Geographic – Page 60 – Digital-Lifestyles

Sony W880i Ai: Tuesday Euro Launch?

Sony W880i Ai: Euro Tuesday Launch? Sony Ericsson have let it be known via press invites that there’s a number of new handsets being released in Europe next Tuesday.

What they are and where it’s going on is currently being held close to the chest, but there’s rumours going around that one of them might be the W880i Ai.

There’s some shots purporting to be it floating around on a Swedish site called Mobil.

If the shots are to be believed, it looks mighty svelte, appearing only just bigger than a Bic lighter and as thin as you like.

It’s understood that it feels really solid, with a covering of metal conveying a feeling of quality.

We think it looks pretty hot, but the only thing that holds us back from near-total lust is the size and make up of the numeric keys, that have more than a passing similarity to a 1970’s calculator. Without having our hands on it, it’s unclear how friendly it will be to texting at high speed.

Specs are unclear, but it looks like two cameras, one facing forward, the other, a 2mpx facing back. Walkman branding makes it pretty clear it has music-ness included.

It looks like it’s 3G, which makes it all the more remarkable that it’s so tiny.

We’re really interested in its almost-neon-type interface.

Last, but not least, it looks like it’s heading to the US, as it’s got FCC approval.

Tune in next Tuesday for more details following the press launch, until then have a look at Mobil for more shots of it – and get a handkerchief to catch the drool.

The official I Want My W880 site.

Well done to those at Mobil for the photo scoop and Thanks to Hugo for the pointer.

220,000 PS3’s At UK Launch

Sony Computer Entertainment UK’s managing director, Ray Maguire, has put a figure on the number of PlayStation 3 machines (PS3) that will be available at its UK launch, on 23 March.

220,000 PS3's At UK Launch Towards the end of an interview with SPOnG (the Super Players On-line Gamebase), he revealed his estimation to be 220,000 units, with the hope of getting a few more units if, “he goes down on bended knee.”

His rough maths to get to this figure is based on one million units being delivered to Europe as a whole for launch, and the UK having a 22% slice of that, making it the single largest market in Europe.

Maguire was keen to point out that it will be the largest launch the games industry has had to date, “Probably over four times PlayStation One, and close to double the amount of PS2s. So, it’s going to be a logistical nightmare – that’s a lot of trucks to get around.”

PS3 fanboys will also be excited to hear that, “Product is already on its way, on ships, at the moment, and there is more being generated every single day.”

The other point of interest will be the confirmation that the UK price for the 60Gb will be £425, despite the wails from prospective UK owners. There will be no lesser model (20Gb) sold in the UK, as there are in other places around the world.

The success of the PS3 is not a done deal however. The xBox 360 has been selling well for over a year and the Nintendo Wii has done pretty well too. Our observations at the GameOn exhibition recently saw much of the public interest directed towards the Wii rather than the PS3.

Sky Anytime on TV Preview: Sky VOD

When is a 300Gb hard disc not a 300Gb hard disc? When it’s in a Sky box. The fruit of Sky’s much discussed drive partitioning was revealed today, with the announcement of a March launch for Sky Anytime on TV.

Sky Anytime on TV is a push video service that will populate users’ Sky HD (and some Sky+) PVRs with shows from the Sky network, plus Artsworld, National Geographic, Disney and the Biography and History channels. In a one-to-one briefing today, we got to sample the Anytime on TV service, not to be confused with Sky Anytime on PC or the yet to surface Sky Anytime on Mobile. For brevity, we’re going to call Sky Anytime on TV, SAoTV.

SAoTV consists of around 20 to 25 programmes, ranging from half-hour comedies to full length movies, chosen to represent the best of the weeks programming. In the wee hours of every night, a number of assets (between 1 to 6 hours of TV) will be pushed to the Sky box. At launch, every subscriber will receive identical content, although personalisation of SAoTV is ‘on the road map’, according to a spokesman.

Where it’s available, HD subscribers will receive their SAoTV content in High Definition and (in the first phase at least) all content is free from adverts, with the exception of an intro promo hat can be fast-forwarded through, like any Sky recording.

The SAoTV service enjoys its own instant access button – the red key – whose previous occupant (HD Channels) now receives its own menu entry. It’s presented in a similar way to the Planner screen, with the addition of a live video preview window showing a trailer of the highlighted show and some promotional text.

As new shows arrive nightly, older programmes are bumped down the SAoTV listings. Each programme has a clear expiration date, doing a Cinderella-style pumpkin vanishing act at midnight, seven days after its first appearance. If you want to keep a show permanently, you simply hit the Record button any time during that week to add it to your Planner.

The SAoTV service will initially be free and contain only programmes that have been previously broadcast, although Sky hasn’t ruled out charging for content or including exclusive previews in the future.

Sky Anytime on TV will be available to all HD subscribers, as well as owners of the most recent Sky+ boxes (those with partitioned hard drives): currently around 1 million households. Anyone who bought a Sky+ box within the last year should be able to use the service, although Sky will be writing to each subscriber to alert them.

Sky is also rolling out the Anytime brand to cover its Sky by broadband and Sky by mobile services.

Our take? The Sky Anytime on TV services is largely a win-win situation. Sky gets to promote high profile, expensive acquisitions like Lost, 24 and blockbuster movies – and we get to watch them free from adverts and without having to remember to set the timer (or rely on the occasionally erratic Series Link). Of course, it would be nice to see a wider range of channels on board (negotiations are on-going, but don’t expect to see the terrestrial broadcasters any time soon).

However, there will always be the argument that grown-up TV viewers should be free to populate their own hard drive as they see fit – which makes the timing of Sky Anytime on TV all the smarter. HD and Sky+ subscribers have had nearly a year to get to accustomed to their truncated storage space, making the Anytime service seem like less of an intrusion and more of a bonus.

Leonardo da Vinci Notebooks Reunited With Windows Vista

Leonardo da Vinci Notebooks Reunited With Windows Vista Two notebooks containing work by Leonardo da Vinci, know as the Codices, have been digitally reunited today at the launch of Windows Vista.

Background
The books, compiled from work by da Vinci in the early 1500s, have been seperated for many years. Well, a rather long time actually – since 1519.

The British Library holds one – the Codex Arundel – and the other is privately owned by Bill Gates – the Codex Leicester.

Gates bought his 72-page manuscript back in 1994, when he paid $30,802,500 for it – plus tax. Much to his expected disappointment he didn’t get tax relief on his little purchase, despite letting the Seattle Art Museum display it to the public.

Leonardo da Vinci Notebooks Reunited With Windows Vista

Previous owner of the The Codex Leicester was Armand Hammer, the owner of Occidental Petroleum, who bought it in 1980 and in an incredible act of arrogance renamed it Codex Hammer. Gates returned it to its original name after he coughed up the cash for it.

How does it all works?
The British Library’s Codex has been available electronically for some time using a service that they call Turning The Pages.

It’s been available through a browser as it uses Adobe Shockwave and runs on all platforms.

It’s quite fun to flick through the rather old, and frankly scrappy book seeing Leonardo’s mirror writing and drawings.

There will be very few of you surprised to hear that the newly combined version – Turning The Pages 2 – will only work on computers that are “Microsoft’s ‘Vista Premium Ready'”, that are running Vista or Windows XP Service Pack 2. Anything other than that, needs to refer to the message at the bottom of the page, “Turning the Pages 2.0 will not run on Windows 2000, XP Service Pack 1 or Macintosh at this time.”

Leonardo da Vinci Notebooks Reunited With Windows Vista

The new version does look lush, but I suspect that the team at Microsoft who worked on this project felt that they were walking a knife edge – getting it wrong and not showing off the bosses $30m book would not be a good prospect for promotion.

Why was Bill in London?
Before the event, there’s been much confusion in journalistic circles as to why the Windows Vista launch was going to be held at the British Library. Microsoft could pick any location in the UK Capital to hold their launch.

Now we know.

Turning The Pages 2
The original Turning The Pages

Mobile Internet Use Grows

Mobile Internet Use Grows Mobile phone users are increasingly getting jiggy with the wee buttons on their handset as new figures show mobile Internet access soaring.

According to the Mobile Data Association, UK mobile owners accessed the Internet nearly 16 million times throughout December 2006, adding up to a thumping rise of one million unique sessions over the previous month.

These latest figures mean that mobile users have accessed the web 45.6 million times in the past three months.

Mobile Internet Use Grows Although the figures suggest we’re rapidly turning into perma-connected, perambulating Internet fiends, Thomas Husson, a mobile analyst at Jupiter Research was quick to suggest that much of the recent increase could be down to Christmas gift-giving.

Ol’ Tommy also reckoned that mobile data was “far from being mainstream,” although he expected an increase in data use as more people got their grubby mitts on internet-capable mobile phones, backed by better user experiences, user education, and cheaper prices.

Ready to rustle up a risotto of facts was Nick Lane, principal analyst at Informa Telecoms and Media, who calculated that there’ll be 797.6 million mobile phone subscriptions worldwide capable of web browsing by the end of 2007 (that adds up to 25% of all mobile phones, fact fans).

Mobile Internet Use Grows “The continued advancement of handsets means people are beginning to spend more time familiarising themselves with new services,” Lane added.

News, sport and weather updates are currently the big hitters for mobile users, although recent surveys have shown an increasing demand for location-aware services like maps and local services.

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BT Stays Top Of The UK Broadband League

BT Stays Top Of The UK Broadband League New figures from research firm Epitiro puts BT as the leading consumer broadband provider for the 4th quarter of 2006 (October-January).

Their research found BT to be providing the best overall service, closely followed by Pipex, Orange and Demon, with Virgin in 5th place. Despite their low placing, Virgin recorded the lowest number of connection failures, suggesting that their customers achieved the highest degree of uptime.

BT notched up the fastest HTTP download speed and fastest FTP downloads from users’ personal webspace, with Pipex recording the fastest FTP upload speed.

BT Stays Top Of The UK Broadband League Epitiro’s testing procedure monitors “customer experience” for internet access services, analysing over 622,000 real-time data samples from eleven locations around the UK – meaning that each broadband service was tested around 60,000 times.

Like ferrets in a drainpipe factory, Epitiro’s boffins keenly rummaged through these figures to get a breakdown of the speed and reliability of Internet connections, connection times, download and upload speeds, and the performance of both ping and DNS lookups.

The report also shows browsing speeds increasing steadily throughout last year, with the fourth quarter recording an average consumer ADSL connection speed at 5728.3 kilobytes per second.

“ISPs are increasing their speeds, which is good news for bandwidth-hungry users,” commented Epitiro’s Gavin Johns.

BT Stays Top Of The UK Broadband League “Speeds have increased from 3817.82 kilobytes per second in the third quarter due to new ADSL Max entrants into the ten largest broadband providers. However it’s unlikely that many ADSL Max services will perform at their full capacity of 8Mbps. The speed of broadband service reduces the further the customer’s connection is from their local telephone exchange,” he added.

Overall rankings Q4 2006 (Q3 2006 in brackets)
1 BT (BT)
2 Pipex (Pipex)
3 Demon (Orange)
4 PlusNet (Demon)
5 Virgin (Virgin)

Epitiro

YouTube To Share Ad Revenue With Uploaders

YouTube To Share Ad Revenue With Uploaders Filmmakers who upload their own movies on to the video-sharing website YouTube will soon be able to enjoy some financial rewards for their efforts.

In an interview with the BBC, YouTube founder Chad Hurley announced that the company was working on a revenue-sharing mechanism designed to “reward creativity”.

Set to start rolling out in a couple of months, the deal would raise revenue to reward creative camcorder types via a mixture of adverts and short clips slipped in at the beginning of a clip.

YouTube To Share Ad Revenue With Uploaders
Only folks who own the full copyright of the videos can expect to receive a wedge of the moolah, with YouTube introducing the advertising technology incrementally.

Somerfield Staff Antics on YouTube

Elsewhere, UK supermarket chain Somerfield has launched an inquiry after video clips of their staff mucking about turned up on YouTube.

Various staff members are seen larking about while wearing the store’s uniform, including a break dancing shelf stacker, an “extreme floor cleaner” crashing into a wall and a nutter hurtling down a car park slope on a shopping trolley.

YouTube To Share Ad Revenue With Uploaders
Somerfield has said that they are looking into the incidents, sternly adding that they will, “take any necessary action where appropriate.”

Of course, all they’ve really done is helped publicise the clips for everyone else to enjoy – and reminded us of our equally daft antics in previous crap jobs.

Somerfield YouTube videos

Now Is the Time for Blockbuster to Make Its Move

It’s time for Blockbuster to get into the online download business. The market is only now emerging and the pickings are slim, but it’s not too soon for the company to expand its offerings to include web-based movie downloads and rentals. It could be the only company to offer a true “triple-play” of mail, brick-and-mortar, and online access – a combination that (given innovative marketing) could give a second wind to a dying brand and uniquely position the company for long-term success.

Failure to Launch
Blockbuster has a lousy record when it comes to identifying and quantifying emerging trends that may impact its business. Once a leviathan in the consumer video space, Blockbuster has seen its DVD sales migrate to mass retailers such as WalMart and Target; its DVD rentals cannibalized by Internet-based mail order houses (NetFlix); and its movie rental revenue snacked on by PayTV and on-demand providers.

The result? The company enjoys the unique ‘blessing’ of managing hundreds of retail outlets, many of them struggling to stay open, others being shuttered on a weekly basis. The ‘local video store’ may never fade away, but Blockbuster’s version of it is dying a slow death.

What Train?
Of particular embarrassment was Blockbuster’s inability to foresee the emergence of NetFlix. Blockbuster’s senior strategists sat idly by as a no-name upstart gobbled up millions of Blockbuster converts who wanted a better video experience and knew how to take advantage of a basic Internet-connected PC.

Even now Blockbuster continues to play second fiddle to a once-tiny company that had an interesting idea, a decent understanding of technology, and a unique business model. Blockbuster’s leadership simply didn’t see the train coming, and by the time they did realize that NetFlix was for real, the train had pretty much rolled over them.

To give you an idea how much was at stake, simply take a look at NetFlix’s Q4 2006 earning statements revealed on Wednesday, January 24, 2007: NetFlix now has more than 6.3 million subscribers (compared to Blockbuster’s 2 million online subscribers) and enjoyed fourth quarter revenue of $277 million. That’s got to hurt!

Hard to Shake Old Habits
In March 2006, Blockbuster CEO John Antioco stated that the company had a “digital future” that could very well take it to a greater size than it achieved as a primarily store-based business. If judged by Blockbuster’s conduct since that time, he must be the only one who knows that strategy.

Yes, Blockbuster was an early investor in CinemaNow but never was a strong supporter of the concept or the company (it was too busy tending to NetFlix-related wounds). Yes, in June 2006 Blockbuster reportedly tried to buy a majority stake in Movielink for $70 million but the deal was killed. In both these cases, however, the Blockbuster brand was not involved – these strategies involved leveraging an existing online brand (neither of which have to date enjoyed any success).

Today, Blockbuster still has no real presence in an important emerging market while brands such as Amazon and Apple have already started building their own online rental and sell-thru video businesses.

Yet a recent shift in Blockbuster’s strategy may be the first sign that the company is actually aware of what cards it does hold.

Extending the Logic of Blockbuster’s “Total Access”
In November 2006, Blockbuster rolled out its “Total Access” program, an initiative that gives customers the option of returning DVDs through the mail or at their local Blockbuster store where, should they choose, they could pick up movie for free (but with time limit on viewing and return required at the same store). According to CEO Antioco, Total Access is the reason why Blockbuster’s online user base grew to 2 million at year-end 2006, up 500,000 in the fourth quarter alone. This is just speculation on his part (no evidence was cited) but it is interesting nonetheless.

To blend the concept of the direct mail DVD rental service with its local retail stores – and to brand the offering separately – would appear to be an obvious move. For Blockbuster, however, this represents a strategic revolution compared to its usual blind-leading-the-blind strategic thinking. (Again, this is the same company that thought it could bury NetFlix in just a couple years.)

Tactically, blending these two businesses makes a lot of sense. Strategically, however, it’s a better move than first glance might indicate.

New Moves for New Media
What’s the one thing that Blockbuster has that NetFlix, Apple, or CinemaNow don’t have? Hundreds of ‘brick-and-mortar’ retail video stores. None of these competitors has an interest in getting into the brick-and-mortal video distribution business, but this is precisely why Blockbuster has a lock on this notion. Ironically, it may be the local video stores that end up the centerpiece of Blockbuster’s digital future. They provide Blockbuster with a one-of-a-kind local marketing channel through which it can educate its customers about the benefits of online distribution and how to enable it, while still serving the needs of those interested in mail or in-store procurement.

Combining the online mail-order DVD and stand-alone retail businesses should be but the first step in a larger journey that culminates in a Blockbuster “triple-play” that also incorporates a full-blown online movie rental and sell-thru service. Not a CinemaNow or Movielink service, but a Blockbuster-branded offering that, when blended with the retail and mail-order channels, represents a comprehensive but tightly integrated offering that competitors simply can’t match. This comprehensive vision would serve Blockbuster well: it could minimize or recast what cannibalization did occur because of digital distribution by providing a comprehensive yet cohesive market message, one in which Blockbuster is itself recast as the true innovator in consumer video.

As well, Blockbuster has the brand clout to help legitimize online video distribution. Think of how Apple’s entry into the online video business (and its pending introduction of the AppleTV set-top box) has drawn attention to the progress that online video has made, as well as enhanced the awareness of online movie services. Blockbuster’s entry would have a similar impact, but instead of speaking to Apple fans and technology enthusiasts, it would whisper to the mass audience of Internet households that (given the right equipment) a broadband connection is now a legitimate conduit for delivering on-demand movie content to your primary home TV.

Sure, this type of prognostication is best reserved for long-term strategy discussions, but that’s exactly how Blockbuster should be thinking. After all, if you’re going to say you have a “digital future,” it’s to the future you should first look. Then and only then can you identify the steps necessary to enable that future to materialize.

A claim must first be staked out, this one in a virtual world where Blockbuster’s current and future competitors are building fortifications. And guess who’s setting up camp? NetFlix.

Michael Greeson, Founding Partner & Principal Analyst, The Diffusion Group

iTunes Illegal Declares Norway Consumer Watchdog

iTunes Illegal Declares Norway Consumer Watchdog Norway has declared iTunes to be illegal because it doesn’t allow songs downloaded from the online music store to be played on any other equipment except their own, today’s FT reported.

This is the first time, worldwide, for action like this to have been successful, despite bodies in other countries threatening the same, including France.

The decision by the Norwegian consumer watchdog, which the FT describes as “powerful” is based on Apple’s restrictive approach breaking their consumer protection laws.

Apple have until the 1 October deadline to make their FairPlay DRM schema available to other technology companies or face fines, or ultimately have the service shutdown.

iTunes Illegal Declares Norway Consumer Watchdog The original complaint was made by Torgeir Waterhouse, senior advisor to the Norwegian Consumer Council. He told the FT that “he was in negotiations with pan_European consumer groups to present a unified position on iTunes’ legality.”

Worrying news for Apple, especially when they hear that Germany and France have joined Sweden and Finland. When added together, this comprises more than 100m European consumers.