Will Femtocells revolutionise triple-play packages?
Mobile operators like Vodafone will bundle ADSL broadband, a femtocell router and two mobile phones by the end of the year, speculates femtocell-maker Thomson.
Sound interesting? Perhaps not at face value but femtocell routers, like Thomson’s new TG870, do so much more than just telephony and mobile broadband.
Femtocells are little 3G mobile phone masks and the premise is they will sit side-by-side with Wifi routers in the home, giving your mobile phone excellent coverage indoors. If you make a phone call through it, the call gets routed through your ADSL to the mobile phone operator’s “femtocell aggregator” which is plugged into the tradition phone network.
The TG870 outputs 3.6mbit/sec HSDPA and 802.11g Wifi and combines an ADSL modem and a four port Ethernet switch. Your mobile phone can surf the net indoors and, since so much bandwidth is available, mobile TV, a resounding failure in the UK so far, becomes a doddle to do too.
Calls made on your mobile over the Femtocell are essentially Voip calls, so costs are much lower and that could rip control away from BT and SKY in the race for triple/quadruple-play (Telephony, TV, Broadband) packages.
Thomson’s TG870 also integrates home automation software. You can dim lights, set timers or monitor your house using a simple interface on a regular 3G phone. The TG870 is also a uPnP server; Any video, music and photos on hard disks plugged into the TG870’s master USB port can be accessed by devices around the house.
Jeff Land, business development manager for Thomson, says mobile phone operators will be the main retailers of femtocell routers. The TG870 will cost around €200 (£153 approx.) when it goes on sale in November, but in the long run the company is aiming for a €90 (£69 approx.) price tag.
The coverage of the TG870 is on a par with Wifi routers in home environments, but Land says that’s using one tenth of the power of Wifi and it’s easy to increase the range legally.
Posted by Emil Larsen on March 7, 2008 | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack
Sweden and Turkey in hacking war
A hacking war has broken out between Swedish and Turkish hackers after several newspapers in Sweden published a caricature of the prophet Muhammed. Around five thousand websites have been affected, including those of Linköping Cathedral and Gothenburg Council, according to the English-language Swedish newspaper The Local.
Swedish hackers are reported to have retaliated by breaking into Turkish forums and posting pornographic images of Muhammad and Kemal Atatürk, founder of the modern Turkish state.
Stefan B Grinneby, head of the Swedish IT Incident Centre (SITIC), has asked local hackers to exercise restraint to prevent an escalation.
Inevitably security firms are using the battle as a dire warning for companies to beef up their protection. Geoff Sweeney, chief technology officer of Tier-3 said companies can learn a lot from the methodology of the hackers, and claimed "more advanced" measures like behavioural analysis offered better protection because it provided a safety net against unknown as well as known threats.
Posted by Clive Akass on October 26, 2007 | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack
Watch YouTube on Google Earth
Google has just added a new feature to Google Earth that adds a YouTube video layer. YouTube users simply need to provide location information for their videos and permit embedding. This will then let Google Earth users see a clickable tag for the videos appear in the correct geographical location. the video runs in an embedded window within Google Earth.
The new layer will automatically appear in the 'Featured Content' section of Google Earth the next time you open the application.
Wat
Posted by Kelvyn Taylor on October 11, 2007 | Permalink | Comments (4) | TrackBack
Wimax nomads will skirt the law and create a charging headache
So, the good news is that Wimax services will start to rollout in Britain. The bad news is that we don’t know exactly when (though we can assume it will be a matter of months) nor how much they will cost.
The people from Freedom4, formerly known as Pipex Wireless, haven’t yet worked these things out themselves, judging from yesterday’s launch press conference.
The uncertainty starts with the company’s licence to use its precious spectrum. Cliff Mason, manager of Ofcom’s mobile and broadband wireless policy team, pointed out that the terms were agreed 13 years ago when the technological climate was very different from today.
Ofcom later granted what is called a “variation” to allow the spectrum to be used for any wireless fixed link, following a European policy of allowing use of new technologies unless there are clear reasons against them.
But the meaning of “fixed” is far from, well… fixed. Wimax uses multiple-in-multiple-out (MIMO) technology with several aerials that can form beams on the fly, directing transmitted energy towards whoever happens to be using it at the time.
So if you have a Wimax account and a Wimax-equipped notebook (they are coming in next year) there is nothing to stop you using the service from a local park. And as the service becomes available elsewhere you could use it in other cities too.
This is what has become known as nomadic use, as opposed to roaming use like a mobile phone when you can move between base-station catchments without dropping a link. Nomadic use is supported by the fixed version of the Wimax standard, known as 802.16d; roaming uses the more recent 802.16e.
Technically, moving around your neighbourhood using Wimax may be a breach of the licence, but it would require a test case to establish the fact. “I think it would be a little OTT to prosecute someone for it,” said Mason.
Wider nomadic use, which would require support from Freedom4, might be trickier legally as things stand. There seems little doubt that it will get the Ofcom go-ahead. Perhaps 16e will too, but mobile-phone operators may have a thing or two to say about that considering the billions they paid for their licences. Freedom4 chief executive Mike Read said yesterday that he could not say whether the company would have to pay extra.
In practice there is little to choose between 16d and 16e for data users, who will usually be static when they use a service.
Charging for all this could be a tricky business. If you have a home base station and a nomadic Wimax notebook, can you use both on the one account? Paul Senior, chief technology officer of Wimax-equipment maker Airspan, pointed out: “There’s no problem if you charge by the megabyte.”
That would not go down well among people who have got used to flat-rate broadband charges. Freedom4 has some tricky waters to navigate.
Posted by Clive Akass on October 5, 2007 | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBack
24Mb broadband from Newnet (if you live in Portsmouth)
Newnet has announced its 24Mb broadband package will be debut in Portsmouth next month.
Of course, unless you're transferring a hell of a lot of data the actual usefulness of anything above 8Mb is questionable. What's more interesting is the 1Mb upload speed - allowing devices such as home network cameras to provide smooth video feeds etc.
If you're confused why the folk in Portsmouth are getting special treatment, Newnet is giving priority to areas where it has the most customers - which makes sense.
Sign up for a year, and the cheapest package is just £11.49/month - however this really is just a headline grabbing rate.
You can buy pre-paid additional gigabytes if you think you might go over the cap (and surely anyone requiring a 24Mb service would do so in a day or two) at a cost of 70p for 1GB. However, these come in 10GB blocks, so you'll have to splash out at least £7.
If you go over the cap without having pre-paid for extra gigabytes you'll be charged £1.30 per GB in 3GB blocks - so that's £3.90 each time you go over the cap.
Still, the Home M 24 rate seems good value at £18.49/month with a 12GB cap.
Posted by Will Stapley on July 24, 2007 | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack
EQO mobile does mobile phone VoIP without Wi-Fi
Eqo mobile is offering a slightly different way for mobile phone uses to call abroad cheaply.
It first launched its VoIP service in 2006 but it's been refined and changed and now works on all java enabled mobile phones.
To use the service you make a national phone call. In the UK's case it's an 0208-London number but this is, of course, different for different countries. The recipient of the phone call also (but unknowingly) calls an exchange in his/her country.
This all sounds complicated, but the magic bit is that it's easy as pie because it's all done in software.
Eqo's software negotiates between the caller and the recipient so that there are no numbers involved and it works like a normal mobile phone conversation would do.
The magic bit is Eqo's software that looks like instant messaging software, with a contacts list you can call. It'll also let you speak to your msn messenger and aim contacts too.
Eqo mobile won't charge you for Eqo – Eqo calls, but it does charge you for calls from an Eqo enabled phone to a non Eqo mobile phone or landline. Users are also billed for national telephone charges by their mobile phone operator separately.
The problems with this service are obvious though; it's not for landline phones, it won't work for national calls and an Eqo-enabled mobile phone must pay national rate telephone charges even if they are the recipient of a conversation.
Paying to receive a call is never popular with anyone and is likely to confuse people.
Windows Mobile support will come in the next two months and Eqo is looking to expand to 40 support countries. Every county needs to be specifically enabled with a VoIP-analogue converter before it can be used for Eqo calls.
Posted by Emil Larsen on July 3, 2007 | Permalink | Comments (2) | TrackBack
New Opera mobile phone web-browser brings Wii functionality
Opera has released a new mobile phone browser that can zoom in and out of a page like on the Nintendo Wii.
Combined with a cheap mobile phone it is the "iPhone for the poor man today", according to Opera's vice president of engineering, Christen Krogh.
This is because phones using the browser will be able to surf the net faster than Apple's iPhone can, despite the iPhone using relatively high-bandwidth Wi-Fi to transfer data.
To back up his claims, Krogh demonstrated a GPRS enabled phone downloading a website at a comparable rate to a video of the iPhone doing the same when Steve Jobs demonstrated it in January.
Opera Mini 4 uses server-side compression techniques that render websites for a small screen on Opera's servers before sending them to a mobile phone at 5-20 per cent of the original size.
Pages have their original layout plus there's support for Flash 7 animations. Krogh said transfer times are "a bit faster as well" compared with the Mini 3.
Opera Mini 4 is available today as a free beta download. A final version of the software will be available over the summer.
The company is also proud to announce that Opera Mini, present on 15 million unique phones, is more widely used than Apple's Safari browser… in the Ukraine.
Perhaps Opera's sniping at Apple is because it sees the iPhone as a threat, since it's a closed device that probably won't ever feature Opera's software.
Posted by Emil Larsen on June 19, 2007 | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack
How to make and take web calls on your mobile phone
We have two products in for review that offer a home or small-office version of the gateways many cheap-call vendors use to undercut the big telcos. The Mobigater, from a Bulgarian firm of the same name, and the IP Voicelink for IPDrum, both allow you to make and receive web calls on a mobile phone.
You insert SIM card from an operator of your choice, which gives the device is a phone number. You can call that number to make an international web call; conversely any web call to the number can be diverted to your mobile. If you are always ringing your mum in, say, Kuala Lumpa, you could have a gateway at either end of the line.
The Mobigator is restricted to Skpe calls but the IP Voicelink has a SIP option.
So can you make this cheaper than using one of the cut-price operators? Well some operators allow you to call one designated number for free, and all offer deals bundling hundreds of minutes for local calls, so you probably can.
We've been slow to review the Mobigater due to factors beyond our control but we will be looking at both devices in the next few days.
Posted by Clive Akass on June 15, 2007 | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBack
Website offers 700 TV channels
Our attention has been drawn to Viewmy.tv, a website that aggregates over 700 TV channels from around the world.
Although there's the usual spate of shopping and religious channels, there's also a lot of quality content including BBC News 24, Aljazeera, BBC Parliament, Bloomberg, MTV, CNN… the list goes on and on.
The London based company claims channels are regularly monitored for stream availability and quality, and I've certainly found picture very good.
All the website does it pull together IPTV streams that are available on individual websites; viewmy.tv even provides the individual channel urls it uses, along with some basic HTML code so you can embed each individual channel into your own website. Most channels are formatted in Windows Media Video 9 codec at 300-700kbits/sec and should be viewable on handheld devices.
The site launched some months ago and remains as a 'beta' site. The company states: "Zero ad clutter and the absence of annoying banners and text ads means that the site not only looks sophisticated, but is straightforward and easy to navigate, a quality that attracts visitors to the site and encourages them to register."
Trying to be a social networking site is probably a step to far, but it's an excellent progression for IPTV - maybe it could be integrated into set-top boxes, like the Evesham iPlayer, so non-tech heads can enjoy TV from around the world.
Posted by Emil Larsen on May 25, 2007 | Permalink | Comments (10) | TrackBack
One law for the email bitchers and another for the judges of porn
A curiously muted report in today's Times makes you wonder what goes on in judges' chambers after the wigs come off. It seems the Lord Chancellor has a list of judges who have been disciplined for misuse of their computers, including viewing pornography.
It does not say what 'disciplining' involved (the mind boggles) but there has been no mention of judges losing their posts. If judges did not have human frailties they could not do their job properly, and what they do in their spare time is up to them. But using an office computer to view porn would be a sacking offence in most companies.
Is this a case of one rule for the legal profession, and another for the rest of us? Perhaps. But it is time the legal profession and other organisations started getting online transgressions in proportion.
A colleague of a friend recently got hounded by her local-authority employer for personal remarks she had made in an email sent from work. The remarks were ill-advised and unfair but they were of a kind that people make every day in private conversation.
They were discovered months later in a trawl of email. She was technically in the wrong, but her real transgression was to treat work email as a private conversation. This is the dawn of the email age, with many people still struggling to come to terms with computers and the web, and they cannot all be expected to appreciate such subtleties.
One has to ask which is the most offensive: a snatch of private bitching, or a system so intrusive as to track it down months later and hold someone to account for it?
The woman. like the porn judges, was called to account for misuse of official computers. She avoided the sack only because she had already found another job.
Posted by Clive Akass on May 17, 2007 | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBack
Free broadband for £12.50
Pipex is offering 'free' broadband to anyone who signs up for a minimum 18 months to its Anytime telephony and 8Mbit/sec web-access package. Translated from marketing speak, this means you pay £12.50 a month for the first six months, and £19 a month thereafter. But you do get free UK, and cut-rate foreign and mobile calls. There's a 2GByte cap on monthly downloads. Details are here
Posted by Clive Akass on May 17, 2007 | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack
Great news, e-learning site pulled by BBC
The news that the BBC has been forced to close Jam, its internet e-learning portal, has come with great joy to me, because I strongly believe e-learning is a load of codswallop.
Although I'm now in my twenties, I actually grew up with various e-learning programmes, in particular BBC's Bitesize, which includes educational videos, books and a website.
The website covered and still covers all the major GCSE subjects and is supposed to help you learn. My younger sister is just finishing her A-levels and I've noticed the system hasn't really changed since my school days.
Don't get me wrong; watching an educational TV programme or listening to a tape can be an excellent way to grasp scientific concepts or learn the auditory side of languages, but using a PC to revise for a GCSE is a waste of time – it's nearly all multi-choice questions.
It's difficult for kids who use Bitesize to give it their full attention, because they are probably logged onto MSN, Facebook, Myspace, Bebo and the rest of it. I was seven years ago, kids are even more likely to be now.
Even if a child is disciplined, most revision has to be done with pen and paper because things like symbols and calculus are difficult and slow to input with a qwerty keyboard. What's more, grammar and reading is best done at a clear desk where repetition is the key.
Computers are important for other areas of a child's development though. They bring an understanding of logic, written and graphic design and it's important to learn to use the net effectively. Dare I say it; even computer games increase a child's coordination.
Perhaps e-learning makes a parent's and teacher's life easier. Perhaps it should be renamed lazy learning.
Posted by Emil Larsen on May 16, 2007 | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack
Perils of Pandora's box
Even if you are not of a supersitious bent, you might think that calling a company Pandora is asking for trouble. As soon as the company or its products hit trouble, there are going to be heavy jokes about the Pandora of Greek myth, who was created by the gods as a punishment for the theft by Prometheus of the secret of fire. You will recall that she unleashed all the evils of the world when she opened a forbidden box.
Like many of these old stories it has a powerful resonance today, and it shows there is nothing new about fears that the use of technology is dangerously out of control. The troubles of Pandora the company are rather more prosaic, as we report today. It is having difficulty opening its media-streaming 'box' to the wider world. We trust that, when it succeeds, it won't make things worse.
Posted by Clive Akass on May 4, 2007 | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack
Jimmy Choo case gets mixed response from antivirus vendors
The Jimmy Choo hacking case, where Mathew Mellon is accused of using a Trojan-horse virus to hack into the president of Jimmy Choo's computer, has had a mixed response from antivirus vendors.
Mathew Mellon, allegedly hired someone to send Tamara Mellon, president of the £300-per-pair shoe company Jimmy Choo, a keylogging virus, which she opened.
If that is what transpired, Eikbal Dhillon from F-Secure told me at security conference Infosec that F-Secure's products could have prevented the hacking incident.
He said even unique, custom Trojan horses can be stopped and then went on to plug 'Deep Guard' as the component F-Secure uses to detect Trojan like behaviour. Dhillon said it would detect things like "if it's trying to log keystrokes or write to a .dll".
David Emm from Symantec presented a more cautious tone, saying "targeted attacks are very difficult to deal with".
Emm referred to a case that concluded last year when Mr and Mrs Haephrati were jailed for creating and selling custom Trojan horses that successfully infiltrated several different businesses. He said it was these low-scale, customised commodities that were difficult to deal with.
Posted by Emil Larsen on May 2, 2007 | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack
PS3s regularly sell for £370 on Ebay
I was one of the many people who almost went to a store and bought a Playstation 3 on launch night, partly because it would be interesting to see a launch party, partly because I thought I might make a bob or two on eBay.
When the PS2 launched in November 2000, there was such short supply that people were successfully selling them for £900 in the run up to Christmas.
Well, this time there's not the same demand in the UK. Less than a week after launch 60GB PS3s are regularly selling for less than you can buy them for in the shops, typically £370 - £420.
Ironically 60GB PS3s from Hong Kong and the USA, which are already in the country (so no customs duty) are selling for even less, despite having full PS2 backwards-compatibility, unlike the European versions.
In contrast, the Wii continues to sell well above its suggested retail price on Ebay. Its explosive growth means it has overtaken the XBox360 and PS3 in Japan and has notched up 6million sales worldwide, outpacing Sony's next gen console which has 2.7million sales and catching up with XBox360's 9.7million sales.
Posted by Emil Larsen on March 26, 2007 | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBack
When a film won't sell
When a film won't sell for love nor money, then perhaps someone could make money by making it a free download bundled with a load of adverts.
That's kind of what Lovefilm.com and VW are doing. You need to be a member of the DVD-in-the-post rental company, to get the download; This costs a minimum of £4.99 a month (giving you two DVD rentals per month).
Users download the film using a download manager, which streams Volkswagen ads directly to the user's desktop, while the film is downloading. There are also other 'TV quality' ads the user must watch before the movie commences.
The first film available is a romance called The Cooler. The standard edition of this film is the 14,980th best selling DVD on Amazon and the special edition can only muster 20,709th place.
Lovefilm is interested in getting other companies to sponsor films, so perhaps this will become a viable business model to flog DVDs that just can't sell.
Posted by Emil Larsen on March 23, 2007 | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBack
Viagra only comes in English
Spam isn't much of a problem outside of Great Britain and the USA, according to two German gentlemen from Strato, Europe's second largest web host.
They proposed that if a German company is presented with 200 e-mails and only one of them is in German, then the rest are probably spam.
Straight after this very sensible conclusion, however, they said image spam now accounts for 90 per cent of all e-mails, up from 70 per cent last August - so knowing the language of an e-mail becomes a lot more difficult.
We've previously reported that the number of image junk emails is on the rise and optical character recognition (OCR) is too time consuming to filter out the dirty stuff. Instead Strato calculates the hash values of images to guess what's likely to be spam.
Posted by Emil Larsen on March 21, 2007 | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack
Skype opens 100 free Wi-Fi hotspots… in Stockholm
Scandinavians get all the good luck. Not only are they beautiful, the happiest people on Earth and reasonably wealthy, now Skype's decided to roll out free Wi-Fi hotspots for them.
Skype was founded by a dane and a swede (the very same duo who also founded the old pirates' favourite KaZaA) so its perhaps no suprise that Stockholm is the first to get 100 free Wi-Fi hotspots across various cafes and restaurants.
The Nordic director of Skype, Jonas Kjellberg, told Swedish mag Ny Teknik if there was enough interest in the scheme, Skype, together with Swedish newspaper Aftonbladet, might roll more free hotspots.
Skype won't guarantee any minimum speeds, but initial tests by journalists in the country found speeds averaging 1.5Mbits/sec.
We were unable to get a comment from Skype UK about the scheme. And yes, I have a serious dose of Scandinavian in me.
Posted by Emil Larsen on March 6, 2007 | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBack
Internet telephony on mobiles rears its head again
Another VoIP application offering free calls between mobile phones has been launched.
It's called Barablu and the catch is you need a Wi-Fi enabled mobile phone, which means battery life will be very poor when using it.
The software looks extremely similar to Truphone's offering, however it appears more complete adding PC compatibility, conference calling for up to 50 people, file transfers and text messaging.
Like Truphone, Barablu diverts phone calls seamlessly to a GPRS network if the user moves out of the Wi-Fi zone.
The company claims calls outside the Barablu network will typically only cost 1p per minute.
Posted by Emil Larsen on March 2, 2007 | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBack
Er... just as I was writing about unreliable websites
Just got back from the NetEvents forum on networks and communications at Evian, France, where the network went down for the final day. Seems it was something to do with the service-provider and the massed ranks of experts could do nothing about it. As a result you'll have to wait until Monday for some of my reports.
Some kind of gremlin seems to be at work at PCW Towers, too. I've just loaded a story about web sites going down, only to find that our own site is throwing up old news and not allowing me in to put the latest up.
Recent hiccups in my Virgin Media (ex NTL Telewest ) broadband service had already got me thinking about net resilience and if I were running a small web-dependent business I would be sure to have some kind of fallback, however apparently watertight my service level agreement. It costs relatively little to have both an ADSL link and cable in areas where both are available.
Some businesses take their link for granted until it goes down. A friend of mine, who runs a news agency serving all major news outlets in the Middle East, found himself cut off for days when his ADSL crashed. He had no fallback and no business-class service level agreement, having never been told he needed one; BT appeared oblivious to the damage the disruption would cause to its reputation in a major market.
This is not just a problem for businesses. Many people work from home at least part of the week and only realise how much they depend on the web when it goes down.
Dean Bubley, founder of Disruptive Analysis, suggested at the NetEvents Forum this week that this could be where emerging technologies like Wimax could be heading: providing a fallback link for people or businesses. It makes a lot of sense.
Posted by Clive Akass on February 24, 2007 | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack
Come back friendly Telewest and get me out of this Branson pickle
You have been waiting in a queue got forty minutes, plagued by a particularly annoying busker who can play only one piece of music on a tinny electric organ. Suddenly an official arrives and says: "You have been waiting too long. Get to the back of the queue and start all over again."
Unfair? Doesn't make sense? Yet this is exactly what can happen with Virgin Media, the expensively rebranded NTL-Telewest.
I won't bore you with the details of how I spent an hour and a half on Friday, and from 9-30am to 5pm on Saturday, failing to change my package. Mostly it was a game of navigating voice menus and then hanging on to the same ghastly jingle until you reached an actual human who said you were talking to the wrong person.
I had the speakerphone on to allow me to do other things and at one point, hoping to goad the company into replying, I chose the option for people planning to move to another supplier. To my astonishment, after about 40 minutes, the ensuing "wait for us" jingle stopped and a voice said: "The other party has cut off."
I suppose it is one way to try to delay defections but it could also get Virgin Media sued for wasting people's time.
Still, I refused to be defeated. It became a challenge to talk to someone who would not pass me on to someone else. Late on Saturday afternoon I finally spoke to a woman who appeared willing to help me. "Hang on, I'll consult my supervisor," she said.
This time there was proper music on the line, which was somehow reassuring. Then, out of nowhere, the voice-response system kicked in, offering two completely irrelevant options. I picked one at random. "You're talking to wrong person," the man said.
Richard Branson's Virgin was supposed to be bringing improved customer relations to the cable company. If this it, please give me back friendly old Telewest.
Posted by Clive Akass on February 19, 2007 | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBack
Has Virgin cast a hex on my Telewest service?
Richard Branston seems to have had an effect on services at NTL-Telewest, now rebranded Virgin Media under a deal with the be-jumpered entrepreneur.
I had few problems with my service in Islington, North London, until about three weeks ago in the run-up to the launch of the new-look company. The service has since gone down three times, on each occasion for more than a day, and on two occasions I lost both the TV service and my Blueyonder broadband.
Even when the service is on, some of the TV channels are on bit-rates so low as to be barely viewable and a couple of the Discovery channels seem to be unavailable more often than not.
Postcodes that have suffered most of the recent problems are favoured habitats of London's mediacrats, so what this is doing for the new Virgin Media's image is anyone's guess.
The flashy new Virgin Media site is full of offers but lacks the service status page of the old Blueyonder site on which you could check out problems in your area – or if the page is there, the search engine can't find it.
I can, however, report that Branston's promise to improve customer relations has had some effect. My broadband went down for the third time today, for the first time after the rebranding, and the old-style automated voice has been replaced by a cheerful, young (dare I say Virginal?) woman's voice running through the numbered options.
Telewest's Liverpool-based support staff are still on the job, and they have always been helpful and friendly in my experience. They tell me my latest problem is not district-wide, which means I have to wait three days for someone to come round.
Meanwhile I await Virgin Media's explanation of why its services have deteriorated and I am checking out the alternatives.
Posted by Clive Akass on February 14, 2007 | Permalink | Comments (7) | TrackBack
Symantec to rate websites
Symantec visited PCW today and told me about its new security product, Norton 360, and its plans to rank websites according to how trustworthy they are – a completely different angle to anti-phishing.
Any website can be rated by Symantec's software and this ranking will happen in two ways:
1) data from official bodies that oversea selling complaints, for example Trading Standards in the UK and the Better business bureau in the USA, will be collected for ranking websites
2) a community rating will be given to websites, where all Symantec users can give their opinion on websites
This feature will be a part of the next Norton Internet Security version and Norton 360.
Norton 360 includes everything in Norton Internet Security 2007 (NIS2007) but adds PC Tune-up, which does basic defragging and cleans up temporary files, and Back & Restore software, which provides 2GB of online storage and scheduling for backing up files and folders to external devices etc.
The new security suite will arrive in March priced £59.99, £10 more than NIS2007, and like NIS2007, Norton 360 comes with three licences so it can be legitimately installed on three different PCs for 12 months, a really positive step in my opinion.
Symantec is also currently trailing heuristic malware detection (finding spyware and adware based on traits rather than a signature which takes longer to develop a response to), which will be an enabled in NIS2007 via a live update soon (and come with Norton 360).
NIS2007 users are currently guinea pigs in this trial, with their computers logging and uploading data about suspected malware to Symantec's servers to help Symantec develop the software.
On a separate note I asked Tom Powledge, a senior director at Symantec, why Norton Internet Security 2007 slows down Windows XP boot-up times so much.
Powledge said Symantec's own findings were that it is quicker than the average for most anti-virus solutions during boot up but admitted its testing is based on fresh installs of the operating system.
Symantec claims it takes 33 seconds to boot into Windows XP on a Pentium 4 system, however in our NIS2007 review we recorded a time of 2 mins 23 secs to boot up on a Pentium 4 system with an old install of XP with several programs already on the hard disk.
Posted by Emil Larsen on February 13, 2007 | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack
Tell the BBC what you think about on-demand TV
If you want to have a say in how the BBC's proposed on-demand internet TV services shape up, go over to the BBC Trust website and fill in the open consultation form. Do it! Now!
Posted by on February 1, 2007 | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack
UK music-video download store launches
The UK's first dedicated music-video online shop has launched called www.ilovevideo.com.
The site claims to have 99 per cent of UK independent labels signed up and although "independent labels" suggests second-rate material, big names like The White Stripes, The Prodigy and Fatboy Slim are onboard.
Only 100 music videos are currently available since it is a soft-launch of the shop but content will quadruple over the next month and the small operation is uploading new videos as fast as it can encode them.
Karl Badger, managing director of ilovevideo, conceded "we're not trying to compete with iTunes", which also has some music videos for download.
Unlike iTunes, ilovevideo.com videos are DRM free, which means you can play them on any device with no restrictions.
The files come in .wmv and .m4v file formats. Portable quality files are 30fps, 750Kbits/sec, 320x240 and weigh in at about 20Mbytes for £1.89
We wouldn't bother with these low res flicks but go for TV quality files instead, which are 30fps, 3200Kbits/sec, 720x576 and weigh in at about 90Mbytes for £1.99.
Video quality is better than iTunes' offerings but it's a shame the TV quality ones cost 10p more than iTunes.
Personally I'm drawn to "Weapon of Choice" featuring Christopher Walken; like anything Dick Van Dyke does, this video demands attention.
Posted by Emil Larsen on January 22, 2007 | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack
Arm Whois v2.0 released
Arm has released Whois v2.0, a utility to find information on domain names, severs and computers all over the world.
At first glance it's difficult to justify installing Whois software since many websites offer the functionality and it's even more difficult to justify the price, $29.95, because there are free utilities that broadly offer the same service.
There is a trial version that appears to give you full functionality apart from notices asking for payment.
Like most whois programs it can show who the owner of the domain name, when the domain was registered, the owner's contact information and where the host is situated. Unusually it can also find the owner of the IP address block you are tracing.
Privacy groups like the EFF aren't fond of whois and whois information can be blocked in certain countries not governed by InterNIC (part of ICANN) which oversees popular names like .com and .org.
Even in ICANN territories it's easy to give false information about websites like incorrect telephone numbers and addresses.
The program has a very clean interface with a field to insert domain or IP information you want to investigate and a large field to show the results.
Despite Arm claiming this is a security professional's program I think its target audience is actually non-tech heads who can while away the hours looking where different websites are hosted and who owns them.
Posted by Emil Larsen on January 15, 2007 | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBack
Amazon's 30-day price drop refund
We've recently seen claims that if you buy a product from the US Amazon store and it drops in price over the next 30 days, Amazon will refund you the difference.
With many electrical item prices in free fall throughout January, it might seem damaging to make such an offer.
So to confirm that the offer is also valid in the UK, I rang Amazon's UK customer service telephone line and asked whether Amazon offers a 30-day price guarantee.
I was told: "Yes we do, we do reimburse price differentials for up to 30 days. Only on our website and products we are selling".
He went on to make it clear that this doesn't apply to third party traders on Amazon, such as those operating through Marketplace, and price matching with other websites is not considered.
He was keen to stress that it only applies if you specifically alert customer services: "If you alert us to the fact then we do make a refund of the differential".
With Microsoft now making at least $76 profit per console (iSupply Nov 06) speculation is rife that the Xbox360 price will be chopped to wound Sony's game division as it tries to flog PS3s.
To increase sales, manufactures have a habit of selling consoles at a loss. They then make their money on after-sales items like controllers and games. So, expect an Xbox360 price drop in the coming weeks and months.
Worried that the day after you buy a 360 it has £60 chopped off it? Perhaps Amazon will offer you some peace of mind.
Posted by Emil Larsen on January 4, 2007 | Permalink | Comments (3) | TrackBack
BT crashes through the 10million broadband barrier
BT says it will surpass 10million broadband connections this week - double the initial target of 5million connections by the end of 2006, which was set back in 2002.
Of course, this doesn't mean BT actually has 10million direct customers. The figure combines 8.7million BT Wholesale connections (broadband services sold on by the likes of Tesco, Eclipse and Supanet) and 1.3million BT Openreach services provided through LLU ISPs such as Bulldog, Be Unlimited and Homechoice.
Many are still complaining broadband in the UK too expensive compared to the likes of the Netherlands, Japan and South Korea, but since there are no government subsidies for Broadband in the UK the price difference is hardly surprising.
Connection speeds in the UK are also frequently bemoaned. BT aims to provide 24Mb services across the UK over the next few years, but with 100Mb services readily available in Japan it's playing catch-up.
Posted by Will Stapley on January 3, 2007 | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack
Internet telephony on mobiles
Truphone has launched VoIP software for mobile phones to compete with Skype phones.
It is free piece of software that enables Wi-Fi equipped Nokia mobile phones to make internet-rate phone calls (VoIP calls) via Wi-Fi internet connections. When the phone is not in Wi-Fi range it reverts to being a normal mobile phone.
Skype is available in various guises for mobile phones that pack Wi-Fi but Truphone's trump card appears to be that if someone calls your Truphone number and you’re not ‘on-net’, it simply forwards automatically to your normal GSM number.
Truphone claims it will never cost the caller more, but it may cost them, and you, less (especially if abroad).
The software is SIP based which is a flexible standard to allow different SIP products to talk to each other. The software is still under development and is marked as a beta version.
Posted by Emil Larsen on January 2, 2007 | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack
ADSL switching rules too little too late
Getting a MAC code so you can switch internet providers could remain a drawn out, desperate and despairing process for users if the small print is anything to go by.
The welcome news that Ofcom is making ISPs provide MAC codes free and compulsory is too late for people affected by the E7even scandal and disgruntled customers like me - I had to pay PlusNet £84 for my MAC.
Anyone who's had dealings with regulators like Ofcom and Ofwat may have some scepticism and I wanted to see what kind of teeth Ofcom claims now to have.
ISPs have five days to issue MAC codes to customers. But how long could it really take?
Simon Bates from the regulator told me "if there is any evidence a company has broken the rules" Ofcom would do the following things in the following order:
- issue the company with a warning
- ask it to remedy the situation
- possibly request that it pay refunds to the customer
Finally, should all else fail it would issue a fine of up to 10 per cent of the company's turnover to the naughty ISP.
But, to the crux of the matter, how long does it take Ofcom to deal with unfulfilled MAC requests? Bates said it hopes to close any investigation into ISPs breaking the rules "within six months of opening it". So even if Ofcom does have some balls, it's still a fat bureaucracy…
Posted by Emil Larsen on December 15, 2006 | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack
How their lordships fenced with banks over web security
For journalists accustomed to being stonewalled by banks about security and other issues, there was a certain pleasure yesterday in watching representatives of the industry being grilled by a House of Lords sub-committee inquiring into personal internet security.
But even their Lordships could not get anything out of the witnesses concerning the security records of individual banks. If you'd like to hear their lengthy refusals, without actually saying the word No, to a series of exquisitely barbed questions from the Great and Good, there is a recording of the hearing here
Yesterday's hearing was only part of a broader inquiry, headed by Lord Broers, set up by the House of Lords Science and Technology committee. It is looking the nature and scale of threat to individual users but it does not cover national threats, such as whether terrorist bombs or cyber attacks could shut down Britain's internet infrastructure.
It is looking at whether software and hardware developers could do more, and whether legislation is needed, and will report some time next year.
Lord Errol, a member of the sub-committee carrying out the inquiry, told me one question would be whether banks could and should do more to counter fraud. He suggested that criminal use of cash cards at ATMs could be avoided by measures such as fingerprint scans.
The committee would also look at whether companies or other organisations that compromised people's personal data, such as the recent case of a stolen laptop containing details of millions of Nationwide customers, should be obliged to inform them as soon as possible.
The issues are not always straightforward, as answers at yesterday's hearing made clear: sometimes publicity might alert thieves to the fact that they have valuable data. But it was also a shock to discover that all banking records are not routinely encrypted.
"I'm a hereditary. I know nothing about technology," Lord Errol said when he introduced himself to me at a reception the evening before the hearing. It turned out he was joking.
It seems that peers who gain their position from birth tend to be dismissed as asses compared with those appointed because of their expertise and achievements. Where those who buy peerages stand in this rarefied hierarchy I did not manage to find out.
Posted by Clive Akass on December 14, 2006 | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack
Crazy method to Skype out
I am going to suggest a long-winded way you could use Skype from your mobile phone.
1) Plug a mobile phone into your computer
2) Leave you computer on all day long
3) From a second mobile phone, call the first one (which is plugged into the computer) and then let the first mobile phone Skype Out to another telephone number
Alternatively:
1) Let someone call you on Skype
2) Let Skype talk to your first mobile phone (connected to the PC) and then it will call your second mobile phone
3) The original caller pays nothing whilst you pay the bill for calling from your first to your second mobile phone
Confused? Well that's exactly what a Norwegian company called IPdrum is trying to do.
It has launched a product called the IP Voicelink. It is a GSM device, or a mobile phone without buttons and speaker/microphone, that interacts with Skype and theoretically lets you use Skype anywhere you have signal on your mobile phone.
An IPdrum spokesperson describes it as a "cost-cutting device", but when you combine the £139 cost of the box, having your computer turned on continuously and the fact that you will have to pay for mobile to the IP Voicelink box (referred to as the first mobile phone in the situation above) and vice versa we think the cost is astronomical.
A very small number of business people who continually call abroad from their mobile phone will save money, however 3's X-series, which has Skype built in, may be a cheaper and simpler option.
The box goes on sale next week and PCW will bring you a review soon.
Posted by Emil Larsen on December 14, 2006 | Permalink | Comments (2) | TrackBack
2006, the year HD and IPTV kicked off
And then there were three.
Sky, NTL and now BT are all vying for your living room like never before. As you can read from our news story, things are hotting up with each providing telephony, broadband internet access, a range of TV channels and an option to use a PVR to record content.
I would suggest a fourth option. The do-it-yourself road; get broadband, buy your own router and PVR, like the Evesham iPlayer (Freeview HD - review online soon!) and plug it all together and then use IPTV providers like TVMax, Real or hold out for Microsoft's offering.
I am sceptical of BT's offering because it's not really that cheap and there are bandwidth issues.
Most people will laugh at me and claim their 8Mbit/sec line is way higher than the 2Mbit/sec minimum Vision needs. But 2Mbit/sec at peak hours is a squeeze due to contention. Add to that the many poor-quality broadband lines in the UK and that you may be downloading on your PC whilst trying to watch TV and real quality issues may arise.
Sky is streets ahead of BT in terms of content too. Rupert Murdoch has a controlling stake in Sky and Twentieth Century Fox, which distributes the Simpsons, Borat and Star Wars to name but a few. Who expects him to cave in to a fledgling service from BT? Besides, BT already dipped its toes into IPTV before (via OpenWorld)… and failed.
Many industry insiders believe NTL stands in a poor position because of its dire customer service record. It's also increasingly difficult for NTL to upgrade its network since it has to dig up whole roads to replace inadequate cable.
BT thinks its Vision division will be profitable within three years and that it will get more customers by offering a bigger package. With an eye on profits, other providers are flirting with the idea; Tiscali has said it wants in on IPTV and Spanish broadband giant Telefonica is rumoured to pile into the UK.
So how does HD fit into all of this? BT is in trouble because an HD video stream consumes a minimum of 10Mbits/sec (but you're really looking at 24-25mbits), much higher than BT's 8Mbit/sec network is capable of. Even with the advent of ADSL2+ pushing 24Mbits/sec (16mbits in reality) it's not enough.
There are over 1.4million HD-tellies out there and only Sky has a service to power them all. Sky HD now has over 100,000 subscribers and BT, NTL and smaller IPTV players claim to be HD ready but in reality have nothing. Telewest does have something, but its network is limited by the whole cable thing.
Right now, IPTV packages are too expensive and only good for lazy people who forget to record programs or can't be bothered to wander down the road to Blockbusters.
So until good old fashioned capitalist competition brings prices down to really compete with that illegal BitTorrent thingy and DVD rental, I will rely on my huge 10 year old Sony Trinitron CRT, DVD player and my laptop I occasionally plug it into.
Posted by Emil Larsen on December 4, 2006 | Permalink | Comments (2) | TrackBack
Danish broadband penetration
I just got a press release in my inbox saying:
'According to a quantitative analysis conducted by Qmars Safikhani, Danes are less responsive to broadband price decreases than the Germans.
'The analysis based on broadband penetration is measured in the number of subscribers per inhabitant.'
As a Dane, I can sympathise with this; a typical 2Mbit/sec connection costs about £35/month in Denmark alongside the obligatory £55 connection fee. Compare that to your £20/month 8Mbit/sec line in the UK and you're laughing.
But does anyone else give a hoot? The Danes don’t, which is of course the point of the report (probably since we're the happiest people on Earth). It painted a comical picture for me though:
[Large German man]: 'I am very sensitive to the price of my broadband'
[Dane]: 'I'm sorry, what was that about penetration?'
Posted by Emil Larsen on December 4, 2006 | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack
Privacy argument needs balance
I believe in the right to privacy. Anyone who has read 1984 will understand that with full disclosure, someone in government will sooner or later become corrupt.
But after being called at 2am, several times, when you're trying to get some sleep, by an immature idiot who's dialling random numbers, it's difficult to see the privacy argument.
Can anyone suggest a valid reason for using BT's 141 to hide your number? I cannot. BT retains call records. Government agencies have access to call records, so you don't have any privacy from those at the top anyway.
If you want privacy, the onus should be on the caller not making the call in the first place.
There isn't a parallel between 141 and using an anonymous proxy online (thus hiding which websites you visit/emails you send) because the Government can't always monitor proxy servers. Further more proxies are excellent at helping journalists and bloggers residing under repressive regimes.
Said dialler-under-the-influence used 141 so I couldn't get back at him. He should take a leaf out of my book and call a friend or family member and tell them you love them when you've had too many.
Don't call random numbers asking if the receiver likes various genitals.
Posted by Emil Larsen on November 29, 2006 | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack
Is Skype all hype?
'Only' four percent of online users use Skype according to a new Jupiter Research report. Ofcom reports that at the end of March there were 11.1 million broadband links in Britain, so it is a fair guess that there are around 12 million now. That makes nigh-on half a million UK Skype users, even assuming just one to a broadband connection. Not a small number - and as Jupiter points out it is likely to rise with the new generation of Skype friendly phones.
The study shows that twice as many people use other Voice-over-IP services, which does not at first sight look so good for Skype. Its drawback is that it uses proprietary protocols and in theory systems using the global SIP standard should be more popular and convenient.
In fact SIP has been slow to take off because systems using it have been harder to use, according to Ian Fogg, lead author of the report and senior analyst at Jupiter. Rivals to Skype are a disparate bunch, ranging from multiuser games that bundle VoIP, Instant Messenger systems like Microsoft Live and AIM, and offerings from individual service providers. The impressive thing about Skype is its ease of use and the fact that it is growing so fast.
Different IM systems are just beginning to interoperate but superficially the VoIP landscape still looks similar to that of email in pre-web days, when it was extremely difficult to communicate with anyone outside the system you were subscribed to. However, Fogg points out that almost all VoIP systems have gateways to the old steam telephone system that you can use as a fall-back, even if you have to pay for it.
Users perceive VoIP as a way of getting free phone calls. The reality, says Fogg, is that it is generating new business models that allow people to phone each other much more for less money. People now have a choice of many ways to contact each other and VoIP adds features such as being able to address a person instead of a particular location or device. So if you ring your wife or husband you can get through whether they are home or not.
Posted by Clive Akass on November 27, 2006 | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack
DivX takes on YouTube
I met with DivX representatives recently to discuss its new video-uploading website, www.stage6.com. DivX's European managing director Mark Lawson told me: "We hope to grow as big as YouTube."
Stage6 focuses on providing much higher quality video than YouTube by using its own mpeg4 compression. In comparison, YouTube uses a low bit-rate Flash player.
Unlike YouTube, Stage6 lets you download and store every video to your computer. Lawson also stated Stage6 will allow anyone to charge for their own content. By doing this DivX hopes for a lot of interest from independent studios.
The site has been around for eight weeks now and still has a lot of work to do. It lacks the variety YouTube has, especially anything that possibly infringes copyright. In response to this Lawson said: "we don't monitor any of the free content". Instead inappropriate content is removed when a certain number of users say so.
Lawson pities the movie industry and claimed it was "too late" on digital distribution. He says they have been technologically ready for two years and by not licensing or selling moves online they have made the same mistake as the music industry did, resulting in widespread internet piracy.
My initial impressions of the service are favourable. Quality is good and the website has a clean feel about it. The file sizes are typically 10mb per minute of footage, which is vastly higher than YouTube's clips. You must have DivX installed on your system or download the 2.5MB DivX web player. In my opinion this is its Achilles heel and means it won't ever gain the widespread appeal of YouTube.
Comparisons are easy to draw. A dancing video on stage6 looks much better than the one on YouTube, but takes much longer to download.
Posted by Emil Larsen on November 20, 2006 | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack
Skype and Fon join SMC in wifi bundle
I reviewed two Skype wifi phones recently – from SMC and Netgear - and felt both were well overpriced for the range of services they offered.
This week I got hold of Belkin’s Skype wifi phone. It’s made by the same manufacturer as the SMC handset, comes with the same wireless hotspot deal yet costs a third less. At £100, the handset is beginning to head towards being better value for money.
I’ve given it only a quick initial test so far, and found quality and ease of use pretty similar to the SMC alterative, and a full review will be online in a few days time.
In my write up of the SMC phone I criticised the cost, and mentioned that Belkin would soon have a rival handset for £50 less. The day the Belkin landed on my desk, SMC announced it had done a deal with Fon and Skype. The bundle gets you the SMC phone, a Fon router, 500 SkypeOut minutes and free Skype voicemail for a year for a more reasonable £99.
Fon is easiest described as a Peer to Peer style wireless hotspot operator. It is backed by Niklas Zennstrom and Janus Friis, who of course co-developed Skype, so the Skype, SMC, Fon bundle is clearly more than a coincidence. It works by having people in homes or offices agree to open up their wireless networks to other Foneros, which other subscribers can use.
It has its support but I can’t see too many people being attracted by the SMC/Fon package, because among those that are savvy enough to secure their wireless network many will be nervous about opening it up to strangers (it comes with a secure router so protects PCs on your network) and for those that don’t secure their networks, I think the Fon concept is beyond most of them.
Update:
The SMC phone we reviewed, which comes with a £6.99 a month deal with hotspot provider the Cloud, has now also been cut to £99 from its original £150.
Posted by Rob Jones on November 17, 2006 | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBack
3 mobile service shows the way of the future
3 this week announced its expanded mobile internet package, including a range of services that let you not only access the internet or make Skype calls, but also control your home TV and PC.
It’s an impressive set of services, although as a customer you’ll have to pay a monthly fee. So far 3G operators haven’t come up with that illusive killer application for their networks, so considering the money that was invested returns are quite poor.
I like the look of this package from 3. It has done a deal with Sling Media so that Slingbox owners can control their home TVs – it reopens the debate of whether people want to watch telly on a mobile screen. To date I’ve never been convinced, but suddenly I think the argument has become more compelling.
A deal with Orb means you’ll be able to push photos from your PC to your phone. Taken a step further, I can see people getting a service like GoToMyPC, and paired with a handset that is PDA-like (such as the O2 XDA or Palm Treo), it’s an attractive offering for business people. And incidentally, then you’d have a screen size more attractive for watching TV.
TV over data streams is not that new, and we’re also seeing phones with an additional antenna so that you can watch TV independent of your mobile service (cutting out their data charge). I can see this coming soon in combination with the sort of service 3 announced yesterday.
Give people the choice of for instance controlling their home TV, including their pre-recorded programmes or DVDs using a Slingbox, or to just watch whatever is being broadcast at that moment over say Freeview.
We’re heading that way with phone calls after all. Hence the reason Skype is part of this package. Although you’ll pay indirectly through your monthly subscription, 3 has accepted that by allowing people to save money on calls via Skype it will reap the benefi