Open Source Software (OSS) is rapidly coming to dominate certain areas of IT. Despite this advance, few beyond hardware vendors have developed solid models for leveraging OSS to boost margins or revenues. This inability to monetize OSS is perhaps its greatest inhibitor to thriving beyond the commodity server. The Open Source Business Conference (OSBC) is the first forum to bring together established technology vendors, startups, open source community members and enterprise IT users/customers to jointly explore new oppotunities for OSS deployment and how to capitalize on them. Westin St. Francis Hotel, San Francisco http://www.osbc2004.com/
Chrysalis Mobile Offers MP3 Downloads Straight to Mobile Phones
Chrysalis Mobile, a standalone business unit within the Chrysalis group of companies, has launched a service designed to bring music to mobile phone users, in various forms.
Chrysalis are offering the service on a “white label” basis – third parties will be able to contract the service and have it branded with their own identity. The service is comprised of hosting, content creation, billing and even royalty payments.
Available for download will be MP3s of real songs, ringtones, short edits of real songs (for alarms, tones and fun use), and images.
Chrysalis are pushing the CRM aspect of the service to potential customers – they’ll know who bought what and when, allowing effective management of campaigns and promotions.
Streaming Patent Claims Thicken as Playboy Licenses Technology
Acacia Media Technologies Group, part of Acacia Research Corporation, has found a new licensee for it patent claim on transmitting media over the web: Playboy.com.
Acacia acquires patents based on broad definitions – and then pursues companies using technologies in similar areas. The company claims to own the patents relating to transmitting compressed video and audio online – a fairly basic component of the internet these days. Acacia don’t actually provide a product for streaming media, or a service – they just claim the patent and will license the right to you.
Playboy.com have been granted the 118th license to use streaming technology – analysts estimate that Acacia are looking to take about 1 or 2% of the income that licensees make from streaming.
The company had recently started action on 39 “adult entertainment” sites, and it seems these businesses seem to be their preferred targets rather than, say, Micorsoft, RealNetworks or Apple. Their reasoning is that content providers have billing systems in place with consumers and so it’s an easier revenue stream to tap into.
iTunes Sells 50 Million Songs; Hewlett Packard-branded iTunes Launches
Apple announced on Monday that they’d sold 50 million tracks through its iTunes music service. They’re not including free songs redeemed through the Pepsi promotion running at the moment, just tracks which users have paid for and downloaded.
The service is now selling 2.5 million songs per week – that’s an annual rate of 130 million tracks per year, and it’s increasing. Steve Jobs said “It’s increasingly difficult to imagine others ever catching up with iTunes.” He may have a point: there’s no denying that the service has completely changed the face of the music industry, with many other companies are trying to get a slice of the market – though many other offerings (such as myCokeMusic) are considerably inferior. We’re looking forward to iTunes belated launch in Europe in the Summer – and hope that this will prompt Apple to do a bit more work on their slightly shoddy Windows client for the store.
Apple also partnered with Hewlett Packard to offer a special HP-branded copy of iTunes.
Oh – and what was the milestone song sold this time? “The Path of Thorns” by Sarah McLachlan.
BenQ Launch World’s First 12” High Definition Widescreen Laptop
BenQ are pitching their new Joybook 6000 as part of their “digital hub” – and is the World’s first high definition 12.1” laptop.
The high definition screen runs at a 1280 x 600 resolution (WXGA) – we haven’t seen it yet, but it is by all accounts beautiful. We’ve been looking around and it seems to retail at about US$2640.
The Centrino notebook has the usual WiFi/Bluetooth/IrDA capabilities, so will be able to connect users to data services easily and under a variety of conditions.
The Line between TVs and Displays Blurs Even Further
Is it a display with a TV tuner or is it a TV that you can use as a flat panel monitor? The viewing angle is possibly a bit narrow for living room use, but Iiyama’s new E430T-S display could easily be used as a television when you’re not using it to read DigitalLifestyles. Suspiciously similar to their existing E430T-S but with a PAL/SECAM/NTSC tuner in it, Iiyama are making the leap to multifunction displays as the market grows: flat panels have become enormously popular over the past 18 months, make ideal mid-size television displays, use less power and save space. Home users no longer see the point in having two near-identical pieces of equipment that do the same thing, and the benefits of integrating an tuner into an existing production model are enormous compared to the tiny cost.
The new display even has built-in speakers, but at 1.5w, you’ll definitely need to use something a bit more powerful for watching TV in living room.
Let Your Mood Dictate the Music
Biometric feedback as an input device is an idea that’s been floating around for a while, but researchers at MIT’s Media Lab Europe have developed a musical “game” that allows your mood to influence the music, rather than the other way round.
When your mood changes, so does your skin resistance (just ask the CIA), and MIT’s project, called Peace Composed, uses a pair of biometric sensors to measure it. This is then used to compose a piece of music based on seven different layers of instruments, including bass, piano, strings and wind instruments.
The application has obvious stress management uses, provided you’re not to stressed or overworked to actually get round to using it, and makes a fitting companion piece to “Relax to Win”, a program developed to help children with anxiety and stress problems. We don’t know why, but the title really appeals to us.
EU/Microsoft Mediaplayer Decision Due Today
The EU’s National Antitrust Exports Advisory meets to day to give their decision on one of their longest running cases – Microsoft’s bundling of multimedia applications in their Windows operating system.
This is the first of an expected two meetings – Microsoft will probably be given a deadline today, and will be expected to provide a “lightweight” version of Windows without its bundled applications, making it easier for other software manufacturers to include their own multimedia players and browsers when conusmers purchase a new PC. We would be very surprised if MS Europe didn’t already have a “core OS and applications only” version of Windows ready to go. Since this case have been going on since Windows 95, they’ve had plenty of time as there have been at least five major versions released since then.
The current solution for MS, the “Set Program Access and Defaults” tool, included in the last service packs, was introduced as a result of legal action, but does not tackle the controversial issue of software bundling.
The second meeting will be on the 22nd of March, where we predict that Microsoft will get hit up for a couple of hundred million euros.
Of course, Microsoft will appeal against both measures, prolonging the case even further – but perhaps next year you’ll be able to buy a PC with RealPlayer instead of Windows Media as the default multimedia application.
SXSW Interactive
In its eleventh year, this offshoot of the South-by-Southwest independent film festival draws cutting-edge new media developers and content creators. Austin, TX. http://sxsw.com/interactive
Motorola’s Linux Music Phone
Motorola haven’t released a Linux-based phone outside the Far East before – but their new E680 looks like it will be distributed in the West.
The phone is intended to be a wireless entertainment portal, with plenty of features to support that claim: GPRS downloads of up to 115kbps; MP3, RealPlayer and MPEG4 playback; stereo speakers; FM radio. And, yes, it has a camera – VGA with an 8x digital zoom and MPEG4 video capture.
The phone incorporates a WAP browser and will run J2ME (Java 2 Mobile Edition) applications. Further expansion is available through an SD slot, up to 1gb.