Digital-Lifestyles – Page 348 – 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

Tango.TV: TELE2 Launches Free 3G TV For Phones
European telco AB has announced that it’s launched the first worldwide free TV station available on 3G mobile phones, via its own TV channel Tango.TV (TTV).
Describing themselves as the “leading alternative pan-European telecommunications company” (have they got, like, cray-zee hairstyles and listen to The White Stripes all day?), the TV station is a product of their development centre located in Luxembourg.
The centre is in charge of applying the company’s convergence strategy and has also created an Internet radio, the painfully cheesy-sounding Sunshine Radio, also available on 3G phones.
The streams are available to any customer looking for some full-on AOR action from the new wap portal T.TVMobile.
We gave the channel a listen via the Web and weren’t impressed. The Dad-friendly soft rock was bad enough, but the dire tunes were rendered even more unlistenable by the stream jumping around like a hyperactive flea on amyl nitrate.
We couldn’t work out if this was supposed to be the 3G TV station or not, but after five minutes of looking at a blank screen on our desktop media player, we gave up waiting.
Lars-Johan Jarnheimer, CEO of Tele2 said; “With the launch of this TV over 3G service, Tele2 is showing that it is at the leading edge of mobile technological developments. We look forward to monitoring the development of this service in Luxembourg to learn about customer behaviour, which we can apply later to our other mobile markets”.
There’s no doubt that mobile TV and radio has a strong future, but this venture strikes me as being more of a publicity stunt than anything. And seeing as I’m writing about it, I guess it’s worked too. Doh! Outwitted again!
Tele2
Sunshine Radio
TTV Online
21 March, 2005
Ask Jeeves Sold To Diller’s InterActive Corp?
The wires are buzzing with rumours that Barry Diller’s InterActive Corp (IAC) is set to buy the Internet search engine service Ask Jeeves for almost $2bn.
Ask Jeeves is currently the fifth-largest search-engine provider on the Internet and the company also owns the popular ask.com, Bloglines and Excite Web sites.
In the UK, Ask Jeeves is the seventh most popular search site with 1.9 per cent of total searches, dwarfed by Google who weigh in with a mighty 63 per cent of total searches.
IAC already owns assorted Web properties including CitySearch, Expedia, Hotels.com, TicketMaster, dating site Match.com and the Home Shopping Network.
CitySearch offers localised search results for businesses, bars, cinemas and restaurants.
The reported US$1.9 billion price tag is something like 35 times AskJeeves’ 2004 earnings from continuing operations of US$52.4 million, and is 27 times its 2004 pro forma earnings from continuing operations of US$71.1 million (this excludes items like depreciation and amortisation).
About US$1.2 billion of the purchase price will be in cash, the New York Times reported (although we don’t think they mean used wads of dollars stuffed in suitcases).
Today’s expected announcement shows that search sites are still attracting investors and that there’s rich pickings to be gained with Microsoft recently following Google and Yahoo into paid-for-search advertising.
We tried to check the story by visiting Ask Jeeves and typing in, “are you being bought by InterActive Corp?”
Disappointingly, the search engine failed to find the answer.
AskJeeves
InterActive Corp
21 March, 2005
Wireless Internet Soars Nearly 30% – Ipsos Insight Report
The number of wireless Internet users grew by 29% in 2004 according to a recent research study by Ipsos Insight.
The study estimates that 171 million people, or 44% of Internet users in the measured markets, have accessed the Internet wirelessly.
The wireless population growth was largely driven by the two biggest Internet markets, the US and Japan, fuelling 69% of user increase and adding an estimated 15 million and 11.6 million new wireless Internet users, respectively.
Wireless Internet also gained some popularity in Western Europe, South Korea, and Urban China.
Surprisingly, it wasn’t the growth in Wi-Fi enabled laptops leading the charge, but consumers accessing the Internet through their mobile phones.
In Japan, for instance, where wireless Internet, laptop, and mobile phone prevalence is highest, twice as many adults (59%) have accessed the Internet through a mobile device such as a mobile phone than have used a wireless laptop connection (28%).
Similarly, outside of North America, Germany, and Urban Mexico, mobile devices like mobile phones are propelling wireless Internet use.
This reflects the belief that mobile phones have reached a turning point, evolving from primarily a voice communication device to a popular multimedia tool encompassing data and Internet applications.
Although SMS may have been the growth vehicle for non-voice applications on a mobile phone in recent years, the survey predicts Internet-based applications are the ‘wave of the future’.
The survey discovered that one in three mobile phone households (estimated 175 million) have exchanged email via mobile phone, with one in four (estimated 124 million) using their handsets to browse the Internet.
A similar percentage of users have exchanged digital image and videos over their mobiles.
With the exception of SMS and ring tone download activity, 2004 saw a year-over-year increase in wireless activities across the board, with email usage growing by 21% and the nascent market of mobile commerce growing by 60%.
Said Brian Cruikshank, Senior VP of Ipsos-Insight and co-author of the study: “These developments are indicative of an early adoption of multimedia and transaction-based activity through a mobile device. As smart-card technology handsets are introduced in many markets, transaction-based activity will be yet another frontier driving data connectivity and ARPU in the next three-to-five years.”
Ipsos predicts that 2005 will be a ‘spring board year’ for wireless Internet via a mobile phone, with uptake encouraged by cheaper 3G coverage offering more mass market services.
“The mobile phone is the most prevalent global device. The continued adoption of the Internet and the recent launch of advanced mobile networks will no doubt lead to a greater number of people connecting to the Internet through a mobile phone.
In fact, we feel that wireless Internet connection via a mobile phone may indeed become the predominant and, perhaps, only point of connection for many in the developing parts of the world, akin to the technology jump from wired to wireless voice communication,” said Cruikshank.
Ipos Insight
18 March, 2005
Apple iPod Under Pressure From East
Until now, Apple has been pretty safe in its position of master of all digital music players. That’s lead to speculation of their crown slipping. We’re fresh back from the European consumer show CeBIT and saw many, many good looking, highly functioned, portable music players there.
The Far Eastern companies that’ve been building digital music players for the Western companies have learned a few tricks. Not content to just been passivley manufacture, they have discovered design and embraced it. In our view they have what is needed to go toe-to-toe with Apple.
In addition to that, Korean electronics giant Samsung has launched a hefty push into the highly competitive MP3 player market with six brand-spanking-new players.
The half dozen new players should be available in the first half of the year, ranging from a 256 megabyte flash memory type to a 30 gigabyte hard disk drive model capable of holding about 7,500 songs.
The pocket-sized players will sport colour screens and radio tuners, while some will allow users to watch music videos or take digital photographs.
The company has vowed to grab a giant sized slice of the highly lucrative market within in the next two years.
Samsung sold 1.7 million MP3 players last year, and is the market frontrunner in China. Mindful of expanding its presence, the company said it will focus on products that go beyond the basic flash and hard-disk categories and include products that target the premium, fashion and video-enhanced market segments.
In other words, they’re going to try and outflank Apple by stuffing their players full of multifunctional and multimedia gizmos that allow users to play electronic games, watch music videos and movies, and view digital photographs.
We’ve no doubt that these players will be lovely little fellas, but whether they’ll be capable of overcoming the sheer market presence and all-round design quality of Apple – and more recently Sony – is open to question (Sony’s shift to open standards, switching from its proprietary ATRAC music format to MP3 is a highly significant development).
Both Apple and Sony have branched out into music delivery solutions and it remains to be seen whether a hardware-only product will have enough clout, ‘cool’ and interconnectivity to unseat the market leaders.
After all, with zillions of options available to consumers, it’s vital for music device makers to offer shedloads of connectivity with other hardware, along with easy access to the content.
Samsung
18 March, 2005
3G: Adventures In Compelling Content – Pt 3
With a lucrative mobile market hungry for content, it’s not surprising to find a host of companies getting their thinking caps on.
Conker Media, Mersey TV’s digital development and production division, has already created mobile content for teen-tastic TV soap Hollyoaks, but it’s aware of the challenge ahead:
“It’ll be interesting to see whether we can develop something which is effectively stand-alone and which doesn’t have a TV property with it,” said Lee Hardman, head of Conker Media in an interview with Peter Keighron at Broadcastnow.
“If you can crack that it will be seen as a breakthrough.”
Conker’s latest idea is “textual intercourse” (stop tittering at the back) which gives new writers and directors the opportunity to tell a story on slides with 160 characters.
“In a strange way it’s going back to quite traditional storyboarding,” says Hardman. “I think it’s going to require somebody with good storytelling skills – traditional skills – in order to get the audience’s attention five days a week, 52 weeks a year.”
Last year, Nokia introduced its “Nokia Shorts” competition which invited ‘film-makers’ to enter movies created on consumer level digital video cameras.
The shorts had to be no longer than 15 seconds long, with the winning entries being screened at the Raindance festival, a leading British independent film event.
The winning filmmaker was given the opportunity to make a longer film with a professional crew and a training course at Raindance.
In addition, the winner and two runner-ups each received filmmaking training courses courtesy of Raindance.
Meanwhile, Channel 4 has commissioned cutting-edge animators Empire Square – creators of the Gorillaz music project – to create a series of 90-second to three-minute clips to work on a mobile platform.
In an interesting reversal, the animations will also be shown on TV channel E4.
Although it’s clear that there’s no lack of enthusiasm from creatives to get involved with the mobile industry, the big problem for the network owners is how to extract some revenue out of the content.
Although ventures like the ‘Nokia Shorts’ competition are great for attracting favourable PR and showcasing the potential of 3G, they’re not going to get the network cash tills ringing.
In the next instalment, we’ll look at the problem of raising revenue streams from mobile content.
Nokia Shorts
Raindance Festival
Conker Media
broadcastnow (reg required)
18 March, 2005
Yahoo 360 Service Blends Blogging And Social Networking Tools
Internet giants Yahoo are preparing to introduce a new service that blends several of the popular features of its site with two of the Web’s fastest growing activities – blogging and social networking.
The hybrid service, snappily entitled “Yahoo 360,” won’t be available until 29 March, but the company decided to announce the product early after details were leaked to news outlets.
The service is designed to enable Yahoo’s 165 million registered users to grab content from Yahoo discussion groups, online photo albums and review section and slap it into their own blogs (web logs).
The service also aims to be big on ‘social networking’, making it easy for users to connect with others who share common interests and friends. Yahoo bloggers (Yahblogoos?!) can either choose to open their blogs to the entire world or restrict access to chums invited through e-mail.
“We heard from people that they have a strong desire to stay close to the people who are important to them, but at the same time they didn’t want to feel like they were exposing themselves online,” said Julie Herendeen, Yahoo’s vice president of network products.
“Yahoo 360 has also been designed to let users consolidate a variety of existing Yahoo services and content in one place, with the goal of increasing users’ interaction” added Paul Brody, the company’s director of community products. “It’s about integrating all the great resources across the Yahoo network into this service to deepen the users’ engagement,” he said.
Similar to Microsoft’s Space and Lycos’ Circles, Yahoo 360 represents Yahoo’s effort to tap into the popularity of blogs and social networking sites.
Although sniffy critics continue to dismiss blogs as the dull mumblings of the self obsessed generation, recent figures reveal that 27 percent of online adults in the United States read them and another 7 percent write them (source: Pew Internet and American Life Project).
Blogging has also started to be recognised as a credible news reporting tool, often publishing stories missed by the mainstream media – the first hand accounts posted on the Web after the Asian tsunami being a notable example.
Of course, the big draw for Yahoo is that social networking sites are establishing themselves as major online attractions, with the prospect of lots of luvverly advertising opportunities.
According to comScore Media Metrix, a research firm, Yahoo notched up 110 million unique visitors last month, accounting for nearly 30 billion page views.
By expanding into social networking and blogging, Yahoo are hoping to make its Web site a more alluring prospect, with the blogs attracting even more visitors to their site.
It has to be said that Yahoo are unfashionably late arrivals to the blogging party, with competitors like MySpace.com Chief Executive Chris DeWolf predicting they’ll have a tough time catching up with entrenched social networking sites.
But Yahoo have some major tricks up their sleeve: millions have already shared their personal information with the company via the registration process and the company has deep, deep pockets, with US$3.5 billion in cash and short-term investments at the end of 2004.
When the service goes online later this month, Yahoo 360 will be initially restricted to users invited by the company. Those early participants will then be able to invite their chums to join in.
Yahoo 360
18 March, 2005
Cell Phone Porn On The Way Up
Thrill-seeking mobile phone users around the world slapped out US$400 million on pornographic pictures and video in 2004 – an amount that is expected to rise to US$5 billion by 2010, according to a report by research group Strategy Analytics.
Surfers seeking saucy smut contributed to the fast growth of the adult entertainment sector on the World Wide Web.
Media industries were fast to take advantage of the new medium, with porn connoisseurs among the first to get high-speed Internet access for downloading X-rated films.
In the squinty-small screen of mobile communications, however, pornography might not do as well, with high telecommunications charges and tiny displays reducing the thrill.
“In 2010 we estimate that expenditure on mobile adult content will represent just 5 percent of total end-user spend on mobile content services,” said analyst Nitesh Patel.
“We expect services that are built around sports, music and media to perform better, because they appeal to a wider audience of users,” he added. In addition, there is value in offering news bulletins or a recently scored goal on a mobile screen.
The US$5 billion forecast for 2010 represents a huge upward shift from Strategy Analytics’ earlier predictions, with the company noting that adult entertainment businesses are aggressively building services and customers appear happy to shell out for them.
Playboy and rival Private Media Group have ramped up their offerings, and many mobile phone makers are busy implementing strategies to make sure no subscribers aged under 18 years will be able to access X-rated services.
Additionally, the growth in colour screens (one in every two phones sold in 2005, predicted to rise to four out of five by 2010) along with enhanced video capability is expected to increase the ‘value’ of mobile-delivered porn.
Elsewhere, anecdotal evidence from countries that have a technological edge shows a throbbing interest from consumers, with adult content registering over 23% of the traffic over South Korea’s SK Telecom in late 2003.
17 March, 2005
Lose friends The Apple Mac Way
Even the most die-hard Mac hugger is having problems defending the company’s recent litigious spree, where Apple seems determined to become ‘The Man’ and use its corporate power to crush all before it.
We find this action particularly strange given the inevitable rise of competition in the portable digital media space. As we’ve saw at CeBIT, the Chinese and Taiwanese MP3-player producing companies have embraced design to good effect. Apple’s iPod crown for the future is now a lot less certain, and given this we’d have thought this would be a time they would be trying to maintain their current friends and make new ones. Instead they appear hell bent on irritating everyone.
First off, there was the case of the bloggers at Apple Insider, PowerPage and Think Secret, mercilessly pursued though the courts after they leaked snippets of Apple’s future plans to their excited audience of Mac users.
Wielding their big white shiny Apple Mac stick, the company successfully won a judgement from the Santa Clara County Superior Court forcing the bloggers to admit to their sources.
The court also granted Apple powers to root around the blogger’s e-mail records in their near-religious quest to track down the culprit.
A wave of international protests followed the ruling by Judge Kleinberg that the laws covering the divulging of trade secrets “outweighed considerations of public interest” with the Guardian newspaper arguing “Was Enron’s off-balance sheet funding structure a “trade secret”, for instance?”
Business Week was equally unimpressed: “Apple has the right to use the legal system to help it punish those who have misappropriated its trade secrets, or to identify employees or partners who may have broken confidentiality agreements.
But going after the Web sites or forcing them to divulge their sources will put the company in the middle of a freedom-of-speech firestorm that will be a costly distraction for management, and could tarnish the Apple brand.”
Not surprisingly, the EFF was also deeply concerned about the ruling:
“We’re disappointed that the trial court ignored the Supreme Court’s requirement that seeking a journalist’s confidential sources be a ‘last resort’ in civil discovery,” said EFF Staff Attorney Kurt Opsahl. “Instead, the court asserts a wholesale exception to the journalist’s privilege when the information is alleged to be a trade secret.”
“This is a broad-brush ruling that threatens journalists of all stripes,” said EFF Legal Director Cindy Cohn.
Writing in The Scotsman, long time Mac user Stewart Kirkpatrick was equally unchuffed, “In California at least, Apple has destroyed journalism by undermining the most vital tool of our trade: the ability to receive information without having to shop the person who told you.”
Meanwhile, Mac was busy flexing its bully boy corporate muscle in the UK, successfully squashing a smaller company holding prior rights on the iTunes.co.uk domain.
The company registered the name in November 2000 – four years before Apple launched its UK service – with the URL redirecting to their music search engine on CyberBritain.
Apple initiated the complaint because it secretly applied for a UK trademark for the name iTunes on October 27 2000. This application was confidential – known only by Apple, its filing agents and Her Majesty’s Patent Office – and was not published in the TradeMarks Journal until December 6 2000.
After being asked to issue a decision on a complaint through its Dispute Resolution Service, UK domain service registry Nominet has decided that the domain should be handed to Apple.
The owner of iTunes.co.uk, Benjamin Cohen, expressed his frustration. “I must admit that we were not expecting this decision by Nominet’s appointed expert. Apple chose to launch the UK brand of ‘itunes’ within the UK with the knowledge that we had owned the name for three years before their US launch and four years before their launch within the UK,” he said.
“We now face two decisions, whether to appeal to Nominet directly or refer the matter to the High Court. Both of these options are expensive and are not necessarily within the means of a small business. However, the recent High Court victory of Phone4U.co.uk against the major retailer, Phones4U – owned by the Caudwell Group – leads me to think that our case may be extremely strong.”
It’s clear that the Apple self-destruct PR offensive isn’t over yet, with The Register reporting the mysterious case of Google’s vanishing Mac OS X-style interface.
Designed as a tribute to all things Mac, a software engineer had replaced the main text navigation bar on the Google home page with a Mac OS X-style dock sporting a row of eight icons zooming and shrinking as the mouse hovered over them.
The coder was clearly so enamoured with Mac that he included a loving poem above the copyright notice on the Google page: “Roses are red. Violets are blue. OS X rocks. Homage to you”. (sickbag please!)
Sadly, it appears that litigious Apple don’t find anything funny these days, and the design promptly vanished off the Web completely with neither Apple nor Google offering any explanation.
It does seems strange that a company that prides itself for ‘thinking differently’ seems to have embarked on a mission to appear as unpleasant, as ruthless and as willing to crush the little fella as its Redmond neighbours.
With a scathing report in The Guardian concluding that Apple is effectively, “asking to be loathed and subverted”, some pundits are wondering why Apple should actively seek to alienate the people who are its fans and customers.
Put simply, such actions don’t make much business sense.
Google’s X Files disappear
Apple is ‘real loser’ in Think Secret battle
How Apple lost its groove
Nominet backs Apple iTunes domain claim
Blogger lawsuit peels Apple’s shine
17 March, 2005
Ezmax EZMP4200P, VoIP-capable MP3 Player
MP3 playing device includes software for sending and receiving Internet-based phone calls.
Cackling wildly at iSuppli’s recent analysis that consumers don’t like MP3 players stuffed with extra gadgets, Ezmax of South Korea has announced a gizmo-tastic MP3 player that allows users to make and receive telephone calls using VoIP (voice over Internet Protocol).
The South Korean company says that their EZMP4200P player will contain software allowing users to make VoIP calls when the device is linked to a web-connected PC via a USB 2.0 port, using a microphone incorporated in the device’s earphone cord.
Ezmax’s director, Lee Sung Soo, explained that a player plugged into a desktop or notebook PC will appear onscreen as a removable disk icon. Double clicking on that puppy will launch the dialling software, enabling the user to make calls on the MP3 player-cum phone.
Users need to sign up with a VoIP provider before they can start getting chatty on their device. The company is currently talking to providers in South Korea, Germany, and other European countries to ensure compatibility with their networks.
Ezmax demonstrated the device at their stand at CeBIT, plugging the player into a notebook PC and successfully making a call via the VoIP dialling software.
We imagine the gasps from onlookers were either a sign of amazement or an expression of extreme bafflement as they – like us – pondered over the usefulness of an MP3 player that has to be plugged into a laptop to make a call.
Software for the EZMP4200P (doesn’t that just roll off the tongue?) is presently compatible with Windows 2000/XP, with Ezmax claiming that Mac OS X compatible software will be ready sometime in the ‘near future’ so don’t go throwing your iPods away quite yet Mac-fans!
The flash memory-based device is 2.8 inches long, 0.9 inches in diameter, and weighs 0.8 ounces without the AAA-size battery.
As well as MP3 music files, it can playback formats such as WMA (Windows Media Audio), ASF (Advanced Systems Format), and Ogg and comes with a built in FM radio.
In addition, the device is capable of voice recording and sports a two-colour (blue and yellow) 128 pixel by 64 pixel OLED screen.
The EZMP4200P should be launched in May and be available in three models, each with a different storage capacity: 256MB, 512MB, and 1GB.
The added VoIP software adds about US$8 (£4.25, €6) to the price of the company’s non-VoIP capable devices. Prices for the EZMP4200P will be about US$150 (£78, €112) for the 256MB model and about US$220 (£115, €165) for the 1GB model, the company says.
17 March, 2005
MP3 Player Sales Set To Nearly Quadruple By 2009
Shipments of MP3 players soared by an enormous 116% in 2004, as hundreds of wallet-tempting products arrived in response to the phenomenal success of Apple iPod player, according to a survey by Market Intelligence firm, iSuppli.
Propelled by the soaring growth in demand for hard disk drive (HDD)-based products, iSuppli predicts shipments of MP3 players will nearly quadruple from 2004 to 2009.
The company forecasts that total MP3 player shipments will expand to 132 million units in 2009, rising at a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 29.1% from 36.8 million in 2004.
Although growth in 2005 is expected to slow from the frenzied buying levels of 2004, the MP3 market will continue to expand at a rapid rate, with iSuppli predicting unit shipments of MP3s rising to 57.7 million in 2005, up 57% from 36.8 million in 2004.
The super, soaraway success of the iPod echoed the public’s love affair with HDD-based MP3 players, with competitors moving quickly to offer products that aped the iPod’s use of a 1.8-inch HDD.
The iSuppli report also predicts that HDD-based MP3 player shipments will grow by a CAGR of 41.8% from 2004 to 2009, as compared to 22.9% for flash-based players.
Shipments are expected to 56.2 million units in 2009, up from 9.8 million in 2004, with HDD-based products accounting for nearly half of all MP3 shipments, at 42.6% in 2009 (up from only 26.6% in 2004).
The overall small form-factor HDD market had revenues of US$2.2 billion in 2004 and likely will rise to US$5.7 billion in 2008, generating a CAGR of more than 27 % over this period, iSuppli predicts.
The first vendor to ship 1.8-inch HDDs was Toshiba. Hitachi Global Storage Technology also has started shipping these drives and Western Digital Corp. (WDC) is expected to begin shipping them later in the year.
The research group said electronics producers stood to benefit from consumers’ willingness to pay more for “waaaaaay cool” products, something that Apple traditionally excels at and something that Sony clearly has in mind with its funky new line-up of Walkmans.
“Initially, (Apple’s) iPod was quite expensive, but the company reduced prices when the competition arrived. It also has aggressively introduced many generations of products in quick succession over the past four years,” iSuppli said.
But iSuppli warned companies not to try to squeeze too many features into their products: “The so-called ‘Swiss Army Knife’ approach has not succeeded in the MP3 market. Simple, elegant products that perform a few functions with easy-to-use interfaces have sold well in the marketplace, while the do-everything approach has failed.”
So, there goes my idea for a MP3 playing toaster then.
iSuppli
17 March, 2005