James Purnell, Secretary of State for Culture, Media and Sport in the UK is currently in the middle of a manipulated photo row.
Full photo after the jump
Continue reading Photoshopped: UK Broadcast MP in Fake Photo Scandal
Category: Government
Microsoft European Anti-Trust Appeal: Actual Judgement Text
With the overview of Microsoft losing of their European appeal against the European court case completed, we thought you’d appreciate the actual judgement handed down.
1. Annuls Article 7 of Commission Decision 2007/53/EC of 24 March 2004 relating to a proceeding pursuant to Article 82 [EC] and Article 54 of the EEA Agreement against Microsoft Corp. (Case COMP/C-3/37.792 – Microsoft), in so far as:
Continue reading Microsoft European Anti-Trust Appeal: Actual Judgement Text
Microsoft Loses European Anti-Trust Appeal
Microsoft has lost its appeal against a court ruling that they abused their dominant position in Europe.
The judgement released today was handed down by the European Court of First Instance – following the hearings on 24, 25, 26, 27 and 28 April 2006 – is huge, running to 1373 points.
In the courts words “The Court of First Instance essentially upholds the Commission’s decision finding that Microsoft abused its dominant position,” this is despite Microsoft providing their own shortlist of people they found acceptable to provide evident to the court and request to delay the hearing.
Continue reading Microsoft Loses European Anti-Trust Appeal
UK Public Slow To VaVaVoom VoIP
Phone services offering freebie calls over the Internet are still only being used by a niche following according to new research.
A study by Ofcom has discovered that Voice- Over-Internet- Protocol (VoIP) services – like those offered by Skype, BT and Tesco – have failed to fire the public imagination.
Continue reading UK Public Slow To VaVaVoom VoIP
Ofcom Report: Internet & Mobile Usage Up. TV, Radio & Phone Down
Today Ofcom have released their yearly Communications Market report, covering fixed and mobile telecoms, TV, radio and Internet use.
It’s a massive collection of information and statistics running to 332 pages, covering the habits and preferences of the UK population during 2006.
Continue reading Ofcom Report: Internet & Mobile Usage Up. TV, Radio & Phone Down
OFT Look Into Sky Buying Amstrad
The UK Office of Fair Trading has issued an Invitation to Comment on the proposed deal of Amstrad being bought by Sky.
The OFT does this when they thing that the deal needs to be looked at and is the first stage of possibly taking it further.
We’re sure that this will be welcomed by the various other companies that currently provide Sky with digiboxes around the world, and potentially by other too.
If you want to leave a comment, details can be found on the OFT site.
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 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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Twofour Get Parliament Webcasting Deal
Trebles all round at Twofour Digital as they announce the winning of the three year contract to produce and host the webcasts of all proceedings from the House of Commons and House of Lords, made available through the Parliament Web site.
The webcasts include live coverage of all UK parliamentary proceedings and Select, Public Bill and General Committees as well as selected archive footage.
We imagine this is in no small way due to Phil Haggar now being within the Twofour fold, them having bought his Makeni Webcasting production company back in April this year.
What’s the relevance? We first met the very competent Mr Haggar when he ran Westminster Digital way back in 1999 – whose business backbone was … Webcasting Parliament.
It appears that Twofour’s ambitions don’t stop there, besides growing through acquisitions of companies, it’s also working for the European Parliament to design and deliver a ground breaking webTV channel broadcasting scheduled content in 20+ languages.
Ofcom: Cut Mobile Number Transfers To 2 Days
Ofcom has floated a proposal to simplify the process of moving your mobile phone number to another provider and cutting the transfer time to within two hours, a stark contrast to the five days it takes now.
With the two hour goal just over two years away, Ofcom has ruled that the mobile industry must reduce the time taken to a getting-close-to-reasonable two working days, starting on 1 April 2008 (why do UK organisations persist in using 1 April? It’s so open for abuse if problems arise).
Continue reading Ofcom: Cut Mobile Number Transfers To 2 Days