there’ll be things that even hardened BlackBerry users will find new and useful.
As a newbie corporate user, get your IT department to sort it out.
As a casual Blackberry user or if it’s a corporate issued Blackberry, stay away – though the first couple of chapters might seem relevent and give you some tips, most of the book will be over the top and very hard to wade through.
Score
For the intended audience: 92%. It hits the mark.
Author: Dave Mabe
ISBN: 0-596-10115-5
RRP: (GBP)17.50
Buy it
Buy it on Amazon UK – £11.55
Buy it on Amazon US – $15.72
9 May, 2006
NTL, BT Nowhere In Premier League Football Bids
There had been some excitement, well amongst UK media analysts at least, that BSkyB might loose its dominance of the control of UK football’s Premier League.
Today we learned who the winners were.
Following pressure from the European Union (EU), who had stated that all matches couldn’t be controlled by the same broadcaster, the games for this round of bidding were split into six packages of 23 games each. The EU threatened legal action against the Premier League if their will wasn’t complied with. Not surprisingly, they did.
Clearly BSkyB bid. Having exclusive right to the football was one of the cornerstones that built the success of Sky in the UK.
Other bidders included NTL, fronted by the bearded-wonder – Richard Branson, who had been acting the big I AM, threatening to out bid Sky for the available six packages. BT made some noises too.
Finally the other company, Irish broadcaster Setanta, had thrown its hat into the ring, originally saying they were going to bid for two of the packages. Those not in the broadcast world wouldn’t necessarily know who Setanta are, but most people will know of their 40% owners, Benchmark Capital.
The results of the bidding? Sky got four of them and Setanta the other two. With only six on offer, the other pretenders got nothing.
For the UK Football Association, it’s a giant payday with the total amount paid rising from £1Bn three years ago, to £1.7Bn covering the next three years. Not bad work if you can get it. Expect many more overpaid footballers and lurid stories in the tabloids. The Cristal champagne will be flowing tonight.
Premier League
5 May, 2006
Live Football And Cricket on Vodafone 3G Mobiles
This weekend marks the start of Vodafone UK offering live coverage of international cricket and the Football League Playoffs from Sky Sports to their 3G customers.
They’re keen to point out that this is the first time in the UK, live football matches will be shown simultaneously live on mobile and on TV.
It’s not like this is going to be a trickle of content. There’s over 100 hours of coverage scheduled in the first month, with fifteen live football matches and three live Test matches. The cricket will continue with live coverage until the final Test against Pakistan in September.
Don’t think there’s going to an extra financial penalty to pay for this. The coverage will be available at no extra charge as a bonus service for subscribers to Sky Mobile TV’s News, Sports and Factual Pack.
Having said that the packages aren’t what you’d call cheap. Each Sky Mobile TV pack (detailed below) is and extra £5/month.
Sky has been actively putting its content over different platforms for quite some months now, following the announcement in January of Sky by Broadband which delivers some of Sky’s content to PC’s over a, you guess it, broadband connection.
Bizarrely, Sky specify that the content is for Personal use only. Errr … it’s on a mobile phone Sky. It’s not like you’re going to get the throngs in the pub crowding around watching it on a tiny screen. That is until someone comes up with a huge magnifying glass that the phone sits behind.
The packs that are available are
- News, Sport & Factual Pack: Sky News; CNN; Bloomberg; Sky Sports News; At The Races; Discovery Mobile Factual; National Geographic Channel; The History Channel.
- Entertainment Pack: Sky One; Sky Movies; Living TV; Discovery Mobile Lifestyle; Nickelodeon; Paramount Comedy; Cartoon Network; Bravo; The Biography Channel and MTV Trax and MTV Snax.
- Music Pack: MTV Trax, MTV Snax, The Box, Smash Hits, Kiss, Kerrang, B4, IMF and IMF 2.
Most of these don’t run live but are made up of dedicated ‘made for mobile’ channels, featuring regularly updated blocks of programming.
5 May, 2006
A Gadget Lover’s Day Out In The Countryside
With the weather warming up and the great outdoors beckoning, here’s our selection of must-have gadgets for technology addicts heading off for a day strolling over heath and heather.
Snapping the scenery: Ricoh GR Digital
Fast, pocketable and with enough controls to grab perfect exposures in the trickiest of conditions, the Ricoh GR is our fave take-anywhere camera.
With its panoramic 28mm, f2.4 lens this small, rugged and highly versatile beauty is perfect for capturing dramatic, sweeping landscapes.
Attach the optional 21mm superwide angle lens for capturing the ~~entire pub interior~~ majestic mountain vista with one shot or get up close to weird crawly things and strange flower-like growths using its 1cm macro lens.
Ricoh GR
Smartphone: Treo 650
The Palm Treo packs in enough functionality to keep you in touch with the cricket scores, send off emails, write texts and perhaps pen a short, moving poem to the Great Outdoors using its WYSIWYG keyboard.
If you prefer strutting to the sounds of Wolfmother rather than hearing the gentle rustle of Mother Nature, you can slap in a MP3-stuffed 2GB card and rock your way through the countryside.
And if the weather turns bad, you can shelter under a tree and pass away the hours playing the annoyingly addictive BeJeweled game.
Palm Treo 650
Where the chuffin’ ‘eck am I? GPS and Memory-Map
Although an Ordnance Survey map and a trusty compass are more than ample for finding your way around, that’s clearly waaaay too lo-tech a solution for a full-on gadget freak.
Gizmo-lovers should instead load up their GPS-enabled Pocket PC PDAs with Memory-Map and head to the hills.
This mapping software uses real OS colour maps and offers waypoint-to-waypoint directions, bearing and distance indicators, real-time positioning and a tracklog to see how far you’ve shuffled.
There’s also a velocity vector for projecting your current course/speed so you can work out how far it is to the nearest boozer.
www.memory-map.co.uk
Keeping track of time: Suunto X6 Pro
Naturally, when it comes to watches, a mere pair of hands giving you the time won’t be enough for hard core tech heads, so we recommend the Suunto X6.
With this baby strapped on your arm you’ll have no need to look at the countryside around you, as the display offers a far more interesting display including an altimeter, barometer, thermometer and compass.
Suunto X6 Pro
Armed with all the kit above (and suitable weatherproof clothing and boots, natch) you should be ready for anything the countryside can throw at you.
Just don’t forget spare batteries for your bag full o’gadgets and your bus fare in case you get tired lugging all those gizmos about.
5 May, 2006
Butler For The Palm OS Review (85%)
Butler is a hugely popular selection of nifty utilities for the Palm Treo smartphone that manages to fix many of the minor shortcomings of the phone in one fell swoop.
Billed as “The Essential Tool for the Treo 650 & 600”, Butler offers a suite of tools to help you set up the Treo the way you like it and introduce productivity-boosting extras.
Accessed through a rather basic looking interface, Butler offers repeating alarms with ringtones/MP3 playback, nagging alerts, extra security options, navigation enhancements, LED controls, keyguards and more.
Launching apps
We particularly liked the Keylauncher feature which lets you fire off specified programs from any other application just by holding down a specified key.
Another option lets you specify different modes for the external volume buttons on the Treo; as ‘back’ and ‘forward’ controls for moving through recent opened applications used; a ‘select key,’ or as scroll bars (particularly useful for reading e-books).
Lights out
The Treo is one of those phones with a multicolour LED that is constantly broadcasting its status.
Butler lets you take control over the colours and flash rates, and includes an option to set the hours the LED will do its flashing thang (handy if you don’t fancy an all night disco show).
You can also set a specific colour to remind you of outstanding voicemails.
Onguard!
An improved keyguard lets you override Palm’s functions, offering control over the lock time (from 1-30 seconds) and the ability to disable the touchscreen, space, delete and return keys when incoming calls are received or in progress – so if you’ve got Spock-like pointy ears you won’t be inadvertently ending calls.
Oy! You!
To absolutely, categorically guarantee that you’ll know all about a missed appointment, incoming call, SMS, alert or voicemail notification, the “Attention Grabber” feature can nag you into submission, with options to keep on reminding you once every 10 seconds to every 15 minutes, from 5 to 1000 times.
Reminders can be assigned MP3, vibrating alarms or ring tones, and custom LED notifications set up with an option to set time periods when the program shuts the feck up.
Butler also offers a straight alarm feature that lets you set up to 6 repeating alarms, complete with customised messages and the option to assign a program to open after you’ve cleared the alarm.
Nuke ’em
The trouble with smart phones is that you by carting around all that personal information there could be serious consequences if it gets lost or stolen.
To protect your data, Butlers offers a set of SMS-triggered security functions.
By sending your missing phone a pre-configured text messages, Butler can carry out a variety of security operations from simply turning off and locking your device to the Armageddon option which wipes the SD card and RAM clean.
We would have liked it if it hurled taunting abuse at the thief as the data was being deleted or even blasted out a massive electric shock, but I guess that would be too much to ask. And possibly illegal too
Wrapping up the feature set is a “Hide SMS popup” option which stops you being bothered by SMS screens, an option to beam your business card by holding the phone button down and a useful “Keep Exchange Manager Clean” utility which addresses the annoying ‘preference loss’ bug seen on the Palm OS.
Conclusion
Butler is a fantastic set of utilities for fine-tuning your Treo, richly deserving its place in Palm’s Best Seller list.
The interface isn’t the easiest to get your head immediately around, however, and sometimes things may seem a little confusing when first exploring the options.
It’s worth persevering though because it won’t take long before you begin to wonder how you ever coped without Butler on your Treo – and at just $14.95 (£8.20,€11.90) it’s something of a bargain!
Features: 85%
Ease of use: 70%
Value For Money: 85%
Overall: 85%
Butler by Hobbyist Software
4 May, 2006
Opera Mini 2.0 For Mobiles Released
Nordic browser kings Opera Software have released Opera Mini 2.0, a spanking new version of their tiny Web browser that runs on almost all mobile phones.
Building on the success of the first version – which has already notched up 2.5 million users since its January 2006 release – Opera Mini accelerates mobile surfing by using compression and reformatting techniques.
The latest version of the Java-powered browser adds a selection of tweaks and refinements, including the ability to download multimedia content, like images and MP3s, directly to the phone.
There’s also a selection of new skins available to customise the look of the browser, and a natty new multisearch feature, letting users select extra search engines for the home page.
Also new for version two is a speed dial widget, which lets surfers call up bookmarks by assigning shortcut key combinations.
“Opera Mini has kick-started real mobile Web browsing by enabling non-smartphone owners to surf the full Internet on their phones, just as they do on their PCs,” purred Jon S. von Tetzchner, CEO, Opera Software.
With Opera Mini supporting mobile commerce via SMS, users can directly buy ringtones, games and other content for delivery as an SMS.
This system lets the seller set the price with charges appearing in the phone bill as an SMS.
The new browser is compatible with a host of phones, smartphones and PDAs (including Sony Ericsson, Pocket PC and Palm handets) and can be downloaded for free by typing in http://mini.opera.com into your WAP-tastic browser or by delivery via SMS download for a small fee.
4 May, 2006