Category: USA

Microsoft Windows Vista Prices Leaked

Microsoft Windows Vista Prices LeakedPrices for Microsoft’s much-anticipated update to their Windows operating system, Vista, have leaked out onto various Websites, including an official Microsoft site.

Retail prices for the four different versions of Vista (priced in Canadian dollars) briefly appeared on various sites before vamoosing in double quick time.

The top dog Windows Vista Ultimate Edition was spotted carrying a hefty price tag of $499 Canadian dollars ($450, £237) while the Home Premium version was listed at C$299 ($270 or £142).

The Vista Ultimate Upgrade was priced at C$299 ($270 or £142) with the cheapest option being the Home Premium Upgrade for C$199 ($180 or £95).

Microsoft Windows Vista Prices LeakedVista on Amazon
As the scheduled release date grows ever-nearer, prices are popping up elsewhere, with Amazon’s ‘pre-order’ pricing advertising Windows Vista Ultimate Edition at $399 (£210) and Home Premium at $239 (£126).

Upgraders could get the Ultimate and Home Premium versions for $259 (£136) and $159 (£84) respectively (these prices seem to have varied, depending on the site).

Availability was listed as from “January 30th, 2007.”

Microsoft Windows Vista Prices LeakedAs we reported earlier this year, there will be no less than six different versions of Vista, all in 32 and 64-bit flavours.

Users who like to live on the edge, can download Windows Vista pre-RC1 ISO file from here, but be quick – there’s only 100,000 downloads available!

Microsoft Vista

Spiralfrog Offers Free Universal Music Downloads

Spiralfrog Offers Free Universal Music DownloadsVivendi Universal, the biggest music group on the planet have signed a deal with Spiralfrog to let surfers download the contents of its man-sized music catalogue for free.

The New York based company Spiralfrog will be launching the new service offering Universal’s songs for download in December – but in US and Canada only – bah!

As some old bloke in the pub used to tell us, “You don’t get nuffink for free in the world, no way, not ever,” and for once he was right – surfers wanting to gorge themselves on all that luvverly free music will have to endure tons of adverts, presumably of the targeted kind.

The dreadfully named Spiralfrog are looking to take on the mighty iTunes, and have high hopes that punters will be quick to switch loyalties when download prices of nuppence are whispered in their shell-likes, compared to Apple’s current rate of 99 cents per song in the US.

“Offering young consumers an easy-to-use alternative to pirated music sites will be compelling,” enthused Spiralfrog Chief Executive Robin Kent said.

Spiralfrog Offers Free Universal Music DownloadsMaking it pay
With an estimated forty dodgy downloads to every legal download over the Internet, Spiralfrog could attract the huge number of users currently risking prosecution from pirate file-swapping services, making their money by sharing income from advertising with content partners like Universal.

Amongst the music industry cognoscenti, a few eyebrows have raised about the practicalities of the new service, with music industry specialist Josh Lawler telling the BBC: “The Internet is very much a viable media, but the trick is going to be getting it off the ground in the first place”.

“Spiralfrog will have to find a way to pay artists from the advertising dollars they are generating. But they’re not necessarily going to know how many advertising dollars there are and so some artists are going to be hesitant about it,” he added.

If Spiralfrog does get it right, the company could seriously shake up a market that saw 60 million MP3 players sold and 420 million single tracks downloaded last year.

Spiral Frog

Fox Plays With “Blinks”: Super-Short Advertising

Clear Channel, Fox Deliver Super-Short Advertising BlinksWe’ve all known for years that PVR’s have been eating TV advertising. Murdoch has been on top of this for ages too, which makes it all the more interesting to hear that his Fox network is using 2-second Blinks, adverts. Digital Music News covers what is happening.

Clear Channel Radio realigned its advertising strategy last year by structuring shorter spots, a move designed to spark greater listener stickiness. The strategy, dubbed “Less Is More,” has now gone into overdrive with the “blink,” an incredibly short spot that runs about two seconds.

The ultra-fast slot is now being used by Fox to promote several shows, including “Prison Break,” “House,” and “The Simpsons.” The quick punch is designed to create an instant connection, and drive subsequent viewers. “Like our breakthrough programming, these spots are one-of-a-kind, and through the power of radio, they will be heard across the country,” said Kaye Bentley, senior vice president at the Fox Broadcasting Company.

Clear Channel, Fox Deliver Super-Short Advertising BlinksOverall, Clear Channel Radio has experienced mixed results following Less Is More, though recent quarters have shown positive revenue increases. Clear Channel executives have credited those jumps to the shortened advertising slots, which address a major source of radio listener irritation.

From a broader perspective, the concept is also designed to discourage listener migration towards competing formats like satellite radio subscriptions and even iPod collections. Blinks have already run for “Prison Break,” and get started for “House” and “The Simpsons” early next month.

Dell Recalls 4 Million Laptop Batteries

Dell Recalls 4 Million Laptop BatteriesDell has announced that it is to recall millions of laptop batteries over fears that they could overheat and pose a fire hazard.

According to a report in the Wall Street Journal, Dell are working with the Consumer Product Safety Commission in what the commission is describing as, “the largest safety recall in the history of the consumer electronics industry.”

This big daddy of product recalls involves 4.1 million lithium-ion batteries manufactured for Dell by a unit of Sony and sold between April 2004 and July 2006.

The recall comes after Dell says it received six reports of batteries overheating, resulting in property damage to furniture and personal effects, although many suspect the figure to be much higher.

The problem hit the headlines in June 2006, when a Dell laptop burst into flames during a conference in Japan.

Photos of the flaming computer were posted on the tech site The Inquirer, with the eye witness reporting that the computer “suddenly exploded into flames” and “produced several explosions for more than five minutes.”

Dell Recalls 4 Million Laptop BatteriesA battery of battery recalls
This isn’t the first time that Dell has issued recalls for its batteries either.

In December 2005, the company was forced to recall 22,000 batteries in the United States after fears that they could overheat and create a fire hazard.

The jumbo-sized recall adds up to 18% of the 22 million notebooks Dell sold during the period, this rather raises questions about about the safety of other laptops using Sony-built batteries.

Inquirer

Images courtesy of The Inquirer.

Portable Media Players Hit US Consciousness

Portable Media Players Hit US ConsciousnessRecent research shows that US consumers are becoming more aware of Portable Media Players (PMPs), devices that can play video as well as music. Over 75% of 1,099 people polled were aware of PMPs.

The iPod video is picked out as the device that raised general awareness of the PMP, despite many not classifying it as a true PMP.

In-Stat estimates that the worldwide market for true, video-centric PMPs will grow to 5 million units by the end of 2006, up from under half a million just two years ago.

Putting on her wise-head, In-Stat analyst, Stephanie Ethier said, “Despite the fact that PMP shipments are finally gaining traction, suppliers and manufacturers continue to face challenges. PMPs will continue to compete with other portable devices offering similar functionality, such as notebook computers, portable DVD players, handheld gaming products, and other mobile devices.”

Portable Media Players Hit US ConsciousnessSony threw their hat into the PMP ring when they launched the Mylo earlier this week.

If you want to read the research in full, In-Stat will be more than happy to help you while taking $2,999 from you at the same time.

In-Stat

AOL’s Steve Case Sorry for Time Warner Deal

AOL's Steve Case Sorry for Time Warner DealSteve Case, co-founder of AOL, now ex-chairman of AOL-Time Warner, has said he was sorry for the merger between AOL and Time Warner. It is widely regarded as a deal that didn’t go very well, leading to internal wrangling and huge amounts of money being knocked of share values.

In an interview with well known US journalist, Charlie Rose, Case said he still believed the ‘idea’ of bringing together Time Warners content and broadband infrastructure, RoadRunner, with AOL digital expertise was right.

He resolved that “Ultimately it comes down to execution,” and that in this case that hadn’t been successful. Case said he missed the ‘power’ to execute what he thought was right.

When questioned further about it, Case then refered to his current company, Revolution, saying that they will only enter into agreements where they have a controlling interest, so they can “Take a long term view.” We take this as implying that this wasn’t the case when dealing with Time Warner.

When Rose asked him straight, “Was it a good idea, or not?”, Case gave a half smile and then laughed, trying to avoid a direct answer.

AOL's Steve Case Sorry for Time Warner DealWhen pushed, Case said from the point of shareholders of the two companies, employees & customers – it didn’t go as he’d hoped, it had been a disappointment and a source for frustration. Given the wide range of those included by Case, we don’t know who else might be disappointed who wasn’t included.

Given the stark choice of, “Sorry, Yes or No?”, Case said, “Yes I’m sorry I did it.”

Watch the video. The section relevant to this story starts at 30 minutes in.

Google Video: Advertising Sponsorship

Google Video: Advertising SponsorshipGoogle Video has been serving videos to the Internet population for over a year and a half now, both paid download via their Video Store.

Today, when researching a story, we noticed that they’ve also brought in a third model – sponsored playback, a new one to us. Never let it be said that given an opportunity to raise advertising dollars, Google aren’t at the forefront.

Above the video being played back is a banner containing the logo of the advertiser (in this case HP), a couple of lines of advertising copy and a couple of links.

How the financial on this works isn’t clear, but we’d assume that the owner of the contact will receive some payment from the sponsor, via gogole, for each video that is watched, in a similar way that the record companies get paid a small number of pennies when a people play their artists music on a monthly music subscription service.

One interesting feature is that the video is still available for purchase, as the version that is shown is at a lower quality than the for-sale version. Google call the for-free version Preview, although for our purposes, retrieving information from the programme, this is all that we’d need. You could see that other types of programs would benefit from higher resolution.

Google Video: Advertising SponsorshipClicking on Watch their Ad link opens a new browser session and plays the video advert from … Google Video. All very neat.

It is interesting to note that the cost from Google, in this case 99c, is significantly less than the price when purchased from Charlie Rose’s own site, which is available on DVD or VHS at at least $30.

What is powerful about this rendition of advertising with video content is that the brand is associated with the content, in our case a well known and respected US journalist, and the viewer is given the opportunity of watching the content. They aren’t forced to watch it, as we commented about at the end of the recent review of GoTuit, and are they given the opportunity to stop watching it whenever they feel like it.

Example of Google Video being sponsored by an advertiser.

US Stays Top Of The Spam League

US Stays Top Of The Spam LeagueOnce again, America remains firmly rooted to the top of the league of spam-relaying nations, accounting for a hefty 23.2 per cent of the world’s unsolicited email during the second quarter of 2006

Lurking close behind with a 20 per cent contribution to the global spam total is China (inc. Hong Kong), with South Korea in third with 7.5 per cent.

However, the figures from IT security firm Sophos reveal that both China and South Korea have managed to reduce their spam output since the first quarter of the year, unlike the US which has failed to reduce its spam for the first time in over two years.

Botnets of zombies. Aaaieee!
Sophos explained that the vast majority of the spam tracked by the company was relayed by botnets of ‘zombie’ computers hijacked by Trojan horses, worms and viruses, controlled by devilish hackers.

Graham Cluley, senior technology consultant at Sophos commented that the introduction of the 2004 US Can-Spam legislation in 2004 had resulted in a regular quarter-on-quarter drop in the proportion of US-based spam, Until now, of course.

“Given the number of arrests, and the huge fines dished out to guilty spammers, it is hard to criticise the US for failing to take action, said Cluley.

“Perhaps the reality is that the statistics cannot be reduced any further unless US home users take action to secure their computers and put a halt to the zombie PC problem,” he added.

Eurospam
When it comes to spam-per-continent, Sophos found Asia the busiest around, but noted that spam relaying in Europe continues to grow.

Europe collectively accounted for 25 per cent of the world’s spam in the first quarter of 2006, a figure that has now increased to 27.1 per cent, overtaking North America in the spam spreading league.

Ruski controllers
There may be no sign of Russia in the “dirty dozen” of steeeenkin’ spam-relaying countries, but Sophos reckons there’s still ’nuff bad boys to be found, claiming that Russian spammers may be controlling “vast networks” of zombie PCs.

US Stays Top Of The Spam LeagueEmbedded spam
Spams containing embedded images have seen a huge rise this year, leaping from 18.2 per cent in January to 35.9 per cent in June.

Using images instead of plain text lets spammers bypass some anti-spam filters that weed out spam by analysing the textual spam content.

Pump and dump
Sophos reckons that 15 per cent of all spam emails are now ‘pump-and-dump’ scams, up from just 0.8 per cent in January 2005.

We’ve suffered a ton of these scams which are designed to boost the value of a company’s stock in order for spammers to make a quick profit

“It is worrying to see so many pump-and-dump emails, often with embedded graphics, being spammed out to the general public,” commented Cluley.

“The people that act on these emails are not skilled investors, and do not realise that purchasing the shares is likely to reap no reward, benefiting only the spammers while creating a financial rollercoaster for the organisation in question,” he added.

Although we sympathise with his words, you’d have to be madder than Jock McFruitloop wearing jelly trousers to even consider buying any stocks recommended by these emails.

The Bad Boy tables

Spam relaying countries, April to June 2006:
1. United States 23.2%
2. China (inc. Hong Kong) 20.0%
3. S Korea 7.5%
4. France 5.2%
5. Spain 4.8%
6. Poland 3.6%
7. Brazil 3.1%
8. Italy 3.0% new entry
9. Germany 2.5%
10. United Kingdom 1.8%
11. Taiwan 1.7%
12. Japan 1.6%
Others 22.0%

Spam relaying continents, April to June 2006:
1. Asia 40.2%
2. Europe 27.1%
3. North America 25.7%
4. South America 5.5%
5= Australasia 0.7%
5= Africa 0.7%
Others 0.1%

Sophos

Europe Goes Nuts For Nokias, While The US Trumpets The Treo

Europe Goes Nuts For Nokias, While The US Trumpets The TreoAccording to figures compiled by mmetrics.com, a research firm who strut around in the exciting world of mobile market measurement, when it comes to mobile phones there’s a hefty transatlantic gulf in smartphone tastes.

In Europe, Nokias are the reigning kings and queens of the smartphone world, enjoying total top three domination in the big French, German and UK markets, while in the US the top two slots are held by the Palm Treo 650, with the Blackberry 7530 trailing in third.

The figures were based on a three month moving average up to the end of May 2006, with an impressively large number of subscribers surveyed (12,631 in France, 15,122 in Germany, 14,913 in UK and just under 34,000 in the States).

Europe Goes Nuts For Nokias, While The US Trumpets The TreoFrench say “Nous aimons Nokia”
Breaking the figures down per country, it seems that the French are keen to say ‘oui’ to the Nokia 6680, with an estimated 374,477 subscribers.

Coming in second was the Nokia 6630 with 287,723 subscribers and the Nokia 6600 bringing up the rear with 98,122 subscribers.

Europe Goes Nuts For Nokias, While The US Trumpets The Treo“Ja ist Nokia gut,” say Germans
It’s also a case of Nokia Über Alles in Deutschland, with the Nokia 6630 ratcheting up 278,818 subscribers, followed by the 6600 (250,682) and the 7650 (237,449).

Brits go waheey for the N70
In the UK, the smartphone of choice is the N70 with 471,874 subcribers, followed by the Nokia 6680 (433,405) and the Nokia 6630 (341,718).

Europe Goes Nuts For Nokias, While The US Trumpets The TreoAmericans go ape for Palm
When it comes to the land of hotdogs, mad presidents and fevered flag waving, it’s an entirely different story with the trusty Palm Treo crushing all before it and ne’er a single Nokia making the top three.

The Treo 650 CDMA smart phone is by far the most popular smartphone with over half a million subscribers (573,660), with the GSM version coming in second with 269,053 users. In third place is the trusty Blackberry 7520 with 267, 912 users.

Mmetrics

YouTube Sued For Copyright Abuse

YouTube Sued For Copyright AbuseYouTube 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 Sued For Copyright AbuseYouTube 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