Digital-Lifestyles

News In Brief

Blips of news

  • Twofour Get Parliament Webcasting Deal

    Twofour Get Parliament Webcasting DealTrebles 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.

    Twofour Digital

  • iPhones Take Out WiFi Network

    iPhones Take Out WiFi NetworkiPhone’s appear to be taking out chunks of the wireless network at Duke University in the US.

    We won’t get all technical on you by delving in to the tech-laden reasons as to why it _might_ be happening – they still don’t know how it is happening for sure – but the upshot of it is they think the iPhones are generating up to 18,000 requests per second.

    Barrages like this are crippling the WLAN kit, as it tries to deal with and make sense of each of them.

    Duke have been in touch with Apple about the problem, but so far the communication with Apple has been “one-way.”

    Given the number of tech mad loonies that have bought iPhones in the US, it is a little strange that no other sites have recorded the same problem.

    For the details on the story, trot over to Network World

  • Dow Jones Board Votes Yes: Murdoch One Step Closer To Ownership

    Dow Jones Board Votes Yes: Murdoch One Step Closer To OwnershipWe received a newsflash from the Wall Street Journal (I guess they would be the first to know) at 4:27 this morning that the Dow Jones board had voted in favour of the News Corp take over, with only Leslie Hill, a member of the Bancroft family, and Dieter von Holtzbrinck abstained from the vote.

    Christopher Bancroft – who it is understood is actively seeking alternatives to the News Corp. bid – left the meeting early.

    It’s reported that News Corp. was “grateful” to Dow Jones board for its vote.

    News Corp have been trying to get their hands on Dow Jones and the Wall Street Journal, to add to their already large portfolio of highly influential media titles and companies around the world.

    The next, and possibly final stage, is for the Bancroft family to approve the boards approval. Given the family has asked for more than $60 per share in the past – the current News Corp offer, valuing the company at $5Bn – it’s anyone’s guess which way it will go.

    There’s been considerable concern voiced about how good an idea it is for Rupert Murdoch to be in control of a major force of financial reporting in America.

  • AWOMO, Virgin Games Company To Float For $1Bn?

    AWOMO, Virgin Games Company To Float For $1Bn?We nearly fell off our chairs when we saw the Independent reporting that Virgin-backed games company, A World Of My Own (AWOMO) were hoping to list for $1Bn in London and Frankfurt.

    The Big Idea is that people will use the 3D world of AWOMO to download their games.
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  • Chatpad On Xbox 360 Announced

    Chatpad On Xbox 360 AnnouncedMicrosoft have confirmed that they will be releasing the Messenger Kit for the XBox 260 in the US this September, after a long period of building up anticipation for it.

    As well as a headset for voice chatting – which have been around since the original Xbox – the interesting part is the introduction of a full-sized, if mini, qwerty keyboard, letting you IM your mates until your thumbs bleed.

    While Microsoft aren’t disclosing any plans for Europe or the UK, they say it should retail at $29.99 when it goes on sale on 6th September.

  • Wii Sales 6:1 Against PS3 In Japan

    Wii Sales 6:1 Against PS3 In JapanFurther news of the power of the Wii arrives, with Japanese data service Famitsu Marketing Data Service reporting that the Nintendo Wii outsold the PS3 again in Japan.

    June saw another factor of one being added to the previous two months of PS3 thrashing with Wii outselling it 6.5 to one. The figure quoted are 270,974 Wiis against 41,628 PS3s.

    April saw a ratio 4:1 of Wii to PS3 sales and May a 5:1.

    Clearly these latest figures are just one territory, but we’ve been pointing out how much more popular the Wii was with the public since before its UK launch.

    The Xbox 360 is relatively no where with a tiny 17,616 being sold, putting the Wii outselling it at 15 to one!

  • David Sweeney: Quale, Intelligent Olfactory Channel: RCA 2007

    Listen to the Interview – [audio:https://digital-lifestyles.info/media/audio/david-sweeney-quale-RCA-2007.mp3]

    David Sweeney: Quale, Intelligent Olfactory Channel: RCA 2007This goes beyond the simplicity of smell-o-vision, to a far more deeper, emotional level. Using smells to associate to emotions, providing powerful triggers.

    16 essential oils, extracted from around Berlin (in this example usage) are held in the device. When a smell is needed to be generated, they are passed down a syringe tip to a piezo-electric disc and then atomised.

    One example used – instead of constantly checking your email, a ‘key’ smell is generated, so the person using it ‘feel’ like it’s time to check their email – triggered by the released smell.

    David’s site – makegoodstuff

    David Sweeney: Quale, Inteligent Olfactory Channel: RCA 2007

    We’re trying a new format with these RCA pieces. Rather than have text dominated reporting, we’re going to have the audio and picture do the speaking. Let us know what you think of the new approach.

  • WiiWare: New Original Games Channel Opening

    WiiWare: New Original Games Channel OpeningEveryone’s favourite games console manufacturer (except Sony, perhaps), is opening up another channel of content for its Wii.

    Nintendo have announced WiiWare, letting people purchase and download original games software.

    Nintendo have offered a service to download reworked classic games – Super Mario Bros, etc – to the Wii since last November. Indeed, earlier this month they announced that 4.7m of these classic games had been downloaded already.

    WiiWare will attempt to get legions of small software developers to create compelling, less-expansive games, without them having to be concerned with the hassle and cost of creating games on disk.

    Nintendo expect the first WiiWare content to arrive early 2008 – so coders, get coding!

  • Virgin Media: BBC iPlayer Via TV First

    Virgin Media: BBC iPlayer Via TV FirstVirgin Media tell us that they “will be the first” TV service to offer the BBC iPlayer service through their STB and remote control – rather than through a computer.

    Following yesterday’s Official launch of the BBC iPlayer, we thought this would of interest to follow up.
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  • Manhunt 2 Is “A Fine Piece Of Art”

    Manhunt 2 Is A Fine Piece Of ArtManhunt 2 has been hanging around the news all week long.

    It started off with being banned by the BFFC for sale in the UK, now it’s being called a “fine piece of art” by the game’s publisher, Take-Two.

    The game, written by Rockstar Games, must be liked by the chairman of Take-Two, as he is now on record say that he “Fully” stands behind the game.

    More extensively he release a statement saying

    “The Rockstar team has come up with a game that fits squarely within the horror genre and was intended to do so,” he continued, “It brings a unique, formerly unheard of cinematic quality to interactive entertainment, and is also a fine piece of art.”

    So there.