Digital-Lifestyles – Page 157 – Digital-Lifestyles pre-empted and reported thousands of articles on the then-coming impact that technology was to have on all forms of Media. Launched in 2001 as a research blog to aid its founder, Simon Perry, present at IBC 2002, it grew into a wide ranging, multi-author publication that was quoted in many publications globally including the BBC, was described by the Guardian as 'Informative' and also cited in a myriad of tech publications before closing in 2009

Digital-Lifestyles pre-empted and reported thousands of articles on the then-coming impact that technology was to have on all forms of Media. Launched in 2001 as a research blog to aid its founder, Simon Perry, present at IBC 2002, it grew into a wide ranging, multi-author publication that was quoted in many publications globally including the BBC, was described by the Guardian as 'Informative' and also cited in a myriad of tech publications before closing in 2009

Apple And Record Companies Charged In EU iTunes Row
The European Commission has dished out formal charges to Apple and ‘unnamed major record companies’, accusing them of restricting music sales in Europe.
The EU alleges that agreements between Apple and the record companies are guilty of breaking European Union rules that prohibit restrictive business practices. It’s far from the first time that the EU and other Northern European Countries has got wound up about Apple and iTunes.
“Consumers can only buy music from the iTunes online stores in their country of residence and are therefore restricted in their choice of where to buy music, and consequently what music is available and at what price,” said Jonathan Todd, European Commission spokesman.
“The statement of objections alleges that distribution agreements between Apple and major record companies contain territorial sales restrictions,” he added.
Promptly shifting the blame on to the record companies, Apple insisted that they’d tried to operate a single pan-European iTunes store accessible to peeps from any member state but were foiled by music labels and publishers imposing legal limits on the download rights.
The Commission first got involved back in 2005 after the UK consumer group Which? pointed out that iTunes purchasers in France and Germany were paying far less than us poor chumps in the UK (67 pence against 79 pence).
Apple and the record companies now have two months to defend themselves in writing or take part in an oral hearing which usually happens around a month after a written reply has been received.
This latest development is unrelated to yesterday’s deal between Apple and EMI.
Source
3 April, 2007
Over Half Of UK Adults Have Home Broadband
Industry body Ofcom has published its Digital Progress Report, the result of taking a long goosey gander at current trends in the UK broadband industry up until the end of last year.
The report found that half of all UK adults live in broadband-connected households, up 11% from 12 months ago and a hefty seven times increase from 2002.
Folks connected to broadband lines are getting good use of it too, with 63% of adults using it daily, while 30% went online at least once a week.
Video content was viewed by 51% of adults with broadband at home, with 26% watching video clips every week.
Over two thirds (70%) of broadband-connected adults bought products or services online, and over half had carried out banking transactions.
Broadband users were found to spend on average 9.1 hours online per week, over double the amount of people still connecting via screechy modems in dial-up.
Although just under half of users had no idea how fast they were connecting to the Internet, the report put the average headline connection speed at 3.8Mbps (up from 1.6Mbps in 2005).
Voice over IP (VoIP) services like Skype have seen an increased take up, with one in ten adults making calls over the Internet, double the amount compared to the end of 2005. Of those using VoIP, 14% said they were making calls daily with a further 30% making calls several times per week.
Bundling
Bundling was found to be an important factor for consumers choosing their ISP, with 40% of all adults with broadband at home using other communications services from the same provider.
Wi-Fi
Ofcom found that just over a fifth (21%) of of all UK adults owned a Wi-Fi enabled laptop in February 2007, with a third of that total using public hotspots to access the internet. The amount of available public hotspots was counted at around 12,000 in September 2006, up 32% from the previous year.
Mobile Internet
The report found that despite one in three UK adults saying that they owned an Internet-enabled mobile phone in February 2007; only half had ever actually used the thing to go online.
It seems that a ‘lack of need or interest’ put off the majority of users (43%), with cost the second reason (31%).
Ofcom
3 April, 2007
Apple And EMI Cut High Quality DRM-Free Music Deal
It wasn’t the bonanza of Beatles songs that some had hoped for, but Apple has just announced that all of EMI Music’s vast catalogue of digital music will be available for purchase without digital rights management from the iTunes Store from next month.
The DRM-free tracks from EMI will be encoded at a high quality 256 kbps AAC encoding – making them “virtually indistinguishable” in audio quality from the original – but at a higher price of $1.29 per song (compared to 99c for 128bps downloads).
Users wanting to ‘upgrade’ their library of previously purchased EMI content to the higher quality DRM-free versions can do so if they’re prepared to fork out 30 cents a song.
“We are going to give iTunes customers a choice — the current versions of our songs for the same 99 cent price, or new DRM-free versions of the same songs with even higher audio quality and the security of interoperability for just 30 cents more,” said Steve Jobs, Apple’s CEO.
“We think our customers are going to love this, and we expect to offer more than half of the songs on iTunes in DRM-free versions by the end of this year,” he added.
Keen not to miss out on the quote-fest, Eric Nicoli, CEO of EMI Group, piped up: “EMI and iTunes are once again teaming up to move the digital music industry forward by giving music fans higher quality audio that is virtually indistinguishable from the original recordings, with no usage restrictions on the music they love from their favourite artists.”
Using the new DRM-free EMI downloads, users can enjoy the tracks without any usage restrictions that limit the types of devices or number of computers that purchased songs can be played on – something that was celebrated by a guy called Eric Chiu posting on the Engadget site who gleefully commented, “My BitTorrent Engine is ready to fire on full cylinder… Demonoid and Piratebay, be ready for the new era of EMI Music.”
Apple
EMI Music
2 April, 2007
Avoid Corporate Coffee Chains With The Delocator
If you travel around the UK a lot and find the homogenisation of High Streets into identical rows of bland coffeeshop multinationals a deeply depressing experience, you may find delocator.org.uk the perfect site for your needs.
Bearing a passing resemblance to the ‘store locator’ seen on the Starbuck’s site, the delocator lets you type in a UK post code and find the nearest ‘non corporate cafe’ near you, with a drop-down menu for selecting the distance range to search, from 1km to 15km.
The site’s still in early days and because it relies on users to input recommended cafes, the coverage isn’t as complete as it might be, but the author told Digital Lifestyles that he intends to add more functionality ‘in the Spring’ (he’s also asked for help in running this site – contact him here.)
Despite this, we still managed to find two non-corporate cafes within a 1km of us, with the results displayed in a text box containing a description of the cafe and address details, accompanied by a zoomable Google map.
Delocating the world
The first Delocator website started up in America, tasked with “assisting the public in finding and supporting independently owned cafes” and proved a great success, with over 5000 independent cafes across the States being inputted by users.
The site encouraged other activists to create their own delocator site using a downloadable toolkit, with a second site being set up for Canadian users, delocator.ca, with the UK site now being the third of what may turn out to be a multinational anti corporate franchise (now there’s a concept!).
With Starbucks promising to open a new branch every fortnight for the next decade in the UK, we reckon local, independent coffee shops need al the help they can get.
Free Rosey Lee in the East End
Elsewhere, Starbuck’s shiny new store in Whitechapel in the East End of London found itself the subject of an unusual protest last week by those cheeky scamps, the Space Hijackers.
Setting up a stall and dishing out free fair trade teas, tasty home made sandwiches and delicious cakes to passers by, the protesters hoped to illustrate “what the area will be missing if Starbucks and their ilk are allowed to settle in.”
Naturally, the urban75 website went along to lend their support (and scoff some tasty banana cakes) – see their photo report here
2 April, 2007
VBox: Virgin Free TV DTT Launched By Virgin Media For Non Cable Customers
Virgin Media has ramped up the availability of its quadplay (broadband, phone, mobile and TV) services beyond its cable franchise network with today’s announcement of a new digital TV service.
Using the digital terrestrial television platform (DTT), Virgin will be offering a new set-top box to lure customers with the promise of over 40 free-to-air TV channels and over 25 digital radio stations, an eight-day, Virgin branded, on-screen TV guide, interactive content (via the trusty red button) and plug ‘n’ play installation.
Perhaps cocking a snoot to Sky’s energy-scoffing box, Virgin say that their set top box will offer low power consumption and use just 1/15th of the energy of a standard 60W light bulb (we could work that out as a percentage for you, but it’s still Monday morning).
The box is a wee little puppy too, measuring up around the same size as Ye Olde VHS tape (19cms by 9cms) and comes with a remote control and a nifty remote control extender so you can still use the remote if the box is hidden away somewhere.
Virgin will be dishing the boxes out for free to any non-cable customers subscribed to their twenty quid 8 Meg broadband and Talk Anytime phone bundle, or there’ll be a £40 charge to non-cable customers taking a broadband service on it’s own.
Philip Snalune, managing director of non-cable (bit a duff job title that, no?) at Virgin Media, said:
“Launching a basic TV service into non-cable areas enables us to expand availability of our quadplay of broadband, phone, mobile and TV. This is just the first step and our aim is to offer more advanced TV services in all areas throughout 2008.”
Virgin Media
2 April, 2007
Beatles Songs For iTunes?
After years of throwing squadrons of lawyers at each other, the big Apples – Apple Inc and Apple Corps – kissed and made up a few months ago and now it looks like they can’t stop the love.
Yesterday, record company giants EMI Group PLC announced that it planned to unveil “an exciting new digital offering” with Steve Jobs and the gang at Apple, leading pundits to conclude that The Beatles’ music catalogue is finally about to be made available through Apple’s iTunes online music store.
Spinning the expectation-o-meter right up to eleven, EMI revealed that their chief executive, Eric Nicoli, and Apple head honcho Jobs will be holding a news conference today, which will be supplemented by a “special live performance.”
The Beatles have famously refused to sign up to iTunes and other online music services for years, and many expect the download charts to be instantly filled up with the Fab Four’s songs as soon as their catalogue becomes available.
Of course, the fact that the story broke on April Fool’s Day has led some to think it might be a bit of a jolly wind-up wheeze, so I guess we’ll have to wait to see if the scheduled 1pm conference happens or not.
Mind you, if it is an April Fool’s it’s a pretty crummy one compared to Google’s TiSP Toilet wireless network one.
2 April, 2007
BBC TV & Radio Trial On UK 3G
The BBC are going to start of a trial to syndicate a range of its television channels and radio networks via 3G to mobile phones within the month.
Three UK operators will be taking part, Orange, Vodafone and 3 giving subscribers to the trial the ability to watch BBC One, BBC News 24 and BBC Three streamed on their mobiles. Beyond some sports programmes and programmes where they don’t have the necessary rights.
As well as the TV channels, eight radio stations will also be included – Radio 1, 1Xtra, Radio 2, Radio 3, Radio 4, 6 Music, BBC 7 and Asian Network.
Appropriately enough the announcement by Richard Halton, BBC Controller of Business Strategy, was made at the Broadcast Mobile TV Congress.
The BBC haven’t done a great deal of content on mobiles, not that they’re not keen on it, as you’ll be able to tell from the comments of Richard Halton, “The BBC believes that mobile content is an important part of the broadcasting landscape and is looking at ways in which mobile devices will shape services of the future for licence fee payers.”
They hope to learn lots from this trial, as Ashley Highfield, Director of Future Media and Technology at the BBC said, “The findings, combined with quantitative and qualitative consumer research, will inform the BBC’s future mobile strategy.”
We’ll keep our eyes on this.
30 March, 2007
.xxx Porn Domain Defeated By ICANN
After a long time, the organisation behind the domain names on the Internet has voted against .xxx.
The idea behind the .xxx p0rn domain extension (or Top Level Domain TLD, in domain -ese) has been floating around for a very long time.
Back in March 2004 ICM Registry, based in Florida, put a formal application in for .xxx, in response to ICANN’s request for proposals for new TLDs.
Over the time since then, there’s been many back and forths between ICM and ICANN to try and reach a settlement.
There’s been signs of encouragement from ICANN when it has gone to votes twice back in 2005.
Today the ICANN meeting in Lisbon has voted against .xxx. The reasons they list are
- ICM’s Application and the Revised Agreement fail to meet, among other things, the Sponsored Community criteria of the RFP specification.
- Based on the the extensive public comment and from the GAC’s communiqués that this agreement raises public policy issues.
- Approval of the ICM Application and Revised Agreement is not appropriate as they do not resolve the issues raised in the GAC Communiqués, and ICM’s response does not address the GAC’s concern for offensive content, and similarly avoids the GAC’s concern for the protection of vulnerable members of the community. The Board does not believe these public policy concerns can be credibly resolved with the mechanisms proposed by the applicant.
- The ICM Application raises significant law enforcement compliance issues because of countries’ varying laws relating to content and practices that define the nature of the application, therefore obligating ICANN to acquire a responsibility related to content and conduct.
- The Board agrees with the reference in the GAC communiqué from Lisbon, that under the Revised Agreement, there are credible scenarios that lead to circumstances in which ICANN would be forced to assume an ongoing management and oversight role regarding Internet content, which is inconsistent with its technical mandate.
Reading their application back in March 2004, there’s chance for a bit of a laugh.
The proposed .xxx string is clearly appropriate for the sponsored community as other strings were deemed too Anglo-Saxon and had the potential to lead to confusion (see above).
“too Anglo-Saxon” – brilliant.
Many people feel the .xxx TLD to be a good idea, the theory being that if all porn is pushed on to it, children and those not interesting in seeing p0rn won’t just stumble across it by accident. Given the sheer amount of p0rn on the Internet, that’s not a bad idea, but thinking that p0rnographers will adhere to any rules is wishful thinking.
Frankly if ICANN’s thinking is that by not allowing .xxx they think people won’t think there’s p0rn on the Internet, they’re living in a different world.
Rejection of Proposed sTLD Agreement with .XXX
Public comments on .xxx
30 March, 2007
Flexion ePhotomaker Review (90%): Handy Mini Studio-In-A-Bag
With more and more people shifting their goods via eBay, auction sites and online shops, it’s important to be able to back up your sales patter with some high quality images.
Although digital cameras make it easy to quickly snap product shots, the built in flash often creates unflattering shadows and reflections, so Lastolite are hoping that people will be prepared to shell out for their economy-priced ePhotomaker kit.A much smaller and less complex affair than the three hundred quid Lastolite Cubelite Portable Studio set-up we reviewed last September, the ePhotomaker comes in two sizes, and promises pro-quality, studio-style shots at a cut price budget.
The package comes in a small round blue bag, with the igloo-shaped light tent almost bursting out, thanks to its super-springy wire skeleton.
Also lurking in the bag is a sheet of blue ‘gel’ (to compensate for the yellow hue of the average light bulb) and two crocodile clips for attaching it to a desk lamp.
Inside the igloo
Looking inside the igloo-like tent, there’s an all-white interior with the right side covered in reflective silver material.
The idea is that you shine your desk light through the left hand side of the tent, with the material diffusing the light inside and the silver material ‘filling in’ shadows from the opposite side.
In general, we got pretty good results, although you’ll almost certainly have to fiddle about with the EV compensation and/or white balance controls on your digital camera to get the best results.
Fortunately, the included illustrated instructions do a fairly good job of talking newbies through the process of setting up the camera, with directions for both digital and film users.
The desk lamp isn’t included by the way, but just about any old light source will do (indeed, we got excellent results sitting the light tent on a sunny table top).
Also included in the kit is a grey card for setting exposure and a wee tripod, but unless you want to see your expensive dSLR nose-dive into the ground, we would only recommend attaching this to small digital compact cameras.
Conclusion
If you’ve ever battled to produce a decent product photo at home and suffered the inevitable distracting backgrounds, inconsistent shadows and disappointing results, it may well be worth investing in the ePhotomaker.
Although you could just as easily make your own home studio with a white sheet, some stickyback plastic and a few shoeboxes, the ePhotomaker kit has the advantage of being easy to set up and quick to pack away – and it’s pretty cheap too.
Once you’ve delved into your digicam’s menus to work out the best settings for your camera, you should have no problem knocking out high quality images – and if the better product photos help you sell your stuff on eBay, the ePhotomaker kit may well end up paying for itself sooner than you think!
Our verdict
Features: 75%
Ease of Use: 80%
Value for Money: 85%
Overall: 90%
0Small ePhotomaker kit
Price: £50 inc. VAT.
Large ePhotomaker kit
Price: £80 inc. VAT.
ePhotomaker
30 March, 2007
Complete My Album Launched By Apple iTunes
As is often the case, there’s been rumours circling for a long time about the possibilities of Apple launching an add-service for iTunes, to give credits for tracks purchased.
Today they’ve announced it’s for real. The new Complete My Album will give iTunes users 79p credit per track for each track on an album that they decide to purchase, if they’ve bought the tracks individually first.
To illustrate, a user who’s already purchased three 79 pence singles and decides to buy the corresponding £7.99 album would be able to download the remaining songs to complete the album for just £5.62, without having to pay for the same tracks again.
Well done for Apple for launching this, but frankly, it only seems right anyway.
There’s two caveats. Customers only have 180 days from the purchase of the first track to buying the whole album, and it doesn’t looks like it’s going to be all albums as they’re referring to “qualifying albums.”
The music industry don’t really have an option in increasing the likelihood of punters buying more music from them. Complete My Album is just such a offering. As to whether people will be tempted into buying those extra tracks from the album, that they purposely didn’t buy when they were originally buying the track is quite another matter.
29 March, 2007