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Darren Waters

The iPod tax resurfaces

  • Darren Waters
  • 17 Apr 08, 19:20 GMT

I completely missed earlier in the week - so my thanks to the Guardian and others who reported it.

Essentially the British Phonographic Industry - that's the UK record industry - is arguing that there should be a tax on devices that allow you to format shift.

You can read the BPI's letter .

They are asking for a license to be levied on every device that facilitates format shifting - ie copying.

The letter says:

Enormous value is derived by those technology companies and manufacturers who enable consumers to copy. UK creators and rights owners are legally entitled to share in this value - as they hold the exclusive right to reproduce their music - but are currently excluded from the value chain.

My hunch is that most ordinary readers of this blog will find this suggestion laughable.

But I would love to hear from a musician, an artist, a band who feel this suggestion has merit.

Not a producer, or publisher, or record label - but the creative talent, the song-writer, the session musician etc.

Please - if you are one of those and feel that the ability to copy a track from a CD to an iPod is taking food from your table, then let us know.

After all, the BPI purports to represent you.

Rory Cellan-Jones

Google - about to overtake ITV

  • Rory Cellan-Jones
  • 17 Apr 08, 18:09 GMT

Over the last three years I've made frequent visits to Google's London offices opposite Victoria station - and every time I go back the search firm seems to have filled more space.

This week the funky offices and the free canteen were sparsely populated but only because just about the whole London workforce had gone off on the annual Google ski trip.google_canteen432.jpg

And what are most of the eager young Googlers doing? Selling advertising or talking to Britain's biggest brands about how they can move more of their marketing budget online.

Because it's easy to forget that as well as being an extraordinarily innovative firm, Google is also rapidly becoming Britain's biggest advertising business. The latest figures - released on Thursday evening - show how rapidly it is growing in the UK, earning $803 million (about 拢407m) in the first three months of 2008, about 40% up on a year ago.

Let's put that into context. Last year, ITV's net advertising revenue was 拢1.5 billion. So, even if you just multiply Google's earnings by four and assume no further growth this year, Britain's biggest commercial television business - the original "licence to print money" - is about to be overtaken by an American upstart which only arrived in the UK in 2001.

google_staff203.jpgYou could not ask for a starker example of the threat to traditional media from the online world.

Marc Mendoza - whose media buying agency is putting a lot of its clients' budgets online - tells me that Google now has about 80% of the UK online advertising market. It turns out he's referring to search, where Google has crushed all opposition, and of course there are other forms of online marketing.

Still, the latest figures I've seen put total UK online ad spending at around 拢2.8 billion last year, of which Google had nearly half. That's a stunning share, and with the now completed, Google looks set to be bigger in display too. The company's founders were also sounding very bullish in their results conference call about their prospects in the mobile advertising market.

So who's got a problem with this? Microsoft, obviously - that's why it is determined to win its battle for Yahoo. With an infinitesimal share of online advertising, it is paranoid that the Google business model has more of a future.

But here in the UK, the internet service providers are desperate to shore up their wafer-thin subscription revenues with some advertising cash. That's why they're looking seriously at which promises to serve up targeted ads.

At an open meeting this week Phorm's chief executive was hammering home the message that there needed to be an alternative to Google.

All those young Googlers in their multi-coloured Victoria offices signed up to an edgy, radical business which was admired - even loved - by the rest of the industry. Now, though, Google has grown into the biggest kid on the block, and is eating everyone else's lunch. I don't think there's going to be much love flowing its way from now on.

Darren Waters

Toys leave me a-twitter

  • Darren Waters
  • 17 Apr 08, 16:13 GMT

I've been using a lot recently, thanks to the application .

twhirl.gifIt's powered by , which means it runs on both Macs and Windows, and makes using Twitter more pleasurable because it lives outside the browser in an "always-on" fashion.

As soon as a Twitter friends drops a new post I get a little chime and it appears in the Twhirl window.

But just as I was enjoying Twhirl, along came - another AIR application that makes using more of a pleasure.

And because FriendFeed is a composite of many online tools, including Twitter, I've since switched to Alert Thingy.

But now I've just learned that Twhirl now supports FriendFeed too.

So... every few seconds my laptop chirrups and chimes with new Tweets and new FriendFeed alerts from both applications.

It's a battle of the hyper-connected, AIR-powered tools.

Ultimately it means keeping up-to-date with the minutiae of people's lives has never been easier; if you're into that sort of thing.

Oh - and both Twhirl and Alert Thingy are great demonstrations of just how cool Air applications can be.

PS: Just to repeat what I added to the bottom of my earlier post, the 大象传媒 has now upgraded its blogging software so that, amongst other things, it better withstands the volume of comments we get. From today if you want to comment on any 大象传媒 blog you will need to register first. You can read more about this on the Editors' blog.

Darren Waters

First impressions: Classmate 2

  • Darren Waters
  • 17 Apr 08, 15:19 GMT

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I'm writing this post on one of Intel's new generation of laptops designed for the developing world - the Classmate PC - and it's quite a task, mainly because my fat fingers are too large for the keyboard.

This is the machine that arguably with (OLPC), makers of the . According to Intel, OLPC wanted the firm to stop making the Classmate. Intel refused and pulled out of their deal.

Whatever the truth - the Classmate is definitely a rival to the XO's ambitions in the developing world generally and in education in particular

I've been playing with the Classmate for a few days and my first impression is that the two laptops herald from polar opposite philosophies about how to end the digital divide.

We've lots about the XO and the first Classmate, so I won't repeat myself.

Certainly, the Classmate 2 is exactly the sort of machine you would expect a commercially driven firm to make for the developing world.

It's a cut-price, cut-down laptop that runs XP moderately well, and connects to the net without a hitch. In fact, it accomplishes most tasks thrown at it without a hitch and its underpowered processor only really struggles when it is attempting to multi-task.

It has been designed with education and the developing world in mind, says Intel, and yes, there are a small number of unique features. It has mesh networking - so that laptops can piggyback their wireless and create ad hoc networks.

But this feels like a feature pilfered from the XO and added only because it was such a glaring oversight in the first machine.

When you first connect to a wireless network it searches for other teachers' laptops on the network. It also comes with a nifty handle velcro-ed on to the machine for carrying and has a "water resistant" keyboard.

But that's about it, to be honest. It's small, well-made, quite rugged, with a decent keyboard and decent screen, albeit in only 800x400 resolution.

The key difference between the Classmate and XO is the different approach to software and operating system.

The XO comes with a variation of Linux installed - a user interface designed specifically for education, and applications built to support the educational environment.

The Classmate machine I'm using comes with XP loaded as standard - but there are options to have Linux.

And while there are plans afoot to port XP to the XO machine, it remains by and large a Linux machine.

There is educational software pre-loaded onto the Classmate machine and a teacher can monitor the work of children from a host machine.

The use of Windows gives the Classmate a recognition and sense of security to governments and educators looking to buy laptops for schools.

After all, Windows is the world's most dominant operating system.

So what else has changed with the second generation Classmate laptop?

Not much: the second gen laptop now has two models (7 inch and 9 inch screen) and has a built-in webcam.

It's clear the re-design of the Classmate is more about making the machine more design friendly to consumers and educators in the developed world than improving the internals of the machine.

nine-year-old Rufus Cellan-Jones gave his impressions of the XO laptop. We've given him a 7-inch model and expect his comments some time next week.

The machines go on sale for between $300 and $500, which is a lot more expensive than an XO, more expensive than an PC and probably a lot more than many educators can afford to pay.

Nicholas Negroponte's dream of one laptop per child - whether an XO or a Classmate, is still some way off.

PS: The 大象传媒 has now upgraded its blogging software so that, amongst other things, it better withstands the volume of comments we get. From today if you want to comment on any 大象传媒 blog you will need to register first. You can read more about this on the Editors' blog.

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