Digital-Lifestyles

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

  • Billy Bragg vs MySpace

    Billy Bragg vs MySpace There’s mutterings of some discontent around MySpace, the insanely popular social site.

    Billy Bragg, well known in the UK for his rebel-rousing tunes, has taken a stance against MySpace by removing his music in protest of MySpace’s Terms and Conditions.

    Bragg and ‘his people’ posted a comment on their MySpace blog (we do love it when a companies tools are used against them), decrying what they say are completely unreasonable terms.

    TERMS: (as of 17th March 2006)
    By displaying or publishing (“posting”) any Content, messages, text, files, images, photos, video, sounds, profiles, works of authorship, or any other materials (collectively, “Content”) on or through the Services, you hereby grant to MySpace.com, a non-exclusive, fully- paid and royalty-free, worldwide license (with the right to sublicense through unlimited levels of sublicensees) to use, copy, modify, adapt, translate, publicly perform, publicly display, store, reproduce, transmit, and distribute such Content on and through the Services. This license will terminate at the time you remove such Content from the Services. Notwithstanding the foregoing, a back-up or residual copy of the Content posted by you may remain on the MySpace.com servers after you have removed the Content from the Services, and MySpace.com retains the rights to those copies.

    The summary? MySpace can exploit the music/content that is put on the site, worldwide, without payment – and sub-license it infinitely.

    Billy Bragg vs MySpace The original Bragg posting was made back in mid-may, but was highlighted when it was picked up by the New York Daily News this week.

    Since then, there have been many announcing the impending death of MySpace with thoughts that all musicians would follow suit and MySpace would implode. As yet we haven’t seen any signs of this.

    It appears that MySpace didn’t intend to own everything and are putting it down to sloppy lawyering and say they intend to straighten things out. MySpace spokesman Jeff Berman, told the New York Daily News, “Because the legalese has caused some confusion, we are at work revising it to make it very clear that MySpace is not seeking a license to do anything with an artist’s work other than allow it to be shared in the manner the artist intends,” adding the all important. “Obviously, we don’t own their music or do anything with it that they don’t want.”

    There’s a difficult balance to be had here. Clearly MySpace is putting out millions of musicians tracks daily and needs to be able to do this, without having a separate contract with each artist. Running alongside this need is the equally important need not to terrify the musicians into thinking that all of their music are belong to us (MySpace).

    Billy Bragg’s MySpace

  • Freeview TV Homes Exceed Analogue For First Time

    Freeview TV Homes Exceed Analog For First TimeWe wouldn’t normally bore you with tales of how many more percent of the UK population have joined the Digital TV-owning army, but this one is a significant one.

    For the first time, the number of households having the BBC-backed Free-to-Air service, Freeview, has exceeded their analogue cousins. Nearly 7.1m have Freeview and 6.4m are still analogue only.

    Freeview will also be pretty pleased that for the third successive quarter their sales have exceeded the 1 million mark, achieving 1.2m between January and March, up 40% over the same period last year.

    Digital satellite is still the Digital Daddy, with 7.7m homes subscribing to Sky and the remaining 645,000 receiving free-to-view satellite.

    There would have been relief at the recently-merged UK cable companies when they saw that there’d been an increase in the number of subscribers. The gain for NTL is only 5,000 subscribers in real terms as the additional new now-digital 70,000 digital cable subscribers were laid off against the 65,000 analogue subscribers who switched. These figures relate to the pre-merged companies.

    Interestingly there still around 500,000 analogue subscribers out of the 3.3m total cable subscriber-base. Changing these has got to be a priority if NTL want to start making the returns they need from subscribers.

    Freeview TV Homes Exceed Analog For First TimeTV over ADSL First
    For the first time Ofcom has reported separate figures for TV over ADSL services. Currently this is only London-focused HomeChoice, but they will be joined in short order by other IPTV companies like BT Vision. HomeChoice gained at a rate of 21.4% over the same period in 2005, ending with 48,545 subscribers.

    Breaking down Sky’s figures
    There’s some interest to be had comparing Sky’s Q4, 2005 figures with Q1 2006 – a couple of surprises lie in there.

    Churn (number of subscribers leaving the service) is up to 11.4% over 10.6% and ARPU (Average Revenue Per User) is down £5 to £392 from £397. This doesn’t sound like a lot until you look at it in terms of income loss – over £38m.

    On the positive front there was a gain of 87,000 households, with multi-room households gain 84,000 and Sky+ users up 149,000, now hitting 1,430,000.

    Freeview TV Homes Exceed Analog For First TimeAdditional TV Sets – Ongoing problems
    Ofcom are estimating that 38% of Freeview sales are intended to secondary TV sets which will start to allay a lot of fears.

    The big hurdle for the UK digital switch-over gang is the replacement of the non-primary TV set, the bedroom TV & video, little Johnny’s TV and the spare that the babysitter uses. When the analogue-broadcast lights go off is when these people start to yell.

    Ofcom UK Digital TV Q1 2006 report (PDF)

  • Samsung Announce True VGA Mobile Display

    Samsung Announce True VGA Mobile DisplayMobile phone companies have been striving to develop high resolution displays to capitalise on the potential of multi-media content. This week, Samsung joined the growing list of manufacturers who have created a true VGA display suitable for mobile phones.

    The 1.98″ LCD panel was debuted on Tuesday at the 2006 Society for Information Display International Conference and Exhibition in San Francisco. The screen uses the company’s proprietary amorphous silicon (a-Si) technology to achieve the same resolution as most desktop PC’s. It can display up to 16 million colours and supports extremely fast data transfer rates making it ideal for viewing video content.

    According to Samsung, the screen has 10 times as many pixels per square inch as a typical 40″ HD TV meaning that your Big Brother clips will be rendered in super high definition.

    Samsung Announce True VGA Mobile DisplayVGA has been available on handheld devices for a while now. Toshiba debuted the first PDA with VGA display (the e805) back in December 2003 and the first VGA mobile, Sharp’s 904SH, launched in Japan in April this year. The latter has four times the resolution of the average QVGA (Quarter VGA) display and face recognition functions that authenticates users by their facial features.

    All of this pixel-mania may be pleasing to electronics CEO’s and geek tech-heads but there are questions about the value of such high definition in such a small device. Higher resolution means greater pixel density which means smaller graphics. This doesn’t, necessarily, equate with ease of use. As one industry insider commented, “The fundamental issue is interface design not resolution. High resolution is primarily useful for viewing pictures – still or moving. Putting a Windows style UI (user interface) on a screen with a resolution greater than the human eye can detect doesn’t deliver a better product.”

    Nokia has already had a stab at addressing this issue with their S60 browser Mini Map function which allows the user navigate around full HTML pages by zooming in and out. A feature which may point the way for future developments in interface design.

  • The World’s Most Expensive Mouse Mat?

    The World's Most Expensive Mouse Mat?Designed exclusively for idiots with more money than sense, the official Formula 1 carbon and leather mouse mat can now be bought online for just £260 ($489, €380)

    Whereas most folks are happy to go along with some wafer thin promotional freebie or a tatty old mouse mat bought for a fiver, the Formula 1 mat is clearly designed for loaded types who go through life struggling to find a connection between common sense and value.

    The ‘none-more-black’ mat has been hand-made in England exclusively for Formula 1 by specialist composite technicians who make Formula One monocoques.

    I guess we must be a bit thick here because we had to look up what ‘monocoques’ meant. We can now, however, tell fellow ignoramuses that it means, “a type of vehicle design in which the body and chassis are in one piece”. So now you know.

    The World's Most Expensive Mouse Mat?The blurb on the Formula 1 webpage insists that the carbon mouse mat was designed “using state of the art automotive 3D modelling software.”

    We’re not entirely sure what 3D car design tools are needed to roll out a piece of flat material, but we can tell you that the mat is made of solid polished carbon fibre with an inlaid leather mouse area.

    It looks like it might just be able to take the almighty stress of having an optical or ball-operated mouse rolling over its surface too, with the carbon being “cured to 120º C at 100 psi.” Thank heavens for that.

    The World's Most Expensive Mouse Mat?(There is a rather better looking all-carbon version available for ‘just’ £250, but this won’t work with an optical mouse).

    Just in case no-one’s noticed that you’re the owner of an outrageously overpriced mat – backed with the finest Italian black suede we’ll have you know – the thing is embossed in carbon with the F1 Formula 1 logo.

    We bet that will impress the ladies. Not.

    F1 store

  • Mobile Consumers Are Lapping Up Convergence

    Mobile Consumers Are Lapping Up ConvergenceSad but (supposedly) true: a new study by Nokia has found that over one in five mobile owners said they’d find losing their phone more upsetting than their wallet, credit cards and – unbelievably – even their wedding ring.

    Tempted though we are to find those people and give them a reality-introducing slap around the face with a wet fish, the survey does reflect the growing importance of mobiles in everyday life.

    Clicking ticking mobiles
    Nearly half (44 per cent) of mobile owners now use them as their primary camera – 68 per cent in India – with over two thirds predicting that music-enabled mobiles will soon rule the world, replacing MP3 players like iPods.

    It doesn’t look like a good time to invest in Timex stocks, with the study finding that seventy two percent of mobile users no longer own a separate alarm clock – and nearly three quarters use their phones as their main watch or clock.

    Mobile Consumers Are Lapping Up ConvergenceNokia commissioned the research in 11 countries around the globe to discover people’s attitudes towards current and future mobiles, and generally found that people *heart* the things the planet over.

    Such is the love for mobiles that users want to see them integrated even closer with their lives, with 42 per cent wanting their phones to be able to chat to their home networks, printer, PC, stereo, TV and mobile devices.

    Curiously, 72 per cent of Saudi Arabians also wanted their fridges to be included in this network.

    Mobile Consumers Are Lapping Up ConvergenceSurfing on the move
    Mobile surfing continues to rise in popularity, with over a third (36%) of respondents browsing on their mobiles at least once a month, with Japan going for it big time, with 37% going online daily.

    “The results strongly demonstrate that people are buying into the idea of convergence – they really do want one device that does it all, from taking quality images, to storing their music collections and operating a digitally connected home,” commented Tapio Hedman, senior vice-president of marketing, multimedia at Nokia.

    Nokia

  • A Third Of UK Business Employ Email Snoopers

    A Third Of UK Business Employ Email SnoopersNew research from messaging security specialists Proofpoint has revealed that more than a third of blue-chip companies in both the US and UK hire dedicated staff to snoop on their employee’s emails.

    Their survey of 112 “email decision makers” at UK enterprises with 1,000+ employees found that 38 per cent of firms employed staff to read, analyse or generally sniff about outbound emails from staff (a figure that rises to 40 per cent for companies with more than 20,000 employees.)

    A total of nearly 62 per cent UK companies were found to perform regular audits of outbound email content.

    UK companies estimate that nearly 1 in 5 outgoing emails contains content that poses a “legal, financial or regulatory risk” with the most common form of non-compliant email content containing “adult, obscene or potentially offensive” content (or, more likely, staff trying to lighten the misery of their dull jobs by sharing a joke).

    A Third Of UK Business Employ Email SnoopersWith companies becoming more concerned about internal security breaches rather than external threats, 34 per cent of companies claimed that their business was impacted by the exposure of sensitive or embarrassing information over the last year.

    With all this secret email snooping going on, bosses have been delivering “You’re Fired!” messages with gusto, with more than one in three sacking an employee for violating email policies in the past 12 months.

    There’s also been lots of finger wagging going off in the boss’s office, with over 70 per cent of UK companies disciplining an employee for violating email policies in the last year,

    The report goes on to sat that just over a fifth of UK companies have given employees a shoutdown for violating blog or message board policies in the past 12 months, with 3.6 per cent getting the boot for their troubles.

    Fear the email
    Nearly half of UK companies declared themselves to be concerned about Web-based email being used to send confidential or proprietary information, with 81.3 per cent saying that it is “important” to reduce the legal and financial risks associated with outbound email in the next 12 months.

    Of course, it’s worth noting that the folks who commissioned the survey – Proofpoint – just happen to run a business offering secure/filtered messaging systems, so it might be an idea to seek out the saltcellar when reading their report.

    Email-free workzones
    Looking to the future, Graham Titterington, principal analyst at Ovum, sees the automated blocking of outbound mail as the future security choice for most companies, as it would sidestep the current grey area concerning the legality of monitoring personal emails.

    Quite how they’d the deal with terminally bored employees deprived of a lifeline to the real world may be another matter though.

    Proofpoint

  • LCD TVs To Rule The Roost By 2009

    LCD TVs To Rule The Roost By 2009In a few years time, kids will be clutching their sides and laughing at the thought that their parents used to watch TV on massive great boxes that filled up half the living room.

    We know this because a new report tells us that LCD TVs are the future, with worldwide ownership of the slimline goggleboxes overtaking lardy CRT TVs in 2010.

    According to a new analysts iSuppli, sales of LCD TVs are positively hurtling along, with shipments expected to rise by 74 per cent to 46.7 million units this year – way up on their original estimate of 41.9 million units.

    After wheeling out their extrapolation-o-meter and pulling assorted levers and flywheels, the company predicts that LCDs will account for 48 per cent of TVs shipped in 2009, while chunky old-school CRTs will struggle with just 42 per cent.

    By the next year, the report predicts that LCDs will account for a hefty 56 per cent of all TVs shipped.

    Sales of rear-projection TVs and plasmas look set to remain a small part of the overall market, claiming just 3 percent and 7 per cent of the market respectively in 2009.

    LCD TVs To Rule The Roost By 2009Style over picture
    Although punters are happy to plunge headlong into the lithe, angular world of the LCD TV, many still believe that the ‘umble CRT TV still provides better picture quality – and what’s more, they cost less.

    However, declining LCD TV prices brought about by improvements in manufacturing continue to bring the once stratospherically-priced TVs into the economic reach of your average punter, with the average price of 32-inch and 40/ 42-inch LCD TVs falling by 17 per cent and 14 per cent respectively in the last five months.

    LG.Philips remain the raging King Kongs of the LCD TV manufacturer jungle with the biggest slice of the market, followed by Samsung, China’s Chi Mei and Acer-owned AU Optoelectronics.

    In the fourth quarter, South Korea produced nearly 45 per cent of the world’s LCD TVs, with Taiwan grabbing 40.1 per cent.

    iSuppli

  • Windows XP SP1 Support Ends October 2006

    Windows XP SP1/SP1a Support Ends, October 2006If you’re still running Ye Olde versions of Microsoft Windows XP Service Pack 1 (SP1) and Service Pack 1a (SP1a), you’d better get your modem in gear as Microsoft will be ending support for these products on 10 October, 2006.

    From that point onwards, you can kiss goodbye to security updates for these service packs, with Microsoft recommending that customers still running SP1 or SP1a upgrade to Windows XP Service Pack 2 el pronto.

    What version have I got?
    You can check what version of XP you’re running by right-clicking the My Computer, and then clicking Properties.

    If “Service Pack 1” appears under System, you are – believe it or not – running Windows XP SP1, so it’s time to get downloading (by the way, don’t bother installing SP1a – go straight for SP2).

    Out of the goodness of their altruistic hearts, Microsoft have extended the SP1 support end date a whole three weeks from the original 16th Sept, 2006 to 10th Oct, 2006. Gawd bless ’em.

    A little bit of history
    The SP1 release sure has been around a long time, first seeing the light of day on the 9th September, 2002 (blimey, was it really that long ago?).

    Windows XP SP1/SP1a Support Ends, October 2006This added USB 2.0 support and a Set Program Access and Defaults utility, letting users control the default application for activities such as web browsing and instant messaging.

    Service Pack 1a came out later as naughty Microsoft were forced to remove their Java virtual machine as a result of a lawsuit with Sun Microsystems.

    Service Pack 2 (SP2) came out on August 6, 2004 after the usual delays and added new functionality to the operating system, including an improved firewall, better Wi-Fi support, a pop-up ad blocker for Internet Explorer, and Bluetooth support and the rather good Windows Movie Maker 2.

    Service Pack 3
    Crawling over the horizon at Microsoft’s leisure is Windows XP Service Pack 3, currently with a “preliminary” release date of “2nd half 2007.”

    Scheduled for release after the launch of Windows Vista, Service Pack 3 looks set to include their Firefox challenging Internet Explorer 7 browser and Windows Media Player 11 (both already available in beta form), and many other changes.

    But don’t hold your breath on this one.

    Microsoft

  • Google Spreadsheets Heads Into Excel Territory

    Google Spreadsheets Heads Into Excel TerritoryGoogle is ready to shove its size nines deep into Microsoft territory with the launch of a free Web-based spreadsheet program, Google Spreadsheets.

    The new program will allow people to view and simultaneously edit data online while conducting what Google describe as “in-document” chat.

    This new spreadsheet product looks sure to put the heat on Microsoft, who have long ruled the roost with their desktop-based, spreadsheet app Excel long being the de facto office tool.

    Google’s announcement comes hot on the heels of their purchase of Writely, a Web-based word processor, and puts them in direct competition with the Redmond mob who are busy prepping their new online-focused Windows Live and Office Live services.

    Launching in beta form today, Google Spreadsheets supports the import and export of documents in the .xls format used in Excel and the .csv (common separate values) format, although it is not yet compatible with many of Excel’s more powerful features – the program can’t, for example, create charts or serve up control menus by right clicking on the screen.

    Jonathan Rochelle, the Google Spreadsheets product manager, explained that the new service will be able to handle several hundred formulas used to manipulate data in Excel, but it won’t be able to handle more complex functions like Excel macros.

    Google Spreadsheets Heads Into Excel TerritoryHe explained that the program’s main goal is to make it easier for family, friends or co-workers to read and work on the same spreadsheet from different computers at different times, letting authorised users add and edit data without having to keep sending e-mail attachments back and forth.

    “When people want to share and collaborate, we think this product fits in well,” he added.

    Users must have a Google account to use the new service, which will initially only be offered to a limited number of users.

    Google

  • N-Gage Online Game Purchase Launched

    N-Gage Online Game Purchase LaunchedNokia took a step into the world of online content delivery today with the launch of a new Website specialising in downloadable games for its N-Gage device. Gamers can download time-limited demos of games such as One and Pathway to Glory before purchasing at between 19.99 and 29.99 euros.

    The shop, is a significant step for the company allowing them to deliver games directly to customers, an achievement not always matched in stores. It could also pave the way for online games downloading services, perhaps the gaming equivalent of Apple’s iTunes?

    The process? All that is needed is to identify the game that you’re interested in, pay for it, download it to your computer, then load it on to a spare memory card to your N-Gage.

    The N-Gage has not had an easy time. The first version was launched to widespread derision due to its ‘unique’ side-talking feature, which forced users to speak into the side of the device, instantaneously transforming them into raging doofuses. A succession of model changes followed, culminating in the more sensibly configured, 7710, or N-Gage QD as it’s more often known as..

    N-Gage Online Game Purchase LaunchedWhile the concept of side-talking may fuel nerd in-jokes for some time to come (see sidetalkin) Nokia are determined to develop the N-Gage platform to create a multi-player, mobile gaming community which can connect via a variety of devices. The N-Gage platform for multiple devices was announced at the E3 trade show in Washington last month and will roll-out in early 2007.

    “As we move forward with our next generation of mobile gaming, we continue to offer N-Gage owners easy ways to get games,” said Jukka Hosio, Director, Global Sales, Multimedia, Nokia. “The N-Gage platform is recognized worldwide for its high-quality mobile gaming content. By making these games available for download over the internet, we’re making it easier for N-Gage owners to find and purchase new games.”

    Gameshop