Digital-Lifestyles – Page 158 – 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

Yahoo Mail To Go Unlimited
Yahoo Mail will be upping the ante in the Web-based email market.
There’s been back and forth between Yahoo and Google, following Google launching Gmail with an at-the-time world-shattering 1GB of storage back in April 2004.
To mark their 10-year web-mail birthday, Yahoo are proposing giving people unlimited storage for their email, quite a step up from the 4MB that they launched with.
To put some numbers to the escalation of the demands for email, David Nakayama, Yahoo’s group vice president of engineering, points out that in the early days, Yahoo’s “total capacity for mail accounts back then was 200GB for all of our customers. At Yahoo!, we’re now receiving more inbound mail than that every 10 minutes.”

Now don’t expect all of this to be available today, as even Yahoo’s mighty mass of server farms might buckle under the demand. Instead they plan roll it out gradually over the coming months.
Don’t go thinking that you’ll be able to use your Yahoo mail account to hold all of your data, Yahoo will have anti-abuse limits in place to protect users, the details of which are currently unclear.
Many of us at Digital-Lifestyles swear by Gmail as our email package of choice, but we’ve hit the 2.8GB limit a few times of late and if Google don’t make the jump to copy Yahoo’s infinite offer, that may be enough for some of us to jump over to Yahoo. So come on Google.
29 March, 2007
Ofcom To Regulate VoIP In UK
Ofcom have just announced a new regulatory code for Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP) service providers operating in the UK.
With predictions estimating that there could be as many as three million VoIP users in the UK by the end of this year, Ofcom clearly felt it was time to set some base rules for the industry to adhere to.
They’re broadly divided in two – prescribed information to tell the consumer before they sign up and once they have signed up, making them aware of the limitation of their access to the emergency services.
For a long time the lack of solid emergency (999) number access has been used by the incumbent telecos to try and stem the growth of VoIP. Their argument? If someone calls 999, there is no assured way of telling if that person is calling from Basildon, Birmingham, or Beijing, as the handset just needs to be on an IP connection, to attached to the end of a specific piece of wire, like a landline is.
Before June 2007, all VoIP providers will be required to make it clear :-
- whether or not the service includes access to emergency services (some operators may choose not to provide any support at all);
- the extent to which the service depends on the user’s home power supply (Standard telephones are powered by the phone line itself, where as Broadband services require external power to a number of different boxes to function);
- whether directory assistance, directory listings, access to the operator or the itemisation of calls are available; and
- whether consumers will be able to keep their telephone number if they choose to switch providers at a later date. (This is known as number portability, and would seem reasonable to offer, given it is standard throughout the rest of the telecoms markets).
If a customer decides to sign up for a VoIP service, the provider has additional obligations around emergency calls:-
- secure the customer’s positive acknowledgement of this at point of sale (by ticking a box, for example);
- label the capability of the service, either in the form of a physical label for equipment or via information on the computer screen; and
- play an announcement each time a call to emergency services is attempted, reminding the caller that access is unavailable.
29 March, 2007
Driven Mad By A Whining Asus Fan
Life in Digi-Life towers has become considerably more stressful recently after our Mesh PC started to give out an annoying high pitched whine from one of the PC’s fans.
At first, it was just an occasional background noise that would start just as quickly as it would stop. Then it started to become more regular. And louder. And more irritating.
Put the boot in
We noticed that a highly unscientific boot to the PC’s case (carry out at your own risk) often stopped the noise, but in the past few weeks the fan has become so noisy that we feared we may end up committing GBH on the machine.
With a level of grumbling that would make Mr Grumpy on Tax Return Day seem like a happy chap, we reluctantly pulled open the PC to look for the culprit.
Naturally, the machine decided to switch to ‘absolutely silent’ mode for the first ten minutes, but eventually we tracked down the culprit: the chipset fan on our ASUS A8N-SLI Deluxe motherboard.
‘No problem,’ we thought, we’ll just pop along to the nearest PC fair and grab a £2 replacement fan and silence will be, once again, truly golden.
Before shelling out for the fan, we thought we’d take a quick look on the Web to see if there were any issues about fitting replacement fans and that’s when the expletive count started to hit Gordon Ramsey levels.
It’s the chipset, Jim
It turns out that our motherboard is not only near legendary for its incessantly whining fan, but worst of all, Asus fitted the mobo (Motherboard) with a stupid, steeenkin’ non-standard fan. Aaargh!
Although we can only admire the near-Klingon-esque sci-fi looks of the Asus fan in question, its proprietary fitting means that you can’t simply slap in an off-the-shelf replacement.
According to some online forums, Asus will apparently send you a free replacement fan once you’ve filled in several forms in triplicate, but we haven’t heard back from them yet (the mobo comes with a three year warranty).
A request for help on the urban75 forums brought forth disturbing tales of folks fitting their own replacement fans, a process which involves the enormous hassle of removing the entire motherboard – not a job for an impatient journo with pressing pub deadlines.
Some had simply botched up a solution, with one user wedging in a standard chipset fan with a zip-tie, while another had manoeuvred a case fan to blow over the chipset at low revs.
Others suggested plumping for a passive cooling solution, employing a Zalman Silent Motherboard Heatsink – a bargain at under £3, but once again requiring the entire PC be taken apart.
We’ll be keeping you informed if Asus honour their free replacement fan offer (we’ve also written to Mesh, the PC makers), but for now you’ll have to excuse us if a few of our posts get a little tetchy as the ruddy thing has started making a whining noise all over again.
In the meantime, may we recommend that users looking to upgrade or build a new PC invest in a motherboard with passive chipset cooling rather than risk suffering the slings and arrows of an outrageous PC racket.
29 March, 2007
LG-Google Handsets Coming From Deal
LG have signed a deal with Google to put some of their mobile services pre-loaded onto its handsets.
LG have committed to release at least ten new mobile phone and will jointly market them as LG-Google handsets.
The apps covered by the deal are Google Maps – which lets people view maps and satellite imagery, find local businesses, and get driving directions, Gmail – the Java-driven, mobile focused version of their email service and Blogger Mobile – which, err … lets you blog while on the move, using images taken from the mobile phone.
Mr. Paul Bae, Vice President of the Product Planning Team at LG Electronics Mobile Communications Company really wants us all to know that “LG’s mobile devices, combined with Google, will provide consumers with easy access to their favourite Internet services even without a PC and make it easy for them to stay connected while in motion.” Wooo!
As we know LG don’t just do mobile phones, but a whole panoply of electronic bits, with a major focus on the home, so it’s interesting to hear from LG that they’ll be extending their relationship with Google to “develop digitalized home in the future.”
The financial terms of the deal were not revealed, indeed it’s unclear if LG will be sharing the income Google will derive from its advertising.
LG are being a little tarty about this. It’s not too long ago (end of 2006) that they signed a deal with Yahoo to pre-load Yahoo! services, including Yahoo! Go for Mobile 2.0, Yahoo! Mail and Yahoo Messenger on many of its mobile phones. Clearly that wasn’t an exclusive deal and it will have covered different handsets we imagine.
28 March, 2007
Xbox 360 Elite Announced
There’s been lots of speculation going around the various blog sites about the release of a new version of Microsoft’s Xbox 360.
Yesterday Microsoft confirmed that the Xbox 360 Elite is a real product and will begin arriving in US stores on 29 April with an expected retail price of $480.
The confirmed spec of the 360 Elite is a combination of a 120Gb hard drive, new accessories bundled in, and to all of those HD TV fans, an HDMI port built in. Oh, and a return to a black case like the original Xbox. Microsoft tell us that the retail price of all of the bundled bits is over $600 if bought separately.
The HDMI port is an interesting move – yes it will make it simpler to get High Def screens connected (if you have a screen with an HDMI in port), but importantly it will let Elite owners play protected HD-DVD discs on the long-discussed add-on HD-DVD drive. HDMI connection is needed for the HDCP content protection scheme.

The new, large hard drive is a big step up from the previous version of 20Gb to 120Gb – all the more space for Microsoft to sell you TV shows, films and software to download – oh … and save you game positions to as well of course.
The hard drive is detachable and will also be sold separately so standard Xbox users will be able to get hold of them too. Expected US price is $180.
Alongside the goodies above are an Xbox 360 Wireless Controller in black and a headset, in … err, black. Do you get the black theme? There’ll be a couple of other new bits available separately too, a Play & Charge kit for the the wireless controller ($20) and a black rechargeable battery ($12)
Peter Moore, Corporate Vice President – Interactive Entertainment Business, Microsoft, turned the hyperbole meter way up to deliver the following, “Today’s games and entertainment enthusiast has an insatiable appetite for digital high-definition content. Xbox 360 Elite’s larger hard drive and premium accessories will allow our community to enjoy all that the next generation of entertainment has to offer.”
It’s worth noting that the first shots of the Elite, while looking slightly underground, are in fact taken by ‘Major Nelson,’ the pseudonym for Larry Hryb, Xbox Live Director of Programming. So ‘leaked’ photos are now coming from official sources!
Images courtesy of Major Nelson
28 March, 2007
Clipboard Recorder 4.0 Review (84%)
Sometimes the simplest applications can make the biggest difference to your productivity, and we reckon that freeware Clipboard Recorder by LW-Works could be such a fella.
As the name suggests, the program extends Windows clipboard functionality by keeping a full record of whatever you’ve copied into your your clipboard (annoyingly, Windows normally only lets you store one piece of copied content in memory).
The program is a mere slip of a thing at just 1 meg and equally light on system resources, and once installed provides several ways for you to access content stored in its clipboard.
Once running (it can be configured to start up automatically), Clipboard Recorder lurks in the system tray, quietly monitoring and storing what’s going into your system clipboard.
The neatest way to can access the extended clipboard is by selecting the Windows+V keys or clicking on the system tray icon and selecting the desired text from a list of ‘headlines.’
If that’s not enough, you can also choose to have a floating window on your desktop or go the whole hog and have the full application window open, giving you the opportunity to preview the full content of the pasted clips.
The program supports a variety of formats including RTF text, HTML, CSV and images (although we couldn’t get it to store images copied in Firefox) and can even let you transfer clipboard data between computers.
Big time cut’n’pasters can set up separate clipboard records by creating new categories and drag and dropping clipboard contents over.
Conclusion
Although it doesn’t possess the most attractive interface we’ve ever had grace our desktop, Clipboard Recorder does a very useful job without any fuss and for free, we’re not complaining.
In use, we found the program a real boon and short of some calamitous program malfunction in the future, it’s earned a permanent place in our system tray. Recommended.
Score on the doors
Features: 70%
Interface: 60%
Ease of use: 80%
Overall: 84%
Clipboard Recorder
Pro version and developments
There is also a professional version available offering extra features for £30, as well as a downloadable preview version of the forthcoming v4.1.
This lets you exclude clips from specific applications (so you don’t fill up your clipboard with passwords, for example) and offers the ability to export clips to external files.
The developer seems fairly active on the site too, and seems open to user feedback, so if you like the program give the fella some feedback!
28 March, 2007
Texas Instruments Demos Mobile Phone Projector
As if having someone hand you their mobile and insist that you’d be bored to death looking at their collection of blurry, “here’s me drunk with my mates” videos wasn’t bad enough, it looks like things are set to get a lot worse.
At the CTIA Wireless 2007 show in Orlando, Florida, tech firm Texas Instruments has been giving public demonstrations of its digital light processing (DLP) ‘pico’ projector – a teensy weensy movie projector that’s small enough to wedge into a mobile phone.
“How does it all work?” we hear you ask. And the answer is, “with clever stuff that we don’t quite understand.”
We can tell you, however, that the mini-projector sports three lasers, a LP chip and a power supply, with the whole caboodle measuring just 38mm, making it technically possible to fit in all the gubbins inside a normal sized phone.
Using the phone projector (“phonejector?” “prophonetor”?”), the mobile phone will eventually be able to beam DVD-quality video on to a screen or a wall, making it a workable portable video player or TV.
However, the prototype is currently only capable of displaying an image about the size of an A4 sheet of paper (8.5×11-inches) at a rather humble HVGA (640×240) resolution in “ambient light conditions” (i.e. it’s not very bright).
We understand that for some of you, the prospect of filling giant walls with the handheld highlights of the office party may prove a compelling attraction, but we’re afraid that you’re going to having to wait: TI has not announced when it will actually start producing projectors for the mobile phone market.
Source
27 March, 2007
Smaato Offers Free RSS Reader For Smartphones
Software company Smaato and mobile media types Handmark have pressed the flesh, slapped some backs and delivered mutual high-fives as the two companies announce a strategic partnership to distribute Smaato News.
Smaato News is a RSS reader for smartphones that lets users read RSS feeds of their favourite Websites and blogs and get other information on the move.
Currently available for Palm OS, Windows Mobile Pocket PC and Symbian S60 devices, the program comes with a collection of re-defined RSS feeds to get users started, and there’s the option to add custom feeds.
The program can also provide various services like weather forecasts and allows users to share their feeds with friends via SMS or email.
Feeds can be synchronised via a desktop connection (Palm OS and Windows Mobile only) or over the air via a mobile Internet connection.
Although the application is free, the program is supported by adverts which appear on the top section of the screen (“if you see something interesting, don’t hesitate to click,” implores their manual, rather optimistically).
The program can be downloaded from Smaato’s Website, although users may baulk at the amount of space the application takes up: a beefy 640k for the Palm and a positive pie-scoffing 1.80 meg for Windows Mobile.
We couldn’t find an option to save the downloaded RSS feeds to the memory card, so this isn’t a machine for users running smartphones that are already stuffed full of programs.
Funnily enough, we were half way through writing a review of some Palm OS RSS readers and without giving too much away, we’d suggest you wait for our review to go up before installing the Smaato app.
Smaato News
Availability:
Palm OS Smartphones (e.g. Treo 650)
Windows Mobile Pocket PC Phone Edition (e.g. Treo 750; O2 XDA)
Symbian S60 (e.g. Nokia N70)
27 March, 2007
Microsoft Vista Shifts 20 Million Copies
Microsoft says that its new Vista OS is flying off the shelves quicker than, err, hot software off a shovel, with a claimed 20 million copies shifted since its January 30 consumer release.
Microsoft’s Corporate VP Bill Veghte was clearly a chuffed fella, “We are encouraged to see such a positive consumer response to Windows Vista right out of the gate,” he purred in an official statement released on Monday.
“While it’s very early in the product lifecycle, we are setting a foundation for Windows Vista to become the fastest-adopted version of Windows ever,” he added.
The figures seem to stack up well against the 17 million copies of Windows XP sold in the two months following its release in 2001, but the PC market has increased exponentially since then: according to IDC, total worldwide PC shipments hit 136 million units in 2001, a figure dwarfed by last year’s 227 million total sales.
There seems to have been a bit of gentle manipulation with the figures by Microsoft too. As well as the boxed copy and new Vista PC sales, the company cunningly included those folks who had bought an XP PC over the holiday season and then gone on to redeem their free Vista upgrades later.
Although Windows marketing director Bill Mannion acknowledged that the upgrade program had nudged the sales figures in an upward direction, he played down the numbers saying that upgraders didn’t make up the “core component of the 20 million.”
A shift to higher-end versions of Vista has been also reported by both Microsoft and the PC makers, with Mannion saying that the pricey Ultimate edition has been doing good business: “We have relatively modest expectations for Ultimate, but it’s exceeding that on both new PCs and the packaged product.”
ZNet
27 March, 2007
iRiver T50 PMP Coming Soon

We generally can’t get too excited about the launch of yet another Personal Media Player – after a while they all start to look the same to our product-swamped eyes – but we have to say iRiver’s new T50 PMP looks rather special indeed.
Perhaps inspired by Swiss chocolate Toblerone bars, the T50 comes in a natty triangular form, with the metallic, industrial-styled casing looking like it could take a few tumbles down the Alps too.
A tiny 1-inch 128 x 64, 65k colour CSTN LCD display gives status feedback and if the promo pics are anything to go by, it’s a mighty fine looking little screen too.
The player comes with 1GB of onboard flash memory and offers an impressive 52 hours of playback from a single AAA battery – a pretty impressive tally if it manages that in the real world.
Multimedia support comes in the shape of MP3, OGG and WMA DRM10 audio playback, and it can also read BMP images (although you’ll need your own built-in macro lens to see much on that diminutive screen.)
The unit also packs in a handy FM tuner and voice recorder, with functions controlled by a wee joystick.
Produced in black or white finishes, the T50 measures up at 2.9 x 1.2 x 1.0 inches and will be available in Japan for around 10,000 Yen ($85) from 14th April. There’s no news yet of a UK/European release. Bah!
Specifications:
Product Type Portable Audio Player
Weight 32 g
Dimensions 73.1 x 30.9 x 27.3 mm
Interface Type USB 2.0
Storage type Flash
Capacity 1 GB
FM Radio Yes
Voice Recording Yes
ID3 tag support Yes
Supported audio formats MP3, Ogg Vorbis, WMA
Signal-to-noise ratio 90 dB
Battery type AAA Alkaline
Rated battery life (audio) 52 hours
Picture formats BMP
27 March, 2007