Geographic

3 Rolls Out Its Festive UK Phone Collection
UK 3G network 3 have announced four new video mobiles to be released in time for the traditional Christmas trading bonanza.
The top-of-the-range handsets will be supplied by LG, Motorola and Nokia with a pretty pink handset for the laydees and sexuality-unchallenged geezers.
Here’s the full listing:
LG U880
The super-thin triband LG U880 will be offered in black, silver and pink with its clamshell design incorporating a 1.3 megapixel camera and expandable internal memory of 80 MB.
The main display supports 262k colours (65k for sub display) with the large 2.0″ colour screen offering a simple user interface.
There’s a built in speaker phone, Bluetooth support and Windows Media (audio and video) playback.
Nokia 6280
The first mass-market 3G Nokia handset to go on sale in the UK, the 6280 has a sliding keyboard and built-in 2 megapixel camera with 8x digital zoom and integrated flash.
There’s a QVGA 262,144 colour display, video messaging, download video clips and Quickplay video streaming in widescreen
The quadband phone supports 3’s full range of communications and entertainment content and services.
Motorola RAZR V3x
A poseur’s delight, the Motorola RAZR V3x is the high-fashion phone for the “Look at me!” crowd, with its slinky, slim-line form supporting a full range of 3G services.
The 2.2″ main display supports 262k colours, and there’s a 1.0″ colour sub display for video calls.
The phone comes with a two megapixel camera on board, with the handset being available in cosmic blue and liquorice black.
Nokia N70
Destined to be 3’s first two megapixel phone when it becomes available at the end of October, the Nokia N70 is based on the hugely successful Nokia 6680 and offers video calling, integrated flash, a built-in FM tuner, Bluetooth and support for Visual Radio.
The 2 megapixel camera phone provides up to 20x digital ‘smooth’ zoom, viewable on a large 2.1″ 262k colour screen with the handset supporting video messaging, video clips downloads and Quickplay video streaming in widescreen.
The Quadband phone works in the USA, Europe and Asia and comes with Bluetooth.
Jones the Santa
Gareth Jones, COO, 3 UK put on his Santa hat and started the “Ho Ho Ho” stuff:
“3 understands the important part handsets play in the customer experience and with our Christmas range we’re offering the best video mobiles in the UK.
All of these handsets support 3’s full range of video mobile content and services. If you’re on 3 you can enjoy music, video, games, the internet and every kind of messaging, as well as great value voice tariffs, all on state of the art devices that look good and are easy to use. If you want the widest choice of high-quality video mobiles this Christmas, then 3 is the network to choose.”
3 UK
18 October, 2005
Italy Has Highest Number of Mobile Users in Europe
According to the latest figures from the International Telecommunication Union (ITU) in Geneva, Italy can now boast the highest mobile penetration rate in Europe, with mobile-mad Italians notching up 109.42 phones per 100 inhabitants.
The data comes from an ITU report scheduled for presentation next month but leaked by the Italian newspaper Corriere della Sera over the weekend.
The figures in the report reveal that, globally, only Hong Kong has a higherpenetration rate than Italy – 114.5% – but Italy wins in absolute terms with as many as 62.7 million mobile users.
With over four million UMTS users, Italians are also leading the way in 3G take up, with the ITU reporting that the country is the most prominent user of 3G services in Europe.
Globally, the country slips to twelfth place in terms of 3G penetration, out of 70 countries that have introduced services.
ITU’s Cristina Bueti elaborating on the criteria used for their data in the newspaper, explaining that the figures referred to the number of activated SIM cards in use, rather than the actual number of phones.
Several countries have also quibbled about the methods used, including Luxembourg who reckon that the Italy’s figures are inflated because many Italians use more than one SIM on the same mobile phone.
Mind you, it could be argued that Luxembourg’s high mobile ownership is equally skewed due to their nationals living in neighbouring countries needing a second handset for use within its borders.
In May this year, research firm Analysys predicted that overall mobile penetration in Western Europe would 100 per cent by 2007, with the UK reaching 101% last year.
ITU
17 October, 2005
Frans Bauer DVD Debuts On Mobile Before Shops
Call us cynical if you like, but when we get a press announcement trumpeting some kind of ‘world first’ or another from someone we’ve never heard of, our eyebrows tend to arc skywards.
So when we heard that “popular singer” Frans Bauer was slapping up a mobile version of the (ahem) “most breathtaking scenes” from his DVD and making Norris McWhirter troubling noises, a mass outbreak of chin-stroking followed.
Despite being boldly hailed as the “first time that scenes from an as of yet unreleased music DVD will make their debut on a mobile phone,” there were unimpressed noises emanating around Chez Digital-Lifestyles as we suspected the over-eager hand of a hyperbolic publicist at play here.
It is significant that content is breaking on mobiles before it’s in the shops and we’ve no doubt that mobiles will continue to play a greater part in the distribution of music and video, but we can’t really get excited about someone (even if they have got dazzling teeth) releasing a few snippets of a DVD for mobiles and then expecting the Guinness Book of Records to be calling them up.
After all, all they’ve really done is just make the equivalent of a film trailer available a few days before the full release. Big bloomin’ deal.
In fact, we’re so unimpressed that we can’t even be bothered to give you the name of the video, but you can find it somewhere on Vodafone’s Dutch Live TV website, or just click around chirpy Frans’ website.
Whose the winner from this? Well, top marks to the music company who we suspect will be getting a slice of cash from Vodafone NL, as well as getting them to promote the artiste with all of the PR power they can muster, giving tons of free promotion to the new release of a DVD that many of us wouldn’t have heard about otherwise.
The fans of Frans ‘The Teeth’ Bauer will probably also be falling off their Zimmer frames in excitement. There’s no doubt that Frans will be flashing a smile too, but he probably can’t help that.
But this transparent marketing exercise does reflect the growing importance of the mobile music market – and with sales of mobile music surpassing CD single sales this year in terms of volume, we can no doubt expect to be troubled with more attention-seeking press releases.
Vodafone.nl
Frans Bauer
17 October, 2005
Speedy Macs; iMac G5; End Of Internet – Teenage Tech News Review
Did someone say fast?
This week’s update is an Apple-feast… Apple sent out a media invitation a few days ago, titled “One More Thing…”. This phrase has often been used in the past by Steve Jobs to introduce new hardware. So I sat and waited with bated breath, or, well, I was excited anyway.
Sadly, the 4-processor Powermac that I had spotted on French site, www.hardmac.com, didn’t materialise, but I didn’t really expect it to until late next year. The specs on the Powermac I spotted there did never the less impress me a lot: Overall, more than 11Ghz of processing power in one box. Would probably also heat most of the house, but that’s beside the point.
I’d love one of these, as it would surely mean the little waits I have now opening Photoshop and other professional applications would finally vanish and it would simply cool. I do however doubt I will EVER be able to afford one.
Couch Potatoes Rejoice
Some of the hardware that was actually released includes the new iMac G5. The difference this has from earlier models? It is equipped with a built-in iSight, basically a webcam. I have played around with an iSight before, and the performance and image-quality is far above what I have experienced with other web cams.
The other difference between this model and the last is that this includes a handy technology called Frontrow which is basically a remote control. This places the new iMac as a serious competitor to Windows Media Centre, something that our friends at Microsoft will be worried.
In my opinion, any industry that has more than one competitor in it will always have more innovation than a monopoly, because companies are actually forced to compete. I hope that this will bring some exciting new ideas into the fairly stagnant home entertainment computer market.
Internet? Break? Yeah right…
Yes, it’s that time of the week again: The usual doomsday announcements this week included an announcement from the EU that the Internet could fall apart next month. If this is serious, I am going to have to find some other way of life…
The trouble nowadays is, that there’s so many people saying the world’s going to end and that civilisation will collapse, when it never does, that no-one takes anything that will change their entire lives seriously, and until something life-changing actually happens, nobody will.
14 October, 2005
“Internet Spam Gang” Gets $37m Fine
Leo Kuvayev, the leader of the largest Spam gang, and six of his business partners have been handed a $37m (~E30m, ~£21m) fine by the courts in Massachusetts.
They were prosecuted under the CAN-SPAM Act (Controlling the Assault of Non-Solicited Pornography and Marketing Act) and the Massachusetts Consumer Protection Act.
Running the two businesses, 2K Services Ltd. and Ecash Pay Ltd, from both a Boston Post Office and Russia, he was helped to court by information supplied by Microsoft. The spammers had used many different Hotmail accounts to blast the unsuspecting world with their spam, where they sold counterfeit Vioxx, Zoloft, Paxil, Lipitor, and Viagra; copy-software; and Casino playing.
This was no small operation. Microsoft collected more than 45,000 spam messages believed to be from the Internet Spam Gang in just 22 days between 12 June and 4 July 2004. Not bad, with an average of 2,000 emails per day.
These boys had permanently itchy feet online as well as in real life. They registered domain names in Monaco, Australia and France, and used computer servers located in China, Korea, Brazil and Taiwan.
Massachusetts Attorney General Thomas Riley took civil action against the collection of companies and obtained an emergency court order, bringing down a number of websites including BadCow.com.
Leo’s been known about for a while. A glance to the ever-helpful Wikipedia, shows information that was collected about Leo Kuvayev, or Leonid Aleksandorovich Kuvayev to give him his full name, as far back at June 2004. Wikipedia reports that all of this information was then passed to the Head of Macromedia anti-piracy unit, and eventually made it to the FBI.
From this, we can see that Mr Kuvayev didn’t limit his business activities to just being the worlds largest spammer, but ran software copying organisations and online casino’s and most frighteningly credit card processing.
He appears very enterprising, does’t he? He’s also listed as the 2nd worst spammer on the Spamhaus top ten – (thanks to them for the photo).. Not bad for a 32 year old (if you like that sort of thing) .
On the amusing side, In what we assume must have been his less wealthy days, Leo looks like he tried to sell a few of his possessions on usenet. Interestingly the ad says that they ‘Must sell by 5/31/96’ – on the move again?
We suspect that the chances of him being caught is pretty slim, and those of him clearing his $37m fine, slimmer still.
We also wonder how long it will be before Viaden.com removes the testimonial from Kuyayev!
Case information from Massachusetts Attorney General
14 October, 2005
Splashpower: Chuck Out Your Chargers: Ceatec
There is a dilemma with the pursuit of mobile living that we’re all familiar with. The constant need for recharging.
Battery technology hasn’t kept pace with the frantic dash of processor development and generally more processing power needs more electricity. This leads to the need to packing a considerable number of different power chargers.
Standards in this area are hard to find.
By the sheer number of mobile phones that they have sold, Nokia have, by default, become a form of (power adaptor) standard. While other mobile phone companies took the introduction of each model as an opportunity for extra profit, by altering the power connector of each device, Nokia standardised.
This sensible approch has lead to the point of knowing that most houses that you visit will have at least one Nokia charger knocking around somewhere. Slowly, and I suspect, rather begrudgingly, other companies are starting to take advantage of this too.
A Thomson bluetooth headset, the Liberty, that I recently acquired came with a small interconnect between mains charger and the headset that was designed to be used with a Nokia charger.
As I covered in The Guardian today, what’s needed is a universal standard and UK company Splashpower hopes they’re the company that could help empty your suitcase of power leads, taking you to recharging nirvana.
Theirs is a contact-less charger, so there’s no worry about different connectors. It uses electromagnetic induction to pass electricity from a charging plate to any suitably equipped device that’s placed on it. Think cordless kettle or electric toothbrush.
How do you use it? It couldn’t be easier, just place your device with a SplashModule on a splash pad and it starts charging.
A very neat idea – if not a little magical.
This is all fine and dandy, but I see it’s a pretty hard business to succeed in. Not only do they have to persuade the makers of the devices that they need Splashpower charging – taking away possible profits from them in additional charge sales as people need one for the office and another for home – but the Splashpower unit has to be incorporated into the mobile device too.
The barriers – additional costs. A concern where price pressure on mobile companies is constant in countries like the UK where the consumer expect their next handset to be free or at least very cheap
– While Spashpower have managed to incorporate all of the required gubbins into a Nokia 6630 without it protruding beyond the original case. The space required is a challenge in the era of ever decreasing size and ever increasing function.
– The design of any Splashpowered handset need to be designed with this in mind from the outset to ensure no interference with the phones reception.
Beyond that they have to persuade the device manufacturers to include their SplashModule in devices, but without the charging SplashPads out there, why would they? The same is true to the venues installing SplashPads, without a pool of equipped mobile devices.
I suspect that in the four years they’ve been in existence, they’ve realised this. While perfecting the product and applying for patents, they’ve also been putting deals together.
Putting this to Lily Cheng, the co-founding CEO, revealed that they’re in discussion with two posh hotel chains mentioned in the article, Penninsular and Radisson Mayfair, who are planning to build the SplashPad’s into the bedside units, so the execs can sleep soundly knowing their mobiles will be fully charged in the morning.
The surprising one for me was the up-market office furniture makers, who are seeing it not only as a way of recharging mobile technology, but for placing other wire-free electrical items on the desks, such as lamps and fans. Cue minimalist interior designers and architects fainting at the prospect of wire-free desks.
With all of this up-market talk, I wonder if the unnamed mobile phone company they’re also in talks with is Vertu, Nokia’s uber-expensive mobile brand.
So what was new at Ceatec for them?
They’ve expanded their range of pads to include one that charges two devices and a single unit too, which is a smaller, travel-friendly version. In the current trend for personalisation, decorated/pattered covers can be fitted to the front.
Rather than wait around for the makers of portable devices to catch up with their thinking, they designed and made adaptors for a number of devices – iPod Mini and DoCoMo FOMA phones – that consumers can buy and attach themselves. Other adaptors are on their way for other devices including the ever-expanding range of iPods.
I really hope Splashpower succeed. They got a strong idea and when you see it, you’ll wonder why we’re not all using this already – another step in the freedom from wires.
Photos shot on a DSC-T7
Splashpower
13 October, 2005
Xara Xtreme Goes Open Source/Cross Platform
UK-based software developers Xara, have announced an update to their sophisticated vector graphics program Xara X, adding new functions and renaming it Xara Xtreme.
Although not as well known as rival programs Adobe Illustrator CS and Macromedia Freehand, Xara has long been our vector program of choice, offering a simple interface, powerful editing tools, a comparatively tiny download (just 21 meg) and the ability to render pages at scorchio speeds that leaves the competition for dead.
Capable of handling photos, business graphics, drawing and illustration needs, Xara keeps the feature set streamlined and focused, offering unrivalled speed at a bargain price.
In this latest version, the Xara Picture Editor has been updated and a new Live Effects tool allows Photoshop and Xara plug-in effects to be applied to photos and vector graphics.
The rendering engine has been tweaked for even faster performance, with improved Illustrator compatibility and import/export tools.
CEO Charles Moir is extremely enthusiastic about the product, “It absolutely knocks the stuffing out of Adobe and the new Microsoft product. In terms of ease of use, shear flexibility and performance. Adobe has tried for 10 years to get close to our performance levels and cannot. Microsoft are not going to be able to either. I guarantee it.”
Linux, Mac and Open Source versions planned
Xara have also announced that they intend to create Xara XTreme for Linux and Mac users in response to customer demand, with an Open Source version in the pipeline.
Moir table-thumped “We’re going to a place that Microsoft and Adobe cannot go. The Open Source world is the acknowledged largest threat to established giants such as Microsoft. We felt it was necessary for us to shake up the graphics world a bit, and making one of the most powerful, easiest to use graphics applications Open Source should do the trick.”
Xara Xtreme is available for Windows now, at just $79 (~£45~€66).
Xara XTreme
12 October, 2005
Digital Music Grabs 60% Of Single Market
BPI, the UK record label industry association has released its third-quarter report revealing that it’s boom time for the Brit digital music industry.
There’s a veritably frenzy of digital downloading going on, with UK single track download sales totalling 25 million since the format launched, with 5.7 million sales in 2004 and a thumping great 16.9 million sales already notched up this year.
According to the BPI, weekly sales regularly top half a million, with digital downloads accounting for over 60 percent of the entire singles market – compare that to the 3.6 percent market share at the beginning of 2004.
Digital is also claiming a bigger share of the Top 75 singles chart, growing from 15.9 percent when the combined chart launched in mid-April to 25.5 percent at the end of August.
But with the Yin of the increased digital music sales comes the Yan of declining retail sales, with the BPI reporting a 21.8 percent decline in physical single sales.
This decline has, however, been more than offset by the hefty growth of digital song purchases – up 288 percent – helping the overall singles market grow by a massive 49 percent. Significantly, these figures do not include subscription sales or paid-for streams.
Once again, the death of vinyl has been exaggerated with the 7-inch physical singles market registering 80 per cent growth with 800,000 sales.
A clearly chuffed BPI Chairman Peter Jamieson said: “This year digital made the transition from mere potential to becoming a significant revenue stream. But this is just the beginning.”
“While the record label model of investing in the best new music talent remains the same, the emergence of innovative new digital services means that the record companies can offer consumers even greater choice as to how to access their music.”
The report also highlighted figures from The Official UK Charts Company which suggested that digital punters are taking advantage of increasing consumer choice, with 81% of all download sales being non-chart titles.
Out of the 1.5 million different songs available legally online, around 80,000 different tracks are being sold each week – up from 55,000 last August.
BPI
11 October, 2005
Top UK Cop: iPods Fuelling Crime
Like a big flashing sign above the listener’s head saying “Mug Me!” the distinctive white headphones of iPods continue to attract the unwanted attentions of ne’er-do-wells in the street.
With the latest Home Office crime statistics expected to reveal that muggings rose by almost 40% in some parts of the country last year, police are blaming the sharp rise in the street robberies on the increasing popularity of iPods, MP3 players and expensive mobile phones.
Chief superintendent Paul Forrester of Merseyside police said students and teenagers strutting around with expensive gear were virtually asking for it, commenting: “Some children carry phones and iPods worth over £600 and they are making themselves walking targets.”
Metropolitan police chief Sir Ian Blair was equally quick to point the finger of blame at all things Apple Mac: “It is very obvious when someone is wearing an iPod. That is what is fuelling this.”
Figures from the Metropolitan police revealed that the practice of purloining iPods increased more than fivefold since last November 2004, with incidents rising from ten a month to 52 in May this year.
Similarly, the number of iPods pinched from motors went in an equally upward direction, leaping from 178 cases in November 2004 to 395 in May this year.
Insurance company Norwich Union have found themselves shelling out for pilfered iPods by the bucketful, replacing 1,721 lost or stolen iPods between January and September this year, compared to just 36 during the same period last year.
Our advice to iPod users: forget about making a style statement, dump those daft white headphones in double quick time and get yourself something more discrete!
11 October, 2005
One In Five Americans Has Never Been Online
A new study has revealed that one in five Americans is without home Internet access and have never been online, potentially hindering their access to crucial information and services.
The survey by the non-profit Pew Internet & American Life Project has highlighted the existence of a digital divide running along lines of age, race and income.
American wrinklies are lagging far behind in Internet adoption, with only 26 percent of folks 65 and older going online, compared with 67 percent of the 50 to 64 group.
One in five American adults (22 percent) remain completely untouched by the Internet and have never been online or received an email – roughly the same percentage of the population as in 2002.
Not surprisingly, the study also found that people with lower incomes and less education also registered lower percentages of Internet adoption.
Although around 70 percent of white Americans use the Internet, only 57 percent of African-Americans are online, with an emerging divide among those who have high-speed “broadband” Internet access and those on cranky old dial up.
The Pew study found that the majority of those using broadband are affluent and well-educated and that 66 percent of households earning $75,000 (~£42,260, ~€61,825) or more annually have a high-speed broadband Internet service at home.
This compares to just 21 percent of households on low incomes ($30,000 a year, ~£16,900, ~€24,730) possessing a high-speed Internet service.
Broadband makes it easier for surfers to whiz around the Web and download music, view videos, enjoy free VoIP calls and access online services and important information on topics like health and finance.
The differences are similar between those who have college degrees and those who have high-school degrees with Susannah Fox, associate director of the Pew project, commenting, “What’s starting to emerge … is an elite group of people who are pulling away with what they can do online.”
Fox added that businesses and governments should not forget the needs of the unconnected population and ensure that offline sources for health and government material is made available.
The study estimated that 53 percent of Internet users now have a high-speed connection at home, up from 21 percent in 2004, while a separate report last week by Nielsen/NetRatings, estimated that around 42 percent of the US population has broadband Internet service, up from 36 percent in January.
Pew Internet & American Life Project
7 October, 2005