Web

Yahoo Messenger With Voice Gets US launch
Things are hotting up in the US VoIP market as Yahoo announces their low cost Messenger with Voice service, letting users make phone calls through the company’s instant messaging software.
The version 7.5 Beta launch comes after successful trials in five other countries since December, with the service letting users make calls from their computers for 2 cents a minute (or less) to the most popular national phone markets, including the United States.
Just like rival Skype, the new service lets users make freebie computer-to-computer calls, with a “Phone Out” and “Phone In” feature allowing users to dial or receive calls from landlines in 180 countries.
The Phone In service – which lets customers to receive calls on their computers from regular and mobile phones – is priced at $2.99 a month, or $29.90 (~£17, ~€25) a year, compared to Skype’s €30 yearly charge.
Keen to elbow Skype off the VoIP table by appealing to consumer’s wallets, Yahoo claim that their service is noticeably cheaper.
They claim Messenger with Voice costs between 20 to 30 percent lower than Skype’s fees to many major markets outside the United States.
Yahoo are upbeat about prospects for their new service after trials in the initial five countries proved more successful than anticipated, especially in France.
Mindful that not everyone wants to bark into their computer, Yahoo have also struck deals with various hardware manufactures including headset makers Plantronics, USB handset manufacturers VTech and cordless phone kings Siemens AG.
With Yahoo Instant Messenger already enjoying a huge market presence, the new voice service could hurt Skype’s prospects – after all, why should a user go through all the hassle of signing up with a third party when they’re already with Yahoo?
Yahoo Messenger with Voice
22 March, 2006
WorldMate 2006 Travel App For Pocket PC Users
WorldMate 2006 Professional Edition v4.1
It’s painfully expensive at $75 (~£42, ~e61) per annum, but WorldMate could prove a wise investment for high fallutin’, globe-trotting business professionals who regularly zip around the planet.
Housed in an attractive interface, WorldMate 2006 provides a valuable suite of tools for hardcore travellers including weather, exchange rate and flight information.
The program offers comprehensive flight schedules for over 800 airlines, with daily and weekly schedules provided for any selected route, supported by a “dynamic connection engine” which provides the 50 fastest connections to inputted destinations.
Travellers can get real-time information about their flights – including the inevitable delays, gate and terminal information – with global forecasts letting them know whether to pack the Goretex or the suntan lotion.
American users can view animated Weather Satellite radar and precipitation maps, with detailed 5-day forecasts provided for over 38,000 locations worldwide.
Also bundled in the program are world clocks, currency, size and measurement converters and utilities to calculate local tax and tipping customs as well as a handy list of global dialling codes.
WorldMate Standard Edition v.5.1
For mere mortals who don’t spend their entire lives swanning around the globe, the WorldMate Standard Edition v.5.1 offers a cut-down feature set at a suitably modest $35 (~£19, ~e29).
Essentially the same program minus the live flight and subscription services, this is an essential Pocket PC installation even for occasional travellers, with the updating weather and currency converters almost worth the price alone.
If we had some criticisms (and this applies to both versions), it would be that the map’s large scale makes it really difficult to accurately locate a city by clicking onscreen.
Some city information might have been a nice touch too, as would a means of calculating the distance between waypoints and destinations.
These minor quibbles aside, both programs offer a compelling suite of utilities for travel and come highly recommended for perambulating Pocket PC users.
Versions of the program are also available (at differing prices) for a host of platforms including Palm, Blackberry, Windows Mobile Smartphone, Series 80 and Series 60.
We hope to have a full review of the Palm version shortly.
Mobimate
20 March, 2006
Windows Live Family Safety Settings Announced
Microsoft is to release a suite of free parental controls and other safety measures designed to safeguard children on the Internet.
The software, called Windows Live Family Safety Settings, runs on Windows XP and lets parents block Web content which they feel is inappropriate for their little Timmy or Tabatha.
Parents can choose individual settings to ‘allow,’ ‘block’ or ‘warn’ for a range of content categories for each member of the family, with the filtering settings being activated when a user logs on to a PC running Microsoft’s Family Safety Settings.
The settings can be changed over time (“OK son, you’re old enough to see some breasts now”) with the settings applicable to Web pages, email or messenger communications as well as Windows Live Spaces.
Kids definitely won’t like this, but the software also lets parents access their activity reports to check what they’ve been up to online.
“Contact management,” an update coming later in the year, will let parents approve contacts on Windows Live Mail and Windows Live Messenger (the new brandings for Hotmail and MSN Messenger respectively).
Another feature will give parents control over who can access their kids’ blogs on MSN Spaces.
Family Safety Settings will be available for any PC running Windows XP with Service Pack 2 as well as the upcoming Windows Vista operating system.
Microsoft has said that it expects the service to be available to “Windows Live customers in dozens of countries worldwide” by this summer.
In addition to the Live family filter for Windows XP, Microsoft is building parental controls into their next-gen operating system, Windows Vista.
Windows Live
Windows Live Family Safety
15 March, 2006
Supersites Bloom As Web Users ‘Only Visit Six Sites’
There may be almost 76 million sites stuffed full of six billion pages of information vying for our attention on the Web, but it seems that most surfers only choose to visit six sites on a regular basis.
This rather amazing fact emerged from a survey commissioned by the Cabinet Office to publicise the relaunch of Directgov, the Government’s one-stop Internet Website.
The study echoed what experts are calling the ‘Supersite’ phenomenon, with over half of UK Internet users (51 per cent) visiting just six or less sites on a regular basis.
It seems that despite the immense choice on offer, most people deliberately restrict themselves to visiting just a handful of sites, preferring to stick with the familiar and the trusted.
The survey also found that three quarters of people questioned declared the Internet to be “indispensable” to their daily lives.
Sadly, it seems that the days of random surfing are coming to a close, with the vast majority of Web users (95 per cent) going online with a specific destination in mind.
For most people, it appears that banking, shopping, travel and holiday Websites are all the Web is good for, with “supersites” now including Ebay, Amazon, Google, Lastminute.com and National Rail Enquiries. And, of course, digital-lifestyles.info and urban75.com.
Naturally, all of this new research ties in perfectly with this relaunch of the www.direct.gov.uk, the government’s very own wannabe supersite.
Bringing together public services from across eleven Whitehall departments, visitors to Directgov can unearth a mountain of useful information and services, from renewing driving licences, car taxes or passports , locating local services like schools, childminders and recycling and even planning journeys on foot, by car or by public transport.
Building up a formidable head of promotional steam, Cabinet Office Minister Jim Murphy enthused, “Directgov makes it much easier for people to get to the public services they need by joining up government to bring everything together all in one place.”
“It’s our response to the changing way that people want to access information, communicate and deal with things online and on the move. Renewing your car tax, learning about benefit entitlement, finding out about training or checking your council’s recycling facilities need not be complicated – it’s all there at www.direct.gov.uk,” he added.
7 March, 2006
Brits Love Online Banking As Alliance & Leicester Introduce New Security
Almost 60 per cent of Britons rely on the Internet to do their banking, according to new research commissioned by the Alliance and Leicester bank.
Surveying around 2,400 people, the study found that just under one-third (29 per cent) use Internet banking between once and twice per week, with just over one in 10 (12 per cent) logging on to their bank everyday
The YouGov survey revealed that there’s been a 63 per cent rise in people managing their bank accounts online since 2003, with balance checks proving the most popular activity (96 per cent) followed by money transfers for payments (76 per cent).
It seems that people still prefer to sort out complex problems by visiting the bank, and of those folks who choose to avoid online banking, over a fifth (21 per cent) said they preferred to deal with people face to face, with 13 per cent expressing concerns about security.
With this in mind, the Alliance & Leicester has announced that it will become the first UK high street bank to give all its customers two-factor authentication technology.
Designed to cut down on identity theft and online fraud, the two-factor authentication compels users to provides two means of identification.
This usually involves something that has been memorised by the user (like a password or special code) along with a physical device that generates random numbers or code.
With this security double whammy, hackers who have managed to capture the first pass code should be unlikely to proceed because the customer then needs to generate a new code to authorise online transactions.
The authentication technology will also be used to prove the authenticity of a bank’s Web site, and this should help clamp down on phishing sites.
The bank hasn’t revealed any further details yet, although it has said that the initiative would be a “simple and robust way” for customers to be confident that “their data online is safe from criminals.”
Other banks are also jumping on the security bandwagon, with Barclays running a new chip card reader trial involving 5,000 customers and staff, while Lloyds TSB is close to completing an exhaustive six-month test of a keyring type device.
The trial involved 30,000 UK online customers, with Lloyds TSB declaring itself well chuffed with the initial findings, which produced a healthy 78 per cent adoption rate amongst users.
Around 95 per cent of people using the device said they found it easy to use with the bank claiming a 100 per cent success rate in reduction of fraud among users.
Despite its success, Lloyds said that the current trial was more about testing consumer response to the technology, and it’s more interested in working to meet banking industry group Apacs’ universal security standard that will eventually be used by all banks.
As more banking activity goes online, the face of High Streets looks set to change forever, with the Economic and Social Research Council recently concluding that the rise of Internet and phone banking has led to more branches being closed.
Alliance & Leicester
3 March, 2006
Ask Jeeves Rebrands, Adds New Search Tools
The site formerly known as Ask Jeeves has retired its long serving butler, rebranded itself as ‘Ask.com’ and served up a new, simplified homepage offering access to new tools like enhanced maps, driving directions, encyclopaedia search and a Web-based desktop search.
With the butler now booted off the homepage, ask.com presents a simple, Google-like interface with a text search box and a collapsible, customisable sidebar with shortcuts to 10 default search tools including maps, bloglines, images, weather, dictionary and weather.
New map features galore (if you’re in the US)
Ask.com says that the map search service has been considerably improved, employing the new AJAX-based technology to let users add new locations (pins) on the map, and then move the pins around on the map to get instantly updated walking or driving directions.
Aerial photos can also be overlaid or combined with regular street views, with the option to print aerial shots for a fee.
After several minutes frantically looking for some pin-pushing, drag’n’drop action of our own, we realised that it’s not for the likes of us Brits and all the groovy functionality is reserved for US maps only.
Were we impressed? Not at all.
And as if to wind us up a bit further, we then discovered that ask.com’s much-touted new encyclopedia search function was also noticeable by its absence on the UK homepage, as was the local search function.
Here’s an idea Ask.com – how about you include a help file to explain this to users, or, even better, give us the same goodies too?
Keeping it simple
In an attempt to stand out from a highly competitive (and Google dominated) market, Ask executives are aiming to provide a super-clean interface with fewer ads and editorial results displayed above advertisements.
“We want to get the message out that Ask.com is a serious alternative to any search engine out there,” said Daniel Read, vice president of consumer products at Ask.com.
Old Danny boy’s got his work cut out for him as Ask Jeeves has remained the least used among the largest search engines, way behind market leaders Google who currently hog an estimated 40 per cent of all queries.
Trailing behind Yahoo, Microsoft, MSN and AOL, Ask Jeeves can only muster a paltry 6.5% of the market, and until we get the same advanced functionality that our US counterparts enjoy, we’ll be sticking with Google, thanks.
Ask.com
27 February, 2006
Buzz-o-Phone – A New Form Of Web Content
The idea behind buzz-o-phone is simple enough. You call a US freephone (800) number where you’re able to leave a voice message. Your elicitation, wise or otherwise, is the posted to the player section of the buzz-o-phone Web site, where the world can listen.
Initially Buzz-o-phone looks like ideas that have been around before, like the innovative AudBlog – a link between the POTS world (Plain Old Telephone Service) and the online. We know that ideas build on each other, and Buzz-o-phone may well have picked these up from projects in the past.
Look a big deeper and you may agree with us – we think buzz-o-phone signals a whole new form of content. A simple, barrier-less way of everyone to leave public comment.
Blogging and Podcasting have their own barriers. OK, there’s free online tools to do both of these, but even when these are setup, there’s the barrier to actually getting your thoughts – which are free flowing, to be published and it takes effort. Sometimes the effort is too large and the ideas don’t get sharedexplored a few ideas on his blog as to how Buzz-o-phone might be expanded in the future.
Legal issues?
There has been, in our view, a getting-close-to-hysterical reaction from some panicking about slander and libel.
While the legal issues can’t be ignored, it’s interesting reading the Q&A session on Buzz-o-Phone between Robert French and Matt Galloway. It’s clear that Mr Galloway hasn’t just fallen into this idea – he’s wisely done a lot of background research on the legal side.
Issues with content filtering
To minimise legal problems, or indeed the removal of postings containing swearing (that some might find offensive), the audio comments have to be listened to, in order to know that they fall into the acceptable category. The issue with this, as with all audio files, is that this has to happen in real-time, unlike the text of a blog, it cannot be either read by a computer and checked against a dictionary of acceptability or speed read.
We’d imagine that two versions of the ‘conversation’ will have to be created; the raw, which would be an unfiltered version; and the clear-feed, dropping off comments that are judged as offensive. This is riddled with difficulties of its own – as with all censorship, you have to make you’re own decision as to if your parameters of acceptability align with the self-appointed censor.
All in all, we’re very excited about Buzz-o-phone, so get yourself over there, dial toll-free US 1-800-591-5375 (you can use Skype), contribute a comment and watch it grow.
Buzz-o-phone
Buzz-o-phone player
(via the ever-enjoyable RocketBoom (congrats to them on their initial advertising deal).
24 February, 2006
Xara Xtreme Review (93%)
Xara has been around for over a decade now, and although it may not be as well known as expensive rival programs like Illustrator and Freehand, it continues to offer astonishing value for money, providing ample power under the hood and enough tools to satisfy anything from graphic smudgers to arty pros.
Now known as Xara Xtreme, the vector-based program claims to be “the world’s fastest drawing program”, and we’ve certainly never seen anything as fast on our machines.
Compared to its big name rivals, this fella is a Billy Whizz in a world of Billy Bunters.
Screen redraws are instantaneous, and changes you make to blends, bevels, shadow effects, feathering, graduated transparency and other effects appear on-screen in real time.
Complex objects can be moved around and transformed in real-time, so you won’t be entertained by egg-timer pointers or have to view pesky wireframe or boundary boxes when shunting graphics around the screen.
Although it isn’t the most modern-looking of programs, Xara’s sheer simplicity and power makes it a far less daunting program to master compared to many high-end vector programs, with new users guided by a set of excellent help files and 80+ short movie tutorials.
With an intuitive, customisable and familiar interface, there’s a refreshing lack of dialogue boxes floating about, with most changes being made via an option bar that instantly updates to show the relevant options for the active tool.
Bitmap editor
As well as the usual Bezier, freehand, shape, blend and text vector tools, there’s a handy ‘Picture Editor’ photo enhancement module available for bitmap editing.
This launches when you double-click any imported bitmap image and offers basic photo adjustments like brightness, contrast and saturation, along with useful tools like cropping and red-eye removal.
Imported images can be resized, have text added and then exported as JPEGs with control over compression settings.
Interestingly, Xara also offers Photoshop plug-in support, opening the door to more advanced digital editing and effects.
Xtreme comes with tools for outputting optimised graphics for the Web, a NavBar tool, image slicing and image map support, but if you’re feeling low on inspiration, there are Gallery palettes packed with thousands of ready-made items which can be downloaded off Xara’s site.
Xara should easily fit into most user’s workflows too, with support for all the common vector and bitmap graphic formats, including Flash, AI (Illustrator), Corel DRAW, TIFF, GIF, PNG and PDF, and offers integration with Adobe/Macromedia’s Dreamweaver and Flash software.
The verdict
Once again, we were knocked out by the performance, superlative speed and graphics capability of Xara, but we’ve kept the best bit until last: the price.
At just $79 (~£46, ~e66), Xara Xtreme retails for a fraction of the price of its rivals and with its sophisticated and powerful set of tools can only be considered an absolute bargain!
Highly recommended.
Ease Of Use: 85%
Features: 85%
Value For Money: 95%
Overall: 93%
Xara Xtreme
24 February, 2006
AOL Set To Battle Skype, Google And MySpace
America Online is about to come out of its corner fighting as it gets ready to slug it out with Internet heavyweights such as MySpace, Skype and Google.
Ignoring shouts from the crowd that ‘they’re a big organisation but they’re out of shape’, AOL CEO Jonathan Miller told USA Today that they’re ready to KO the opposition with a salvo of killer punches.
New video search tools
First up is a new video search tool which integrates with the innovative Truveo technology which AOL bought in December.
The company claim that by using Truveo’s “visual crawlers”, they can now find and index high-quality video on the Web that traditional search engines can’t see, and will include AOL Hi-Q Videos (DVD-quality) in their video indexes.
The 1.8 million videos already indexed through Truveo will be added to AOL’s existing archive of 20,000+ original and licensed videos, along with the 2.5 million Web videos indexed through Singingfish.
Come mid-March, AOL will also be making 14,000 Warner Brothers-owned classic TV shows available for free (but supported by advertising), as part of its new In2TV service.
Mashing up MySpace
With 43 million active users signed up to their AIM messaging service, AOL is hoping that with their substantial music and video offerings, they’ll be able to mount an effective challenge to the immensely successful MySpace social networking community.
Seeing as they already operate the world’s most popular messaging service, AOL should be in a strong position to take on Murdoch’s company.
As Miller points out, with so many people already using Buddy Lists to chat with others, “the barrier to getting people to use it would be very low.”
With the new service, subscribers could simply click on a name in a Buddy List and be taken directly to that person’s personal website.
Charlene Li, analyst at Forrester Research, reckoned AOL’s plans made perfect sense, adding: “The key is making a strong link with AOL Music. Part of the reason MySpace works so well is it has music.”
Stalking Skype
Miller also revealed plans to turn AIM into a full voice platform which would compete directly with Skype.
Although Google and Yahoo instant message services already offer VoIP calls, AOL’s market dominance could quickly establish them as a force in cheap Internet phone calling.
Expected to should roll out in late spring, AOL also intends to open up the new AIM voice service to outside software developers.
No doubt AIM users will be hoping that this may finally produce long-overdue tools to let them chat with users of other messaging services.
AOL
21 February, 2006
Opera Web Browser Now On Nintnedo DS
Opera, Opera, everywhere
Opera have had a concerted effort to place their Web browser on _everything_, most recently, with AJAX support on digitalTV.
Nintendo have made an interesting move here. The DS has always been focused on providing gaming, so to take the jump to making it a Web-access device is significant.
Those interested in running it will need to buy a Opera on a DS card and they’ll be away – browsing over Wifi on the dual screens.
GIVING GAMERS TWO WINDOWS TO THE WEB: THE OPERA BROWSER FOR NINTENDO DS
February 15, 2006: Opera Software today announced that it will deliver the World Wide Web to Nintendo DS users in Japan. In Opera’s agreement with Nintendo, Nintendo DS users will now be able to surf the full Internet from their systems using the Opera browser. The Opera browser for Nintendo DS will be sold as a DS card. Users simply insert the card into the Wi-Fi enabled Nintendo DS, connect to a network, and begin browsing on two screens.
Earlier this year, Nintendo reported that 13 million Nintendo DS systems were sold to consumers around the world within just 13 months of its debut in November 2004. Nintendo DS combines unique dual screens, touch screen, voice recognition and wireless and Wi-Fi communications capabilities. According to an independent market research company in Japan, Nintendo DS has become the fastest selling video games machine to top the 6 million sales mark in Japan in just over 14 months since its Japanese debut, breaking the old record held by Nintendo’s Game Boy Advance.
“The incredibly popular Nintendo DS is already Wi-Fi enabled to support real?time gaming, so adding Web browsing capabilities was a natural evolution for this device,” says Scott Hedrick, Executive Vice President, Opera Software. “Gaming devices are growing more advanced and a great Web experience is becoming a product differentiator for gaming manufacturers. Opera is excited to work with Nintendo to deliver a unique dual screen, full Internet experience on Nintendo DS.”
With an on?screen keypad and stylus, users can easily navigate the Web from their Nintendo DS with PDA?like functionality. Based on the same core as the Opera desktop browser, Opera delivers superior speed and rendering of Web pages on the Nintendo DS.
“Within just five seconds of turning on the system, the Nintendo DS is already fully operational. This makes it the ideal device to enable people to swiftly obtain the latest information from the internet, wherever they are,” says Masaru Shimomura, Deputy General Manager of Nintendo’s R & D Department. “Opera exceeded our expectations with its user friendly interface, quick access to all your favorite sites, ease of use and, most importantly, in making the best use of the Nintendo DS system’s unique double screens and touch screen features. Opera is an important partner for Nintendo in our efforts to further expand the users of the Nintendo DS.”>Nintendo Co., Ltd. held a presentation today in Tokyo, Japan, to announce updates for the Nintendo DS. Information on the availability of the Opera browser DS card has not yet been announced.
15 February, 2006