IBC News: Autonomy and Virage Announce First Integrated Products

Autonomy and Virage have chosen this year’s IBC to announce the integration of the two companies’ key technologies.

Virage’s SmartEncode/VideoLogger/ControlCentre software is a leading platform for the automated capture, encoding and indexing of video. Autonomy’s Dremedia technology integrates structured and unstructured data by processing text, voice and video and then orders it by concept.

Autonomy acquired Virage in early September, for $24.8m, specifically with this sort of integration in mind: to enable customers to search and visualise their media stores. Given that many of Virage’s customers are large corporations or governments these media archives are likely to be vast.

Gartner on the Acquisition

More on Virage

Making the Web Safer for Iranian Citizens

The US International Broadcasting Bureau (IBB) have partnered with Anonymizer to provide an email and newsletter service that uses changing URLs to allow Iranian citizens to access sites that have been blocked by the government. The URLs are also promoted on Voice of America and Radio Farda. Once a URL is blocked, a new one is provided – the voanews.com and radiofarda.com servers act as a trusted intermediary, and the service even includes a SafeCookie feature for sites that use mandatory user cookies.

Ken Berman, program manager for Internet Anti-censorship activities at the IBB : "The links to the service provided within the emails point to either the VOA or Radio Farda sites, but they can go anywhere on the Internet. Dissident sites, religious sites, the L.L. Bean catalogue — they are free to explore the Internet as they wish, in an unfettered fashion."

Importantly, Anonymizer’s technologies also mean that it’s impossible for the authorities to find out which sites an individual has visited.

Formed in 1996, Anonymizer, Inc has over 100,000 paying subscribers worldwide. The new Iranian service to similar to the one they have provided in China and other countries censoring net access.

Anonymizer

Radio Farda

IBC News: Companies Flocking Window Media 9

With several leading European content and distribution companies announcing new tools and services based around the Microsoft’s Windows Media 9 platform, support for the technology is growing fast.

BBC Technology, Capital Radio, NTL Broadcast, Quantel and many other companies announced that they were either moving to adopt WM9, or were embracing it further in new services.

Because of the breadth of support for the format in the industry, Microsoft has decided to open its specification for the codec by submitting it to the Society of Motion Picture and Television Engineers (SMPTE) C24 Technical Committee for consideration as an international standard.

Said Peter Symes, vice president of engineering at SMPTE. "The creation of an international standard based on this compression technology means there will be new choices for organizations that are strongly committed to the use of open standards and to those looking for the maximum level of interoperability in their products."

It will be interesting to see how the providers of the two other main media formats, Real and Apple, a going to react to this news.

Quantel will be using WM9 in its product lines to streamline production processes and improve quality. BBC Technology will be demonstrating its Colledia Control – a system designed to simplify the operation of broadcast equipment and provide workflow throughout the process.

Microsoft have made an improved range of tools available for WM9, such as the File Editor and Batch Encoder – these, coupled with the efficiency of the compression will no doubt have contributed to the uptake of the format.

With Windows Media 9, Microsoft are also finally providing the DRM capabilities they have been aiming towards for the last few years.

BBC Technology on Colledia

The Windows Media Encoder tools

3D Displays for Laptops – No Silly Glasses Required

Incorporating the new 3D LCD*1 technology developed by Sharp, their new PC-RD3D (sounds a bit Star Wars, really) is a high-performance workbook with a 2.8GHz processor and a GeForce 4 440 graphics chip.

The 3D display has very exciting applications: CAD, medical imaging, playing Star Wars Galaxies … but how does it work?

The display is switchable between two modes, standard 2D and a mode optimised for 3D applications. In 3D mode, light leaving the display is polarized by a filter into one of two different directions, so each eye sees a different image. This "parallax barrier system" has been used in things like those LCD switching glasses you get handed at the IMAX cinema, but this is the first time it’s been employed on a display.

Sharp explain how their 3D display works

Sony’s Dream World a Success, MySony launches

With more than 30,000 visitors, far exceeding all predictions, Sony have announced that their Dream World exhibition was a great success for them. As predicted, Sony’s entertainment robots AIBO and QRIO were big hits.

Sony launched their MySony service at the event – and more than 4,000 visitors signed up for it there and then. The programme offers subscribers a range of benefits based on their preferences, and is based around an internet portal. Users also earn points for using the portal which can then be put towards purchasing CDs, electronics from the Sony range. We’d best get clicking for that Dawson’s Creek boxset.

MySony

Motorola’s Mini GPS Unit

The tiny FS Oncore module from Motorola consumes just 70mW whilst providing one position fix per second, and is designed to operate even with weak GPS signals.

To make the chip simpler, and therefore easier and cheaper to produce, the firmware is stored on the host device and retrieved when the chip is powered up.

Applications could include PDAs and maps that show real time navigation, position “stamping” in digital cameras, theft recovery, and mobile phones that can locate their position and find contacts and services nearby. The size of the unit means that it manufacturing companies will be able to use it in inventory tracking applications, and the low cost will help in making GPS units in cars more affordable.

FS Oncore User Manual

Synergy GPS

Devices for the Digital Home

Obviously to have a fully integrated home you need a fair smattering of equipment, but knowing which bits to buy and what will work with what, can be a nightmare. CRN, the technology site, has produced a shopping list of recommended components and what they will do for you.

Encompassing the usual favourites – projectors, plasma displays, wireless cameras, wireless routers – the list helps clear up some of the confusion in the bewildering array of compatible (and incompatible) equipment out there today.

CRN

Lessig on the BBC Creative Archive

Lawrence Lessig, professor of law at Stanford University and cultural commentator thinks that the BBC have got it right with their proposal of making their freely archive available to the public for non-commercial uses.

By making the content available, commercial entities will also be able to identify BBC material and then license it for a fee.

Lessig describes this as “a brilliant response to the extra ordinary explosion of creative capacity enabled by digital technologies.”

There is less evidence of this sort of thinking in the US: corporations there are opposed to sharing standards and protocols and, as highlighted by the fascinating and ongoing Linux vs SCO vs IBM case, suspicious of the open source movement.

Original FT article

Lessig on Intellectual Property

Lessig’s weblog

Mass Market Self-destructing DVDs Get Closer

Amongst protestations from environmental groups, the Walt Disney Co is testing out new rental disks which become unreadable after 48 hours.

The trial is this week in Austin, Texas; Peoria/Bloomington, Illinois; Charleston, South Carolina; and Kansas City, Missouri.

Intended for convenience stores rather than Blockbuster, the “EZ-D” discs are intended as impulse purchases. Developed by Flexplay Technologies Inc, the discs start off red, but turn black as they are oxidized. The system doesn’t make DVDs any more secure against piracy, as they can still be copied in the first 48 hours.

To appease environmentalists, such as the Alliance for Safe Alternatives, concerned at the needless landfill this will create, Disney are offering a recycling programme – and as an incentive, customers will get a new disk for every six used ones they return.

Flexplay: http://www.flexplay.com/

AOL Opens Up its Instant Messaging Service to Brokerage Firms

AOL and Reuters are forming a partnership to provide a secure, encrypted instant messaging (IM) service for commercial banks, investment firms, mutual funds and other financial organisations. Another feature of the service is that messages can be stored, as regulators require.

This is the first time that AOL has opened up its IM service to another network. The guts of it comes down to translating to and from AOL’s OSCAR protocol and Reuter’s own SIMPLE schema.

Michael Osterman, and industry analyst makes the point: “Email no longer offers a competitive advantage since everyone has it. If you offer instant messaging and the ability to communicate with customers and partners, that can provide you with a competitive advantage.”

Washington Post

AtNewYork