Software – Page 24 – Digital-Lifestyles

Vodafone Mobile Services Expansion: The Why

Vodafone has made three days of surprising announcements. Three of them for Web services soon to be accessible over their mobile network (MySpace, eBay and YouTube) and the other relating to the building out of their 3G networks in the future (analysis).

We thought it would be worthwhile taking a look as to why this might be happening and why it’s come at this time.

Why the push?
Well, lots of other companies are moving in to tread on Vodafone’s toes – example – Virgin Mobile now with NTL/Telewest TV/broadband/telephone service – as all forms of communication converge.

Vodafone is pretty much a mobile only company. They’re trying to change this, through deals with BT to offer fixed-line broadband and similar offerings in Italy and Germany. In the converged game, they’re pretty weak.

This weakness is leaving their previous highly-profitable dominance of the mobile space threatened.

They’ve been aware of the benefit of differentiating their service through providing access to content for a while, but these recent moves mark a serious step forward.

Previously it’s been about them providing the means of accessing content from third parties, games, music, etc. These most recent deals are about access to services.

I know content is being accessed, a la YouTube, but they’re actually providing access to the service … one that happens to be providing content.

What’s the benefit?
There’s many advantages to Vodafone on this.

Short term it’s about making people associate Vodafone with being on the leading-edge – “Wow, they’ve got MySpace and YouTube!”

It’s unclear how far this benefit will extend into the future, as more phones become easier to browse the Web, where these services live.

eBay, MySpace and YouTube all have fanatical following. When people become embroiled in them, they _must_ find out what has _just_ happened. They’re a modern day replacement for TV soap-operas.

Obsessions like these drive people to choose mobile phones that enable them to get access – and Vodafone will be shouting this from the roof tops to encourage people to switch to them.

Interestingly, those three services are also used by a great deal of people who don’t have a strong technical understanding. People who don’t know that the whole Internet is available through the Web Browser on their mobile phone. This changing is just a matter of time.

Another short-term benefit for them is the amount of revenue they’ll end up generating. We imagine that it’s cost Vodafone a pretty penny to get exclusives from all three services, but this will be made up by the seriously boosted data charges that they’ll be clawing in.

MySpace is pretty rich with bandwidth hungry media – lots of photos, and many many pages to check. Same for eBay.

The real earner for them will be YouTube. You’ll struggle to find an application that uses as much data as video and with the ability to pass links to favourite videos, subscribers will be helping their friends run up big data charges too.

Pocket Tunes v4.01 For Palm: Review (90%)

Pocket Tunes v4.01 For Palm: Review (90%) Pocket Tunes has long been the most popular audio player on the Palm OS, and the recent update to version 4 has produced a raft of cool new features including an Internet Radio Catalogue, a swanky new interface and album cover art support.

Loading up the application, the sleek dark blue graphics immediately impressed, offering a smooth, shiny, Vista-like interface.

Album art could now be seen on the main screen and clicking on the small image (or pressing ‘w’ on the keyboard) brought up a full screen version, albeit a tad pixelated.

Running along the top of the screen are current time and battery info, plus with access to the drop down prefs and options menus (more about them later).

Underneath is the song information area, displaying the track’s artwork, title, artist and album name.

A large, animated, two-tone horizontal bar keeps the user informed of the played/total time of the current track, with the option to tap or drag forwards or backwards through a song.

A window below displays five songs from the current playlist (six if you reduce the default font from small to positively teensy weensy), while bashing ‘L’ on the keyboard gives speedy access to the playlist manager.

Sitting below the track listing are tappable controls for shuffle & repeat and a draggable volume display bar with percentage readout.

Finally, a large row of five buttons at the bottom of the interface lets you rewind, play/pause and fast forward through your selections, either by clicking onscreen or by using the Palm’s hardware buttons.

Pocket Tunes v4.01 For Palm: Review (90%) Streaming Internet Radio
The final button is perhaps the most interesting, launching the Internet Radio manager, which offers a pre-installed catalogue of Shoutcast stations (previous versions required users to input station URLs in manually).

There’s a fairly comprehensive list available, although it has something of an American bias and, sadly, nothing from the good ol’BBC (the Beeb doesn’t provide the necessary aacPlus or MP3 streams).

Tuning into a station is a bit of revelation; even though we were connecting via a bog standard GPRS connection, the sound quality was generally excellent, with no stuttering.

We weren’t able to connect to all of the stations on the list however, but it was fun tuning into a Hawaiian radio station while looking out into the London gloom.

Of course, you’re going to need a very generous GPRS data allowance if you intend to use the radio frequently, so check with your network provider before settling into that four hour Icelandic folk remix.

Pocket Tunes v4.01 For Palm: Review (90%) As with MP3s we had no problems listening to radio streams in the background while we used the Treo for sending off emails and editing a Word document, although the phone was occasionally a tad sluggish when switching between apps.

The application handled phone calls well too – if we received a call, the stream would pause and then reconnect after the call had ended.

Mini console
Another nice feature is the mini MP3 player that can be called up when you’re using other applications and playing songs in the background.

This pops up on the lower half of the screen and gives quick access to song controls, so you can skip songs without having to open up the full program.

Formats
The player can handle all the major file formats like MP3, WMA, AAC, aacPlus, Ogg Vorbis, and WAV, with the deluxe version supporting PlaysForSure and DRM-protected content (but not iTunes files).

When hooked up to a PC, Pocket Tunes appears as a regular MTP (Media Transfer Protocol) media player and can then sync music, playlists and podcasts with any compatible desktop software.

Although we had no problem syncing over files, we preferred to make the job quicker by slamming the SD card into a media reader and transferring the files over that way.

Pocket Tunes v4.01 For Palm: Review (90%) Once the music is loaded up on your Palm, the program shuffles through the list and categorises the content into Artist, Album, Title and Genre sub-categories.

Sound quality
Although the makers Normsoft are making a bit of a hoo-ha about the improved audio quality in the new version, we were hard pressed to notice any big difference.

Maybe if we got out our Grado S60s it would become apparent, but seeing as Version 3 sounded good and, err, Version 4 sounds good too, we’re not complaining.

The 5-band graphic equaliser definitely seemed an improvement on the previous version though, as that seemed apt to distort when you tried to introduce Phil Spector-esque soundscapes. For some, the simple Bass Boost button might be enough.

There’s also support for cross-fading across variable bitrate tracks, if that’s your bag, with optional plug-ins adding expansion possibilities.

Options
As with previous versions, Pocket Tunes comes with a wealth of options to customise the program to your tastes. The program comes with a skinnable interface, with lots of mighty purdy free skins available from third party sites as well as Normsoft’s own site.

The skins can be moved to the memory card too, which is a good thing as the lardy 1.8 meg Pocket Tunes application will take a fair chunk of your Palm’s memory.

For those in a tight squeeze, it is possible to run the program off the SD card, albeit with some caveats, as Normsoft explained to us:

Pocket Tunes v4.01 For Palm: Review (90%) “We still do not recommend running Pocket Tunes from a SD card because you cannot launch a stream from Blazer (system limitation), however this is less problematic in 4.0 because it has a built-in Internet radio catalog, no longer requiring the user to use Blazer.

There is still an issue with Pocket Tunes sometimes being left in internal memory when running from a SD card. Some customers have found that PowerRun helps to prevent this from occurring.”

Conclusion
Sporting a smart and modern interface and a wealth of new features, this latest version of Pocket Tunes truly is a must-have application for music fans using the Palm OS.

We loved the new features – especially the Internet radio – and can thoroughly recommend the program, despite its upmarket pricing; $37.95 for the Deluxe version and $19.95 for the Basic (sans support for DRM-protected music, Internet Radio, AAC, WMA, crossfading and bookmarks.)

Features: 91%
Ease of use: 85%
Value For Money: 75%
Overall: 90%

Pocket Tunes

Technical Specifications
Audio Support: MP3 (all bitrates, CBR and VBR), AAC (all bitrates), WMA, Protected WMA (PD-DRM WMDRM9, Janus WMDRM10), aacPlus/HE-AAC v1, aacPlus/HE-AAC v2, Ogg Vorbis, PCM WAV.
Playlist Support: Stored on SD card: M3U, PLS. Stored on device: internal playlist format. Accessed via HTTP: M3U, PLS. Other capabilities: playlists that include other playlists are expanded automatically.
Streaming Audio: Protocols: HTTP, ShoutCast, Live365. Formats: MP3, aacPlus, Ogg Vorbis, WAV.
Album art: JPEG format any size (depending on available memory).

MySpace Mobile Vodafone Deal: Further Details And Opinion

You may have seen the announcement of the tie up between Vodafone Europe and MySpace Mobile we ran a short while ago.

We think this is a pretty big story, so we’ve been chatting to Vodafone and Myspace to get further details and thought we’d fill you in.

The UK will be the first market in Europe that Vodafone will release it in. The dates of the release are being very closely guarded. We tickled and cajouled in an attempt to get it tied down further, which resulted in us finding out it will be the second half of the year. Perhaps later, rather than sooner.

There will be a subscription fee, as is the case in the MySpace Mobile deal with Cingular in the US. The details of costs are currently unannounced.

MySpace Mobile runs on its own application, not through standard Web access. We’re not aware that this has been seen in the wild, so the completion of it may account for the yet-undisclosed release date for the Vodafone service.

Access to the app will be via the yet unannounced ‘selected handsets’ and it will be available for download from Vodafone Live!

Impact
While it might initially appear to be a great deal for Vodafone to capture the youth as customers, there may be clouds on the horizon. In a recent visit to a youth club, it was surprisng to see all of the collected 13-16 year olds using BeBo, with not one on MySpace. When asked why, they replied that they just found setting up and running BeBo a lot easier than MySpace. We can only assume that Vodafone did some decent research on who actually uses it, rather than what MySpace told them … didn’t they?

It’s not clear how much of a market there will be for this. As mobile phones handle Web browsing increasingly better, the need for a dedicated application drops away, as people simply use their Browser on any network. It’s been seen that a well-written dedicated mobile apps can still maintain an advantage – like Google’s mobile email client – due to the restricted interface intrinsic with mobile keyboards.

What will the features be?
The details of what MySpace-ers will be able to do …

MySpace Mobile Features:

* Upload and View Photos
MySpace Mobile allows Vodafone customers to select photos stored on their mobile device and upload them to their MySpace profile. They can also view photos already uploaded on any MySpace profile.

* Respond to Mail
Vodafone customers don’t have to wait to log on to a computer to read and reply to their MySpace messages. From their mobiles, they have the ability to send messages to their MySpace friends, read and reply to messages sent to them.

* Manage Your Community of Friends

MySpace Mobile allows customers view and manage friend requests. They can also perform basic friend searches giving users the opportunity to “click-to-add “friends into their network. They simply locate a MySpace profile they wish to add as a friend, and then select to add this user as a friend.

* Post Comments or Blog Entries
Update your blog live throughout the day by posting new entries on the move, or make comments to other users’ blogs or MySpace profile pages. To post a blog or comment, people simply view the appropriate section and click “Post” to create the entry. Users can save their work at any time, and any information entered will update both the mobile service and the online MySpace profile page.

* View Friends
Customers have the ability to view the friend list of any MySpace profile. The friend list contains a text listing of the friends, which when selected would show the profile picture along with a link to that user’s MySpace page, and the ability to add the friend to your MySpace contact list for quick bookmarking.

Vodafone Europe Gets MySpace Mobile

Vodafone Europe has signed an exclusive deal with MySpace to get MySpace Mobile on their service.

Although currently exclusive, MySpace are remaining elusive as to the length of the agreement. When we asked, they declined to be drawn on how long the exclusivity with Vodafone would last, preferring to tantalise with “our ambition is to get MySpace on as many platforms as possible.”

MySpace addicts will be able to feed their cravings when not glued to the computers.

To tantalise potential subscribers further, Vodafone will pre-load it on to ‘selected handsets.’

MySpace did a similar deal in the US with Cingular back in December 2006. In that deal Cingular charged their subscribers an extra $2.99/month, plus data charges for the privilege.

At the time of going to press it is unclear if there will be a similar charging scheme with Vodafone.

The financial terms of the deal were not disclosed.

More details shortly.

Flick Off AGAIN: Flickr-ites Still Don’t Want Yahoo! Accounts

That’s the response that Yahoo! (the owners of popular Web 2.0 photo sharing site Flickr) were greeted with when they announced that they would be forcing a merging of Flickr accounts with Yahoo! accounts.

Users who joined Flickr before its acquisition in March 2005 are known as ‘old skool’ users, and they use the original Flickr accounts to login, rather than the Yahoo! accounts used for those who joined after the acquisition. Old skool status is heavily valued in the community, and successive Yahoo! attempts to force migration from ‘old school’ accounts to Yahoo! accounts has attracted much controversy.

The migration of accounts is not a technical issue; Old skool members will keep their buddy name and are not forced to use any other Yahoo! services. Given that this is the case, it perhaps seems illogical that there is such a backlash. One old skool user’s view is in a post by Thomas Hawk, a keen Flickr user (and also CEO of a rival service).

Flick Off: We don't want Yahoo! accounts

Raj Parmer writes “I do not like the way Yahoo impose in this manner. I am an old skool member (which I was in a way quite proud of) but when it becomes mandatory to sign up to Yahoo, I will have to delete all my pics and close my account down and join with one of the other similar services on the net.”

The problem seems to be two fold. Firstly, Flickr users simply don’t want to be forced to give up their ‘old skool’ account; they are proud to have been part of one of the archetypal Web 2.0 products before it hit the mainstream, and do not want to see their status lost.

Secondly, there appears to be a wider problem within the Flickr community, namely concern about the direction in which Yahoo! might change the nature of Flickr. Yahoo! recently announced that it would be making use of Flickr images in its new Brand Universe program, a move which has concerned some users, and other attempts to integrate Flickr further into Yahoo! products are likely to be met with concern.

Unlike the last time Yahoo! attempted to merge old skool accounts with Yahoo! accounts (when they bowed to pressure and relented), it appears that this time they are determined. There may be a small number of old skool users who delete their photos, but there will be no major exodus.

Huw Leslie is editor of UK-based Web 2.0 and software blog Gizbuzz, and the co-founder of technology blog network Oratos Media. His personal blog is For Crying Out Loud!

Information Overload: How To Read The Web

It is often said that we live in the information era; the Internet is an enormous library of information (some high quality, some not so), with millions of new pieces being added every day. How to keep track of it all?

Information Overload: How To Read The Web The Answer
RSS is a technology many (including me) are turning too. If you haven’t heard of it already, RSS stands for Really Simple Syndication and is essentially a way of describing, or ‘marking up’, content in a way which allows it to be displayed in many different ways and in places other than the site which created it. Digital-lifestyles publishes an RSS feed, as do most other news sites, and I am thus able to aggregate many different sources into one system to allow me to read my news more efficiently, visiting only one site rather than many.

Unlike the process of checking websites you were interested in as and when you had time, RSS delivers the content as soon as it is published, whether you like it or not. Whilst you can still choose whether or not to read it within your reader, for many people seeing the notification ‘x new items’ is simply too tempting!

This problem of ‘information overload’ can be solved if there can be found some way of triaging the arriving information – in other words deciding what to read, and what to leave, and this is something that many different companies are working on, with two main schools of thought.

The Personalised Homepage
One option is a personalised homepage, with the more recent (and advanced efforts) coming from companies such as Google, Netvibes and YourMinis. I talked in more detail about these in December. Such a personalised homepage allows you to easily add content from RSS feeds (and other places) and drag them around your page into an arrangement which suits you. The page will typically show just the title of the item, sometimes with a short snippet, the theory being that this allows you to decide at a glance which posts you want to read, and thus click on to display the full item.

The advantage of this approach is that it is a very efficient way to display a lot of information in a relatively small space. The disadvantage is that it is sometimes difficult to tell whether or not a post is interesting based purely on its headline and a short snippet – with a personalised homepage it is impossible to quickly scan the whole article.

Information Overload: How To Read The Web The Fully-Fledged Feed Reader
A second approach, which I have found myself favouring, is the use of a full-blown feed reader, such as Google Reader or Bloglines (both online applications) or Newsgator (offline application). Google Reader will allow me to see on a left hand panel which sources have new items, and click through to see them. Alternatively, I can use the ‘river of news’ function which will display all new items in a long list, with each post expanding when I click on it. I find that I am able to get through as many as 100 new items extremely quickly by scanning the post in perhaps two seconds, and then either reading it in detail or using a hotkey to move the reader to the next post. I am able to add a star to posts I am particularly interested in, but perhaps do not have time to read in detail immediately, and come back to them later. The advantage of a feed reader is that a well designed program allows fast scanning of posts in full, rather than just relying on the titles, but the disadvantage is that it is not possible to pick at a glance which posts to read, as they are not all displayed at the same time.

Conclusions
In short, use of a personalised homepage will allow you to get through your news faster but you stand a greater chance of missing out on great content, whereas a feed reader may well take longer, but you are guaranteed to read everything of interest to you. I happen to prefer the feed reader.

Information overload is a problem the Web has been working hard to solve. RSS, because of its efficiency, created new problems, but ultimately moved internet content consumption forward for the simple reason that it allows people to display content in many different ways, allowing people to innovate, and get closer to the ultimate aim of us each reading only the news that we are interested in, and being able to find that news easily.

Huw Leslie is editor of UK-based Web 2.0 and software blog Gizbuzz, and the co-founder of technology blog network Oratos Media. His personal blog is For Crying Out Loud!

220,000 PS3’s At UK Launch

Sony Computer Entertainment UK’s managing director, Ray Maguire, has put a figure on the number of PlayStation 3 machines (PS3) that will be available at its UK launch, on 23 March.

220,000 PS3's At UK Launch Towards the end of an interview with SPOnG (the Super Players On-line Gamebase), he revealed his estimation to be 220,000 units, with the hope of getting a few more units if, “he goes down on bended knee.”

His rough maths to get to this figure is based on one million units being delivered to Europe as a whole for launch, and the UK having a 22% slice of that, making it the single largest market in Europe.

Maguire was keen to point out that it will be the largest launch the games industry has had to date, “Probably over four times PlayStation One, and close to double the amount of PS2s. So, it’s going to be a logistical nightmare – that’s a lot of trucks to get around.”

PS3 fanboys will also be excited to hear that, “Product is already on its way, on ships, at the moment, and there is more being generated every single day.”

The other point of interest will be the confirmation that the UK price for the 60Gb will be £425, despite the wails from prospective UK owners. There will be no lesser model (20Gb) sold in the UK, as there are in other places around the world.

The success of the PS3 is not a done deal however. The xBox 360 has been selling well for over a year and the Nintendo Wii has done pretty well too. Our observations at the GameOn exhibition recently saw much of the public interest directed towards the Wii rather than the PS3.

Microsoft Vista – Made by Web 2.0?

Vista - Made by Web 2.0? Bill Gates launched Vista this morning by emphasizing the role of the general public in its conception. “We’ve got over 5 million beta testers to thank,” he told a packed audience at the British Library in London. “They’ve helped to make sure that Vista is the highest quality product we’ve ever released. And then we picked 50 families and talked to them about how they used computing in their daily lives, generating over 800 changes in the final version.”

This isn’t the monolithic Microsoft of old, laying down the law and strong-arming others to follow its digital lead. Instead, Gates pointed out that Office 2007 (also launched today) “redefines collaboration in the workplace. It embraces the XML standard and that’s a big deal.” He went on to say that “the strength of Windows has always been the ecosystem around it, consisting of hardware, solutions and software partners. We’ve always had ten times as many applications for Windows as for other operating systems, and that’s allowed us to see software at low prices.”

Vista - Made by Web 2.0?

It’s perhaps no coincidence that the Vista ecosystem opens up a whole new environmental niche, in the form of miniature applications called Gadgets, a selection of which were unveiled (at great length) by Windows marketeers. Although superficially very similar to Apple’s desktop Widgets, the Gadgets on show were heavily branded by partners ranging from BetFair to Universal Music, and seemed to integrate worryingly easily with Microsoft’s software. If you block out a meeting in Milan, for instance, the EasyJet Gadget could pop up to suggest suitable flights.

It remains to be seen whether Gadget developers have consumer – rather than corporate – interests uppermost in their minds. Bill gushed: “I’m excited to see what people are going to do with Vista”. Any bets that malware Gadgets are just around the corner?

PCMover Vista: Transfer Your PC Life To Vista

Avanquest Software, makers of the old-faithful LapLink, have launched PCMover to help people transfer all of their PC data from previous versions of Windows on to Vista.

PCMover Vista: Transfer Your PC Life To Vista Getting a new machine with a new operating system is both a joy and a pain. The joy is the shiny new OS you have to play with and the likelihood that it runs considerably faster than the previous machine. The pain, is trying to make sure you’ve remembered all of the little bits of data tucked away in forgotten corners, and usually having to reconfigure all of your settings back to the way you had them on your previous machine.

That’s where PCMover comes in.

The software digs deep into your current version of Windows (going back to Win95), rummages around and gathers all files, settings and programs, including those held in the registry, for transfer to a new Vista-equipped machine.

It has mind-settling features such as not overwriting any pre-installed software on the new PC, or alter the old PC in any way and if you feel it’s all gone horribly wrong, there’s an undo function.

The available options to carry out the transfer are extensive. The package comes with a custom USB 2.0 lead which “includes a chipset that allows for a simultaneous, bi-directional flow of information between PCs,” that they tell us enables a faster transfer.

PCMover Vista: Transfer Your PC Life To Vista Beyond this, you can choose from a wired/wireless network for top speed, or resort to a USB 1.1 or a parallel cable. There’s also an option to use removable media such as a CD-R or DVD-R.

With the forthcoming release of Vista at the end of the month, there’s likely to be a number of supporting applications to help people switch.

Thomas Koll, Chairman and CEO of Laplink Software feel that they are in a strong position, as he was more that happy to share, “Because our competition can’t move software programs, they don’t offer the same total migration solution that we do.”

PCmover Vista is available now at the SRP of £49.99 from their online shop, or if you like to collect boxes, from selected retail outlets.

The Risks Of e-voting: ORG London Event

Clearly we love technology – it would be a bit of rum do calling ourselves Digital-Lifestyles if we didn’t.

The Risks Of e-voting: ORG London Event Firm believers in technology being used to add something, not being used for the sake of it, we also think there are some areas that technology should stay out of.

One being the counting of votes for elections. Democracy is just too valuable to be fiddled with.

We’ve all heard about the introduction of electronic voting machines in America and the huge number of concerns that has thrown up. Hell, there was even a film made about it – Hacking Democracy.

As we in the tech world know, anything that is on a computer can be manipulated. Removing people, who bring the appropriate check and balances to the process, is a very bad idea.

What does it matter if it takes a little bit longer to count the votes? Who’s hurrying? Let’s not forget that the party elected in the UK is going to be in power for four years, so a couple of extra days to count the vote matters not.

The Risks Of e-voting: ORG London Event There are just too many risks to let this go ahead.

Well, some bright spark appears to think that introducing computerised voting in the UK and further afield is a good idea.

Luckily the Open Rights Group (ORG) is holding some discussions on the 8th Feb to discuss this very subject.

If you’re near to London, we urge you to attend. This is important stuff.