Category: Geographic

24-7 Football: Sky Offer To Mobile UK

24-7 Football: Sky Offer To Mobile UKAs we’re not fans of football, we’re constantly amazed at how keen people are to watch the game that involves people kicking a pig’s bladder around an oblong section of grass. Ho, Hmm.

Never one to not take the opportunity of cramming more football into people lives, Sky TV has teamed up with a load of other ‘newspapers’ owned by media mogul, Rupert Murdoch, to create 24-7 Football.

It’s a new on-demand service that will offer video highlights and goal clips from the Barclays Premier League and UEFA Champions League on mobile phones.
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Tape 2 PC: Ion USB Cassette Deck: First View: UPDATED

We popped off to the Firebox “Xmas in July” do last week and we saw loads of goodies that they’ll be bringing out between now and christmas.

Tape 2 PC: Ion USB Cassette Deck: First View

The first that we’ll bring to you is the Ion Tape2PC. We all know about the Ion Audio USB turntable and how popular they’ve been.

Not one to stay still Ion have now moved on to capturing other digital media.
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Some UK Teachers Want YouTube Closed Down

Some UK Teachers Want YouTube Closed DownYesterday the UK’s Professional Association of Teachers (PAT) demanded sites such as YouTube to be closed, for encouraging CyberBullying.

Proposed by Kirsti Paterson at the national conference held in Harrogate, the motion was “Conference deplores the very real problem of cyber bullying in schools and demands the closure of sites encouraging such behaviour.”
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Sky Content To PSPs

Sky Content To PSPsSky have announced, in the presentation of their final year accounts, a joint venture with Sony Computer Entertainment Europe to offer PSP owners in the UK and Ireland a content download service.

Saying that PSP-owners can “turn their devices into personalised on-demand video libraries,” will be a big boost for the PSP UK-side, where Sony claim that there’s 2 million of the blighters.

The start date has been pencilled as “early 2008,” making it the first in Europe. With delivery to the handheld via wireless or PC-connection, it’s that expected content such as “sports, entertainment, movies, music and animation,” will be available, interestingly from “both Sky and 3rd party channel partners.”

Sky is being really prolific in distributing its content (apart from Virgin customers :) ), arguably better at it than the BBC – whose have a specific remit to do so.

Financial terms were not disclosed.

BBC iPlayer: A Flawed Gem

iPlayer Open Beta: A Flawed GemToday the BBC has opened a list for up to 500,000 UK TV license payers to sign up for access to iPlayer – if they have an appropriate computers setup.

Over the next six months, those who sign up will be let on to the Beta trial to use iPlayer. (Those of us who have been on the 15,000 people iPlayer trial will have noticed that there was a new release of the software last night.)

Let’s be clear, we do think that the iPlayer is an advance for the BBC, and the functions and control it gives views are welcome.

Where it really lets itself down is that it is dependant on a very thin slice of technology needs.
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BBC Trust OK With No DRM On BBC Shows

BBC Trust OK With No DRMIf you listen to our interview with Mark Taylor, you’ll have heard a very interesting point that was raise in the OSC discussion with the BBC Trust.

The BBC Trust are totally fine with BBC content going out to over the Internet _without_ content protection – ie DRM.

This would be in-line with the BBC’s view of distributing their TV content over satellite in the UK, where in 2003 they made Sky beam out the BBC TV channels without encryption – much to Sky’s displeasure – saving themselves £40m – £85m in the process.

This is of course still an avenue open to the BBC. We wonder how much of the License payers money would be saved on DRM if they were to take this route?

iPlayer: OSC Interview After BBC Trust Meeting: Podcast

We got the exclusive opportunity to interview the members of the Open Source Consortium (OSC) that has met with the BBC Trust, directly after they had been discussing the BBC iPlayer with them for the first time.

From there we scooped the iPlayer On Linux a must story, but there was a lot more detail in the interview than we could get into the piece.

Various highlights were

  • How discussion went with the BBC Trust
  • The path that the OSC has been following
  • Discussion with Ofcom
  • How iPlayer is based entirely on the Microsoft stack
  • concerns under the BBC Radio player being rolled into the iPlayer and the loss of support of other players that would occur
  • BBC Trust’s different view on BBC Content and content from other production companies
  • Support for a Linux iPlayer from the “the most popular Linux desktop client in the world”

If you, like many others, are unhappy about the iPlayer only being available on a particular version of Windows, get yourself over to the iPlayer petition. Every vote counts, so join the current 12,000+ that have said they don’t like it.

Sorry about the popping in part of the recording (like the beginning), but I left the mic windshield at the office – blast!)
[audio:https://digital-lifestyles.info/media/audio/osc-post-bbc-trust-iplayer-meeting.mp3]

Ofcom Wants VoIP 999 Services

Ofcom Wants VoIP 999 ServicesOfcom has published a proposal that some VoIP services should allow users to call 999 to connect to emergency services as soon as by early 2008.

They’ve carried out research that has revealed that as many as 78% of those with VoIP thought that they could, or did not know if they could.

Ofcom’s concern is that VoIP users cannot connect to emergency services when they really need it – ie. in an emergency.

If people have to locate a landline or mobile phone, costing them a delay of seconds or minutes in getting through to emergency services, it could prove critical.
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