Digital-Lifestyles – Page 161 – 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

Virgin Media Boosts XL Broadband to 20Mbps
Virgin Media have announced that they are to boost the top speed of their ‘XL’ cable broadband offering from 10Mbps to 20Mbps, starting in May.
The upload speed will also be upped to 768Kbs, not exactly setting the uploading world alight, but better than a poke in the eye with a stick, non?
While getting people excited about this, they’re also raising the price of their top service by £2 to £37/month.
They’re claiming it “will make the XL broadband service the fastest (widely available) home internet connection in Britain,” which is questionable, depending on your definition of “widely available.”
UK Online and Be Unlimited have been offering 22Mbps and 24Mbps broadband services (respectively) around the UK since the end of 2005, although Virgin Media has a wider reach than them. Both UK Online and Be Unlimited rely on their equipment being installed at the telephone exchange.
To us, these speed increases make it sound like they’re getting ready to start offering other IPTV/VoD-type services.
15 March, 2007
Whitehaven Digital TV Switchover Process Details Emerge
The details of how Whitehaven will switch over from Analogue to Digital are starting to come out.
It’s quite an interesting approach that’s worthy of a little attention, especially as this will form the basis for the approach for the rest of the UK.
Lots of local press have already become involved in informing local residents about the forth coming changes.
This will be added to by sending a letter to each of the 25,000 households in the Whitehaven area to give them details. In there will be details of the Help Scheme for the over-75s, those with disabilities, and blind.
Those qualifying will benefit from a one-off subsidised fee of £40, unless the households receive income-related benefits, in which case assistance will be free.
Starting in May, the awareness of the TV watching residents of Whitehaven will be further raised with captions appearing on their current analogue channels, warning them of the impending switch off of the analogue channels and the need for them to change their equipment if they want to continue watching TV.
As announced, analogue BBC2 will be switched off on 17 October between 2-4 am, freeing up a chunk of analogue frequency for digital use.
The process is slightly more complicated than first appears, although the effect of the actions will remain the same.
Analogue ITV1 will be switched over to the frequency currently used by analogue BBC2, which will become unavailable.
This will leave ITV1’s frequency available to be used by the first digital mux, which will provide three full time stations BBC1, BBC2, BBC News 24, with CBBC and BBC Three sharing the same frequency, switching between the two at 7pm daily.
Summary – For the price of one analogue TV channel (ITV1), four digital TV channels will work in its place.
(BTW we think DigitalUK should be ashamed with themselves at referring to the date as October 17, they are after all a UK Government body. This is the UK and dates are referred to with the date _before_ the month. The UK isn’t the US)
During this time, ITV1 will slip a little from button 3 on their remotes to button 2 – previously occupied by BBC2. A possible source of some confusion for Whitehaven residents, but reducing it to a minimum.
Four weeks later, the other analogue channels will switch off, making space for ‘at least’ 18 channels including ITV2, E4, BBC Four and some digital radio channels all via their TV aerial. There are a number of channels that are available in other parts of the country that won’t be making it to Whitehaven (detailed three paragraphs in).
We’ll keep our eyes and ears open to monitor the success of the process.
15 March, 2007
Whitehaven Digital TV Switchover Date: 17 October 2007
(Update: Details of the switch over process)
Today the date of the start of switchover to Digital TV of the first English town was announced as 17 October 2007. Being cautious types, they’re only going to be switching off one analogue channel to start, BBC 2, with BBC1, ITV and Channel 4 going dark over the rest of the month.
Back in June last year, we heard that Whitehaven was going to be the first town in England to switch off their analogue signal to be replaced by a purely digital service.
Whilst the majority of the channels, including all of the public service ones, will be available via DTT (Freeview), there are a number that won’t. Film 4 won’t be available, but Film 4 +1 (the same, but delayed by an hour) will be – no great loss there. Other missing channels will be a number of shopping and adult channels – a loss for some.
Whitehaven follows analogue switch off which started in Wales, specifically Ferryside and Llanstephan, back in March 2005 and four months later was judged to be a success.
Whitehaven, Cumbria, has similar characteristics to the previous Welsh site – pretty self-contained with the sea to its left and a jolly big mountain on to its right. Areas like this (Google Maps) are chosen to minimising the impact on the surrounding areas.
The official figures for preparedness do present a few hurdles for them. Only 73% of the Wighthaven households have the equipment to let them receive Digital TV – be that via Sky or Freeview. That leaves over a quarter of them still exclusively on analogue.
Photos of Whitehaven
15 March, 2007
iPod – The Missing Manual: Review (80%)
Another in O’Reilly’s missing manual series, this covers the iPod and its companion program iTunes.
Although most of the information can be had elsewhere, it’s useful to have a single source where everything’s in one place. Forgotten how to reset your iPod? It’s in the Missing Manual.
Some sections are genuinely useful, especially the Power of Playlists. It describes how to set them up and even gives links to software and on-line services which may make your life easier, including things like shared playlists and what other people are listening to.
The book is US centric and the iTunes sections assume you live in the US and can purchase TV shows and such like (which us Brits can’t do yet), but it’s still a useful reference.
The sections on photos and video are reasonably complete and help users manage their photo collection on and off an iPod and convert video for iPod use. There’s also a good section on the other features available on the iPod so you can manage address books, calendars etc.
At around £14/$20 it’s not the cheapest book out there, but it should be the only iPod book you’ll ever need.
Verdict
Value – 72%
Information – 88%
Overall – 80%
Buy at US Amazon $12.59
Buy at UK Amazon £9.23
The chapters are: –
Meet the iPod
Bopping Around the iPod
In Tune with iTunes
The Power of Playlists
Shop the iTunes Store
Videos Everywhere
Picturing Your Photos on the iPod
Other Stuff the iPod Can Do for You
iPod Out Loud
What to Do When the iPod Isn’t Working Right
Advanced iPodding
15 March, 2007
Vodafone To Offer Europe-wide Daily Flat Data Rate
The practicality of using cellular data service while you’re abroad hasn’t been high, unless your company doesn’t mind paying the crazy rates that has been data-roaming.
Sanity appears to have been reached by Vodafone, as they announce a flat-rate of €12/day for data in Europe – but only if accessed from “mobile-enable laptops” from 1 July 2007. It will replace their current per Megabyte service, giving what they say is “practically unlimited data usage,” which is actually up to 50Mb/day.
We asked Vodafone for clarification as to what “mobile-enable laptops” were and they said the service would be open to any laptop user who has a datacard, or a mobile phone with modem – as long as they opted-in to the service. The opt-in is free of charge.
Back in June 2005, Vodafone offered a months worth of data roaming for €75, but only included 100Mb in the service – the equivalent of two days data limit for the new service.
Vodafone have been running a voice equivalent roaming service, Vodafone Passport, for two years now, which they claim has 12m users. They tell us that they’ve yet to come up with a swish name for the equivalent data service.
The EU has been on at mobile phone companies to make their European voice roaming charges more reasonable for a while – in fact Vodafone pre-empted any action by the EU, by announcing a dropping their prices a year before they were going to do it.
14 March, 2007
Bling Player Screams Steal Me
As if the life of the portable music player listener isn’t hard enough to survive already, MediaReady has brought out a new range to attract the eye of street magpies – the Bling Player.
As you might guess from the name, the Bling Player has rather a lot of bling-esque stuff stuck to it. The young dudes and dudesses at Digital-Lifestyles tell me that this is referred to as being “iced out,’ or at least it used to be – street phrases move fast.
There’s two models available DOGTAG or SKULL’N’BONES, which MediaReady tell us creates “a new kind of fashion statement.”
The Bling Player is a 2Gb Flash player with FM radio built into it, capable of storing 30+ hours of music or 16+ plus hours of video. We hear that it “will ship to leading consumer electronics, clothing, and jewellry retailers,” starting April 2007.
The price of $199 will possibly mean that prospective purchasers will need to sell a bit of their current bling to own it.
MediaREADY Bling Player
14 March, 2007
Nearly Half Of All UK TVs Digital-ised: Ofcom
The number of UK TVs connected to digital devices – ones that can receive digital TV signals – has increased to 48.5% reports Ofcom.
The quarterly report snappily titled, Communications Market: Digital Television Progress Report, covering the fourth quarter of 2006 (October-December), shows the figures are up from 39% in the same period the previous year, and also from 44.7% in the Q3 2006.
The run up to Xmas is traditionally a time where many more new TVs are bought, in a desperate attempt to increase the ‘enjoyment’ of Xmas by numbing their brains watching ‘entertainment’ on TV. It appears no different this year as a further one million UK homes acquired digital televisions for the first time.
Previously, Ofcom used to highlight the number of UK households that were digital-TV-enabled, which has now reached 77.2%. This figure received a fair degree of criticism as, although it sounded impressive, didn’t give a true reflection of what the impact of switching off analogue would be for UK TV watchers.
There’s been an interesting announcement in the US, where the American households will be offered up to two $40 vouchers to switch to digital TV. The UK government has actively discouraged thinking like this in the UK.
As ever, there’s a huge pile of numbers that will be poured over by those in the industry who get quite excited about this type of thing. We’re normally in this category, but for some reason were not too excited about this quarter.
Communications Market: Digital Television
Progress Report, Q4 2006
14 March, 2007
Online Bloke’s Mags See Traffic Soar
Blokes are generally an easily pleased bunch when it comes to magazines – just shove in loads of high tech gadgets, big cars, some football, lots of wobbling booby babes, video game reviews, pics of dangerous sports and perhaps a page or two on cooking to show off their sensitive side – and they’re as happy as a pig in dirt.
Of course, now that they can get most of the above (and more) all over t’internet, mens print magazines have had to set up their own web presences to keep the ol’brand loyalty going and new figures from Nielsen//NetRatings show that the blokes are digging the concept.
Their stats show that Maxim is currently most popular UK online men’s lifestyle mag, Bizarre the fastest growing with Monkey enjoying the most loyal audience.
The phwoaar-tastic Loaded site apparently has the “greatest affinity” with men, with 88% of visitors to their site being of the geezer persuasion, followed by Nuts (83%) and Zoo (81%).
GQ is almost a girly mag in comparison with more than half (55%) of their online audience being laydees (or ‘foxy chicks’ as Loaded might put it).
Market leaders Maxim managed to notch up 479,000 Unique Visitors in January 2007, putting it 27% ahead of second-placed FHM (378,000), although visitor loyalties seem to easily switch: FHM was the most popular site in October 2006, while Monkey ruled supreme in November and December 2006
“The last quarter has seen the big three online men’s lifestyle magazines – Maxim, FHM and Monkey – vying for top spot. On its official launch in November 2006, Monkey climbed straight to the top of the tree but the last two months have seen a slight, if steady, drop in popularity to fall behind Maxim and FHM,” commented Alex Burmaster, European Internet Analyst, Nielsen//NetRatings, commented:
Dennis Publishing were responsible for the three fastest growing online men’s magazines, with Bizarre scoring a 255% UA growth, Maxim (124%) and Monkey (99%) between October 2006 and January 2007.
The soaring online figures are in contrast to tumbling print figures, reflecting the importance of the online space to traditional publishers.
Via
14 March, 2007
Scoopt Citizen Journalism Service Snapped Up By Getty
With ‘citizen journalism’ being one of the loudest buzzwords in the bright shiny Web 2.0 world, it’s no surprise to see the big media agencies looking for a slice of the action.
Major news agencies made great use of public camera phone footage after the London 7/7 bombings, with several images making the front page of newspapers.
The citizen journalism photo agency Scoopt currently offers a service that lets users text or email any newsworthy photos and video footage, which the company then endeavours to flog on to the international press on their behalf .
Acquiring the company for an undisclosed sum, Getty Images is looking to fully integrate this service into the output of their pro photographers.
The small print
Camera phone snappers uploading imagery to Scoopt keep their copyright but agree to grant the agency a 12-month exclusive license that lets them re-license the work to one or more publishers, with a 50/50 split on the moolah.
With Getty’s well established media network, amateur snappers should expect increased prospects of shifting their work, although Getty hasn’t commented if the payment share is to remain the same.
The company has also said that it intends to invest in technology upgrades and introduce further enhancements to make the Scoopt site more accessible to punters.
“New technology has made it easier to capture and distribute imagery, leading to citizen photojournalism that is increasingly relevant to the news cycle,” commented Jonathan Klein, co-founder and CEO of Getty Images.
“While this genre will never replace the award-winning photojournalism for which we’re known, it’s a highly complementary offering that enables us to meet the evolving imagery needs of a broad customer base,” he added.
Via
How to take good camera phone pictures
Scoopt’s site also provides a handy photo taking guide for wannabe citizen journos, and here’s their top ten tips:
1 Hold the camera steady.
2 Concentrate on the subject.
3 Be aware of what is happening around you.
4 Try to connect with your subject but stay slightly detached to look for the best time to take a picture.
5 Go the extra mile to get the picture — but don’t take risks and don’t break the law.
6 Keep looking and snapping even when you think you have the scoop.
7 Don’t be put off by bad light/rain/snow/a duff viewpoint. Sometimes these elements can add to a picture.
8 Be VERY patient.
9 Be single minded. Getting the picture is your objective. Think in terms of images
10 Hold the camera steady! (Did we mention that one already?)
14 March, 2007
Intel Announces Solid State Drives And Green Processors
Just like clunky eight track cartridges, brick sized cellphones and desk hogging CRT monitors, the trusty hard disk could be heading for oblivion as Intel announce their first move into the flash drive market.
Yesterday, the electronics big boy elbowed its way onto the Flash Memory table clutching news of their Intel Z-U130 Value Solid-State Drive, offering USB 2.0/1.1 interfaces.
Despite its instantly forgettable name, Intel reckons that the NAND flash memory can whip the spinning botty of hard disk drives and removable USB storage devices, offering nippier boot times, embedded code storage, faster data access, silent operation and lower power consumption.
Although no one’s predicting that flash memory will replace hard disks quite yet (mechanical drives still enjoy a considerable cost advantage at large capacities), Greg Matson, product marketing manager for Intel’s NAND flash memory division reckons they could provide a more reliable and cheaper way of storing information on PCs for emerging markets.
The drives could also be fitted into PCs and servers as a way to speed up the boot process, and thus deprive workers of a good excuse to pop out for a walk, “while the PC’s starting up.”
Intel is currently keeping schtum about the pricing for their Z-U130 Value Solid-State Drives (it doesn’t get any more memorable the second time around, does it?) but the capacities will vary from 1GB to 8GB, with 8GB drive not expected to emerge until the end of the year.
Source
Intel’s Green Xeon Processors
Elsewhere, Intel were giving their Eco-Trumpets an extra long parp with the announcement of two new Quad-Core Xeon processors – the L5320 and L5310.
Intel claims that these offer between a 35 and 60 percent reduction in power consumption on low-power, quad-core processors designed for high end users like data centres, blade servers and financial industries.
“Intel has really responded to the industry’s call to deliver unprecedented breakthroughs for datacenter energy efficiency,” frothed Kirk Skaugen, VP of Intel Digital Enterprise Group and GM of the Server Platform Group.
“IT managers can get outstanding quad-core Intel Xeon server performance today and at no premium to dual-core products,” he added.
Via
13 March, 2007