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

  • Fourth Generation iPod Will Have Better Battery, Cheaper

    Details are surfacing of the next generation of iPods from Apple featuring a number of improvements to the wildly popular music player.

    There will be two new models: a 20gb for US$299 (€240) and a 40gb for US$399 (€320) – a US$100 (€80) reduction in price from the comparable existing models.

    Battery life, previously a source of some controversy, has been given a significant hike – from eight hours to twelve. The battery is not thought to be user replaceable still, and no details of its longevity are available – indeed, it may well be exactly the same battery with the increase in play time coming from more efficient power conservation.

    The new models will also incoroporate the click-wheel interface from iPod Mini, launched last week.

    No release date has been given, Apple have a policy of not pre-announcing products, but they are said to be imminent – perhaps even this week.Apple iPod

  • U2 Album Goes Missing … Turns Up on P2P Networks

    U2 have called in the police after a CD featuring unfinished tracks from their forthcoming album was stolen at a photo shoot in France. The new album, their first since 2000, is likely to be called Vertigo, and the tracks on the CD have already started appearing on P2P networks such as Overnet.

    Edge said on the U2.com website: “A large slice of two years’ work lifted via a piece of round plastic. It doesn’t seem credible but that’s what’s just happened to us… and it was my CD.” Should have kept an eye on it then.

    “This matter is of great concern to us.” said Lucian Grainge, Chairman and CEO of Universal Music Group UK. “As the missing CD is our property, we’re very keen find it as soon as possible and the French Police are being extremely helpful in this regard.”

    Having tracks available, even in unfinished form, so far in advance of the album’s release is likely to tempt many fans who would not normally lift music from P2P networks. However, even though many people will undoubtedly download the tracks using file sharing programs, it is unlikely that this alone will result in lost sales.
    If the disk finds its way to a CD pressing plant, then they’ll have a problem.U2.com

  • Ofcom Warns: 2010 UK Analog Switch Off Unlikely

    Tessa Jowell has described the UK’s progress towards analogue switch-off as astonishing – yet Ofcom has warned that it’s running late: two years late.

    Stephen Carter, chief executive of Ofcom has said that 2012 is a much more realistic date for the goal of 95% of homes with digital TV.

    “If you want to turn the analogue signal off in 2010, you have to start making the transmitter deployment and regional deployment decisions in 2006, which means that you have to have done all the planning in 2005 – that’s next year.” Carter said. Carter believes that the BBC’s new estimate of 2012 is more likely.

    Jowell, the Secretary of State for Culture has previously stated that the UK has been making great progress towards a planned 2010 switch-over.

    A Department of Trade and Industry survey has found that, although 52% of home in the UK can receive digital television, 25% cannot – and 13% refuse to convert. Many are possibly thinking of converting nearer the time, but the huge scale of the operation means that planning and adoption needs to happen as early as possible to meet the 2010 target.

    Ofcom

  • PocketPC Virus Found

    The first ever PocketPC virus was discovered over the weekend – but it’s a proof of concept project and carries no payload. Given how long devices running Microsoft’s PocketPC operating system have been available, it’s surprising that we’ve been lucky up until now.

    The virus, Duts, was written by one of the 29A virus group – a group who write viruses as an exercise to analyse dangers and provide information for anti-virus companies. The same group produced the Cabir Symbian virus last month.

    Duts is safe even if it gets out in to the wild as it asks for permission before infecting other files, and only affects a limited number of file types. However, it may not be too difficult for someone to reverse engineer the code and produce a malicious variant.

    Viruses and trojan horses are now spreading to other platforms, meaning that PDA and phone users, nit just PC owners will have to take anti-virus measures very seriously indeed.

    29A Labs

    F-Secure on the Duts virus

  • OD2’s Big Tune Push

    OD2 has announced that it is adding one million more tunes to its library of tracks. Currently standing at about 350,000 songs, OD2’s white label offering for outfits like MyCokeMusic and HMV was looking a little slim, but now they’re going to take it to 1.3 million.

    The new catalogue, which is not compatible with the iPod, should be available by the end of the year.

    iTunes and Napster offer 750,000 tracks a piece, but are adding more music every week and indeed Apple are close to signing a major indie deal to expand their own catalogue.

    OD2 was recently acquired by Loudeye, hence the sudden access to a massive amount of new music.

    OD2 are pleased with their sales growth, and announced yesterday that they saw a “significant increase in activity” in the second quarter of this year, citing a 28% increase in sales the week that iTunes launched in Europe, and a 22% rise the week Napster launched. But could this simply be the old internet phenomenon of “a rising tide lifts all boats”, and that growth for all music sites is increasing rapidly?

    Market share will decide who wins – when catalogues are so large as to be virtually identical, the consumer will have to choose between their preferred DRM and favourite music hardware. There’s no doubt that iTunes sells iPods, but Windows Media-based sites like OD2’s offering selling WM-compatible devices?

    OD2

  • Microsoft Buys Lookout for Outlook

    Microsoft are focussing on providing search facilities for their customers – after their changes to MSN Search, they’ve acquired Lookout, a company that makes searching technology for Outlook.

    Outlook is an impressive diary, email and contacts program, and those who use it generate huge amounts for data – though searching through mails, appointments and addresses for details and information was never its strong point.

    Microsoft have not released any details of the deal, and will not say how Lookout will be integrated in their products, but they have said that they intend to use the acquisition to improve services.

    Yusuf Mehdi, corporate vice president of MSN, said in a statement: “Our vision is to take search beyond today’s basic Internet search services to deliver direct answers to people’s questions, and help them find information from a broad range of sources.”

    Having a fully featured internet search built into the operating system will be very convenient and this could be ominous news for Google who do not have the same potential for product integration that Microsoft have. Instead Google relies on visits to their portal, or on customers installing their tool bar.

    Lookoutsoft

  • BT Launch Communicator Residential VoIP Service

    BT have launched new VoIP service called Communicator – bundled with Yahoo Messenger they claim that it makes calling from your PC easier. It certainly won’t make it cheaper as BT will bill you at exactly the same rate they bill for calls from your home phone, despite giving a clear warning on their site that PC calls aren’t as good. So, I have to ask – what’s the point?

    BT are selling the service on convenience – the subscriber’s PC becomes an all-in-one communications centre with instant messaging, email, voice calls, and call management integrated into one product. Additional features include internet call barring and waiting – allowing you to block calls to your PC, and to notify you’ve got someone else waiting to speak to you when you’ve got a call. Never ones to miss a trick, these two extras cost UK£1.75 (€2.62) a month each, if you don’t already have them on your usual line.

    BT also use the quality issue as an opportunity to recommend upgrading to a broadband connection: “The quality of calls made with BT Communicator may not be as good as the quality of traditional phone calls. BT Communicator call quality may be better on a broadband connection.”

    People registering now get a free month of calls – after that, the service is charged like a normal phone service, with calls showing up on your normal bill as “Clic2call” items.

    BT Communicator

    Skype – free internet calls

  • A Look at Sony Connect

    Sony’s Connect service is the one that gets most comparisons with iTunes – it requires a special application, Sonic Stage, has its own DRM and even uses its own hardware. We thought we’d have a look to see how it measures up.

    Registration is completely different from the American version – you register on a webpage, rather than in the application, and Sony demand that you supply your gender and mobile number. I can’t invent a gender, but I certainly gave a false mobile number – I don’t really need those “helpful” texts telling me about new offers. You have to agree to them using your personal details or you can’t register. Not cool, Sony – very poor. When you register a credit card, you also have to agree to them using this personal data too – so that they can match up the tunes you’ve bought with your address and sell that information on.

    A nice touch is being able to set what genre page you’re presented with when you start the application up. I wish iTunes would use this feature as it would save me having to look at Nelly Furtado’s moon-faced stare every time fire up their store.

    Downloading Connect is as simple as you’d expect, though you don’t download the entire application. You begin the process by downloading a 600k installer which then pulls the Sonic Stage application down – and that’s another 20 megabytes. Servers are currently speedy bandwidth-wise and the whole process only took a few minutes.

    If you have the US version of Sony Connect installed, you MUST remove it first, though Sony don’t bother telling you that. Shoddy coding and teams that don’t talk to each other mean that the European version will install OK, but when you launch their service you’ll be taken to the US store – and it won’t let you in. There is no option to fix this, and you’ll have to uninstall everything start again from the very beginning. As I did.

    Once installation is complete, Sonic Stage springs an unwelcome last minute restart on you. When you’ve rebooted and started up again, you’re then left with an orange Connect icon on your desktop – make sure your internet connection is on and away you go. After setting a couple of preferences, you’re straight into the store.

    The store itself looks remarkably like iTunes – I suppose there’s not too many ways for laying these things out, and it’s a good adaptation. The store even has forward and back buttons for navigation, and it’s quite easy to find your way around. News items are displayed on the pages, giving it a magazine-type feel, another feature that makes the store more useful.

    Searching for tracks is easy from the side bar, and songs from the same album are easily identified as they appear with the same tiny album cover thumbnail in the search results. My search for Eno listed a few of his tracks, but lots of irrelevant stuff – and iTunes’ panel with quick links to artist pages is sorely missed in this respect.

    But what’s this? Variable pricing! Some tracks are a reasonable 79p, some more popular ones are £1.19. Yes – the more people want that track, the more expensive it is. This makes popular music more expensive than on iTunes – even for the same tracks. For example, squawky pop whiner Dido’s ‘White Flag’ is £1.19 on Connect, but 79p on iTunes. Connect is around 50% more expensive.

    The same goes for albums – Wagon Christ’s classic Tally Ho! is £7.99 on iTunes, and £9.99 on Connect – about 25% more expensive.

    Previewing tracks is simple – but there’s no way of knowing how far through a preview you are – there’s no progress bar.

    Buying tunes involves clicking on the cart icon and confirming with your password – then the Sonic Stage Downloader takes over from there. The process is very quick and keeps you well informed with a bar. I chose Photek’s “Rings Around Saturn” as my test tune, and the process was effortless.

    Once downloaded you can play the track immediately, or transfer it to your Sony music hardware with a click. The Sonic Stage music library functions are comprehensive, and can sort music in any of the usual ways, including the last time played tracks.

    You can transfer some music to a recordable CDs, but forget trying to transfer anything you’ve bought from Connect. You’re simply not allowed, which is in sharp contrast to iTunes, where you can make multiple copies of the same playlist.

    In summary – will appeal to Sony purists who bought a Sony music player instead of an iPod, but has an almost insultingly restrictive DRM model.

    Pros – stylish, easy to use, decent library of music, works with your Sony gear

    Cons – inexplicably more expensive than iTunes for the same product, very restrictive rights, fiddly install, won’t work with many devices, Sony have no regard for customers’ privacy

    Connect

  • Nintendo DS – Japan: November 4th, US: November 11th

    It looks like Nintendo’s hotly awaited DS handheld console will be in stores in Japan on November 4th, and in US shops a week later, if reports from Japanese retailers are anything to go by.

    The console is likely to be priced at US$180 – which is about €145, but expect it to be about €180 in Europe and nearer UK£180 in Britain when it appears in early 2005.

    Four games are expected to launch with the console in Japan, with a total of eleven on the market by the end of the year. The first games for the DS will feature many of Nintendo’s most successful characters and intellectual properties – titles include Metroid Prime: Hunters, Super Mario 64×4 and the rather exciting Animal Crossing DS. Animal Crossing DS is the prime reason I’ll be buying the new console, and don’t expect any sense from me for a few weeks afterwards.

    Nintendo aims to sell three million DS consoles by March 2005. Whilst the DS currently has a “less cool” image than the PSP that it’ll be competing with, Nintendo’s unbeatable intellectual properties coupled with the DS’s wide range of features and lower price mean that they might well achieve that goal.

    Nintendo on the DS

  • Updated: Graphic Exchange Publishes Interactive Rich Media PDF Edition

    Canadian technology Graphic Exchange have just published an electronic edition – an interactive PDF featuring QuickTime video, QuickTime VR.

    The 58 page electronic publication is themed around convergence and digital lifestyles and covers content creation, DJ culture and graphic design.

    Additionally, to bring the electronic and print versions together, they’re now both branded gX and are published in the same landscape format.

    “We have pioneered the use of new graphics technologies ever since we began publishing Graphic Exchange in 1991,” says gX publisher and editor-in-chief Dan Brill. “Our readership consists of creative professionals who are sophisticated technology users, so we felt that the time was right to take a radically different cross-media approach to the creation and delivery of pages for this audience. What we have is truly a twenty-first century publishing model – for both subscribers and advertisers, the new digital version is like a combination of TV and the Internet. Capitalizing on PDF 1.5’s ability to either embed or stream video and animations lets us bring our editorial to life, with rich media that emulates broadcast television – and we can even include commercials. For readers, web links in every article add a whole new editorial dimension to explore, allowing them to instantly use a browser to dig deeper into any highlighted word.”

    gX are pleased with the new landscape format – for the physical edition it stands out on the shelf and advertisers get more space, but printed magazines are a pain in the neck to read in that orientation if you’re not crouched over a waiting room coffee table. On screen, however, it’s perfect.

    The 92mb electronic edition is just one file making distribution considerably easier, and is available as a free download.

    Quick Update: Having had a chance to have a decent read through the magazine after download, Jook Leung’s QT VR image of Times Square is *utterly captivating* and well worth the download alone. It is accompanied by a video of Jook talking about his work, and is a splendid example of electronic publishing.

    gX