Digital-Lifestyles

News In Brief

Blips of news

  • YouTube On iPhone: H.284 Encoded

    YouTube On iPhone: H.284 EncodedWith just over a week until the whole of humanity is saved and we shall never have to worry about disease again launch of the iPhone in the US, Apple have let it be known that they have been getting even closer to YouTube.

    YouTube have been busily re-encoding lots of their videos to H.264 and the Apple iPhone (aka Mankind’s Saviour) will be the first phone to make use of them. The advantages to Apple is PR (You’re reading this) and the playback of H.264 should be more battery efficient, as it doesn’t need the whole of a Flash player to render the videos on the handset.

    Over 10,000 video will be available on the 29 June (iPhone day) with all of the other videos following suit, it’s expected, by Autumn (Fall) this year.

    By way of a lovely tie-up, it’s also the day that sees the YouTube on Apple TV go live – after they do the download update to their little boxes.

  • BeeBird: FM Transmitter

    BeeBird: FM TransmitterBeeBird, another FM transmitter reaches us, this time with a pretty decent look about it.

    The Chinese manufacturer, netSharp, got in touch with us give us the heads up.

    There’s a not-insubstantial 199 channels available for transmitting your fave sounds. The frequency range that can be chosen between, is 88.1 – 107.9MHz.

    The chosen frequency is displayed on the LCD display, while the simple up/down shuffle changes the frequency.

    It’s got FCC approval, and as long as its output is under 50 nanoWatts, it will be legal in the UK under OfCom rules too.

    It looks at light as it is at 30g excluding the one AAA battery it runs on (there’s also a car power adaptor available). As you’d expect, it has a 3.5mm headphone jack, so will play from any sensible music source.

    Price? Not clear yet. We hadn’t heard back before going to press.

    NetSharp BeeBird

  • Plazes Launches Out Of Beta

    Plazes Launches Out Of BetaPlazes, a service that enables its users to create geo-indexed information, has finally come out of beta to a release version.

    We’ve been using Plazes for over two years now, so its beta phase has been pretty extensive. In that time it has grown not only in number of users, or locations ‘discovered’ – it’s topped 20,000 places in over 120 countries now – but in terms of functions.

    Since we last looked at it, about six months ago, it’s gained a Twitter-like function – the ability to add short messages telling people what you are up to at any time of the day. This can also be done by mobile phones these days.

    Further new additions bring the ability to add comments to any of the Plazes – anywhere with a WiFi connection – providing a review function as well.

    If you haven’t see it before it’s well worth having a look at – Plazes

  • AVS: China’s H.264 Rival In Testing By China Telecom

    AVS: China's H.264 Rival In Testing By China Telecom It’s clear that China like to do things their own way.

    The latest in the list is a video CoDec’s, the algorithm that is used to compress/decompress video signals. Much of the world currently uses H.264, but China has developed its own equivalent, that they call AVS, standing for Audio Video coding Standard – an acronym that is bound to cause confusions with the Microsoft-backed AVC.
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  • Alan Johnston Video Online

    Alan Johnston Video OnlineMuch relief for the relatives and friends of BBC Journalist Alan Johnson as a video of him speaking, apparently in good health, has appeared on the Internet.

    Many sites are now carrying it, like the BBC itself and The Telegraph, but in typical media fashion they have chosen to edit the video. We’ve embedding the video below.

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  • Sky Probed Over ITV Share Holding

    Sky Probed Over ITV Share HoldingThe UK Department of Trade and Industry has referred Rupert Murdoch’s Sky purchase of nearly 18% share holding in major UK broadcaster ITV.

    In the words of Alistair Darling, the Secretary of State for Trade and Industry, “My decision reflects consideration of the reports I have received from both the Office of Fair Trading and Ofcom and of other representations I have received about this matter.”

    This action won’t be unexpected at Sky, Ofcom and the Office of Fair Trading recommended this back on 27 April this year.

    Sky has released the following statementSky notes today’s announcement by the Secretary of State for Trade and Industry. We look forward to engaging with the Competition Commission as the ongoing regulatory process enters its next phase.Translation: Bring it on.

  • Legal Action Against Apple Over MacBook Displays

    Legal Action Against Apple over MacBook DisplaysJust after the back-patting of the release of the upgraded Apple MacBooks last week, there news that Apple is the target of a class-action in the US.

    The case for false advertising and misrepresentation centers on the claims by Apple that the MacBook and MacBook Pro notebooks display supports “millions of colors” and offer views “simply unavailable on other portables.” The plaintiffs say this isn’t the case and that they are only capable of displaying the “illusion of millions of colors through the use of a software technique referred to as ‘dithering.”

    To get all medieval on your arse with the numbers – the monitors is only capable of 6 bits per channel (18-bit colour), rather than 8 bits per channel. This enables the displaying of only 262,144 colours without dithering, as opposed to the 16 million colours that 8-bit could do.

    More when we hear it.

    (via Appleinsider, where you can find a PDF copy of the complaint)

  • PSP Online Store Coming

    PSP Online Store ComingSony is adapting their idea of the PS3 online store, taking it to their handheld games machine, the PSP – in the US at least.

    It’s expected that a wide variety of content could be downloaded to it – demos, full games, possibly even music and videos.

    With a planned start date of Autumn, or Fall for our US readers, access will be via the handheld’s Wi-Fi, using the Web browser that comes built-in.

    It’s not exactly a lightening move, given that the UK release date of the PSP was September 2005 – and that was behind the US and Japan. This was acknowledged by Jack Tretton, Sony Computer Entertainment America president, “I think the advent of a long awaited and quite frankly long overdue ability to deliver a downloadable service for the PSP will help us out a great deal.”

  • BT Shout “We’re Number One” In Broadband

    BT Shout We are Number One In BroadbandBT are rather pleased with themselves today as they’ve gained the number one position, as Britain’s most popular broadband retailer.

    They now got 3.66m broadband customers which, in their words “leapfrogs” them over Virgin Media (NTL/ Telewest as was).

    BT are of course running a reduced price scheme for the first six months of sign up – as are Virgin Media. The big difference between the two offers is the entry price – BT £8.95/month and VM £14.99. We would suggest that this has had a major impact in achieving BT’s current number one position (as well as buying PlusNet a short while back).

    We’ve just a little, quick maths on the number of BT’s subscribers.

    There’s healthy cash flows for BT in this game. Even taking the customers to be on the lowest package, they’ll be clawing in £66m _per month_. This rises to £91m if people are on the highest package.

    On a yearly basis that’s broadband subscriptions earning for BT of between £792m and 1.092 Billion a year! Don’t forget you also _have_ to have a phone line with them to have their broadband, so extra earning there.

    Not a bad little business broadband has turned out to be for them really. Makes you wonder why they were so reluctant to get going back in the late ’90’s/early 2000’s.

  • Tivo Swivel Search Launched: Content Beyond The Box

    Tivo Swivel Search Launched: Content Beyond The BoxTivo have released a new search function that searches over not only the content on the box or that provided by the broadcaster subscribed to, but stretches beyond this to encompass relevant results from the TiVoCast service and Amazon Unbox™ on TiVo.
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