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Microsoft debuts security tools
Microsoft is releasing tools that clean up PCs harbouring viruses and spyware.
The virus-fighting program will be updated monthly and is a precursor to Microsoft releasing dedicated anti-virus software. Also being released is a software utility that will help users find and remove any spyware on their home computer. Although initially free it is thought that soon Microsoft will be charging users for the anti-spyware tool.
The anti-spyware tool is available now and the anti-virus utility is expected to be available later this month. Microsoft's Windows operating system has long been a favourite of people who write computer viruses because it is so ubiquitous and has many loopholes that can be exploited. It has proved such a tempting target that there are now thought to be more than 100,000 viruses and other malicious programs in existence. Latest research suggests that new variants of viruses are being cranked out at a rate of up to 200 per week. Spyware is surreptitious software that sneaks on to home computers, often without users' knowledge. In its most benign form it just bombards users with pop-up adverts or hijacks web browser settings. The most malicious forms steal confidential information or log every keystroke that users make. Surveys have shown that most PCs are infested with spyware. Research by technology firms Earthlink and Webroot revealed that 90% of Windows machine have the malicious software on board and, on average, each one harbours 28 separate spyware programs. Before now Microsoft has left the market for PC security software to specialist firms such as Symantec, McAfee, Trend Micro and many others. It said that its virus cleaning program would not stop machines being infected nor remove the need for other anti-virus programs. On spyware freely available programs such as Ad-Aware and Spybot have become widely used by people keen to keep the latest variants at bay. Microsoft's two security tools have emerged as a result of acquisitions the company has made over the last two years. In 2003 it bought Romanian firm GeCAD Software to get hold of its anti-virus technology. In December 2004 it bought New York-based anti-spyware firm Giant Company Software. Last year Microsoft also released the SP2 upgrade for Windows XP that closed many security loopholes in the software and made it easier for people to manage their anti-virus and firewall programs. | tech |
Slimmer PlayStation triple sales
Sony PlayStation 2's slimmer shape has proved popular with UK gamers, with 50,000 sold in its first week on sale.
Sales have tripled since launch, outstripping Microsoft's Xbox, said market analysts Chart-Track. The numbers were also boosted by the release of the PS2-only game Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas. The title broke the UK sales record for video games in its first weekend of release. Latest figures suggest it has sold more than 677,000 copies.
"It is obviously very, very encouraging for Sony because Microsoft briefly outsold them last week," John Houlihan, editor of Computerandvideogames.com told BBC News. "And with Halo 2 [for Xbox] out next week, it really is a head-to-head contest between them and Xbox."
Although Xbox sales over the last week also climbed, PS2 sales were more than double that. The figures mean Sony is reaching the seven million barrier for UK sales of the console. Edinburgh-based developer, Rockstar, which is behind the GTA titles, has seen San Andreas pull in an estimated £24m in gross revenues over the weekend. In comparison, blockbuster films like Harry Potter and The Prisoner Of Azkaban took £11.5m in its first three days at the UK box office. The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King took nearly £10m over its opening weekend, although games titles are four to five times more expensive than cinema tickets.
Gangster-themed GTA San Andreas is the sequel to Grand Theft Auto Vice City which previously held the record for the fastest-selling video game ever. The Xbox game Halo 2, released on 11 November in the UK, is also widely tipped to be one of the best-selling games of the year. The original title won universal acclaim in 2001, and sold more than four million copies.
Mr Houlihan added that Sony had done well with the PS2, but it definitely helped that the release of San Andreas coincided with the slimline PS2 hitting the shelves. The run-up to Christmas is a huge battlefield for games consoles and titles. Microsoft's Xbox had been winning the race up until last week in sales. The sales figures also suggest that it may be a largely adult audience driving demand, since GTA San Andreas has an 18 certificate. Sony and Microsoft have both reduced console prices recently and are preparing the way for the launches of their next generation consoles in 2005. "Both have hit crucial price points at around £100 and that really does open up new consoles to new audience, plus the release of two really important games in terms of development are also driving those sales," said Mr Houlihan. | tech |
Seamen sail into biometric future
The luxury cruise liner Crystal Harmony, currently in the Gulf of Mexico, is the unlikely setting for tests of biometric technology.
As holidaymakers enjoy balmy breezes, their ship's crew is testing prototype versions of the world's first internationally issued biometric ID cards, the seafarer's equivalent of a passport. Along with the owner's picture, name and personal details, the new Seafarers' Identity Document incorporates a barcode representing unique features of its holder's fingerprints. The cards are due to be issued in February next year, in line with the revised UN Convention on Seafarers' Identity Documents of June 2003. Tests currently under way in the Caribbean are designed to ensure that new cards and their machine readers, produced by different companies in different countries, are working to interoperable standards. Results of the current tests, which involve seafarers from a wide range of occupations and nationalities, will be published by the International Labour Organisation (ILO) by the end of November. Crystal Cruises, which operates the Crystal Harmony, is exploring the use of biometrics but has not yet committed to the technology.
Authenti-corp, the US technology consultancy, has been working with the ILO on its technical specifications for the cards.
"If you're issued a seafarer's ID in your country, you want to be sure that when the ship lands in a port in, say, my country you can validate yourself using whatever equipment we have installed," Authenti-corp's CEO, Cynthia Musselman, told the BBC's Go Digital programme. She said French, Jordanian and Nigerian nationals would be the first seafarers to get the new ID cards since their countries have already ratified the convention. It aims to combat international terrorism whilst guaranteeing the welfare the one million seafarers estimated to be at sea. The convention highlights the importance of access to shore facilities and shore leave as vital elements to a sailor's wellbeing and, therefore, it says, to safer shipping and cleaner oceans. "By increasing security on the seas as well as border control and protection, the cards will hopefully reduce the number of piracy problems around the world," said Ms Musselman. "It should be a safer environment for seafarers to work in, and will allow people protecting their borders to have confidence that the people getting off the ship are, in fact, seafarers." | tech |
US blogger fired by her airline
A US airline attendant suspended over "inappropriate images" on her blog - web diary - says she has been fired.
Ellen Simonetti, known as Queen of the Sky, wrote an anonymous semi-fictional account of her life in the sky. She was suspended by Delta in September. In a statement, she said she was initiating legal action against the airline for "wrongful termination". A Delta spokesperson confirmed on Wednesday that Ms Simonetti was no longer an employee. Delta has repeatedly declined to elaborate on what it calls "internal employee matters". A spokesperson reiterated this position on Wednesday, confirming only that Ms Simonetti was no longer with the company. The spokesperson also confirmed that there were "very clear rules" attached to the unauthorised use of Delta branding, including uniforms. Ms Simonetti announced on her blog she had been fired on 1 November.
She said in an official statement: "As a result of my suspension and subsequent termination without cause by Delta Airlines I am moving forward with filing a discrimination complaint with the Federal Government EEOC [US Equal Employment Opportunity Commission]." She added she had also hired a Texas-based law firm to initiate legal action for "wrongful termination, defamation of character and lost future wages." Ms Simonetti told the BBC News website she had received no warning or further explanation when she was suspended on 25 September. Queen of the Sky has received a lot of support and advice from the global blogging community since news of her suspension was brought to light on the BBC News website and others.
Her story has highlighted concerns amongst the growing blogging community about conflicts of interest, employment law and free speech on personal websites. The blog, which she started in January as a way of getting over her mother's death, contains a mix of fictional and non-fictional accounts. Queen of the Sky developed over the months as a character in her own right, according to Ms Simonetti. In the postings, she made up fictional names for cities and other companies she mentioned to protect anonymity. But some postings contained images of herself in uniform. Of the 10 or so images only one showed Ms Simonetti's flight "wings". She removed them as soon as she was informed of her suspension. "I never meant it as something to harm my company and don't understand how they think it did harm them," Ms Simonetti said. A legal expert in the US speculated that Delta might be concerned that the fictional content on the blog may be linked back to the airline after the images were posted.
Delta has been hit recently by pressures of rising fuel costs and fierce competition. It has said it needs to cut between 6,000 and 7,000 jobs and reduce costs by $5bn (£2.7bn) a year. Analysts had warned recently that the airline might have to seek Chapter 11 bankruptcy prevention. Last week, it struck a $1bn cost-cutting deal with its pilots which could save it from bankruptcy. The deal would see pilots accept a 32% pay cut in return for the right to buy 30 million Delta shares, unions said. And on Monday, it negotiated a deal to defer about $135m in debt which was due next year, until 2007. The airline also said it had agreed the terms of a $600m loan from American Express. | tech |
Mobiles double up as bus tickets
Mobiles could soon double up as travel cards, with Nokia planning to try out a wireless ticket system on German buses.
Early next year travellers in the city of Hanau, near Frankfurt, will be able to pay for tickets by passing their phone over a smart-card reader already installed on the buses. Passengers will need to own a Nokia 3220 handset which will have a special shell attached to it. The system would reduce queues and make travelling easier, said Nokia.
Transport systems around the world are seeing the advantage of using ticketless smartcards. Using a mobile phone is the next step, said Gerhard Romen, head of market development at Nokia.
The ticketless trial will start early in 2005 and people will also be able to access transport information and timetables via their phones. Nokia has worked with electronics giant Philips to develop a shell for the mobile phone that will be compatible with Hanau's existing ticketing system. The system opens up possibilities for mobile devices to be interact with everyday environments, said Mr Romen. "It could be used in shops to get product information, at bus-stops to get information about the next bus or, for example, by being passed over an advert of a rock star to find out details of concerts or get ringtones," he told the BBC News website. He is confident that the trial being run in Germany could be extended to transport systems in other countries. "The technology offers access to a lot of services and makes it easy to get the information you want," he said. | tech |
Mobile gig aims to rock 3G
Forget about going to a crowded bar to enjoy a gig by the latest darlings of the music press.
Now you could also be at a live gig on your mobile, via the latest third generation (3G) video phones. Rock outfit Rooster are playing what has been billed as the first ever concert broadcast by phone on Tuesday evening from a London venue. The 45-minute gig is due to be "phone cast" by the 3G mobile phone operator, 3. 3G technology lets people take, watch and send video clips on their phones, as well as swap data much faster than with 2G networks like GSM. People with 3G phones in the UK can already download football and music clips on their handsets.
Some 1,000 fans of the London-based band will have to pay five pounds for a ticket and need a 3G handset.
"Once you have paid, you can come and go as much as you like, because we expect the customers to be mobile," said 3 spokesperson Belinda Henderson. "It's like going to a concert hall, except that you are virtually there." The company behind the trial hopes to learn more about how people use their video phones. "We are looking on how long people will stay on average on the streams. Some people may stay the whole time, some may dip in and out," said Ms Henderson. "We actually expect people to dip in and out because they are mobile and they will be doing other things." 3 is looking to music as a way of persuading more people to take up the latest video phones. It is already planning regular gigs throughout 2005. And during the intermission, of course, you would still be able to make a phone call. | tech |
Consumers 'snub portable video'
Consumers want music rather than movies while on the move, says a report.
Produced by Jupiter Research the analysis of the portable media player market found only 13% of Europeans want to watch video while out and about. By contrast, almost a third are interested in listening to music on a portable player such as an iPod. The firm said gadget makers should avoid hybrid devices and instead make sure music reproduction was as good as possible.
The report concluded that the driving force behind the growth of Europe's portable player market was likely to be music, rather than films or any combination of the two. Barely 5% of those questioned said they wanted a player that could play back both music and movies. Only 7% wanted a player that could handle games and video.
"Dedicated music players are the only established digital media players in Europe today despite their high prices," said Ian Fogg, Jupiter analyst. Mr Fogg said although video players and smartphones were trying to cash in on this success they faced a tough job because of the compromises that had to be made when creating a dual-purpose device. "Europeans care most about music playback," he said. The report showed that 27% of consumers asked are interested in portable music players. The research revealed that French, 39%, and British, 31%, consumers were most interested in music players. Mr Fogg said portable video players were likely to remain a niche product that would not be able to compete with devices dedicated to music playback.
A separate report by Jupiter forecasts that the European digital music market will grow to 836m euros (£581m) by 2009. At the end of 2003, the market was worth 10.6m euros (£7.36m). Digital music players will be behind this market growth said Jupiter . Apple's iPod was launched in October 2001, but the portable music player market has been growing steadily since the launch of the Creative Nomad Jukebox in mid-2000. Now consumers face an almost overwhelming choice of high-capacity portable music players that let them store every track on every CD that they own. | tech |
Learning to love broadband
We are reaching the point where broadband is a central part of daily life, at least for some, argues technology analyst Bill Thompson.
One of the nice things about being a writer is that I rarely have to go to an office to work. I can sit in a café or a library, with or without a wi-fi connection, and research and write articles. If I am passing through Kings Cross station on my way to a meeting then I can log on from the platform. And I can spend the day working with my girlfriend Anne, a children's writer, at her house in Cambridge, sharing her wireless network. But just over a week ago I arrived at her house to find that there was no network connection.
We checked the cable modem and noticed that it had no power, and when she changed the power lead it sparked at her in a way which made it abundantly clear that it was never going to talk to the internet again. She called her service provider, and they told her it would be five days before an engineer would show up with a new cable modem. This did not seem too bad, but in fact she really suffered until her connection was restored on Wednesday. With no modem installed in her computer, she had to borrow internet access from friends or use the dial-up connection on her daughter's laptop, so she had to choose between copying her files onto her USB memory card or accepting a slower and flakier net connection. As a result she did not submit the pictures she wanted to use for a book on earthquakes because they were too big to send over dial-up.
She could not research other material because she is used to having easy access to a fast link that lets her search quickly and effectively. But the impact spread into her personal life too. She did not take her children to the cinema during half-term because she could not find out which films were showing at the local cinemas. She planned a trip to Norfolk but did not check the weather because the only place she knows to look for weather information is the BBC website. And she did not know where to go fossil-hunting on the trip because she could not type "fossils Norfolk" into Google. Of course, she readily admits, she could have answered these questions if she had looked in the local paper, listened to the radio or found a book on fossils. But she did not, because having fast, always on, and easy access to the net has become part of the routine of her daily life, and when it was taken away it was too much effort to go back to the old ways of doing things. She may be unusual, but I do not think Anne is alone.
According to Ofcom there were almost four million broadband users in the UK in April 2004, and numbers are climbing fast. There will certainly be five million by the end of the year. Dial-up users are switching to broadband. My dad finally made the change earlier this month and new net users are selecting broadband from the start. More and more of these broadband users are beginning to mould their daily lives around the availability of broadband internet connections, and they too will find it difficult to cope if they cannot get online for any reason.
It is part of the process of adaptation, and it is a vital step in the growth of broadband in the UK and elsewhere. People who have integrated net access into their daily lives tell their friends about it, and show off the cool stuff they can do. They encourage other people to get broadband so that they can share digital photos and do all of the other things that need fast and reliable connectivity. Of course, broadband in the UK is laughably slow compared to other parts of the world. In South Korea, Japan and Hong Kong normal connection speeds are measured in megabits, or millions of bits, a second rather than the thousands that we are supposed to be happy with. But speed is only a small part of the attraction of broadband, and when it comes to checking websites for film times, looking at weather forecasts, or all of the other small things that make a real difference to the routines and habits of our daily lives, even UK speeds are sufficient. It may not be the brave new world of streaming full-screen video and superfast file downloads, but it will do for now. And it is certainly better than slow access or no access. Just ask Anne.
Bill Thompson is a regular commentator on the BBC World Service programme Go Digital. | tech |
Nintendo DS aims to touch gamers
The mobile gaming industry is set to explode in 2005 with a number of high-profile devices offering a range of gaming and other features such as movie and music playback. Market leader Nintendo, however, is releasing a handheld console that it says will revolutionise the way games are played.
The first striking thing about the DS is how retro it looks. Far from looking like a mould-breaking handheld, it looks more like Nintendo dug out a mould from a 1980s handheld prototype. The lightweight clam shell device opens up to reveal two screens, and when switched on it instantly reveals its pedigree. Both screens are crisp and clear while the bottom of the two is touch sensitive. Nintendo has given developers free rein to utilise the dual screens and ability to control the action by simply touching the screen.
The Japanese gaming giant hopes the DS will maintain the firm's pre-eminence in an increasingly-competitive mobile gaming market.
Nintendo first launched its GameBoy console in 1989 and has dominated the market ever since. But its lead can no longer be taken for granted. Sony will enter the market later this year with its PlayStation Portable, while start-up companies Gizmondo and Tapwave Zodiac are also offering hybrid devices. "We believe the DS will appeal to all ages, both genders and gamers of any skill," said David Yarnton, Nintendo Europe's general manager said at the recent press launch for the handheld. With its two screens, wireless connectivity and backwards compatibility with the GameBoy Advance, the DS certainly has a number of unique selling points. It went on sale in the US in mid-November priced $150 and Nintendo says sales have exceeded expectations, without giving detailed figures. Japan and Europe will have to wait until the first quarter of 2005 to get the device. With more than two million pre-orders for the device in Japan, Nintendo is confident it will keep its number one spot. But will the device prove to be as revolutionary as claimed? The game ships with a demo of Metroid Hunters - a 3D action title which can be played alone or with a group of friends using the machine's wireless capabilities. It certainly looks impressive on the small machine and plays smoothly even with a group of people.
The game can be controlled by using the supplied stylus to aim. The top screen is used to navigate the action while the bottom screen offers a top-down map and the ability to switch weapons. It is certainly a unique control method and while it makes aiming more controlled it can be a little disorientating. Super Mario 64 DS is a faithful re-creation of the Nintendo 64 classic with a host of new mini-games and new levels. The game looks stunning on the portable machine and the sound too is impressive for such a small machine. One thing is for certain. Hardened gamers will have to learn to adapt to a new way of playing while it could prove to be an accessible way in to gaming for novices, Ultimately the success or failure of the device lies in the hands of developers. If they manage to create titles which use the Nintendo DS's key features then a whole new market of gamers could open up. The fear is that the touch screen and voice recognition are treated as little more than gimmicks. | tech |
China 'blocks Google news site'
China has been accused of blocking access to Google News by the media watchdog, Reporters Without Borders.
The Paris-based pressure group said the English-language news site had been unavailable for the past 10 days. It said the aim was to force people to use a Chinese edition of the site which, according to the watchdog, does not include critical reports. Google told the BBC News website it was aware of the problems and was investigating the causes.
China is believed to extend greater censorship over the net than any other country in the world.
A net police force monitors websites and e-mails, and controls on gateways connecting the country to the global internet are designed to prevent access to critical information. Popular Chinese portals such as Sina.com and Sohu.com maintain a close eye on content and delete politically sensitive comments. And all 110,000 net cafes in the country have to use software to control access to websites considered harmful or subversive.
"China is censoring Google News to force internet users to use the Chinese version of the site which has been purged of the most critical news reports," said the group in a statement. "By agreeing to launch a news service that excludes publications disliked by the government, Google has let itself be used by Beijing," it said. For its part, the search giant said it was looking into the issue. "It appears that many users in China are having difficulty accessing Google News sites in China and we are working to understand and resolve the issue," said a Google spokesperson. Google News gathers information from some 4,500 news sources. Headlines are selected for display entirely by a computer algorithm, with no human editorial intervention. It offers 15 editions of the service, including one tailored for China and one for Hong Kong. Google launched a version in simplified Chinese in September. The site does not filter news results to remove politically sensitive information. But Google does not link to news sources which are inaccessible from within China as this would result in broken links. | tech |
A question of trust and technology
A major government department is without e-mail for a week, and technology analyst Bill Thompson wants to know what happened.
A couple of weeks ago I wrote about how my girlfriend had suffered when her cable modem blew up and she was offline for several days. It seems that thousands of civil servants at the UK's Department of Work and Pensions went through the same thing last week. It has emerged that the internal network crashed in a particularly horrible way, depriving staff of e-mail and access to the application software they use to calculate people's benefit and pension entitlement or note changes in personal circumstances. Senior consultants from EDS, the computer firm which manage the system, and Microsoft, which supplied the software, were running around trying to figure out what had to be done to fix it all, while staff resorted to phone, fax and probably carrier pigeon to get work done. Fortunately the back-office systems which actually pay people their money were still working, so only new claims and updates were affected done properly. This is bad enough for those affected, but it does mean that the impact is not devastating for millions of pensioners. I am sure regular readers will be expecting one of my usual diatribes against poor software, badly specified systems and inadequate disaster recovery plans.
Although the full story has not yet been told, it seems that the problem started when a plan to upgrade some of the computers from Windows 2000 to Windows XP went wrong, and XP code was inadvertently copied to thousands of machines across the network.
This is certainly unfortunate, but I have a lot of sympathy for the network managers and technology staff involved. Today's computer networks are large, complex and occasionally fragile. The interconnectedness that we all value also gives us a degree of instability and unpredictability that we cannot design out of the systems. It is the network equivalent of Godel's Theorem - any system sufficiently complex to be useful is also able to collapse catastrophically. So I will reserve judgment on the technology aspects until we all know what actually happened and whether it was a consequence of software failure or just bad luck. What is really disturbing, and cannot be excused, is the fact that it took four days for news of this systems failure to leak out into the technical press.
It is, without a doubt, a major story and was the second or third lead item on BBC Radio 4's Today programme throughout Friday morning.
So why did not the prime minister's official spokesman mention it at any lobby briefings before Friday? Why was not the pensions minister in Parliament to make an emergency statement on Tuesday, when it was clear that there was a serious problem? If there had been an outbreak of Legionnaire's disease in the air conditioning system we would have been told, but it seems that major technology problems do not merit the same treatment. While EDS and Microsoft will no doubt be looking for technical lessons to learn from their week of pain, we can learn some political lessons too. And the most important is that in this digital world, technology failures are matters of public interest, not something that can be ignored in the hope that nobody will notice, care or understand. That means we need a full report on what went wrong and what was done to fix it. It would be unacceptable for any of the parties involved to hide behind commercial confidentiality or even parliamentary privilege. A major system has evidently collapsed and we need to know what went wrong and what is being done differently. Anything less is a betrayal of public trust.
Bill Thompson is a regular commentator on the BBC World Service programme Go Digital. | tech |
Call for action on internet scam
Phone companies are not doing enough to warn customers about internet "rogue-dialling" scams, according to premium phone line regulator Icstis.
It has received 45,000 complaints in recent months about dial-up internet connections diverting to premium rate numbers without users' knowledge. Phone companies refuse to pay compensation because they say calls must be paid for. They must warn people earlier about possible fraud, Icstis said.
People who use dial-up connections can be affected by the scams. Without realising, a program can be downloaded which diverts internet calls via a premium phone line. Victims often fail to notice until they receive an unusually high bill. Icstis spokesman Rob Dwight said: "Phone companies should get in touch with their customers sooner. "If my bill goes over the usual £50 a month I want to know about it straight away - I don't want to be told when it's hit £750."
Phone companies had the systems in place to spot fraudulent activity and artificially-inflated traffic, he said. "We alert them to the numbers that we have under investigation and they should be looking out for these numbers," he added.
Telecoms ombudsman Elizabeth France said: "Certainly I would not be surprised to find my credit card company phoning me if I do something out of the ordinary. "So I would expect phone companies to be looking to see if they can have a similar approach." The biggest phone company BT says it is doing what it can to monitor fraud and warn people about rogue dialling. Its advice to customers is to use call barring if they want to prevent calls to premium lines because, under the current system, once the call has been made there's little that can be done.
Gavin Patterson, group managing director for BT Consumer, said "We do look at customer's calling patterns and we do make interventions when they are out of the ordinary. "We're looking at the moment at whether we can improve this." But as BT handled 180 million calls a day monitoring was "quite a task in itself", he added. The government has ordered a review of premium line services and is likely to say Icstis should have more power to deal with rogue diallers in future. At the moment, it cannot demand pay-outs on the behalf of customer - it can only close illegal services down.
I use free anti-virus software (AVG) and free firewall protection (ZoneAlarm). Both of these tools have prevented unauthorised access and outgoing calls inadvertently and innocently caused by my daughter's love of music sites. How about ISPs informing all customers of such facilities? The responsibility clearly falls with the customer but many fall prey through simply not knowing how to avoid these issues.
Ignorance is and always has been an expensive business.
Does any one know what happens once this fraud has been committed and recognised? The phone companies pay the people who obtaining money fraudulently, so are these people followed up and prosecuted ?
These diallers are mainly downloaded from sites offering illegal MP3s, porn and pirated software. If people didn't visit such sites they'd be considerably less at risk. Whatever happened to personal responsibility? It seems everyone has to be a 'victim' these days!
Part of the blame has to rest with the manufacturers of home computer operating systems. A secure system should not allow a web page or email to download and install anything without the user's knowledge.
These scams are illegal and telephone companies should have nothing to do with them. They should refuse to pay money over to the perpetrators. Or are they themselves receiving such good returns that it is in their interest to keep the scam going?
Why don't BT et al block all premium numbers by default and only turn it off at the customer's request? To anyone who falls foul of this scam - refuse to pay your telephone provider for these calls. After you notify your telephone provider of these fraudulent transactions, they cannot insist on you paying the bill. To do so would be to knowingly assist the fraudsters to commit the fraud. No customers have yet been taken to court for refusing to pay these bills.
Disable or remove your modem and use broadband instead - then you have nothing to worry about. Or buy some decent firewall software and anti-virus. You would not walk out in the freezing cold without a coat - you would not drive your car without any insurance - so why not protect your PC? Stop blaming the phone companies - it's not their fault!
I was very impressed with our phone company recently. I had kept ringing a hotline number for Kylie tickets and next day they rang back to ask if I was aware there were 40-odd calls to the same number. Great service. And I got the tickets as well!
I have a colleague who has fallen victim to this kind of scam. He informed the phone company about it, they subsequently put a block on premium rate numbers. Three months later another huge bill of over £1,000 came in - the block apparently didn't work and he still has to pay for it, even though a block was in place. Phone companies are probably quite happy for their customers to be hit with a huge bill, otherwise they'd be taking extra steps to prevent this kind of problem.
I have been scammed of £139. The operator will do nothing about this and, to add insult to injury, I was charged VAT by the government.
Premium rate numbers have been subject to various scams ever since they were invented. One example was where thieves would set up a premium rate number and then dial it day and night from phones whose quarterly bills were never paid. The telephone company was the victim here and you can bet that loophole was blocked very quickly.
I know people who have run up large bills, despite being IT-literate. From talking to BT in Belfast, I believe that they will shortly be giving out a free application that can stop you dialling expensive numbers without knowing. It's not the fault of phone companies, and at last they are doing something about it.
It's about time that the profiteering by the 'legitimate' phone companies came to an end, mainly by doing away with dial-up altogether and bring broadband down to the same price as dial-up! Not only will this ruin things for the dialler scammers but also allow people to update and upgrade their security more easily and quickly.
I haven't "fallen victim to a rogue-dialling scam" but I think you're seriously remiss in not pointing out that the vast majority of these scams arise from people trying to access services purporting to provide free pornography. In most cases the user is entirely at fault, which is probably why the telephone companies are rightly unwilling to refund them.
My telephone supplier did not inform me that my monthly bill had risen from its normal £3 to £5, to £320. This was because of the scam. They simply billed me. What particularly galls me, over and above having over £300 stolen, is that the supplier and the government (through VAT) are profiting from this crime and will not reimburse me their portion of my losses.
How about an automatic monthly cap of say £20 on premium rate calls that you would have to contact your provider to have lifted? That way you could use legitimate premium rate numbers while limiting fraudulent usage. At least any disputed amount would be limited, far easier for a telecoms operator to write off £20 than it is £750.
A few years back I was also the target of such scams but thank God I have already upgraded to broadband and nothing was connected to my modem so all I heard was the sound of an attempted connection.
How about home users take some responsibility and ensure their anti-virus and firewall software is up to date? That should prevent the vast majority of these scams. | tech |
Screensaver tackles spam websites
Net users are getting the chance to fight back against spam websites
Internet portal Lycos has made a screensaver that endlessly requests data from sites that sell the goods and services mentioned in spam e-mail. Lycos hopes it will make the monthly bandwidth bills of spammers soar by keeping their servers running flat out. The net firm estimates that if enough people sign up and download the tool, spammers could end up paying to send out terabytes of data.
"We've never really solved the big problem of spam which is that its so damn cheap and easy to do," said Malte Pollmann, spokesman for Lycos Europe. "In the past we have built up the spam filtering systems for our users," he said, "but now we are going to go one step further."
"We've found a way to make it much higher cost for spammers by putting a load on their servers." By getting thousands of people to download and use the screensaver, Lycos hopes to get spamming websites constantly running at almost full capacity. Mr Pollmann said there was no intention to stop the spam websites working by subjecting them with too much data to cope with. He said the screensaver had been carefully written to ensure that the amount of traffic it generated from each user did not overload the web. "Every single user will contribute three to four megabytes per day," he said, "about one MP3 file." But, he said, if enough people sign up spamming websites could be force to pay for gigabytes of traffic every single day. Lycos did not want to use e-mail to fight back, said Mr Pollmann. "That would be fighting one bad thing with another bad thing," he said.
The sites being targeted are those mentioned in spam e-mail messages and which sell the goods and services on offer.
Typically these sites are different to those that used to send out spam e-mail and they typically only get a few thousand visitors per day. The list of sites that the screensaver will target is taken from real-time blacklists generated by organisations such as Spamcop. To limit the chance of mistakes being made, Lycos is using people to ensure that the sites are selling spam goods. As these sites rarely use advertising to offset hosting costs, the burden of high-bandwidth bills could make spam too expensive, said Mr Pollmann. Sites will also slow down under the weight of data requests. Early results show that response times of some sites have deteriorated by up to 85%. Users do not have to be registered users of Lycos to download and use the screensaver. While working, the screensaver shows the websites that are being bothered with requests for data. The screensaver is due to be launched across Europe on 1 December and before now has only been trialled in Sweden. Despite the soft launch, Mr Pollmann said that the screensaver had been downloaded more than 20,000 times in the last four days. "There's a huge user demand to not only filter spam day-by-day but to do something more," he said "Before now users have never had the chance to be a bit more offensive." | tech |
First look at PlayStation 3 chip
Some details of the chip inside Sony's PlayStation 3 have been revealed.
Sony, IBM and Toshiba have released limited data about the so-called Cell chip that will be able to carry out trillions of calculations per second. The chip will be made of several different processing cores that work on tasks together. The PlayStation 3 is expected in 2006 but developers are expecting to get prototypes early next year to tune games that will appear on it at launch.
The three firms have been working on the chip since 2001 but before now few details have been released about how it might function. In a joint statement the three firms gave hints about how the chip will work but fuller details will be released in February next year at the International Solid State Circuits Conference in San Francisco.
The three firms claim that the Cell chip will be up to 10 times more powerful than existing processors. When put inside powerful computer servers, the Cell consortium expects it to be capable of handling 16 trillion floating point operations, or calculations, every second. The chip has also been refined to be able to handle the detailed graphics common in games and the data demands of films and broadband media. IBM said it would start producing the chip in early 2005 at manufacturing plants in the US. The first machines off the line using the Cell processor will be computer workstations and servers. A working version of the PS3 is due to be shown off in May 2005 but a full launch of the next generation console is not expected to start until 2006. As well as being inside the PlayStation 3, the chip will also be used inside high-definition TVs and powerful computers. "In the future, all forms of digital content will be converged and fused onto the broadband network," said Ken Kutaragi, Chief Operating Officer of Sony. "Current PC architecture is nearing its limits." | tech |
Online commons to spark debate
Online communities set up by the UK government could encourage public debate and build trust, says the Institute of Public Policy Research (IPPR).
Existing services such as eBay could provide a good blueprint for such services, says the think-tank. Although the net is becoming part of local and central government, its potential has not yet been fully exploited to create an online "commons" for public debate. In its report, Is Online Community A Policy Tool?, the IPPR also asks if ID cards could help create safer online communities. Adopting an eBay-type model would let communities create their own markets for skills and services and help foster a sense of local identity and connection. "What we are proposing is a civic commons," Will Davies, senior research fellow at the IPPR told the BBC News website. "A single publicly funded and run online community in which citizens can have a single place to go where you can go to engage in diversity and in a way that might have a policy implication - like a pre-legislation discussion."
The idea of a "civic commons" was originally proposed by Stephen Coleman, professor of e-democracy at the Oxford Internet Institute. The IPPR report points to informal, small scale examples of such commons that already exist. It mentions good-practice public initiatives like the BBC's iCan project which connects people locally and nationally who want to take action around important issues.
But he adds, government could play a bigger role in setting up systems of trust for online communities too. Proposals for ID cards, for instance, could also be widened to see if they could be used online. They could provide the basis for a secure authentication system which could have value for peer-to-peer interaction online. "At the moment they have been presented as a way for government to keep tabs on people and ensuring access to public services," said Mr Davies. "But what has not been explored is how authentication technology may potentially play a role in decentralised online communities." The key idea to take from systems such as eBay and other online communities is letting members rate each other's reputation by how they treat other members. Using a similar mechanism, trust and cooperation between members of virtual and physical communities could be built. This could mean a civic commons would work within a non-market system which lets people who may disagree with one another interact within publicly-recognised rules.
E-government initiatives over the last decade have very much been about putting basic information and service guides online as well as letting people interact with government via the web. Many online communities, such as chatrooms, mailing lists, community portals, message boards and weblogs often form around common interests or issues.
With 53% of UK households now with access to the net, the government, suggests Mr Davies, could act as an intermediary or "middleman" to set up public online places of debate and exchange to encourage more "cosmopolitan politics" and public trust in policy. "Government already plays a critical role in helping citizens trade with each other online. "But it should also play a role in helping citizens connect to one another in civic, non-market interactions," said Mr Davies. There is a role for public bodies like the BBC, libraries, and government to bring people back into public debate again instead of millions of "cliques" talking to each other, he added. The paper is part of the IPPR's Digital Society initiative which is producing a number of conferences and research papers leading up to the publication of A Manifesto For A Digital Britain. | tech |
Mobile gaming takes off in India
Gaming on the move is one of the fastest-growing activities among the tech-savvy in India, says a report.
The Indian mobile gaming market is expected to generate about $26m (£13.8m) by the end of 2004, according to market analysts In-Stat/MDR. In October, mobile phone users grew by 1.4 million to 44.9 million, overtaking the number of landlines, said the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India. Analysts say cheap rates and a huge youth market is driving the market. India has a large population of under-25s, and many in urban areas are fast adopting mobiles as must-have gadgets.
India's mobile gaming market will bring in about $336m (£178m) by 2009, according to the report. Mobile gaming is expected to explode globally over the next few years. Analysts predict that 220 million people will be playing games on phones by 2009, generating billions for mobile companies.
Services other than just voice calls which are offered by mobile operators in India have, as a result of the huge rise in subscribers, grown significantly and rapidly. "The growth of this market sector has attracted publishers, developers, animators, musicians, and content providers, and is also stimulating the development of innovative business models," said Clint Wheelock, director of In-Stat/MDR's wireless research group.
"Mobile gaming is not just about fun; it also represents one key element of a rich mobile entertainment experience for consumers, and a lucrative market opportunity for industry players." Currently, India has six big games developers and four mobile operators that offer games to their subscribers, said the report. According to In-Stat/MDR, it is tipped to make up one of the most important markets in the next wave of mobile multimedia growth.
In January 2003, there were only 10 million mobile subscribers in India. Many choose mobiles in rural areas in order to bypass poorer telecoms infrastructure. Despite this, the penetration rate is still much lower that other countries. Less than 20% of India's total population own a mobile in India, compared to well over 50% in most European countries. The trend echoes the uptake of mobiles in many developing economies, which continues to grow as people opt to leapfrog slower and more expensive state-run fixed-line operators. | tech |
Gadget market 'to grow in 2005'
The explosion in consumer technology is to continue into 2005, delegates at the world's largest gadget show, in Las Vegas, have been told.
The number of gadgets in the shops is predicted to grow by 11%, while devices which talk to each other will become increasingly important. "Everything is going digital," Kirsten Pfeifer from the Consumer Electronics Association, told the BBC News website. The Consumer Electronics Show (CES) featured the pick of 2005's products. "Consumers are controlling what they want and technologies like HDTVs [high-definition TVs], digital radio, and digital cameras will remain strong in 2005. "All the products on show really showed the breadth and depth of the industry." Despite showing diversity, some delegates attending complained that the showcase lacked as much "wow factor" as in previous years.
The portable technologies on show also reflected one of the buzzwords of CES, which was the "time and place shifting" of multimedia content - being able to watch and listen to video and music anywhere, at any time. At the start of last year's CES, the CEA predicted there would be an average growth of 4% in 2004. That figure was surpassed with the rise in popularity of portable digital music players, personal video recorders and digital cameras. It was clear also that gadgets are becoming a lot more about lifestyle choice, with fashion and personalisation becoming increasingly key to the way gadgets are designed. Part of this has been the rise in spending power of the "generation X-ers" who have grown up with technology and who now have the spending power and desire for more devices that suit them. More than 57% of the consumer electronics market is made up of female buyers, according to CEA research. Hybrid devices, which combine a number of multimedia functions, were also in evidence on the show floor. "A lot of this is driven by just the ability to do it," said Stephen Baker, a consumer electronics analyst with retail research firm NPD Group. "Some of these functions cost next to nothing to add."
As well as the show floor showcasing everything from tiny wearable MP3 players to giant high-definition TVs, several keynote speeches were made by industry leaders, such as Microsoft chief Bill Gates. Despite several embarrassing technical glitches during Mr Gate's pre-show speech, he announced several new partnerships - mainly for the US market. He unveiled new ways of letting people take TV shows recorded on personal video recorders and watch them back on portable devices. He disappointed some, however, by failing to announce any details of the next generation of the Xbox games console. Another disappointment was the lack of exposure Sony's new portable games device, the PSP, had at the show. Sony said the much-anticipated gadget would most likely start shipping in March for the US and Europe. It went on sale in Japan before Christmas. There were only two PSPs embedded in glass cabinets at the show though and no representatives to discuss further details. A Sony representative told the BBC News website this was because Sony did not consider it to be part of their "consumer technology" offering.
Elsewhere at the show, there was a plethora of colour and plasma screens, including Samsung's 102-inch (2.6 metre) plasma - the largest in the world. Industry experts were also excited about high-definition technologies coming to the fore in 2005, with new formats for DVDs coming out which will hold six times as much data as conventional DVDs. With so many devices on the move there were a lot of products on show offering external storage, like Seagate's 5GB pocket sized external hard drive, which won an innovation for engineering and design prize. More than 120,000 trade professionals attended CES in Las Vegas, which officially ran from 6 to 9 January. | tech |
Swap offer for pirated Windows XP
Computer giant Microsoft has launched a pilot scheme to replace counterfeit versions of Windows XP with legal ones.
The first-time initiative is restricted to the UK and to users with pre-installed copies of the operating system in PCs bought before November. Until December Microsoft said software can be sent to it for analysis if there are doubts about its legitimacy. The company aims to detect illegal traders and turn users of fake versions of Windows into legitimate ones.
The Windows XP Counterfeit Project will mean that software that is found to be counterfeit will be replaced for free, subject to certain conditions, until the end of the year. It is the first time Microsoft has launched a counterfeit product replacement scheme in the world, the company told the BBC News website. In June, the software giant said that the major security update to Windows XP, Service Pack 2, would not work with the most widely pirated versions of its operating system. The upgrade closed security loopholes in XP and added features that made it easier to keep machines safe from viruses and other types of malicious computer code.
The US company invited anyone who had suspicions about their version of Windows XP to submit it for testing as soon as possible. The procedure consists of a series of computer checks, collating documents, and filling out a witness statement. "This is a great opportunity for users to confirm the authenticity of Windows XP software whilst helping gather vital information about illegal traders", said Alex Hilton, licence compliance manager at Microsoft. The scheme has also been welcomed by the technology and commerce industry. "It is important that users ensure that they are legally licensed to avoid the risks of purchasing and using counterfeit products", said David Frost, director general of the British Chambers of Commerce. The plan would enable Microsoft to gather intelligence about illegal traders in a prompt way, which would allow it to take action against software pirates. Microsoft said it would evaluate the results of the UK programme before setting up similar schemes in other countries. | tech |
Ban hits Half-Life 2 pirates hard
About 20,000 people have been banned from playing the Half-Life 2 game.
Game maker Valve shut down the online accounts of the players because it had evidence that their copy of the game had been obtained illegally. Copies of Half-Life 2 had been circulating on file-sharing systems soon after it was officially released. Experts said the success of the Half-Life 2 anti-piracy system might tempt other game makers into creating their own version.
Half-Life 2 was officially released on 16 November but before gamers could get to grips with the long-awaited title they were forced to authenticate their copy of the game online. Authentication involved setting up an account with Valve's gaming community system called Steam and letting that check which copy of the game was being run.
In a statement detailing the banning of the accounts Valve said this system helped identify who had got hold of pirated copies. "The method used was extremely easy for Valve to trace and confirm, and so there is no question that the accounts disabled were used to try and illegally obtain Half-Life 2," read the statement. Valve spokesman Doug Lombardi said that the company had not yet released sales figures for the game and would not say what proportion of all Steam players the 20,000 represented. One effect of Steam's popularity has been to limit the copies of the game sold in shops and artificially depress the game's ranking in the top ten. Even so the title debuted at No 3 in the UK charts. Valve also said that a small number of accounts were closed because people were using stolen credit cards to buy copies of the game or were using stolen Steam accounts. Some of those who have been banned by the move protested their innocence in the online forums on the main Steam site and said they were being punished for what other people did with their account.
Some contributors to the forums wondered if the action might force more piracy as people tried to get hold of successive copies of the game to keep ahead of Valve's anti-piracy actions.
In its statement Valve also said that rumours that it distributed fake Half-Life 2 keys, copies of the game or instructions on how to hack the game, just to catch pirates and cheats were false. The company said: "The hack came from the 'community' as do they all." It added that most of those banned simply tried to use copies of Half-Life 2 circulating on file-swapping systems such as Bit Torrent rather than use hacks to get around the need for CD keys. Rob Fahey, editor of online news site gamesindustry.biz, said the mass banning showed off the power of the Steam system. Before now, he said, it has been hard for game makers to do anything about piracy once the game was being played. "But with this, Valve is taking really effective steps against people using illegitimate copies of Half-Life 2," he said. If Steam proves effective at cutting the piracy of games to a minimum, said Mr Fahey, other game makers may be tempted to set up copycat systems. "It's not hard to see a point in the near future when every publisher wants you to run an application on your system purely to allow you to play their games," he said. This could mean that computers get cluttered with poorly written Steam-type systems that are used to batter people with adverts. Unless game firms were careful, he said, they could face a backlash from consumers who soon get tired of maintaining different accounts for every game they play. | tech |
New browser wins over net surfers
The proportion of surfers using Microsoft's Internet Explorer (IE) has dropped to below 90%, say web analysts.
Net traffic monitor, OneStat.com, has reported that the open-source browser Firefox 1.0, released on 9 November, seems to be drawing users away from IE. While IE's market share has dropped 5% since May to 88.9%, Mozilla browsers - including Firefox - have grown by 5%. Firefox is made by the Mozilla Foundation which was set up by former browser maker Netscape in 1998. Although there have been other preview versions of Firefox, version 1.0 was the first complete official program. "It seems that people are switching from Microsoft's Internet Explorer to Mozilla's new Firefox browser," said Niels Brinkman, co-founder of Amsterdam-based OneStat.com.
Mozilla browsers - including Firefox 1.0 - now have 7.4% of the market share, the figures suggest. Mozilla said that more than five million have downloaded the free software since its official release. Supporters of the open-source software in the US managed to raise $250,000 (£133,000) to advertise the release of Firefox 1.0 in The New York Times, and support the Mozilla Foundation. There was a flurry of downloads on its first day of release.
The figures echo similar research from net analyst WebSideStory which suggested that IE had 92.9% of users in October compared to 95.5% in June. Microsoft IE has dominated the browser market for some time after taking the crown from Netscape, and its share of users has always stayed at around the 95% mark. Firefox is attractive to many because it is open-source. That means people are free to adapt the software's core code to create other innovative features, like add-ons or extensions to the program. Fewer security holes have also been discovered so far in Firefox than in IE. Paul Randle, Microsoft Windows Client product manager, responded to the figures: "We certainly respect that some customers will choose alternative browsers and that choosing a browser is about more than a handful of features. "Microsoft continues to make significant investments in IE, including Service Pack 2 with advanced security technologies, and continues to encourage a vibrant ecosystem of third party add-ons for Internet Explorer." Firefox wants to capture 10% of the market by the end of 2005. Other browser software, like Opera and Apple's Safari, are also challenging Microsoft's grip on the browser market. Opera is set to release its version 7.60 by the end of the year. OneStat.com compiled the statistical measurements from two million net users in 100 countries. | tech |
Smartphones suffer Skulls attack
Owners of some Nokia smartphones are being warned to watch out for malicious wallpaper.
Those downloading the software could find all the icons on their 7610 phone swapped for images of skulls. When installed the malicious program also locks many of the 7610's functions making it hard to use and harder to repair. The program is only the latest in a series of viruses produced to attack mobile phones.
The file, nicknamed Skulls, is thought to have surfaced on shareware sites where people can pick up free add-ons, such as wallpaper, games and ringtones, for their phones Symbian said that it was not sure if the damage Skulls does was intentional or simply a result of bad programming. Soon after being discovered the file is thought to have been removed from the sites that were unwittingly harbouring it. The program is masquerading as software that creates new background images and themes for the main screen of the 7610 phone. The Skulls program is labelled as a file called: 7610.extended.theme.manager.zip.
Once installed the program replaces all the icons on the main page with skulls and replaces all the working applications, such as contacts, calendar, notebook etc with non-working versions so the phone becomes almost useless. The only thing the phone can do is make and take calls. A statement by Symbian played down the significance of the malicious program and said few people would fall victim to it as users have to go through several steps to install it, one of which includes ignoring a security warning. Symbian said that the spread of the Skulls program was likely to be limited as the program cannot travel from one phone to another by itself. Despite this Finnish anti-virus lab F-Secure said it had sporadic reports of 7610 owners being caught out by it. The firm has produced guidance for users caught out to help them remove the program and get their phone working again. The Skulls program is thought to have been written by a malicious hacker using the alias Tee-222. Symbian phones produced by Sony Ericsson, Motorola, BenQ, Arima and Fujitsu are unaffected by the Skulls program. | tech |
Musical future for phones
Analyst Bill Thompson has seen the future and it is in his son's hands.
I bought my son Max a 3G phone, partly because they are so cheap and he needed a phone, and partly because I am supposed to know about the latest technology and thought I should see how they work in real life. After using it for a while I am not at all tempted to get rid of my SonyEricsson P800 smart phone. That has a relatively large screen, even if it does only have slower GPRS access to the network. I can read my e-mail, surf the web using a proper browser and write stuff using the stylus on its touch screen. Last week someone e-mailed me a document that had been compressed into a ZIP file, and I was pleasantly surprised to discover that my phone even knew how to decompress it for me. By contrast the confusing menus, complicated keyboard and truly irritating user interface of Max's 3G phone simply get in the way, and I did not see much value in the paid-for services, especially the limited web access. The videos of entertainment news, horoscopes and the latest celebrity gossip did not appeal, and I did not see how the small screen could be useful for any sort of image, never mind micro-TV.
But then Max started playing, and I realised I was missing the point entirely.
It is certainly not a great overall experience, but that is largely due to the poor menu system and the phone layout: the video content itself is compelling. The quality was at least as good as the video streaming from the BBC website, and the image is about the same size. Max was completely captivated, and I was intrigued to discover that I had nearly missed the next stage of the network revolution. It is easy to be dismissive of small screens, and indeed anyone of my generation, with failing eyesight and the view that 'there's never anything worth watching on TV', is hardly going to embrace these phones. But just as the World Wide Web was the "killer application" that drove internet adoption, music videos are going to drive 3G adoption. With Vodafone now pushing its own 3G service, and 3 already established in the UK, video on the phone is clearly going to become a must-have for kids sitting on the school bus, adults waiting outside clubs and anyone who has time to kill and a group of friends to impress.
This will please the network operators, who are looking for some revenue from their expensively acquired 3G licences. But it goes deeper than that: playing music videos on a phone marks the beginning of a move away from the 'download and play' model we have all accepted for our iPods and MP3 players. After all, why should I want to carry 60GB of music and pictures around with me in my pocket when I can simply listen to anything I want, whenever I want, streamed to my phone? Oh - and of course you can always use the phone to make voice calls and send texts, something which ensures that it is always in someone's pocket or handbag, available for other uses too. I have never really approved of using the Internet Protocol (IP), to do either audio or video streaming, and I think that technically it is a disaster to make phone calls over the net using "voice over IP".
But I have to acknowledge that the net, at least here in the developed Western countries, is fast and reliable enough to do both.
I stream radio to my computer while I work, and enjoy hearing the bizarre stations from around the world that I can find online but nowhere else. I am even playing with internet telephony, despite my reservations, and I appear on Go Digital on the World Service, streamed over the web each week. But 3G networks have been designed to do this sort of streaming, both for voice and video, which gives them an edge over net-based IP services. The 3G services aren't quite there yet, and there is a lot to be sorted out when it comes to web access and data charges. Vodafone will let you access its services on Vodafone Live! as part of your subscription cost but it makes you pay by the megabyte to download from other sites - this one, for example. This will not matter to business users, but will distort the consumer market and keep people within the phone company's collection of partner sites, something that should perhaps be worrying telecoms regulator Ofcom. But we should not see these new phones simply as cut-down network terminals. If I want fast access to my e-mail I can get a 3G card for my laptop or hook up to a wireless network. The phone is a lot more, and it is as a combination of mini-TV, personal communications device and music/video player that it really works. There is certainly room in the technology ecosystem for many different sorts of devices, accessing a wide range of services over different networks. 3G phones and iPods can co-exist, at least for a while, but if I had to bet on the long term I would go for content on demand over carrying gigabytes in my pocket. Or perhaps some enterprising manufacturer will offer me both. An MP3G player, anyone?
Bill Thompson is a regular commentator on the BBC World Service programme Go Digital. | tech |
Multi-purpose TV aids India
Two-thirds of the world's population, 4 billion people, live on $2,000 a year or less.
You might think that the last thing on their minds would be getting a television set or a computer. But that's not the case. Many people in the developing world give up one of their daily meals so they can afford to buy a TV. And now, an Indian-born computer engineer thinks he's come up with a way to give them cheap access to the internet. Carnegie Mellon Professor Raj Reddy has spent the bulk of his professional career trying to find ways to make technology accessible to poor people. The first step is to figure out why poor people would want a personal computer and Professor Reddy thinks he has a pretty good idea of why they might. "I come from a village," says Prof Reddy, "I know what the population is like, many of them are illiterate, and many of them have other concerns." "There, nobody will use it for the conventional uses of a PC, word processing and Powerpoint," he said. "So it's clear to me that if people wanted to use PCs in a village - it has to usable by illiterate people and it must be primarily for entertainment, education, telemedicine, and access to expert advice."
Prof Reddy also thinks that tying it into some kind of aid package was the wrong approach. After all, he asked -- what aid group could possibly give expensive computers to 250 million less fortunate Indians, let alone the billions of poor people around the world?
Instead, Prof Reddy decided to think of those 250 million Indians as a potential market. The problem then becomes one of making the product compelling enough. "It must be so compelling that you would give up your third meal in order to have this," Prof Reddy says. "People do this today with television sets. If you go to India, and many other countries, they will first go get a television set before they worry about one more meal. Why? Because personalized entertainment has become very important." This hatched a completely new idea. He calls it a PCtvt - A personal computer, television and telephone all in one that runs on a normal desktop machine. Literate users can surf through the applications with a keyboard and mouse but illiterate users can use what looks like a television remote control.
On the screen, pictures - not words - designate applications like TV, voice mail, and video e-mail. This dependence on graphics, video and audio means that a computer for an illiterate person needs 100 times more power and more memory than one for a PhD. Prassana Rambathla, one of Prof Reddy's graduate students, says that "when you're talking illiterate you're talking audio and video, and that demands exponentially high bandwidth.' "It can't choke at any point in time, and it has to withstand anything no matter what you're pressing." "The major part is making it foolproof, very tough, so that it never breaks," he says. The Carnegie Mellon team says this project is only possible because PCs are now so much cheaper and have built-in audio and video hardware and software. Limited trials of the PCtvt are due to start this month in the Indian state of Andhra Pradesh.
Although Andhra Pradesh has a fairly good infrastructure but work has to be done to ensure reliable connections to the net. Prof Reddy has teamed up with Eric Brewer at the University of California at Berkeley. The answer, says Prof Brewer, is wi-fi.
"We're looking at the thing you'll see in Starbuck's or many other hotspots," he says. "We're doing a lot of work on long-distance wireless and how to make the network work better in the presence of intermittency, when the power goes up and down, and the links go up and down, and the computers you're connected to just get turned off for no reason." Prof Reddy says he hopes to lease the PCtvts for about $10 a month, and thinks Indians will rent the units for the television and DVD capabilities. Reddy says he can then introduce the PCtvt's other technologies - such as video mail. For example, a farmer could use the PCtvt's webcam to send a picture of a harmful insect to a local official who could send back a proposed course of action to the farmer. Prof Reddy thinks this kind of communication is the real pay-off. "The underlying problem," he says, "is how you can increase their wealth and reduce their poverty and reduce their illiteracy, and improve their health care.' "And what I'm postulating is that this is the technology that will enable them. If I didn't have it, it would be an uphill battle. Even with the technology it's an uphill battle. But I have a tool. There is hope. I can reach them in ways that have not been possible before."
Clark Boyd is technology correspondent for The World, a BBC World Service and WGBH-Boston co-production | tech |
Computer grid to help the world
Your computer can now help solve the world's most difficult health and social problems.
Launched this week, the World Community Grid will use idle computer time to test solutions to these problems. The donated processor cycles will help the WCG create virtual supercomputers via the net. The idea follows the success of other similar projects that have used the untapped processing power of millions of desktop PCs. One of the most successful collaboration projects was Seti@home, run by the Search for Extra Terrestrial Life project, which sorted through radio signals looking for signs of alien communication.
Anyone can volunteer to donate the spare time of their computers by downloading a special screensaver from the WGC website. Once installed, the virtual terminal gets a chunk of the computational task to process, and reports back after completing that task. The first WCG problem being tackled will be the Human Proteome Folding Project, which hopes to identify the ways that the proteins in our body fold.
The subjects of study are being selected by an international advisory board of experts specializing in health sciences, and technology. The body will evaluate proposals from leading research, public and not-for-profit organizations, and is expected to oversee up to six projects a year. Organisations also represented on the board include the United Nations Development Programme and the World Health Organisation.
"The World Community Grid will enable researchers around the globe to gather and analyze unprecedented quantities of data to help address important global issues," said Elain Gallin, program director for medical research at the Doris Duke Charitable Foundation. "[It] will inspire us to look beyond the technological limitations that have historically restricted us from addressing some of our most intractable problems", she added. IBM has donated the hardware, software, technical services and expertise to build the basic infrastructure for the grid. The computer company, working with United Devices, previously developed the Smallpox Research Grid, which linked together more than two million volunteers from 226 countries to speed the analysis of some 35 million drug molecules in the search for a treatment for Smallpox. | tech |
How to make a gigapixel picture
The largest digital panoramic photo in the world has been created by researchers in the Netherlands.
The finished image is 2.5 billion pixels in size - making it about 500 times the resolution of images produced by good consumer digital cameras. The huge image of Delft was created by stitching together 600 single snaps of the Dutch city taken at a fixed spot. If printed out in standard 300 dots per inch resolution, the picture would be 2.5m high and 6m long.
The researchers have put the image on a website which lets viewers explore the wealth of detail that it captures. Tools on the page let viewers zoom in on the city and its surroundings in great detail. The website is already proving popular and currently has more than 200,000 visitors every day.
The image was created by imaging experts from the Dutch research and technology laboratory TNO which created the 2.5 gigapixel photo as a summer time challenge.
The goal of the project was to be one of the first groups to make gigapixel images. The first image of such a size was manually constructed by US photographer Max Lyons in November 2003. That image portrayed Bryce Canyon National Park, in Utah, and was made up of 196 separate photographs. The panorama of Delft is a little staid in contrast to the dramatic rockscape captured in Mr Lyons' image. "He did it all by hand, which was an enormous effort, and we got the idea that if you use automatic techniques, it would be feasible to build a larger image," said Jurgen den Hartog, one of the TNO researchers behind the project. "We were not competing with Mr Lyons, but it started as a lunchtime bet."
The Dutch team used already available technologies, although it had to upgrade them to be able to handle the high-resolution image.
"We had to rewrite almost all the tools," Me den Hartog told the BBC News website. "All standard Windows viewers available would not be able to load such a large image, so we had to develop one ourselves." The 600 component pictures were taken on July 2004 by a computer-controlled camera with a 400 mm lens. Each image was made to slightly overlap so they could be accurately arranged into a composite. The stitching process was also done automatically using five powerful PCs over three days. Following the success of this project, and with promises of help from others, the TNO team is considering creating a full 360-degree panoramic view of another Dutch city, with even higher resolution. | tech |
Remote control rifle range debuts
Soon you could go hunting via the net.
A Texas company is considering letting web users use a remote-controlled rifle to shoot down deer, antelope and wild pigs. For a small fee users will take control of a camera and rifle that they can use to spot and shoot the game animals as they roam around a 133-hectare Texas ranch. The Live-Shot website behind the scheme already lets people practise shooting at targets via the internet.
John Underwood, the man behind the Live-Shot website, said the idea for the remote-control hunting came to him a year ago when he was watching deer via a webcam on another net site. "We were looking at a beautiful white-tail buck and my friend said 'If you just had a gun for that'. A little light bulb went off in my head," Mr Underwood told the Reuters news agency. A year's work and $10,000 has resulted in a remote-controlled rig on which sits a camera and .22 calibre rifle. Mr Underwood is planning to put one of these rigs in a concealed location in a small reserve on his Texas ranch and let people shoot at a variety of game animals. Also needed is a fast net connection so remote hunters can quickly track and aim at passing game animals with the camera and rifle rig. Each remote hunting session will cost $150 with additional fees for meat processing and taxidermy work. Species that can be shot will include barbary, Corsican and mouflon sheep, blackbuck antelope and wild pigs. Already the Live-Shot site lets people shoot 10 rounds at paper and silhouette targets for $5.95 for each 20-minute shooting session. For further fees, users can get the target they shot and a DVD recording of their session. Handlers oversee each shooting session and can stop the gun being fired if it is being aimed off-range or at something it should not be. Mr Underwood said that internet hunting could be popular with disabled hunters unable to get out in the woods or distant hunters who cannot afford a trip to Texas. In a statement the RSPCA said it had "grave concerns" about people being allowed to go online and remotely control a rifle. "We assume it would be extremely difficult to accurately control a gun in this way and therefore it would be difficult to ensure a 'clean kill', something the RSPCA accepts is the intention of those shooting for sport," it said. "Animals hit but not killed would without doubt be caused to suffer unnecessarily," said the statement. Mike Berger, wildlife director of the Texas Parks and Wildlife Department, said current hunting statutes did not cover net or remote hunting. He said state laws on hunting only covered "regulated animals" such as native deer and bird species. As such there was nothing to stop Mr Underwood letting people hunt "unregulated" imported animals and wild pigs. Mr Underwood also lets people come in person to the ranch to hunt and shoot game animals. | tech |
Gangsters dominate gaming chart
Video games on consoles and computers proved more popular than ever in 2004.
Gamers spent more than £1.34bn in 2004, almost 7% more than they did in 2003 according to figures released by the UK gaming industry's trade body. Sales records were smashed by the top title of the year GTA: San Andreas - in which players got the job of turning central character CJ into a crime boss. The game sold more than 1 million copies in the first nine days that it was on sale. This feat made it the fastest selling video game of all time in the UK. Although only released in November the sprawling story of guns, gangsters game beat off strong competition and by year end had sold more than 1.75 million copies. There were also records set for the number of games that achieved double-platinum status by selling more than 600,000 copies. Five titles, including Sony EyeToy Play and EA's Need for Speed: Underground 2, managed this feat according to figures compiled by Chart-Track for the Entertainment and Leisure Software Publishers Association (Elspa). Electronic Arts, the world's biggest games publisher, had 9 games in the top 20.
2004 was a "stellar year" said Roger Bennett, director general of Elspa. "In a year with no new generation consoles being released, the market continued to be buoyant as the industry matured and the increasingly diverse range of games reached new audiences and broadened its player base - across ages and gender," he said. Part of the success of games in 2004 could be due to the fact that so many of them are sequels. 16 out of the top 20 titles were all follow-ups to established franchises or direct sequels to previously popular games. Halo, The Sims, Driver, Need for Speed, Fifa football, Burnout were just a few that proved as popular as the original titles. Despite this fondness for older games, Doom 3 did not make it to the top 20. Movie tie-ins also proved their worth in 2004. Games linked to Shrek, The Incredibles, Spider-Man, Harry Potter and Lord of the Rings were all in the top 20. Elspa noted that sales of Xbox games rose 37.9% during the year. However, Sony's PlayStation 2 was the top seller with 47% of the £1.34bn spent on games in 2004 used to buy titles for that console. Despite winning awards and rave reviews Half-Life 2 did not appear in the list. This was because it was only released on PC and, compared to console titles, sold in relatively small numbers. Also the novel distribution system adopted by developer Valve meant that many players downloaded the title rather than travel to the shops to buy a copy. Valve has yet to release figures which show how many copies of the game were sold in this way. | tech |
British Library gets wireless net
Visitors to the British Library will be able to get wireless internet access alongside the extensive information available in its famous reading rooms.
Broadband wireless connectivity will be made available in the eleven reading rooms, the auditorium, café, restaurant, and outdoor Piazza area. A study revealed that 86% of visitors to the Library carried laptops. The technology has been on trial since May and usage levels make the Library London's most active public hotspot.
Previously many were leaving the building to go to a nearby internet café to access their e-mail, the study found. "At the British Library we are continually exploring ways in which technology can help us to improve services to our users," said Lynne Brindley, chief executive of the British Library. "Surveys we conducted recently confirmed that, alongside the materials they consult here, our users want to be able to access the internet when they are at the Library for research or to communicate with colleagues," she said. The service will be priced at £4.50 for an hour's session or £35 for a monthly pass. The study, conducted by consultancy Building Zones, found that 16% of visitors came to the Library to sit down and use it as a business centre. This could be because of its proximity to busy mainline stations such as Kings Cross and Euston. The study also found that people were spending an average of six hours in the building, making it an ideal wireless hotspot. Since May the service has registered 1,200 sessions per week, making it London's most active public hotspot. The majority of visitors wanted to be able to access their e-mail as well as the British Library catalogue. The service has been rolled out in partnership with wireless provider The Cloud and Hewlett Packard.
It will operate independently from the Library's existing network. The British Library receives around 3,000 visitors each day and serves around 500,000 readers each year. People come to view resources which include the world's largest collection of patents and the UK's most extensive collection of science, technology and medical information. The Library receives between three and four million requests from remote users around the world each year. | tech |
UK broadband gets speed injection
Broadband's rapid rise continues apace as speeds gear up a notch.
An eight megabit service has been launched by internet service provider UK Online. It is 16 times faster than the average broadband package on the market and will pave the way for services such as video-on-demand and broadband TV. The service is possible due to a new regime which allows other operators to use BT's exchanges and will initially only be available in towns.
It represents a "big leap forward" for broadband, said Chris Stening, UK Online general manager.
The service comes with a hefty £39.99 monthly price tag but will mean users can download MP3s in seconds and offers TV-quality video streaming. The service includes WiFi as standard, meaning users can connect multiple PCs, laptops and game consoles from any room in the house. Not everybody will be able to take advantage of the service, as it will be restricted to metropolitan areas. The service will initially be available to users within 2km radius of 230 telephone exchanges in areas such as London, Birmingham, Glasgow and Cambridge. That represents about 4.4 million households. The service is possible due to a decision to loosen BT's strangle-hold on telephone exchanges.
The process, known as local loop unbundling, was put in motion by the now defunct telecoms watchdog Oftel but has only proved popular in recent months due to falling costs. UK Online is looking at the possibility of bundling services such as cheap net telephone calls, video-on-demand and TV by 2005 if the service proves popular. "The service is twice as fast as any other service on offer in the UK and 16 times faster than most broadband services," said Mr Stening. "It takes a big leap for broadband and we are very excited about it," he said. Countries such as South Korea and France have found the advantage of upping the speeds of broadband. In South Korea, video-on-demand over the net is cheaper than renting a DVD and online gaming is huge. Mr Stening believes the service will appeal to people in multi-occupancy buildings as well as easing family arguments. "A typical family with two adults and two children is currently sharing a 512 kilobit service. This will basically give them 2 megabits each," he said. | tech |
Row brewing over peer-to-peer ads
Music download networks are proving popular not just with an audience of youngsters keen to take advantage of free music but with advertisers equally keen to reach out to a captive audience.
The debate over the legitimacy of file-sharing networks rages on as the music industry continues its threats to close the services down for good. Meanwhile the millions of downloaders are proving both an advertiser's dream come true and a branding nightmare. Paul Myers, chief executive of Wippit - a peer to peer service which provides paid-for music downloads - believes it is time advertisers stopped providing 'oxygen' for companies that support illegal downloading. "You may be surprised to know that current advertisers on the most popular peer to peer service eDonkey who now steadfastly support copyright theft with real cash money include Nat West, Vodafone, O2, First Direct, NTL, and Renault," he said in an open letter to the British Phonographic Industry last month.
He urged people to follow his lead and 'dump' brands associated with companies such as eDonkey. The BPI is equally quick to condemn established brands becoming bedfellows with peer to peer networks. 'Networks like eDonkey, Kazaa and Grokster facilitate illegal filesharing. The BPI strongly believes that any reputable company should look carefully at the support they are giving these networks through their advertising revenue," it said in a statement. "Illegal file-sharers steal millions of pounds worth of music through these services. We are sure that the companies advertising on them would not put up with theft on such a scale from their own businesses," it said. But the issue is often more complicated for advertisers, said Mark Mulligan, a music analyst with Jupiter Research. "This has been a problem for a long time, ever since the days of Napster," he told the BBC News website.
The reality is that the millions of downloaders represent a very attractive audience. "Advertisers probably pay a lot less for putting ads here than on more respected sites and they are reaching the perfect target audience," he said. "If you put the legality issues aside, not to advertise here would mean missing out on a valuable audience," he added. Meanwhile companies contacted by the BBC News website insist that they were not directly aware of where their ads have been appearing. OneTel adverts were spotted on eDonkey this week and its response was typical. "We have investigated this matter and believe that one of our affiliate partners has placed this advert without our knowledge. It is not our policy to advertise through peer-to-peer networks," read a statement from the discount phone firm. It has requested the advert be removed immediately, said a spokeswoman. Similarly telecommunications firm NTL blames its media buying agency which places adverts with third party networks featuring thousands of sites. Since the matter was brought to its attention last month, the agency has strict instructions to make sure ads do not appear on such sites, a spokesman told the BBC News website.
However Mr Mulligan was not entirely convinced by these explanations. While smaller brands might not necessarily be aware of where the money they allocate to online advertising actually ends, this is no excuse for well-known brands, he said. "I would be surprised if these brands didn't have the know-how to prevent this happening," he said. At the moment eDonkey is enjoying the benefits of having some very well-known faces advert on its network. "Many big brands have leveraged the opportunity, including perhaps two of the biggest brands in the world - Senator John Kerry and President George W. Bush," said chief executive Sam Yagan. There are some distinct advantages of advertising on such a network, he thinks. "Peer-to-peer clients offer big brands a unique opportunity to engage with their customers where they're most comfortable: at their desks interacting with their favourite digital media," he said. | tech |
How to smash a home computer
An executive who froze his broken hard disk thinking it would be fixed has topped a list of the weirdest computer mishaps.
Although computer malfunctions remain the most common cause of file loss, data recovery experts say human behaviour still is to blame in many cases. They say that no matter how effective technology is at rescuing files, users should take more time to back-up and protect important files. The list of the top 10 global data disasters was compiled by recovery company Ontrack.
Careless - and preventable - mistakes that result in data loss range from reckless file maintenance practices to episodes of pure rage towards a computer. This last category includes the case of a man who became so mad with his malfunctioning laptop that he threw it in the lavatory and flushed a couple of times. "Data can disappear as a result of natural disaster, system fault or computer virus, but human error, including 'computer rage', seems to be a growing problem," said Adrian Palmer, managing director of Ontrack Data Recovery.
"Nevertheless, victims soon calm down when they realise the damage they've done and come to us with pleas for help to retrieve their valuable information." A far more common situation is when a computer virus strikes and leads to precious files being corrupted or deleted entirely. Mr Palmer recalled the case of a couple who had hundreds of pictures of their baby's first three months on their computer, but managed to reformat the hard drive and erase all the precious memories. "Data can be recovered from computers, servers and even memory cards used in digital devices in most cases," said Mr Palmer. "However, individuals and companies can avoid the hassle and stress this can cause by backing up data on a regular basis." | tech |
Mobile picture power in your pocket
How many times have you wanted to have a camera to hand to catch an unexpected event that would make headlines?
With a modern mobile phone that has a camera built in, you no longer need to curse, you can capture the action as it happens. Already on-the-spot snappers are helping newspapers add immediacy to their breaking news stories headlines, where professional photographers only arrive in time for the aftermath. Celebrities might not welcome such a change because they may never be free of a new breed of mobile phone paparazzi making their lives a bit more difficult. Already one tabloid newspaper in LA is issuing photographers with camera phones to help them catch celebrities at play. It could be the start of a trend that only increases as higher resolution phone cameras become more widespread; as video phones catch on and millions of people start carrying the gadgets around.
Only last week, the world media highlighted the killing of the Dutch film maker Theo van Gogh, notorious after making a controversial film about Islamic culture.
One day later De Telegraaf, a daily Amsterdam newspaper, became news on its own when it published a picture taken with a mobile phone of Mr van Gogh's body moments after he was killed. "This picture was the story", said De Telegraaf's image editor, Peter Schoonen. Other accounts of such picture phone users witnessing news events, include:
- A flight from Switzerland to the Dominican Republic which turned around after someone took a picture of a piece of metal falling from the plane as it took off from Zurich (reported by the Swiss daily Le Matin).
- Two crooks who robbed a bank in Denmark were snapped before they carried out the crime waiting for the doors of the building to be opened (reported by the Danish regional paper Aarhus Stiftstidende).
But this is not just about traditional media lending immediacy to their stories with content from ordinary people, it is also about first-hand journalism in the form of online diaries or weblogs.
It has been called "open source news" or even "moblog journalism" and it has flourished in the recent US election campaign. "Not many people walk around with their cameras, but they always have their mobile phones with them. If something happens, suddenly all these mobiles sort of appear from nowhere, and start taking pictures," said digital artist Henry Reichhold. He himself uses mobile phone pictures to create huge panoramic images of events and places. "You see it in bars, you see it everywhere. It's a massive thing," Mr Reichhold told the BBC News website.
With some picture agencies already paying for exclusive phone pictures, especially of celebrities, there are also fears about the possible downside of this phenomenon.
It could become a nuisance for public figures as higher resolution picture phones hit the market, with five megapixel models already being launched in Asia. Already on US photojournal site, Buzznet, there is a public album full of snaps of celebrities, many of which were taken with camera phones. Tabloid newspapers in the UK and many monthly magazines invite readers to send in images of famous people they have seen and snapped. But there are other positive uses of picture mobile phones that may balance these uses. For instance, in Alabama, in the US, camera phones will be used to take snaps at crime scenes involving children, and help the authorities to arrest and prosecute paedophiles. And in China's capital Beijing, courts have adopted mobile phone photos as formal evidence. For Henry Reichhold, this is progress: "That's the whole thing about the immediacy of the thing. I can see that happening a lot more." | tech |
Man auctions ad space on forehead
A 20-year-old US man is selling advertising space on his forehead to the highest bidder on website eBay.
Andrew Fisher, from Omaha, Nebraska, said he would have a non-permanent logo or brand name tattooed on his head for 30 days. "The way I see it I'm selling something I already own; after 30 days I get it back," he told the BBC Today programme. Mr Fisher has received 39 bids so far, with the largest bid currently at more than $322 (£171). "The winner will be able to send me a tattoo or have me go to a tattoo parlour and get a temporary ink tattoo on my forehead and this will be something they choose, a company name or domain name, perhaps their logo," he told the Radio 4 programme.
On the online auction, Mr Fisher describes himself as an "average American Joe, give or take". His sales pitch adds: "Take advantage of this radical advertising campaign and become a part of history." Mr Fisher said that while he would accept any brand name or logo, "I wouldn't go around with a swastika or anything racial". He added: "I wouldn't go around with 666, the mark of the beast. "Other than that I wouldn't promote anything socially unacceptable such as adult websites or stores." He said he would use the money to pay college - he is planning to study graphic design. The entrepreneur said his mother was initially surprised by his decision but following all the media attention she felt he was "thinking outside the box". | tech |
Toxic web links help virus spread
Virus writers have begun using the power of the web to spread their malicious wares.
A Windows virus called Bofra is turning infected machines into distributors of its malicious code. Those clicking on the poisoned links in e-mail messages sent out by infected machines may fall victim to the virus. The trick is being used to prevent the progam being caught by anti-virus software that combs through code contained in e-mail attachments.
The virus that uses this trick is called Bofra and the first member of the family of worms appeared on 10 November. They exploit a Windows vulnerability that was discovered only a few days earlier.
Like many other recent viruses, Bofra plunders the address book in Microsoft Outlook for e-mail addresses and scours other files on an infected machine for fresh target addresses. The virus uses its own mail sending software to despatch e-mail messages to potential victims but, unlike many other recent viruses, does not itself travel via mail. Instead the body of the mail messages sent out contain fake weblinks that, when clicked on, connect back to the machine that distributed that e-mail. Essentially, Bofra turns infected machines into small web servers that happily dole out copies of the virus. The messages try to trick people into clicking on the links by promising pornographic videos and images or by posing as payment confirmation for a Paypal transaction.
Copies of the messages seen by the BBC News website had bright yellow and green backgrounds. Those clicking on the links will inadvertently download the Bofra virus which will then start searching for new addresses to send itself to. Filtering firm Clearswift said this tactic of creating thousands of mini web servers was designed to help the virus spread quickly and avoid attempts to shut it down. In the past other malicious programs have relied on a single web server that downloads viral code to target machines. Shutting down this central server usually stops the virus spreading.
Clearswift said that fact that no viral code travels in the e-mail messages sent out by machines infected by Bofra could hamper effects to limit its spread. Finnish anti-virus firm F-Secure said that, so far, it had not seen many copies of the Bofra virus and its variants in circulation.
Tim Warner, spokesman for anti-virus firm Finjan, said: "You have people getting very creative now to deliver the virus and get it propagating." Mr Warner said organisations needed to prepare deep defences to keep out the modern form of malicious mobile code. "Most firms have secured their e-mail gateway," said Mr Warner, "but the irony is that most of them let malicious content through the web gateways." He said behavioural systems that monitor what users do can help to spot when viruses have penetrated organisations and have started hunting for other victims. The Bofra family of viruses, which were originally thought to be offshoots of the MyDoom bug, can infect machines running Windows 2000, 95, 98, Me, NT, XP and Server 2003. Users running Windows XP that have applied the SP2 update are not vulnerable to the loophole that Bofra exploits. | tech |
Millions to miss out on the net
By 2025, 40% of the UK's population will still be without internet access at home, says a study.
Around 23 million Britons will miss out on a wide range of essential services such as education and medical information, predicts the report by telecoms giant BT. It compares to 27 million, or 50%, of the UK, who are not currently online. The idea that the digital divide will evaporate with time is "wishful thinking", the report concludes.
The study calls on the government and telecoms industry to come up with new ways to lure those that have been bypassed by the digital revolution. Although the percentage of Britons without home access will have fallen slightly, those that remain digital refuseniks will miss out on more, the report suggests. As more and more everyday tasks move online and offline services become less comprehensive, the divide will become more obvious and more burdensome for those that have not got net access, it predicts.
The gap between "have-nets" and "have-nots" has been much talked about, but predictions about how such a divide will affect future generations has been less discussed. BT set out to predict future patterns based on current information and taking account of the way technology is changing. Optimists who predict that convergence and the emergence of more user-friendly technology will bridge the digital divide could be way off mark, the report suggests. "Internet access on other devices tends to be something taken up by those who already have it," said Adrian Hosford, director of corporate responsibility at BT. Costs of internet access have fallen dramatically and coverage in remote areas have vastly improved over the last year but the real barrier remains psychological. "There is a hard rump of have-nots who are not engaging with the net. They don't have the motivation or skills or perceive the benefits," said Mr Hosford.
As now, the most disadvantaged groups are likely to remain among low income families, the older generation and the disabled.
Those on low incomes will account for a quarter of the digital have-nots, the disabled will make up 16% and the elderly nearly a third by 2025, the report forecasts. Organisations such as BT have a responsibility to help tackle the problem, said Mr Hosford. The telco has seen positive results with its Everybody Online project which offers internet access to people in eight deprived communities around Britain. In one area of Cornwall with high levels of unemployment, online training helped people rewrite CVs and learn skills to get new jobs, explained Mr Hosford. Such grassroot activity addressing the specific needs of individual communities is essential is the problem of the digital divide is to be overcome, he said. "If we don't address this problem now, it will get a lot worse and people will find it more difficult to find jobs, education opportunities will be limited and they'll simply not be able to keep up with society," he said. The Alliance for Digital Inclusion, an independent body with members drawn from government, industry and the voluntary sector has recently been set up to tackle some of the issues faced by the digital refuseniks. | tech |
Lifestyle 'governs mobile choice'
Faster, better or funkier hardware alone is not going to help phone firms sell more handsets, research suggests.
Instead, phone firms keen to get more out of their customers should not just be pushing the technology for its own sake. Consumers are far more interested in how handsets fit in with their lifestyle than they are in screen size, onboard memory or the chip inside, shows an in-depth study by handset maker Ericsson. "Historically in the industry there has been too much focus on using technology," said Dr Michael Bjorn, senior advisor on mobile media at Ericsson's consumer and enterprise lab. "We have to stop saying that these technologies will change their lives," he said. "We should try to speak to consumers in their own language and help them see how it fits in with what they are doing," he told the BBC News website.
For the study, Ericsson interviewed 14,000 mobile phone owners on the ways they use their phone. "People's habits remain the same," said Dr Bjorn. "They just move the activity into the mobile phone as it's a much more convenient way to do it."
One good example of this was diary-writing among younger people, he said. While diaries have always been popular, a mobile phone -- especially one equipped with a camera -- helps them keep it in a different form. Youngsters' use of text messages also reflects their desire to chat and keep in contact with friends and again just lets them do it in a slightly changed way. Dr Bjorn said that although consumers do what they always did but use a phone to do it, the sheer variety of what the new handset technologies make possible does gradually drive new habits and lifestyles. Ericsson's research has shown that consumers divide into different "tribes" that use phones in different ways. Dr Bjorn said groups dubbed "pioneers" and "materialists" were most interested in trying new things and were behind the start of many trends in phone use. "For instance," he said, "older people are using SMS much more than they did five years ago." This was because younger users, often the children of ageing mobile owners, encouraged older people to try it so they could keep in touch.
Another factor governing the speed of change in mobile phone use was the simple speed with which new devices are bought by pioneers and materialists. Only when about 25% of people have handsets with new innovations on them, such as cameras, can consumers stop worrying that if they send a picture message the person at the other end will be able to see it.
Once this significant number of users is passed, use of new innovations tends to take off. Dr Bjorn said that early reports of camera phone usage in Japan seemed to imply that the innovation was going to be a flop. However, he said, now 45% of the Japanese people Ericsson questioned use their camera phone at least once a month. In 2003 the figure was 29%. Similarly, across Europe the numbers of people taking snaps with cameras is starting to rise. In 2003 only 4% of the people in the UK took a phonecam snap at least once a month. Now the figure is 14%. Similar rises have been seen in many other European nations. Dr Bjorn said that people also used their camera phones in very different ways to film and even digital cameras. "Usage patterns for digital cameras are almost exactly replacing usage patterns for analogue cameras," he said. Digital cameras tend to be used on significant events such as weddings, holidays and birthdays. By contrast, he said, camera phones were being used much more to capture a moment and were being woven into everyday life. | tech |
Search sites get closer to users
Search sites want to get to know you better.
Not content with providing access to the millions of websites, many now offer ways that do a better job of remembering, cataloguing and managing all the information you come across. Some of the latest to update their search systems are Ask Jeeves and Blinkx, which have both released a series of utilities that try to help people get more from the web. "The future is all about developing your own personal web," said Tony Macklin, spokesman for Ask Jeeves.
Mr Macklin said that too often when people use a search engine it was like the first time they ever used it, because there was no memory of what they had searched for before. "Each time you go back in you have to start all over again," he said. The series of updates to its service, collected under the My Ask Jeeves banner, would help people remember where they had been before.
Ask Jeeves has added the ability to "save" websites of interest so the next time a users visits the site they can search through the sites they have previously found. Sites saved in this way can be arranged in folders and have notes attached to them to explain why they were saved. Mr Macklin said many people wanted to save sites they had seen but did not want to add them to their bookmarks or favourites not least because such lists cannot be easily searched. On average, said Mr Macklin, users conduct between five and 10 searches per day and the tools in My Ask Jeeves should stop them having to do searches twice and get to what they want much more easily. Under My Ask Jeeves users can search the web or through the results they have already noted as interesting. "It's about finding again what you found before," he said. The My Ask Jeeves service lets people store up to a 1000 web links or 5000 if they sign up to the free service. By way of comparison Google's Desktop search tool catalogues search histories informally and lets people look through the sites they have visited.
At the same time, search start-up Blinkx has released a second version of its eponymous software. Blinkx is desktop search software that watches what someone is working on, be it a document or e-mail, and suggests websites, video clips, blogs or documents on a PC that are relevant to it.
Since Blinkx launched it has faced increased competition from firms such as Google, Copernic, Enfish, X1 and Apple all of whom now have programs that let people search their PC as well as the web. "The competition has validated the problem we tackle," said Suranga Chandratillake, co-founder of Blinkx. In the latest release of Blinkx, the company has added what it calls smart folders. Once created the folders act as persistent queries that automatically sweep the web for pages related to their subject and catalogues relevant information, documents or incoming e-mails, on hard drives too. What users do with Blinkx and other desktop search engines shows that people tend to be very promiscuous in their use of search engines. "Blinkx users do not stop using other web search systems," he said. "They might use Google to look up a company, or Yahoo for travel because they know they are good at that," he said. "The classic thing we have seen recently, is people using Blinkx to look at the things they have searched on," he said. The variety of ways to search data was only helping users, said Mr Chandratillake and that it was likely that in the future people would use different ones for different tasks. | tech |
Anti-spam screensaver scrapped
A contentious campaign to bump up the bandwidth bills of spammers by flooding their sites with data has been dropped.
Lycos Europe's Make Love, Not Spam campaign began in late November but its tactics proved controversial. Lycos has shut down the campaign saying it had been started to stimulate debate about anti-spam measures and had now achieved this aim. The anti-spammer screensaver came under fire for encouraging vigilante activity and skirting the edge of the law.
Through the Make Love, Not Spam website, users could download a screensaver that would endlessly request data from the net sites mentioned in many junk mail messages. More than 100,000 people are thought to have downloaded the screensaver that Lycos Europe offered.
The company wanted to keep the spam sites running at near total capacity to make it much less financially attractive to spammers to operate the sites. But the campaign was controversial from the moment it kicked off and many net veterans criticised it for using spamming-type tactics against the senders of junk mail. Some net service firms began blocking access to the Lycos Europe site in protest at the action. Monitoring firm Netcraft found that the anti-spam campaign was proving a little too successful. According to response-time figures gathered by Netcraft, some of the sites that the screensaver targeted were being knocked offline by the constant data requests. In a statement from Lycos Europe announcing the scrapping of the scheme, the company denied that this was its fault. "There is nothing to suggest that Make Love, Not Spam has brought down any of the sites that it has targeted," it said. "At the time that Netcraft measured the sites it claims may have been brought down, they were not in fact part of the Make Love, Not Spam attack cycle," it added. The statement issued by Lycos also said that the centralised database it used ensured that traffic to the target sites left them with 5% spare capacity. "The idea was simply to slow spammers' sites and this was achieved by the campaign," the company said. Many security organisations said users should not participate in the Lycos Europe campaign. The closure comes only days after the campaign was suspended following the outbreak of criticism. | tech |
Europe backs digital TV lifestyle
How people receive their digital entertainment in the future could change, following the launch of an ambitious European project.
In Nice last week, the European Commission announced its Networked & Electronic Media (NEM) initiative. Its broad scope stretches from the way media is created, through each of the stages of its distribution, to its playback. The Commission wants people to be able to locate the content they desire and have it delivered seamlessly, when on the move, at home or at work, no matter who supplies the devices, network, content, or content protection scheme. More than 120 experts were in Nice to share the vision of interconnected future and hear pledges of support from companies such as Nokia, Intel, Philips, Alcatel, France Telecom, Thomson and Telefonica. It might initially appear to be surprising that companies in direct competition are keen to work together. But again and again, speakers stated they could not see incompatible, stand-alone solutions working. A long-term strategy for the evolution and convergence of technologies and services would be required.
The European Commission is being pragmatic in its approach. They have identified that many groups have defined the forms of digital media in the areas that NEM encompasses. The NEM approach is to take a serious look at what is available and what is in the pipeline, pick out the best, bring them together and identify where the gaps are. Where it finds holes, it will develop standards to fill them. What is significant is that such a large and powerful organisation has stated its desire for digital formats to be open to all and work on any gadget. This is bound to please, if not surprise, many individuals and user organisations who feel that the wishes of the holder of rights to content are normally considered over and above those of the consumer. Many feel that the most difficult and challenging area for the Commission will be to identify a solution for different Digital Rights Management (DRM) schemes. Currently DRM solutions are incompatible, locking certain types of purchased content, making them unplayable on all platforms. With the potential of having a percentage of every media transaction that takes place globally, the prize for being the supplier of the world's dominant DRM scheme is huge. Although entertainment is an obvious first step, it will encompass the remote provisions of healthcare, energy efficiency and control of the smart home. The 10-year plan brings together the work of many currently running research projects that the EC has been funding for a number of years.
Simon Perry is the editor of the Digital Lifestyles website, which covers the impact of technology on media | tech |
TV future in the hands of viewers
With home theatre systems, plasma high-definition TVs, and digital video recorders moving into the living room, the way people watch TV will be radically different in five years' time.
That is according to an expert panel which gathered at the annual Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas to discuss how these new technologies will impact one of our favourite pastimes. With the US leading the trend, programmes and other content will be delivered to viewers via home networks, through cable, satellite, telecoms companies, and broadband service providers to front rooms and portable devices.
One of the most talked-about technologies of CES has been digital and personal video recorders (DVR and PVR). These set-top boxes, like the US's TiVo and the UK's Sky+ system, allow people to record, store, play, pause and forward wind TV programmes when they want.
Essentially, the technology allows for much more personalised TV. They are also being built-in to high-definition TV sets, which are big business in Japan and the US, but slower to take off in Europe because of the lack of high-definition programming. Not only can people forward wind through adverts, they can also forget about abiding by network and channel schedules, putting together their own a-la-carte entertainment. But some US networks and cable and satellite companies are worried about what it means for them in terms of advertising revenues as well as "brand identity" and viewer loyalty to channels. Although the US leads in this technology at the moment, it is also a concern that is being raised in Europe, particularly with the growing uptake of services like Sky+. "What happens here today, we will see in nine months to a years' time in the UK," Adam Hume, the BBC Broadcast's futurologist told the BBC News website. For the likes of the BBC, there are no issues of lost advertising revenue yet. It is a more pressing issue at the moment for commercial UK broadcasters, but brand loyalty is important for everyone. "We will be talking more about content brands rather than network brands," said Tim Hanlon, from brand communications firm Starcom MediaVest. "The reality is that with broadband connections, anybody can be the producer of content." He added: "The challenge now is that it is hard to promote a programme with so much choice."
What this means, said Stacey Jolna, senior vice president of TV Guide TV group, is that the way people find the content they want to watch has to be simplified for TV viewers. It means that networks, in US terms, or channels could take a leaf out of Google's book and be the search engine of the future, instead of the scheduler to help people find what they want to watch. This kind of channel model might work for the younger iPod generation which is used to taking control of their gadgets and what they play on them. But it might not suit everyone, the panel recognised. Older generations are more comfortable with familiar schedules and channel brands because they know what they are getting. They perhaps do not want so much of the choice put into their hands, Mr Hanlon suggested. "On the other end, you have the kids just out of diapers who are pushing buttons already - everything is possible and available to them," said Mr Hanlon. "Ultimately, the consumer will tell the market they want."
Of the 50,000 new gadgets and technologies being showcased at CES, many of them are about enhancing the TV-watching experience. High-definition TV sets are everywhere and many new models of LCD (Liquid Crystal Display) TVs have been launched with DVR capability built into them, instead of being external boxes. One such example launched at the show is Humax's 26-inch LCD TV with an 80-hour TiVo DVR and DVD recorder. One of the US's biggest satellite TV companies, DirectTV, has even launched its own branded DVR at the show with 100-hours of recording capability, instant replay, and a search function. The set can pause and rewind TV for up to 90 hours. And Microsoft chief Bill Gates announced in his pre-show keynote speech a partnership with TiVo, called TiVoToGo, which means people can play recorded programmes on Windows PCs and mobile devices. All these reflect the increasing trend of freeing up multimedia so that people can watch what they want, when they want. | tech |
Cyber criminals step up the pace
So-called phishing attacks that try to trick people into handing over confidential details have boomed in 2004, say security experts.
The number of phishing e-mail messages stopped by security firm MessageLabs has risen more than tenfold in less than 12 months. In 2004 it detected more than 18 million phishing e-mail messages. Other statistics show that in 2004 73% of all e-mail was spam and one in 16 messages were infected with a virus.
In its end-of-year report, MessageLabs said that phishing had become the top security threat and most popular form of attack among cyber criminals. In September 2003, MessageLabs caught only 273 phishing e-mails that tried to make people visit fake versions of the websites run by real banks and financial organisations. But by September 2004 it was stopping more than two million phishing related e-mail messages per month. Worryingly, said the firm, phishing gangs were using increasingly sophisticated techniques to harvest useful information such as login details or personal data.
Older attacks relied on users not spotting the fact that the site they were visiting was fake, but more recent phishing e-mails simply try to steal details as soon as a message is opened. Other phishing scams try to recruit innocent people into acting as middlemen for laundering money or goods bought with stolen credit cards. "E-mail security attacks remain unabated in their persistence and ferocity," said Mark Sunner, chief technology officer at MessageLabs. "In just 12 months phishing has firmly established itself as a threat to any organisation or individual conducting business online," he said. Mr Sunner said MessageLabs was starting to see some phishing attacks become very focused on one company or organisation. "Already particular businesses are threatened and blackmailed, indicating a shift from the random, scattergun approach, to customised attacks designed to take advantage of the perceived weaknesses of some businesses," he said. Although phishing attacks grew substantially throughout 2004, viruses and spam remain popular with cyber-criminals and vandals. One of the biggest outbreaks took place in January when the MyDoom virus started circulating. To date the company has caught more than 60 million copies of the virus. Also up this year was the amount of spam in circulation. In 2003 only 40% of messages were spam. But by the end of 2004, almost three-quarters of messages were junk. | tech |
Gritty return for Prince of Persia
Still basking in the relatively recent glory of last year's Sands Of Time, the dashing Prince of Persia is back in Warrior Within, and in a more bellicose mood than last time.
This sequel gives the franchise a grim, gritty new look and ramps up the action and violence. As before, you control the super-athletic prince from a third-person perspective. The time-travelling plot hinges on the Dahaka, an all-consuming monster pursuing our hero through the ages. The only way to dispel it is to turn back the clock again and kill the sultry Empress Of Time before she ever creates the Sands of Time that caused the great beast's creation.
Studiously structured though this back story is, everything boils down to old-fashioned fantasy gameplay which proves, on the whole, as dependable as it needs to be. Ever since the series' then-groundbreaking beginnings on the Commodore Amiga, Prince of Persia has always been about meticulously-animated acrobatic moves, that provide an energetic blend of leaping preposterously between pieces of scenery and lopping off enemies' body parts.
Those flashy moves are back in full evidence, and tremendous fun to perform and perfect. Combining them at speed is the best fun, although getting a handle of doing so takes practice and plenty of skill. Until you reach that point, it is a haphazard business. All too often, you will perform a stunning triple somersault, pirouette off a wall, knock out three enemies in one glorious swoop, before plummeting purposefully over a cliff to your doom. That in turn can mean getting set back an annoyingly long distance, for you can only save at the fountains dotted along the path. The expected fiendish puzzles are all present and correct, but combat is what is really been stepped up, and there is more of it than before. The game's developers have combined acrobatic flair with gruesome slaying techniques in some wonderfully imaginative ways. Slicing foes down the middle is one particularly entertaining method of seeing them off.
Warrior Within is a very slick package; the game's intro movie is so phenomenally good that it actually does an ultimate disservice once the game itself commences.
It is on a par with the jaw-dropping opening sequence of Onimusha 3 earlier this year, and when the game begins, it is something of an anti-climax. That said, the graphics are excellent, and indeed among the most striking and satisfying elements of the game. The music is probably the worst aspect - a merit-free heavy metal soundtrack that you will swiftly want to turn off. There is something strangely unsatisfying about the game. Perhaps precisely because its graphics and mechanics are so good that the story and overall experience are not quite as engaging as they should be. Somehow it adds up to less than the sum of its parts, and is more technically impressive than it is outright enjoyable. But that is not to say Warrior Within is anything other than a superb adventure that most will thoroughly enjoy. It just does not quite take the character to the new heights that might have been hoped for. | tech |
Disney backs Sony DVD technology
A next generation DVD technology backed by Sony has received a major boost.
Film giant Disney says it will produce its future DVDs using Sony's Blu-ray Disc technology, but has not ruled out a rival format developed by Toshiba. The two competing DVD formats, Blu-ray developed by Sony and others, and Toshiba's HD-DVD, have been courting top film studios for several months. The next generation of DVDs promise very high quality pictures and sound, as well as a lot of data. Both technologies use a blue laser to write information. It has a shorter wavelength so more data can be stored. Disney is the latest studio to announce which technology it is backing in a format battle which mirrors the 1980s Betamax versus VHS war. Sony lost out to JVC in that fight.
The current battle for Hollywood's hearts and minds is a crucial one because high-definition films will bring in billions of revenue and the studios would prefer to use one standard. Last month, Paramount, Universal and Warner Brothers said they were opting for the Toshiba and NEC-backed format, HD-DVD high-definition discs.
Those studios currently produce about 45% of DVD content. Sony Pictures Entertainment and MGM Studios have already staked their allegiance with the Blu-ray Disc Association, whose members also include technology companies Dell, Samsung and Matsushita. Twentieth Century Fox is still to announce which technology it will be supporting. If Fox decided to go with Blu-ray too, it would mean the format would have a 47% share of DVD content. Disney said its films would be available on the Blu-ray format when DVD players for the standard went on sale on North America and Japan, expected in 2006. Universal is to start producing films on the HD-DVD format in 2005, and Paramount will start releasing titles using the standard in 2006. Toshiba expects sales of HD-DVDs to reach 300bn yen ($2.9bn, £1.5bn) by 2010. | tech |
Britons growing 'digitally obese'
Gadget lovers are so hungry for digital data many are carrying the equivalent of 10 trucks full of paper in "weight".
Music, images, e-mails, and texts are being hoarded on mobiles, cameras laptops and PDAs (Personal Digital Assistants), a Toshiba study found. It found that more than 60% kept 1,000 to 2,000 music files on their devices, making the UK "digitally fat". "Virtual weight" measurements are based on research by California Institute of Technology professor Roy Williams. He calculated physical comparisons for digital data in the mid-1990s. He worked out that one gigabyte (1,000,000,000 bytes) was the equivalent of a pick-up truck filled with paper. The amount of data people are squirreling away on their gadgets is clearly a sign that people are finding more things to do with their shiny things.
If digital hoarding habits continue on this scale, people could be carrying around a "digitally obese" 20 gigabytes by next year. "Britain has become a nation of information hoarders with a ferocious appetite for data," said Martin Larsson, general manager of Toshiba's European storage device division.
"As storage capabilities increase and the features and functionalities of mobile devices expand to support movie files and entire libraries of multi-media content, we will all become virtually obese," he told the BBC News website. The survey reflects the increasing trend for portable devices with built-in hard drives like music and media players from Apple, Creative Labs, Archos, iRiver and others. This trend is set to grow, according to analysts. They suggest the number of hard drives in consumer electronics gadgets could grow from 17 million last year to 55 million in 2006. "Consumers are driving the move towards smaller devices that have greater functionality, and industry is trying to keep up," said Mr Larsson. "People are looking for more than just phone calls and text messages on the move, they want things like web browsing, e-mailing, music, photos and more."
Many are finding memory keys and memory sticks are simply not big enough to hold everything.
"Floppies and memory keys have their place, but they don't have anything like the capacity or flexibility of a hard drive so are unable to meet the demand for more and more storage capacity in consumer devices," said Mr Larsson. The cost of making hard drives has dropped and is continuing to do so because of improved technologies so they are proving to be more cost-effective than other forms of memory, he added. The amount of data that can be stored has grown by 400% in the last three years, while the cost for every gigabyte has fallen by 80%. It is also getting easier to transfer files from one device to another, which has traditionally been a slow and problematic area. "Transfer of data between different memory types has improved significantly in recent times, and will be further helped by the standards for hard drives which are currently being developed by the major manufacturers," said Mr Larsson. According to technology analysts IDC, a fifth of all hard drives produced will be used in consumer electronics by 2007. | tech |
Halo 2 heralds traffic explosion
The growing popularity of online gaming could spell problems for net service firms, warns network monitoring company Sandvine.
It issued the warning following analysis which shows that traffic on the Xbox game network increased fourfold on the launch day of Halo 2. The 9 November traffic explosion has continued into December, said Sandvine. Service providers now need to make sure that their networks can cope with the increasing demands for bandwidth. As well as being a popular single-player title, Halo 2 can be connected to Microsoft's subscription-based broadband network, Xbox Live. Gamers who want to play online can create their own clan, or team, and take on others to see how well they compare.
But the surge in numbers and huge demands for bandwidth should be a wake-up call to the industry which must ensure that their networks can cope with the increases in traffic, said Sandvine's chief technology officer Marc Morin.
In a bid to cope and ease congestion, providers are increasingly making their networks intelligent, finding out who is using bandwidth and for what. It could become common to charge people for the amount of bandwidth they use. "The explosion in Xbox Live traffic attributed to Halo 2 should be seen as a clarion call," he said. "ISPs need to enhance the broadband experience for these high-end users by prioritising or reserving bandwidth for games," he added.
One of the main factors that spoils online gaming is "lag" in which there is a noticeable delay between a gamer clicking on a mouse or keyboard and what happens in the online gaming world. Gamers tend to migrate toward networks with the lowest "lag". Analysing traffic will become increasingly important for service providers if they are to hold on to bandwidth-hungry gamers said Lindsay Schroth, an analyst with research firm The Yankee Group. "In the competitive broadband environment, operators need to differentiate the way they offer access to services like live-play gaming," she said. In countries such as Korea, which has high levels of fast net connections to homes, online gaming is hugely popular. | tech |
Media gadgets get moving
Pocket-sized devices that let people carry around video and images are set to have a big year in 2005, according to industry experts.
Last year saw the emergence of portable media players, such as the Windows-based Creative Zen portable media player, the Samsung Yepp, the iRiver PMC-100, and the Archos AV400 series among others. But this year, they are set to get smarter and more connected, to allow people to find more video to watch on them. Archos launched its latest range of its Linux-based portable media devices at the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas on Friday. Dubbed the Pocket Media Assistant PMA430, it crucially has wi-fi capability built-in for the first time. "Consumers are showing a great thirst for devices that store all their media in one place for anywhere access," said Henri Crohas, chief of Archos. "And now those consumers can stay connected and productive at the same time." Archos said the focus for the device is to be the second gadget in people's pockets, after the mobile.
Unlike Windows-based players, the Archos AV400 series devices have always been able to record from any video source, such as TVs, as well as playback. The content put onto the devices is copy protected so cannot then be swapped to another device.
Recording is perhaps a crucial functionality for those who have not seen the point of portable video if there is not a lot of video to watch on it. And wi-fi connectivity opens up the possibility of content delivery via a high-speed wireless link. Archos also announced that it would open up the software development kit to Linux developers so that more applications could be created for the device. Microsoft also made some announcements in the portable media arena at CES, primarily for US consumers though. It has agreed a content deal with personal video recorder company TiVo, which Bill Gates also showcased in his keynote speech at CES. The TiVo To Go service means that US consumers will be able to take any programmes they record on their TiVos and transfer it for free to watch on any of the Windows-based portable media players or smartphones. It also said it had launched a service with MTV to let people watch Comedy Central, VH1 and Country Music TV on its devices. And a service is launching with MSN to provide people with shortened versions of news, entertainment and other video on a subscription basis for download via the PC onto the portable devices. But the ability to record directly from TV, VCR, and digital cable and satellite boxes, which Windows-based devices do not offer, certainly gives people more content to watch on the go too.
The increased capability of these devices, and the content deals that are being done, may go some way to persuading people to use them. Recent research by Jupiter suggested that people would prefer a device that was dedicated to music. Only 13% of Europeans wanted to watch video while on the move. More seemed interested in spending their cash on music-only devices.
"This year, we are ready for an explosion of portable media," Microsoft's Mike Coleman told the BBC News website. "We are very bullish about it. The fact that I can put photos on here too and share them is super-cool to the consumer," he added. The fact that Europeans are far larger public transport users than Americans is one reason why portable media will take off in the coming year too. There is a burgeoning market there for commuters to watch news and other programmes on their way to work. Although Microsoft's content distribution deals are for the US market at the moment, talks were "always on-going" with European content suppliers to offer similar services. Various rights management issues have to be ironed out first however. But that does not prevent people from finding ways to create their own content to share online and swap on portable devices, particularly via those which are wi-fi enabled. The possibility is open for non-professional makers of video and audio to take advantage of the growing portable media market to distribute their work. CES, which runs from 6 to 9 January, showcases more than 50,000 new gadgets that will be hitting the shelves in 2005. | tech |
Satellite mapping aids Darfur relief
Aid workers trying to house, feed and clothe millions of homeless refugees in the Sudanese region of Darfur are getting a helping hand from advanced mapping technology.
A European consortium of companies and university groups known as Respond is working to provide accurate and up to date maps. The aim is to overcome some of the huge logistical challenges in getting supplies to where they are needed. Respond is using satellite imagery to produce accurate maps that can be used in the field rapidly. "Respond has produced very detailed maps for example for the road networks, for the rivers and for the villages, to more large-scale maps useful for very general planning purposes," said Einar Bjorgo from Unosat, the UN satellite mapping organisation that is part of the Respond consortium.
The group uses satellites from Nasa, the European Space Agency and the Disaster Monitoring Constellation. The satellite data is transmitted to ground stations. From there, the information makes its way to Respond organisations that specialise in interpreting such data. "You have to convert the data into images, then the interpreter has to convert all this into crisis, damage, or situation maps," said Stefan Voigt, who works in the remote sensing department of one of those organisations, the German Aerospace Centre.
This kind of detailed analysis usually takes a couple of months but Respond gets it done in about 12 hours. "Our users are usually not so much familiar with reading satellite imagery, reading satellite maps, so it's our task to transfer the data into information that non-technical people can read and understand easily and very, very efficiently," said Mr Voigt. Respond supplies maps to aid groups via the web, and on compact disc. But the best map is one you can hold in your hands, especially in remote areas where internet connections and laptops are scarce. "A map is a working document," explains Herbert Hansen of Respond's Belgian partner Keyobs. "You need to use it, you need to write on it, correct, give feedback and so on, so you need paper to write on. "We print maps, we laminate the maps, we encapsulate the maps if needed so you can take a shower with the map, it's completely protected."
Humanitarian groups in Darfur have been making good use of Respond's maps. They have come in especially handy during Sudan's rainy season, when normally dry riverbeds, or wadis, became flooded. "These wadis had a very small amount of flooding, generally, in terms of depth, but greatly impeded the transport capabilities and capacities of the humanitarian groups on the ground," says Stephen Candillon of Respond imaging partner Sertit. Respond's rapid imaging has allowed aid groups to find ways around the wadis, allowing then to mark on their maps which roads were washed out at which times. Aid groups say that combination of satellite technology and on-the-ground observation helped keep relief flowing to those who needed it.
Clark Boyd is technology correspondent for The World, a BBC World Service and WGBH-Boston co-production | tech |
Disney backs Sony DVD technology
A next generation DVD technology backed by Sony has received a major boost.
Film giant Disney says it will produce its future DVDs using Sony's Blu-ray Disc technology, but has not ruled out a rival format developed by Toshiba. The two competing DVD formats, Blu-ray developed by Sony and others, and Toshiba's HD-DVD, have been courting top film studios for several months. The next generation of DVDs promises very high quality pictures and sound, as well as a lot of data. Both technologies use a blue laser to write information. It has a shorter wavelength so more data can be stored. Disney is the latest studio to announce which technology it is backing in a format battle which mirrors the 1980s Betamax versus VHS war. Sony lost out to JVC in that fight.
The current battle for Hollywood's hearts and minds is a crucial one because high-definition films will bring in billions of revenue and the studios would prefer to use one standard. Last month, Paramount, Universal and Warner Brothers said they were opting for the Toshiba and NEC-backed format, HD-DVD high-definition discs.
Those studios currently produce about 45% of DVD content. Sony Pictures Entertainment and MGM Studios have already staked their allegiance with the Blu-ray Disc Association, whose members also include technology companies Dell, Samsung and Matsushita. Twentieth Century Fox is still to announce which technology it will be supporting. If Fox decided to go with Blu-ray too, it would mean the format would have a 47% share of DVD content. Disney said its films would be available on the Blu-ray format when DVD players for the standard went on sale on North America and Japan, expected in 2006. Universal is to start producing films on the HD-DVD format in 2005, and Paramount will start releasing titles using the standard in 2006. Toshiba expects sales of HD-DVDs to reach 300bn yen ($2.9bn, £1.5bn) by 2010. | tech |
Lifestyle 'governs mobile choice'
Faster, better or funkier hardware alone is not going to help phone firms sell more handsets, research suggests.
Instead, phone firms keen to get more out of their customers should not just be pushing the technology for its own sake. Consumers are far more interested in how handsets fit in with their lifestyle than they are in screen size, onboard memory or the chip inside, shows an in-depth study by telecommunications company Ericsson. "Historically in the industry there has been too much focus on using technology," said Dr Michael Bjorn, senior advisor on mobile media at Ericsson's consumer and enterprise lab. "We have to stop saying that these technologies will change their lives," he said. "We should try to speak to consumers in their own language and help them see how it fits in with what they are doing," he told the BBC News website.
For the study, Ericsson interviewed 14,000 mobile phone owners on the ways they use their phone. "People's habits remain the same," said Dr Bjorn. "They just move the activity into the mobile phone as it's a much more convenient way to do it."
One good example of this was diary-writing among younger people, he said. While diaries have always been popular, a mobile phone -- especially one equipped with a camera -- helps them keep it in a different form. Youngsters' use of text messages also reflects their desire to chat and keep in contact with friends and again just lets them do it in a slightly changed way. Dr Bjorn said that although consumers do what they always did but use a phone to do it, the sheer variety of what the new handset technologies make possible does gradually drive new habits and lifestyles. Ericsson's research has shown that consumers divide into different "tribes" that use phones in different ways. Dr Bjorn said groups dubbed "pioneers" and "materialists" were most interested in trying new things and were behind the start of many trends in phone use. "For instance," he said, "older people are using SMS much more than they did five years ago." This was because younger users, often the children of ageing mobile owners, encouraged older people to try it so they could keep in touch.
Another factor governing the speed of change in mobile phone use was the simple speed with which new devices are bought by pioneers and materialists. Only when about 25% of people have handsets with new innovations on them, such as cameras, can consumers stop worrying that if they send a picture message the person at the other end will be able to see it.
Once this significant number of users is passed, use of new innovations tends to take off. Dr Bjorn said that early reports of camera phone usage in Japan seemed to imply that the innovation was going to be a flop. However, he said, now 45% of the Japanese people Ericsson questioned use their camera phone at least once a month. In 2003 the figure was 29%. Similarly, across Europe the numbers of people taking snaps with cameras is starting to rise. In 2003 only 4% of the people in the UK took a phonecam snap at least once a month. Now the figure is 14%. Similar rises have been seen in many other European nations. Dr Bjorn said that people also used their camera phones in very different ways to film and even digital cameras. "Usage patterns for digital cameras are almost exactly replacing usage patterns for analogue cameras," he said. Digital cameras tend to be used on significant events such as weddings, holidays and birthdays. By contrast, he said, camera phones were being used much more to capture a moment and were being woven into everyday life. | tech |
Millions to miss out on the net
By 2025, 40% of the UK's population will still be without internet access at home, says a study.
Around 23 million Britons will miss out on a wide range of essential services such as education and medical information, predicts the report by telecoms giant BT. It compares to 27 million, or 50%, of the UK, who are not currently online. The idea that the digital divide will evaporate with time is "wishful thinking", the report concludes.
The study calls on the government and telecoms industry to come up with new ways to lure those that have been bypassed by the digital revolution. Although the percentage of Britons without home access will have fallen slightly, those that remain digital refuseniks will miss out on more, the report suggests. As more and more everyday tasks move online and offline services become less comprehensive, the divide will become more obvious and more burdensome for those that have not got net access, it predicts.
The gap between "have-nets" and "have-nots" has been much talked about, but predictions about how such a divide will affect future generations has been less discussed. BT set out to predict future patterns based on current information and taking account of the way technology is changing. Optimists who predict that convergence and the emergence of more user-friendly technology will bridge the digital divide could be way off mark, the report suggests. "Internet access on other devices tends to be something taken up by those who already have it," said Adrian Hosford, director of corporate responsibility at BT. Costs of internet access have fallen dramatically and coverage in remote areas have vastly improved over the last year but the real barrier remains psychological. "There is a hard rump of have-nots who are not engaging with the net. They don't have the motivation or skills or perceive the benefits," said Mr Hosford.
As now, the most disadvantaged groups are likely to remain among low income families, the older generation and the disabled.
Those on low incomes will account for a quarter of the digital have-nots, the disabled will make up 16% and the elderly nearly a third by 2025, the report forecasts. Organisations such as BT have a responsibility to help tackle the problem, said Mr Hosford. The telco has seen positive results with its Everybody Online project which offers internet access to people in eight deprived communities around Britain. In one area of Cornwall with high levels of unemployment, online training helped people rewrite CVs and learn skills to get new jobs, explained Mr Hosford. Such grassroot activity addressing the specific needs of individual communities is essential is the problem of the digital divide is to be overcome, he said. "If we don't address this problem now, it will get a lot worse and people will find it more difficult to find jobs, education opportunities will be limited and they'll simply not be able to keep up with society," he said. The Alliance for Digital Inclusion, an independent body with members drawn from government, industry and the voluntary sector has recently been set up to tackle some of the issues faced by the digital refuseniks. | tech |
Spam e-mails tempt net shoppers
Computer users across the world continue to ignore security warnings about spam e-mails and are being lured into buying goods, a report suggests.
More than a quarter have bought software through spam e-mails and 24% have bought clothes or jewellery. As well as profiting from selling goods or services and driving advertising traffic, organised crime rings can use spam to glean personal information. The Business Software Alliance (BSA) warned that people should "stay alert". "Many online consumers don't consider the true motives of spammers," said Mike Newton, a spokesperson for the BSA which commissioned the survey.
"By selling software that appears to be legitimate in genuine looking packaging or through sophisticated websites, spammers are hiding spyware without consumers' knowledge. "Once the software is installed on PCs and networks, information that is given over the internet can be obtained and abused."
The results also showed that the proportion of people reading - or admitting to reading - and taking advantage of adult entertainment spam e-mails is low, at one in 10. The research, which covered 6,000 people in six countries and their attitudes towards junk e-mails, revealed that Brazilians were the most likely to read spam. A third of them read unsolicited junk e-mail and 66% buy goods or services after receiving spam.
The French were the second most likely to buy something (48%), with 44% of Britons taking advantage of products and services. This was despite 38% of people in all countries being worried about their net security because of the amount of spam they get. More than a third of respondents said they were concerned that spam e-mails contained viruses or programs that attempted to collect personal information. "Both industry and the media have helped to raise awareness of the issues that surround illegitimate e-mail, helping to reduce the potential financial damage and nuisance from phishing attacks and spoof websites," said William Plante, director of corporate security and fraud protection at security firm Symantec. "At the same time, consumers need to continue exercising caution and protect themselves from harm with a mixture of spam filters, spyware detection software and sound judgement." | tech |
More power to the people says HP
The digital revolution is focused on letting people tell and share their own stories, according to Carly Fiorina, chief of technology giant Hewlett Packard.
The job of firms such as HP now, she said in a speech at the Consumer Electronics Show (CES), was to ensure digital and physical worlds fully converged. She said the goal for 2005 was to make people the centre of technology. CES showcases 50,000 new gadgets that will be hitting the shelves in 2005. The tech-fest, the largest of its kind in the world, runs from 6 to 9 January. "The digital revolution is about the democratisation of technology and the experiences it makes possible," she told delegates. "Revolution has always been about giving power to the people." She added: "The real story of the digital revolution is not just new products, but the millions of experiences made possible and stories that millions can tell." Part of giving people more control has been about the freeing up of content, such as images, video and music. Crucial to this has been the effort to make devices that speak to each other better so that content can be more easily transferred from one device, such as a digital camera, to others, such as portable media players. A lot of work still needs to be done, however, to sort out compatibility issues and standards within the technology industry so that gadgets just work seamlessly, she said.
Ms Fiorina's talk also touted the way technology is being designed to focus on lifestyle, fashion and personalisation, something she sees as key to what people want.
Special guest, singer Gwen Stefani, joined her on-stage to promote her own range of HP digital cameras which Ms Stefani has helped design and which are heavily influenced by Japanese youth culture. The digital cameras, which are due to go on sale in the US by the summer, are based on the HP 607 model. The emphasis on personalisation and lifestyle is a big theme at this year's CES, with tiny, wearable MP3 players at every turn and rainbow hues giving colour to everything. Ms Fiorina also announced that HP was working with Nokia to launch a visual radio service for mobiles, which would launch in Europe early this year. The service will let people listen to radio on their mobiles and download relevant content, like a track's ringtone, simultaneously. The service is designed to make mobile radio more interactive.
Among the other new products she showcased was the Digital Media Hub, a big upgrade to HP's Digital Entertainment Centre. Coming out in the autumn in the US, the box is a networked, high-definition TV, cable set-top box, digital video recorder and DVD recorder. It has a removable hard drive cartridge, memory card slots, and Light Scribe labelling software which lets people design and print customised DVD labels and covers. It is designed to contain all a household's digital media, such as pre-recorded TV shows, pictures, videos and music so it can all be managed in one place. The hub reflects the increasing move to re-box the PC so that it can work as part of other key centres of entertainment. Research suggests that about 258 million images are saved and shared every day, equating to 94 billion a year. Eighty per cent of those remain on cameras. Media hubs are designed to encourage people to organise them on one box. Ms Fiorina was one of several keynote speakers, who also included Microsoft chief Bill Gates, to set out what major technology companies think people will be doing with technologies and gadgets in the next 12 months. In a separate announcement during the keynote speech, Ms Fiorina said that HP would be partnering MTV to replace this year's MTV Asia music award. MTV's Asia Aid will be held in Bangkok on 3 February, and is aimed at helping to raise money for the Asian tsunami disaster. | tech |
Robotic pods take on car design
A new breed of wearable robotic vehicles that envelop drivers are being developed by Japanese car giant Toyota.
The company's vision for the single passenger in the 21st Century involves the driver cruising by in a four-wheeled leaf-like device or strolling along encased in an egg-shaped cocoon that walks upright on two feet. Both these prototypes will be demonstrated, along with other concept vehicles and helper robots, at the Toyota stand at the Expo 2005 in Aichi, Japan, in March 2005. The models are being positioned as so-called personal mobility devices, which have few limits. The open leaf-like "i-unit" vehicle is the latest version of the concept which the company introduced last year. Built using environmentally friendly plant-based materials, the single passenger unit is equipped with intelligent transport system technologies that allow for safe autopilot driving in specially equipped lanes. The model allows the user to make tight on-the-spot turns, move upright amongst other people at low speeds and can be easily switched into a reclining position at higher speeds. Body colours can be customized to suit individual preferences and a personal recognition system offers both information and music.
Also on display at the show will be the egg-shaped "i-foot". This is a two-legged mountable robot like device that can be controlled with a joystick.
Standing at a height of well over seven feet (2.1 metres), the unit can walk along at a speed of about 1.35km/h (0.83mph) and navigate staircases into the bargain. Mounting and dismounting is accomplished with the aid of the bird-like legs that bend over backwards. "They are clearly what we call concept vehicles, innovative ideas which have yet to be transformed into potential products and which are a few years away from actual production," said Dr David Gillingwater from the Transport Studies Group at Loughborough University. "They clearly have eye-catching appeal, which is in part the name of the game here, and are linked to the iMac and iPod-type niche which Apple have been responsible for developing and leading in recent years - new, different, hi-tech, image conscious products. "As always with these concept vehicles, it is difficult to see 'who' they would appeal to and what their role would be in the 'personal transport' marketplace."
The personal transport arena is taking on a new dimension though with futuristic devices that augment human capabilities. Toyota's prototypes represent the latest incarnation of wearable exoskeletons in a vehicular form that is specially focused on transport. Powered robotic exoskeletons have been the focus of much US military research over the years and Japan seems to have jumped onto the bandwagon with a wave of products being developed for specific applications. With an emerging range of devices targeted towards the ageing world population, care giving and the military, wearable exoskeletons seem to represent a new line of future technologies that meet an individual's particular mobility needs. While Toyota's prototypes are geared towards mass transport, the company says that the vehicles will allow the elderly and the disabled to achieve independent mobility.
Experts, though, are a bit sceptical of their acceptance in this area.
"Those with arguably the greatest needs for this sort of assistance, now and certainly in the future, are the elderly and infirm people," Dr Gillingwater told the BBC News website. "You have to ask whether these sorts of vehicles will appeal to these groups." Design considerations also exist. Dr Erel Avineri, of the Centre for Transport and Society at the University of the West of England in Bristol said: "The design of the introduced mobility devices is not completely adjusted to the specific needs of the elderly and the disabled. "For example, one problem that many older passengers experience is limited ability to rotate the neck and upper body, making it difficult to look to the side and back when backing up. "It looks like the visual design of the device interior does not consider this need. This and other human-factors related issues in the design of such devices are not the only issues that should be considered," said Dr Avineri. "In general, introducing a new technology requires the passenger to change behaviour patterns that have served the older passenger for decades. Elderly users might not necessarily accept such innovation. "This may be another barrier to the commercial success of such a vehicle." Such single-person vehicles may find a relatively small market niche and may be more suited towards specialised applications rather than revolutionising the face of mass transport. "The concept of personal mobility behind these sorts of innovations is great but they beg a huge number of questions," said Dr Gillingwater. "What's their range? How user-friendly will they really be? What infrastructure will be required to allow these vehicles to be used. "Overall I think these vehicles pose a number of important questions than provide answers or solutions." | tech |
Hi-tech posters guide commuters
Interactive posters are helping Londoners get around the city during the festive season.
When interrogated with a mobile phone, the posters pass on a number that people can call to get information about the safest route home. Sited at busy underground stations, the posters are fitted with an infra-red port that can beam information directly to a handset. The posters are part of Transport for London's Safe Travel at Night campaign.
The campaign is intended to help Londoners, especially women, avoid trouble on the way home. In particular it aims to cut the number of sexual assaults by drivers of unlicensed minicabs. Nigel Marson, head of group marketing at Transport for London (TfL), said the posters were useful because they work outside the mobile phone networks. "They can work in previously inaccessible areas such as underground stations which is obviously a huge advantage in a campaign of this sort," he said.
The posters will automatically beam information to any phone equipped with an IR port that is held close to the glowing red icon on the poster. "We started with infra-red because there are a huge number IR phones out there," said Rachel Harker, spokeswoman for Hypertag which makes the technology fitted to the posters. "It's a well established technology." Hypertag is also now making a poster that uses short-range Bluetooth radio technology to swap data. Although the hypertags in the posters only pass on a phone number, Ms Harker said they can pass on almost any form of data including images, ring tones and video clips. She said that there are no figures for how many people are using the posters but a previous campaign run for a cosmetics firm racked up 12,500 interactions. "Before we ran a campaign there was a big question mark of: 'If we build it will they come?'" she said. "Now we know that, yes, they will." The TfL campaign using the posters will run until Boxing Day. | tech |
Parents face video game lessons
Ways of ensuring that parents know which video games are suitable for children are to be considered by the games industry.
The issue was discussed at a meeting between UK government officials, industry representatives and the British Board of Film Classification. It follows concerns that children may be playing games aimed at adults which include high levels of violence. In 2003, Britons spent £1,152m on games, more than ever before. And this Christmas, parents are expected to spend millions on video games and consoles.
Violent games have been hit by controversy after the game Manhunt was blamed by the parents of 14-year-old Stefan Pakeerah, who was stabbed to death in Leicester in February. His mother, Giselle, said her son's killer, Warren Leblanc, 17 - who was jailed for life in September - had mimicked behaviour in the game.
Police investigating Stefan's murder dismissed its influence and said Manhunt was not part of its legal case. The issue of warnings on games for adults was raised on Sunday by Trade and Industry Secretary Patricia Hewitt. This was the focus of the talks between government officials, representatives from the games industry and the British Board of Film Classification. "Adults can make informed choices about what games to play. Children can't and they deserve to be protected," said Culture Secretary Tessa Jowell after the meeting. "Industry will consider how to make sure parents know what games their children should and shouldn't play." Roger Bennett, director general of Entertainment and Leisure Software Publishers Association, said: "A number of initiatives were discussed at the meeting. "They will be formulated to create specific proposals to promote greater understanding, recognition and awareness of the games rating system, ensuring that young people are not exposed to inappropriate content."
Among the possible measures could be a campaign to explain to parents that many games are made for an adult audience, as well as changes to the labelling of the games themselves.
According to industry statistics, a majority of players are over 18, with the average age of a gamer being 29. Academics point out that there has not been any definitive research linking bloodthirsty games such as Manhunt with violent responses in players. In a report published this week for the Video Standards Council, Dr Guy Cumberbatch said: "The research evidence on media violence causing harm to viewers is wildly exaggerated and does not stand up to scrutiny." Dr Cumberbatch, head of the social policy think tank, the Communications Research Group, reviewed the studies on the issue. He concluded that there was an absence of convincing research that media violence caused harm. | tech |
BBC web search aids odd queries
The BBC's online search engine was used a record amount in 2004, helping with enquires both simple and strange.
More than 277 million enquiries were made, asking for informaton of a wide range of subjects. The most requested search terms of 2004 included games, EastEnders, CBBC, John Peel, Harry Potter and Olympics. But there were many strange enquiries, including: what is a dog?, how do you say basketball? and what is the biggest collection of naval fluff? The search engine works by matching key words typed in to different web pages but many people still type in natural language questions. Here are some of the strangest queries of 2004 - spelling and grammar errors left untouched - and their possible solutions:
- How to fold a serviette like an elf's boot?
- How do I structure a French letter?
- What is better one long vacation each year or several short vacations throughout the year?
- What is so special about the Swiss?
- What are the contemporary issue in nurses?
- What is the number 4 in this number 40052308090?
- What is up?
- What is the name of James Martin's dog?
Search engines are key to the way people use the internet. Companies such as Google have become of paramount importance as they dictate how people travel through websites while online. | tech |
2D Metal Slug offers retro fun
Like some drill sergeant from the past, Metal Slug 3 is a wake-up call to today's gamers molly-coddled with slick visuals and fancy trimmings.
With its hand-animated sprites and 2D side-scrolling, this was even considered retro when released in arcades four years ago. But a more frantic shooter you will not find at the end of your joypad this year. And yes, that includes Halo 2. Simply choose your grunt and wade through five 2D side-scrolling levels of the most hectic video game blasting you will ever encounter. It is also the toughest game you are likely to play, as hordes of enemies and few lives pile the pressure on.
Players must battle soldiers, snowmen, zombies, giant crabs and aliens, not to mention the huge, screen-filling bosses that guard each of the five levels.
The shoot-anything-that-moves gameplay is peppered with moments of old-school genius. Fans of robotic gastropods should note the title refers, instead, to the vast array of vehicles on offer in a game stuffed with bizarre hardware. Tanks, jets and submarines can be commandeered, as well as cannon-toting camels, elephants and ostriches - more weaponry on offer than in an acre of Iraq. Doling out justice is a joy thanks to ultra responsive controls, and while this is a tough nut to crack, it is addictive enough to have you gagging for that one last go. And at a mere £20, Metal Slug 3 is as cheap as sliced, fried spuds, as the man says. Of course, most of you will ignore this, lacking as it does the visual fireworks of modern blasters. But at a time when blockbuster titles offer only a fresh lick of paint in favour of real innovation, Metal Slug 3 is a fresh gasp of air from an era when the Xbox was not even a twinkle in Bill Gates' eye. | tech |
Mobile multimedia slow to catch on
There is no doubt that mobile phones sporting cameras and colour screens are hugely popular. Consumers swapping old phones for slinkier, dinkier versions are thought to be responsible for a 26% increase in the number of phones sold during the third quarter of 2004, according to analysts Gartner More than 167 million handsets were sold between July and September 2004, a period that, according to Gartner analyst Carolina Milanesi is "seldom strong". But although consumers have mobiles that can take and send snaps, sounds and video clips few, so far, are taking the chance to do so.
In fact, the numbers of people not taking and sending pictures, audio and video is growing. Figures gathered by Continental Research shows that 36% of British camera phone users have never sent a multimedia message (MMS), up from 7% in 2003. This is despite the fact that, during the same period, the numbers of camera phones in the UK more than doubled to 7.5 million. Getting mobile phone users to send multimedia messages is really important for operators keen to squeeze more cash out of their customers and offset the cost of subsidising the handsets people are buying. The problem they face, said Shailendra Jain, head of MMS firm Adamind, is educating people in how to send the multimedia messages using their funky handsets.
"Also," he said, "they have to simplify the interface so its not rocket science in terms of someone understanding it." Research bears out the suspicion that people are not sending multimedia messages because they do not know how to. According to Continental Research, 29% of the people it questioned said they were technophobes that tended to shy away from innovation. Only 11% regarded themselves as technically savvy enough to send a picture or video message. The fact that multimedia services are not interoperable across networks and phones only adds to people's reluctance to start sending them, said Mr Jain. "They ask themselves: 'If I'm streaming video from one handset to another will it work?'" he said. "There's a lot of user apprehension about that."
There are other deeper technical reasons why multimedia messages are not being pushed as strongly as they might. Andrew Bud, executive chairman of messaging firm Mblox, said mobile phone operators cap the number of messages that can be circulating at any one time for fear of overwhelming the system. "The rate we can send MMS into the mobile network is fairly constant," he said. The reason for this is that there are finite capacities for data traffic on the second generation networks that currently have the most users.
No-one wants to take the risk of swamping these relatively narrow channels so the number of MMS messages is capped, said Mr Bud. This has led to operators finding other technologies, particularly one known as Wap-push, to get multimedia to their customers. But when networks do find a good way to get multimedia to their customers, the results can be dramatic. Israeli technology firm Celltick has found a way to broadcast data across phone networks in a way that does not overwhelm existing bandwidth. One of the first firms to use the Celltick service is Hutch India, the largest mobile firm in the country. The broadcast system gets multimedia to customers via a rolling menu far faster than would be possible with other systems. While not multimedia messaging, such a system gets people used to seeing their phones as a device that can handle all different types of content. As a result 40% of the subscribers to the Hutch Alive, which uses Celltick's broadcast technology, regularly click for more pictures, sounds and images from the operator. "Operators really need to start utilising this tool to reach their customers," said Yaron Toren, spokesman for Celltick. Until then, multimedia will be a message that is not getting through. | tech |
Internet boom for gift shopping
Cyberspace is becoming a very popular destination for Christmas shoppers.
Forecasts predict that British people will spend £4bn buying gifts online during the festive season, an increase of 64% on 2003. Surveys also show that the average amount that people are spending is rising, as is the range of goods that they are happy to buy online. Savvy shoppers are also using the net to find the hot presents that are all but sold out in High Street stores.
Almost half of the UK population now shop online according to figures collected by the Interactive Media in Retail Group which represents web retailers. About 85% of this group, 18m people, expect to do a lot of their Christmas gift buying online this year, reports the industry group. On average each shopper will spend £220 and Britons lead Europe in their affection for online shopping.
Almost a third of all the money spent online this Christmas will come out of British wallets and purses compared to 29% from German shoppers and only 4% from Italian gift buyers. James Roper, director of the IMRG, said shoppers were now much happier to buy so-called big ticket items such as LCD television sets and digital cameras. Mr Roper added that many retailers were working hard to reassure consumers that online shopping was safe and that goods ordered as presents would arrive in time for Christmas. He advised consumers to give shops a little more time than usual to fulfil orders given that online buying is proving so popular. A survey by Hostway suggests that many men prefer to shop online to avoid the embarrassment of buying some types of presents, such as lingerie, for wives and girlfriends. Much of this online shopping is likely to be done during work time, according to research carried out by security firm Saint Bernard Software. The research reveals that up to two working days will be lost by staff who do their shopping via their work computer. Worst offenders will be those in the 18-35 age bracket, suggests the research, who will spend up to five hours per week in December browsing and buying at online shops.
Iggy Fanlo, chief revenue officer at Shopping.com, said that the growing numbers of people using broadband was driving interest in online shopping. "When you consider narrowband and broadband the conversion to sale is two times higher," he said. Higher speeds meant that everything happened much faster, he said, which let people spend time browsing and finding out about products before they buy.
The behaviour of online shoppers was also changing, he said. "The single biggest reason people went online before this year was price," he said. "The number one reason now is convenience." "Very few consumers click on the lowest price," he said. "They are looking for good prices and merchant reliability." Consumer comments and reviews were also proving popular with shoppers keen to find out who had the most reliable customer service. Data collected by eBay suggests that some smart shoppers are getting round the shortages of hot presents by buying them direct through the auction site. According to eBay UK there are now more than 150 Robosapiens remote control robots for sale via the site. The Robosapiens toy is almost impossible to find in online and offline stores. Similarly many shoppers are turning to eBay to help them get hold of the hard-to-find slimline PlayStation 2, which many retailers are only selling as part of an expensive bundle. The high demand for the PlayStation 2 has meant that prices for it are being driven up. In shops the PS2 is supposed to sell for £104.99. In some eBay UK auctions the price has risen to more than double this figure. Many people are also using eBay to get hold of gadgets not even released in this country. The portable version of the PlayStation has only just gone on sale in Japan yet some enterprising eBay users are selling the device to UK gadget fans. | tech |
Google to scan famous libraries
The libraries of five of the world's most important academic institutions are to be digitised by Google.
Scanned pages from books in the public domain will then be made available for search and reading online. The full libraries of Michigan and Stanford universities, as well as archives at Harvard, Oxford and the New York Public Library are included. Online pages from scanned books will not have adverts but will have links to online store Amazon, Google said.
"The goal of the project is to unlock the wealth of information that is offline and bring it online," said Susan Wojcicki, director of product management at Google.
There will also be links to public libraries so that the books can be borrowed. Google will not be paid for providing for the links. It will take six years to digitise the full collection at Michigan, which contains seven million volumes. Users will only have access to extracts and bibliographies of copyrighted works. The New York library is allowing Google to include a small portion of books no longer covered by copyright.
Harvard is limiting its participation to 40,000 books, while Oxford wants Google to scan books originally published in the 19th Century and held in the Bodleian Library. A spokeswoman for Oxford University said the digitised books would include novels, poetry, political tracts and art books. "Important works that are out of print or only available in a few libraries around the world will be made available to everyone," she said. About one million books will be scanned by Google, less than 15% of the total collection held in the Bodleian. "We hope that Oxford's contribution to this project will be of scholarly use, as well as general interest, to people around the world," said Reg Carr, director of Oxford University Library Services.
"It's a significant opportunity to bring our material to the rest of the world," said Paul LeClerc, president of the New York Public Library. "It could solve an old problem: If people can't get to us, how can we get to them?" "This is the day the world changes," said John Wilkin, a University of Michigan librarian working with Google. "It will be disruptive because some people will worry that this is the beginning of the end of libraries. "But this is something we have to do to revitalise the profession and make it more meaningful." | tech |
Microsoft takes on desktop search
Microsoft has entered the desktop search fray, releasing a test version of its tool to find documents, e-mails and other files on a PC hard drive.
The beta program only works on PCs running Windows XP or Windows 2000. The desktop search market is becoming increasingly crowded with firms touting programs that help people find files. Search giant Google launched its desktop search tool in October, while Yahoo is planning to release similar software in January.
"Our ambition for search is to provide the ultimate information tool that can find anything you're looking for," said Yusuf Mehdi, corporate vice president at Microsoft's MSN internet division. Microsoft's program can be used as a toolbar on the Windows desktop, the Internet Explorer browser and within the Outlook e-mail program. The software giant is coming late to the desktop search arena, competing with a large number of rivals. Google has already released a desktop tool. Yahoo is planning to get into the game in January and AOL is expected to offer desktop searching early next year. Small firms such as Blinkx, Copernic, Enfish X1 Technologies and X-Friend offer tools that catalogue the huge amounts of information that people increasingly store on their desktop or home computer. Apple will release a similar search system for its computers called Spotlight that is due to be released with the Tiger operating system. | tech |
Gamers snap up new Sony PSP
Gamers have bought almost all of the first batch of Sony's new PlayStation Portable (PSP) games console, which went on sale in Japan on Sunday.
Thousands of people queued for hours to get hold of one of the 200,000 PSPs which were shipped to retailers. The handheld console can play games, music and movies and goes on sale in Europe and North America next year. Despite the demand Sony said it would not increase the 500,000-strong stock of PSPs it plans to ship by year's end.
Sony says it intends to ship three million of the consoles by March 2005. The company is hoping to challenge the dominance of Nintendo in the handheld market. Nintendo released its new DS console earlier this year and has already raised shipment targets for the device by 40%. The PSP is selling in Japan for 19,800 yen ($188; £98) while Nintendo's DS console sells in the US and Japan for $150 (£78). Nintendo's goal is to ship 5 million of its new Nintendo DS handheld consoles by March 2005. | tech |
Go-ahead for new internet names
The internet could soon have two new domain names, aimed at mobile services and the jobs market.
The Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (Icann) has given preliminary approval to two new addresses - .mobi and .jobs. They are among 10 new names being considered by the net's oversight body. Others include a domain for pornography, an anti-spam domain as well as .post and .travel, for the postal and travel industries.
The .mobi domain would be aimed at websites and other services that work specifically around mobile phones, while the .jobs address could be used by companies wanting a dedicated site for job postings. The process to see the new domain names go live in cyberspace could take months and Icann officials warned that there were no guarantees they would ultimately be accepted. Applicants paid £23,000 apiece to have their proposals considered. The application for .mobi was sponsored by technology firms including Nokia, Microsoft and T-Mobile.
Of the 10 currently under consideration, the least likely to win approval is the .xxx domain for pornographic websites. There are currently around 250 domain names in use around the globe, mostly for specific countries such as .fr for France and .uk for Britain. Perhaps unsurprisingly, .com remains the most popular address on the web. | tech |
Set your television to wow
Television started off as a magical blurry image. Then came the sharpness, the colour and the widescreen format. Now the TV set is taking another leap forward into a crystal clear future, although those in Europe will have to be patient.
After years of buzz about high-definition TV (HDTV) it is finally taking off in a handful of countries around the world, mainly the US and Japan. If you believe the hype, then HDTV will so wow you, that you will never want to go back to your old telly. "HDTV is just the latest must-have technology in viewers' homes," says Jo Flaherty, a senior broadcaster with the CBS network in the US. All television images are made up of pixels, going across the screen, and scan lines going down. British TV pictures are made up of 625 lines and about 700 pixels. By contrast, HDTV offers up to 1,080 active lines, with each line made up of 1,920 pixels. The result is a picture which can be up to six times as sharp as standard TV. But to get the full impact, programmes need to be broadcast in this format and you need a HDTV set to receive them. Most new computer displays are already capable of handling high-resolution pictures. Viewers in Japan, the US, Australia, Canada and South Korea are already embracing the new TV technology, with a selection of primetime programmes being broadcast in the new format, which includes 5.1 digital surround sound.
But TV viewers in Europe will have to wait to enjoy the eye-blasting high-definition images.
Many high-end European TV programmes, such as the recent Athens Olympics, are already being produced in high-definition. But they still reach your screen in the old 625 lines. The prospects for getting sharper images soon do not seem very encouraging. According to consultants Strategy Analytics, only 12% of homes in Europe will have TVs capable of showing programmes in high-definition by 2008. But the HDTV hype spilling out of the US and Japan has spurred European broadcasters and consumer electronic companies to push for change. Big sports and entertainment events are set to help trigger the general public's attention. The 2006 World Cup in Germany will be broadcast in high-definition.
In the UK, satellite broadcaster BSkyB is planning HDTV services in 2006. There is already a HDTV service in Europe called Euro1080. Other European broadcasters, especially in France and Germany, also aiming to launch similar services.
In Britain, digital satellite and cable are largely seen as the natural home for HDTV, at least while a decision is taken regarding terrestrial broadcast options. The communications watchdog Ofcom could hand over some terrestrial frequencies freed up when the UK switches off its analogue TV signal. For now, broadcasters like the BBC are working on their own HDTV plans, although with no launch date in sight. "The BBC will start broadcasting in HDTV when the time is right, and it would not be just a showcase, but a whole set of programming," says Andy Quested, from the BBC's high-definition support group. "We have made the commitment to produce all our output in high-definition by 2010, which would put us on the leading edge." One of the options under consideration is to offer high-definition pictures on the web. The BBC has already dipped its toe into this, including some HDTV content in recent trials of its interactive media player - a video player for PCs. It is planning to offer special releases of selected flagship programmes online in the near future. According to Mr Quested, this could help put Europe back into the running in the race to switch to HDTV. This is backed by recent research which suggests that the number of Europeans with broadband has exploded over the past 12 months, with the web eating into TV viewing habits. | tech |
Hollywood to sue net film pirates
The US movie industry has launched legal action to sue people who facilitate illegal film downloading.
The Motion Picture Association of America wants to stop people using the program BitTorrent to swap movies. The industry is targeting people who run websites which provide information and internet links to movies which have been copied or filmed in cinemas. More than 100 server operators have been targeted in the actions launched in the US and UK, the MPAA added. The suits were filed against users of the file-sharing programs BitTorrent, eDonkey and DirectConnect in the United States, United Kingdom, France, Finland and the Netherlands, the MPAA said.
BitTorrent users can download movies by following a link to files which are found on websites called trackers. Unlike most peer-to-peer programs BitTorrent works by sharing a file, which could be anything from a legitimate digital photo to a copied movie, among multiple users at the same time. The movie industry hopes that suing the people who run the trackers will cut BitTorrent users off from illegal movies at source. Last month major film studios started legal action against 200 individuals who were swapping films online. The growth in broadband has made it quicker for people to download movies and the industry fears that if it does not take action now, it could suffer the same downturn as the music industry. | tech |
PC ownership to 'double by 2010'
The number of personal computers worldwide is expected to double by 2010 to 1.3 billion machines, according to a report by analysts Forrester Research.
The growth will be driven by emerging markets such as China, Russia and India, the report predicted. More than a third of all new PCs will be in these markets, with China adding 178 million new PCs by 2010, it said. Low-priced computers made by local companies are expected to dominate in such territories, Forrester said. The report comes less than a week after IBM, a pioneer of the PC business, sold its PC hardware division to China's number one computer maker Lenovo.
The $1.75bn (£900m) deal will make the combined operation the third biggest PC vendor in the world. "Today's products from Western PC vendors won't dominate in those markets in the long term," Simon Yates, a senior analyst for Forrester, said. "Instead local PC makers like Lenovo Group in China and Aquarius in Russia that can better tailor the PC form factor, price point and applications to their local markets will ultimately win the market share battle," he said. There are currently 575 million PCs in use globally. The United States, Europe and Asia-Pacific are expected to add 150 million new PCs by 2010, according to the study. The report forecast that there will be 80 million new PC users in India by 2010 and 40 million new users in Indonesia. | tech |
PC photo printers challenge pros
Home printed pictures can be cheaper and higher quality than those from High Street developers, tests shows.
A survey carried out by PC Pro magazine looked at which of 100 home photo printers offered a better deal than handing your snaps to a photo lab. The tests found that images from top PC printers kept their colour longer than professionally produced photographs. But using the wrong printer cartridge could means snaps fade in months, warned the magazine.
The group test of 100 home photo printers for PCs discovered how much it costs to create images using the devices compared to online developers as well as High Street names such as Jessops, Boots and Snappy Snaps. The comprehensive test also revealed how quickly different printers produced images, the quality of the finished image and how resistant finished pictures were to smudging or water damage. It found that although some ink for printers now costs more than £2 per millilitre it can still be cheaper to produce prints from photographs at home than it is to send them off to a High Street store. "If you really like your photos, then it's definitely worth printing at home instead of going to the high street, but only if you choose the right printer," said Nick Ross, top tester at PC Pro.
Mr Ross said that a new generation of printers produced images with brighter colours and that were less likely to fade than many High Street developers or even some professional wedding photographers. Some High Street photo shops can be the cheapest when it came to developing prints that were 6x4in, said Mr Ross, but the test revealed that images 7x5in and 8x10in in size were cheaper to produce at home. According to PC Pro, producing a print 8x10in on an Epson R800 printer using top quality paper costs £1.87. At Jessops the same image would cost £2.50 and at Snappy Snaps £9.99. A 10x7in snap at Boots would cost £4.99. "Considering how inconvenient it can be to go to the High Street and how silver-halide prints can fade in the sun, we're adamant that it's now better, cheaper and more convenient to print at home," he said. Ann Simpson, marketing manager at Snappy Snaps believes the convenience of high street printing will continue to attract customers. "Some people will want to do their own thing on their computer but the feedback to us is that customers often have to print two or three pictures at home in order to get a good one," she said. "Many people are not skilled at getting the colour, contrast and cropping right and they don't want the hassle," she added. The magazine test found that which ink consumers use determined how long their prints lasted before they started fading. It recommended avoiding so-called third-party inks not produced by printer makers because they tended to produce prints that fade the quickest. | tech |
The gaming world in 2005
If you have finished Doom 3, Half Life 2 and Halo 2, don't worry. There's a host of gaming gems set for release in 2005.
WORLD OF WARCRAFT
The US reception to this game from developers Blizzard has been hugely enthusiastic, with the title topping its competitors in the area of life-eating, high-fantasy, massively multiplayer role-player gaming. Solid, diverse, accessible and visually striking, it may well open up the genre like never before. If nothing else, it will develop a vast and loyal community. Released 25 February on PC. ICO 2 (WORKING TITLE) Ico remains a benchmark for PS2 gaming, a title that took players into a uniquely atmospheric and artistic world of adventure. The (spiritual) sequel has visuals that echo those of the original, but promises to expand the Ico world, with hero Wanda taking on a series of giants. The other known working title is Wanda And Colossus. Release date to be confirmed on PS2. THE LEGEND OF ZELDA
The charismatic cel imagery has been scrapped in favour of a dark, detailed aesthetic (realism isn't quite the right word) that connects more with Ocarina Of Time. Link resumes his more teenage incarnation too, though enemies, elements and moves look familiar from the impressive trailer that has been released. Horseback adventuring across a vast land is promised. Release date to be confirmed on GameCube. ADVANCE WARS DS The UK Nintendo DS launch line-up is still to be confirmed at time of writing, but titles that exploit its two-screen and touch capacity, like WarioWare Touched! and Sega's Feel The Magic, are making a strong impression in other territories. Personally, I can't wait for the latest Advance Wars, the franchise that has been the icing on the cake of Nintendo handheld gaming during the past few years. Release date to be confirmed on DS. S.T.A.L.K.E.R.
Following in the high-spec footsteps of Far Cry and Half-Life 2, this looks like the key upcoming PC first-person shooter (with role-playing elements). The fact that it is inspired in part by Andrei Tarkovsky's enigmatic 1979 masterpiece Stalker and set in 2012 in the disaster zone, a world of decay and mutation, makes it all the more intriguing. Released 1 March on PC. METAL GEAR SOLID: SNAKE EATER
More Hideo Kojima serious stealth, featuring action in the Soviet-controlled jungle in 1964. The game see Snake having to survive on his wits in the jungle, including eating wildlife. Once again, expect cinematic cut scenes and polished production values. Released March on PS2. DEAD OR ALIVE ULTIMATE Tecmo's Team Ninja are back with retooled and revamped versions of Dead Or Alive 1 and 2. Here's the big, big deal though - they're playable over Xbox Live. Released 11 March on Xbox. KNIGHTS OF THE OLD REPUBLIC II Looks set to build on the acclaimed original Star Wars role playing game with new characters, new Force powers and a new set of moral decisions, despite a different developer. Released 11 February on Xbox and PC. | tech |
Bond game fails to shake or stir
For gaming fans, the word GoldenEye evokes excited memories not only of the James Bond revival flick of 1995, but also the classic shoot-em-up that accompanied it and left N64 owners glued to their consoles for many an hour.
Adopting that hallowed title somewhat backfires on this new game, for it fails to deliver on the promise of its name and struggles to generate the original's massive sense of fun. This however is not a sequel, nor does it relate to the GoldenEye film. You are the eponymous renegade spy, an agent who deserts to the Bond world's extensive ranks of criminal masterminds, after being deemed too brutal for MI6. Your new commander-in-chief is the portly Auric Goldfinger, last seen in 1964, but happily running around bent on world domination. With a determination to justify its name which is even less convincing than that of Tina Turner's similarly-titled theme song, the game literally gives the player a golden eye following an injury, which enables a degree of X-ray vision.
Rogue Agent signals its intentions by featuring James Bond initially and proceeding to kill him off within moments, squashed by a plummeting helicopter. The notion is of course to add a novel dark edge to a 007 game, but the premise simply does not get the juices flowing like it needs to.
Recent Bond games like Nightfire and Everything Or Nothing were very competent and did a fine job of capturing the sense of flair, invention and glamour of the film franchise. This title lacks that aura, and when the Bond magic shines through, it feels like a lucky accident. The central problem is that the gameplay just is not good enough. Quite aside from the bizarre inability to jump, the even more bizarre glaring graphical bugs and dubious enemy AI, the levels simply are not put together with much style or imagination. Admittedly the competition has been tough, even in recent weeks, with the likes of Halo 2 and Half Life 2 triumphing in virtually every department. What the game is good at is enveloping you in noisy, dynamic scenes of violent chaos. As is the trend of late, you are made to feel like you are in the midst of a really messy and fraught encounter. Sadly that sense of action is outweighed by the difficulty of navigating and battling within the chaos, meaning that frustration is often the outcome. And irregular save points mean you have to backtrack each time you are killed. A minute red dot passes for a crosshair, although the collision-detection is so suspect that the difficulties of aiming weapons are compensated for. Shooting enemies from a distance can be tricky, and you will not always know you have picked them off, since dead enemies vanish literally before they have fully hit the floor, and they do so in some woefully uninspiring death animations. It is perhaps indicative of a lack of confidence that the game maker's allow you several different weapons almost immediately and throw you quickly into raging firefights - no time is risked with a measured build-up.
By far the most satisfying element of the game is seeing old favourites like Dr No, Goldfinger, hat-fiend Oddjob and crazed Russian sex beast Xenia Onatopp resurrected after all these years, and with their faces rendered in an impressively recognisable fashion.
There is a real thrill from doing battle with these legendary villains, and it is a testament to the power of the Bond universe that they can cut such a dash. But the in-game niggles, combined with a story and presentation that just do not feel sufficiently well thought-through, will make this a disappointment for most. Diehard fans of Bond will probably find enough here to make it a worthwhile purchase and try to ignore the failings. The game is weak, not completely unplayable. Then again, 007 fanatics may also take umbrage at the cavalier blending of characters from different eras. Given James Bond's healthy pedigree in past games, there is every reason to hope that this is just a blip, a commendable idea that just has not worked, that will be rectified when the character inevitably makes his return.
GoldenEye: Rogue Agent is out now | tech |
Humanoid robot learns how to run
Car-maker Honda's humanoid robot Asimo has just got faster and smarter.
The Japanese firm is a leader in developing two-legged robots and the new, improved Asimo (Advanced Step in Innovative Mobility) can now run, find his way around obstacles as well as interact with people. Eventually Asimo could find gainful employment in homes and offices. "The aim is to develop a robot that can help people in their daily lives," said a Honda spokesman.
To get the robot running for the first time was not an easy process as it involved Asimo making an accurate leap and absorbing the impact of landing without slipping or spinning. The "run" he is now capable of is perhaps not quite up to Olympic star Kelly Holmes' standard. At 3km/h, it is closer to a leisurely jog. Its makers claim that it is almost four times as fast as Sony's Qrio, which became the first robot to run last year. The criteria for running robots is defined by engineers as having both feet off the ground between strides. Asimo has improved in other ways too, increasing his walking speed, from 1.6km/h to 2.5km, growing 10cm to 130cm and putting on 2kg in weight. While he may not quite be ready for yoga, he does have more freedom of movement, being able to twist his hips and bend his wrists, thumbs and neck.
Asimo has already made his mark on the international robot scene and in November was inducted into the Robot Hall of Fame. He has wowed audiences around the world with his ability to walk upstairs, recognise faces and come when beckoned. In August 2003 he even attended a state dinner in the Czech Republic, travelling with the Japanese prime minister as a goodwill envoy. He is one of a handful of robots used by tech firms to trumpet their technological advances. Technology developed for Asimo could be used in the automobile industry as electronics increasingly take over from mechanics in car design. For the moment Asimo's biggest role is an entertainer and the audience gathered to see his first public run greeted his slightly comical gait with amusement, according to reports. Robots can fulfil serious functions in society and the United Nations Economic Commission for Europe predicts that the worldwide market for industrial robots will swell from 81,000 units in 2003 to 106,000 in 2007. | tech |
Nintendo adds media playing to DS
Nintendo is releasing an adapter for its DS handheld console so it can play music and video.
The add-on for the DS means people can download TV programmes, film clips or MP3 files to the adaptor and then play them back while on the move. The release of the media add-on is an attempt by the Japanese games giant to protect its dominance of the handheld gaming market. Nintendo said the media adapter will be available from February in Japan.
The Nintendo DS is the successor to the hugely successful GameBoy handheld game console and went on sale in Japan on 2 December. The DS has two screens, one of which is touch sensitive, and also has on-board a short-range wireless link that lets people play against each other.
The launch of the media adapter, and the attempt to broaden the appeal of the device, is widely seen as a response to the unveiling of the Sony PSP which was built as a multi-purpose media player and game gadget from the start. Sony is thought to be preparing pre-packaged movies and music for the PSP. The add-on will also work with the GameBoy Advance SP. Nintendo dominates the handheld gaming console world thanks to successive versions of the GameBoy. More than 28 million GameBoy Advance handhelds have been sold around the world. The dual-screen DS is also thought to be selling well with more than 2.5 million expected to be sold by the end of 2004. Nintendo said it had no plans to sell the media adapter outside Japan. When it goes on sale the adapter is expected to cost about 5000 yen (£25), roughly the difference in price between the DS and the higher-priced Sony PSP. | tech |
Apple sues to stop product leaks
Computer firm Apple has issued a lawsuit to prevent online leaks of information about future products.
The lawsuit, against an unidentified individual, comes just weeks before the MacWorld conference in San Francisco, used to showcase new products. The complaint said an "unidentified individual... has recently misappropriated and disseminated confidential information". The lawsuit was filed with the Santa Clara California Superior Court. Apple is famously secretive about its future product launches while Apple users are equally famous for speculating about new technology from the company. Fans have speculated in recent weeks about the possibility of a new type of iPod being announced at the MacWorld conference.
Apple said in the seven-page complaint, filed on 13 December, that it did not know the "true names or capacities, whether individual, associate, corporate or otherwise," of the defendants. The company said it would amend the complaint once they had discovered the names of those who had allegedly leaked information. It is not the first time Apple has sued people who have posted information about future products on the internet. In December 2002, Apple sued a former contractor who allegedly posted online drawings, images and engineering details of the company's PowerMac G4 computer. In a statement, Apple said of the current lawsuit: "Apple has filed a civil complaint against unnamed individuals who we believe stole our trade secrets and posted detailed information about an unannounced Apple product on the internet." | tech |
Gamer buys $26,500 virtual land
A 22-year-old gamer has spent $26,500 (£13,700) on an island that exists only in a computer role-playing game (RPG).
The Australian gamer, known only by his gaming moniker Deathifier, bought the island in an online auction. The land exists within the game Project Entropia, an RPG which allows thousands of players to interact with each other. Entropia allows gamers to buy and sell virtual items using real cash, while fans of other titles often use auction site eBay to sell their virtual wares. Earlier this year economists calculated that these massively multi-player online role-playing games (MMORPGs) have a gross economic impact equivalent to the GDP of the African nation of Namibia.
"This is a historic moment in gaming history, and this sale only goes to prove that massive multi-player online gaming has reached a new plateau," said Marco Behrmann, director of community relations at Mindark, the game's developer.
The virtual island includes a gigantic abandoned castle and beautiful beaches which are described as ripe for developing beachfront property. Deathifier will make money from his investment as he is able to tax other gamers who come to his virtual land to hunt or mine for gold. He has also begun to sell plots to people who wish to build virtual homes. "This type of investment will definitely become a trend in online gaming," said Deathifier. The Entopia economy lets gamers exchange real currency into PED (Project Entropia Dollars) and back again into real money. Ten PEDs are the equivalent to one US dollar and typical items sold include iron ingots ($5) and shogun armour ($1.70) Gamers can theoretically earn money by accumulating PEDs through the acquisition of goods, buildings, and land in the Entropia universe. MMORPGs have become enormously popular in the last 10 years with hundreds of thousands of gamers living out alternate lives in fantasy worlds. Almost 200,000 people are registered players on Project Entropia. | tech |
Microsoft sets sights on spyware
Windows users could soon be paying Microsoft to keep PCs free of spyware.
Following the takeover of anti-spyware firm Giant, Microsoft said it would soon release a toolkit that strips machines of the irritating programs. Although initially free, Microsoft has not ruled out charging people who want to keep this toolkit up to date. Surveys show that almost every Windows PC is infested with spyware programs that do everything from bombard users with adverts to steal login data. Microsoft said that a beta version of the toolkit to clean up Windows machines should be available within 30 days.
Designed for PCs running Windows 2000 and XP, the utility will clean out spyware programs, constantly monitor what happens on a PC and will be regularly updated to catch the latest variants. Before now many of Microsoft's other security boosting programs, such as the firewall in Windows XP, have been given away free. But Mike Nash, vice president in Microsoft's security business unit, said it was still working out pricing and licensing issues. Charging for future versions has not been discounted, he said. "We'll come up with a plan and roll that out," he said. The plan could turn out to be a lucrative one for Microsoft. A recent survey by Earthlink and Webroot found that 90% of PCs are infested with the surreptitious software and that, on average, each one is harbouring 28 separate spyware programs. Currently users wanting protection from spyware have turned to free programs such as Spybot and Ad-Aware. Spyware comes in many forms and at its most benign exploits lazy browsing habits to install itself and subject users to unwanted adverts. Other forms hijack net browser settings to force people to view pages they would otherwise never visit. At its most malign, spyware watches everything that people do with their PC and steals login information and other personal data. Microsoft's announcement about spyware comes after it bought small New York software firm Giant Company Software. Terms of the acquisition were not disclosed. | tech |
Video phone help for deaf people
Deaf people who prefer to communicate using British Sign Language (BSL) could soon be having their phone conversations relayed using webcams or videophones and an interpreter.
The Video Relay Service is being piloted by the Royal National Institute for Deaf People (RNID), but the organisation says unless the service is provided at the same rate as voice calls it will be beyond most people's pockets. The RNID is urging telecoms regulator, Ofcom, to reduce the cost of the service from the current £7.00 per minute and make it the same as ordinary phone calls. The service works by putting a deaf person in visual contact with a BSL interpreter via a webcam or video phone, and the interpreter then relays the deaf person's conversation using a telephone and translates the other person's response into sign language.
For many deaf people, especially those born deaf, BSL is a first and preferred means of communication.
Until now, the only alternative has been to use textphones which means having to type a message and have it relayed via an operator. "In the past, I've used textphones but they have problems," said Robert Currington who is taking part in the pilot. "I communicate in BSL; my written English is not very good and it takes me longer to think in English and type my message." "I sometimes find it difficult to understand the reply." The RNID says the UK is lagging behind other countries which are already making relay services available at the cost of an ordinary phone call. "There are no technical or economic reasons for not providing equivalent access to services for deaf people," said RNID technology director, Guido Gybels. "In the US and Australia, sign language relay services have already been made universally available at the same cost as a voice call. "By failing to provide and fund the video relay service for sign language users, the telecommunications sector is effectively discriminating against an already disenfranchised group."
Ofcom says it has plans to review the services that telecoms companies are obliged to provide early next year. And new technology, including the Video Relay Service, will be discussed with interested parties in the near future. But a spokesman said its powers were limited by legislation. "Any proposals to extend existing arrangements to cover new services would be for government to consider," he said. Mr Currington, like many of the UK's 70,000 BSL users, will be hoping that a way can be found to make a cost-effective service available. "The relay service makes phone conversations a pleasure," he said. "I can show my emotions more easily in BSL in the same way hearing people express emotions through voice calls." | tech |
Virus poses as Christmas e-mail
Security firms are warning about a Windows virus disguising itself as an electronic Christmas card.
The Zafi.D virus translates the Christmas greeting on its subject line into the language of the person receiving infected e-mail. Anti-virus firms speculate that this multilingual ability is helping the malicious program spread widely online. Anti-virus firm Sophos said that 10% of the e-mail currently on the net was infected with the Zafi virus.
Like many other Windows viruses, Zafi-D plunders Microsoft Outlook for e-mail addresses and then uses mail-sending software to despatch itself across the web to new victims. To be infected users must open up the attachment travelling with the message which bears the code for the malicious bug. The attachment on the e-mail poses as an electronic Christmas card but anyone opening it will simply get a crude image of two smiley faces.
The virus' subject line says "Merry Christmas" and translates this into one of 15 languages depending of the final suffix of the e-mail address the infected message has been sent to. The message in the body of the e-mail reads: "Happy Holidays" and this too is translated. On infected machines the virus tries to disable anti-virus and firewall software and opens up a backdoor on the PC to hand over control to the writer of the virus. The virus is thought to have spread most widely in South America, Italy, Spain, Bulgaria and Hungary. The original Zafi virus appeared in April this year. "We have seen these hoaxes for several Christmases already, and personally I prefer traditional pen and paper cards, and we recommend this to all our clients too," said Mikko Hypponen, who heads F-Secure's anti-virus team. | tech |
Fast lifts rise into record books
Two high-speed lifts at the world's tallest building have been officially recognised as the planet's fastest.
The lifts take only 30 seconds to whisk passengers to the top of the 508m tall TFC 101 Tower in Taipei, Taiwan. The Guinness Book of Records has declared the 17m per second speed of the two lifts the swiftest on Earth. The lifts also have a pressure control system to stop passengers' ears popping as they ascend and descend at high speed.
In total, the TFC Tower has 61 lifts, 34 of them double-deckers, and 50 escalators to shuttle people around its 106 floors. The TFC 101 Tower is due to be officially opened on 31 December.
The super-fast lifts can speed up to 24 passengers to the tip of the tower in about 30 seconds, while ascending their 382m track. The 17m/s top speed of the lifts translates to about 38mph (61km/h). Curiously the lifts take longer to descend and spend almost a whole minute returning to ground level from the top of the TFC Tower. The key new technologies applied in the world's fastest elevators include:
- A pressure control system, which adjusts the atmospheric pressure inside a car by using suction and discharge blowers, preventing "ear popping"
- An active control system which tries to balance the lift more finely and remove the sources of vibrations
- Streamlined cars to reduce the whistling noise produced by running the lifts at a high speed inside a narrow shaft
"The certification of our elevators as world record-holders by the authoritative Guinness World Records is a great honour for us," said Masayuki Shimono, president of manufacturer Toshiba Elevator and Building Systems which installed the lifts. The first record for the world's fastest passenger elevators was published in the first edition of the Guinness Book of Records in 1955. "As such, it is an interesting indicator of how technology has advanced in the 50 years since that first edition, when the record was 426m per minute, or 25.6 km/h, less than half the speed of the new record," said Hein Le Roux, specialist researcher at the Guinness World Records. Taipei's TFC 101 Tower is more than 50m taller than the Petronas Towers in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia - formerly the world's tallest skyscraper. | tech |
Broadband in the UK gathers pace
One person in the UK is joining the internet's fast lane every 10 seconds, according to BT.
The telecoms giant said the number of people on broadband via the telephone line had now surpassed four million. Including those connected via cable, almost six million people have a fast, always-on connection. The boom has been fuelled by fierce competition and falling prices, as well as the greater availability of broadband over the phone line. "The take-up rate for broadband is accelerating at a terrific pace," said Ben Verwaayen, BT's chief executive. "We will be in a very strong position to hit our five million target by summer 2006 much earlier than we had previously expected."
The last million connections were made over the past four months, with thousands of people being added to the total every day of the week.
Those signing up to broadband include those that get their service direct from BT or via the many companies that re-sell BT lines under their own name. Part of the surge in people signing up was due to BT stretching the reach of ADSL - the UK's most widely used way of getting broadband - beyond six kilometres. Asymmetric Digital Subscriber Line technology lets ordinary copper phone lines support high data speeds. The standard speed is 512kbps, though faster connections are available. According to BT, more than 95% of UK homes and businesses can receive broadband over the phone line. It aims to extend this figure to 99.4% by next summer. There are also an estimated 1.7 million cable broadband customers in the UK. | tech |
Hollywood campaign hits websites
Movie studio efforts to stop pirated films being shared on peer-to-peer networks have claimed a high-profile victim.
The campaign of legal action is thought to be behind the closure of the widely used Suprnova.org website. The site was the most popular place for people swapping and sharing links for the BitTorrent network. A recent study showed that more than half of the peer-to-peer traffic during June was for the BitTorrent system.
In a message posted on Suprnova.org on Sunday, the site's controllers said the site was "closing down for good in the way that we all know it". If the site did return, the message said, it would not be hosting any more torrent links. It continued: "We are very sorry for this, but there was no other way, we have tried everything. " The only parts that would keep going, said the operators of the Suprnova site, were the discussion forums and net chat channels. The site is thought to have closed following an announcement by the Motion Picture Association of America that it was launching legal action against those operating BitTorrent servers rather than end users. Because of the way that BitTorrent works, server sites do not host the actual file being shared, instead they host a link that points people to others that have it. By targeting servers, the MPAA hopes to cripple BitTorrent's ability to share files. In the opening days of the MPAA campaign, the organisation filed 100 lawsuits against operators of BitTorrent server site. The launching of the legal seems to be having an effect. Phoenix Torrents, another popular BitTorrent site, has also decided to shut down and, though it gave no reasons for the closure, it is thought to be motivated by the threat of legal action. Last week Finnish police raided a BitTorrent site based in the country that, according to reports, let 10,000 users shared pirated films, software, music and games. | tech |
Poles play with GameBoy 'blip-pop'
A group of artists in Poland has taken the cacophony of blips, boops and beeps created as players bash buttons on Nintendo's handheld GameBoy console to a new level.
The Gameboyzz Orchestra Project has taken the game sounds to put together music tunes they have dubbed "blip-pop." Think of it as Donkey Kong meets Norman Cook, or maybe Tetris takes on Kraftwerk. Any way you slice it, the sound is distinct. All the sounds are made by six Nintendo GameBoys, with a mixture of older models and newer Advance SP handhelds. The Gameboyzz Orchestra Project tweaks the software a bit, and then connects the units through a mixing board.
Jarek Kujda, one of the project's founding members has been into electronic music and video games, for a while now.
"I was playing some experimental music and three, four years ago when I first used a GameBoy in my band as a drum machine," said Kujda. He realised that the console could be used as a rudimentary synthesizer. He wondered, if one GameBoy can make music, what would happen if he put six of them together? Kujda found five other people who were interested and the Gameboyzz Orchestra Project was born. "Gameboyzz Orchestra Project is more of an improvisational project," said Kudja. "We prepare some patterns before a concert, and then improvise during the concert." The group plays maybe four or five shows a year. Malgorzata Kujda, Jarek's younger sister and a fellow band member, describes a Gameboyzz Orchestra Project concert as a lot of noise. "For example, I make music with more hard beats and noises," she said. "But each of us makes another music, a different sound. And then in the concert we just improvise, and that I think is more fun for us."
The Gameboyzz Orchestra Project admits they get mixed reactions from audiences. Some love the group's music, and others are not quite sure what to make of it.
In the world of electronic music, these purveyors of blip-pop are not unique. But Jarek Kujda says they try to be unique. "We have lots of people making music on old school stuff, electronic old school stuff like Commodore, Atari, Spectrum," he said. "We want to play only experimental music, not cover songs. We're something like an electronic jam session." The Gameboyzz Orchestra Project's tracks are available online and the group hopes to make a CD next year. And they have sponsorship, courtesy of the Polish distributor of Nintendo products. The members of the Gameboyzz Orchestra Project do not expect serious competition anytime soon. A GameBoy Advance costs about US $200 in Poland these days, which is still way beyond the reach of most Polish gamers, or musicians.
Clark Boyd is technology correspondent for The World, a BBC World Service and WGBH-Boston co-production | tech |
Santy worm makes unwelcome visit
Thousands of website bulletin boards have been defaced by a virus that used Google to spread across the net.
The Santy worm first appeared on 20 December and within 24 hours had successfully hit more than 40,000 websites. The malicious program exploits a vulnerability in the widely used phpBB software. Santy's spread has now been stopped after Google began blocking infected sites searching for new victims.
The worm replaces chat forums with a webpage announcing that the site had been defaced by the malicious program. Soon after being infected, sites hit by the worm started randomly searching for other websites running the vulnerable phpBB software. Once Google started blocking these search queries the rate of infection tailed off sharply. A message sent to Finnish security firm F-Secure by Google's security team said: "While a seven hour response for something like this is not outrageous, we think we can and should do better." "We will be reviewing our procedures to improve our response time in the future to similar problems," the Google team said. Security firms estimate that about 1m websites run their discussion groups and forums with the open source phpBB program. The worst of the attack now seems to be over as a search conducted on the morning of the 22 December produced only 1,440 hits for sites showing the text used in the defacement message. People using the sites hit by Santy will not be affected by the worm. Santy is not the first malicious program to use Google to help it spread. In July a variant of the MyDoom virus slowed down searches on Google as the program flooded the search site with queries looking for new e-mail addresses to send itself to. | tech |
EU software patent law delayed
Controversial new EU rules for the patenting of computer-based inventions have been put on hold due to a last minute intervention from Poland.
Poland - a large and therefore crucial EU member - has requested more time to consider the issue, especially as it relates to the patenting of software. Critics say the law would favour large companies over small, innovative ones. They say it could have massive ramifications for developments such as open source software.
Polish ministers want to see the phrasing of the text of the Directive on the Patentability of Computer-Implemented Inventions changed so that it excludes the patenting of software. The planned law has ignited angry debate about whether the EU should allow the patenting of computer programs and internet business methods as currently happens in the US. So, for instance, US-based Amazon.com holds a patent on 'one-click shopping'. Critics claim the law, which the EU says is needed to harmonise with the US, is little more than a law on ideas. "Patent rights, it is claimed, protect inventors but in this case it is exclusively the interests of the big companies that are protected," Eva Lichtenberg, a Austrian Green member of the European Parliament said in a statement. "Smaller, innovative firms cannot afford the patenting and legal costs that the directive would inflict on them," she added. The European Parliament has already clashed with the European Union on the issue and there have been accusations that the process to decide the issue has been undemocratic. The directive has been subject to several previous delays. | tech |
Apple sues 'Tiger' file sharers
Apple has taken more legal action to stop online leaks of its new products.
The computer giant has sued three men for releasing preview versions of its latest Mac OSX software onto file-sharing sites prior to its release. It said two versions of the operating system, codenamed Tiger, were put onto the net in October and December. It is the second time in two weeks Apple has taken legal action to protect its future products. Tiger is due to be shipped in early 2005. Last week, it filed a lawsuit against "unnamed individuals" who leaked details about new products onto the web.
The latest action was against members of the Apple Developer Connection, a group of programmers which gets to see test versions of upcoming software so they can develop or change their own programs to work with them. "Members of Apple Developer Connection receive advance copies of Apple software under strict confidentiality agreements, which we take very seriously to protect our intellectual property," Apple said in a statement.
It added that its future financial results were very much dependent on developing and improving its operating systems and other software. It is thought the men used sites which employ BitTorrent technology. With BitTorrent technology, sites do not host actual files being shared, instead they host a link that points people to others that have the particular file. Last week, the Motion Picture Association of America launched a legal campaign targeting websites that operate using the BitTorrent system in an effort to clamp down on movie piracy. Apple is no stranger to taking legal action against those who leak product information. In December 2002, it sued a former contractor who allegedly put drawings, images and engineering details of its PowerMac G4 computer online. The latest action was filed on Monday in the US District Court in California. It comes just weeks before the MacWorld conference in San Francisco, used to showcase new products. | tech |
Apple unveils low-cost 'Mac mini'
Apple has unveiled a new, low-cost Macintosh computer for the masses, billed as the Mac mini.
Chief executive Steve Jobs showed off the new machine at his annual MacWorld speech, in San Francisco. The $499 Macintosh, sold for £339 in the UK, was described by Jobs as the "most important Mac" made by Apple. Mr Jobs also unveiled the iPod shuffle, a new music player using cheaper flash memory rather than hard drives, which are used in more expensive iPods.
The new computer shifts the company into new territory - traditionally, the firm is known as a design and innovation-led firm rather than as a mass-market manufacturer. The Mac mini comes without a monitor, keyboard and mouse, and a second version with a larger hard drive will also be sold for $599.
The machine - which will be available from 22 January - was described by Jobs as "BYODKM... bring your own display, keyboard, and mouse". In an attempt to win over Windows PC customers, Mr Jobs said it would appeal to people thinking of changing operating systems. "People who are thinking of switching will have no more excuses," he said. "It's the newest and most affordable Mac ever." The new computer has been the subject of speculation for several weeks and while few people will be surprised by the announcement many analysts had already said it was a sensible move. In January, Apple sued a website after it published what it said were specifications for the new computer. Ian Harris, deputy editor of UK magazine Mac Format, said the machine would appeal to PC-owning consumers who had purchased an iPod.
"They want a further taste of Mac because they like what they have seen with iPod." Harris added: "Everybody thought that Apple was happy to remain a niche maker of luxury computers, and moving into a market dominated by low margin manufacturers like Dell is a bold move. "But it shows that Apple is keen to capitalise on the mass market success it's had with the iPod. The Mac mini will appeal to PC users looking for an attractive, 'no fuss' computer." The new iPod shuffle comes in two versions - one offering 512mb of storage for $99 (£69 in the Uk) and a second with one gigabyte of storage for $149 (£99) - and went on sale Tuesday. The music player has no display and will play songs either consecutively or shuffled. The smaller iPod will hold about 120 songs, said Mr Jobs. Mr Jobs told the delegates at MacWorld that iPod already had a 65% market share of all digital music players. | tech |
Speech takes on search engines
A Scottish firm is looking to attract web surfers with a search engine that reads out results.
Called Speegle, it has the look and feel of a normal search engine, with the added feature of being able to read out the results. Scottish speech technology firm CEC Systems launched the site in November. But experts have questioned whether talking search engines are of any real benefit to people with visual impairments.
The Edinburgh-based firm CEC has married speech technology with ever-popular internet search. The ability to search is becoming increasingly crucial to surfers baffled by the huge amount of information available on the web.
According to search engine Ask Jeeves, around 80% of surfers visit search engines as their first port of call on the net. People visiting Speegle can select one of three voices to read the results of a query or summarise news stories from sources such as the BBC and Reuters. "It is still a bit robotic and can make a few mistakes but we are never going to have completely natural sounding voices and it is not bad," said Speegle founder Gordon Renton. "The system is ideal for people with blurred vision or for those that just want to search for something in the background while they do something else. "We are not saying that it will be suitable for totally blind people, although the Royal National Institute of the Blind (RNIB) is looking at the technology," he added. But Julie Howell, digital policy manager at the RNIB, expressed doubts over whether Speegle and similar sites added anything to blind people's experience of the web. "There are a whole lot of options like this springing up on the web and one has to think carefully about what the market is going to be," she said. "Blind people have specialised screen readers available to them which will do the job these technologies do in a more sophisticated way," she added.
The site uses a technology dubbed PanaVox, which takes web text and converts it into synthesised speech. In the past speech technology has only been compatible with broadband because of the huge files it downloads but CEC says its compression technology means it will also work on slower dial-up connections. Visitors to Speegle may notice that the look and feel of the site bears more than a passing resemblance to the better known, if silent, search engine Google. Google has no connection with Speegle and the use of bright colours is simply to make the site more visible for those with visual impairments, said Mr Renton. "It is not a rip-off. We are doing something that Google does not do and is not planning to do and there is truth in the saying that imitation is the sincerest form of flattery," he said. Speegle is proving popular with those learning English in countries such as Japan and China. "The site is bombarded by people just listening to the words. The repetition could be useful although they may all end up talking like robots," said Mr Renton. | tech |
Broadband steams ahead in the US
More and more Americans are joining the internet's fast lane, according to official figures.
The number of people and business connected to broadband jumped by 38% in a year, said the US Federal Communications Commission (FCC). In a report, it said there were more than 32 million broadband connections by the end of June 2004. But the US is still behind compared to other nations, ranked 13th in the world by a UN telecoms body.
During his 2004 re-election campaign, President George W Bush pledge to ensure that affordable high-speed net access would be available to all Americans by 2007.
According to the report by the FCC, broadband is becoming increasingly popular, with people using it for research and shopping, as well as downloading music and watching video. The total number of people and businesses on broadband rose by to 32.5 million in the year ending June 2004, compared to 23.5 million in June 2003. Whereas in the UK, most people hook up to broadband via Asymmetric Digital Subscriber Line (ADSL) technology which lets ordinary copper phone lines support high data speeds. But in the US, cable leads the way, accounting for 18.6 million lines. Broadband over the phone line makes up 11.4 million connections, according to the FCC figures. | tech |
Napster offers rented music to go
Music downloading, for those that have rejected the free peer to peer services, can be a costly business.
The cost of paying even as little as 70p per track can add up, particularly for those people who own one of the new generation of players that can store thousands of songs. Paying per track for music is becoming as outmoded as paying per minute for internet access and alternative monthly or yearly subscription models are springing up as a more convenient, and ultimately cheaper way of owning music.
"Music fans are moving away from buying the traditional bundled package of a dozen or more songs that we used to call an album to newer ways that fit their lifestyle; either single tracks or subscriptions services," said Paul Myers, chief executive of Wippit, a UK-based music download service. While iTunes is doing good business with its sales of individual tracks to iPod owners, others are questioning whether the concept of owning music is even valid in the digital age. Napster is due to launch a new rental subscription service - dubbed Napster to Go in the UK in the next few months. The service can be used on players that support Microsoft Windows latest Digital Rights Management technology known as Janus. This includes players made by Samsung, Rio and Creative.
Currently on offer in beta-version in the US, the service costs $15 per month for unlimited downloads. The technology ensures that music downloaded to the player only remains playable while the user subscribes to the service. Users need to update their license on a monthly basis or the tunes will no longer play.
This has outraged some digital music lovers, especially as Napster already offers a cheaper service for downloading music to the PC. Napster claims the higher price is a result of record labels charging more for the to-go service and says it also offers "greater value" for customers. Mr Myers is not convinced a rental model will work for consumers. "We've been offering our unlimited music subscription service for more than three years now and our customers know what they want. Format interoperability, excellent value and the reassurance that music purchased from Wippit is theirs to keep and enjoy on whatever device they choose," he said. "Who wants to download a track that won't play next month if you decide to unsubscribe to the service or change portable player for an iPod or the latest mobile phone?" Wippit offers a download subscription service for £4.99 per month or £50 per year. It has a catalogue of around 60,000 songs. | tech |
Broadband soars in 2004
If broadband were a jumbo jet, then 2003 would have seen it taxiing down the runway, firing up its engines and preparing for take-off. But this year has seen it soar.
In the spring it literally took to the skies as Lufthansa and British Airways trialled it on flights. This perhaps said more about how indispensable people were beginning to perceive the technology, rather than how useful sky-high broadband would actually be. It was flying high and by the autumn, five million Britons had signed up for high-speed net access at home.
Such enthusiasm is unlikely to dampen any time soon and experts predict that by the end of next year the numbers will have risen to more than eight million, or more than 30% of homes. The two key factors in whetting people's appetite were falling prices and a huge marketing push. When operators such as BT and Telewest offered standard 512K broadband for less than £20 at the beginning of the year, it was as if an invisible barrier had been breached - broadband had truly gone mass market. A feeding frenzy followed as firms vied for eyeballs in a price war reminiscent of that following the mass market take-up of dial-up. Broadband for less than £10 was even touted by some firms, although such a low price raised eyebrows among more established companies questioning how they are able to sustain such business models.
For those who became broadbanders in 2004 there was no turning back and the days of waiting for the modem to kick in began to seem as outdated an idea as a jungle without celebrities. The rest of the world was also falling in love with the benefits of fast internet access, to the tune of 100 million connections worldwide by April, prompting research firm Point Topic to declare it one of the fastest growing technologies ever. By September, the number of broadband connections in the UK finally overtook dial-up and in December BT announced that it was making a new broadband connection every 10 seconds.
Broadband was being mentioned on the 10 O'clock News and in the tabloids; the Sun even carried a cartoon joke about it. But two of the most significant pieces of news for broadband were items that did not make the headlines. In May, BT quietly announced that it was shaving 70% off the cost of allowing other operators access to its telephone exchanges, so-called local loop unbundling. The vital local loop is the crucial link between telephone exchanges and homes. At the moment BT has a stranglehold on more than 80% of these lines making it the key voice in deciding what ADSL products get into homes. With cheaper local loop unbundling, rivals to BT can offer faster services that will leave the broadband of today looking positively tortoise-like. It will mean the UK will finally catch up with countries such as France and the Netherlands, where homes are routinely enjoying speeds of up to 15Mb (megabits per second). And the major price fall means that, rather than just talk about it, companies are actually starting to get their own equipment into BT's exchanges. It may not seem that exciting but it is a remarkable transition given that just a few years ago the arguments over local loop unbundling bore more than a passing resemblance to the Northern Ireland peace talks - fraught, bitter and with no end in sight.
Another big piece of news for broadband users in 2004 was the extension of BT's reach, meaning more than 95% of the population could get broadband, regardless of how far away from the exchange they lived.
There was a slight caveat for those wanting to upgrade to 1Mbps broadband, they still have to live within six kilometres of a broadband-enabled exchange. For thousands frustrated by their inability to get the technology, the news meant they could finally join in. Broadband is not just about fast access over the telephone and cable operators NTL and Telewest also had a bumper year. The biggest news for them was increased speeds, introducing 2Mb and 3Mb services for users and offering a free upgrade to those on 512K. The cable operators are limited in their reach and it is perhaps testament to how big a deal local loop unbundling could become that even they are considering extending their range via this route. Broadband can seem confusing for consumers, with the huge amount of operators offering so many different products, some with capped bandwidth and different length contracts and set-up fees. It is unlikely to get any less easy to understand in 2005 but remains a plane worth catching. As it gets faster and offers extras such as cheap telephone calls online, the only real thing to remember for the coming year is to enjoy the ride. | tech |
Half of UK's mobiles 'go online'
Multimedia mobile phones are finally showing signs of taking off, with more Britons using them to go online.
Figures from industry monitor, the Mobile Data Association (MDA), show the number of phones with GPRS and MMS technology has doubled since last year. GPRS lets people browse the web, access news services, mobile music and other applications like mobile chat. By the end of 2005, the MDA predicts that 75% of all mobiles in the UK will be able to access the net via GPRS. The MDA say the figures for the three months up to 30 September are a "rapid increase" on the figure for the same time the previous year. About 53 million people own a mobile in the UK, so the figures mean that half of those phones use GPRS. GPRS is often described as 2.5G technology - 2.5 generation - sitting between 2G and 3G technology, which is like a fast, high-quality broadband internet for phones.
With more services being offered by mobile operators, people are finding more reasons to go online via their mobile. Downloadable ringtones are still proving highly popular, but so is mobile chat. BandAid was the fastest ever-selling ringtone this year, according to the MDA, and chat was given some publicity when Prime Minister Tony Blair answered questions through mobile text chat. Multimedia messaging services also looked brighter with 32% of all mobiles in the UK able to send or receive picture messages. This is a 14% rise from last September's figures. But a recent report from Continental Research reflects the continuing battle mobile companies have to actually persuade people to go online and to use MMS. It said that 36% of UK camera phone users had never sent a multimedia message, or MMS. That was 7% more than in 2003. Mobile companies are keen for people to use multimedia functions their phones, like sending MMS and going online, as this generates more money for them. But critics say that MMS is confusing and some mobiles are too difficult to use. There have also been some issues over interoperability, and being able to send MMS form a mobile using one network to a different one. | tech |
Blinx sequel purrs nicely
The original Blinx was intended to convert many platform game lovers to Microsoft's then new Xbox console.
Its sharp graphics and novel gameplay, with the main character able to pause, slow, rewind and fast-forward time, were meant to lure many fans to the new machine. But poor design meant the game became a very frustrating affair with players often stranded half-way through a level without the required tools to finish. Thankfully, the sequel has fixed many of the original faults. This time around you do not play as Blinx but instead you are given the chance to create two unique cat characters and two pig characters.
The character generator is very detailed and a few minutes of tweaking and adjusting will create a unique personality to unleash on the game.
As the game progresses you swap between the two rival factions, pig and feline, assuming the role of your created characters. The thrust of the game sees the two factions competing to recover pieces of a missing Time Crystal. As in the original, your feline persona can control time, but this time the pigs get to control space. There are a number of puzzles which require control over time to solve while the pigs can create things such as warps, space bubbles and void traps in order to progress. The control over space and time is achieved through a number of VCR-style icons and is quite intuitive.
Annoyingly, the puzzles are a little too obviously flagged up and most gamers will find it more of a chore than a challenge to solve them. The game has also tried to emulate franchises such as Jak and Daxter and Ratchet and Clank on PS2 and so there are a number of combat elements. These are a little predictable and tend to drag the general polish of the game down to a more dulled affair. But the game's excellent graphics, easily the best-looking platform game around, sound and dollops of humour make it an attractive game for younger platform fans.
Blinx 2 is out on Xbox now. | tech |
The year search became personal
The odds are that when you fire up your browser, you go straight to your favourite search engine, rather than type in a web address.
Some may see this as the height of laziness, but in an era of information overload, search has become a vital tool in navigating the net. It is symptomatic of how the way we use the internet is changing. And as Google has shown, there is money in offering a service that people cannot live without. There is no shortage of companies vying for the loyalty of web searchers, offering a wealth of different services and tools to help you find what you want. Over the past 12 months, giants of the technology world such as Microsoft and Yahoo have sought to grab a slice of the search action. "User experience has contributed to people searching more," said Yonca Brunini of Yahoo. As people become more familiar with the internet, they tend to spend more time online and ask more queries, she said. "The other second thing is broadband," Ms Brunini told the BBC News website. "This will do to internet what colour has done to TV."
But search is hardly a new phenomenon. It has been around since the early days of the net.
Veteran surfers will remember old-timers like Hotbot and Altavista. "Search was always important," said Urs Holzle, Google vice-president of operations. "We trumpeted that in 1999. It is even truer now as there are more users and more information." "People didn't realise that search was the future. The financials have something to do with it." Google has shown web commerce can work through its targeted small adverts, which appear at the top and down the right-hand side of a page and are related to the original search. These small ads helped Google reach revenues of $805.9m for the three months to September. Others have woken up to the fact that you can make money out of web queries. "Once you see there is a market, Microsoft is bound to step to it. If Microsoft sees search as important, then nobody queries it," said Mr Holzle.
Microsoft is just one of the net giants muscling in on search. Yahoo, Ask Jeeves, Amazon and a handful of smaller outfits are all seeking to capture eyeballs.
Web users face a plethora of choices as each company tries to outflank Google by rolling out new search products such as desktop search. It reflects how the battlefield has shifted from the net to your PC. Search is not just about finding your way around the web. It is now about unlocking information hidden in the gigabytes of documents, images and music on hard drives. For all these advances, search is still a clumsy tool, often failing to come up with exactly what you had in mind. In order to do a better job, search engines are trying to get to know you better, doing a better job of remembering, cataloguing and managing all the information you come across. "Personalisation is going to be a big area for the future," said Yahoo's Yonca Brunini. "Whoever cracks that and gives you the information you want is going to be the winner. We have to understand you to give you better results that are tailored to you." This is perhaps the Holy Grail of search, understanding what it is you are looking for and providing it quickly. The problem is that no one yet knows how to get there. | tech |
IBM frees 500 software patents
Computer giant IBM says 500 of its software patents will be released into the open development community.
The move means developers will be able to use the technologies without paying for a licence from the company. IBM described the step as a "new era" in how it dealt with intellectual property and promised further patents would be made freely available. The patents include software for a range of practices, including text recognition and database management. Traditional technology business policy is to amass patents and despite IBM's announcement the company continues to follow this route.
IBM was granted 3,248 patents in 2004, more than any other firm in the US, the New York Times reports. For each of the past 12 years IBM has been granted more US patents than any other company. IBM has received 25,772 US patents in that period and reportedly has more than 40,000 current patents. In a statement, Dr John E. Kelly, IBM senior vice president, Technology and Intellectual Property, said: "True innovation leadership is about more than just the numbers of patents granted. It's about innovating to benefit customers, partners and society.
"Our pledge today is the beginning of a new era in how IBM will manage intellectual property." In the past, IBM has supported the non-commercial operating system Linux although critics have said this was done only as an attempt to undermine Microsoft.
The company said it wanted to encourage other firms to release patents into what it called a "patent commons". Adam Jollans, IBM's world-wide Linux strategy manager, said the move was a genuine attempt to encourage innovation. "We believe that releasing these patents will result in innovation moving more quickly. "This is about encouraging collaboration and following a model much like academia." Mr Jollans likened the plan for a patent commons to the way the internet was developed and said everyone could take advantage of the result of collaboration. "The internet's impact has been on everyone. The benefits are there for everyone to take advantage of." Stuart Cohen, chief executive of US firm Open Source Development Labs, said the move could mean a change in the way companies deal with patents.
"I think other companies will follow suit," he said. But not everyone was as supportive. Florian Mueller, campaign manager of a group lobbying toprevent software patents becoming legal in the European Union,dismissed IBM's move as insubstantial. "It's just diversionary tactics," wrote Mr Mueller, who leadsnosoftwarepatents.com, in a message on the group's website. "Let's put this into perspective: We're talking aboutroughly one percent of IBM's worldwide patent portfolio. They filethat number of patents in about a month's time," he added. IBM will continue to hold the 500 patents but it has pledged to seek no royalties from the patents. The company said it would not place any restrictions on companies, groups or individuals who use them in open-source projects. Open source software is developed by programmers who offer the source code - the origins of the program - for free and allow others to adapt or improve the software. End users have the right to modify and redistribute the software, as well as the right to package and sell the software. Other areas covered by the patents released by IBM include storage management, simultaneous multiprocessing, image processing, networking and e-commerce. | tech |
Yahoo moves into desktop search
Internet giant Yahoo has launched software to allow people to search e-mail and other files on their PCs.
The firm is following in the footsteps of Microsoft, Google and Ask Jeeves, which have offered similar services. Search has become a lucrative and hotly-contested area of expansion for net firms, looking to extend loyalty beyond the web. With hard drives providing bigger storage, users could need more help to locate important files, such as photos.
The desktop search technology has been licensed from a US-based firm X1 Technologies. It is designed to work alongside Microsoft's Outlook and Outlook Express e-mail programs. Searching e-mail effectively is becoming increasingly important, especially as the amount of spam increases. According to research from message analysts the Radicati Group, up to 45% of businesses' critical information is stored in e-mail and attachments. Yahoo's software can also work separately on the desktop, searching for music, photos and other files. Users can search under a variety of criteria, including file name, size, date and time. It doesn't yet incorporate web searching, although Yahoo has promised that future versions will allow users to search both web-based and desktop data. "We are all getting more and more files on our desktop but the real commercial opportunity lies with linking this through to web content," said Julian Smith, an analyst with research firm Jupiter. "It is all about extending the idea of search and getting a closer relationship with consumers by organising not just how they search on the internet but the files on your computer as well," he said. Search engines are often the first port of call for users when they go onto the web. The new foray into desktop search has rung alarm bells for human rights groups, concerned about the implications to privacy. And not everyone is impressed with the functionality of such services. Alexander Linden, vice president of emerging technologies at analyst firm Gartner,downloaded the Google product but has since removed it. "It was just not very interesting," he said. He believes the rush to enter the desktop business is just a way of keeping up with rivals. "Desktop search is just one of many features people would like but I'm suspicious of its usefulness," he said. More useful would be tools that can combine internet, intranet and desktop search alongside improvements to key word searching, he said. | tech |
Rings of steel combat net attacks
Gambling is hugely popular, especially with tech-savvy criminals.
Many extortionists are targeting net-based betting firms and threatening to cripple their websites with deluges of data unless a ransom is paid. But now deep defences are being put in place by some of the UK's biggest net firms to stop these attacks. Increasing numbers of attacks and the huge amounts of data being used to try to bump a site off the web are prompting firms to adopt the measures. "Net firms are realising that it's not just about anti-virus and firewalls," said Paul King, chief security architect at Cisco. "There are more things that can be done in the network to protect data centres." Mr King said the only way to properly combat these so-called Distributed Denial-of-Service attacks was with intelligent net-based systems. Many of the gambling sites suffering DDoS attacks are in offshore data and hosting centres, so any large scale data flood could knock out access to many more sites than just the one the criminals were targeting, said Mr King. This overspill effect was only likely to grow as attacks grow in size and scale.
Malcolm Seagrave, security expert at Energis, said the most common types of attacks hit sites with 10 megabytes of data over short periods of time. Bigger attacks sending down 200 megabytes of traffic or more were rarely seen, he said. "It does feel like they are turning the dial because you see this traffic gradually growing," he said.
So far there have been no attacks involving gigabytes of data, said Mr Seagrave. However, he added that it was only a matter of time before such large attacks were mounted. Maria Capella, spokeswoman for net provider Pipex, said that when DDoS attacks were at their height, customers were getting hit every four to five days. The defences being put in place constantly monitor the streams of data flowing across networks and pluck out the traffic destined for target sites. "It's about understanding what's genuine traffic and keeping attack traffic from going to the site," she said. "We study the profile of their traffic and as soon as we see an anomaly in the profile that's when we start to get the backbone engineering boys to see if we are going to sustain an attack," said Ms Capella. This traffic can be hard to spot because DDoS attacks typically use thousands of computers in many different countries, each participating machine only sends a small part of the entire data flood.
Typically these computers have been infected by a virus or worm which reports its success and the net address of compromised machines back to the malicious hacker or hi-tech criminal that set off the virus. Hijacked computers are known as zombies or 'bots and collections of them are called 'bot nets. Many spammers rent out 'bot nets to help them anonymously send junk mail.
Most of the zombies are based outside the country that hosts the target site so getting the attacking PCs shut off can be difficult. Often Pipex and other net suppliers do get advance notice that an attack is about to happen. "The serious players tend to precede an attack with some kind of ransom e-mail," said Ms Capella. "We ask, as part of the service we provide, that customers notify us of anything they have in advance that would give us forewarning." Once an attack is spotted dedicated net hardware takes over to remove the attack traffic and ensure that sites stay up. Energis took a similar approach, said Mr Seagrave. "We have technology out there that allows us to detect attacks in minutes rather than let network engineers spend hours pulling the information together," said Mr Seagrave. Also net firms were starting to work more closely together on the problem of DDoS attacks and pool information about where they are coming from. Information gathered on attacks and where they originated has led to some arrests. He said Energis also did its own intelligence work to get in insight into which sites criminal gangs plan to target. "We have people in places where they shouldn't be, monitoring tech sites," he said. Sometimes though, he said, spotting the next victim was easy. "You can see them going alphabetically through the list with the gambling sites, trying one after another," said Mr Seagrave. | tech |
US hacker breaks into T-Mobile
A man is facing charges of hacking into computers at the US arm of mobile phone firm T-Mobile.
The Californian man, Nicholas Lee Jacobsen, was arrested in October. Mr Jacobsen tried at least twice to hack T-Mobile's network and took names and social security numbers of 400 customers, said a company spokesman. The arrest came a year after T-Mobile uncovered the unauthorised access. The US Secret Service has been investigating the case. "T-Mobile has stringent procedures in place where we monitor for suspicious activity so that limited his activities and we were able to take corrective action immediately," Peter Dobrow, a T-Mobile spokesperson said. It is thought that Mr Jacobsen's hacking campaign took place over at least seven months during which time he read e-mails and personal computer files, according to court records.
Although Mr Jacobsen, 21, managed to get hold of some data, it is thought he failed to get customer credit card numbers which are stored on a separate computer system, said Mr Dobrow. T-Mobile confirmed that the US Secret Service was also looking into whether the hacker accessed photos that T-Mobile subscribers had taken with their camera phones. The Associated Press agency reported that Mr Jacobsen also read personal files on the Secret Service agent who was apparently investigating the case. A Los Angeles grand jury indicted Mr Jacobsen with intentionally accessing a computer system without authorisation and with the unauthorised impairment of a protected computer between March and October 2004. He is currently on bail. T-Mobile is a subsidiary company of Deutsche Telekom and has about 16.3 million subscribers in the US. | tech |
Windows worm travels with Tetris
Users are being warned about a Windows virus that poses as the hugely popular Tetris game.
The Cellery worm installs a playable version of the classic falling blocks game on PCs that it has infected. While users play the game, the worm spends its time using the machine to search for new victims to infect on nearby networks. The risk of infection by Cellery is thought to be very low as few copies of the worm have been found in the wild.
The Cellery worm does not spread via e-mail like many other viruses. Instead it browses computer networks for PCs that have not shut off all the insecure ways they connect to other machines. When it infects a machine, Cellery installs a version of Tetris that users can play. As the game starts up the worm also starts a music file to accompany it. At the same time the virus starts scouring networks for other vulnerable machines. The virus does no damage to machines but heavily infected networks could slow down as scanning traffic builds. Productivity may suffer too if users spend time playing Tetris. PCs running Windows 95, 98, ME, NT, 2000, and XP could be vulnerable to the worm. "If your company has a culture of allowing games to be played in the office, your staff may believe this is simply a new game that has been installed - rather than something that should cause concern," said Graham Cluley, spokesman for anti-virus firm Sophos. So far the number of people infected by Cellery is thought to be very small and the risks of further infection is very low. Sophos urged users and companies to update their anti-virus software to keep themselves protected. | tech |
US state acts to stop 'spammers'
US state Texas has filed a lawsuit against two men believed to be among the world's top five spammers.
It is seeking millions of dollars in damages in a civil lawsuit filed earlier this week. The Texas attorney general said it started the legal action as messages sent by the alleged spammers broke three laws governing e-mail marketing. The company named in the lawsuit denied any wrongdoing and said it complied with all relevant laws.
The Texas lawsuit was filed against Ryan Samuel Pitylak, a University ofTexas student, and Mark Stephen Trotter of California. Both are thought to be the top executives in three companies - PayPerAction LLC., Leadplex LLC. and Leadplex Inc - that are suspected of sending out many millions of unwanted e-mail messages. "Illegal spam must be stopped," said Greg Abbott, Texas attorney general announcing the legal action. "Spam is one of the most aggravating and pervasive problems facing consumers today." The attorney general alleges that messages sent by Mr Pitylak and Mr Trotter's companies broke the 2003 Controlling the Assault of Non-Solicited Pornography and Marketing Act (Can-Spam) as well as the Texas Electronic Mail and Solicitation Act and Texas Deceptive Trade Practices Act. All three acts confer cash penalties for each violation of their terms. If the men are found guilty and all penalties are applied, the two men could face a damages bill running into millions. Mr Abbott said the messages sent by the pair broke laws by using misleading subject lines, not identifying themselves as adverts and offering services for which they had no licence to do so in Texas. Lawyers for the alleged spammers said the lawsuit was groundless and the two men would defend themselves strongly against the accusations. "Leadplex and PayPerAction are legitimate internet marketing companies that are in complete compliance with the federal Can-Spam Act," said Lin Hughes, speaking on behalf of Mr Pitylak and Mr Trotter. In a similar move the US Federal Trade Commission (FTC) has won a court order that stops an international group of spammers sending sexually explicit e-mail. The FTC took the action because the messages being sent violated several parts of the CAN-Spam Act. In particular, the pornographic messages did not identify themselves as being sexually explicit, had deceptive subject headings, did not have working opt-out mechanisms, failed to mention they were adverts and did not give the sender's real world address. The court order stops the spammers sending e-mail and freezes assets prior to a hearing on a permanent injunction. | tech |
World tour for top video gamers
Two UK gamers are about to embark on a world tour as part of the most lucrative-ever global games tournament.
Aaron Foster and David Treacy have won the right to take part in a tournament offering $1m in total prize money. The cash will be handed out over 10 separate competitions in a continent-hopping contest organised by the Cyberathlete Professional League. As part of their prize the pair will have their travel costs paid to ensure they can get to the different bouts.
The CPL World Tour kicks off in mid-February and the first leg will be in Istanbul. All ten bouts of the tournament will be played throughout 2005, each one in a different country. At each stop $50,000 in prize money will be up for grabs. The tournament champion for each leg of the CPL World Tour will walk away with a $15,000 prize. The winner of the grand final will get a prize purse of $150,000 from a total pot of $500,000.
Winners of each stage of the tour automatically get a place at the next stop. The world tour stops are open to any keen gamer that registers. Online registration for the first stop opens this weekend. Some pro-players are winning a spot at the tour destinations through qualifying events organised by CPL partners. Winners at these qualifiers get seeded higher in the elimination parts of each tournament. Mr Foster and Mr Treacy get the chance to attend the World Tour as members of the UK's Four-Kings gaming clan. Towards the end of 2004 Four-Kings staged a series of online Painkiller competitions to reveal the UK's top players of the PC game. The best eight players met face-to-face in a special elimination event in late December where Mr Foster and Mr Tracey proved their prowess at Painkiller. As part of their prize the pair also get a contract with Four-Kings Intel which is one of the UK's few pro-gaming teams. "There are a lot of people who take gaming very seriously and support their local or national team with the same passion as any other sport," said Simon Bysshe who filmed the event for Four-Kings and Intel. More than 80,000 people have downloaded the movie of the tournament highlights. "Professional gaming is here to stay and will only grow in popularity," he said. | tech |
Souped-up wi-fi is on the horizon
Super high-speed wireless data networks could soon be in use in the UK.
The government's wireless watchdog is seeking help on the best way to regulate the technology behind such networks called Ultra Wideband (UWB). Ofcom wants to ensure that the arrival of UWB-using devices does not cause problems for those that already use the same part of the radio spectrum. UWB makes it possible to stream huge amounts of data through the air over short distances. One of the more likely uses of UWB is to make it possible to send DVD quality video images wirelessly to TV screens or to let people beam music to media players around their home. The technology has the potential to transmit hundreds of megabits of data per second. UWB could also be used to create so-called Personal Area Networks that let a person's gadgets quickly and easily swap data amongst themselves. The technology works over a range up to 10 metres and uses billions of short radio pulses every second to carry data. At the recent Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas products with UWB chips built-in got their first public airing.
Currently, use of UWB is only allowed in the UK under a strict licencing scheme. "We're seeking opinion from industry to find out whether or not we should allow UWB on a licence-exempt basis," said a spokesman for Ofcom.
Companies have until 24 March to respond. In April the EC is due to start its own consultation on Europe-wide adoption of UWB. The cross-Europe body for radio regulators, known as the European Conference of Postal and Telecommunications Administrations (CEPT), is carrying out research for this harmonisation programme. Early sight of the CEPT work has caused controversy as some think it over-emphasises UWB's potential to interfere with existing users. By contrast a preliminary Ofcom report found that it would be quite straight-forward to deploy UWB without causing problems for those that already use it. The Ofcom spokesman said it was considering imposing a "mask" or set of technical restrictions on UWB-using devices. "We would want these devices to have very strict controls on power levels so they can not transmit a long way or over a wide area," he said. Despite the current restrictions the technology is already being used. Cambridge-based Ubisense has about 40 customers around the world using the short-range radio technology, said David Theriault, standards and regulatory liaison for Ubisense. He said that UWB was driving novel ways to interact with computers. "It's like having a 3D mouse all the time," he said. He said that European decisions on what to do with UWB allied with IEEE decisions on the exact specifications for it would help drive adoption. Prior to its adoption as a way for gadgets and computers to communicate, UWB was used as a sensing technology. It is used to spot such things as cracks under the surface of runways or to help firemen detect people through walls. | tech |
EA to take on film and TV giants
Video game giant Electronic Arts (EA) says it wants to become the biggest entertainment firm in the world.
The US firm says it wants to compete with companies such as Disney and will only achieve this by making games appeal to mainstream audiences. EA publishes blockbuster titles such as Fifa and John Madden, as well as video game versions of movies such as Harry Potter and the James Bond films. Its revenues were $3bn (£1.65bn) in 2004, which EA hoped to double by 2009. EA is the biggest games publisher in the world and in 2004 had 27 titles which sold in excess of one million copies each. Nine of the 20 biggest-selling games in the UK last year were published by EA.
Gerhard Florin, EA's managing director for European publishing, said: "Doubling our industry in five years is not rocket science." He said it would take many years before EA could challenge Disney - which in 2004 reported revenues of $30bn (£16bn) - but it remained a goal for the company. "We will be able to bring more people into gaming because games will be more emotional." Mr Florin predicted that the next round of games console would give developers enough power to create real emotion.
"It's the subtleties, the eyes, the mouth - 5,000 polygons doesn't really sell the emotion.
"With PS3 and Xbox 2, we can go on the main character with 30,000 to 50,000 polygons," he said. "With that increased firepower, the Finding Nemo video game looks just like the movie, but it will be interactive." Mr Florin said that more than 50% of all EA's games were sold to adults and played by adults, but the perception remained that the video game industry was for children. "Our goal is to bring games to the masses which bring out emotions." EA said the video game industry was now bigger than the music industry. "Nobody queues for music anymore."
"You can't ignore an industry when people queue to buy a game at midnight because they are so desperate to play it," he said, referring to demand for titles for such as Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas and Halo 2.
Jan Bolz, EA's vice president of sales and marketing in Europe, said the firm was working to give video games a more central role in popular culture. He said the company was in advanced stages of discussions over a reality TV show in which viewers could control the actions of the characters as in its popular game The Sims. "One idea could be that you're controlling a family, telling them when to go to the kitchen and when to go to the bedroom, and with this mechanism you have gamers all over the world 'playing the show'," said Mr Bolz.
He also said EA was planning an international awards show "similar to the Oscars and the Grammys" which would combine video games, music and movies. Mr Bolz said video games firm had to work more closely with celebrities. "People will want to play video games if their heroes like Robbie Williams or Christina Aguilera are in them." Mr Florin said the challenge was to keep people playing in their 30s, 40s and 50s. "There's an indication that a 30 year old comes home from work and still wants to play games. "If that's true, that's a big challenge for TV broadcasters - because watching TV is the biggest pastime at present." | tech |