Remoulding Microsoft for the web
- 29 Jul 08, 12:30 GMT
What is for? I ask the question, because I think it's one that the company has been asking itself a lot recently.
Is it a software company? Producing an operating system, and tools like Office.
Or is it a hardware company? Producing games consoles and peripherals.
Perhaps it's a web company? Producing an online ecosystem, such as Live Mesh.
Or is it a server company? Producing Microsoft's Internet Information Server (IIS).
The answer, according to Microsoft, is all four.
Yesterday two of Microsoft's leading executives, , head of all Microsoft outside North America, and , head of Microsoft UK visited 大象传媒 News' Business Unit, as part of a series of lunchtime talks we arrange with leading businesses.
Mr Courtois has been with Microsoft 24 years, and Mr Frazer 13 years; long enough to see the firm reinvent itself over and over again.
Yesterday the two men were focused on explaining Microsoft to us as a software and services firm. While competitors, such as - whom Mr Courtois continually referred to as "our friend" - are a software-as-a-service firm, Microsoft's future is more complex.
The firm owns the desktop space, and is responsible for an ecosytem that encompases hundreds of millions of PCs.
It makes its money charging for a license each time a new version of Windows is installed.
But it also sells its own services which fit inside that ecosytem, namely Office.
It's a simple model and one that has proved to be enormously successful - the firm reported revenues of more than $50bn this year.
Yet the firm is dogged by repeated accusations that Vista has been a failure. Mr Courtois admitted that mistakes had been made at the launch of Vista, but pointed out that Microsoft had sold more than 180m licenses for Vista, putting it comfortably ahead of XP sales at the same time in that product's lifecycle.
He also said that Microsoft continued to pay a premium, in term of its brand, for being out in front in the OS market.
Microsoft is also intensely aware that a new model and market is emerging - one dominated by the free at point of use web.
So far Microsoft has proved less successful in this space, especially in search and advertising.
Mr Courtois was only to happy to acknowledge this and said the firm would be looking at areas such as specialised and niche search in the future, while still trying to compete with Google in the core search market.
He also said that health and education were two powerful new markets for the firm, as the areas were top of the agenda for most governments around the world.
But is Microsoft spreading itself too thinly? Can it create an ecosystem both offline and online, at the same time as providing services which exploit that infrastructure?
After the talk, my colleague Rory Cellan-Jones sat down and interviewed Mr Corurtois, and began by asking him how a company which has grown huge on persuading consumers to part with cash for software can prosper in an online world where they're beginning to assume it comes for free.
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Are you a digital native or an old dog?
- 29 Jul 08, 08:42 GMT
Companies love nothing more than being able to slot us all into a convenient box so they can target their advertising dollars and pitch their products in a more sales oriented way.
Fair dues I guess you could say. Well now a new study by the research company will help them in their quest with what it calls "the largest ongoing survey in the world to explore consumers' attitudes, ownership and use of technology."
While some of it is standard fare and is pretty obvious, the survey does tie down a few interesting trends.
According to Charles Golvin, a principal analyst at the company, a major strength of the report is that it includes a broad swath of so called members. They are youngsters in the 18-28 age bracket, a group of 38 million American citizens that "sets the pace for technology adoption."
And for most companies this group is apparently the most elusive said Mr Golvin.
"Gen Y is the audience that most companies are struggling to understand right now because it's key to their future revenue growth."
Surely you might think its everybody wants to sweet talk because they have the spending power? Not so said Mr Golvin who noted the distinction as thus.
"Gen Xers use technology when is supports a lifestyle need, while technology is so deeply embedded into everything Gen Yers do that they are truly the first native online population. They are heavy users of new media. It is their default."
What does that mean in real terms? Well it's much of a muchness at this stage.
The survey showed that nine in 10 Gen Yers own a personal computer and 82% own a mobile phone.
More crucially Gen Y spends more time online, for leisure or work, than watching old fashioned TV. 72% use their phone to send or receive texts and 42% watch internet video at least once a month.
Gen Xers are no slouches. Of the 63 million adults in this sector, 32% own an HDTV, 29% have a DVR and in the last three months, 69% shopped online and 65% banked online.
In short what the study seems to say is that it's not just about how much technology these sectors of the digital society have, but how they use it.
So what about those other age groups?
The Boomers, aged 43-63 are apparently 'older dogs reluctantly learning new tricks.' They do not go online for new activities and use technology for convenience.
The 39 million seniors out there, who are aged 64 and over, spend the least amount of time online and still watch more TV and read more newspapers than the others.
Mr Golvin said "One might say an older dog is even more difficult to teach tricks to."
The scamp!
How cool is Cuil?
- 28 Jul 08, 16:55 GMT
Does the world need another search engine? The people behind (pronounced cool) obviously think so. They claim that their brand new search searches three times as many pages as Google and they tell us that "rather than rely on superficial popularity metrics, Cuil searches for and ranks pages based on their content and relevance."
The founders of Cuil are former Google engineers and they obviously have a fiercely competitive attitude to their former mother-ship - this line in their FAQ seems aimed at another search engine:
"What information do you keep about me?"
"None. We analyze the web, not our users. Read our for details. It's short."
But getting a world which now uses "google" as a verb to change its search habits is a massive challenge. So is Cuil worth a try? I tried it, and was not immediately impressed. It looks better than Google, with images integrated into search results, and I like the option to explore by categories which you are offered with your results. But in a number of cases it offered me, well, nothing.
One was a complex inquiry relating to how you find your data usage on a mobile broadband product - Google directed me to a useful forum, Cuil said "no results".
Then I put in the surname of a senior Microsoft executive and got this :"We didn't find any results for "Courtois Microsoft". Only when I put in his full name did I receive some decent links.
Perhaps it was just me. I decided to widen my research by asking colleagues across our newsroom - all of whom are rabid searchers after truth - to try a Cuil search alongside every Google inquiry. Within minutes of sending out an e-mail, I was getting plenty of responses - most telling me that they had received this message after trying a search:
"Due to overwhelming interest, our Cuil servers are running a bit hot right now. The search engine is momentarily unavailable as we add more capacity."
Oh dear - if you can't hook impatient people on the day you launch, they may not return. I decided to give it one last chance and put Cuil's fate in the hands of a real expert. Murray Dick is a 大象传媒 researcher who has spent a lot of time working out how journalists can use search more effectively - he runs an excellent seminar on webtools for journalists, which he's published on .
His conclusions were kinder than mine, but not much:
- Search term: "The speed of sound" "This particular search highlights one of Google's many tricks - giving a calculation and conversion details of the speed of sound at the top - a serious benefit over the Cuil results."
- Search term: "Nikon d50 reviews problems". Plenty of articles on the D70 camera, but none on the D50 (which might suggest it isn't doing its job in terms of prioritising meta tags and headlines above freetext). Google however got a good review from a reputable independent source as first link.
- Search term:"Fernando Pessoa" From the point of view of someone interested in literature, Cuil returned a wiki result, and a number of literary review-type pages, both professional and amateur. However Google (assuming the consumerist angle) brought back Amazon results as a priority (with pic), then Wiki, then various others - Google is geared more towards selling than reference research.
- Search term: "What age is Gordon Strachan?"
Cuil returns nothing - it doesn't seem to be able to cope with question-based queries - compared to Ask (with same query), which finds Strachan's Wiki page, and gives the results exactly (Ask being a natural language search engine, beats others at this type of query - semantic search engines aside).
So Cuil only came out on top in one out of Murray's four searches. In summary, neither Murray nor anyone else I asked to try out Cuil saw a compelling reason to switch search engines, which is a pity, because it is getting more difficult to extract useful results from Google.
Cuil has raised impressive amounts of investor cash for a start-up taking on the biggest kid on the internet block. But seeing as I had to search Google to find out about the $25 million round of investment in April - a search on Cuil for "cuill backers" returned no results - I fear those investors may not see their money back.
UPDATE:
Well I don't look so cool now, do I? I've spent an entire blog post writing "Cuil" as "Cuill"(now corrected). Why? Because that is how I first typed it into my browser and that took me to the site. Mind you, I've done that search for "cuil backers" again and it still returns nothing useful.
Stephen Fry, Apple and the 大象传媒
- 26 Jul 08, 19:58 GMT
After a long absence, Stephen Fry is back with his gadget column in the Guardian. Terrible news - he's such a witty and well-informed observer of the technology scene that he makes the rest of us read like a laser printer user manual.
His first piece on his return is about the 3g iPhone - and halfway through a pretty positive review he launches this, admittedly mild, sideswipe at us: "The 大象传媒's technology site is so afraid of looking as though it "favours" Apple in some way that it has been failing to file legitimate stories for fear of the anti-Apple community, because, believe it or not, there are people out there who think the launch of yet another Nokia or WinMob Apple-a-like should be given equal prominence."
Oh dear, have we been failing to give enough coverage to Apple? Those of you who are frequent visitors to this blog - many, many millions of you - will be aware that every time we do write about Mr Jobs' company, war breaks out between the Macaholics and the rest. The Apple fans accuse us of being insufficiently respectful of the wondrous gifts emanating from the shrine at Cupertino, the non-believers stifle a yawn and complain that we give this minor business far more attention than it deserves.
In the run-up to the launch of the 3g iPhone the complaints were so numerous - at least a dozen - that I was dragged in front of the ultimate tribunal, the 大象传媒 Editors' Blog, and forced to explain myself.
So that probably made us a bit more cautious in our coverage. I decided that I really couldn't be bothered to write about the new iPhone - although I did cover the arrival of the applications store, which I,like Stephen Fry, thought more significant. It wasn't just the wrath of some readers that put us off covering the 3g launch, it was the attitude of the Apple press office. We had planned a jokey video comparing iPhone 3g with the HTC Diamond, but so manic and controlling was Apple about letting us film a phone before the launch that we chucked the whole idea.
And yes, I agree that our caution means we may have failed to file some legitimate stories. Like the total Horlicks (oh no - more product placement) Apple has made of the launch of its MobileMe online service. I'm not going to write about it now - it's about as boring as watching the spinning beach-ball as my laptop fails to synchronise with my desktop. But considering Apple plans to charge 拢59 for something which the likes of Plaxo do for nothing - synchronise your data between different computers - then this ranks as one of the most disastrous launches since Heathrow's Terminal 5 lost half the world's baggage.
Oh, and while I'm at it, the 3g iPhone is indeed a thing of beauty - and I love turning my phone into a light sabre as much as the next man. But the GPS can't find me four times out of five, the SMS application takes an age to launch, there's no cut and paste - and the battery barely lasts beyond 4pm on a busy day. Whereas the 2g iPhone now does almost everything the new one does - via the 2.0 software - with longer battery life. There. I'll shut up again now - and let the Mac-bashers and boosters have another go.
UPDATE: Darren Waters, the editor of the Technology section, has given his view on all this, below.
Just how big is the web?
- 25 Jul 08, 20:50 GMT
Ever wondered how big the world wide web is?
Well, Google thinks they have an idea. Their search engineers reckon there are now more than one trillion unique URLs live on the web right now, marking a new milestone.
There's a bit more detail . And of course by the time you read this, there are many, many more new URLs.
Apple's future without Steve Jobs
- 25 Jul 08, 06:38 GMT
The rather inelegant question of who will lead when Steve Jobs "goes" is being bandied about virtually everywhere at the moment. Speculation about his health has prompted the rumour mill to go into overdrive with Apple seemingly doing a poor job to dampen down the feverish speculation.
It all started last month when a gaunt Mr Jobs appeared at the company's developer conference in San Francisco. There was an almost audible gasp in the auditorium when he took to the stage in jeans that were practically hanging off his thin frame. But for a short while the issue faded as the crowd went nuts over his announcement about the new 3G iPhone.
Afterwards, spokespeople at Apple said Mr Jobs was recovering from a common bug. It was no secret that he had pancreatic cancer and four years ago underwent surgery which was hailed a success.
But the topic took centre stage again this week when analysts were involved in a conference call following the company's quarterly results. Chief financial officer Peter Oppenheimer said that Mr Jobs served as CEO "at the pleasure of Apple's board and has no plans to leave Apple".
Not sure if that line was borrowed from the script where the characters were constantly intoning how they "served at the pleasure of the president".
Arguably the matter might just have withered on the vine if Mr Oppenheimer had left the issue there, but he added that Mr Jobs' health was "a private matter".
That got people Twittering like mad and now the big question being asked is just how much investors and analysts should know about a top exec's health. Especially, they are suggesting, one like Steve Jobs who is such a visionary for Apple and whose success seems to be closely bound together.
You might well think that this is a lot of brouhaha for nothing, but in the world of commerce this is a big deal. news agency reports that one investor was considering adding to his $2bn fund but was hestitant because of all the talk about the Apple guru's health.
There are now reports that the "common bug" that led to the weight loss was due to a "surgical procedure" Steve Jobs had earlier in the year. And also being highlighted and bandied about by unnamed sources and unnamed friends is the story that "in recent weeks, Mr Jobs has reassured several people that he is doing well and that four years after a successful operation to treat a rare form of pancreatic cancer, he is cancer-free".
You might wonder how Apple ended up handling this bit of public relations so badly? They are, after all, regarded as masters of the art when it comes to hyping their products and controlling the "message". But it does seem they have been wrong-footed.
The debate all just underlines the $64,000 question of who really will eventually follow in Steve Jobs' footsteps? And can or should any one person be allowed to be bigger than the company he or she runs?
BPI v ISPs - who's won on music piracy?
- 23 Jul 08, 23:34 GMT
Just two days ago BskyB signed a deal with Universal to set up an online music service and I asked whether the fast-growing broadband provider would be doing anything in return to crack down on filesharing. Well now I've got my answer. Sky is one of six major ISPs to sign a memorandum of understanding with the music industry to reduce the ilegal swapping of music online.
The deal was brokered by the government and is being . Among those companies to have signed up is Carphone Warehouse, whose boss Charles Dunstone sent the music industry away with a flea in its ear a few months back, insisting it wasn't his job to act as an internet policeman.
So victory to the BPI, the music industry trade body which has fought long and hard to get the ISPs to to recognise their duty to cooperate in the campaign against piracy? Err, not quite.
All the ISPs have promised to do is to send letters to those customers identified by the BPI as persistent filesharers. And these letters are described as "Informative", designed to let people know that what they are doing is illegal, but not to threaten them with anything - much like to some of its customers. What the BPI wants - and it's been telling anyone that would listen that it had the government's backing on this - is a "three strikes and you're out" policy, which would see customers who ignored repeated warnings disconnected by their broadband providers. I've spoken to two ISPs in the last few hours and both have made it clear that they certainly will not be threatening customers with any such thing.
Now these letters may have an effect on some who receive them, particularly parents who are informed that the teenagers are upstairs sharing their music with the world. Indeed I'm told that a trial shows they work in around 70% of cases. The trouble is that the other 30%, what you might call the hardcore filesharers, will not be deterred. That issue - dealing with the repeat offenders - will now be discussed by the two sides with the media regulator Ofcom.
I've also heard that the business minister Baroness Vadera has spent many hours on the phone to ISP bosses, urging them to sign up to this deal. Whatever the BPI may say about the threat of legislation if the ISPs don't play ball, it's clear the government wants to avoid that at all cost. After all, any kind of voluntary "pact on piracy" sounds a lot better than framing complex laws designed to turn millions of internet users and the companies who supply them into criminals.
Oh, and that story running in about the government favouring a 拢30 tax to download music seems to be wide of the mark. It sounds like the "iPod tax" idea floated by some parts of the music industry - and even they admit that it is now a non-starter.
The BPI has a carrot-and-stick approach in its dealings with the ISPs - you crack down on pirates, and you can have a stake in what is still a pretty lucrative business. So far, the ISPs seem to be grabbing the carrot - while avoiding the stick.
Saving TV advertising the TiVo way
- 23 Jul 08, 09:46 GMT
You gotta hand it to those bods over at land. First of all they invent a brilliant dvr for recording TV programmes that lets you skip adverts and gives you ultimate viewing power. Well now, they have turned that on its head and have incorporated a feature that lets you buy products you either see on a show or on a commercial all from your couch.
TiVo have partnered up with for this amazing switcheroo. And of course it gladdens the hearts of all those companies who had been paying out top dollar for TV advertising only to have viewers completely ignore their pitches.
(Full disclosure here. I was an early adoptor and evangelist of TiVo when it first came out but on my return to the Valley, have had to swap to another provider to get the British footy.)
Now the 'Product Purchase Feature' will pair up any item that is available from Amazon with a TV show and allow TiVo viewers to simply click and buy.
"By teaming with Amazon.com, TiVo enables viewers to purchase products related to their favourite TV shows or what they've seen in TV ads without leaving their couch," said Evan Young the director of broadband services for TiVo.
"For example, if a guest on or has a new book, CD, or DVD out, you can purchase it on Amazon.com using your TiVo remote without missing a second of TV, whether the viewer is watching live or recorded."
Whoopee! More people getting into debt buying things they don't need and more profits for everyone else.
Frankly I think it's a sell out. I liked the fact that TiVo kinda thumbed its nose at the advertisers and gave us, the viewer, the power to just enjoy a programme without it being interrupted every 12 minutes or so.
Now it's the worst of all worlds.
Advertisers hounding us every which way and the awful prospect of constantly being pitched at during a show and after. I know we already are with product placement and subliminal advertising and that as we walk around our towns and cities we are bombarded by thousands of advertising messages every day. But this is just another slide on the slippery slope to increased debt and probably crass TV.
Ask yourself what is going to happen to all those great documentaries and period dramas that cost a fortune to make. Does it mean they will only get funding if they incorporate this feature?
Let's be really extreme and imagine as we watch Mary Queen of Scots head to the chopping block, that we are offered the chance to buy DVDs on the history of the British monarchy. Or let's say, during that World Cup clincher between England and Scotland (hey we can all dream!) that you get the amazing opportunity to buy the autobiography of Sir Alex Ferguson or David Beckham's new underpants line.
Yes, you may scoff, but who is to say that that is not what lies down the road.
Don't get me wrong. I understand the basic business model that TV needs to make money to make programmes and that advertisers need eyeballs to sell their products and that the advertising pie is being gobbled up by the internet. What I fear is that erosion of great TV and the ability of great TV producers and directors to take creative chances that might not always pay off.
Heck you can see here in America that advertising is already going where it really shouldn't ought to.
On the front page of this week's there is a story about how the presenters on a morning news programme in Las Vegas sit with cups of iced coffee on their desks. The anchors rarely touch the cups. I think that is meant to convey journalistic integrity or something.
Execs at the station say it's part of a six-month promotion to shore up advertising revenue. One advertising honcho at the company behind the scheme admitted to the NY Times that if the programme did a negative news story about McDonalds that the cups should get whisked away or they wouldn't be very happy and would probably can the promotion.
I lament the all pervasive nature of advertising in our world and especially in our very own living room. And now TiVo, the company that made skipping adverts so easy is delivering viewers back into the hands of advertisers. But then I guess that's what they call progress!
Sky and Universal v iTunes and file-sharers
- 22 Jul 08, 16:45 GMT
I spent half an hour this morning in the rather impressive office of a CEO. It was different from the usual set-up - there was a guitar in one corner, a keyboard in another, and the office's owner told me that Amy Winehouse had been sitting where I was just a while back, belting out a few songs for him.
The office belonged to Lucian Grainge, the chairman and chief executive of Universal Music Group International. Also present was Mike Darcey, chief operating officer of BskyB, who confessed that his own office on Sky's charmless industrial estate in Osterley was rather less impressive.
Still, it's Mr Darcy whose company is the real powerhouse in the deal that the satellite broadcaster has just signed with Universal to launch a new music service. For years, record industry moguls have been telling Internet Service Providers (and don't forget Sky is now one of Britain's fastest growing ISPs) that they can have a lucrative stake in the music business - and presumably get to meet the likes of Amy Winehouse - if they only do something to crack down on illegal file-sharing.
Now Sky has won the reward - access to Universal's huge catalaogue - without apparently paying the price. Its joint venture with the music label is being touted by the two firms as "a world first" - a susbscription service with all-you-can-eat streaming plus a set number of DRM-free downloads. But Mr Darcey was being very coy about whether Sky would return Universal's favour by sending its broadband customers letters warning them of the error of their file-sharing ways - as Virgin Media has done. They were "talking to governement and the music industry about the way forward" was all he would say.
Still, it's clear that this, like many other new music services, has two targets - the file-sharers and iTunes. BskyB reckons it can succeed in denting Apple's dominance where so many others have failed. As Mike Darcey points out, his company is in one in three UK households, through its TV business, and has plenty of experience in running subscription services. What's more it's got far more marketing muscle than any of the existing music subscription services - so Sky's nine million customers can expect to be bombarded with offers.
But there are big questions yet to be answered. We don't know what price Universal/Sky customers will be asked to pay for their music, and we are still not clear exactly when the service will launch. By the time it's here, Nokia's "Comes With Music" (in which Universal is also a partner) may well have launched, offering another eye-catching way of getting hold of music legally without iTunes.
As for the file-sharers, the argument that all they've just been waiting for a nice new legal service to come along is wearing a bit thin. The digital music business seems now to have achieved some sort of equilibirum. Many of its customers - especially the younger ones - have fallen into a pattern of getting most of their music by file-sharing, while buying the odd track from iTunes. Disturbing that equilibrium is going to be tough - but BskyB and Universal have a better chance than most.
Is the mystery game revealed?
- 19 Jul 08, 17:16 GMT
A reader of the blog - Kyle Barrett - has emailed to ask if a mystery game I had teased people with a few months ago had finally been revealed at Sony's E3 press conference.
At the time I wrote:
If the footage I was shown truly is "in game", as told to me by the Sony PR people, then we could be on the brink of a step change in what games consoles are capable of in terms of story-telling and immersion.
So, sat in the audience in the Shrine Auditorium in Los Angeles at the Sony briefing I was really looking forward to seeing everyone's reaction to the game.
As the briefing wore on I was beginning to wonder if it would ever appear.
But then Sony executive Jack Tretton said: "We have one final thing to show you."
And I thought: This is it. This is the big reveal; finally I can be unburdened with this secret.
And on the big screen MAG appeared - the massively multiplayer online FPS game.
As it turned out: this was one of the games I had been shown some months before but under strict instruction I was not to write about it.
But this was not the game I was referring to. It still hasn't been shown publicly.
And so I still can't talk about it. Or even tell you what it's called. In fact when I referred to it in passing and without detail in front of a 大象传媒 colleague this week, the Sony PR man drew a sharp intake of breath and shot me a withering look.
Some of you might be thinking the game is pure vapourware. But I promise you it's real.
Broadband poverty - a 1% problem?
- 18 Jul 08, 09:10 GMT
This week saw of its plan to invest 拢1.5bn in fibre-based broadband - a move I thought was pretty significant. But as soon as I'd written about it I received an e-mail from someone who wasn't impressed at all.
"There is a significant number of people like me who live and run businesses in rural communities that can still not receive broadband at all," wrote Adrian Linney. "We are a small minority of households/business for sure, but we are living in digital poverty whilst those who live in or near cities have their greed for speed met ultimately at our expense." Mr Linney lives in Herefordshire, not a particularly remote location.
I was intrigued, especially as I'd heard from other people in similar circumstances who could not understand why the broadband revolution had not reached their doorsteps. So I called Adrian Linney to find out why he couldn't get connected. The answer was that he was seven miles from the nearest exchange and a engineer who came and tested the line told him that was too far away to get broadband by the normal ADSL route. As a graphic designer working from home he needs to be online, so he's had to resort to satellite broadband - at 拢70 a month for a 512Kbps connection.
So how many people are in this situation? My next call was to the telecoms regulator . "The exact scale of the problem is difficult to quantify," came the reply. But they pointed me towards the statistic that is often trotted out - that over 99% of the population is connected to a broadband enabled exchange. So, if you believe that, less than 1% of the UK population is living in "broadband poverty".
But how robust are those figures is not clear. Adrian Linney for instance is connected to a broadband enabled exchange - indeed when I popped his number into BT's speed check site it came back with this message:
"We've just tested your line and can confirm your line supports the UK's most complete broadband package, BT Total Broadband. We estimate your maximum download speed to be 6.0 Mbps". But of course the engineer told Mr Linney that his maximum speed would be - well, around zero.
There do seem to be quite a few of these broadband "not spots", places that aren't up some mountain or on a remote island but just a few too many miles from the nearest exchange, and there may well be more people in them than the 1% of the population suggested by Ofcom.
Now BT says with some justification that it is not a social service but a company owned by shareholders who demand a return on their investment, so it can't be expected to spend a fortune bringing broadband to every last home. Ofcom says it is encouraging local development bodies to help fill any gaps in broadband provision.
But Adrian Linney wonders whether it will be sustainable, in a few years time when much of the country is being offered speeds of 20, 40, or even 100Mbps, to leave people like him out of the broadband age.
The sun sets on E3
- 18 Jul 08, 06:48 GMT
I wasn't exactly the last to leave the LA Convention Center but I was certainly among the final few to be ushered out politely by security staff.
After four days, three major press conferences, 14 interviews and enough Snapple to stun a cow my E3 draws to a close.
If you haven't seen it already, we have a special section devoted to E3. There you'll find lots of lovely video from our time in LA.
We've tried to do more video this year - which for me meant operating a camera and doing some video editing. So I take responsibility for all the video diaries. Here's .
My colleague Andrew Webb produced all the good stuff. Can I point you in the direction of the sequence about the , the exhibition, and the .
Although E3 is a fraction of the size it was, in many ways it means more work. It's easier to meet more people, play more games, which means producing more output.
The E3 of old was so crowded, so impossibly frenetic that it was almost impossible to get work done.
There are plenty of things I didn't get a chance to see, not least The Who playing at EA's Rockband 2 party at The Orpheum in Los Angeles. My colleague Iain Mackenzie saw them and said they were awesome; he's from Radio 1 so I trust his judgement.
The best part of the show is always the snatches of conversations you have with developers, often after the camera has stopped rolling.
Developers like Todd (Bethesda) Howard and Eric (Crystal Dynamics) Lindstrom were terrific conversationalists. All of it was off the record, but believe me these guys are very smart.
In many ways the new smaller, more dignified E3 represents an industry that is finally growing up.
One of the reasons that E3 used to be such a carnival of light and sound was because the industry was trying so desperately hard to impress.
One of the PRs I spoke to this week said it was about convincing lifestyle journalists that the games industry was credible: "The games industry does Hollywood."
Some people have emailed me to ask why Technology is covering the games industry and not Entertainment. It's a valid question.
It's because, by and large, the 大象传媒 like many other mainstream media organisations does not really see video games as part of the entertainment industry.
It's an attitude that is changing slowly, but rather than see no coverage at all on the 大象传媒, I'd rather do some under the Technology umbrella.
I even managed to get a radio package about E3 on the Today programme on Radio 4.
And if that's not progress, then I don't know what is.
Top five E3 2008 moments
- 17 Jul 08, 17:25 GMT
E3 always provides its fair share of magic and stand-out moments - and it's not always just the games themselves.
So here are mine from 2008 that will remain with me for some time:
Todd Howard's moment of horror
It's one of the most public ways for technology to go wrong. Standing in front of the world's gaming press to demo Fallout 3, and just as you begin to play up pops "Please reconnect your controller."
As Todd Howard later told me: "I thought I was going to die on stage." Luckily for him, it was a momentary glitch and the game was soon up and running.
Eurogamer's Ellie Gibson loving Wii Music a little too much
We asked games journalist Ellie Gibson to give her selection of the best of E3. And she picked out Wii Music from Nintendo. And as you can see in the video, she really digged those drums.
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Cliffy B playing You're in the movies
In a lighter moment, it was nice to see Epic developer Cliffy B, master of the chainsaw, messing about and playing the Xbox title You're In The Movies. Even Cliffy B likes some downtime from all that gore.
Seeing Phil Harrison at the Xbox event
The former PlayStation executive is one of gaming's most towering icons, in part because he is so tall. Now at Atari, he was among the crowd at the Xbox press conference and looking very relaxed with his new role. He even apologised to me for not contacting me as I'd asked him to on this blog after his surprise exit from Sony.
Duffy being asked about digital distribution plans for Lips
All companies use celebrity endorsements for their products. But it's asking a bit much of your hired talent when you expect them to answer marketing and strategy questions.
Poor Duffy was left on the spot when the developer of Xbox's shameless Singstar-clone Lips rushed off stage following a demo and a European journalist asked her about what kind of downloadable tracks the game would offer.
Nintendo lead from the front
- 16 Jul 08, 13:02 GMT
The last time Nintendo had such domination of the games business Sony was focusing on Walkmans and Microsoft had just released a minor product, called Windows.
Twenty three years later and the three heavy weights go into the crucial period before Christmas knowing full well who will emerge as the victor.
Sony can, and does, point to its success as the only firm with three simultaneous platforms - the PS3, PSP and PS2, which continues to do remarkable business.
Part of the great optimism within Sony's ranks stems from the fact they know many millions of owners have yet to buy a next generation console.
But Nintendo's dominance is not just based on the impressive sales figures for the and DS, which stand at more than 10m and 70m respectively.
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It comes from knowing that the Wii and DS have sparked a revolution in the industry, one which Sony and Microsoft are only beginning to react to.
At the Nintendo press conference, American boss Reggie Fils-Aime uttered the word that many people have used to describe the firm's success - "fad".
He said: "Fad is no longer operable. It's inevitable when the paradigm shifts, imitation is just around the corner."
Nintendo has always been a humble company - but they haven't been able to restrain themselves from a few choice remarks.
The company's global president Satoru Iwata said of the Wii's success: "Even if it is a revolution sooner or later people will become tired of a new form of entertainment.
"This happens faster when others try and reproduce the initial change. What seemed fresh, will inevitably be lost."
Which explains Nintendo's insatiable appetite for peripherals: No sooner had the balance board arrived, but now we have the MotionPlus, a highly sensitive motion controller which attaches to the Wiimote.
Nintendo is desperate to convince people it is not a one-trick pony. And while it wheels out the WiiSports Resort and WiiMusic, the firm's highly loyal fans are left waiting on news of the company's legacy titles, Zelda and Mario.
But there was no news at all; not even a teaser trailer. A lot of people left the Kodak Theatre muttering a little.
And what about Sony? Their staging was certainly the most dramatic of the big three and their message to consumers and analysts was just as subtle.
Sony Computer Entertainment America boss went to great lengths to point out that some of the biggest ever releases on the PS2 did not see the light of day until two, three, four and five years into its lifespan.
What he's really trying to say is: Be patient PlayStation fans, the best is yet to come.
For the last two years PlayStation devotees who invested in a PS3 in truth invested in a promise; that the potential of the console would be realised with outstanding games.
Despite the hyperbole, there is not a single game, in my opinion, on the PS3 that truly looks like it surpasses the technical limitations of the Xbox 360.
Sony is desperate to put clear blue water between itself and the Xbox 360, and reeled off a roster of game developers who wanted to wax lyrical about the power of the Cell processor.
But no-one has played or experience anything tangible that backs these claims up. And that's not to say it won't ever happen.
For me, the most impressive aspect of the PlayStation 3's development is in the online space. The original PlayStation Network was a clumsy, ill-conceived attempt at community through connectivity, and digital experiences through downloads.
But in the US, at least, it is getting its act together, with a movie and film download store, and great use of the PSP as a satellite device.
It is just frustrating that European gamers cannot enjoy the same level of service.
So what did we learn from the two press conferences today?
One:
Nintendo still looks a little shocked to be ahead of the pack.
Two:
Sony is asking for just a little bit more time to deliver on the many promises of PlayStation 3.
Hands on with vintage gaming
- 15 Jul 08, 14:10 GMT
If you want to find some of the best video games during E3 then I would advise driving away from the convention centre north east to the suburb of Glendale.
Hidden away in a work shed is the Vintage Arcade Superstore, a treasure trove of some of the greatest jewels in video game history. Retro-loving gamers can pick up a piece of history for as little as $1,500 (拢750).
An original Williams' Defender machine, Ms Pacman, Battezone, Gauntlet, a classic Asteroids cabinet, Star Wars, Pinball Machines and hundreds of other gems fill the room.
There are dusty circuit boards, old cathode ray tube monitors, the empty housings of classic arcade games and row upon row of some of the greatest games ever made.
The store is the property of Gene Lewin, who started the arcade superstore 31 years ago after falling in love with Pinball as a teenager.
"They are imaginative, creative, a lot of fun," he said of arcade machines.
But why arcade machines when you can play games in high definition on a game console for as little as $400 (拢200)?
He said: "It's the real arcade experience; the original games, the original cabinets, the original artwork. You can get a piece of your childhood, a piece of history."
Gene and his team both sell and restore arcade games, from the monitors to the boards and cabinets.
And his most prized possession?
"I have the very first Asteroids Deluxe machine, serial number 001.
"It's one of a kind and the first off the assembly line."
So if you want this piece of history you can pick it up for only $2,495 (拢1,500).
A tale of two Microsofts
- 15 Jul 08, 12:20 GMT
And so it was to a rather emasculated Los Angeles Convention Center for the first press conference and briefing of 2008.
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The E3s of old were colourful, brash affairs but there were no signs of the traditional giant posters on the convention windows and walls. The walls were bare and the hall had the air of an accountancy convention, rather than a games conference.
We'd been dragged from our beds for an early morning exclusive press briefing with Microsoft, ahead of the actual Xbox conference. We were promised a "major announcement".
On the way to the venue the journalists speculated about the announcement:
"A price cut!"
"A new Halo game"
"Bungie's new project"
So what was it? Well, it was Lips, a karaoke game that bears more than a passing resemblance to Singstar on the PlayStation 3.
A ripple of disinterest passed through the assembled media who half-heartedly asked some questions, most of which were batted away with a "we can't talk about that right now" response.
Microsoft brought on Welsh singer Duffy as the acceptable face of video games to plug the new title. Right on cue she admitted she didn't play video games because they were too violent.
One of the journalists asked her about downloadable content for Lips. Unsurprisingly, she wasn't exactly that well versed with the digital distribution plans for Xbox Live titles.
And so on we trouped to the press briefing proper. And it was the usual slick Microsoft briefing.
We were expecting a radical new direction for the console. But the first half was dominated by the classic blockbuster franchises, Gears of War 2, Fable 2 and Fallout 3.
Just as we thought that Microsoft's attempt to become a more family-friendly console was an illusion, up stepped John Schappert and Shane Kim to reveal all.
A re-designed Xbox Live, coupled with plenty of social and casual games were paraded in front of us. But it felt like Microsoft had merely cherry picked some of the more successful aspects of the PlayStation and Wii, and created versions for the 360.
There was lots of news about new developments for Xbox Live content but most of them applied only to the North American market.
Bungie were due on stage to reveal a taster of their upcoming project their first title post Halo. But there was no sign of them.
I had been due to speak with them immediately after the briefing but that too was pulled with little explanation.
And so what impression am I left with? Well, Microsoft are clearly a company being pulled in two directions: it needs to satisfy the blood-thirsty needs of its core demographic, but can only triumph over Sony if it can attract more European gamers to the platform, and they tend to prefer more casual titles.
Microsoft can do both but the firm just looks uncomfortable trying to do casual and social: a demo session during the briefing of three Xbox senior playing a movie game was just painful to watch.
BT goes high fibre
- 15 Jul 08, 11:59 GMT
has announced a big investment this morning in fibre, promising to get Britain into the broadband fast lane. It's aiming to bring 10 million homes within reach of fibre-based broadband by 2012. That's going to cost a whopping one and a half billion pounds - though some of that cash was already in the investment pipeline.
It looks as though this could be the moment broadband enthusiasts have been crying out for, when the UK starts catching up with countries who've already started the move to ultra-fast networks. BT was keen to celebrate. "This marks the beginning of a new chapter in Britain's broadband story," according to the new Chief Executive Ian Livingston.
But hold on a minute. We were told that digging up Britain to lay a fibre-to-the-home network would cost 拢15bn, ten times what BT is spending, so how can they do it for the money?
Well first of all the plan is to reach 40% of UK homes with fibre, with the rest served by the new ADSL2 network, which is going to offer up to 24Mbps. And then in most cases they're planning not fibre to the home, but "fibre to the cabinet" - in other words that box on the street where you sometimes see an engineer fiddling. That will deliver up to 40Mbps, with BT saying its technicians believe they can eventually get up to 60Mbps.
Some places - like the Ebbsfleet development in Kent - will get fibre right into the home, with the promise of up to 100Mbps soon, and 10 times that in the future. Who gets what will depend on an assessment of demand from both consumers and the retail broadband suppliers who will be using the BT fibre network.
And BT is making it clear that the regulator must play its part by allowing it to make a decent return on the cash. Within hours of the announcement, Ofcom had put out a press release welcoming BT's plans, and talking of providing "the right incentives for operators to invest" in fast broadband, so I think we can assume that the regulatory side will be sorted.
What we don't know yet is what this will cost consumers. But after a bitter price war which has left many broadband providers struggling to provide a decent service at a profit, there looks certain to be more mergers - and with fewer, bigger broadband players, that could mean we all end up paying a bit more to get the kind of speeds BT is now promising.
So this may not be quite the bold step into the future painted by BT - and remember the likes of Virgin Media are already promising ultra-fast broadband - but it is a sign that money is beginning to flow to fibre. And let's not underestimate the risk involved for a major telecoms business in promising extra expenditure in the current environment. Stockmarket analysts did not seem too surprised by the the BT announcement - but the share price was still down more than four percent the last time I looked.
E3 gets set for gaming
- 14 Jul 08, 13:30 GMT
Hands up if you've got an , or ?
That's a fair few of you.
Now, hands up if you play any games on , or casual games on your PC, perhaps online gambling, or perhaps a few games on your phone, or on your DS Lite or PSP?
I suspect that there might be a few more of you in that category.
The fact is we like playing games; no, we love playing games. The whole world is busy playing games.
Yet the console manufacturers have not always been successful in tapping this rich interest in gaming.
The Wii has made great strides with family-friendly, social gaming but Sony and Microsoft have traditionally aimed for the hard core gamer.
That could all be about to change at this year's . Microsoft, in particular, is expected to spend vast amounts of money rebranding and repositioning the Xbox 360.
As one commentator said to me: "Microsoft want to be seen more like Disney and less like Tarantino."
The Xbox has for too long been seen as the home of Halo, of first person shooters, twitch action gaming, and online death match battles.
Microsoft knows that if it is going to appeal to a broader market, and to gamers in territories like mainland Europe, it needs a softer, more accessible image.
That doesn't mean the hard core gamer will be left out in the cold - Gears of War 2 and the power of Xbox Live are the two biggest weapons in its arsenal.
For PlayStation, Sony needs to move beyond the brand. The firm relied on brand loyalty in the first 12 months of its launch but now it needs to put clear blue water between itself and Xbox.
It has made bigger strides than Microsoft in the social gaming arena - with Buzz, Singstar and Eyetoy - and the firm will be putting more emphasis here too, as well as pushing its exclusive franchises.
Nintendo has the difficult task of pulling the same magic trick twice. It dazzled us with the audacity of the Wii, and has carried off the spoils for the last two years. But is there more depth to the Wii? How long can it rely on puzzle games, or lifestyle games? I hope we find out what Nintendo's peerless in-house studios are up to - because we've heard so little from them.
I'm expecting to see the big firms like , and announce titles for the Wii which make great use of its control mechanism, as well as develop the social aspect of gaming further.
We're out at E3 this week, writing for the website and blog, doing on demand video, a bit of radio and some TV. So we've got a big week ahead of us.
So what are the big games of E3? Well, I'll be looking forward to seeing Fallout 3, Left4Dead, Dead Space, Gears of War 2, Fable 2, Killzone 2, LittleBigPlanet, and any first-party Nintendo titles.
And you? What are you hoping to see from E3?
Google Open House
- 14 Jul 08, 13:10 GMT
Some cubicles are stark and workman like but the majority are gay and fun. I am talking about the work stations of Googlers who have just moved into their new home in San Francisco overlooking the Bay.
Last week threw an open house and the Mayor of the city, the handsome and very charming came along to officially welcome the newcomers to what he hailed as the first truly 21st Century city in the world.
"It's always been a city of dreamers and doers, of entrepreneurs, of innovators. A city always on the leading edge of new ideas. One of the most diverse cities in the most diverse region in the most diverse state in the world. The most diverse democratic city that doesn't tolerate its diversity but celebrates it."
Way to go Mayor!
And by the way, in case you are wondering, the Mayor is kinda in the middle of a political campaign. That of perhaps running for governor when so called 'Governator' Arnie Schwarzenegger hangs up his Uzi in a couple of years time.
The Mayor told an assembled crowd of journos and workies that he had been trying to persuade the Google founders Sergey Brin and Larry Page for years to open up in San Francisco.
It seems fitting that as the company approaches its 10th anniversary, it should finally succumb to the lure of the City by the Bay. That also puts an end to the daily misery of being shuttled 50 miles south to the Googleplex hq in Mountain View for many employees who refused to live in the burbs.
Forgive me, but always one to bat for the Scots abroad, my charming guide around the
new office space was Calum Docherty who hails from the Kingdom of Fife by way of Greenock.
There were still tons of people mingling about and working when we went for a wander around in the early evening...and some as you can see from the photo I have posted take a leisurely approach to getting the job done. Touche!
There is no doubt that a certain level of self expression is encouraged...especially if you like blow-up animals.
Calum also gave me a sneak peak into his office, which he and his fellow cohorts have decorated with a Casablanca 'Play It Again Sam' kind of feel.
Overall what an office! For me it is the floor to ceiling views afforded of the Bay that clinches it, for others it might be the fact employees were given a budget to decorate their offices and work space. Which if you think about it is really clever 'cos along with all the fab free food, games and massages there really is no need to go home because you have just created a wee bit of home here at the office.
I had to remind three Googlers curled up playing Wii games as I was leaving around eight that they had families and a life to return to after work.
Google is no different from big successful firms around the world in creating an environment that is enticing enough for people to never really want to leave.
Mind you this location is a bit different. Slap bang in one of one of the coolest parts of San Francisco means there is so much happening around you that you would be crazy not to want to get out and see it. Besides this area is a magnet for cool hipsters and those on the pick up. I am not divulging how I know that!
So you may wonder why the hell I am writing a blog about this. To be honest, I thought it might be interesting to lift the veil a wee bit on one of the internet's most successful companies to date and see what it is that ensures they come top of all those polls as the number one place people want to work. And heck it might even give you some decorating tips!
Tech corr in tech hell
- 14 Jul 08, 09:45 GMT
Is there anything more boring than other people's stories of their domestic IT disasters, and their desperate struggle to get an answer out of tech support? No, but I've suffered plenty of these tales in my time - and now it's your turn. Hopefully this will be brief and to the point - and for a technology correspondent to spend some time in tech hell can be instructive for both him and his audience.
So, 10 days ago my wife's e-mail - connected to a domain she bought from our ISP seven years ago - just gave up the ghost. She's a reasonable woman but this left her close to despair. I was deputed to fix things - replacing our 17-year-old director of IT who was out with his mates.
First call was to the ISP. I've no wish to inflict public humiliation in them so let's call this company "Tunnelvision". We've been with them for 12 years but I've grown more and more unhappy with their prices, broadband speeds and service - especially since they were taken over by a larger company who we shall call "Monteverdi". I had suggested moving - but my wife was reluctant, fearing that moving her website and e-mail would be a nightmare.
But the nightmare did indeed begin with a call to Tunnelvision's outsourced call centre somewhere in the Far East. They could only tell me there were no general problems with the network and our issue would be addressed by a "second-line engineer" within a day. When we grew impatient and called back 24 hours later, the story had changed. There was an issue affecting a number of customers - and we should not expect to hear a result for 48 hours.
My patience snapped - and I decided on swift executive action. We were going to switch ISPs - but that would take around 10 days, and in the meantime we would move my wife's domain to another hosting company. She was impressed by my new-found decisiveness.
I contacted a hosting company - this one had 24/7 UK-based support - to get the domain to a safer place. They told me this could happen in a couple of days and then the e-mail would be up and running again. All we had to do was forward an e-mail to Tunnelvision asking them to change the name servers on the domain. So we sent off the e-mail, along with a letter sent by registered post, and we waited. And waited.
Three days on, with nothing happening, I began an extraordinary series of phone calls all around the Tunnelvision - or rather Monteverdi - empire. First, customer service. "Not us, speak to our domains registration business." "Nothing to do with us," said the next lot, "speak to the hosting company, Tunnelvision Solutions." No solution there either: "Never heard of your domain, go back to customer service." "Sorry, we know nothing about domains," said customer service, "speak to technical support in the Far East."
Then a long, long call to technical support (interspersed with much Vivaldi while on hold) which ended with the message that the only option was to e-mail domains@tunnelvision.net. "But that's where we started three days ago," I screamed. "Is there no phone number for the domains department?" No.
In desperation, I started posting messages on the Twitter micro-blogging service about our problem. Within minutes, lots of kind Twitters were proffering advice, much of it very learned. But without a response from Tunnel vision, we could do nothing. Then a few hours later came a call from the company itself. Their PR people had spotted my anguished Twittering and wondered if they could help. Yes, yes, yes, please! But that was Thursday. Friday brought no advance - except for an request to resend the original e-mail detailing the required change in name servers.
On Monday morning I'm still awaiting the call to say the domain has been successfully moved. And if it isn't done today, I will be sleeping on a park bench tonight - there's only so many excuses I can make for my failure to get the domestic IT set-up running smoothly again.
So a typically boring tale - but with some lessons informing my future purchasing.
1. Customer service, not just price or speed, should be a major factor when choosing a supplier.
2. I want to be able to speak to my supplier, night and day - and get a clear response. In future I will test companies' call centres before I sign up.
3. I will be wary if a supplier is taken over by another firm. "Hosting is no longer a core part of Monteverdi's offering," was what one person at the firm told me. In other words we may have taken your supplier but don't expect us to care about all that tedious stuff you bought from them years ago.
4. Shouting about bad customer service can work. I was lucky this time - my ravings were spotted by a PR person who recognised my name. All anyone can do is make as much noise as possible.
5. Err, I'm sure you too have a long tale to tell about your domestic IT nightmare - but can it wait a few days? I'm still getting over mine.
UPDATE
Finally, at 2200 on Monday evening, with the park bench beckoning, I got the domain transferred and my wife's email working again after ten days in limbo. It only took another half dozen phone-calls, and five emails. And we move to our new ISP on Thursday. Now if I can only fix the flickering light in the porch.....
Phone apps - open or closed?
- 10 Jul 08, 16:34 GMT
We're trying to ignore the hullabaloo over the 3G iPhone (is a 3G phone really that new?) but the launch of is of far more interest. Firstly because it's the first real mass-market attempt to sell mobile users on the idea of downloaded software, and secondly because of the way the whole system has been locked down by Apple, to the dismay of some smaller developers. That's a real contrast with the way some of Apple's rivals in the mobile software world are operating.
By lunchtime on Thursday the iPhone apps store was up and running - though rather hard to find on iTunes.
I browsed through hundreds of free apps, from iPint, which makes your iPhone look like a pint of lager, to social networks like Facebook and MySpace, to a British Airways application which gives you a live departures board - but may not tell you where your lost luggage has gone. There is an Apple application which turns your iPhone or iPod into a remote which can control your iTunes from anywhere over your wi-fi network - and another developer will turn your phone into a light sabre.
The paid-for applications seemed thinner on the ground - they included maps of New York, photo sharing services, and a number of games. The most expensive appeared to be Netterman's Anatomy Flash Cards for 拢23.99, so if your doctor gets out his iPhone during a consultation you'll know what's happening.
"A bunch of stuff that I never needed before, and probably don't need now," was the cynical response from one colleague when I read out this list. He may be right about the paid-for applications - but I think the free stuff will fly off the virtual shelf. For many people it will be the first time they've been introduced to the idea that you can customise your phone with new software.
Of course you can already do that on plenty of other phones - I've put several free mobile video applications on a Nokia phone - but I'd guess the vast majority of users have never caught on to that.
So this is a game-changer - but Apple has written some very rigid rules. It controls access to the Apps Store and to the iPhone. "It's very locked-down" one small developer told me, contrasting Apple's approach to Google's upcoming Android platform and even to Windows Mobile.
Joe Richards has been trying to get his security application (it sends out annoying noises to anyone who steals your phone and wipes personal data) onto the applications store. He says big firms have been welcomed in - but for smaller players like him "it's like waiting outside a nightclub with the bouncer promising you'll be let in sooner or later."
He believes that the army of small and innovative developers who could make the real difference are being alienated: "There's a serious danger that they hack off the smaller developers and they go off to Android." Android is not the only threat. Symbian, now wholly owned by Nokia and going open-source, is by far the biggest player in this industry.
There is definitely a benefit to Apple's approach. After all, a bit of quality control will be welcomed by consumers - remember all those useless and annoying Facebook applications which appeared after it threw open its doors to any developer big or small?
But if , and have any sense they will be opening their own applications supermarkets - and finding out whose approach, open or closed, proves most attractive to mobile users.
UPDATE:
Okay, to those who think I've committed some terrible faux-pas by even daring to write about the iPhone apps store without spending a couple of weeks with a cold flannel on my head, let me make a few things clear:
The 3g iPhone will be a big successes - the queues at my local shopping centre at an O2 and two Carphone Warehouse stores at 0900 tell me that, though there was much grumbling in the line when the message arrived "the computers are down".
The App store is already doing a lot of business and has some really good stuff - as I said above it is a "game-changer". But don't think the likes of Symbian, Windows Mobile and Google are going to let the market be taken away from them without a fight
And, finally, if a 大象传媒 blog waited for a few weeks to reflect a story that much of the tech world is talking about, would that be a sensible strategy?
RIP the Fake Steve Jobs
- 10 Jul 08, 07:13 GMT
It is with deep regret that I write about the passing of the .
The character, who allegedly had more than a passing resemblance to the chief, was devised by Dan Lyons. Dan was the person who gave me some very sage advice on starting my first blog, which was "Don't do it, it's like a monkey on your back."
Well, it seems Dan is ditching the monkey that has been on his back for the last couple of years, despite the fact it resulted in a certain amount of notoriety, a modicum of fame and quite a bit of success. Oh and let's not forget the mini witch-hunt that was carried out to unmask the Fake Steve and find out who was behind the creation that captivated the technology world.
Eventually the blogosphere discovered that editor Dan Lyons conjured up the secret diary of Steve Jobs as a way to stay relevant and in a job. No more worries on that score, because the blog has propelled Dan into a new job with .
Apparently Apple complained about their new signing. Dan did reveal that he understood Mr Jobs was not best pleased with the parody that portrayed him as egocentric and autocratic.
As well as moving onto pastures new, the real Dan Lyons will get the chance to shine through with a column under his own name. So it was those developments on the horizon that prompted the affable Dan to let the Fake Steve put down his weed and hippy mantras and call it a day.
He also admitted to getting a little tired of the Fake Steve and even when he thought about doing a similar diary with another character, it just wasn't convincing.
"I tried transitioning to other voices, like , but it just didn't work," said Mr Lyons.
"It seems clear that people reading the blog wanted to read Fake Steve or nothing."
In his final blog, the Fake Steve writes "I'm sorry that the blog is fizzling out. I know you'll miss FSJ. So will I. But rest assured, Fake Steve is not really going away. He's just taken on a new form. As Jimi Hendrix once said, 'If I don't see you no more in this world, I'll meet you on the next one, but don't be late'."
But if you just can't face the future without the musings of the Fake Steve, then you won't have too long to wait because a book of his bon mots is out very soon and Dan is also working on a script to put his creation on the silver screen.
Namaste to all. Much love. Peace out.
The final poignant words of one Fake Steve Jobs. What will life be like without him?
Location, location, location
- 9 Jul 08, 08:56 GMT
You're walking along the street past a well-known clothes' store and a message on your mobile invites you in with the promise of a 20% discount. The "new-look you" emerges from the store and 20 yards down the street, your mobile tells you that it is happy hour at your favourite bar - you check and see that two of your mates are not far away - and , hey presto, you have an instant night out. Sounds familiar? Of course not, but that's the vision that has been promised both by the mobile operators and various digital visionaries for the last decade.
Location-based services have been the next big thing for a long time. Way back in 2001, BT Cellnet, as it was then before it became O2, lured me to the Isle of Man to see trials of the world's first 3g network. One of the things that got them really excited was driving us in a taxi past some windswept pub on a lonely road so that a screen inside the cab could light up with a message inviting us in for a pint.
But location-based services, like personal jet-packs and the internet fridge, are the future that didn't happen. Now, though, the idea is back in fashion - and I've been trying out something called which promises to let you "share" your location with a whole range of sites and services.
It's a project that's emerged from a Yahoo lab. The idea is that you tell Fire Eagle where you are, and then all sorts of wonderful things happen - you can find your friends, display your location on your blog, receive information about local events, and instantly tag photos with the location where they were taken. According to Tom Coates, who's leading the project, "any service can be theoretically enhanced (either a small amount or a large amount) by being able to personalize itself to where you are while giving you unprecedented control over your data and privacy." He says that by geo-tagging all sorts of data - from blog posts to Twitter messages to people playing songs on last.fm - you can make that information much more useful to all concerned. And if your phone or your laptop knew where you were at any time, then you could receive personalised information about weather, traffic - just about anything.
That's the theory. In practice, I've found a couple of problems. I need to make the effort to update my location via Fire Eagle all the time - though as GPS comes to more phones that could happen automatically - and most of the time I just can't be bothered. And when I do, I'm still not sure why I want the world to know where I am.
So I've just told Fire Eagle that I am in Notting Hill Gate (not strictly true) - now what? Well my laptop is telling me what the weather is like, and has also revealed that there are no relevant photos nearby. A "nearby Wikipedia pages" application seems to be confused about my location and is telling me about Northfields tube station - which is actually near my home. I've tried using a couple of other services attached to Fire Eagle - but just downloading and signing up has tested my patience to the limits.
I think my main problem is the lack of a network effect - until there are plenty of location-based services and plenty of people are using them, the whole idea just won't have any mass appeal. And I'm still worried that it's a concept which may appeal more to advertisers and technology developers than to users - there does not seem to be any real "need" waiting to be fulfilled.
So I remain to be convinced that location, location, location is going to be quite as important as its boosters claim. But I could be wrong. As I was completing this post, I went on Twitter to say: "struggling to work out why i want my phone to know where I am... eg why location-based services?"
There was a noisy chorus of tweets in reply - not just from Tom Coates, who pointed out that Fire Eagle hadn't even launched yet, and there would be plenty of very useful applications when it did. All the tweeters were amazed that I didn't get it: "marrying content produced on your phone to location awareness is *clearly* valuable and useful", "even mundane tasks like finding your local cinema from a drop-down menu are made unnecessary", "nearby gigs that match last.fm tastes? Facebook friends who may be in town and you not knowing? Just a couple of examples."
Well, perhaps the Twitter and Facebook generation, always out and about looking for the nearest gig, are crying out for location-based services. And if they are, there will be plenty to choose from very soon.
Avatars a go-go
- 9 Jul 08, 08:33 GMT
Do you ever feel like there is something you are missing out on? You know you have those little pangs of anxiety that make you feel like you are on the outside looking in?
Well that's kind of how I have been feeling the last 24 hours when I consider the world of virtual reality. It seems everybody is having a whoop-de-do party and I haven't been invited.
Everyone from to has just jumped on the virtual bandwagon in the last day with offerings to unshackle ourselves from the humdrum life we have here on planet earth.
And if you don't believe me that it seems like everyone is starting their own virtual world, then take the word of . In a it says that in the second quarter of this year, $161m has been put into 14 virtual world investments. Add in the first quarter investment and we hit more than 拢345m. That's a lot of moolah.
Google, who seem to be taking over the world, unveiled, a three dimensional application which lets you enter virtual rooms. The industry watchers suggest that Google's entry into the market place will take the world of virtual reality into the mainstream.
Chris Sherman of Virtual Worlds Management maintains "With a player like Google jumping into this, you're going to see a lot more peole understand this space and pay attention to it."
, which was out of the gate first, isn't resting on its laurels. It has teamed up with IBM to from one virtual world to another. It's history, not as we know it, but as the world of virtual reality knows it.
In its blog, Second Life owners says "This is a historic day for Second Life and other virtual worlds in general. It marks the first time an avatar has moved from one virtual world to another, an event with implications for the entire virtual world industry."
Am I missing out on something here? That's a lot of hyperbole. They didn't come up with a cure for cancer did they?
Another company that has also just opened its virtual doors in the last 24 hours is which is offering users a 3D chat room that runs on Facebook.
Hell's bells, even is getting in on the virtual act with plans to make a virtual appearance on upcoming tour. The fact that these two gals are still trading on the "open mouth" kiss they made during an awards ceremony five years ago seems pretty desperate to me. But hey, what do I know? I am just a real life gal trying to get by in the real life world.
Lost in the cloud
- 8 Jul 08, 17:10 GMT
I've got used to writing articles and scripts that I need to access both at home and at work as Google documents. That way they are available anywhere that I have access to the internet, safely stored on Google's servers.
But suddenly this afternoon - just as I was in the middle of writing another blog post - went down: "The server encountered a temporary error and could not complete your request."
A timely reminder that "cloud computing", where everything you own is held somewhere in the internet cloud, can have its limitations. I'm sure Google will have this sorted within minutes - but right now I'm wishing I'd saved my work locally, or even printed out a draft.
The box in the corner revamped
- 8 Jul 08, 11:01 GMT
From work to leisure to play, our future looks set to be dominated by the telly.
Over the last week I have had a couple of tours from two major hi-tech companies who are making a massive push for your wallet and your attention via the 1080 pixel screen.
First up was , a company that deals in routers and switches to help direct internet traffic. Their offering is called and has been around since 2006. In really, really simple terms it's video conferencing with a lot of knobs on.
The aim of TelePresence is to link two physically separated rooms so they resemble a single room, even though they may actually be at opposite ends of the world.
A series of high definition cameras, state of the art microphones, some serious internet bandwidth and whopping 65 inch TV consoles certainly make the whole experience seem a bit more lifelike than the old school video conferencing.
In fact my TelePresence guide Ron Inouye told me "Sixty per cent of all communication is non-verbal so providing a 100% real life sense is key to making this work."
One trick they use is to have the conference table recede into the screen so it looks like you are all on one screen. And also for anyone who moves out of frame on one screen to be followed into the next screen.
From a business perspective, it certainly seems to be paying dividends for Cisco.
The company claims from a 0% market share in 2006, they now have 70% with more than 100 customers. Added to that, TelePresence represents Cisco's fastest growing new product in the company's history.
From a savings points of view, the firm claims to be reducing travel budgets by over $150m by not having their execs jet across the world spending fruitless hours in the air and at airports. Certainly the rising cost of fuel is another selling point. is another big player in this field.
As well as the financial benefits, Cisco is also claiming some green kudos. Cisco boss John Chambers has set a target of reducing greenhouse gases by 25% by 2012. The firm maintains that by grounding staff and urging them to communicate across the business using TelePresence will be a boon to achieving this goal.
So what has all this got to do with the ordinary consumer?
First there is the obvious attraction for teleworking: allowing you to perhaps live in one part of the world for, say, personal or financial reasons, but also letting you do a job you really enjoy, or that pays well, remotely via a TV screen.
Secondly Cisco is aiming to launch a major offensive in the next 12 months to get into as many living rooms as possible. Mr Chambers sees TelePresence working on two levels.
"If it's just to check in on your family, you'll have a lot of early adopters using it, but if all of a sudden you begin to use if for your business, like I would use it, especially when the majority of my customers are now outside the time zone I'm working it, it becomes key.
"It also depends on when you start to tie in sports and entertainment."
And this is vital I would suggest to broadening its appeal. Cisco puts a price tag of around $10,000 on a home kit but reckons economies of scale may mean it will be a lot cheaper.
Just a wee jaunt down the road in Mountain View is which is also making a concerted effort to secure a prime time presence in our living room. And our bedroom and study and kitchen for that matter. In fact, anywhere you can mount a TV screen.
Their internet protocol TV or IPTV, which they rolled out last year, is about putting your life on the box.
Mediaroom aims to be the one stop shop for your photos, music, movies, games and TV programmes. It wants to take any content you can get on a pc and online and put it on your telly and let you customise your viewing. It is not alone in trying to grab box office market share.
And for gamers, the ultimate: the ability to do all this through the Xbox 360 as well as play games or watch TV while chatting to your gaming buddies.
While the software giant is bragging that it now has two million subscribers to the service, Joe Seidel, the director of Global Partner Ecosystems, whizzed through the features like a tornado. He showed off everything from picture in picture to DVR and video on demand anywhere in the house but it was the feature that got him really razzed.
As an example of what developers or you can do to personalise your TV experience, Joe punched up a live race and demonstrated how you could tune into the cockpit camera of your favourite driver or listen to the pit crew shout directions. You could also flip between drivers and download from the internet all sorts of stats and biographies. And all this while the race is going on.
When I mentioned to Joe that there was no way you would actually watch the actual race because there is so much to distract you from the main attraction, he agreed it was a conundrum. But he reckoned it was not a big deal and that it's a shift we will soon all take for granted.
"The last unconnected device in your house that is no longer connected to the internet is the TV. With IPTV you are now connected. This is what the future looks like and traditional broadcast TV is on its way out because of this."
While analysts believe ten million subscribers need to sign up to IPTV before it can be seen as a real contender, there is no doubt that there are many companies over and above Cisco and Microsoft looking to dominate the living room proving there is everything to play for.
Stay tuned!
iPhone 'sellout': Deliberate ploy?
- 7 Jul 08, 16:31 GMT
We've been contacted by a couple of people who tell us that O2's launch this morning of iPhone 3G pre-ordering was a bit of a shambles. First, the crashed, then after a few hours the entire stock was sold out.
"The website... seems not to have been tested or designed well at all," said one correspondent, "so a lot of people are frustrated... disappointed."
"It was an absolute shambles, I've never seen anything handled so badly in my life," said another.
A quick call to O2 brought this admission: "We did have a few problems with the site - due to demand." Apparently, the 16GB version went first, but by lunchtime the 8GB had gone too.
Of course there will be plenty in the shops on Friday. O2 won't say how many iPhones were made available for pre-ordering. Is it too cynical to wonder whether it was just enough to ensure a wobbly website, a quick sell-out and a heightened sense of anticipation?
Google's Street View response
- 7 Jul 08, 09:52 GMT
Last week I published a letter Privacy International had written to Google, questioning certain aspects of Street View.
You can read the accompanying news story .
Well, now Google has written back to Simon Davies, and in the interests of balance you can read their letter below. There's more also.
Dear Simon,
Thank you for your email. I am happy to respond to your questions about Street View. I think that we have done an excellent job of balancing valid privacy concerns while maintaining the integrity of what our users tell us is an incredibly useful product.
Google Maps Street View in Europe
I can confirm that Google plans to launch Google Maps Street View in a few European countries. In fact, we launched our first European imagery a few hours before your email on Thursday, covering the route of the Tour de France cycle race. We're currently driving in a number of countries across Europe, including the UK, although we don't have any further launches to announce at this time.
As you probably know, the Street View feature in Google Maps has been available for over a year, but until Thursday's launch it had only featured imagery from the US. You correctly note, however, that we had publicly committed to respect other countries' privacy laws and norms, if and when we did launch outside the US. Yesterday's launch therefore not only brought the value of Street View to new shores and new users, it also demonstrated our commitment to meet the privacy challenges of the product.
Technology and tools to protect privacy
With the new Tour de France imagery we have continued our use of face blurring technology. We actually launched this technology publicly in early May, when we refreshed our imagery in Manhattan, New York. Since then we have applied face blurring to all new imagery launches in the US, including a major launch in June. At the same time we retrospectively applied the same technology to all previously launched US imagery. I'm therefore slightly puzzled that you were told by someone at Google just 6 weeks ago that we were having problems with this technology, when it was already in use.
For the Tour de France route we have supplemented our face blurring technology with a similar system which blurs vehicle license plates, to account for improved image resolution in this launch. And of course, as with all Street View imagery, we provide tools that make it easy for users to report images of concern, and we act swiftly to honor valid requests. In combination, our technology and tools are the best way of ensuring that individuals and vehicles which appear in passing within the product are not identifiable.
As with all such systems operating at this scale our blurring technology is not perfect - we occasionally miss a face or license plate, for example if they are partially covered, or at a difficult angle. However, we tested the technology thoroughly before launch and I am confident that it finds and blurs the vast majority of identifiable faces and license plates. For the few that we miss, the tools within the product make it easy for users to report a face or license plate for extra blurring. As always, users can still ask for their image to be removed from the product entirely. We'll also keep working hard to make sure that the technology continues to get even better.
A commitment to privacy
I strongly believe that this type of privacy-enabling technology, together with effective controls for users, is the best way of meeting the challenge of respecting people's expectation of privacy without stifling the development of new products and services that everyone can enjoy and benefit from. We have already been working with the relevant privacy regulators and groups in different countries in which we will offer Street View, including the UK. You may already be aware that Thursday's Tour de France launch was warmly welcomed by CNIL, the French data protection authority.
I hope that this letter provides satisfactory reassurance for the concerns which you have expressed about Street View. I'm sure you will understand that I cannot share the proprietary specifications for the technology which we have developed, but I believe that the results clearly demonstrate our commitment to provide practical and transparent privacy solutions.
I would be happy to meet with you when I am next in Europe, or when you are next in the US, if you would like to discuss these issues further - please just let me know.
Kind regards
Jane Horvath
Senior Privacy Counsel
Google
Watching you, watching YouTube
- 4 Jul 08, 11:03 GMT
I can't be the only one who's been thinking rather nervously about exactly what they've been looking at on YouTube over the years now that Viacom's lawyers are about to .
Luckily, I don't think there's much that is too embarrassing in my case, apart from a run of dodgy videos of even dodgier .
But for everyone who leaves a data trail across the internet this is a wake-up call. When you do just about anything online - from a Google search to a Facebook message to a spot of file-sharing - you are leaving traces of yourself that you might prefer to stay private.
For all the talk of a surveillance society, the analogue world can still be a more private place - if I choose to watch conventional television, stick a friend's copied CD in the player, or post a letter, nobody is likely to know.
Of course, there's no real need to worry about your digital footprint. The big corporations that hold our data on their servers have promised us all that it is safe in their hands. Not a chance that Tesco will hand over your to outsiders for marketing purposes, or that your will let anyone else know that you've been uploading your music collection onto Limewire. No way will Ebay reveal that you spend most of your time at work just checking out whether you're still the highest bidder for that (fake) Rolex.
But the YouTube case seems to show that, despite those promises, we have no real control over our data once it is lodged on a corporate server. Every detail of my viewing activities over the years - the times I've watched videos in the office, the clips of , the unauthorised clip of goals from a Premier League game - is contained in those YouTube logs.
All to be handed over to Viacom's lawyers on a few "over-the-shelf four-terabyte hard drives", according to the New York judge who made the ruling. I may protest that I am a British citizen and that the judge has no business giving some foreign company a window on my world. No use - my data is in California, and it belongs to Google, not me.
The other troubling aspect about this case was that it was only the blogs that seemed to understand the significance of the ruling when it emerged on Wednesday night. Much of the mainstream media ignored it at first, seeming to regard it as a victory for Google, because the judge said the search firm didn't have to reveal its source code.
Great news for Google - but the other part of the ruling was deeply worrying for its users, as the technology bloggers were quick to spot. Indeed Google's statement began by welcoming its victory on the code issue, before moving on to the little problem of the YouTube logs.
Now I've never worried too much about the threat to my privacy. I'm relaxed about appearing on CCTV, happy enough for my data to be used for marketing purposes, as long as I've ticked a box, and have never really cared that Google knows about every search I've done for the last 18 months. But suddenly I'm feeling a little less confident. How about you?
Google, privacy and Street View
- 4 Jul 08, 08:50 GMT
As soon as Google launched , its innovative photo-mapping tool, people began complaining that their privacy had been compromised.
- had Google compromised their privacy by taking photographs of streets that also captured people going about their daily lives?
The tool launches in the UK soon and the cars which drive up and down streets taking snaps have been spotted on the streets of London.
But will Street View in the UK fall foul of data protection laws? Simon Davies, of , believes that Google needs to get permission from people who are snapped on Street View, because the tool is being used for commercial ends.
You can .
Google has taken a lot of flak recently over its privacy policies, with from European Information Commissioners and complaints its privacy policy is .
Google has taken at least one step to address concerns; placing a link to its privacy policy on its . Is this enough of a step?
Simon Davies has written to Google outlining his concerns. It makes for interesting reading.
So take a look for yourself. Here it is:
2nd July 2008
Jane Horvath,
Senior privacy counsel,
Google
Mountainview CA
Dear Jane,
Recent media reports in Europe have mentioned that Google has begun deployment of its StreetView system in the UK and elsewhere in the EU. You may be aware that Privacy International has stated, both privately to Google legal staff and to the media, that we are concerned about a number of potential violations of national law that this technology may create.
In response, Google has informed the media that it will institute "face blurring" technology to ensure legal compliance. However, when we requested information from Google six weeks ago about the specifications for this technology your colleagues admitted that there were problems with it at an engineering level.
We are concerned that claims of protection are being made that may not be possible to institute. I am writing to request full disclosure of the technology specifications for the promised face and number plate blurring system so that the public can be assured that Google has taken every step necessary to satisfy not just legal requirements, but that it is also fulfilling its stated commitments.
We have in the past raised concerns directly with Google that such claims have historically failed to materialise. I recall the promise made by Google to the FTC during the Doubleclick acquisition that "crumbling cookies" would be developed. We have seen no evidence that this technology has been deployed. In response to concerns expressed at the time of our 2007 Internet privacy rankings, Google also promised a "privacy dashboard" to help consumers understand the functionality of their user settings. This technology has not appeared.
You will know that we have often complained that Google performs poorly on the issue of transparency. I believe this is one occasion where disclosure is crucial. Public trust in Google will suffer if there is a perception that the company is manipulating the facts.
I ask that you respond with this technical information within seven days. I also ask that you inform us of the steps, if any, that you have taken to consult the public over the use of their images for what is, in effect, a commercial purpose.
If we do not receive a satisfactory answer within that period we will have no choice but to lodge a complaint with the UK Information Commissioner with a request that StreetView deployment be suspended pending a formal investigation.
Yours sincerely
Simon Davies
Director
Privacy International
Problems for Sony PS3 firmware
- 3 Jul 08, 11:28 GMT
After months and months of waiting, Sony finally launched in-game Cross Media Bar (XMB) browsing via a firmware update.
But it appears there's a problem with the firmware update 2.40 causing PS3s to freeze up. And so Sony have pulled the update while they work on a fix.
You can find out the latest .
I hope no-one's been caught out.
No defence for 'stealing' music
- 3 Jul 08, 08:44 GMT
So were you among the 800 people to about downloading music from file-sharing sites?
The two companies have started their education campaign to try and stop people from using tools like Limewire and BitTorrent to share copyright songs.
It's supposed to be a softly-softly approach but Virgin has done itself no favours by putting the letters in an envelope marked "If you don't read this, your broadband could be disconnected."
That was a mistake, says Virgin.
No-one's threatening legal action yet, but the have made clear time and time again that the hammer remains poised to be brought down hard on the most persistent offenders.
This issue always attracts a lot of debate. It's one I've been following since the early days of Napster.
It's a complicated debate, wrapped up as it is in notions of intellectual property rights, copyright, consumer rights, consumer expectations, the changing music landscape, the revolution in digital distribution.
I've heard a lot of rhetoric from both sides and the arguments of those who defend their use of file-sharing sites tend to be:
•Music is too expensive
• I download music for free to get a taste and then buy the album
• Downloading some songs for free encourages me to buy more music overall
• The entire structure of the music industry is just flawed beyond repair
• The music industry is making enough money already
• The copyright laws need to be overhauled for the 21st Century
I've probably missed a few off. But I have to say that to my mind not one of those arguments is justification for stealing. I actually agree with some of the points and over the years have also felt frustrated by the attitude of record firms. But is that a reason to steal?
And I'll be very honest here. I have used file-sharing sites myself in the past to download music. About six years ago I used Napster and Audio Galaxy to download songs without paying.
What were my reasons? At the time, curiosity and simplicity.
I stopped because it was clear I was breaking the law. I was wrong to do it. I have long since deleted those songs.
The music industry was slow to wake up to the digital revolution. It did spend too long embracing out-moded models of production, distribution and consumption.
And there remain major issues around and legitimate digital content:
• DRM frustrates many consumers and imposes often ludicrous restrictions
• Audio quality on many digital downloads is laughably poor
And the music industry's tactic of identifying IP addresses of those machines that are file-sharing tracks without permission and then passing them on to the ISP which operates those IP addresses, is not without flaw itself.
Anyone with a wireless network could probably argue, with justification, that there is no way to definitively prove that the download took place on a machine they owned.
But is any of that a reason to steal? Is it?
UPDATE: A few people have questioned my use of the word stealing. Arguing that it is copyright infringement and not stealing. There may be a point here but to my mind this is semantics. It's a bit like breaking into a car, driving it around and then abandoing it. I believe it's called Taking Without Consent in legal parlance. Stealing to everybody else.
Broadband ads - Virgin rapped
- 2 Jul 08, 00:00 GMT
Virgin Media has had its knuckles rapped by the over claims it made about its broadband service. Its advert sought to impress potential customers with the kind of speeds Virgin's different packages offer by explaining just how quickly you could download a song or a TV show.
What it didn't mention was Virgin's traffic management policy which caps speeds during peak hours. So the claim that you could "download a TV show in under 26 minutes" on its "up to 2Mb" package didn't really stand up if you were a heavy user. Amusingly, Virgin also got its megabytes (MB) and megabits (Mb) mixed up when describing the size of the files which you could download so quickly - but then we've all made that mistake, haven't we? Oh, and guess where the one complaint about this advert came from? A company called BT...
Which all goes to show a couple of things. The ISPs are in a bitter fight to provide customers the speed and price they're demanding, while trying to avoid spending a fortune on new infrastructure. And the regulators are getting just a bit tougher on the way the companies advertise their products.
So Virgin needs to have a traffic management policy because its network still can't quite cope with the demands of "super-users" - the sort of people who may want to download an episode of Lost downstairs while their teenagers are upstairs playing Halo 3 online. Here's what its statement says:
"Our traffic management policy helps ensure the majority of customers receive the quality of service they expect from our fibre-optic broadband product by managing demand from the heaviest users at certain times of the day." In other words, our information superhighway is getting ever faster (up to 50Mbps soon), but the tiny minority of you who want to clog up the fast lane in the rush hour will find that we've applied the brakes.
Now Virgin isn't alone. All the big ISPs have traffic management policies, including BT, and the regulators are now putting pressure on the companies to come clean about them - it's one of the measures in Ofcom's new voluntary code. But does that mean we'll all be getting clearer information about exactly what speed our broadband lines will achieve?
The Advertising Standards Authority seemed a little hurt when I suggested that it had shied away from the broadband speed issue until now. It pointed me to a from 2004 where it first made it clear that "1Mb broadband" was not acceptable, and would have to replaced by "up to 1Mb."
But since then the ASA has seemed content with the widespread use of "up to" in broadband advertising, despite the evidence that it doesn't tell the full story. "As long as people are getting close," a spokesman told me, "we think the 'up to' qualification is OK." But, as survey after survey has shown, most people aren't getting that close - and as "headline" speeds get faster, the gap with reality gets ever wider.
"We never get complaints from customers about speed - it's not an issue," an executive at one big ISP told me recently. Well that's not what we found during our Broadband Britain tour in June. As the broadband promises get more extravagant, the risk is that customers will get more and more disappointed with what is delivered.
The 大象传媒 is not responsible for the content of external internet sites
This is dot.life - a blog about technology from 大象传媒 News.
Rory Cellan-Jones is the 大象传媒's technology correspondent.
Maggie Shiels is the 大象传媒's tech reporter based in Silicon Valley.
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