You've seen the reality TV documentary about Dame Ellen MacArthur's death-defying and record breaking sailing journeys. Over the past week our very own boss Stuart Miles did the same by joining the crew of a racing yacht, in the same time that there's a historical sailing series on the BBC and only a fortnight after the Bicentennial Battle of Trafalgar celebrations. With all things nautical running through his head along with the soundtrack to 1492 (crazy man), our intrepid cap'n sent us these two selected dispatches from the boat…

Daily Log: 14/7/05

Race: Global Challenge

By Stuart Miles

Position: 48 46N 006 04W 00:21UTC (off the coast of Brest)

Sleeping on the yacht has been an interesting experience these last
40-hours, mainly because I have done a lot more of it than expected.
The urge and need to get your head down no sooner have you come off deck seems to be appealing to all onboard.

Duncan "The sloth" Paterson, who according to the stories I have heard of previous legs, is happy to show us how it's done. Not five-minutes after we've come down off watch and he is curled up in his bunk fast asleep. It truly is a wonder to behold how someone can go from be so active one minute to so inactive the next.

I seem to be, to my surprise, not far behind him, however where I
differ is the inability to find comfort anywhere on board other than the bunk - which I have to say isn't that comfortable either. Up top there always seems to be a sheet in the way, a pulley, or even just the contours of the hull to make it just a shade of reasonable. They say you don't miss something until it's either too late and for me the snugness of my king sized duvet and a wife to cuddle up to is certainly missed.

When you eventually do get to sleep the adventure doesn't stop there.
Aside from having to strap yourself in so you don't roll out, sleep through the noises of the generator, the odd argument and lapping of the sea against the boat you've got the dreams to put up with as well. It's no wonder ancient mariners talked of sea dragons and mermaids.

So you wake up, dazed and slightly confused. Your thoughts amazing turn immediately to your position in the race and the hope that you don't have to spring in to action as soon as you get on deck. Unlike land life there is no promise of breaking that fast and two out of three times it is likely to be pitch black when you do make it topside.

Failing the need for instantaneous action you can follow the lead of
Certain crew (allegedly) and try and sleep on the job. Like the lunchtime drinker who falls into an afternoon slumber, the signs are easy to spot. The panic lurch or double confirmations to acknowledge that they aren't really asleep, they just didn't hear you properly the first time, are the most obvious, while the slopping off to the snake pit, supposedly filing the daily log, or
sitting on the side rails the more ingenious.

Sweet dreams

- then as the race came to an end over the early hours at the start of this weekend…

Daily Log: 15/7/05

Race: Global Challenge

Position: 50 29.4N 02 04.9W (Just off the Isle of Wight)

As we approach the final hours of the race, the mood of the crew and
Myself is anticipation and excitement. In little over 7 hours it will all be over, in 24 an enjoyable experience and in a month a distant memory.

Until then the race is very much on. Since the sunrise this morning we have battled against the odds to not only catch the three front-runners - SAIC, Barclays and BG, but even to steal second place and eye first. The watches are becoming more nerve-racking with every change as everyone is desperate to avoid errors and the urge to win becomes stronger.

As for me, the time has flown by, the routine is starting to become
Somewhat normality and going back to the daily commute on Monday will be hard. Staring out into the big blue sea certainly has its mesmerising hold.

Am I hooked? Certainly. Would I attempt the race? I don't know whether I would have it in me. For the crew though, they've seen, they've sailed and they've
conquered. And I congratulate each and every one of them.

Related links:

• Pocket-lint.co.uk - Official website of Pocket-lint.co.uk

Tags: Sports Fitness Sailing Pocket-lint Adidas

Pocket-lint.co.uk finishes the Global Challenge originally appeared on Pocket-lint on Sun, 17 Jul 2005 18:10:28 +0100

The Makers of the Freedom Force games were zapped by legal action between the first and second games of the series, on account of too many people modding Marvel comic superheroes into the game to play.

Seeing the opportunity and a market, In stepped Microsoft, Sony's tie-up with DC Characters in the Spring, with a view to licensing the Marvel characters you all know and love and maybe a few lesser known heroes too, for gameplay on the Xbox360. In short, if you want a true City Of Heroes, you'll have to sign up for the official versions.

While it's good to see an official version, the obvious question of what happens when more than one person wants to play the same character hasn't been answered by either side - it's easy with, say, Iron Man with his many suits of armour, and you can have the classic and Secret Wars era Spider Man with the all-black Venom costume (plus Venom itself as a villain), and there are 30 years of X-Men to go round, but we can see an opportunity to have massive beat-em-ups with the right to be known as the One true Batman, for example. We'll just have to wait and see how the two comics houses and software companies treat the much-loved superheroes when the newest genration consoles arrive.

Related links:

• Microsoft - Official website of Microsoft

Tags: Gaming Xbox RPG Microsoft

Microsoft in Marvel Team-Up Featuring Xbox360 originally appeared on Pocket-lint on Fri, 15 Jul 2005 23:26:51 +0100

Even though it doesn't quite have the same ring as Sony's Walkman turning 25, or the same social cachet as shelves bursting with CDs, 10 years ago today The Fraunhoefer Institute invented the MPEG 1 Layer 3 file format and the file suffix, MP3, became a much more manageable acronym for the standard's long and almost unpronounceable full name (IS 11172-3 MPEG Audio Layer 3 for those that care).

It had been a revolutionary idea on paper since 1992 and judged to be almost impossible, but it was proved and ratified in the mid 1990s- the rest is history, and gave birth to a new generation of players and piracy until finally, record companies have begun to sell songs to customers using the format legitimately as often as they sue them for stealing it. Those in there at the start with the right model, like iTunes and backbone provider OD2, haven't looked back even if MP3 wasn't the format they preferred to sell.

Other formats have arrived in its wake promising better music quality like Microsoft's WMA which does seem to retain more bass and has spread via the size and force of its parent company but to be honest the compressed format is merely a slave to the original's quality and none so far have been able to obtain MP3's universal worldwide domination, pushed as it was by a standards group for others to exploit rather than one monopoly company. Besides, the full-fat WAV format is also accommodated by ever-increasing hard disk sizes and has hardly died the death some people might have predicted.

Once again, it's another reason why it's good to pioneer in the computer industry. Couple this dominant format with the currently dominant player, Apple's iPod, and only time will tell whether we can get another ten years out of MP3 before it becomes everyday.

Tags: Audio MP3 players

MP3 hits tenth Anniversary originally appeared on Pocket-lint on Fri, 15 Jul 2005 22:44:09 +0100

The media thought they needed David Beckham sporting the famous white headphones to hype the story, but Apple doesn't care who you are - there are now 6.2million iPods in the world, enough to populate a small city in anyone's country, and with satisfied users coming back to upgrade, the number can only rise - that's good news for a company which had a rocky ride before striking up the iMac and then carrying on as if nothing had happened - and reaching beyond its core of religiously devoted fans, as there are many more users to reach, and it represents a jump in sales of more than six hundred percent, contributing USD 320 million out of USD3.4 billion of total revenue. Not only is the iPod a lifestyle statement - or another one after the iMac of three years back - but it's also accounting for nearly ten per cent of the whole company's profits. 1.2 million Mac computers also helped the finances in the last quarter and were also not to be sniffed at from a single manufacturer which, until Intel arrives anyway, has closed off the coveted parts of the standard that makes up the Mac.

It just shows the benefit of getting a package right and pioneering in the market with it - since now it must seem almost impossible to catch and beat Apple for hard disk-based music players. That won't stop a whole army of companies from trying, most notably Sony, who won't want any more thunder stolen from its Walkman brand.

Related links:

• Apple - Official website of Apple

Tags: Audio MP3 players Apple iPod

Celebrations continue for Apple's 6.3million iPod sales originally appeared on Pocket-lint on Fri, 15 Jul 2005 22:09:07 +0100

It's unusual for many TV set manufacturers to give a toss about the PAL standard when NTSC would result in much increased sales, but Sharp has decided to try and head off importers with a LCD screen which tackles the extra visual dimensions offered by the UK standard.

The Aquos P50 has been released in 26, 32 and 37 inches respectively and will allow users to see the whole 960 x 540 range which PAL specifies. WXGA (1366 x 768) is a format touted by rival sets according to Sharp, which requires advanced electronics to interpolate the extra lines you're watching.

However, as far as Sharp is concerned, natively showing PAL images allows the P50 range to rival CRTs and without the back bezel footprint. Also paying attention to modern mandatory connections the P50 also sports twin Scarts and Component, S-Video and Video inputs to let you connect up whatever's sat beneath the screen.

Last but not least, the HDMI interface makes it High Definition ready, but expect this package to cost plenty when it arrives and especially if the “CRT equality” claim is true.

Full specification list here.

Related links:

• Sharp - Official website of Sharp

Tags: Home Cinema Televisions LCD televisions Sharp

New Sharp Aquos P50 TV claims picture as good as CRT originally appeared on Pocket-lint on Thu, 14 Jul 2005 23:48:39 +0100

"Orange SPV C550 Great for Music handset" is basically one of the longest and maybe silliest names we've heard for a mobile phone. It's good news then, that the SPV C550 is so music focussed at a time when Sony with its Ericsson partnership and the imminent Motorola and iTunes tie-up, that Orange have their own model in place with their own portal, Orange World, to try and keep customers.

The company boasts that they're very happy indeed, in spite of the average cost of almost £1.50 per track - but Orange's killer twist is the fact that it allows all music costs to be billed at the end of the month with the contract cost, and you tend to pay more for a ringtone - so if you want the full length Crazy Frog, you could go to Orange's portal to get it (if they were mad). 300,000 tunes will be available, but once you've filled the enclose 128MB mini SD memory card, you'll only be able to carry about 170 - unless the card size is increased, any handset will be in competition with a full-sized HD-based MP3 walkman - after all, you'll already have a phone. In spite of AAC+, WAV, MP3 and MPEG-4 format support, frankly you might as well forget WAV files on the basic card. Whichever format you play, you'll be able to use dedicated music playing buttons on the fascia which won't get in the way of the other controls.

Other specs are 4hrs' talktime and 6 days' standby time maximum, the now-mandatory camera sports a 1.3Megapixel resolution which would be good enough for up-close daytime party snaps. In addition it's a triband wonder with GSM connectivity at 900/1800/1900 MHz, Bluetooth and GPRS Class 10, bolstering basic infrared. The OS is Windows Mobile 2003, so basic compatibility on the email and synchronisation front is very useful.

For this package to sport so many features yet measures less than 110g in weight, it's guaranteed to cost a pretty penny by itself, so the best thing to do is check out the contract links on release - and don't be surprised if Orange chooses to keep this one all to itself for a while. If you just can't wait for its release, the see its existing models, the SPV C500 phone, SPV M2000 PDA and the SPV M500 mini PDA, all of which also sport the portable Windows OS.

Related links:

• Orange - Official website of Orange

Tags: Phones Apps Orange

Orange lets users hear tunes on the bill with new handset originally appeared on Pocket-lint on Thu, 14 Jul 2005 23:20:43 +0100

We reported on several high-profile bugs which affected all major browsers and not just Mozilla's last month, but the American English version of Firefox has been released in the last few days, fixing everything we reported on and more, and certainly sorting out some of the issues much more quickly than, for example, Microsoft. Microsoft. Newly updated, we'll keep bringing you the news using the firm no.2 browser on the market.

Visit the fixes page for full details here,

Then download the newest version here.

Related links:

• Mozilla - Official website of Mozilla

Tags: Software PC software Browsers Mozilla Firefox

Mozilla v1.0.5 arrives with fixes originally appeared on Pocket-lint on Thu, 14 Jul 2005 22:46:22 +0100

They established the portable music player as a modern style icon…after the other one, the iMac and its one stab at PDAs, the Newton. Then the Apple Airport allowed users to beam that music around.

It's still a long stretch to imagine this would make the company strike out into the mobile phone business as a network provider in its own right, although in the same way Sony's Walkman name was attached to Sony-Ericsson phone handsets, Motorola and Apple have teamed up, with the results to be launched (or hyped) at this summer's V Festival in the third week of August.

If the result is indeed an iTunes phone as heavily hinted by Apple sites, then it could be a killer combination depending on both sound quality and battery life compared to the existing handset and iPod you may already own. Of course, it'll be out there, ready to snare a market that seems to be always upgrading and who maybe haven't been turned into download. Keeping in a decent camera and the model might just walk off the shelves into users' pockets.

Related links:

• Apple - Official website of Apple

Tags: Phones Mobile phones Mobile phones Apple

Apple may go into mobile phones but extent stays unknown originally appeared on Pocket-lint on Wed, 13 Jul 2005 23:58:17 +0100

Bolstering its four recently released new Photosmarts, HP has brought back its paper packs of varying sizes. Whereas the older variety were aimed at A4 portrait printers, HP is squarely targeting amateur photographers who just want to print nothing but photos, so anyone using the 343, 344 or 57 and photo 58 - class colour cartridges with their HP printer will be the focus of this new campaign. It's claimed that the price will not exceed 0.23 GBP per print, although none of us will be alive in 2113 to see if the prints will have faded into nothing like the people who take and print the photos are guaranteed to do.

It's also a great help for shoring up the prices of the official cartridges although with the advent of internet cartridge e-tailers, aggressive refillers and the ubiquitous eBay, these recommended retail prices are guaranteed to fall with time, or you could stick to the cartridges themselves and paper from any manufacturer - risking whatever drops in quality may occur until you experiment and find the right paper type for you.

Prices and dimensions are as follows;

HP Tri-Colour 343/344 Cartridge with:

* 10x15cm HP Premium Photo Paper, 100 sheets - 22.99 GBP
* 13x18cm HP Premium Photo Paper, 60 sheets - 22.99 GBP
* HP Vivera 348 Photo Inkjet Print Cartridge, 10x15cm HP Premium Plus Photo Paper, 120 sheets - 41.99 GBP

HP Tri-Colour 57 Cartridge with:-

* 10x15cm HP Premium Photo Paper, 60 sheets - 15.99 GBP
* HP Vivera 58 Photo Inkjet Print Cartridge, 10x15cm HP Premium Plus Photo Paper, 100 sheets - 30.99 GBP

Related links:

• HP - Official website of HP

Tags: Cameras Printers Photo printers HP Bluetooth

HP launches new cartridge and paper packs for the summer originally appeared on Pocket-lint on Tue, 12 Jul 2005 22:37:34 +0100

In the middle of last month, Creative gave the first glimpse of the Zen Vision, a video-orientated portable media player as the name suggests.

The early artists' impressions made the player look a little like a PSP without Sony's snazzy lines, but now by lining up a model in white almost a month later, the clear target market must begin with the iPod disciples who may want to upgrade by now.

The specs remain unchanged for the moment - USB2.0 connection, 3.7” TFT Screen with an SVGA (640 x 480) resolution in 256K colours, FM tuner and recorder, 30Gb Hard Disk and 4 hours' movie playback and 8 hours for music from one charge of the battery, rising to over 12 hours if the rip rate is lowered to 128K. On top of that, it also accepts the original two types of Compact Flash card.

Not impressed yet? It supports NTSC and PAL in the same package so there shouldn't be any hassles when it travels across the pond, although the continent may need a firmware upgrade for SECAM. Video Playback formats are AVI, DivX 4 and 5, WMV from Microsoft, Motion JPEG and MPEGs 1, 2 and 4-SP. Audio formats are comprised of classic MP3 up to 320kbits/sec, WMA from Microsoft, DRM restricted music and full-fat WAV files. From the pictures, the headphone socket looks like the standard 3.5mm variety, so you should be able to immediately upgrade whatever's in the box for your own pair of cans.

It's another exciting prospect and one we hope reaches the UK with this specification intact, and with not too high a price bump.

Related links:

• Creative Labs - Official website of Creative Labs

Tags: Audio MP3 players Creative

Creative readies the Zen Vision originally appeared on Pocket-lint on Tue, 12 Jul 2005 22:17:15 +0100

This time, Rockstar claims it isn't their fault that the controversy has rained down, as opposed to positively begging for it with Manhunt in summer 2004. A thirdparty mod(ification), known as Hot Coffee, will change some scenes in their latest million-selling opus Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas to show the main character having sex with prostitutes - and given the reaction by family groups in America, you'd be forgiven for thinking that was even worse than killing them.

It's rather convenient that both the mod and the over-inflated reaction to it has only arrived with the Grand Theft Auto game dealing with African-American gang life, as opposed to the Italian- and Latin-American crime crossovers of the two episodes before now: GTA III and Vice City. After all, you've been able to carry out all manner of illegal acts which you may not have wanted kids to see, in glorious 3D, for the past four years, in titles from the same publisher. Mods for these older games were as innocuous as changing Tommy Vercetti's clothing to tuning the mood of the populace to induce rioting but few, if any, purported to serve up sex on a disc.

The Entertainment Software Ratings Board is re-examining the game and has the ability to change the rating to AO for Adult-Only, the gaming equivalent of America's NC-17 for movies. This would introduce enough restrictions in sales to stop San Andreas' meteoric American sales at a lousy five million copies on PS2 alone.

However, maybe Rockstar has a point in protesting and co-operating fully with the investigation. Similar manufactured controversy did not happen when the original Tomb Raider series, whose graphics also improved with time, was modded to allow Lara Croft's clothes to be removed at the touch of button. Similarly, Dead or Alive Extreme Beach Volleyball on the Xbox was practically laughed at when a modder programmed a method of removing the virtual swimwear. Neither game received a retrospective ratings adjustment. Maybe it's true that Rockstar has become a whipping boy for the moral majority in the US, even if it courted it as marketing for less than stellar titles in the past.

The key difference for the UK is that once a game has been submitted to the British Board of Film Classification, largely for PR purposes, there are generally no further internal industry markings or ratings on the packaging such as those from ELSPA or PEGI - with legally enforceable punishments, you know where you stand with the big red circle. Not so in the US, where San Andreas was granted a M(ature) rating by the ESRB and scores of seemingly unconcerned parents bought the game for their kids anyway, before blaming the publisher, the retailer or anybody else for their children being “exposed” to an adult title.

Maybe a little undeserved press attention may push Rockstar and Publishers Take Two to serve up a new franchise separate to GTA and not bother with junk like Manhunt - then again if the flagship series is doing five million units on one format, without the Number Two console and the PC to add on top, you know it'll be back. Strangely, the format on which the mod may spread the widest, the PC, has been largely ignored in the mass marketing effort - but if the game looks like it may be censored in any way, then there should be a last minute sell out and the game will be assured a continued half-life on Ebay until the next sequel.

Related links:

• Take2 - Official website of Take2

Tags: Gaming PS2 RPG Rockstar GTA

Rockstar denies deliberate sex in San Andreas, unlocked by mod originally appeared on Pocket-lint on Tue, 12 Jul 2005 21:19:55 +0100

Returning to its most well known market, four new HP Photosmart printers were launched today, the 335 and 385 being the biggest of the quartet although all four place the accent firmly on portability as well as quality. The HP Photosmart 335 Compact Photo Printer. Weighing less than 1.4 kg, this photo printer is a perfect portable device that can be taken anywhere and used to print high quality pictures.

As HP's latest addition to its range of award winning portable photo printers, the HP Photosmart 335 Compact Photo Printer has five built-in memory card slots for direct printing from from CompactFlash, IBM Microdrive, Memory Stick, Memory Stick Duo (with adapter), Mini SD (with adapter), Secure Digital/MultiMedia Card and XD-Picture Card and a front panel USB port which connects to any PictBridge-enabled camera and to most USB flash drives, this printer is ideal for occasions when people want to share the moment as it happens, capture stunning scenery, or video stills in an instant. The optional HP bt300/400 series Bluetooth wireless printer adapter (sold separately), means users can print straight from a Bluetooth enabled camera phone or PDA - allowing more freedom to print photos as and when needed.

With a standard power supply, for maximum mobility, the 335 can be equipped with an optional battery allowing 75 pictures to be printed on a single charge. A custom made case to make carrying easier and the in-car adapter (sold separately) which can also be used to recharge the optional battery means users can remain truly portable and print whenever, wherever - when you're not charging your phone or lighting your cigarettes of course. Other optional accessories available for use with this compact photo printer include an HP inkjet print cartridges and HP papers.

A simple one-touch command button and clear 3.8 LCD screen allows users to easily view and select photos and also print still sequences from video action clips - meaning that fun events caught on video with a digital camera can be printed instantly. The delete button enables keen photographers to free up space on memory cards, whilst HP Real Life technologies can be used to further improve images such as removing red-eye and adjusting contrast - all without a PC, though you may want a monitor sized screen to be totally happy with what you're printing if it's the extras on top of the wedding photos we're talking about.

Also announced at the same time was the Photosmart 385 Compact Photo Printer, a take-anywhere photo printer that combines a wide range of connectivity options with a host of impressive, on-board tools for selecting, editing and printing photos in either rich colour or professional quality black and white. At £200, it'd better do what it says on the tin though. Also weighing little more than 1.4 kg it comes with a standard power cable for use at home, or away. An optional in-car adapter is available for travelling and for complete freedom, whilst an optional rechargeable battery lets users print up to 75 photos between charges, whether indoors or out.

For enhanced freedom, a bank of card slots allow direct printing from the same range of card formats as the 335. The front USB also allows the whole family to print from any PictBridge-enabled camera and most USB flash drives. The HP Photosmart 385 Compact Photo Printer also comes complete with its own Bluetooth adapter for easy direct printing from Bluetooth enabled camera phones. If you're not fussed with frills though, you can even connect it to a PC like any other printer.

A large 6.4 cm built-in LCD flips up will allow easy selection of photos, while in-printer features deliver intuitive access to creative options such as zoom, crop, add frames, rotate and brightness control - all of which can be previewed on the clear colour screen. In addition, HP Real Life technologies such as red-eye removal and adaptive lighting can be used to improve results further still - all without using a PC (as long as you don't reckon you need a monitor sized screen to check the final results). Photo-quality printing can be achieved in around a minute per shot with standard snapshot-sized 10 x 15 cm (6 x 4in) photos printing in less than a minute.

The other two models begin with the Photosmart 475 Compact Photo Printer, which can store up to a thousand photos internally. In HP's opinon, this eliminates the need to store images on a PC or camera, but since a CD-R isn't even £1 anymore, we'd disagree. As well as printing both colour and monochrome photos, they can be viewed on a TV as a photo album by using the included remote control or directly saved to CD or DVD by connecting an external CD/DVD writer - all without using a PC. Finally the Photosmart 422 Portable Photo Studio, is a three-in-one solution offering ultimate photo simplicity with printer, docking station and camera in the style of Kodak's home offerings. Featuring a high quality HP 5.2 megapixel (MP) camera and compact photo printer with built-in camera dock, this package is the perfect travelling companion - enabling users to print their photos on the go or at home and this last package also marks how quickly this megapixel level is crashing in price if it's already getting bundled with extras we'd only seen on much lowlier cameras.

HP certainly haven't been sitting around and it'll be interesting to test the new breed and see if it's worth an upgrade for anyone running their old Deskjets into the ground and sticking with existing Photosmart papers for their pictures.

Related links:

• HP - Official website of HP

Tags: Cameras Printers Photo printers HP

HP launches four Photosmarts for summer originally appeared on Pocket-lint on Fri, 01 Jul 2005 21:04:13 +0100

200GBP will buy you Creative's latest and greatest Zen Sleek player, if you're not wedded to your iPod. The Zen Sleek sports a backlit Touch Pad control on a large blue backlit display (whatever the Sleek's bezel colour) which gives natural, one-handed fingertip management of all the player's functions, even in poor light- so they boast.

The Zen Sleek can store up to 10,000 songs in WMA or 5,000 in MP3 on its 20Gb hard disk though of course this will vary with compression quality as it always does, while the synchronisation stays at the preferred faster USB2.0 standard. It can also record direct from its built-in FM radio and microphone. Its battery is rated at 16 hours maximum playback.

Design is reputedly cutting edge with intuitive new touchpad, a FM tuner with 32 presets and direct recording and a built-in microphone. The built-in recording from radio's a nice new feature but it depends on the reception quality. If it were a portable DAB it would be a killer app, but probably send the price sky-high.

Related links:

• Creative Labs - Official website of Creative Labs

Tags: Audio MP3 players Creative

Creative Readies the Zen Sleek originally appeared on Pocket-lint on Thu, 30 Jun 2005 21:51:32 +0100

Telewest today announced a 20millionGBP investment in Teleport, an intended rival to the Sky Plus service with almost all the same advantages of being able to pause record and rewind live TV while watching from any part of the programme, not just the start. The trial begins for 26,000 subscribers in the Cheltenham and Gloucester area as of today, and once the pilot is completed, it is expected to be rolled out to 1million customers in total early next year.

It follows another similar film-on-demand trial which Telewest limited to a single town (lucky Bristol), and it makes sense not to roll out with a national service which may fail, even if some may view the chosen test area with envy if everyone else has to wait six months. There's no change to existing equipment to access the service and, adding another layer on top of BBC3, soaps like Eastenders will be offered on a second-chance basis - miss it one week and it can be seen the next week (although it was unconfirmed at the time of announcement, whether you could have the whole omnibus). If Telewest customers are already buying the top-level existing packages, then certain add-ins from Teleport could be offered as free sweetners to begin with.

Telewest Broadband has already secured content from the likes of Filmflex, the BBC, Flextech, Discovery Networks Europe, National Geographic Channel Europe, Nickelodeon, Jetix (the new name for Fox Kids) and Playboy TV.

In particular, the BBC agreement will initially provide over 180 hours of documentaries, natural history, drama, light entertainment and children's programmes and bring back in much-needed revenue for the corporation at a time when the licence fee's existence only has nine years left in its current form, and the Government is expecting Auntie Beeb to be more commercial and generate more of its own revenue. The deal with Telewest is mutually beneficial in targeting the digital converts ahead of any analog switch-off in the next decade. With Freeview boxes dropping to £35 on the street though, there's still competition both with people who only ever want to pay once, and with the kind of BT/Microsoft IPTV offerings promised in the future. If Telewest makes use of its cable broadband subscriber base for the new service, then it should have the desired effect of keeping customers captive.

Unfortunately, none of the cable/satellite providers can give you any more free time to watch all that great television.

Related links:

• Telewest - Official website of Telewest

Tags: Home Cinema PVRs Telewest

Telewest launches Teleport TV, BBC Deal among content originally appeared on Pocket-lint on Thu, 30 Jun 2005 16:10:03 +0100

Douglas Havard, an American citizen based in Britain, was jailed for six years after raking in UK£700,000 through an internet phishing scam - though that's only the confirmed figure. His accomplice Lee Elwood received four years.

The National High Tech Crime unit had mounted a lengthy investigation and when searching Havard's flat, found blank cards, faked passports and driving licences and the machines used for the forgeries. Once the details of ordinary identities of tricked online banking users were stolen by Russian hackers, the details would be cloned to the blank cards and used for fraudulent e-commerce and cash withdrawls in the UK and US. In addition to this sentence, Havard is now wanted by US authorities in connection with the frauds perpetrated on American soil and the extradition process between the two countries has begun.

"Internet fraud is on the increase and we work with our colleagues in law enforcement across the globe to stamp down on those criminals using other people's identities to steal. We hope that these sentences deliver a tough message to anybody either thinking about or actually using other people's identities to steal." said DS Mick Deats, Deputy Head of the NHTCU.

So in spite of one victory for the Police, the need to stay alert and not trust scam emails has never been more important, not to mention cache clearing for your browser and keeping security software up to date. If you think it's too much of a pain, ID theft is a lot worse.

Quote Source: BBC

Related links:

• Pocket-lint.co.uk - Official website of Pocket-lint.co.uk

Tags: Software Online Viruses And Malware

Phisherman jailed for 6 years for stealing 700,000GBP originally appeared on Pocket-lint on Wed, 29 Jun 2005 13:45:04 +0100

UK Monopoly telephone and ADSL internet provider, BT, faced with as many people switching phonelines away and staying away, as opposed to the magic million people who come back to them, struck a deal with the ever-busy Microsoft to create a new revenue stream - broadband based television.

Internet Protocol based Television is Microsoft's standard, and BT intends to run trials this summer. To facilitate the service, the network is receiving an upgrade en masse to the tune of UK£10billion, and once in place and working, the company intends to ape the tied-in “triple-play” TV/Internet/Phone packages which are offered by cable stalwarts such as NTL, Telewest and Homechoice.

In an age when people may want a mixture of providers for each service though, a tie-in deal for what would represent no change for many would have to be temptingly priced - in spite of the recent announcement to finally start the Local Loop Unbundling process for competitors' access to the network, the vast majority still pay their line rental to BT unless they are already in a triple-play deal with a rival. That's not to mention those happy with their conventional digital TV services delivered through satellite, cable or Freeview to match their smart new TVs.

It's good to see BT willing to compete at last, but we'll see what happens with the take-up rate of the new deal when launched and whether software users may be tied into Windows Media Player to watch IPTV.

Related links:

• BT - Official website of BT

Tags: Software Broadband BT Microsoft IPTV

BT and Microsoft strike broadband IPTV deal originally appeared on Pocket-lint on Wed, 29 Jun 2005 07:16:01 +0100

Kedebe-F is a name to get used to in future, and if you receive any emails detailing a plot to kill the Pope or Michael Jackson's death or any other types of news you never requested, then it's a worm.

As reported by antivirus company Sophos, one message reads "Someone sent me this document which is stolen from a secret government body and deals about John Paul's death. It says he was killed by two 'doctors' who were hired by some government bodies. The text attached contains all the story behind his death and who these doctors are."

The virus writer appears to have a sense of humour by making fun of one of his past contemporaries who was responsible for the MyDoom virus in 2003. "Hey, this is to tell you that the author of the Internet Worm 'MyDoom' has been arrested by Microsoft today. He is an OLD MAN, about 50s." Never mind that he was German, and in his 20s and was arrested last year.

So, avoiding the crap you've been sent, carrying attachments you don't recognize is never going to become an outdated way of avoiding these kinds of virus. If you've updated your antivirus program then aside from keeping your eyes open, you should be protected.

Read the general advice from Sophos here.

Related links:

• Pocket-lint.co.uk - Official website of Pocket-lint.co.uk

Tags: Software Online Viruses And Malware

Email Virus pretends to be Breaking News originally appeared on Pocket-lint on Wed, 29 Jun 2005 06:57:42 +0100

...Now here's a role reversal and a sign of AMD's continued success (ironically). Over at AMD's website the company has laid out its case for suing Intel in a suit files in Delaware but it boils down to Intel's general dominance of several markets across the world over nearly 40 countries alledging the tying-in of manufacturers so they only stuck to building PCs using Intel technology, primarily processors.

The suit follows investigations by competition authorities in Japan and the European competition's investigations into Intel's monopolistic behaviour. In the case of the Japanese charges from the Fair Trade Commission of Japan, Intel has not mounted a defence against the charges, while the slow wheels turn in Europe, but a Microsoft-style doomsday fine is expected if Intel is found guilty.

So, AMD probably has a good case. The problem here with this argument, is choice. The company has grown larger and some of its moves in recent times, like launching a new chip with a different socket to the others requiring users to buy new boards (FX-55), mirrors Intel's action with the Pentium launch a decade ago, so this underdog isn't above acting exactly like the company it's suing, when it suits them. The company remains the gamer's and overclocker's choice (and let's face it, when they blow up their chips more often that's how sales will rise) and has an even more positive reputation for reliability once it began to tackle heat issues - it didn't want any more "frying Athlon" videos circulating around the internet.

Depending on the time period covered by the lawsuit, there's the risk of a lack of sympathy among users, who are more clued up every day - A stupid jingle is no longer enough to clinch an Intel purchase in an age when both chip makers state clockspeed no longer matters, and leisure computing requires power which Intel has struggled to provide at a reasonable price. The other irony is that some of the manufacturers have since been taken over (with HP buying Compaq) or suffered poor financial performance due to uncompetitive hardware (Gateway retreating to America). AMD needs to take care that further changes to the market won't kill their image as hardworking underdog made good and making better with every new range.

Read all about AMD's argument here and for other details, see AMD's site.

Related links:

• AMD - Official website of AMD

Tags: Biz Lawsuits AMD Intel

AMD sues Intel over alleged monopoly abuses originally appeared on Pocket-lint on Tue, 28 Jun 2005 21:14:53 +0100

If you don't want to read through 55 pages, the short version is that as far as the US Supreme Court is concerned, in the case of the MGM against Grokster (on its second hearing following the p2p company's victory), network providers, whether local or internet, which allow users to download pirated music, can be held liable as accessories and sued for the royalties. Ambulance-chasing lawyers will be cracking open the champagne, while network providers and office MIS managers will be gearing up to rewrite their network policies.

Presumably, anyone downloading at a workplace will generally get fired in an attempt to protect the firm, and there will continue to be hapless parents getting sued by the RIAA and BPI over here to make an example of their know-it-all kids- who'll probably wash the car until they're 35 to pay off the settlement.

Grokster was actually the second round in the record companies' fight against disorganised and decentralised peer-to-peer file sharing, after shutting down Napster. Being the pioneer and whipping boy, Napster could at least be reborn as a legitimate company with enough backing to buy off the industry and trade as a business.

In spite of this decision, the lobbying for both sides on Capitol Hill continues and the case will still go back to a lower court which had previously ruled in Grokster's favour. The peer-to-peer tennis match will continue for a long time to come, but now home users have a lot more than viruses and spyware to worry about when they download.

Read the text of the full judgement : here using Acrobat Reader.

Related links:

• Pocket-lint.co.uk - Official website of Pocket-lint.co.uk

Tags: Software Online Music downloads

Music and Movie businesses win in US court battle vs ISPs originally appeared on Pocket-lint on Mon, 27 Jun 2005 22:16:30 +0100

UPDATED 29/6/05 - Microsoft hinted overnight that Xbox 360 may support the HD DVD format, or that in time a hybrid device in the style of Sony's limited edition hi-fi PS2, with Toshiba building the deck and the ability to play Xbox 360 games, was one possible scenario following the tie-up of the two companies announced at the start of this week. Now that the format war is grinding into motion in spite of Toshiba's stated wish for more talks, it would seem that Microsoft isn't quite so neutral - though it would make sense to tout the format
supported by the DVD Forum.

ORIGINAL STORY

We reported that Format War III might not break out last week. Then again, optimism is a beautiful thing. Toshiba employed the big software and hardware guns to try and take the near-future DVD market by sealing an IP-sharing agreement with Microsoft, which could see future Toshiba HD DVD decks running Windows CE. Strategically, that's good for both of them. Microsoft states that it remains neutral on the subject of formats - Redmond doesn't have to care as long as it's their OS controlling the chipset. However, HD DVD has the backing of the DVD Forum as DVD-R/W had before it - and if recent history repeats itself, no amount of price-dumping will let the non-DVD Forum-approved challenger recover except by dual compatibility in drives. Betamax loser and cul-de-sac format specialist Sony is one of the companies behind the rival Blu-Ray format.

We've been here before. At least twice. So have consumers, who are admittedly a little less peeved at opposing DVD Formats not playing (and others not even bothering to support CD-R) than having the wrong size of tape. However Blu-Ray's much larger size (theoretically 100Gb) immediately lends itself to PC hard disk backup owing to drive sizes sailing past 300Gigabytes on the desktop.

Also, Sony will pack the technology into Playstation3 so there will be at least one or two markets snapping up the format, and in the case of the games console, they will do so without a choice. Having a fast means of recycling the losing format is of parallel importance to the companies, second only to “winning” the “war”. The only winners at the start of this battle will be the makers of “world standard” recorders and PC drives which remove consumer headache by supporting everything and will cost at a premium to cover everyone's royalties.

This new gold rush obscures the fact that DVD as a format is only eight years old. Anyone who stuck with the technology in their PC has been rewarded with a discount in price and the same has happened with the recordable version. If you have any movie-watching intentions this advantage will probably evaporate depending on whether we'll need HD TFTs in future. For backup though, you're sorted.

The difference this time round is that Hollywood studios are as divided as the technology companies - Disney are backing Blu Ray since they know their picture quality, when digitally created in the Toy Story vein - may be taken for granted and want the increased space for extras. Sony has its own Columbia/Tristar studios and bought up MGM, so in a few years the refreshed Bond Boxset with Casino Royale may be on Blu-Ray. Warner Brothers is sticking with HD DVD as the discs will end up with the same thickness and be able to sport “double-siding” with an ordinary DVD Format on the other side, avoiding the need for DVD collections to get junked.

While it's all very interesting and there're the future of data backup, the movie and games industries at stake, it will all end up with one dominant format in each market, and the games business shared out - a lot like it is now. For all the hype and bickering, Consumers hold the greatest power just by waiting and keeping their cash in their wallets, until the parties concerned grow up and reach a headache free compromise for movies. Out of the three entertainment sectors, this is the market with undoubtedly the greatest global reach.

Related links:

• Pocket-lint.co.uk - Official website of Pocket-lint.co.uk

Tags: Home Cinema Blu-ray HD DVD Toshiba Microsoft

Toshiba and Microsoft strike pact amid HD DVD v Blu Ray tussle originally appeared on Pocket-lint on Mon, 27 Jun 2005 20:04:39 +0100

Building on its ever-burgeoning sales and market profile and following the release of Turion for notebooks last week, AMD launched the FX 57 processor, aimed squarely at the hardcore overclocking and gaming market.

Despite taking the name from an old line of processors which previously featured a different socket, the chips won't be dual core like the recently released Athlon 64 X2 range - instead (you guessed it) they'll just be faster, since gamers are judged to appreciate pure speed while they wait for the games industry as a whole to start developing games which use the second core in the X2 chips to maximise performance. Of course when that happens you'll probably need another gigabyte of RAM and we'll be three generations of graphics card down the road, but that's par for the course for a PC Gamer.

"Faster" speeds for this new Athlon 64 means a clockspeed of 2.8GHz, 400MHz over the fastest X2 Athlon and 200MHz more than the old FX 55. It will also sport 1Mb of L2 cache, a 2GHz Hypertransport bus and in a filip to the memory makers, will require DDR533 SRAM for best performance- although there's still no DDR2 support just yet. Not that people who've just bought a new Gigabyte of 400-433MHz speedier RAM will complain.

Another bonus is that there shouldn't be a wholesale scrapping of motherboards overnight for Socket 939 users; it's expected that BIOS upgrades will let the chips sit in those existing boards and have the extra speed (and any advances on cache) recognised. The FX-55s will continue for another six months in parallel as a cheaper option until they finally step aside between Christmas and the traditional farewell period for processors at the end of January 2006.

Unfortunately, a brand new bleeding edge fast chip which can be clocked even higher than specified or be the best thing around for gamers won't come cheap, and at over US$1000 per thousand chips (yes, the price of a PC to most of us), resellers will need to stump up a cool million dollars to even have the chips in stock on launch day. It's this rather than any issues with ramping up production which may mean the processor will only launch in new machines of up to £/$2000 at least until the end of the year in order for dealers to regain any margin off the chips - but the buyers will get bragging rights and a machine with three years in it for gaming anyway. At that price, you'd better not look back at any magazines when the next big thing arrives after this, if you're going to spend silly money on the chip at launch.

Related links:

• Pocket-lint.co.uk - Official website of Pocket-lint.co.uk

Tags: Hardware Desktop PCs AMD

AMD launches new Athlon 64 FX-57 Single Core chip originally appeared on Pocket-lint on Mon, 27 Jun 2005 13:50:02 +0100

Just when we thought Microsoft had finished making announcements in an already very busy week, the company then announced that Really Simple Syndication technology or RSS as we all know and love it, was going to be incorporated into next year's Longhorn operating system starting with Internet Explorer 7, along with an extra add-on for more flexible ordering of the lists for those willing to learn the added code.

Given that the technology was invented by Netscape, that's enough to signal alarm bells for anyone convinced that the Redmond giant will simply dilute the standard through the back door with its extensions. Dean Hachamovitch, Microsoft's manager in charge of RSS, is expected to announce adherence to the Creative Commons licence, which is almost open source but not quite totally free at the “go ahead and steal” level.

As well as being able to order the lists more easily, MS wants to give users the ability to set up picture and music collections and have those lists feeding as well as or instead of the current single-line links (like news stories) which is RSS' current speciality, in addition to having any enabled and compatible program in the OS able to access and update the feeds. It'll be in the beta from this summer and ship with the finished shrinkwrap next year.

With cautious acceptance from some high profile RSS devotees, maybe MS's intention to create a development platform out of RSS, on top of integration with its own browser, won't spell a backdoor takeover once Longhorn is established.

Related links:

• Microsoft - Official website of Microsoft

Tags: Software PC software Operating Systems Microsoft Vista

Microsoft to integrate RSS into Longhorn originally appeared on Pocket-lint on Fri, 24 Jun 2005 23:45:51 +0100

For a website set up only a year ago, it was only a matter of time before iTunes outside of America would reach a significant milestone, but 50million legally downloaded bought and paid for tunes is definitely worth shouting about for Apple, which has spread its online stores across 14 other countries after the launch in the UK, France and Germany.

Once agreement was eventually reached, 1000 indie music labels joined the portal's worldwide major music companies in offering a million tracks for download. All this has happened despite rows over Ripoff Britain - the Office of Fair Trading is still investigating the fact that UK iTunes users are paying the highest price of 79p of the launch countries and of course (as usual) a lot more than America or Canada. (See here for the original story).

Still, in a week when Legal Downloads threatened to become almost as large as the illegal type, Apple knows it'll be the generally top destination for people wanting to charge up their iPod, so it can't be as if UK users are shunning the site in disgust. For Apple, the only way sales can go is up in an age when a ringtone based single can keep a stranglehold on the UK charts for almost a month.

Related links:

• Apple - Official website of Apple

Tags: Software Mac software Music software Apple

Apple iTunes Europe reaches 50 million downloads originally appeared on Pocket-lint on Fri, 24 Jun 2005 22:30:35 +0100

Nobody's going to complain about their mailboxes being made 200 times larger, as Microsoft did at the end of last year, and Hotmail is known for its ruthlessness about spam, keeping its 24-hour deletion of junk and image blocks in place from when everyone's mailboxes were tiny. However now the company is pushing through its Sender ID technology, which means the spoofed headers used by spammers and virus writers will now bounce, and Hotmail will inform you when this has happened.

Legitimate marketing services are among the most vocal in their dissent at the product and of course, there's no confirmation of what happens when Hotmail, along with Yahoo, occasionally “forgets” an address which you specifically marked as not being spam.

ISPs and other companies with mail servers not wishing to be designated as spam sources need to publish a Sender Policy Framework (SPF) certificate to identify their mail servers. So far so good you might think except when you learn that some sections of the code behind Sender ID technology remained as part of Microsoft's patented intellectual property, meaning the Redmond giant would infest every server which posted a certificate, worldwide, and come to dominate the internet in an even more real way than it's perceived to do now.

The Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF) as a proposed standard refused to ratify the standard and of course this will not stop Microsoft introducing it anyway through the millions of hotmail accounts which exist. However, all of those users will need a method by which they can receive email sent from a server without a certificate and access “wanted spam” - for instance, a regular fan club email. This is Microsoft we're talking about though, so for a commonsense solution which will satisfy all sides, give it a few months - during which time server operators may decide to install Microsoft's software for a quiet life and, as Craig Spiezle Microsoft believes, “ultimately enhance their brand name.”

That caps off a rather busy week for Microsoft as summarized here.

Related links:

• Microsoft - Official website of Microsoft

Tags: Software Online Office software Microsoft

Microsoft creates Fortress Hotmail with Sender ID Anti Spam originally appeared on Pocket-lint on Fri, 24 Jun 2005 21:47:10 +0100

It's been another big week for Microsoft, although now we're at the end of it, you'd have been forgiven for thinking the Redmond giant had plans to annoy as many users as possible.

Firstly there was the reaction to the Javascript spoofing flaw - and Microsoft declined to fix it, explaining why in its advisory. By deciding this was a bugbear and not a particularly big or dangerous flaw, the company is basically sitting around, waiting for someone to properly exploit the bug. Opera claims you can find out the origin of the malicious dialog box even if it doesn't fully pass the Secunia test at the moment, but you can be sure rival browsers will get fixed - by which time MS will think about it.

Next, Microsoft's acquisition of New York based enterprise-level antivirus and general computer security company Sybari, first announced back in February when Microsoft decided to get into the antivirus market, was totally signed and sealed three days ago - but with the formalising of the deal came the news that the company was waving goodbye to new open source sales- though MS said it will support existing buyers (insert your own joke here).

Now that Sybari will only supply its antivirus, content filtering and anti-spam strength to Microsoft products from now on, you never know, the market leaders Symantec and McAfee, rattled by Microsoft's intrusion into their space, may decide to push some well known products onto Unix and Linux if they're forward-looking enough to look for new revenue streams. At a time when no-one can afford to be complacent because of several European companies happy to provide antivirus software for nothing as a hook to win new business, the two market leaders need to slim the bloatware and go looking for new markets.

Last but not least, in the absence of working code, the firm attempted to win support for its intent to create its own version of the wild west-style peer-to-peer downloading service, Bittorrent. With the brand name Avalanche, MS intends to include Digital Rights Management into the service and expect people to pay for the privilege of downloading but sharing bandwidth at the same time. The idea was rubbished by users and the inventor of Bittorrent alike, but as shown with the Xbox, Microsoft have patience and deep pockets, so expect to hear more about this service when it's actually demonstrably working - however long that takes.

Related links:

• Microsoft - Official website of Microsoft

Tags: Software Online Browsers Microsoft

Microsoft's torrent of bits in a week of announcements originally appeared on Pocket-lint on Fri, 24 Jun 2005 20:44:11 +0100