Platforms – Page 145 – Digital-Lifestyles

Picture Messaging Slow in the UK

Although picture messaging seems very popular with troops in Iraq at the moment, the service is yet to make any impact in the UK, says a survey by NOP.

Texting took a while to take off – but look what happened when it eventually did. Network providers are hoping for much the same thing – in fact, Sicap, who provide messaging products to mobile operators are rather hoping that Euro 2004 and the Olympic games will lure customers into MMS adoption.

There are two main reasons given for the lack of messaging: 45% don’t have a handset (kind of crucial, really – and also applies if your friends don’t have any either), and 17% don’t know how to send them. Odd then, that they would go to the expense of buying such a well-featured phone. But given that I still receive text messages THAT LOOK LIKE THIS, then it’s not surprising that people only have a limited amount of patience in learning how things work.

Indeed, on the rare occasions when I venture out, there seems to be little use of picture phones in real life situations. Phone users tend to take a few snaps when they first get their new phone, but after a while apathy, privacy infringement fears and the hail of tutting from those nearby soon dampen any enthusiasm for sending your mates a picture of the great time you’re pretending to have.

“The findings of our survey highlight that we will still have a lot more to do as an industry to encourage consumers to embrace MMS in the same way as they have SMS,” said Per-Johan Lundin, Head of Marketing, Sicap. “The first goal is to drive as many MMS compatible handsets into the hands of users as possible. Secondly, the services need to extremely user friendly like Vodafone Live. But the final piece of the jigsaw puzzle is compelling content. Some of this will be generated by users themselves but a lot will need to be generated around the content that consumers are really interested in like sports.”

If picture messaging is this slow in the UK, then you can bet it’s nowhere in the US, which tends to drag behind Europe in the mobile market.

Sicap

Boys Shunning Toys to Play Video Games

The NPD Group has published a report that confirms and adds detail to a view that many have held for some time: non-video game toys are losing the battle for our children’s time and attention.

This is particularly evident with older boys from ages 9 to 12 – they show a marked tendency to move away from traditional toys to playing video games. Girls seem to spend about the same time on toys and video games – but as they get older, they tend to find interests away from video games.

According to the report, the average time children among the ages of 5 to 12 spend playing video games is 4.2 hours per week, with one-third (32 percent) of boys and only 10 percent of girls playing more than six hours per week. Nearly half of the children in the study began playing video games between the ages of 4 and 5, with 20 percent beginning at age 3 or younger.

“Video games demand the attention of toy manufacturers who want to understand their implications to play time with traditional toys,” said Michael Redmond, senior industry analyst, The NPD Group. “For toy manufacturers, determining how to leverage the ‘power’ of video games in order to take advantage of their popularity through different marketing tactics is essential. By researching which types of video games are most popular among children, toy manufacturers can discover new licensing opportunities.”

Categories that are suffering are ones that previously had a very strong grip on the boys’ market – action figures, building toys, puzzles and vehicles. This has been demonstrated by poor sales by companies specialising in toys these areas, with the Lego Company being a high profile victim.

Indeed, my own Lego collection has been sadly neglected since I picked up Eve, though I might dust some off later. To make a Minmatar Tempest, obviously.

Infinium Labs Sets Launch for Phantom Console

We have covered the on/off, is it real, is it vapour history of the Phantom Console a number of times.

We now learn that Infinium Labs are at E3 showing the Phantom Console on an 8,000 sqft stand and signing up game developer for the platform. They have also released their pricing plans.

The Phantom is essentially a sealed box containing a high spec PC that has been designed for gaming, so comes complete with a high end graphics card. What makes it different is that the games are loaded on to it via broadband, so not only are there no physical distribution cost for it, but the payment models for the games can vary from single play rental to ownership.

Following its planned 18 November launch, it will sell for $199 or for free, if two years of membership to the $29.95 per month broadband gaming service, Phantom Gaming Service, are signed up for. At the start of the service a large number of free games will be available.

The sleek-looking device will be manufactured by Biostar in Taiwan, and will feature a 40GB hard drive, AMD Athlon XP 2500+ central processing unit (CPU), the NVIDIA GeForce FX 5700 Ultra graphics processing unit (GPU) and the NVIDIA nForce2 Ultra 400 platform processor. It will also ship with gamepad, mouse and keyboard that they are labelling the Phantom Lapboard, which they claim gives easy control over the keyboard and mouse even when sitting on a couch.

There is plenty of innovative ideas in the Phantom such as the way the capacity of the hard disk is managed. The unit will notice when the drive is becoming full and will invisibly remove the least played games, automatically uploading them from the central server if the gamer request a play.

Kevin Bachus, president of Infinium Labs previously worked in a senior position at Microsoft in the Xbox division.

It is a brave company that takes of the likes of Sony, Nintendo and Microsoft, and all gaming consoles live or die on the support of the games developers – if there is no strong flow of quality titles, people will not buy. Mr Bachus is not alone in thinking it is a good idea; Infinium has just $46m in first round funding.

Infinium Labs

SnapStream FireFly Media PC Remote Released

One important area for addressing your media within the home will be the ability to operate computer that is holding your hundreds of films, thousands of music tracks and endless media sources will be the remote control. Clearly you will not want to be forced to use a keyboard and mouse.

Many companies are starting to bring out products that address this market and SnapStream Media have released a product this week that they originally announced at the start 2004.

The ‘Firefly’ remote integrates with more than 80 popular digital media applications like Microsoft Windows Media Player, online music download service Musicmatch, DivX, WinDVD and SnapStream’s own Beyond TV.

The remote has many buttons on it including five programmable media buttons provide instant access to music, TV, video, photos or DVD applications. For programs that it cannot directly control it has a ‘Mouse Mode’

By using Radio Frequencies (RF) the remote can transmit signals through walls and up to 30 feet away. It comes with its own media center software, SnapStream Media’s Beyond Media that has been designed with a ’10-foot user interface’, meaning that it has been designed to be used for easy viewing and across-the-room control.

Currently it is only available through the snapstream online store for $49.

Remotes are going to be a hot market and we understand from one of the market leaders that there are some special things in the pipeline for later in the year.

SnapStream FireFly information

Nintendo DS and Sony PSP news hits mainstream

E3, the LA games show, is on the nearly upon us and it’s a reflection on the level of competition within the games industry these days that lots of news is coming out prior to the show. Yesterday we covered the pre-show news of EyeToy:Chat and today Reuters is covering the upcoming battle between Sony and Nintendo with their new handhelds.

To those who have been following the gaming market, the arrival of the Sony PSP and Nintendo DS are not news. What will be news is the exact specification and capabilities of them, as most discussion on the subject has been conjecture.

What is known is that the PSP will be more than a games machine, it will also play music and films. The DS will have two screens – DS stands for Dual Screen.

Nintendo has tempted furious discussion in how the DS will be operated, with some who may know more added to this. “This will not be a machine where you push the ‘A’ button or ‘B’ button and move the direction pad, but a completely different way to interact with the device,” said Hirokazu Hamamura, president of “Famitsu” game magazine publisher EnterBrain.

Nintendo has been very strong in the past in getting their gaming platforms working together. The portable GameBoy Advance (GBA) can connect to the GameCube games console, and in fact games such as Animal Crossing let the game characters pass between the two to ‘live’ between them. As we’ve previously covered, Sony is planning to mirror this with the PSP, PS2 and PSX connecting.

Before either the PSP or DS are released, Nokia will be releasing its new version of N-Gage, the QD. We will be testing and reviewing it at the end of May.

Reuters – Sony, Nintendo Aim to Wow Gamers with New Handhelds

Sony EyeToy gets Sociable

Slowly and steadily, Sony is building on the usage and application of the ground-breaking EyeToy webcam add-on for their Playstation 2. The latest announcement is EyeToy:Chat, which expands the tool into a far more social area.

As you probably already know, EyeToy is a low cost Webcam that plugs into Sony’s Playstation 2 and is placed on top of the television, pointing into the room. The player controls the game by moving their arms, body and head around, which in turn interacts with the games. There is no need to use a joypad. It was originally released as EyeToy:Play and came with twelve mini-games; Kung Fu – chopping opponents, the inevitable dance games – Saturday Night Fever-style arm waving, even Keep-up – using the head to keep a ball in the air and knocking it into objects.

EyeToy: Chat brings voice, chat, video mail, video chat and a selection of video-enabled simple games such as chess and checkers. Utilising the broadband adaptor the text chat rooms allow 256 people to talk together, with 16 people able to converse at one time in the voice chat rooms, as well as real-time video. When people are in one-on-one video chats, the options to play the simple games are presented. The video mail feature will allow users to send 30-second video messages to anyone on their buddy list.

Clearly safety will be a big concern for parents and Sony’s London Studios, the original inventors of EyeToy, who developed Chat and have spent considerable efforts in trying to make the product as safe as possible. User will need to register with Playstation Net to use it and will only be bale to take part once they enter the PIN that is send to their home address. With Chat rooms being moderated and a clear processes for grievances Sony feels “‘EyeToy: Chat’ is one of the safest communication packages available on any system on the market.”

The whole of the Digital-Lifestyles office is looking forward to its European Summer release.

Apple’s iPod dissenters continue. Are they right?

It is no surprise to see a rise of articles questioning whether Apple can hold onto their storming lead in selling MP3 player and the music that goes on them. They currently have, by most estimates, around 50% of the MP3 player market to themselves and 70% of song sales. Many companies, technology, consumer electronics and content owning, are now waking up to how far they have let Apple go.

Some people are starting to raise the possible ghosts of Macintosh – where Apple foretold the rise of windowed interfaces for computers, only to be overtaken by the growth of Microsoft. Apple’s response then was to pursue niche markets, originally DeskTop Publishing (as it was known then) and latterly Desktop Video. It is arguable that this is the approach they have taken again with music

Last time around they made mistakes. Steve Jobs bringing John Sculley onboard to run the company, and Sculley subsequently persuading Apple to remove Jobs, being the biggest. Sculley then went on to make many, many mistakes of his own. Who knows how different it might have been if Jobs had stayed in charge.

Many have drawn comparisons between the recent attempt to ‘open up’ iPod to other music services and Microsoft’s similar, and ultimately doomed attempt to open up Macintosh.

We feel it is important to not forget Apple had a 909 percent increase (not a misprint) in iPod sales in the first quarter of 2004 over the same period the year before. Equally let us also not forget that this is the start of media becoming digital and Jobs hasn’t even started on either music devices for home use or and type of video device.

Reuters – Apple’s iPod Lead Creates New Challenges, Analysts Say

AMD outsells Intel-equiped Desktops claims analyst

Intel has had an enormously aggressive period where they have attempted to out Ghz their competition. We now learn that desktop computers fitted with their processors from the competitor, AMD (Advanced Micro Devices) have outsold those equipped with Intel.

It is important to get this into perspective. The figures claimed by Current Analysis were only for the week ending April 24 and Current Analysis have only been studying this particular market since November last year. The figures were also just for desktop computers, not portables, where most of the market growth is. Intel currently hold 81 percent of that market.

The analyst, Toni Duboise from Current Analysis appears to not see the AMD-equipped desktop continuing in the same way, citing Intel’s new-this-quarter Grantsdale chipset to return them to dominance. Grantsdale will have faster memory (DDR2 -double data rate 2) and importantly an integrated wireless access point. We feel this is the killer feature, enabling the normal, non-technical user to easily setup their own home network, for file sharing and importantly media sharing.

Current Analysis

Read

Jens of Sweden release MP130, complete with mirror

The latest MP3 Flash-memory music player from Jens of Sweden has just been announced (so recently that they don’t have English details available). The stylish devices has all you would expect from a mini-MP3 player, currently up to 512Mb of storage, record function dictaphone and FM-radio. Amazingly this little beauty weighs the same as eight sheets of A4 paper.

The unexpected features start with a mirror finish for use when it’s not on. When it is on, the multi-coloured organic LED display shines through the mirror and interestingly it has a clock and alarm built into it. The other surprise is the addition of support for Ogg Vorbis, the open, patent-free audio encoding format that is the preference of the tech-savvy. Jens have improved the battery time over the MP-100 to 18 hours and can drive big headphones.

We’ve spoke to Jens and they tell us that there is a 1Gb version coming out in June. The recommended ex-VAT UK prices are 128Mb £105, 256Mb £145 and 512Mb £190, which should be slightly cheaper in store.

Sadly they are only supporting USB1.1, not USB2.0, which would significantly reduce the speed music could be exchanged with it.

We at Digital Lifestyles office are fans of Flash MP3 players, given their unnoticeable weight during commutes. Longer journeys demand hard-drive-based players.

Jens of Sweden MP-130

Ogg Vorbis

FCC Requires Firewire in Set-top Boxes

A Federal Communications Commission (FCC) directive which came into force this month, requires cable operators to provide a Firewire (IEEE1394) -enabled set-top box to customers who require them. The FFC have long been promoting interoperability between STBs and other equipment, and this looks like another step down that road.

According to an HP paper on the subject (linked below) “The distributed set top architecture becomes more compelling when multiple devices, interconnected by a 1394 cluster/backbone network, can access an access network gateway simultaneously.”

Using the Firewire interface, customers will be able to connect their STB to a range of other devices, such as PVRs or Firewire enabled PCs and Macintoshes. Customers will be able to capture MPEG2 streams to for storage elsewhere – provided it’s within the 4.5m reach of a 1394 cable.

A Firewire interface doesn’t mean that customers will just be able to rip content – anything coming through that port can still be protected by DRM measures, IEEE1394 is just an interface after all. However, the inclusion of a Firewire port does allow the distribution of protected content to other devices around the home.

HP’s report on Firewire and set-top boxes