Software

Reflections On IFA and How The Economist Got It Wrong
The Economist is a publication that we regard highly. It’s not for nothing that they gained a strong reputation. Sadly a recent piece on the Digital Home let them down.
In the 3-9 September issue of The Economist, the leader on page 14 tells readers that ‘Most people will never turn their homes into electronic control centres‘ (sub) and that ‘convergence’ will fail.
It’s a well written, witty piece that sadly not only demonstrates the writers lack of understanding of the subject, but their disconnection with the current news.
This summary pieces doesn’t do justice to the full article starting on pages 68 which grasps many of the issues far better.
Returning from a week at IFA, I have some sympathy with the idea that the ‘dream’ that the consumer electronics (CE) companies are try to sell to the public are unlikely to be met immediately – especially in Germany where it is a well known economic fact that the population are holding on to their money with ever more zeal, in terror of losing their jobs in the current economic uncertainty.
I sat in successive press conferences, listening to each CE company CEO tell the assembled analysts and hacks that, unlike the technology companies, They Understood the consumer. This lead them to announce a parade of nearly idential product line-ups, which frankly all blurred into one.
This was repeated with halls and halls of identikit stands. Remove the brand names and it would have been a challenge to tell them apart.
The exception was Sony, whose bold attempt to live their strap-line, ‘Like.no.other’, lead to a stand that didn’t line up endless products, but played with your senses and tickled your emotions. Sadly the majority of journalists _hated_ it – perhaps saying more about the state of journalism in this fields than the stand itself.
The Tech co view
Until now, the main focus of technology companies has been to sell as much equipment and services to the business market. Having reached total saturation, and business becoming unwilling to comply with the endless cycle of upgrades, having acknowledged that the benefit they bring are not matched by the cost and disruption they bring.
Having acknowledged this years back, the tech companies turned their sights on selling more equipment to the home user, to provide the platform for digital entertainment – which brings us to today.
Where The Economist got it wrong #1 – Convergence
The definition of convergence that they use is long outdated. They’ve interpreted it as the do-it-all device, they use the illustration of “a food processor doubling as a pleasure vibrator for women.”
Until recently, there was an argument that the only successfully converged device was the clock radio. Understanding of the problems have moved on and there are now good examples, such as the Sony Ericsson k750i camera phone, which not only works well as a phone, but has made taking photos a breeze. It contains the vital ingredient – no barrier to easy use.
So what is Convergence?
It’s not unreasonable to ask given the number different definitions it’s had.
Perversely, as more marketing departments in more companies have become involved in flogging convergence, the term itself has become divergent.
We think many things are key to real convergence, and these include
One delivery path – the delivery of digital media over an IP connection.
The coming together of what were previously thought of as different businesses – witness News International embracing video gaming including their recent purchase of IGN.
The combining of layers of information with video or audio; adding further depth to the programme that along it could never provide.
Where The Economist got it wrong #2 – MSMedia Centre PCs are a failure
One glaring lack of knowledge of current, relevant news is brought out by the Leader, stating that Media Centre PC’s, or ‘converged super-gadgets’ as they refers to them, have been an utter failure (this is lead by the main article which states that they accounted for ‘fewer than 1% of all PC’s sold last year’ ).
While this may be true for last year, it ignores recent figures from Current Analysis, publish on the 29 August, which found that Media Centre PC sales have ‘skyrocketed’ to 43% of all desktop computer retail sales in the US from the previous levels of around 15% in July. A significant percentage in anyone book.
The Leader comments also fundamentally misunderstand Microsoft. Anyone who has spent anytime watching them will know that they will never let the Media Centre become a failure. Microsoft know if they can control the device to store and access digital media, they can dominate the market.
IFA/Economist blunder
Given the derisory view the Economist of digital home, it was more than a little ironic that they were giving away promotional copies at IFA. A clear example of the right hand (marketing) not knowing what the left hand (editorial) was doing.
15 September, 2005
iPod Nano; Rollable Screen; Koran Virus: Teenage Tech News
Cool, I want one!
Apple has unveiled a new iPod. Why is this news? Because the new device is miniscule and uses flash memory as opposed to a hard drive. This confirms the rumours that Apple were buying 40% of Samsung’s flash memory.
I think that Apple has unveiled a real killer here: It has a decent capacity, is small, cute and features a colour screen. And of course, Christmas is coming up (Shouts “Dad!”).
Ooh, Shiny, new and it rolls up!
Yes, Ladies and Gentlemen, we are still in 2005 and not 2020. Even so, Phillips has managed to come up with a prototype roll-up screen. What’s special about this screen is, surprise surprise, that it is possible to roll it up as you would a sheet of paper.
At the moment, the model they have is only a prototype, and can only display four shades of grey, but when it gets better to support more colours, I’m sure it will be an instant hit with makers of Mobile Phones and other applications where a large display and a small size is an advantage.
I personally thought the fact someone had finally developed something like this was pretty neat, very futuristic, and a useful invention. I, for instance, would love to have a small phone simply because it’s, well, small. I can’t currently get one however, because the ones that are the size I would like have tiny displays and no features. Hopefully this will now change.
Allah says no
Meanwhile, there’s a new virus out (Windows only, sorry Mac and Linux users) that attempts to block people from surfing pornography Websites. If the virus finds specific sexually-orientated words in a URL, it will minimize the browser window and display a passage from the Koran.
Don’t people realise that you can’t force religion on people? When will people realise that religion is something that comes naturally? People who don’t grasp this concept make me angry, although I can see there is a vaguely humorous element to this virus too.
At least the virus doesn’t damage any of your files!
“Drop the ink cartridge and put your hands on your head!”
We’re told that Lexmark are attempting to outlaw refilling their cartridges. Apparently, as the ink cartridges are patented as one use only, Lexmark think they can enforce this on anyone running a business refilling ink tanks. Luckily, patents don’t apply to non-for profit activities yet, so it’s still safe to refill a cartridge yourself.
I think there should be bans about companies applying terms of use on something that a consumer has actually bought. If it belongs to you, you should be able to do as you wish with it!
9 September, 2005
PSP Launches In UK To Big Queues
After having made the UK wait nearly 9 months since the launch of the PlayStation Portable (PSP) in Japan, the BBC are reporting that enthusiastic potential owners of PSP’s have been queuing for 12 hours or more to get their hands on them.
The original UK release date was knocked back after Sony said it needed to provide the product to the US.
Those UK’ers who couldn’t wait for the much-desired, multi-media device to arrive had an avenue closed to them after Sony successfully took legal action against grey-importers of Japanese and US equipment.
The Japanese giant cited infringement of their trademark, claiming that the provision through these paths could not guarantee the quality of the product.
The UK PSP sells for £179 (249 euros), but it is understood that many shops have pre-sold most, if not all of their allocation of initial stock.
The BBC quoted one 36-year old gamer who had queued for a massive 11 hours to pick up his PSP.
Whilst we respect his dedication to the cause of all things Playstation, we hope we never reach that level of obsession with gaming.
Sony UK
2 September, 2005
Open Media Common: Sun’s Open-Source DRM
Sun’s Chief Operating Officer Jonathan Schwartz has been speaking at the Progress and Freedom Foundation Aspen Summit about how incompatible strains of DRM from different companies will not be good for the consumer.
Now, we don’t have the benefit of having heard his speech, but it strikes us that he’s a little late to this party. This idea is hardly news to anyone who’s spent more that half a day thinking about the future of digital media. Projects like Coral Consortium have been underway for sometime, exactly for this reason – but at this time Coral is proprietary.
Jonathan’s proposal to elevate the problems on incompatible DRM systems is Open Media Commons, which would be an open-source, royalty-free digital-rights management standard.
It appears that his idea is to launch the idea/project, not deliver a solution tomorrow. He’s offering to start it off by giving Project DReaM, to an internal Sun Labs project, to the initiative. The strange collection of capitalisation around Project DReaM is derived from “DRM/everywhere available.”
Where this type of headline-grabbing announcement is great, is in starting to bring the debate about who should own/benefit from the locking mechanism placed around digital media to the fore again.
It also panders to the media companies who are generally _totally_ paranoid/fed up with having to not only use a protection scheme they don’t own, but also to pay Microsoft for the pleasure of selling their snippets of media to the general public – each and every time they do.
Reuters, who broke the story, got this quote from Jonathan, “The industry generally falls into two camps: Those who support what we’re up to and others who want to collect a fee” for using their own DRM standards.
If it does nothing more that stopping or delaying a media company in making their decision to sign with one of the major DRM providers, then we suspect Jonathan would be pleased.
Jonathan has over the last year, been blog-tastic, writing long, detailed postings about many things – he’s clearly not someone who sleeps a great deal. A lot of his entries have been about open source, indeed in June Sun started to open-source their Operating System (OS) with the project OpenSolaris and Java server software, calling it Glassfish. Not only that, but they have an Open-Source Officer, Simon Phipps.
All of these actions are designed to attacking any income that their competitors (including Microsoft) derive from selling software. Sun, of course, is also in the hardware business, which conveniently will run the open source software.
What we do find a little strange is there are no references to Open Media Commons or Project DReaM on Sun’s Web Site.
While it is good that a company as large/established as Sun is talking about opening DRM up, not to be locked in to any single provider of DRM – we’re not yet convinced that this particular idea has a solid ring about it.
Open Media Commons – Updated
SunSource
The Progress & Freedom Foundation
Jonathan Schwartz’s blog
Sun Micro shows open-source DRM project
22 August, 2005
US Gamers Watch Less TV non-Shock
We’ve all known for a long time that TV as we knew-and-loathed-it was under pressure, as people discovered there were things more rewarding in their lives than passively sitting in a darkened room, being bathed in light from a box in the corner of the room, watching whatever the channel controller decided to ‘entertain’ them with.
In a rather self-serving survey, “Digital Gaming in America”, Ziff Davis Media attempts to further fan the flames of this long lasting discussion, as they reveal that video gamers are watching less TV than they did previously, and will continue to reduce the amount they are consume.
Before you run to your boss, waving a printout of this story in your hand, proclaiming the near-death of TV. The results of the survey do reflect the general trend of what is happening, but do bear in mind the size of survey – 1,500 households (ie people who happened to be in, answered the phone, and had nothing better to do than answer a series of questions), compared with 295m people that live in America isn’t what you’d call statistically robust.
What did they find? About a quarter reduced their TV watching over the last year, with about a further fifth planning to do the same in the coming year. To put some hours against that, they estimate that there’s been a two hours per week drop over the last year to 16 hours a week this year, around a 10% drop.
The wolf isn’t quite at the door of TV. Looking at the hours/week, the reduced figure is still over 2.25 hours of TV a day, quite considerable when you consider what other task people do for that period of time, beyond working and sleeping.
In 2003 the BBC did some far more interesting research in this area. Of course they found that numbers of hours watched dropped, but what we found significant was that those hours that were being spent in front of the TV, weren’t dedicated to watching it.
This was particularly true of the younger viewers (34 and under) who were doing other things – texting their friends, Web browsing, talking on the phone, playing games on portable games systems – while in front of the box. They would dip in and out of the TV programme as it was on, occasionally letting it grab their attention – treating it far more like radio. It doesn’t take a great deal of imagination to figure that their attention would be elsewhere during the advert breaks.
Where the Ziff Davis survey does become more interesting is looking at gaming on mobile phones, particularly as this report is US-centric and the market isn’t very mature. A surprising 42% of surveyed gamers had bought games for their phones, and that they’d spent an average of US$13 (~€10, ~£7) each over the last three months.
An additional surprise for us was the length of time the games had been played on the mobile phones – 19 minutes per gaming session. Given the size of the display and general difficulty of playing games on such restricted controls, this is a revelation.
The split of games played was Arcade (57%), Card (44%) and Puzzle (37%) – another suprise for us given the device’s restrictions mentioned in the paragraph above. We suspect that the dominance of arcade games will reduce as players realise thinking games will be more rewarding than twitching with little buttons.
Oh … by the way Ziff Davis just happen to publish the games magazine, Electronic Gaming Monthly, Computer Gaming World, Official U.S. PlayStation Magazine and 1UP.com – and their ad sales people are just sitting there waiting to hear from you if you want to shift your advertising budget from TV to their mags.
Ziff Davis Video Game Survey: Gamers Continue to Cut TV Viewing
BBC – TV’s Tipping Point: Why the digital revolution is only just beginning
10 August, 2005
Oz Gov Give Away Data; DRM Chips On Motherboards; Apple’s Mighty Mouse – Teenage Tech News Review
Australian Government Sells Servers Containing Confidential Information
Let’s start this week’s news with some nice, old-fashioned, technological paranoia: As a teenager, you start to realise that giving everyone your mobile number, letting people know where you live and freely handing out your email address can be a bad thing. Imagine my surprise then when I found out that the Australian government had sold 18 of its servers at a government auction, all carrying confidential information, without erasing any data from them. “Who did they sell these to?” I hear you ask … Well no, it’s not some big company, it’s an individual called Geoffrey Huntley, who has his own blog and who promptly wrote about the issue of these servers having confidential information on them at sale. Using a basic knowledge of AIX, the operating system these servers were running, it was then possible to access all the information on every server, including financial information and emails sent and received.
This sort of occurrence does make me think that it is unsafe to give anyone information, unless I know it is safe with them, as it could all too easily fall into the wrong hands. More must be done to safeguard people’s information in this age of hacking and phishing, where anything not bolted down to the virtual ground is electronically stolen by people who wish to use this information for profit.
The Australian government, it seems, has tried to hush the issue up, as the Web page that originally documented the sale of confidential information carrying servers has now been erased from Geoffrey Huntley’s blog, although it is still available, as above, from a mirroring service.
DRM on motherboards
As well as compromising people’s privacy, technology can also restrict people’s freedom: Everyone’s known it’s been coming for a long while, but DRM (Digital Right’s Management) chips have started to be incorporated into motherboards. Although at present these are only present in Apple’s new Intel developer machines, Windows looks set to follow suit in its next release and require these chips to be implemented. What these sort of chips do, is to enable applications to make sure that a file or program will only work on the computer which has the right DRM chip. If this sounds similar to the current ways of protecting intellectual property with serial numbers, then think again: These serial numbers will be built-in to computer’s mother boards, meaning that they cannot be changed. For me, this is quite a serious blow, as I like to have the freedom to choose what sort of media I want to play, and from where I get it. This sort of inflexible and likely uncircumventible control could also allow computer manufacturers to enforce people to use a certain OS or certain software. With Microsoft’s clout and their habit of making sure that manufacturers of computers are tied into an agreement of bundling Windows with their computers, they might also enforce them to bundle chips with their motherboards that make them only boot Windows. These upcoming technologies will doubtlessly hurt consumers, but it remains to be seen how restrictive they will be.
Mighty Mouse: Apple’s Multi-Button Mouse
In other news: After years of Apple thinking themselves obviously superior by having just the one mouse button, and after years of jokes about how Mac users are inferior because they can’t use more than the one button, Apple has gone back and decided to bring out a mouse with not one, not two, but three buttons, as well as a four way scroll wheel. They have called their mouse, quite simply, Mighty Mouse. What’s so special about this though, and what sets it apart from the hordes of multi-button, Mac-compatible mice out there on the market? The answer is, the mouse has no physical buttons at all! The mouse incorporates iPod-esque touch sensitive technology to make the mouse appear button-less, but still work just fine. Very nice. An earlier argument of many Mac-users was that having just one button on a mouse made computing more accessible to beginners and so called technology-virgins, and I can agree with that statement: Teaching my Mum to use a PC is still a work in progress, and she still asks which button to click. Teaching her to use a Mac, on the other hand, was simply a matter of telling her how to turn the machine on, and what her login password was. Anyway, the new mouse from Apple, having no physical buttons, is programmable to have either one, two or three buttons, meaning that users can specify, on a user-specific basis, which features of the mouse they would like to have, and which ones they would like to leave well alone. What this means, is that You, your Gran, and your Mum can all use the same computer with the same mouse, but still all have as many buttons as suits them and their computing abilities. The mouse should also work just fine with a Windows computer, although from personal experience, trying to use Windows with one mouse button is a bad experience!
9 August, 2005
95% of Mobile Users Won’t Download Games
Mobile gaming big boys I-Play have released the results of a study which revealed that only 5% of mobile users have ever downloaded a game
The independent survey examined the (cough) “behaviour barriers” and motives of 2,500 mobile users across the US, UK, Italy, Spain and Germany.
The study discovered that mobile phone newbies were pretty clueless about what their phones could do, with 33% of respondents unsure whether their handset could even play games.
A further 17.5% were uncertain how to download a game while the rest said that the downloading process itself was tedious.
Of all those polled, only a mere 5% of mobile users had ever downloaded and used a mobile game.
David Gosen, COO of I-play was ready with the positive spin, “The mobile games market is essentially only five percent penetrated. The good news is that we now know what’s limiting market growth – the industry must improve accessibility to mobile games and more importantly, educate consumers on how and where to obtain mobile games”.
Curiously, the survey revealed national differences, with 80% of smart Spaniards aware of the capabilities of their handsets compared with to just 60% of Germans.
Pricing was seen as a discouraging factor by 51% of the respondents, with 48 percent in favour of free trail versions and 30% saying that that they would go for a game if a friend recommended it.
Despite the aggressive advertising campaigns run to promote mobile gaming, the industry is still clearly in its infancy, although the potential for growth is seen as enormous, especially with the interest shown in emerging markets like India and China.
Gosen went on to explain that, “virgin downloaders” need more education about the process and more information about the game before they feel comfortable making that first purchase and this is critical. We know we have to de-risk that first download for the end user.
De-risk. Now there’s a good word for buzzword bingo.
iPlay
2 August, 2005
Mobile Gambling: $7.6Bn by 2010 – Informa
Forget mobile gaming – the big money’s in mobile gambling, according a report by Informa Telecoms & Media
The ‘Mobile Gambling’ report predicts that the market for mobile gambling content is going to soar from US$1.2bn (~£0.67bn. ~€0.98bn) of annual revenues in 2005 to US$7.6bn (~£4.30bn, ~€6.21bn) by 2010, with more than 200 million consumers gambling the odds using mobile devices.
There is a joker in the pack however, with the report warning that the growth of the mobile gambling market is dependent upon mobile gambling operators being able to sidefoot legislative, technological and cultural hurdles.
“Mobile gambling is already generating significant revenues, but there is room for sharp growth in the years ahead,” says Stuart Dredge, the report’s author.
“Operators recognise that there is a strong demand for mobile gambling services, and there is no shortage of companies looking to provide them. However, the industry must keep in mind its responsibilities to tackle underage and problem gambling.”
The report looked at the three key types of mobile gambling – sports betting, lotteries and casino-gaming – and predicted that lotteries are going to be the number one form of mobile gambling in the next five years, spurred on by widespread handset support.
With casinos continuing to migrate their games to mobile, the report predicts growing popularity, although sports betting is expected to be a niche sector by comparison, despite bookmakers being keen to launch mobile applications for their customers to bet on the move.
The report sees Europe remaining the largest market for mobile gambling, generating a hefty US$3.2bn of annual revenues by 2010.
Hot on its heels will be the Asia-Pacific market, forecasted to generate US$2.7bn (~£1.52bn, ~€2.20bn) by 2010.
North America emerges as the dark horse, as the size of the market there will be dependant on mobile gambling being legalised in the US and the impact of any restrictions placed upon it.
Even with these caveats, the report still predicts US$979 million (~£553m, ~€800m) of annual revenues for the region by 2010.
Mobile Gambling
1 August, 2005
Team iFiber Redwire Sets New WiFi Distance Record
Those of you struggling to maintain a Wi-Fi connection from next door’s access point may be exclaiming a Victor Meldrew-style, “I don’t belieeeeve it!” at the news of a mighty new world record being set for an unamplified Wi-Fi link.
The new world record in the “unamplified” category was set last week by Team iFiber Redwire, with the Wi-Fi signal reaching an astonishing 125 miles, stretching from Las Vegas, Nevada, all the way to a spot adjacent to St. George, Utah.
The team of college students managed to crush the previous world record for the longest distance for an unamplified Wi-Fi link (55.1 miles @ 30mW) at the 3rd Annual Defcon Wifi Shootout Contest.
The shootout challenges teams to wirelessly connect two computers at extreme distances, with the winners’ collection of Z-Com 325hp+ PCMCIA cards, homemade antennas, 12 foot satellite dishes, home-welded support structures, scaffolds, ropes and computers earning them the prized record.
The team managed a full 11 Mbps data transfer rate over a distance of 125 miles, a new world record that may end up being recorded in the Guinness Book of World Records.
There is now talk of attempts to smash the current Bluetooth record of 1.08 miles.
I think we may have to borrow one of their 12 foot satellite dishes because we can barely maintain our office connection through one set of walls…
Defcon Wifi Shootout
Credit for first picture : thanks to wifi-shootout.com
1 August, 2005
White PSP: Microsoft Patent Emoticons: Google Rule – News Catch-Up
Microsoft Wants To Own Emoticons
Microsoft has filed an application with the US Patent & Trademark Office to safeguard its rights on “methods and devices for creating and transferring custom emoticons.”
In case you’ve been living under a rock, emoticons are representations of faces made up by keyboard characters and originally all looked like this :) and :-/.
Nowadays, many mobile phones and computers automatically replace the text characters with an appropriate custom image when it spots emoticons in text messages and emails.
It’s far from clear what makes Microsoft think they should own Emoticons – there again, it’s never held them back before.
Microsoft’s patent application
Microsoft emoticons
Sony Whips Out A White PSP
Sony has confirmed that it will be launching a groovy white version of its PSP, but – surprise, surprise – only in Japan.
Sony has a long history of serving up different coloured units in different territories, with the PS2 being released in Aqua, White, Yellow and Silver in the past.
The company has also announced a firmware update (in Japan, natch) so that users can surf the Internet directly from the console.
Some techie users have already been enjoying Web access on their PSPs after a hack was discovered that took advantage of a hole in the operating system used by certain games.
There’s no date set for a US and European patch, although Japanese firmware updates traditionally precede roll-outs in other markets. Sony White PSP
Google Grabs 47% Of All Searches Online
Nielsen//NetRatings “MegaView Search” report has ranked Google as the Big Cheese of search engines, registering 47% of all searches conducted online.
Lagging some way behind was Yahoo! at 22%, with MSN limping into third place at 12% and AOL Search only managing a comparatively feeble 5% of all searches.
Image searching grew hugely in popularity across all the search engines, with MSN seeing the largest increase in its image searches with a massive 90% surge. AOL’s image search zipped up 74%, Yahoo!’s soared 55%, and Google’s jumped by a rather modest 12%. Nielsen//NetRatings
25 July, 2005