Software – Page 42 – Digital-Lifestyles

Google Analytics: Where’s The Data Google?

CRASH! Did you hear that? Any idea what it was? That was the sound of the Web traffic analysis market crashing to the floor following the no-charge release of Google Analytics.

Well it was until today, when a number of people were finding that the data that should have been collected on site for over 24 hours hasn’t appeared for analysis. Google quote that data should be available after only 12 hours.

The delay in reporting will give some thin hope to charge-for analysis service. We’d imagine that it will be short lived as we’re pretty certain that Google will get the service pumping out the stats soon and suspect that the delay has been due to a huge demand.

How much? Free
The service is generally, of course, available at no charge as it is, as with everything that Google does, designed to drive additional sales for Google’s advertising.

Always remember, Goggle may look like a search engine company, but it is, in fact, an advertising company.

The only exception to free usage of the service is sites with over 5m page views per month. Hey guess what? If you have an active Google AdWords account, you’re given unlimited page view tracking. There is no mention of how much it might cost if you don’t have an active AdWords account. Do you see a pattern here?

It looks like the service is comprehensive both in the breadth of reports available and in its thoroughness of reporting. Examples are that Google enable the tracking of external links, something of great use to many media companies, by simply adding some JavaScript to the link. It even easily tracks events within Flash files.

The history
Google bought Urchin Web Analytics for an undisclosed amount back in March this year. At the time, many in the online reporting world started to tremble.

They already had a number of big name customers like GE, NBC, Procter & Gamble, NASA and AT&T. Prices they charged varied from $495 (only covering 100,000 pageviews/month) to $4,995 for their Profit Suite. Prices increased depending on the number of Websites that were monitored.

Google’s free offering is based on Urchins online reporting offering.

Pressure on reporting companies is coming from other directions like, Microsoft with their AdCenter and eBay which has just launched a subscription-based service.

Google Analytics

Big Problems For Sony Continue, Now EULA

Big Problems For Sony Continue, Now EULA This weekend, there’s been lots of furious chat on blogs and Slashdot about the EULA that comes with SonyBMG’s audio CDs.

An EULA? What’s that? I hear you cry. An End User Licensing Agreement (EULA) is something that has been shipping with software packages for a very long time – the cold-hearted view of them is they impose restrictions on the purchaser while absolving its producers from any liability.

To have an agreement shipping with an _audio CD_ in itself is pretty strange. The EULA may well be related to the software that is shipped on the protected CDs, not the music – but this is now unimportant as the generally held view is that it is for the music.

It certainly has got the goal of a few – but it’s the terms of this 3,000 word EULA that has most up in arms. Some of the highlights/lowlights of it are

If you move out of the country, you have to delete all your music. The EULA specifically forbids “export” outside the country where you reside.
If you file for bankruptcy, you have to delete all the music on your computer. Seriously.
You can’t keep your music on any computers at work. The EULA only gives you the right to put copies on a “personal home computer system owned by you.”

The full list is detailed on the EFF site.

All of this builds up on the now huge story of SonyBMG’s choice of software on some of their US released audio CDs. Called XCP, originally designed to ‘assert’ SonyBMG’s rights over their music CD’s, it installs itself on any computer where the audio CD is played. The user of the disk isn’t asked if this is OK, or even told that the software is installing itself. The software then hides itself using something called “rootkit.”

The really big problem for SonyBMG is that virus writers are now using this rootkit exploit to deliverer their viruses.

Big Problems For Sony Continue, Now EULA Many have reacted to RootKit by saying that they feel it is ‘safer’ for them to download their music from unlicensed file sharing services, as they aren’t exposing themselves to unauthorised pieces of software installing on their machines.

SonyBMG have said they will stop selling music CD’s using XCP, but the damage to the Sony name has been done.

It’s all going wrong
A while back Sony, the parent company, had a revelation – that they needed to look outside their Sony Silo and start of embrace open formats. We saw MP3 being supported on their music players, where they’d always insisted on using their propriety content protections scheme ATRAC3. I even saw DivX supported on their DVD players, where DivX had previous been thought of as the content pirates tool.

Sony had (I stress had) started to claw back against Apple and the other companies that they’d been losing out to. As of now, it looks like they’ve slipped even further behind. For goodness sakes, they’ve even got groups of people suggesting Boycott Sony and 3488 have, so far, signed an anti-Sony petition.

Sadly for Sony, it doesn’t end there
In digging through SonyBMG’s code, Finn Matti Nikki has located references to LAME, an open source, MP3 encoder library, within the code used by SonyBMG’s version of the XCP software.

As Matti says, “I’d say this indicates that the executable has been compiled against static LAME library, which happens to be LGPL. I don’t have any further evidence about this, other than lots of data from libmp3lame being included and easy to find.” Let us translate – the LGPL (Lesser General Public License) provides certain freedoms and restrictions in the use of the software covered by it.

These include needing to make the source code to the open-source libraries available and the source code and executable code of their programs.

Without abiding by these rules, they are breaking the licensing terms of the content. Carrying out the exact act they the music companies are loudly decrying in their customer.

Where now for Sony?
Big Problems For Sony Continue, Now EULA SonyBMG have managed to completely undo the small, patient steps that Sony, the hardware business, has been taking to gathering favour with the equipment buying public.

The idea of Sony owning content and hardware businesses always appears to be a great idea – they’d win all around. The reality is turning out to be very different.

There is a tension between the content business, who want to restrict movement of content, and the hardware business that wants to set the purchaser free. Whether a comfortable balance between these can ever be struck is unclear.

What is clear is that it appears that this CD story is nearly out of control for Sony. Someone at the most senior level at Sony needs to grab hold of this and do something radical. Our suggestion for a surefire, credibiliy-straightening maneuver? Reject DRM.

LGLP
SonyBMG on XCP
Wikipedia on LAME
LAME
Slashdot – Sony’s EULA Worse Than Its Rootkit?

Shoreditch Digital Bridge: Linking Residents

Shoreditch Digital Bridge A project starting early next year in East London hopes to bridge the digital divide by broadband-enabling a number of housing estates.

The first stage of the Shoreditch Digital Bridge (SDB) will link-up 1,000 tenants of the Haberdasher and Charles Square Estates, Shoreditch before rolling out to the remaining 20,000 residents. Video Networks, who are best known for the broadband and IPTV service Homechoice, will be providing the connectivity.

Shoreditch/Old Street/Hoxton is a highly mixed area. It’s probably best known as a hip and cool area, mocked by some, celebrated by others and the source of the now-self parody Hoxton Fin haircut (pictured below). The flip side is deprivation. The apparent contrast makes sense. Artists moved into the area _because_ it was run down and the space they needed to paint in was cheap to rent, then over a ten year period it changed into a ‘destination.’

Shoreditch Digital Bridge Happily, this project is focused on the original residents, not the ones who live in the £1/2m flats – sorry, apartments.

The functions available to the residents will be wide and ambitious.

The Education Channel will provide online learning, allowing students to submit homework assignments and work with virtual tutors. When this was used in Kingston upon Hull by KIT working with Kingswood school, it was a huge success.

One key part of closing the digital divide is the provision of a PC on TV, which will be operated adding a wireless keyboard using software such as Citrix. When we spoke to Homechoice about it, they told us this will be able to used with their current Set Top Box.

Interestingly, residents will be able to watch the CCTV cameras around the area – something that for years ‘the powers that be’ have said would never occur.

Shoreditch Digital Bridge Additional services include a Health channel allowing patients to book GP appointments, provide virtual consultations and on-line health and diagnosis information; a Consumer Channel, allowing on-line group buying of common services such as gas, electricity and mobile phone tariffs; and an Employment Channel, providing on-line NVQ courses, local jobs Websites and virtual interview mentoring.

Satellite companies have for a long time had problems providing services to built up urban areas. Providing TV services over a broadband connection has for a long time made sense. The icing on the cake will be the Homechoice IPTV and broadband service, available at an additional charge.

We hope the SDB project will build on succeeded and lessons learned of previous pioneering work will be integrated.

The Shoreditch Trust
Shoreditch Digital Bridge

Hoxton Fin image courtesy of LondonCircus
Charles Square Image courtesy of Hackney Council

Digital Music Conspiracies : Teenage Tech Roundup

Motorola ROKR iTunes Phone Oooh, Conspiracies Abound
We’ve recently covered the Motorola ROKR iTunes music phone, and then again more recently, followed reports of its shortcomings. Now, The Apple Blog has a conspiracy theory on the device: It was deliberately sabotaged.

Apple makes a lot of money out of its iPod sales, with reports of profit margin of as much as 50% on the iPod Nano according to AppleInsider and its one of the company’s principal sources of income. Think about what would happen if people started buying phones as iPod replacements. That’s right, Apple would lose out.

I can well imagine Apple mastermind and CEO Steve Jobs would have seen this from far off, and had thought long and hard about whether or not to allow Motorola to produce an iTunes-compatible mobile phone. I’m sure that Motorola pays Apple some amount of money for the iTunes compatibility, and I’m also sure that Steve Jobs wanted the cash.

How would you introduce a phone that mirrored the iPod’s functionality without canabalizing iPod sales? That’s right, limit its functionality. Maybe this explains the 100-song limit on the Motorola iTunes phone. And before you say “but it’s not got enough memory for more”, it has: It’s possible to put enough memory in it to store around 500 tracks at least, but the software won’t allow any more.

It is possible that Apple want to actually make people think of MP3-playing mobiles as a pile of rubbish, meaning that they will instead buy iPods. Of course, there is no hard evidence that supports this theory, but there are a lot of things that point in this direction.

Whether or not this move on Apple’s part (Apple designed the software) would be wise one or not remains to be seen, and whether the 100-song restriction will still be in place in the upcoming RAZR V3i iTunes phone is also something only time and/or NDA breaches will tell.

The relevance that this idea has to me as a teenager is that as someone who always loses stuff, I would love to just carry one piece of kit around. I want one device that plays music, receives my email, makes phone calls and surfs the web. Apple theoretically attempting to block this digital utopia is something that annoys me.

More conspiracy…
I thought I’d stick with the conspiracy theme. While this rumour is not true, it does highlight what is theoretically possible in an Internet where corporations are increasingly battling their customers. I refer, of course, to media piracy.

The rumour contains the following:

Apple and Microsoft have teamed up in an unusual and, until now, secret partnership. The two firms have developed unique anti-file sharing DRM (Digital Rights Management) technologies they say represent cast-iron guarantees of copyright protection. The technologies “ Apple’s Fair Play earbuds and Microsoft’s PowerHit“ are slated for beta release in time for the Christmas rush, say sources.
From December 1, all iTunes downloads will carry a new kind of Fair Play DRM, a direct negative feedback ‘watermark’ recognized by Fair Play earbuds and, ultimately, by other audio devices from manufacturers who sign up for the code, which was created under a joint SunnComm and Macrovision venture.
When an iPod (or other) user wearing the new audio devices plays an iTunes track not sanctioned by Organized Music (EMI Group, Vivendi Uiversal, Warner Music), Fair Play feedback ‘instructs’ the buds to emit a piercing, high-pitched scream in stereo at 250 decibels.

Sounds pretty nasty doesn’t it! My view is that as long as you never had any intention of going out and buying the music track, having a copy doesn’t deprive anyone of anything. It’s like saying that taking a picture of a painting in a gallery is the equivalent of taking it off the wall and running out with it.

The conclusion? While not true, this could very easily become a reality. Maybe not with Apple and Microsoft working together, because that would just be absurd, but extremely restrictive DRM that punishes the user for misbehaving isn’t such a huge step away, and it seems like the current DRM schemes are training consumers to accept more restrictive varieties.

The reason I am against this, is that as much as technology has changed things for the better, my generation has come to take it for granted. If something is invented when you are under the age of 10, you generally do. The problem with this, is that the next generation will come to take DRM for granted, and we will be the “fogeys” saying “In my day, we were allowed to share music we bought with our friends”>

Vodafone Licenses Intertrust DRM

Vodafone Licenses Intertrust's DRM Intertrust must have though that all of the xmases came at once on the day Vodafone confirmed their licensing deal. It’s not every day that the World’s largest mobile operator signs a deal like that with you.

The Open Mobile Alliance (OMA) specified DRM (Digital Rights Management)contains what they refer to as, the essential patents – the minimum required to run the very basics of the content/rights protection.

Vodafone Licenses Intertrust's DRM The Vodafone deal goes well beyond these basics and licenses all of the technologies and patent that Intertrust have available.

When we asked which of the Intertrust pieces of technology they were planning to use, Vodafone became unusually very shy, explaining that they didn’t have definitive plans as to which parts would and wouldn’t be used.

Vodafone Licenses Intertrust's DRM Both Vodafone and Intertrust declined to reveal the value of the transaction, but given the need for separate deals with the handset companies, it may be here that Intertrust make most of their money. This will not be optional if the handset manufacturers want to be on the Vodafone service and offer content.

The length of the deal has been loosely described as ‘Long-term licensing’, but Vodafone didn’t reveal how long this was by the time we went to press.

Intertrust
Vodafone

Botnet Man Charged In California

Botnet Man Charged In California The alleged ‘commander’ of a 400,000 strong botnet has been arrested in the US, in the first US case brought.

The 20 year old, Jeanson James Ancheta, of Downey, California received a knock on the door from FBI agents on Thursday. He was subsequently charged with spreading a Trojan horse program, “rxbot,”, and in the process building a network of around 400,000 infected computers.

The FBI say he used IRC (Internet Relay Chat) to command this network to do his bidding.

Botnet Man Charged In California He looks like he’s in pretty big trouble as he’s been charged with 17 counts, including conspiracy, transmission of code to a protected computer, to a government computer, and multiple counts of fraud and money laundering.

The cheeky young scamp even advertised his botnet to be available from such pleasantries as spam and DoS (denial of service) attacks.

His fiendish plans didn’t stop there, they think he also received $60k from what is being referred to as an “unnamed advertising service company” and in return he popped their advertising gunk on the infected machines under his control.

We hope that if this is proved to be true, not only are the advertising company going to be chased down, but the advertisers are too.

Botnet Man Charged In California Among the computers infected were some from the Weapons Division of the US Naval Air Warfare Center, and machines belonging to the US Department of Defense’s Defense Information Systems Agency, according to a statement from Debra Wong Yang, US Attorney for the Central District of California.

You have to question how a computer at somewhere that sounds quite that serious has the opportunity to get infected

As ever, all of this is alleged and we await the outcome of the court case to find out if he actually did carry it out.

Botnet’s explained

PSP Media Manager Launched By Sony

PSP Media Manager Launched By Sony Sony have launched the PSP Media Manager for the PlayStation Portable, an iTunes-like application designed to make it easy to shunt music, movies, photos and other content off a PC and onto PSPs and synchronise PC content with the PSP.

Although the PlayStation Portable was promoted as an all-in-one lifestyle gadget as well as a gaming system, getting content onto the thing wasn’t an easy task, with no USB cable or conversion software being supplied – although these were easily added by those inclined.

The PSP Media Manager aims to fix that, coming with the necessary USB to PSP cable and software supporting a load of multimedia formats including .mp4, .avi, .mpg, .mov, and .wmv for video files, and .mp3, .wav, and .wma for audio.

PSP Media Manager Launched By Sony Supported image formats include .bmp, .jpg, .gif, .png, and .tif, with a bundled utility to backing up game saves to the PC.

Like iTunes, PSP Media Manager can copy over music tracks via drag and drop from a PC or download from Sony’s Connect online music store.

Other Apple-like functionality includes the ability to search and subscribe to RSS feeds formatted for viewing on the PSP, including podcasts, video blogs, and magazines.

PSP Media Manager Launched By Sony The boxed version containing the USB lead and five free song downloads will be available form Sony’s Connect music from November 22 for $29.95 (~£17, ~e24), with the downloadable version already available (clearly without the USB lead – matter transfer via the Internet is being worked on) from the official Sony Media Software site for $19.95 (~£11, ~e16.5).

With the new software adding full iTunes-like music/video integration to the already-formidable feature list of the PlayStation Portable, we can hear the sound of Sony’s gauntlet slapping down outside Apple’s HQ.

Of course it may not be a long considered move, more a panic move from Sony, after having seen iTunes 6 and the ‘iPod with video’.

There’s two things that will decide – you the consumer and time.

PSP Media Manager

BitTorrent File Sharer Arrested

BitTorrent File Sharer Arrested A Hong Kong doleboy has been slapped down by The Man after he was found guilty of distributing three Hollywood films using BitTorrent’s peer-to-peer file sharing technology.

A report in the Taiwanese English-language newspaper The China Post named unemployed Chan Nai-Ming in what is believed to be the first case of its kind.

The 38 year old used BitTorrent to distribute “Miss Congeniality”, “Daredevil” and “Red Planet” and heard the knock on the door from customs officers in January 2005.

Nai-Ming pleaded not guilty to copyright infringement but was convicted after a four day trial. He will be sentenced on 7 November, 2005, although some Websites are reporting that he’s already been fined $641 (~£360, ~E529).

The Hong Kong government is claiming the action as its first successful action against peer-to-peer file sharing, with Hong Kong Commerce Secretary John Tsang confident that it would deter other potential file-sharers.

Since the arrest, the Hong Kong customs department said that illegal file-sharing had plummeted by 80%.

BitTorrent File Sharer Arrested The OpenSource BitTorrent software has become one of the most popular means of downloading large files, with the technology allowing users to download fragments of a large file from multiple users, rather than in one hefty lump.

Initially, the program needed centralised tracker files to manage this process, but BitTorrent’s creator, Bram Cohen announced that they were no longer needed in the last year.

As it’s grown in popularity, BitTorrent has garnered the unwelcome attentions of spyware and adware pushers along with the corporate might of recording companies and movie studios.

Thousands of peer-to-peer downloaders using software like Napster and SoulSeek have already been sued for copyright infringement over the past few years, with the US Supreme Court ruling last year that peer-to-peer makers could be sued if they encourage users to copy material.

We expect the corporate-profits-defending big boot of The Man to be seeing a lot of door-kicking action in the upcoming months.

BitTorrent
MPAA to pursue film file-sharers

FUD Encouraged By Macrovision Report

Destiny Media Technologies Updates Promo Only MPE Macrovision, a company who sell content protection (DRM) system, have today released a report they commissioned into content copying.

The findings? That ‘Casual Piracy’ is “a Growing Challenge in the Entertainment Industry” and that “mass market penetration of digital recording devices and broadband/file-sharing networks are prompting many entertainment brands to enrich their content protection strategies and influence bottom line performance.”

Let us translate. Digital Rights Management (DRM) is coming and the public had better start getting used to it.

FUD Encouraged By Macrovision Report This is on the basis of what to us appears, from a quick once over of this report, a pretty unscientific approach, as the following paragraph from page 10 illustrates.

“In order to estimate exactly what effective content protection represents, respondents were also asked to estimate how many units/titles were copied (burnt) for each 100 sold and how many were illegally downloaded for every 100 sold.”

How can someone write “estimate exactly” without seeing the paradox? They just have well asked them “How paranoid are you about content copying?”

Their conclusion directly under this nonsense? “None of the figures make for comfortable reading.” WHAT?!?!? Just because these figures are presented in a table in a report with graphs next to them, doesn’t elevate them from what they are – guesses. At this point we stopped reading this report – we had some drying paint that needed watching.

FUD Encouraged By Macrovision Report I hope that each time a ‘report’ or so called research like this is published, that it is gone through with a fine tooth comb pointing out its weaknesses. This kind of nonsense needs to be countered.

FUD rules
I have, for years, been questioning the content industry – How are you going to sell DRM to the public when what you’ll be selling them some less good/useful than they had before? The answer has always been a resounding silence.

When I asked a very senior person at Fox (his name escapes me) why DRM would be required when the vast majority of their customers are fair, reasonable and trustworthy, his response stunned me – “We take the opposite view, we treat everyone as dishonest.”

To me, that summed up both the arrogance and distain of the company, and possibly that of the current ‘entertainment’ industry. Any company that has such a low opinion of their customers, will eventually come to a sticky end – and it’s quite right that they do.

Through the sheer panic of suddenly waking up to the changes that technology has been bringing to media for decades (hell, I had digitised audio tracks on my Mac Plus, soon after it was released in 1984), the ‘entertainment;’ business has been listening to technology companies, who by strange co-incidence have something to sell – content protection systems.

That combined with the universal truth that fear is contagious, leads to a point where we are now. The current media companies being near terrified that _all_ of the customers are waiting to steal from them, so they must be restricted – and DRM-selling companies are more than happy to help them in their fear.

Their perceived need to restrict their customers is costing them _huge_ amounts of money and it will continue to … and to what gain?

They stop their customers from using their purchases how they feel fit – well, at least until the latest hack removes the protection – and in the process, further alienate their customers, building resentment.

Why don’t they spend all of this effort, time and money creating new content – engaging their audience further?

I wonder if the ‘entertainment’ companies have spared a thought as to what would happen if their businesses did fail? Do they not see that generally the technology companies are going to win anyway even without them?

PDF of complete report.
BTW, don’t try copying text out of the report, it’s protected unsurprisingly.

Portable Games To Exceed $2 Bn In 5 Years: Yankee

Portable Game Business To Exceed $2 Billion In Five Years The portable game business will be worth a thumping great $2.3 billion in four years, according to a report released today by research firm, The Yankee Group.

Their ‘US Portable Entertainment Forecast’ report also found that half of all portable music players will be phone hybrids by 2009, yet mobile MP3 players will only account for only one-third of the portable music service revenue.

The Yankee Group predicts that dedicated digital audio devices like iPods and Walkmans will continue to be used more exclusively for their single purpose, while gaming hand-held devices and phone hybrids are both expected to grab revenue around the $2.3 billion mark by 2009.

Portable Game Business To Exceed $2 Billion In Five Years With the line between wireless handsets and portable CE devices continuing to blur, the Yankee Group used data from both their Video Capable Device Survey and the Mobile User Survey to come up with what they describe as “the most comprehensive view into the portable device market.”

The US Portable Entertainment Forecast discovered that the convergence of wireless handsets and CE devices will force mobile manufacturers to both compete and partner with consumer electronics manufacturers.

“Within this new market dynamic, it will be crucial for companies to have a firm grasp of consumer behaviour and the competitive landscape,” said Mike Goodman, Yankee Group, senior analyst, Media and Entertainment Strategies.

“The major players must understand who will lead and who will follow in order to successfully plan future strategy and appropriately target their investments,” he added.

Yankee Group