Digital-Lifestyles – Page 175 – 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

LG-SH110 LG phone From Korea
With Simon and Garfunkel’s ‘Slip Sliding Away’ surely on perpetual loop in the factory, LG have released yet another natty phone that’s big on that super-slidey thang, the 3G LG-SH110.
Clad in a fashionable all-black stealth finish, the phone boasts a colour QVGA display which – if you’re not down with acronyms – stands for ‘Quarter Video Graphics Array’ and translates into a 320 × 240 resolution display.
And that’s quite a big screen for such a wee phone.
Rustling though the minimal specs offered thus far, we can tell you that Messrs LG have wedged in a 2.0-megapixel camera coupled with a secondary VGA camera for video calling, with the screen able to show your own face and the caller recoiling in horror at your gurning mug.
Judging by the grinning, preening ladies clutching the phone with such ecstatic delight, LG are keen to big up the SH110’s multimedia abilities, with the phone offering an MP3 player, Music Sharing and Bluetooth support, with a pair of wired headphones bundled in the package.
HSDPA connectivity offers super nippy 1.8Mbps connectivity with visio-conference functionality hoping to tempt business bods.
If all this has tempted you to whip out your wallet with gusto, put your money away, squire – as with most of LG’s goodies there’s no confirmed UK release date and there quite probably never will be. Boo!
[From Akihabaranews]
22 January, 2007
Video On Demand Could Grind The Internet To A Crawl
Although the home entertainment industry is more loved up than the Happy Mondays on a bagful of E about Video-on-Demand, a new report suggests there might be a bumpy ride ahead.
The media research bods at Deloitte reckon that video downloads are likely to “encounter some challenges in 2007” with customers expecting to suffer slow broadband downloading times, especially for customers downloading to their computers.
Igal Brightman, global managing partner at Deloitte commented that, “the unrelenting growth in Internet traffic during 2007 may overwhelm some of the Internet’s backbones: the terabit-capable pipes connecting continents.”
“The impact may be most noticeable in the form of falling quality of service,’ he added, warning the industry that it would only take an unexpected upsurge in video usage to turn the inconvenience caused by dropping access speeds into “full-scale consumer dissatisfaction.”
UK market still small
At the moment, the UK film download market in Britain is still relatively small, with media market and research analysis group Screen Digest, anticipating that the big moolah will eventually start rolling in, but not for a few years’ time,
The company estimates that the UK market is set to be worth £2.6 million in 2007 (£400,000 up from last year), soaring up to £8.4 million in 2008, and hitting a badger’s nadger under £30 million by 2009.
The big payola, however, is unlikely to start being raked in until equipment and networks improve.
Slower than a sleepy sloth
Deloitte calculated that on a typical two Mbit/s DSL network, film downloads will crawl down the wire at a yawn-inducing one minute per minute for a film, so a three hour film would take 180 minutes or more to arrive.
When it comes to downloading high-definition video, punters can definitely put the popcorn on hold too, with an average film taking the best part of a day to slide down a one Mbit/s DSL connection.
Matters aren’t helped by the rise of other bandwidth-hogging applications like VoIP, e-mail and online gaming, and in high demand areas it may prove quicker to pop down to Blockbuster than wait for the film to download.
22 January, 2007
MySpace Face Four Child Lawsuits
MySpace is being hit with compensation claims by the families of four children who allege sexual assault by adult MySpace members after finding out personal information about them on their MySpace pages.
The families from New York, Ohio, South Carolina and Texas have filed seperate cases in Los Angeles. They’re being represented by Arnold & Itkin LLP of Houston, Texas and Barry & Loewy LLP of Austin, Texas.
They allege “negligence, recklessness, fraud and negligent misrepresentation” by News Corp. and MySpace.
These cases don’t appear to fall into the ‘oh this might have happened’ category. Three of the cases have lead to the incarceration of the attackers, one whom is serving ten years in Texas. In the other case the two men have been arrested and are awaiting criminal prosecution.
Not the first claim
This isn’t a first for Barry & Loewy LLP. Back in June 2006 they filed the first lawsuit of its kind against MySpace, for a 14 year old girl who was also allegedly assaulted after contact through MySpace.
They claimed MySpace was “negligent in protecting teenage users despite numerous warnings of the dangers” and “had full knowledge that sexual predators were contacting young children on the website but did nothing to stop it.” The financial claim was $30 million in damages.
Concerns like these aren’t new to MySpace. Back in Feb 2006, parents were voicing their concerns.
MySpace have taken action. In December last year MySpace took action to kick off known sexual predators.
Be careful
Cases like these will bring into focus the potential dangers to those who reveal details about themselves online, although with a few simple rules, horrible incidents such as these should be avoidable. Most of them being the same rules you would apply in normal, non-online life.
19 January, 2007
Nintendo Wii _Does_ Get You Fit
Mickey DeLorenzo is a man on a mission – to prove that it’s possible to lose weight just by playing his Nintendo Wii.
He’s been the same weight for the last two years and while maintaining his normal diet, complete with the usual Christmas indulgences in food and drink, he managed to lose nine pounds and nearly 2% of his body fat by playing for 30 minutes a day.
He’s been pretty fastidious in his self-monitoring over the six week period, keeping a close eye on his Weight; Body Mass Index (BMI); Calories burned per session/per game; Body fat %; Heart Rate at rest; Wii Fitness Age; and Additional Notes/Soreness.
By his own description, he played it in a “semi-aggressive way.”
I moved my feet, I used full body motion, and I swung my arms to mimic the real thing. If you just stand there and make small moves or sit on the couch and play, I don’t think you’ll see much, if any results regarding exercise.
Oh the pain
It wasn’t without pain, but as they used to say in the 80s, no pain, no gain.
He got hit with two types of pain – physical pain as well as tech pain. On the physical pain side, he report that “my first 3-5 days were brutal. I was sore from shoulder to wrist, I even went as far as purchasing an Icy/Hot patch to sooth my pain.”
The tech pain was him smashing the screen off his girlfriend’s laptop during a game of Wii bowling. We suspect this accident then lead to further physical pain inflicted by his missus.
The details that he presents on the site are pretty extreme, with obligitory graphs too. Those things combined with the subject make it ideal Digg food, and as we write this, we see the article has been Dugg 3655 times.
I did a similar test with the Sony EyeToy a couple of years back, using Kung Fu that came with EyeToy Play. It really got me feeling good, but my appoach was _far_ less scientific. Reading this gives me the impetus to try it again.
Nintendo must be jubliant about this story – providing the perfect excuse for children to pester their parents to buy a Wii.
Hats off and well done Mickey.
19 January, 2007
Skype: Calls To Landlines Go Flat Rate & Skype Pro Announced
Skype are on the move again, this time changing the way that they bill for calls to landlines.
As is their want, it will be brought to in Europe, then rest of world during 2007.
The new charging scheme does away with per-minute charges for SkypeOut calls to domestic landlines, replacing it with a connection fee. This fee changes depending on the currency, with Europe paying 3.9 Euro Cents and the UK being spanked 2.9 pence per call, against the current exchange rate equivalent of 2.56 pence. All of these prices exclude VAT.
After the first five seconds of a SkypeOut call, the connection fee will apply.
Some countries will be cheaper, running at 1.7 Euro Cents, these currently include … Czech Republic (including Prague), Guam, Hungary (including Budapest), Israel (including Jerusalem), Luxembourg, Malaysia (including Kuala Lumpur), Puerto Rico and both Alaska and Hawaii in the United States.
This shift around isn’t a bolt out of the blue. Back in December a Skype Executive talked about these connection rates that became effective from 13:00 CET today.
The Skype Unlimited Calling plan in the US and Canada and the Talk for Britain campaign in the UK do not include a connection fee for national calls. Skype to Skype calls continue to be free and calls to mobiles will continue to be charged on a per minute basis.
Setup fees are usually bad news for people who make short calls, as the cost is front loaded, with the nattering classes gaining the biggest benefit from the flat rate.
Skype Pro
To have the privilege of a Skype Pro account punters will have to pay €2 per month. The new Skype Pro accounts also come with free Skype Voicemail and €30 off a SkypeIn number.
Skype Pro
18 January, 2007
The iDontWantOne: Private Eye Mocks The iPhone
The brilliant Private Eye, satirical magazine of the UK, has a fake advert for the Apple iPhone.
The headline? At last, from Apple – The iDontWantOne with a photo of the iPhone underneath it.
The gist of the jest is that it’s over-complicated for normal mortals and is highly likely to malfunction. After you’ve used the phone to call Apple customer support and tried to text them and failed, you can use it as an iBrick with a paper note attached to it saying “Why doesn’t your stuff work properly?”
Full copy is
The ultimate in hand-held technology! Now using the all-in-one device you can take a photo, download songs, play videos, access the internet and then with the iPhone you can ring up Apple to complain that none of the above facilities work. And if the phone doesn’t work you can text the customer services department – unless that doesn’t work either, in which case you can use it as a brick (the iBrick facility) to throw through the window of the Apple store, attached to a lo-tech hand-written note saying, “Why doesn’t your stuff work properly?”
Referring to the oft-used phrase of bad support departments, they have an insert with “Try turning it off and then on again,” underneath a photo of The Steve.
Given Apple’s legal-happy status currently, they may be contacting The Eye – not something that will phase them, they’ve had far bigger legal battles and won before.
Besides the great jests that Private Eye have against the irrelevant, they also carry out real journalism – actually investigating wrongs and exposing them – something of a rarity in most publications.
Private Eye
Private Eye subscriptions
18 January, 2007
My Book Pro 500GB Drive: Review (87%)
Attractively designed in a rounded sleek metal jacket and sporting a funky blue capacity gauge, Western Digital’s MyBook range of external hard drives are aimed at consumers looking for a stylish solution to their storage problems.
The drives can be used horizontally or vertically and come in two sizes – 250GB or 500GB, – and three ‘editions’ offering extra features.
We reviewed the 500GB My Book Pro Edition which offers three ways of hooking up the drive to your PC; FireWire 800, FireWire 400, and USB 2.0.
All leads were provided in the box, and we tested both the FireWire 400, and USB 2.0 interfaces with no problem.
Also bundled in the package is the handy EMC Retrospect Express backup and recovery software, with the drive coming with a 3-year limited warranty.
Setting up the drive was a cinch: we simply plugged the drive into a USB port our Windows XP machine, and the drive utilities were automatically installed.
With the drivers installed, we were able to switch to our preferred FireWire 400 connection and the drive was ready for use.
Blue light fever
As the name suggests, the drive is hardback-sized, and could sit happily on a bookshelf although the glowing blue capacity gauge on the front might look a tad odd amongst the Mills & Boon.
We loved the glowing gauge though: it fades in and out when the drive is turned on and off and does a nice little shimmy when in use.
The outer ring displays the power/activity functions, while the inner ring is split into six sections which illuminate as the space is progressively used up. It’s a nice touch.
Lurking inside the 500GB drive is a 7,200rpm drive with a 16MB cache and a quoted seek time of 8.9ms, and we found it very fast in use and had no problems running video files straight off the disk.
Right now we can’t imagine filling up that 500GB in a hurry, but for drive space demons, Western Digital has recently announced the My Book Pro Edition II, which crams in two 500GB drives in an extended case to give you a massive whopping 1TB of storage – enough for about a zillion photographs (all right, up to 284,000 photos according to Western Digital’s figures).
Although the drive is quiet in use, you can certainly feel it vibrating if you’ve got it on the same surface as your machine, so we recommend lobbing it up on to a shelf.
Conclusion
We loved the My Book so much we went out and bought the thing – so now we won’t have any excuses to not back up our data.
It’s a shame that there’s no networking option, but with an online price hovering around the £180, the My Book drive still represents remarkable value for money.
With a choice of three interfaces, we should have no problem using the drive with a variety of desktop PCs and laptops, and unlike many other external hard drives, this one actually looks nice too.
Our verdict
Features: 75%
Ease of Use: 85%
Build Quality: 90%
Overall: 87%
Specs
Performance Specifications
Rotational Speed 7,200 RPM (nominal)
Average Latency 4.20 ms (nominal)
Seek Times
Read Seek Time 8.9 ms
Track-To-Track Seek Time 2.0 ms (average)
Serial Transfer Rate
FireWire 800
Serial Bus Transfer Rate (1394b) 800 Mbits/s (Max)
FireWire 400
Serial Bus Transfer Rate (1394a) 400 Mbits/s (Max)
USB 2.0
Serial Bus Transfer Rate (USB 2.0) 480 Mbits/s (Max)
Physical Specifications
Formatted Capacity 500,107 MB
Capacity 500 GB
Interface Triple Interface
Physical Dimensions
Height 6.780 Inches (Max)- 172.2 mm (Max)
Length 5.630 Inches (Max) – 143 mm (Max)
Width 2.23 Inches – 56.7 mm
Weight 2.60 Pounds – 1.2 kg
Electrical Specifications
Current Requirements
Power Dissipation
AC Input Voltage 100-240 VAC
AC Input Frequency 47-63 Hz
My Book Pro Edition
18 January, 2007
Singapore WiFi ‘Thief’ Gets Probation
A 17-year old Singaporian male has just escaped a jail sentence, for piggy-backing on someone else’s WiFi connection without their permission, AFP have reported. In place of ‘time in the can’, he ended up with 18 months probation, including a period in a boys home and 80 hours of community service.
Pretty severe for securing “access at about 02:00 on May 13 last year to a wireless router belonging to a person identified as Amos Leong “for the purpose of obtaining computer service” and specifically for Internet access.”
The poor fellow, Garyl Tan Jia Luo, was apparently addicted to online gambling the court was told. This lead him to jump on to someoneles connection, after his Mum took away his modem. He was sitting outside using his computer when someone became suspicious and called the boys in blue to get him arrested.
Back in December he pleaded guilty and had a possible maximum three years prison sentence hanging over him over the whole Xmas period.
There’s another case coming to the Singapore courts soon, with the bod facing some 60 charges of the same.
We could sort of understand it if someone was having to pay for the access, like the 20c/min service that SingTel WiFi service started back in 2002, but what makes this whole thing even stranger is that the Singapore government are planning to give the population free WiFi access soon.
While this is the first case of this sort in Singapore, there have been other examples around the world, including the UK and US. As you can see, it was particuarly popular to run these bods through the courts in 2005.
What’s up with these people?
Whenever we hear about these cases, we’re frankly amazed that these people get done at all. Who is it hurting when a little bandwidth is borrowed?
We’ve had first-hand experience with this at our previous office in Hanson Street, London. We had naturally left our WiFi connection open, just incase someone wanted to check mails as they were passing by. Sadly someone nearby decided that they were going to abuse it and cane the heck out of it to download huge amounts of content on P2P networks.
Once we found out about it, it wasn’t a call to the law, but a tightening of the setting on the router to make sure the uninvited guest wasn’t able to abuse our generosity anymore.
[via]
17 January, 2007
Joost: The Venice Project Renamed
The next-market-to-disrupt target of the Skype/Kazaa founders – TV – has it’s latest news. The Venice Project’s working name has been changed to Joost, continuing their penchant for picking weird names – always a benefit when you want the domains(!).
As to the source/root of the name … ? Well it could be that their massive fans of ’80s video game Joust or perhaps it’s a reference to the German for a friendly ‘goodbye’, Tschüss. Who knows? FYI – It’s actually pronounced Juiced.
We’ve been fiddling with the ~~Venice Project~~, sorry, Joost for a couple of weeks now, since Christopher Wood very kindly sent us an invite to join up.
We whacked it on an older (1.5GHz) machine and found that it really didn’t have the horsepower to run it properly. It’s a pretty greedy little number, even running out of steam on a 2.5GHz. The buzz around us beta testers is that currently, it _loves_ taking power/resources.
Clearly the Joost crew are seeing this as a product for the future (not a bad assumption), that will need to have a current processor to run it on. Queue computer and chip makers cheering and clapping.
A couple of beta testers are pointing and declaring that Joost will be the first failure of the founders. We think that it’s waaaaay to early to be calling that. Be patient my headline grabbing-friend and see how it turns out.
Let’s not forget 1) this is still in Beta, 2) Windows Media Centre was a total dog throughout many of its incarnation, taking years to get to the point where it was even usable.
Joost
17 January, 2007
Nintendo Rake In Record Sales
The Nintendo DS has emerged as the top selling gaming device in both the US and the UK during 2006.
According to figures from the NPD Group, the DS outsold the Wii and PlayStation 3 (PS3) over the bumper Christmas holiday period in the US, with 1.6 million Nintendo DS’s flying off the shelves during December, adding to a total sales figure of 9.2 million units.
By comparison, Sony’s much hyped PS3 only managed to sell 490,700 units in December, hindered by supply and production problems.
Americans certainly went waheey for the Wii, with 604,200 consoles shifted in December, backed up by brisk business for extra games.
NPD found that Wii owners bought three extra titles on average, with a huge 86 percent forking out for The Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess.
Nintendo Owns Europe
Across the pond in Europe, Nintendo managed to shift 500,000 Wiis during December, while in the UK a hefty 200,000 of the next-gen consoles found themselves in the clammy excited hands of game-crazy Brits.
Despite the bumper sales, Wii’s still remain as rare as a Cardiff City away win, with Nintendo Europe MD Laurent Fischer admitting that the company is still “facing stock shortages.”
Record sales
According to UK market monitor Chart Track, UK consumers also bought more than 500,000 Nintendo DS handheld consoles, making it the UK’s biggest games machine last year.
With the Wii whipping up a sales storm and the DS registering record sales on both sides of the Atlantic, Nintendo look set to notch up their most successful financial year ever.
[From PC Advisor and Reg Hardware]
17 January, 2007