UK

THUS Preferred Supplier For HSBC
THUS, the communications provider that owns the Demon brand has announced it has become the preferred supplier for HSBC in the UK. The contract is expected to be around £50m plus over 5 years.
The contract covers connectivity for all their branches, ATMs etc (2,200 UK sites).
THUS recently sold off Demon Internet in the Netherlands to KPN, which means they have paid off most, if not all, of their debt and puts them in a very positive position compared to many UK telecoms providers.
THUS also recently acquired Your Comms (a business telco based in the North of England) and Legend, a smallish ISP with a portfolio of VoIP products. Other acquisitions must be on their mind.
Consumer Broadband is free, concentrate on business services
The consumer broadband market is rapidly becoming commoditised, which is good for the customer, though margins are extremely low, so providers need to find other revenue streams to make services pay for themselves.
Though Demon in the past have had lots of consumer customers, they have wisely concentrated on the business markets. Business broadband can still command premiums, as it allows customers to utilise services such as VoIP. Customers who want quality of service can even use broadband to connect to THUS’ backbone MPLS network so allowing teleworking and VPN’s to be securely provisioned.
THUS isn’t as big as several other telcos (in terms of customers or revenue), and in the recent past, they may have looked like a buy-out opportunity, however as they’ve concentrated on services that make them real revenue the tables may have turned with them becoming a threat to other bigger players who could be acquisition targets themselves.
22 September, 2006
PDT Eye-Theatre Head-Mounted Multimedia Viewer
If you’ve admired the look of that bloke in Star Trek with the funky sci-fi specs, then maybe the Eye-Theatre glasses might be just the thing for you.
PDT’s Eye-Theatre is a head-mounted multimedia viewer that promises to deliver an “immersive audiovisual environment” – that sounds a bit like what you get after a plateful of magic mushrooms, so we’re already interested.
The headset lets you watch movies in NTSC/PAL/SECAM formats, with the Eye-Theatre employing twin TFT LCD screens to display 320 x 240 video resolution – perfect for the video iPod’s output (you can plug the unit straight in).
While they’re not the first to do this, the makers claim that the display creates a similar effect to watching a big 50″ screen from around 2.5m with your eyes tricked into focussing at the same distance, so you’re not going to start suffering eyestrain.
There’s a pair of high-quality stereo earphones incorporated in the design, and to keep the unit secure on your noggin, a variety of nose-pieces promise a good fit, from kids to adults.
Weighing just 78g, the Eye-Theatre should be good for eight hours between charges (USB charger supplied), and anyone desperate to get that cyber-berk look can pre-order their video glasses from PDT’s website for £149.99, with the launch expected in mid-October.
The unit is also compatible with other video devices such as the new Microsoft Zune, TV,VCR,DVD, video gaming systems, camcorders any any other video source with Video-Out.
Eye-Theatre
20 September, 2006
Sky Broadband DRM Woes Halt Films
Sky has hit the pause button on delivering films (known by some as movies) and sport via their Sky By Broadband service, due to cracks in Microsoft’s Windows Media DRM software.
Sky has put an announcement on their site,
In order to make an essential update to the Sky by broadband security system, we are sorry that access to all movies and some sports content has been temporarily suspended. This does not affect your computer and content can still be bookmarked for future use. We will keep you posted on progress and apologise for any inconvenience.
Clearly being a big bash for the service, it must be of great embarrassment for all concerned. Content owners from around the world – especially those within the News International family, Fox, etc – will be throwing a dizzy fit, having bought the technologies companies long-lasting pitch that DRM is essential for the survival of the content biz. You see, most of them feel their clients are not to be trusted with the content,that they’re so used to having.
Background
A couple of weeks ago, a little software app called FreeUse4WM appeared, that stripped the Digital Rights Management (DRM) from any content, be that audio or video, held in the Windows Media format.
Following this, Microsoft threw people at fixing the problems – they had to, as it laid bare all of the content that it was supposed to protect. Sitting back with a smug look on their faces (we imagine), they must have choked on their latte’s when version 1.2 of FreeUse4WM came out, cracking the DRM and exposing the content again. It’s understood that Microsoft are working on the fix for v1.2.
Security of all sorts is just a game of cat and mouse, with no absolute guarantees – security company created protection
12 September, 2006
WordWeb Review: Free English Thesaurus/Dictionary (90%)
A long time favourite of the Digi-Lifestyles crew, WordWeb is a free, cut-down version of the WordWeb Pro software, and includes a comprehensive English thesaurus and dictionary with the ability to look up words from within external programs.
Originally an add-on for the Crossword Compiler application, WordWeb has developed into a formidable stand-alone product, regularly updated with new words and senses.
Once installed, the program lurks in your Windows system tray and can be activated from within almost any program.
Simply highlight the word you need a definition for and either click the system tray icon or use the default keyboard shortcut of CTRL+ALT+W.
Quick as a flash, WordWeb pops up with a dictionary definition of your highlighted word, often supplemented by a sample sentence demonstrating the correct usage of the word.
Minger
Seeing as we haven’t got over our childish habit of typing in naughty words into dictionary, we tried it out with the British slang word, ‘minger:’
1. (slang) a physically undesirable, smelly, or ugly person
“It wasn’t ’til we woke, the next morning, that I realised quite what a minger she was. I left pretty damn sharpish before she asked for my phone”
The program can also be used to look up word definitions and alternative synonyms or antonyms – you could, for example, look up “tree”, click on the “Types” tab and you’ll be presented with a list of different types of tree.
Click on “Part of” and the program will tell you that a tree can be part of a “forest” or “wood” (in case you weren’t sure).
Clicking on the “Replace” button will let you swap the highlighted word in your document with a listed synonym or you can keep on exploring alternatives by clicking on words to view more synonyms and definitions.
The WordWeb database boasts more than 156,000 root works and 124,000 synonym sets and is based on Princeton’s WordNet project, with the developers making “many thousands of corrections and additions to this base.”
The program – which comes in regionalised flavours – can also access the web to offer a web search of the highlighted word or link to a site with translation capabilities.
The $19 Pro version adds 6,000 more definitions and offers extra features like wildcard word search, full text definition search, custom glossaries and optional word lists
Notably, the UK-developed WordWeb is also one of the very few references that works with screen reader software for the blind – kudos to the authors.
Features: 85%
Ease of use: 85%
Value For Money: 85% (100% for freebie version!)
Overall: 90%
Free WordWeb 4.5 for Windows 95/98/2000/NT/Me/XP
WordWeb Pro
11 September, 2006
BT Vision Buys From BT/Entriq
BT Media and Broadcast the business to business outfit within BT’s Global services division has announced an alliance with Entriq.
It’s a change for BT Media and Broadcast (BT M&B), who’ve in the past received coverage at Digital Lifestyles for their efforts to offload their satellite TV interests to have some positive news to announce.
The BT Media and Broadcast/Entriq combination has already landed an important customer in the shape of BT Vision, who as well as planning to roll out of a ipTV customer proposition to the home at the end of this year, have a live ‘download to own service’ at www.downloadstore.bt.com.
Barry Bonnett BT M&B’s CEO, aware that some cynics may think BT signing with BT rather convenient, noted that the tender was “highly competitive,” and that, “BT Vision recognised the quality of service and cost effectiveness of our overall network based capability.”
Entriq, who are in the business of developing and managing Pay Media infrastructure, is part of the South African publishing and media conglomerate Naspers. Naspers, as well as having the successful consumer TV platform Multichoice in South Africa, has technology interests that include the Conditional Access company Irdeto.
Headquartered in San Diego, California, Entriq have offices dotted around the world and have a host of existing big name broadcast customers that includes MTV Networks, NBC Universal and the UK’s Channel 4 television.
29 August, 2006
Pub Landlords Get One Over On Sky
Sky TV has a strong market presence in providing big screen football to the drinking public in licensed premises in the UK. This virtual monopoly has long been a bone of contention for ‘Mine Hosts’ keen to encourage soccer imbibers to their premises for the big games, but over a proverbial barrel in terms of the price they have to pay.
Sports rights owners sell their rights by territory, but radio waves beamed out of the heavens know little of national country borders, and some enterprising landlords have made arrangements to take their soccer from sources other than the UK licensed broadcaster, Sky.
Greek, Czech and Arabic satellite TV channels have signed up with the UK’s Premier League for coverage of the UK’s beautiful game, and the deal they have is at a much better price (as we’d expect), than the one Sky negotiated, in what is a competitive market for commercial coverage of the national game.
British licensed premises can pay up to £6,000 a year for Sky’s football package and the same games, without the irritating commentary, can be received for a more manageable £39 a week from overseas operators.
Sky feel that such arrangements are against their interest and are taking the matter to court, but there’s an argument that the free EU market should permit the Greek ‘grey’ import to be available to the market. While the legal niceties are sorted out, packages designed to satisfy the UK market are clearly available on the Internet and are labelled as ‘legal’ for British pubs, citing the European soccer body EUFA .
22 August, 2006
More PE Takeover Talk At NTL
The much heralded NTL/Telewest merger, expected to be the saviour of the UK cable industry, has become the subject of another Private Equity takeover rumour and the likely winner, if it goes ahead, is Richard Branson.
A quick recap
Branson did a deal with NTL that saw Virgin mobile become part of a four-play (geddit?) proposition, allowing the operation to use the Virgin brand and in return received 10.6% of the company. The merger of the three companies has not yet bedded in, and customers across the country are still waiting for the promised improvements in the notoriously poor levels of customer support.
Flextech the programming arm of the company, which was up for sale at the time of the earlier merger (I hope you’re paying attention), is likely to again be offered up for acquisition to media companies. A great way for potential new investors to make a chuck of their cash back.
Market reaction
The market has viewed the possible takeover positively, as it considered the cable company is still under valued following its 20% share price drop in the last three months. More recently shares in the company, quoted in the US, gained around 8% last week, on the possible fresh takeover.
What would the impact be?
If a takeover goes ahead, then the focus will be on installing a strong management team to leverage the offering against well established competition from BT and the newer entrants to the market, like Tiscali whose purchase of Homechoice has put them in the triple-play space, and Sky who are rolling out a broadband proposition under their own well known brand.
21 August, 2006
Guardian g24, A PDF Newspaper: Overview
The UK’s national leading left newspaper, The Guardian, has been looking at what it thinks is the future of the daily newspaper. Since the successful launch of its Berlin edition in 2005, which rolls out of the presses somewhere between the size of a tabloid and the more traditional ‘quality’ broadsheet, it’s done a pile of blue sky thinking.
As well as producing lively Podcasts on media and business, it now brings the much heralded digital ‘Newspaper of the future’ to your computer – sorry paperboys and girls, looks like your days could be numbered.
The answer to the blue sky thinking that it’s put together is pretty radical and out there (literally) for you to try. A downloadable PDF newspaper. It comes as a group of 5 pdfs that are updated every 15 minutes throughout the day and it can be printed on your standard A4 desktop printer. The editions are compartmentalised as Top stories, World, Media, Business and Sport and offer a fairly amazing step forward for newspaper distribution, cutting out a whole tier of distribution. Only becoming physical when printed by the reader – and at the readers expense.
Since the eBooks.
The challenge for any venture like this is to keep the current revenue stream running while building a new wave stream. It’s a brave move and we hope it’ll give a challenge to the rest of the UK news industry.
Guardian g24
18 August, 2006
UK Analogue Radio Gets A Bashing
DAB in the UK has had a good week with prices dropping to an all time low, with High Street retailers are now making available a DAB radio with CD player for under £50.
To add the icing to the digital radio cake, Dixons the domestic electronics giant that made its name in radio more than 50 years ago, has announced its decision to drop conventional analogue ‘steam radio’ from its portfolio (But they appear to make a habit of grabbing press about this type of thing, having done it with VCRs already).
Although a date has been set for UK analogue TV to closedown, no such decision has been made for radio, and with radios outnumbering TVs at something like 4 to 1 any planned switchover is bound to be some way into the future.
DAB radio coverage in the UK is approaching 85% but the rollout in the rest of the world is patchy, with markets like the USA favouring a pay-model satellite-delivered radio service with brands like Sirius. Competition from the drm (Digital Radio Mondiale) standard and commercial operators like Worldspace are also creating uncertainty in territories that are characterised by dispersed populations across large land masses.
There are now over 270 UK analogue radio transmitting licences issued and they’re still leaving OFCOM’s shelves as fast as they become available, but with a promise of a further national DAB multiplexes and a likely radio presence from Channel 4, the future of radio is looking increasingly digital.
Sky’s satellite hybrid gnome receiver has so far failed to dazzle and, like the semi-portable internet radios, it’s perceived as overly complex for the average punter who prefer the Freeview-like DAB proposition.
Not all retailers of radio see the disappearance of analogue radio as inevitable in the near future. There are important extra features to tempt people, like EPG, pause live and track identification, which make digital services far ‘sexier’ than conventional wireless,
What will show DAB has arrived? We reckon that once the DAB pirates hoist their Digital aerials, the technology will have well and truly arrived.
18 August, 2006
UK Government Jumps On YouTube
The UK Government have put two of their videos up on YouTube – for all the world to enjoy.
Senior executives at the UK Cabinet Office have posted their first two short films – ‘Transformational Government‘ and ‘Sharing the leadership challenge‘, a slightly longer clip concerning Whitehall plans to save money by consolidating service departments and the leadership challenges this poses for managers.
I know, I know … given that description, you all want to shoot over to the see them without a delay, but stay with a little while longer.
Ian Dunmore, Director of Public Sector Forums broke the news saying: “This looks like the first time a government anywhere has used YouTube in this way. It’s a ground-breaking move and one other governments might well follow.” We have to admire the him keeping his head by adding, “However we don’t expect the videos to surge to the top of the popularity chart just yet.”
The Death of YouTube?
Is this the death knell for YouTube? How could a service be any less cool than to have the government using it? The truth is, of course, that YouTube welcomes all no matter how stiff the video provider.
YouTube is becoming a cross-section of society, globally. This is borne out by Peter, the self-declared geriatric1927, the 78 year old widower, living alone in the county in the middle of England. His twelve videos documenting events of his life have been watch over half a million times in the last two weeks.
For a long time Governements have been looking around for way to get their ‘messages’ out to the public without the bothersome annoyance of journalists asking difficult questions. They may see YouTube as the fix for this.
What they may not have taken account of is the video replies or text comments that people can leave in response.
UK Gov on YouTube
18 August, 2006