Mobile – Page 101 – Digital-Lifestyles

BBC Live Quiz Show First to Use Java on mobile

Broadcasters have flirted with interactivity in quiz shows for a long time – and there have been a few examples lately using mobile phones to SMS answers. However, the BBC has teamed with Tailor Made Films to develop the next stage – proper interactivity on multiple platforms, including a mobile phone and web-based Java applets. The game can also be played on Freeview and through satellite set-top boxes.

The project has been on the go for about 18 months, and has evolved since its inception. SMS was considered in the early days, but was rejected as it was too restrictive.

Neil Pleasants, Managing Producer at Tailor Made Films told Digital Lifestyles why they favoured Java: ” Java is portable – you can take it to other countries and it’ll work. Digital TV platforms might as well be written in Martian, they don’t transfer — the platforms differ wildly as their capabilities.”

The BBC website explains the format of the quiz: “Come And Have A Go… offers viewers the chance to challenge the studio winners head to head. Playing on interactive TV, Java, or web, teams at home answer the same questions as the studio teams. At the end of the first part of the show a satellite camera is whisked off to join the top scoring home team – wherever they are in the UK. In the second part of the show, the home team competes live against the studio team for the cash prize.” The cameras are on motorbikes distributed around the country.

Neil went onto explain how Java has enabled them to sell the programme into other markets with the minimum of trouble: “We’re taking the programme worldwide. When we went into countries and explained the idea, they loved it. But they didn’t know about the actual technology. We’ve made the technology as simple as possible and that’s the key, because that is so essential everywhere.” Tailor Made films even have an idea for a branded phone.

Their first phase was getting the programme into Western Europe, America, Australia and Scandinavia – the second phase will be Eastern Europe, Middle East, Japan and China.

Java also allowed Tailor Made to build high levels of security into the quiz applet to prevent cheating, including timestamping. This is just as well: the guaranteed minimum prize is UK£30,000 (US$55,000, €45,000) the largest ever weekly prize ever given out on a British television programme.

Neil believes that content is maturing to match the platforms available: “This is as interactive as it gets.”

The official website

Tailor Made Films

Sun’s Java home

Operate Your Video Recorder From Your Mobile Phone

Norwegian software developer Opera, responsible for a couple of the best internet browsers around, have announced the Mobile Interactive Programming Guide (mobileIPG) – which allows users to record TV programmes on their video recorders, even when you’re out and about and have forgotten to set the timer.

Christen Krogh, vice president of engineering at Opera said in a statement: “The mobileIPG means full freedom to see what you want when you want it, it takes just a few seconds to look up the program on the mobileIPG on your handset, and then activate your recorder at home with just a click.”

Opera hope that the new service will attract paying clients from TV operators to mobile phone networks.

Digital Lifestyles have yet to try the product out, but we’re sure they’ve come up with an imaginative was to eject the Mystery Science Theatre 3000 tape we left in the recorder last night and put a blank in.

Get your hands on an Opera browser here

3 Announce Videotalk to PC

We have to admit – it’s quite compelling: with 3’s new Videotalk to PC service, subscribers on the 3 network can call any PC with email and a webcam and have a videophone conversation. The service will roll out in Australia shortly.

It’s a great idea – and will help spread the use of 3G video phones because now you have more than just a few other 3G video phones to talk to.

NEC’s 606 and 808 handsets are already compatible – and a software upgrade will allow Motorola A920 users join in. PC users need a webcam and need to register to use the service before they can take calls.

The service is in use in Italy, and about to launch in Hong Kong. Calls are charged at national Videotalk rates.

3G.co.uk on the story

Japan Agrees on Digital Terrestrial TV Standard… for Mobile Phones

Japan’s six major television networks have agreed a standard for broadcasting and receiving digital television for mobile phones.

Fuji TV, NHK, NTV, TBS, TV Asahi and TV Tokyo have all signed up for the standard. “I think this will raise awareness among viewers about digital broadcasting and we hope it acts as a spur,” TV Tokyo managing director Katsumi Ueda told a news conference.

Services are due to start in April 2005, and will be free – but as yet, no handset or network providers have signed up. Interestingly, NEC released a prototype mobile phone that was compatible with Japan’s existing digital TV standard, but it suffered from power problems. See our recent article on DVB-H, linked below.

NEC’s digital TV mobile

CeBIT: Unless Vendors Work Together, Push-to-Talk is Dead in the Water

Push to Talk Over Cellular (PoC) has exciting implications for phone and network providers: the technology allows subscribers to send a voice message to someone in their address book. The message travels over the network’s data service, so doesn’t require real-time processing and is obviously not interactive – it’s a bit like a walkie-talkie.

Network providers are already enthusiastic about the new services they will be able to create around this service – and the new revenue streams it will bring them. However, there is already some disagreement over what standards will be adopted and how network providers will exchange PoC messages between networks.

Herman Weiffenbach, vice president of Motorola highlights the problem in CeBIT News: “We now have eight launches in prospect, with 18 active trials under way, 12 of which are in Europe. We also expect a further 16 in the first half of the year. It is all looking very promising, but without standardisation, it won’t fly.”

One of the things that will kill PoC for sure if it’s not sorted out quickly is the current lack of cross-network service. For the time being, you can only use PoC services with recipients on your own network. Nokia, Sony, Ericsson, Motorola and Siemens signed an agreement to enable cross-vendor operability, but this seems to be all they’ve done – there’s been no progress since.

One of the great things about standards is that there’s just so many to choose from: Nokia is not taking part in trials with Ericsson, Motorola and Siemens – because they believe their solution is already the best. The three other companies probably have “En usko” to say to that.

Nokia Push to Talk at 3g

Siemens’ attempt to get into the lead

T-Mobile Introduce Mobile Jukebox, Unleashes New Music Format on Unsuspecting World

T-Mobile have partnered with Sony Music and Unversal Music to provide a somewhat unique entry to the mobile music market. Called “Mobile Jukebox”, the service allows subscribers to download music clips to their mobile phones.

So far, there are 200 tracks available to choose from – but the real killer is that those tracks are between only 90 and 120 seconds long.

We think this one might have launched a bit early – with only tiny number of tracks currently available, and even those are brutally short, this has an air of “So what?” about it. T-Mobile intend to offer more tracks later in the year, and full length ones too – but will that be enough?

Thomas Gewecke, Senior Vice President of Sony Music Digital Services explained: “Mobile Mix enables music fans to download a 90 to 120 second excerpt of a song in just a couple of minutes, allowing them to get a feel for the music almost instantaneously, and takes the mobile music entertainment experience to an entirely new level.”

Mobile phone users tend to be young and demanding, and require quite high standards form their entertainment, so surely they want considerably more than just to listen to a music clip? It maybe that T-Mobile have misjudged their market here, or were just keen to get some sort of music product out as soon as possible.

T-Mobile on Mobile Mix

CeBIT: First Look at ExpressCard

PCMCIA, the expansion card format that was hard enough to spell, never mind configure, has a successor and it’s being shown at CeBIT.

PCMCIA was good for a while, but is showing its age – it’s pre USB, pre-Firewire and harks back to the days before even Windows 95. A replacement is on the way: the ExpressCard. It’s smaller, has a faster bus, uses less power and supports plug-and-play auto-configuration. Their bus is based on PCI Express and USB2.0 architecture – hence the hot-swap feature.

The new modules are half the size of their predecessors – they come in 34mm and 54mm formats and are a mere 5mm thick.

Look out for ExpressCards appearing towards the end of 2004 – compliant cards will feature an orange rabbit (obviously representing mobility and speed).The Express Card standard

CeBIT: The Future is in Integration, Not Technology

“There is not going to be one Next Big Thing – it’s going to be many things working together, combined to work seamlessly” said Motorola’s president and COO, Michael Zafirovski in his speech at CeBIT yesterday. This seems to be a common theme emerging from CeBIT, and is reflected in the nature of the mobile devices coming into the market.

It’s almost impossible to buy a mobile phone that is just a phone. Even the most basic phone available has a some sort of PDA functionality, games and a simple WAP browser. Many phones appearing now are in fact more sophisticated than the people you see chatting into them – and the phones at least will continue to get more sophisticated and useful.

Where the challenge for network providers and mobile phone manufacturers lies now is bringing several channels of communication together: many consumers have a fixed line at home (often more than one), a mobile for each person, a mobile in the car, a phone in the office, email on some devices not others … it goes on. Although solutions have been banded around for years (Wildfire, anyone?) the scale of the problem is now far greater than was anticipated before the rapid growth of mobile communications and internet usage began ten years ago.

The current situation does not allow for simplicity and will begin to turn users away unless investment into the seamless integration of devices and services begins to rival the effort put into getting the latest megapixel camera into the smallest form factor.

Opening remarks presented by Simon Perry at the Digital-Lifestyles theme day at IBC September 2003 (PDF).

CeBIT: Sendo Smart Phone Records 30 Minutes of Video

Weighing 129g and with a 176 x 220 pixel TFT display, the new Sendo X is yet another entry into the highly competitive smartphone market.

The phone features all the usual applications and gadgets that have come to define smartphones: digital camera, GPRS, PDA functionality – however, there are a couple of features that set it apart.

Video playback is enhanced though Sendo’s GraphiX engine – a coprocessor that ensures smoother playback of Real and MPEG4 video streams. With 32mb of RAM free to users, the phone can store 30 mins of video, or 1000 photographs from the 4 x zoom camera. Memory expansion is through SD cards.

Another new feature is it’s Voice Signal Technologies (VST) voice-activation function: Sendo claim that their VST advanced speech recognition allows users to access the phone’s functions and address book without having to train the phone to recognize their voice.

The phone runs Symbian’s OS and Nokia Series 60 applications, and is J2ME compatible.

Sendo on the X and its GraphiX engine

CeBIT 2004: 18th – 24th March 2004, Hannover

Digital Lifestyles will be covering CeBIT 2004, and we’ll publish the relevant key stories and news throughout each day.

ICT World Forum 2004

This year the forum will feature 32 speakers from 9 countries, and the theme across the three days is achieving business profitability through technology.

Highlights for us include Brian Kardon (CSO, Forrester Research Inc.), Andy Green (CEO, BT Global Services), Pekka Ala-Pietilä (President, Nokia Corporation) and Justin Lindsey (CTO, US Department of Justice).

With an emphasis on the technology trends of 2004 and CRM, there’s going to be a lot of discussion of the future of the mobile market place – for the consumer, the devices and for the service providers themselves.

Key Events at CeBIT

There will be 260 corporate lectures at CeBIT this year, we like the look of:

Mobile processes, services and mobile content – efficient design and security, mobile CRM

e-Government with Web Services

Mobile applications: navigation, tracking, RFID and mobile payment

Digital photography and IP-video security

Exhibitors

Amongst the 6400 companies exhibiting, look out for important announcements from Sony, Nokia, Micorsoft and all the usual suspects.

New Facilities at CeBIT

With over 200 802.11b access points installed all around the venue, delegates will have access to Wireless LAN in every area at the exhibition centre.

For the first time, the fair organisers are providing an SMS guide to the fair. If you get lost (perhaps on the way back from the bar, or you’ve left your fair catalogue under a heavy pile of carrier bags and promotional mouse mats), just text +3777-4-CEBIT with the name of the exhibiting company (your own, for example) and the location and stand number will be sent directly to your phone (so you can stagger back to check what happened whilst you were away, without too much embarrassment).

CeBIT Homepage