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

  • N-Gage QD Ships

    Nokia has announced that the N-Gage QD mobile gaming phone has started shipping in Europe. The QD is a extensive revision of the original N-Gage console, and contains a number of new features and improvements, including better multiplayer features, rethought controls and a display that may not actually blind you after prolonged use.

    The price begins at a startlingly cheap €49.99 (US$60.77) with a contract, in some markets.

    The QD is backwardly compatible with older N-Gage titles, and Nokia are promising another 50 new games by the end of the year.

    With competition from Nintendo’s DS and Sony’s PSP imminent, the QD will have to rely on its multiplayer online functions to survive. Nokia are putting a lot of faith in their N-Gage Arena service to connect gamers and build a fan community. Quality, high exposure titles like Sims Online (which is essentially like handing people crack, isn’t it?) and Tiger Woods PGA Tour 2004 will no doubt help to achieve this.

    We will have the definitive review of the console here shortly, once we’ve given the console a thorough going over.

    Nokia’s N-Gage QD

  • Intel’s New Approach to Selling Chips

    Microprocessors are old news – they’re now so mainstream that it’s no longer a surprise to see them advertised on television or on billboards, as it was ten or fifteen years ago. Intel know that it’s just them and AMD in the consumer processor market – and now that you can’t win on clock speed, cache size or bus width any more, they need to make their products appear different and sexy to make those billboards interesting again. Let’s face it all those claims about clock speed were dubious anyway – there are too many factors involved and now that AMD don’t even bother publicising processor speeds, it makes a nonsense out of comparisons (that’s right – your Athlon 2800 doesn’t run at anything like 2.8gHz. That’s just a marketing number to make you think it does).

    Cue a new shift in Intel’s product emphasis – it’s not the processor, it’s the chip set. Intel now want you to see the benefits of having a motherboard built round their platform. Now that chip sets are working harder for their money, being the gateway to your PC’s multimedia and communications features, Intel want you to know about it.

    Grantsdale is heading your way in June, and is pitched to lead a new generation of entertainment PCs. Just the sort of thing that Intel want to see sitting in your living room.

    Marketing a processor just wouldn’t give Intel the clout they need to displace other pieces of consumer electronics in the living room – they need to show the full range of functions that a chip set can perform to show that you’re going to be getting the DVD playback, encoding, games and internet performance that will merit a space under your television.

    Grantsdale integrates a lot of features that would previously require more electronics to pull off – including Dolby audio and 3D graphics, allowing PC manufacturers to build smaller, cheaper, quieter boxes.

    Intel will be spending a huge amount of money to make sure you know why chipsets are important and why you would want one of theirs. As AMD have no visibility in this area, they’re going to have to come up with something fast.

    Oh, and apparently, Intel are making a special effort to train retail salespeople in Grantsdale’s benefits. I look forward to some amusing conversations with the staff in Dixons in the summer then.

    More news on Grantsdale as it appears.

    Intel’s Chipsets

  • Music Price Wars – But What About Ringtones?

    Just why are ringtones so expensive? Don’t get me wrong here: I hate them, but there is a huge discrepancy between the cost of downloading a music track and downloading a new ringtone for that phone that’s you’ll probably only own for a month. Often the ringtone will cost more than the entire original song it is based upon.

    Consultancy firm Informa have published a report on the state of the ringtone market, and it looks like it’s all the music companies’ fault.

    A ringtone based on a sample from a track can set you back up to four times the cost of downloading the whole song from iTunes – the cost is inflated because record labels require royalties of between 25 and 55% of the cost of the ringtone.

    For example a track off iTunes will cost you about €1.50 (US$1.82 – nearly twice as much as the US store. I’m sure that’s justified) when the site appears suddenly next month, yet downloading a ringtone can cost a staggering €6 (US$7.30). And thank you T-Mobile UK, for that confident pricing. How much pocket money do kids get paid these days anyway?

    “The reseller is really between a rock and a hard place,” said Simon Dyson, a co-author of the report. “They are torn between raising the price or keeping it steady in the hopes of establishing a market. Demanding such high percentage rates by the record companies could certainly lead to the market being depressed.”

    Depressed? That’s nothing compared to what will happen when phones are released that can just play an MP3 file as the ringtone – then commuter-bothering phone owners won’t have to buy anything at all. Then the US$3 billion (€3.6 billion) market will vanish over night – instead of growing to the US$5 billion (€8.5 billion) monster it’s expected to be by 2007.

    Incidentally, I know some pandas who have a really good ringtone album out.

    Informa Media Group

  • Japanese Consumers Protest at Broadcast Flag

    Japanese television viewers have begun complaining to broadcasters over the sudden removal of editing and copying freedoms they’re experiencing now that the country’s version of the broadcast flag has been rolled out on digital terrestrial and cable channels.

    NHK and and the National Association of Commercial Broadcasters launched the broadcast flag on 5 April, limiting viewers to a single copy of programmes carrying the signal. As programmes can only be copied once, no editing can be performed either. Within a week NHK and other broadcasters had received 15,000 complaints and enquiries.

    This move also means that Japanese consumers will not be able to remove adverts from programmes they have recorded for archiving, or make a backup in case an offline recording is destroyed.

    Furthermore, viewers have to insert a user identification card, B-CAS (from the company who manufactures them, BS Conditional Access Systems), into their digital televisions in order to watch broadcasts.

    It’ll be interesting to see the scale of protest when America’s broadcast flag system rolls out in just over a year and a month – whilst not requiring an ID card to access broadcasts, the flag will tell all new television sets what can and can’t be done to a signal – right down to preventing any copying whatsoever.

    Japan Times coverage

    Slashdot debates the issue

  • SanDisk’s Combined WiFi and Memory SD Card

    Storage specialists SanDisk will release a new addition to their product range next month – and we think that PocketPC users will get quite excited about it. It’s an SD memory card with a 802.11b transceiver built in.

    The low-power card is compatible with devices running the PocketPC 2002, PocketPC 2003 and Windows Mobile 2003 operating systems and will provide a theoretical 11Mbps bandwidth over a range of about 800 feet.

    SanDisk’s marketing manager Dave Smurthwaite made a bold statement with the card’s unveiling: “We think we’re about a year ahead of competitors.” So expect the market to be flooded with competitors’ versions in about four months’ time.

    The card won’t be available for another month, but when it does appear it’ll be about US$130 (€107). Not only does that work out at about US$20 (€16.50) cheaper than buying a memory card and a WiFi adapter, users get the added convenience of only using one slot on their PDA.

    SanDisk

  • Iliad Translated into Microsoft Messenger. End of Civilisation Obviously Nigh.

    Head to the escape pods, the end is near, friends.

    The Iliad, the epic poem that for 2700 years has been our best dramatisation of the Trojan War, has been translated into Windows Messenger.

    The poem’s 15,693 lines of achingly beautiful hexameter are now condensed in to 363 words and some smileys. All this for the 21st century “instant messaging generation”, and as part of a promotion for Microsoft’s chat application.

    However, I imagine there were a few people like me in the 15th century who declared the the end of civilisation when the first printed edition appeared in 1488.

    “The new ‘TrIM Troy’, a Messenger translation of the first five books of the 24 book classic tome, has been designed to give MSN Messenger’s eight million users a whistle stop tour of Homer’s world, the motives behind Menelaus’ rage, the bravery of the Greek army, the tragic death of Hector and the fall of Troy in their online lingo”, says the press release.

    The upshot of this shallow and purely marketing-led butchery is best seen in its effect on the chilling opening verse:
    Rage —
    Goddess, sing the rage of Peleus’ son Achilles,
    murderous, doomed, that cost the Achaeans countless losses,
    hurling down to the House of Death so many sturdy souls,
    great fighters’ souls, but made their bodies carrion,
    feasts for the dogs and birds,
    and the will of Zeus was moving towards its end.
    Begin, Muse, when the two first broke and clashed,
    Agamemnon lord of mean and brilliant Achilles.    Somehow, this now becomes:

    “Ur right to still be ngry, Anchilles has m’ssed things up 4 da Grks wiv his rage”

    I would class this as a lossy compression scheme, without any doubt.

    Robert Fagel’s astonishing 1996 translation, available from Penguin

  • Clear Channel Entertainment Acquires Restrictive Patent on Live Concert CDs

    Clear Channel has purchased a patent relating to the recording then sale of a CDs at a live performance – and are claiming that it relates to every venue in the US.

    Clear Channel operate a service in their venues called Instant Live, where fans can pre-order a recording before a gig and then pick it up at the venue. Clear Channel purchased the patent for this from DiscLive, who have a similar set up. Now Clear Channel are asserting that the patent doesn’t just cover their 130 venues, but all venues in the US.

    This all might have something to do with the fact that DiscLive recently predicted it would gross about US$500,000 (€412,600) selling live recordings at gigs this spring.

    Clear Channel, (somehow recently nominated by the Fortune 500 as one of America’s Most Admired Companies) have granted US$1 licenses to small bands using the DiscLive service, but are telling everyone else that they can’t sell live CDs at gigs. Apparently, the patent doesn’t apply to bands who sell their disks days after the performance, only when the recording is sold immediately afterwards.

    Steve Simon, Clear Channel executive vice president and the director of Instant Live told the Rolling Stone without a hint of irony: /2We want to be artist-friendly. But it is a business, and it’s not going to be ‘we have the patent, now everybody can use it for free.’”

    Expect test cases to begin soon.

    The Rolling Stone covers the story

  • BBC Creative Archive licensing to be based on Creative Commons

    In a significant step forward towards the opening of a portion of the BBC’s archives, the BBC today made their intentions for the Creative Archives clearer to other UK broadcasters and public sector organisations. The Creative Archive,  originally announced by Greg Dyke in 2003, plans to offer the British public free access to some of the BBC’s audio and video programming.

    This afternoon the first meeting of an external consultative panel, which included many UK media holders, heard the BBC’s decision that it will base the Creative Archive usage licence on the Creative Commons (CC) model. This confirmation follows some speculation on the subject. The CC model turns copyright on its head by explaining the ways that the content can be used rather than saying it cannot – or Some Rights Reserved as they put it. By happy coincidence, Creative Commons 2.0 was released yesterday.

    By applying a CC-type license to the content, the BBC will enable individuals in the UK to download released content to their computers, share it, edit it and create new content. Commercial reuse of the content will not be allowed.

    Professor Lawrence Lessig, chair of the Creative Commons project was clearly excited: “The announcement by the BBC of its intent to develop a Creative Archive has been the single most important event in getting people to understand the potential for digital creativity, and to see how such potential actually supports artists and artistic creativity.” He went to enthuse “If the vision proves a reality, Britain will become a centre for digital creativity, and will drive the many markets – in broadband deployment and technology – that digital creativity will support.”

    Lessig has been invited by the BBC to be a permanent member of external consultative panel, which is wise because he is clearly at the centre of Creative Commons and politically wise in the BBC becoming closely associated with the whole movement. This announcement will also be a huge boost in profile for Creative Commons.

    Paul Gerhardt, Joint Director, BBC Creative Archive explains: “We want to work in partnership with other broadcasters and public sector organisations to create a public and legal domain of audio visual material for the benefit of everyone in the UK.” Those attending today’s meeting included Channel 4; the British Film Institute; the British Library; ITN; JISC; The National Archives; the Natural History Museum; the Museums, Libraries & Archives Council; senior figures from the independent production industry; BBC Worldwide. The BBC plans to keep those attending abreast of the project, while encouraging them to follow the same route to opening their own archives.

    This news will give further hope to those who feel the BBC is a leading light in the usage and availability of content in a Digital Lifestyles world. Gerhardt added “We hope the BBC Creative Archive can establish a model for others to follow, providing material for the new generation of digital creatives and stimulating the growth of the creative culture in the UK.”

    Read our interview with Paula Le Dieu, Joint Director on the Creative Archive.

    Creative Commons

  • Oxfam Launches pan-European Music Service Today

    Oxfam have launch their own OD2-backed music service, Big Noise Music, on 26th May. Instead of scratched vinyl records of ELO’s Out of the Blue, the charity hopes to lure customers with 300,000 pristine tracks. How they’re going to recreate the musty charity shop smell and the insane elderly volunteer staff is anyone’s guess.

    Tracks cost the usual UK£0.75 to UK£0.99 (€1.12 to €1.48), with UK£0.10 (€0.15) from each going to Oxfam’s good causes. The site is pan-Europe, but the genius move is that all the prices are in Sterling.

    Adrian Lovett, Oxfam’s Director of Campaigns and Communications said in a statement, “Bignoisemusic.com works for everyone. Music lovers get great tracks and artists see their music helping some of the poorest people in the world, through real cash support and by building the worldwide movement to Make Trade Fair.”

    The site has received plenty of endorsements from stars, featuring exclusive tracks from George Michael and Coldplay.

    Big Noise Music

  • OECD Urges Governments to Drive Broadband Growth

    A new OECD report urges governments to use competition rather than subsidies to promote the growth of broadband in remote areas. Subsidising national operators to roll out broadband in these areas reduces competition and innovation, and may mean that subscribers get stuck with an expensive, yet poor quality, service.

    The OECD report, The Development of Broadband Access in Rural and Remote Areas, claims that the arrival of new start-up companies offering wireless broadband at low prices is causing established telecoms companies to speed up their broadband delivery process and cut prices. Indeed, this has already been seen in the UK to an extent, with BT’s suddenly rapid exchange upgrades and dramatic cuts to broadband subscriptions and local loop unbundling.

    The number of broadband subscribers in OECD countries is expected to reach 100 million by Q3 2004, up from 82 million at the end of 2004 and 56 million at the end of 2003. Broadband penetration now extends to 75% of OECD household, with 1 in 4 already enjoying a service.

    However, the report details that availability will continue to vary widely for at least the next few years:

    • Over 90% of households in Belgium, Denmark, Japan, Korea, Luxembourg, Spain, Switzerland and the United Kingdom can connect to broadband services. Other countries expected to join this group by the end of 2004 include Finland, France and Germany.
    • Countries with larger geographical areas such as Australia, Canada, and the United States are likely to have DSL coverage of between 80% and 90% over the next few years. In Canada and the US, broadband via cable modem already reaches 85% and 80% of households respectively.
    • A number of countries– such as the Czech Republic, Greece, Hungary, and Ireland – have only recently launched broadband services.

    The OECD report