Web

Internet Killed The TOTP Star
To a long, long fanfare that we began to fear would never end, Top of the Pops, the world’s longest-running weekly music show, was finally killed off last night.
A classic example of how the Internet is changing consumer’s habits, the once High Priest of Pop found its viewers tumbling as music fans flocked to the Web for the latest tunes, news and videos.
Despite being a major landmark on the UK music map for what seems like centuries, a new generation of impatient, tech-savvy and Web-connected listeners were hardly likely to warm to a format that only offered a distilled breakdown of chart acts once a week.
Why wait?
Way back when we were lads, music delivery on demand wasn’t quite the slick operation it is now, with music starved teens reduced to hanging about in smelly phone boxes, dialling ‘160’ and shoving in their 2p’s to hear a crackly rendition of the song of the day (which you hoped wasn’t the Wombles).
But kids today – spoilt rotten!
Thanks to the Internet, music lovers can now instantly gorge themselves on zillions of new tunes through social networking sites like MySpace, immerse themselves in vast oceans of songs on pay-per-download sites like iTunes or smuggle in tune booty from pirate sites like SoulSeek.
With this kind of personal music delivery, the days of families sitting around the gogglebox for a weekly fix of pre-programmed music entertainment are long gone, with music fans able to listen to music whenever they feel like it, via their computers, mobile phones, iPods and media players.
The figures back up the story too, with a recent survey revealing that people spend longer on the Internet than watching television, with the audience for Top of the Pops crashing to around a million viewers from its once-lofty peak of more than 15 million.
MTV
Meanwhile MTV are still battling on with the launch of a community-style site at MTV.co.uk followed by a new channel called Flux which will let viewers control what is aired on the station, and offer live chat with other users
Aimed at challenging the big-boy social networking sites like MySpace and Bebo, MTV are hoping their new product will appeal to the wired generation.
Angel Gambino, vice president of commercial strategy and digital media at MTV Networks UK & Ireland told Reuters, “If audiences are spending more time away from the TV it is important for us to make sure we have a really compelling product.”
“It’s critical to our success to make that transition from a broadcasting company to a multiplatform media company,” she added.
Whether MTV’s new interactive TV service will manage to make inroads into a music market increasingly driven by the Internet remains to be seen, but it’s clear that traditional heavyweights like record labels and MTV are very unlikely to enjoy the domination enjoyed in the past.
31 July, 2006
Sky Buys Mykindaplace: Murdoch Grabs More Of The Web
The Murdoch empire continues to buy to part of the online world, as BSkyB announce the full purchase of Web publishing and design company, mykindaplace, a company that they’d invested in 2000 when they previously dabbled in buying bits of the Internet.
Founded in 1999, mykindaplace has a couple of publications aimed at teenagers, one for girls, and another boys, monkeyslum, that launched in September 2004. At the other extreme end of the age range, they also published livingit in January 2006 aimed at those 45+.
With the purchase of mykindaplace, Sky will also gain Burst Interactive, which currently handles the skyone.co.uk site for Sky.
James Baker, Managing Director of Sky Networked Media, who will have the mykindaplace teams under his power, invented a new term to us “super-serve,” when he said “Working even more closely with mykindaplace will allow us to accelerate the expansion of our web portfolio. We intend to super-serve audiences in key content genres and target new users with a suite of content-rich sites thatdeepen customer relationships and drive new revenue.”
Sky who already owned 49% of mykindaplace bought Eurovestech shareholding in Mykindaplace for £0.5 million cash back on 30 June. We understand that Eurovestech owned 5.6% which they bought into at the same time as Sky back in April 2000. At the time of going to press, it isn’t clear who owned the remaining shares, although it is understood that Freeserve invested in the company in 2000 as well.
25 July, 2006
YouTube Sued For Copyright Abuse
YouTube is being sued by a video news service, Los Angeles News Service for infringing the copyright of their video material, in particular, the footage of the 1992 LA riots, including the horrific attack on a truck driver.
They are asking the court for $150,000 per violation and an injunction barring any further use of their material.
Los Angeles News Service’s (LANS) co-founder, Bob Tur, is credited with creating helicopter news-gathering, when it televised a car chase in 1992, they were also the first to follow OJ Simpson in the well-known slowest car chase ever.
Los Angeles News Service isn’t new to legal action like this. They’ve taken many actions against those who they feel are infringing their copyright, including multiple actions out against news organisations who aired the footage they took of the South Central LA riots in 1992.
Copyright complaints are normally dealt with by way of a take down notice – the body who claims rights over the footage has their lawyer write to YouTube, informing of an alleged copyright breach, asking them to remove the offending material. Until now YouTube’s approach has been to comply with this straight away, asking questions later.
YouTube has made moves to reduce copyrighted material on their sites, including limiting the length of videos that can be uploaded.
YouTube is pretty powerless to stop people uploading any footage they feel like. Given the sheer amount of footage on there, it just isn’t practical to check the clips before they are shown to the public – hence their strict observance of take down notices.
If this action is successful, YouTube could be in a whole heap of trouble, given the amount of copyrighted material held on there.
Not surprisingly, YouTube have taken keen action against footage of the LA Riot on YouTube. Searching for it turns up some results, mostly recorded footage of news coverage as well as some links to LANS video. Attempting to watch these now displays the message, “This video has been removed at the request of copyright owner Los Angeles News Service because its content was used without permission.”
If you want to see Bob Tur in action in the LA riots, skip forward to 7:30.
Los Angeles News Service Wikipedia
20 July, 2006
Opera Widgetize: Make Instant Widgets
When we saw the Opera Widgets launch with Opera 9 Beta, discussion went around the team that this sounded like a good idea, and we’d create one for Digital-Lifestyles. But you know what it’s like when you’re constantly staying on top of convergence news and being showered with great gadgets to review – things like News Widgets slide down the list of things that need to be done.
Having said all of that – it’s with great excitement that we can announce the arrival of the Digital-Lifestyles Widget for Opera browsers. [Sadly FeedBurn, our RSS handler, appears to be being a bit flaky at the moment. If so, you may not see the news.]
How the heck have we found time to do this? Well, with a couple of mouse clicks actually, thanks to Opera releasing Widgetize, this afternoon, a simple to follow, form-driven way to make simple Widgets.
By stepping through four screens and typing in a couple of fields, you quickly get to the finished product.
There’s thirteen different skin designs currently available with any RSS or Atom feed simply turned in to a Widget.
Not slow on making the most of online social sites, if you don’t have your own feed setup, there’s simple integration with Yahoo! 360, Blogger, LiveJournal, Xanga, MSN Spaces, WordPress and Opera’s own community site, My Opera.
So get yourself in gear, install the Digital-Lifestyles News Widget, or get making your own.
Opera Widgetize!
19 July, 2006
Logitech QuickCam Ultra Vision Webcam Announced
Logitech has dished out some details on their new QuickCam Ultra Vision Webcam, which they claim offers, “a true-to-life video calling experience by delivering twice the image clarity as that offered by typical Webcams.”
While most Webcams turn into grainy blobs at low light settings, Logitech reckon that their combination of high quality materials and a bright f-stop setting of 1.6 will be a massive improvement on current models.
The software that powers the QuickCam Ultra Vision goes under the snappy name of ‘RightLight 2 Technology’, and it’s claimed to be able to “intelligently adapt” the camera’s video settings based on the ambient lighting.
The Webcam also features a premium 1.3 megapixel sensor with a high performance lens made up of a mix of glass and plastic optics, with the camera supporting the High-Definition (HD) video format.
Unfortunately, Logitech haven’t released any proper photos of the Webcam or posted up any examples of the image quality, so I guess we’ll have to wait to see if the it’s as good as they say.
Sound and video effects
Also bundled with the Webcam is Logitech RightSound Technology, which combines a microphone with acoustic echo-cancellation software, making it easier to host video calls without having to wear a chumpster, ‘call centre’-style headset
We’re sure children under 10 years old (and some cray-zee tie wearing office pranksters) will get more pleasure than we did out of using the included ‘Video Effects’ software.
This lets you personalise your on-screen appearance using ‘hilarious’ avatars and ‘thigh-slapping’ face accessories, so you can have, for example, an alien head that mimics your expressions, or stick on glasses, a moustache, a hat or a crown to your image.
The QuickCam Ultra Vision Webcam should be available in the U.S and Europe from August, and comes with suggested retail price of $130 in the US (~£71, ~€104).
Logitech
18 July, 2006
Fizz Traveller 2.3 For Pocket PC/MS Smartphone Review (69%)
Wedging its foot firmly into the territory currently ruled by rival application World Mate, Fizz Traveller for Pocket PC is a mobile travel companion, compatible with Windows Mobile 2003/2005 and Smartphone editions.
As befits its travel aspirations, the program comes stuffed with information useful to globe trotting types, offering world time, international weather information with forecasts, alarms, to-do lists, Internet-updated currency conversions and more.
Loading up the application on our i-mate JAM, we were taken to a large clock with some daft confetti stuff stuck all over it that promptly sent us looking for the ‘how we did get rid of this’ option.
A rummage through the menus revealed that the developers were pretty keen on the eye candy, with customisation options letting users fiddle about with various themes, background images, clock styles and colours.
Great if you like that kind of thing, of course, but we’d be happier with just one clean, crisp and professional interface than a load of bubbly, baubly spinning things.
We found the overall interface a bit of a pain too, with an animated menu system needlessly complicating matters, although we were impressed with the information that could be (eventually) displayed.
On a more positive note, the Today plug-in that ships with Fizz Traveller was a well designed addition that could be configured to show the current date/time and weather information, and cycle through other modes.
Talk about the weather
The program comes with 58,000 pre-programmed world wide cities, with the option to display more detailed time and weather for six user-selected ‘Favourite Cities,’ along with a pretty little map.
Sadly, you couldn’t zoom into the map so it wasn’t the greatest of travel aids.
The weather information was, however, impressively comprehensive, offering min/max temperatures, precipitation, forecast maps, satellite maps and 2/7 day forecasts, as well as an “Airport Delays” option which didn’t seem to be particularly useful.
More useful was the currency conversion section which, like the weather forecasts, could be configured to update wirelessly at preset intervals.
Wrapping up the feature set was a mixed bag of conversion tools for temperature, length, weight, area, volume, speed, power and torque.
We can’t recall the last time we found ourselves needing a program to convert horsepower into Kilowatts when we were on out travels, but we’ve certainly got one now.
Conclusion
There’s a lot to like about Fizz Traveller, with the program offering lots of useful, travel-related functionality and a well executed Today plug in.
We liked the weather maps and there’s no denying that the interface has been buffed and polished up to a very high standard with lots of options for folks who like to customise their app.
The only problem was that in their quest to produce the prettiest travel application around, usability occasionally flew out of the window.
Compared to its chief competitor, WorldMate 2006, the program often felt clunky and slow, and at times we found the pop up navigation system downright annoying.
It’s not all bad news for the Fizz crew though, as the program offers similar levels of functionality to their rival but retails for substantially less ($20 against WorldMate’s $35), so we’re sure some will be prepared to put up with the quirks of the interface to save themselves a few bob.
Features: 80%
Ease of use: 60%
Value For Money: 75%
Overall: 69%
Fizz Traveller 2.3 for Pocket PC
14 July, 2006
Spend! Spend! Spend! Brits Head Up Euro Online Shopping League
With credit card-crazy Brits leading at the front, Europeans are spending ever more money online, with the yearly total for 2006 on course to hit €100bn.
According to new figures from Forrester Research, the 100 million Internet shoppers across Europe are shelling out a staggering €1,000 per person, with the buying-bonkers Brits spending more than anyone else, registering an average €1,744 for the year.
Jaap Favier, research director consumer markets at Forrester, commented that online sales are “building up every year in the countries where it started first, such as the UK or Sweden.”
Attributing the growth in e-commerce to the widespread adoption of broadband, Favier predicted that countries like France – who were late to the e-commerce party – are now only about two years behind the UK, and will soon have a higher growth rate in spending.
Favier added, “Consumers take about a year after going online before they will purchase something online. The first thing they purchase is either a book, a CD or a trip. Those people who have been online for a while are extending their buying into other categories such as clothing or electronics.”
So where’s the cash going?
According to Forrester, there’s a veritable tidal wave of cash heading for travel Websites, with over a third of all online spending going on booking flights and happy hols.
Favier predicts the travel boom will see an increase of 133 per cent over the coming five years, bringing the annual spend to €77bn by 2011.
Leisure is another Internet boomtown, as online off-licences and wine clubs rake it in, with Forrester predicting a thumping 283 per cent growth on leisure spending over the coming five years.
It’s a big happy-clappy rosy picture for overall e-commerce sales too, with online sales ready to more than double over the coming five years, reaching a cashtill rattling €263bn by 2011.
11 July, 2006
Google Mail: Delete All Spam Feature Arrives
Google mail has released a feature that has been long requested by any long term Gmail user – Delete all Spam messages now.
Previously to rid yourself spam within Gmail you had to delete them all screen by screen, by clicking on Select All, then Delete, repeated endlessly until all of the pesky messages had been wiped out.
HowTo
To use the new feature, simply click on your Spam folder link, to find “Delete all spam message now”, sitting on top of your messages. You will then be met by a dialog box confirming that you want to delete them all.
We had great pleasure of wiping 12577 dreaded spam messages this morning and we’d highly recommend it all to you.
Google mail
11 July, 2006
Spam, Spim And Splog Spins Out Of Control
Steeenkin’ spammers are increasingly turning their evil gaze in the direction of SMS, Web-based instant messaging, bloggers and community sites like MySpace.com, according to MessageLabs.
The mail services company said that spammers are looking to bypass e-mail-based antispam measures by targeting spam on “age, location and other characteristics.”
Mark Sunner, chief technical officer at MessageLabs, warned that social-networking sites offer spammers a “new level of convergence and capability to profile people.”
The company also noted an increase in IM spam (“spim”), with spammers sending just a hyperlink, which can direct users lead to a malicious site, or a phishing site.
“We expect more cross-fertilisation of (malicious software) as Yahoo, MSN and Google become one big blob, from an IM standpoint,” Sunner added.
MessageLabs reported that spam mail soared a hefty 6.9% in June to make up a massive 64.8% of all global emails sent that month.
Geographically, Israel continues to be the world’s number one spam target, with spam making up a colossal 75.9% of the country’s email traffic, up 11.9% since May.
Ireland was hit by the greatest monthly rise, with spam increasing by 14.1% to make up a spam rate of 59.4%, while Spain saw the sharpest fall, with lucky Spaniards only suffering spam at 24.8% of all emails.
Jargon watch
Splog: Blogging spam
Spim: Instant Messaging spam
MessageLabs
10 July, 2006
US Democratic Party Adopt Net Neutrality
The US Democratic party has adopted net-neutrality as a party-political issue following the rejection of a second pro-neutrality amendment in a vote late last week.
Previously we reported on the demise of the first pro-neutrality amendment as part of the ongoing review of US telecommunications law.
The Senate Commerce Committee were tied at 11 for and 11 against, with Republican members voting against the amendment and Democrats for it. A majority vote is necessary for a bill to pass. Afterwards, Republican Senator for Alaska, Ted Stevens, gave his reasons for voting against the bill as well as displaying his obviously comprehensive grasp of the technicalities of the Web, “It’s a series of tubes. And if you don’t understand those tubes can be filled and if they are filled, when you put your message in, it gets in line and its going to be delayed by anyone that puts into that tube enormous amounts of material, enormous amounts of material.”
The Democratic party subsequently took up the issue with the slogan “Republicans: They sold the environment to Exxon, and sold the war to Halliburton. Now they want to sell the Internet to at&t.”
Former presidential candidate Senator John Kerry commented, “This vote was a gift to cable and telephone companies, and a slap in the face of every Internet user and consumer.” Another Democrat, Senator Ron Wyden, placed a ‘hold’ on the bill which temporarily stops further progress but a decision is inevitable and both sides are marshaling forces behind their cause.
Lawrence Lessig greeted news of Democratic support with caution, “Good for the Dems that they got it. Bad that the issue is now within the grips of party politics.” He acknowledged that, give the amount of money involved, political involvement was inevitable.
Many fear that the loss of net-neutrality will signal virtual civil war on the Internet and that commercial interests are having too much effect on the US Legislature. Jeannine Kenney, Senior Policy Analyst, Consumers Union offered a concise summary, “The network neutrality nondiscrimination principle, which protects competition, maximizes consumer choice, and guarantees fair market practices, is one step closer to being abandoned with the Senate Commerce Committee’s vote. This endangers the most important engine for economic growth and democratic communication in modern society. Nondiscrimination made possible the grand successes of the Internet. Its removal can take them away.”
6 July, 2006