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IBM technologist sees convergence of biology and IT
By Nicolas Mokhoff, EE Times
Jun 27, 2002 (9:11 AM)
URL: http://www.theworkcircuit.com/story/OEG20020627S0022
NEW YORK — Nicholas N. Donofrio, senior vice president of technology and marketing at IBM Corp., told a group of IT professionals at TechXNY on Tuesday (June 25) to brush up on their biology if they expect to ride the next wave of technology innovation. "For 30 years, we've been talking about all kinds of convergence of technologies, but none will be as profound as the upcoming convergence of IT and biology," Donofrio said in his keynote address here.
The boundary between biology and information sciences will come down gradually, said Donofrio, who called himself a "classic geek" who loves technology but doesn't see technological changes as revolutionary. "The PC did not wipe out the mainframe," said the 35-year IBM EE veteran. "Thank God, the new economy did not erase the old economy, and biotech is not going to take over the world. But we need to be ready to catch that ride."
Donofrio grants another decade to the continuing advances in silicon technology, which have yielded improvements of six orders of magnitude in the last three decades. He maintained, however, that system and network complexity makes it mandatory to investigate other scientific fields, where integration is simple by design.
"Take a look at our bodies," he told the sparsely attended conference. "We don't consciously think about the work of our muscles or the oxygen we need for our lungs — all our body parts work quietly in the background, continuously programming and reconfiguring themselves to get the job done."
With "managing complexity" the biggest challenge facing the tech industry, "we can learn a lot from biological systems to apply to our man-made systems," said Donofrio. He mentioned the ongoing Grid distributed-computing effort inside IBM and in collaboration with industry and academic partners as means to deal with that complexity. "A new computing model is emerging where a self-managed, autonomic system reconfigures on the fly to meet the demands of the moment," said Donofrio.
IBM is basing its "autonomic-computing" effort on the example of automation in nature. According to the company's literature, implementing autonomic computing will require the participation of thinkers and businesses throughout the industry. "The radical nature of the autonomic-computing solution has implications for the way we conceive, design, manage and maintain technology at myriad and layered levels, placing it far beyond the domain of any one company," IBM said in a TechXNY handout.
Donofrio reiterated that sentiment, warning that if the industry does not tame the complexity brought on by the Internet and all the networks and systems tied to it, IT productivity gains will never materialize. "We are spending three times the cost to manage systems that we are for building them," he said. "We need self-managing systems that can fix themselves, and we can learn a lot about that from biology."
Common standards
As one of the first steps toward managing complexity, Donofrio called on his audience to support Linux as a common open-standard operating system for all applications that pervade wired and wireless world. "Linux is as important for applications as the Internet was for communications," he said. "Next, we need to take a holistic approach to generate better and smarter solutions, not faster, cheaper and smaller systems."
With common standards as the means and self-healing systems as the goal, Donofrio foresees a world of on-demand computing where users just "plug in" to a network to get what they need to run their business. In this model, the needs of IT infrastructure are completely transparent to users.
"We can learn a lot from the biological world [in terms] of how operations work in the background and only their results are manifested on the outside," Donofrio said. "I, for one, look forward to the eventual loosening of boundary between the natural and the mechanical worlds."
Posted by: cksla
In reply to: None Date: 11/13/2001 12:00:25 PM
Post # of 13546
I can see clearly now the rain has gone
I can see all obstacles in my way
Gone are the dark clouds that made me crash
It's going to be a bright, bright sunshiny day
==============================================
music is nice, but give me MOS 3.0 for my $$$$$$$$$$$
Wireless Carriers, Phone Makers Back Open Standards
Audio/Video
By Peter Henderson
LAS VEGAS (Reuters) - The world's largest wireless handset manufacturers and leading wireless carriers unveiled plans on Monday to ensure compatibility between mobile phones and services by agreeing standards for deploying new networks.
Aiming to spur growth of the wireless phone market, the consortium plans to standardize technology to make it easier to develop and broadly deploy new services and to avoid proprietary systems.
Nokia (news - web sites) (NOK1V.HE) (NYSE:NOK - news) Chairman and Chief Executive Jorma Ollila announced the partnership in a speech at the COMDEX trade show. It includes major phone manufacturers, Motorola, Ericsson (news - web sites) (ERICb.ST), Toshiba Corp. (6502.T), Matsushita (6781.T), Samsung (69500.KS), Siemens (SIEGn.DE) and Sony Corp (news - web sites). (6758.T).
U.S. carriers AT&T Wireless and Cingular Wireless, a unit of SBC Communications (NYSE:SBC - news) and BellSouth Corp. (NYSE:BLS - news) signed up along with Japan's dominant wireless carrier NTT DoCoMo (news - web sites) (9437.T) and the UK's Vodafone (VOD.L).
The partners did not announce financial terms or give a time table for the plan which involves the GSM, WCDMA (news - web sites) and GPRS mobile networks, but they outlined some standards they plan to jointly adopt, such as elements of browsers and messaging systems.
The adoption of global standards could run in to difficulties as companies disagree on the best way to implement technologies.
But Ollila said that success would open a broader market for wireless carriers and phone makers, make it easier for consumers to use their phones and speed the adoption of premium services.
The initiative comes at a time when mobile phone sales have leveled off globally after several years of runaway growth.
Setting the technology standards will be like setting rules for playing a game. Individual companies could make different phones and offer services but software programs could be written in languages understandable by all.
Today each often ends up doing things different ways. Short message service, the ability to send brief text messages on wireless phones, has taken off in Europe but has failed to take off in the United States due to disagreements on how to implement the systems, Nokia's senior vice president of mobile software, Pertti Korhonen, told reporters.
Agreeing standards would settle that, he said.
Thus a Nokia phone and a Sony Ericsson phone might look different, and one service provider might support an electronic banking service while another might not, but both phones would be able to download and run the same program.
``We need to create some uniformity behind the scenes,'' Niklas Sarander, vice president of Nokia mobile software, told reporters. ``The key driver why we are doing this is -- fuel market growth.''
Ollila said Nokia, the world's leading maker of mobile phones, would offer the source code for its phones ``openly and on equal terms.''
Ollila also said Nokia would license its smartphone platform to other manufacturers. Smartphones combine phones, personal digital assistants and Internet access devices.
The project's success hinges on the carriers and handset makers carrying out their vow to respect standards that each might want to make improvements.
Success would also be a cold shoulder to Microsoft Corp (Nasdaq:MSFT - news) as it tries to extend its influence on personal computers to the Internet with its .NET initiative of network standards.
Nokia's Korhonen said the alliance planned authentication procedures to allow mobile commerce which would be compatible with the Liberty Alliance, a new group spearheaded by Sun Microsystems Inc.(Nasdaq:SUNW - news), the network computer maker whose Java software which allows programs to run on multiple operating systems and devices.
Microsoft has set its own standards for the .NET program, while Korhonen said the wireless industry consortium was focused on completely open technologies not controlled by any one company.
``We think that we should not stick to the limited business models of the past,'' he told a group of reporters, referring to Microsoft's lock on the operating system which controls virtually all personal computers.
The consortium also includes MM02 (BT.L), Telefonica Moviles (NYSE:TEM - news)(TEM.MC), Fujitsu Ltd.(6702.T), Mitsubishi Electric Corp.(6503.T), NEC Corp.(6701.T), Sharp Corp.(6753.T), and Symbian.
=============================================
Texas Instruments Supports Industry Leaders' Open Mobile Architecture Initiative With OMAP(TM) Wireless Processors
Support for Java(TM) Programming and Symbian OS in TI's OMAP Product Family Demonstrates the Company's Support to Open Mobile Standards
LAS VEGAS, Nov. 12 /PRNewswire/ -- Texas Instruments Incorporated (NYSE: TXN - news; TI) has announced its support for the open mobile architecture initiative, launched by Nokia with other industry leaders earlier today. This initiative demonstrates the commitment of industry leaders to the open mobile architecture, which will accelerate the growth of the mobile services industry.
``The open mobile architecture will receive a significant boost from TI,'' said Pertti Korhonen, senior vice president, Nokia Mobile Software. ``TI's OMAP platform enables optimal performance and power savings for next- generation mobile devices and support for bandwidth-intensive wireless applications.''TI's OMAP wireless architecture, selected by Nokia and other leading manufacturers as a platform of choice for 2.5 and 3G wireless devices, supports the open mobile architecture initiative. TI's OMAP family of powerful and scalable processors, features full support of advanced mobile operating systems such as Symbian OS. In addition, it provides Java programming support. The OMAP platform enables services such as multimedia messaging, short video clip and Internet audio downloads, e-mail, real-time Web browsing, advanced security and games.
``It is of utmost importance to create an open software platform for mobile services. TI is pleased to support Nokia and other industry leaders in order to ensure a balanced business ecosystem, which is built on open industry standards,'' said Gilles Delfassy, senior vice president, Worldwide Wireless Communications, TI. ``We believe that the OMAP platform is the ideal processing solution to support this initiative.''
Combined with easy access to TI's leading wireless expertise, OMAP technology and support infrastructure, this initiative that encompasses end- to-end solutions and services for mobile terminal vendors and operators, further enables application developers to foster rapid innovation and accelerate 2.5 and 3G services.
About Texas Instruments
Texas Instruments Incorporated is the world leader in digital signal processing and analog technologies, the semiconductor engines of the Internet age. The company's businesses also include sensors and controls, and educational and productivity solutions. TI is headquartered in Dallas, Texas, and has manufacturing or sales operations in more than 25 countries.
Texas Instruments is traded on the New York Stock Exchange under the symbol TXN. More information is located on the World Wide Web at: http://www.ti.com
===============================================Texas Instruments unveils processor for 3G market
By Darrell Dunn
EBN
(02/19/01 12:04 p.m. EST)
DALLAS--Shipments of 3G-enabled cellular handsets may not amount to much in the next few years, but Texas Instruments Inc. believes the silicon battle is already raging and today will unveil its first standard processor for the highly coveted market.
The first device in a two-processor solution, TI's OMAP1115 application processor is aimed at 2.5 and 3G wireless handsets. It uses the company's TMS320C55x DSP core and an ARM950 microprocessor combined with an optimized set of peripherals. Designed to execute Internet-based commands, the device will be paired in new phones with an upcoming communications processor that combines a separate 'C55x DSP and ARM950 with optimized modem layers.
Together, the devices will comprise TI's Open Multimedia Applications Platform (OMAP), though individual Internet and communications processors could someday be integrated into a single DSP/ARM solution, according to Richard Kerslake, worldwide wireless computing marketing manager at TI.
By building handsets with its DSP and RISC processors, the company has realized cost, performance, and production efficiencies at a time when handset manufacturers are poised for the convergence of voice-centric cellular phones and more data-intensive PDAs, according to Kerslake. The company also believes OMAP will allow it to further expand its wireless revenue, which grew from $500 million in 1996 to $2.3 billion last year.
"The convergence of PDAs and phones is ongoing from both directions," Kerslake said. "PDAs are getting wireless capabilities, and we're seeing phones getting PDA functionality. Which platform eventually wins out will probably come down to regional tastes."
Though similar in approach to upcoming platforms from the likes of Analog Devices, Intel, and Motorola, TI believes its 3G design will help maintain its leadership role in the cellular market, where its DSPs are used in nearly two-thirds of all handsets.
Micrologic Research, Phoenix, estimates that 1.6 million 3G-class handsets will be shipped this year, primarily in Japan and Korea. Europe is expected to begin adopting 3G-class handsets by the end of this year and into 2002, while 3G shipments in the United States are not expected to reach significant volumes until 2003 or later. In the meantime, 2.5G GSM phones equipped with general packet radio service (GPRS) are expected to dominate in Europe and particularly in the United States.
The debate over whether 3G handsets will eventually come to more closely resemble phones or PDAs-and how that convergence will be best addressed through silicon-is becoming a battleground for competitors vying for position.
Intel Corp., which has limited participation in the handset market through its 1999 acquisition of DSP Communications Inc., believes the new wireless devices will be compute-intensive and require greater reliance on high-performance RISC engines such as Intel's XScale microprocessor. The chip is a recently introduced high-performance version of the StrongARM processor architecture Intel acquired in its 1998 purchase of Digital Equipment Corp.'s IC operations.
Intel plans to use a single XScale for its application processor, and a combination XScale and Micro Signal Architecture (MSA) DSP co-developed with Analog Devices Inc. for the communications processor. Together, the solution will represent Intel's Personal Client Architecture (PCA).
To date, the only announced design win for Intel's PCA is Mitsubishi Corp., but the company believes it has opportunity in the 3G market.
"Applications [for 3G] will become much more sophisticated than they are today," said Ron Smith, vice president and general manager of Intel's Wireless Communications & Computing Group, Folsom, Calif. "They will be largely control applications, and will require an extendible, reprogrammable microprocessor-type of architecture."
Jack Quinn, an analyst at Micrologic Research, said a RISC-intensive approach such as Intel's could find favor in next-generation PDA designs in which RISC "is a model people are more comfortable programming with. It's true that there are a lot of noncellular people out there who are not comfortable working with DSPs."
Other potential 3G silicon providers appear to be taking a DSP/MCU approach similar to that of TI's.
Analog Devices, for instance, has announced that Siemens AG has selected its ADSP218x DSP core and an ARM7 microprocessor for its 2.5G GSM/GPRS handsets. The Norwood, Mass., chip maker said that future handsets are expected to use the MSA DSP co-developed with Intel.
Motorola Inc.'s Semiconductor Products Sector is looking at multiple approaches. SPS' application engine will likely incorporate a future-generation Dragon-ball processor and possibly a DSP. And the communications processor will combine Motorola's MCore340 processor and a StarCore 140 DSP, which the company developed with Lucent Technologies Inc.'s Microelectronics Group (now Agere Systems Inc.).
Motorola also has been replacing its in-house microprocessors with the ARM processor in a variety of product offerings. The company could provide 3G handset components for the merchant market that combine an ARM device with the StarCore DSP, according to observers.
Quinn said that despite the flurry of activity, TI's inherent position in the 2G handset market-and its announced 2.5 and 3G development agreements with handset suppliers Ericsson, Nokia, and Sony-will continue to prove an advantage.
"I think companies that are trying to get in now have an uphill fight," Quinn said. "Companies are designing stuff now, and maybe it's not the final product, but nevertheless, once you have a certain amount of intellectual effort put into the design, it's hard to change."
Competitors have virtually no chance of stealing Nokia away from TI, and an only slightly better opportunity with Ericsson, said Will Strauss, an analyst at Forward Concepts Co., Tempe, Ariz. "A company like Nokia is pretty much locked into TI's core and tools by this point," Strauss said.
For 3G CDMA applications, TI in December signed a cross-licensing agreement with Qualcomm Inc. that should provide San Diego-based Qualcomm with royalty revenue, said Greg Teets, an analyst at A.G. Edwards & Sons Inc., St. Louis. But it appears there will be little head-to-head competition.
The OMAP1115 combines a 200MHz 'C55x DSP providing 320 mips performance with a 175MHz ARM9 offering 210 mips performance. The OMAP115 is scheduled to begin shipping in volume in the second half of this year. TI did not disclose pricing.
==================================================
TI's dsp used in e.digital's reference design is the same one that is at the core of TI's OMAP and new chipset for 2.5 and 3G
http://ragingbull.lycos.com/mboard/boards.cgi?board=EDIG&read=815036
PluggedIn: 'Celestial Jukebox' Closer to Earth
Tue Jul 2,11:01 AM ET
By Andy Sullivan
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - An independent digital music company has brought the much-hyped "celestial jukebox" a bit closer to earth with a service that provides unlimited access over the Internet to thousands of songs and dozens of custom radio stations.
With the announcement Monday that it had clinched a deal with Universal Music , Listen.com's Rhapsody service became the first authorized Internet song provider to offer music from all five major labels, along with more than 50 independent labels.
The company plans to add more features by the end of the year, such as CD burning and wireless access, in a bid to convince more music fans to pay $9.95 per month.
Legitimate, industry-approved Internet music services have struggled to compete against wildly popular unauthorized services like Napster ( news - web sites), Kazaa and Music City Morpheus that allow users to swap songs for free.
Two services launched by major labels last year, MusicNet
and Pressplay, have received thumbs-down reviews for their limited music selection and complicated rules, as well as antitrust scrutiny from the U.S. Justice Department ( news - web sites).
Rhapsody, which has signed up fewer than 100,000 users since its December launch, hopes to break the mold by allowing users to listen to as much music as they want on their computers. Microsoft Windows users with a high-speed Internet connection can search for songs by artist or title or listen to dozens of radio stations in formats ranging from acid jazz to alternative country. A "similar artists" feature allows users to explore new music by following suggestions from an interactive display.
CATALOG HAS LIMITS
With 178,000 songs from more than 5,000 artists, listeners should have plenty to choose from, said Listen.com spokesman Matt Graves.
But a test of the system quickly reveals the limits of the Rhapsody catalog. Neil Young fans can listen to many of the eccentric rocker's best-selling albums, but they won't hear "Tonight's the Night," his harrowing early-'70s examination of rock-star excess that gained cult status.
Rap fans can listen to all of "Enter the Wu-Tang," but not the follow-ups "Wu-Tang Forever" or "Iron Flag."
And some pop titans, like the Rolling Stones or Bob Dylan, are barely represented. A search for the Beatles turns up the Butthole Surfers, but nothing from the Fab Four.
The catalog gaps prompted a thumbs-down from some testers.
"This site is seriously lacking for audiophiles and archivists, but seems like it might be somewhat of a good thing for mindless radio listeners," said Wyatt Mitchell, a Chicago advertising consultant who owns more than 1,000 CDs.
Listen.com's Graves said the company must obtain permission from the record label, the publisher, and sometimes from the artist as well before making a song available. Artists like the Beatles, Radiohead and Metallica ( news - web sites) aren't on the service because they have retained the digital rights to their music and don't want to let it go, he said.
The service should have more than 200,000 songs by the end of July, and will continue steadily adding more, he said.
"We're going to continue cutting deals," he said.
Testers praised the service's Web-radio stations, its intuitive interface and its playlist feature, which allows users to track and organize the songs they've listened to.
BURNABLE SONGS, MOBILE ACCESS PLANNED
But none of these features would convince them to abandon free services like Limewire or Kazaa, they said, which place no restrictions on how the songs could be used. Without the ability to save songs and burn them to CD or move to a portable player, the service is of little use, they said.
"My biggest beef, of course, is that you get nothing to show for it in the end. Nothing on the disc. Yippie doo," said Rob Sullivan, a systems administrator at a Chicago Web-hosting firm.
Recording companies have been reluctant to allow their songs to be "burned" onto a CD, but have begun to change their tune. Rhapsody rival FullAudio said Monday it had reached a deal to allow users to burn songs from AOL Time Warner Inc .'s Warner Music, and Pressplay allows a limited number of songs to be burned each month.
Rhapsody expects to add a CD-burning feature by the end of the year, Graves said, most likely charging users an additional fee per song.
The service will also go wireless by the end of the year, he said, allowing users to set up playlists on their computers and listen to them over their mobile phones.
But Rhapsody still must convince users to pony up $10 each month for something they can easily find for free elsewhere. Graves touted Rhapsody's easy-to-use search interface, consistent song quality, and privacy guarantee as advantages over Kazaa and other services.
The "similar artists" feature was a significant advantage as well, Graves said.
"Kazaa is great if you want a one-way tool for finding a track, but then you hit a dead wall," he said.
FullAudio deal leaves WMG burning
Tue Jul 2, 2:09 AM ET
Chris Marlowe
LOS ANGELES (The Hollywood Reporter) --- Warner Music Group on Monday signed its first licensing deal that includes CD burning. The major label expanded its relationship with FullAudio with a supplemental licensing deal that allows subscribers to FullAudio's digital music service to purchase individual tracks from WMG's catalog.
Tracks will cost 99 cents each. The deal covers about 25,000 songs from Brandy, POD, Goo Goo Dolls ( news - web sites) and many other top-selling artists.
FullAudio CEO Chris Gladwin said this is the next step toward making online distribution a viable business. "This gives our customers what they want and ensures that our channel partners can deliver compelling, high-quality music services to their customers," he said.
FullAudio has offered WMG recordings since April. That initial deal added WMG content to the library of recordings included in FullAudio's streaming service.
All of the additional content therefore becomes available to MusicNow subscribers. MusicNow is Clear Channel's on-demand music subscription service enabled by FullAudio.
This new nonexclusive deal enables subscribers in the United States to buy tracks online, download them to a PC or secure portable device and burn them to a CD. FullAudio plans to have the capability enabled in the fall.
"By continuing to work with our partners in the online community, we can make more music available in a way that addresses the consumer's desire to experience high-quality music easily, securely and with maximum flexibility," said Paul Vidich, WMG executive vp strategic planning and business development.
The announcement comes shortly after Chicago-based FullAudio attracted $13.5 million in its series C round of venture capital funding led by existing investor New Enterprise Associates.
"The key to the future of digital music is to balance the needs of the consumer with those of the artist and the music industry," New Enterprise general partner Stewart Alsop said. "We think FullAudio has tremendous potential to be the market leader in a major new distribution system for music on the Internet."
July 2, OUTSIDE THE BOX: Is There a Shift in Online Music Technology? , Shelley Souza, Optionetics.com
Is there anything to write about that doesn't reiterate the overwhelming domino effect occurring in publicly traded companies as one after another once high-flying companies are falling, as a result of accounting irregularities.? To be honest, not much, especially now that Martha's investment friends and strategies are beginning to reveal tarnish beneath the golden halo that has buoyed the doyenne of gracious living for the average householder for so many years. The latest suspect in the eye of the investor is Vivendi Universal (V), the French corporation that tried to buy Lucent Technologies (LU) last year… However, there is an article I personally found interesting, in the New York Times online, which describes how the Bush administration replaced Arthur Levitt as S.E.C. chairman with Harvey Pitt, who promised to be a “gentler” and “kinder” oversight body. And look where that's led us so far. I've never liked the proverb “spare the rod and spoil the child,” but in the case of the S.E.C. it seems apt (although unfortunately too late for many children; who have grown up to spoil not only themselves but many investors' accounts as well).
The most heartening event I could find in the news today was information (again in the Times) that major recording labels are beginning to realize that file swapping is not going to end, just because they brought about the demise of Napster. So, grudgingly, they are beginning to cut deals with online resources that allow users to download files and even write them to CDs for a small monthly fee.
What does that mean for investors? I think it means that there's a shift happening in online music that could be a section worth putting on the radar screen. There are still several m not sure that is it clear yet who the players (meaning companies, not CD players) will be. So, if I were an investor who was interested in entering this particular technology, I would read the Times article (because it has lots of good information and will save reinventing the wheel). Then I would look at companies like Bertelsmann AG, which recently bought Napster and Zomba, and publicly traded record labels. I would check into companies like Listen.com, which received the first major rights from a major record label to offer users downloadable files for less than $10 a month. I would generally watch the trend and see if there's any fire beneath this initial puff of smoke.
The other sector I would check out would be security technology companies working on digital management rights, like InterTrust (ITRU) for example. Then, when I had all my researched lined up in a row, I would do some nifty trend analysis on any publicly traded companies (using my trusty Optionetics Platinum software) and Bob's your uncle (although I never had an uncle named Bob). But at any rate, you get my drift? Basically, in this highly challenged market, the way to move forward is to use any time that you're on the sidelines as an opportunity to do research into what is likely to be the next wave, at least in the technology section. Let's face it: no matter how many corporate scandals hit the news, there will always be a few good men and women left in the world, and some of them have to be running good, public companies; it's simply the law of averages. It's your mission impossible to find them. Good luck!
As always, trade carefully.
Shelley Souza
Senior Writer & Trading Strategist
Optionetics.com ~ Your Options Education Site
Nokia, IBM to Announce Wireless Software Agreement
Tue Jul 9, 2:57 AM ET
NEW YORK (Reuters) - Nokia ( news - web sites) Corp.. and International Business Machines Corp. are expected to announce an agreement Tuesday to develop software to distribute music and other media to cellphones in an effort to extend the market for wireless services, the New York Times reported.
The two companies are also expected to announce a licensing agreement whereby Nokia's wireless software will be integrated with IBM's digital media software, the paper said.
The announcements, according to the report, represent an attempt by Nokia and IBM to broaden the market for wireless services beyond telephone service and simple text messages, and offset a threat from Microsoft Corp. in the mobile hand-held device software market.
Teen market clicks past e-tailers
By Rachel Konrad
Special to ZDNet News
July 8, 2002, 3:20 PM PT
SAN FRANCISCO--Alan Luu spends about 40 hours a week online, playing games, researching school assignments, and chatting with more than 200 people on his instant messenger buddy list.
But the 16-year-old has never purchased a single item online.
"I don't buy anything because I don't have a credit card," the San Francisco resident said during a trip to the Sony Metreon, a teen-packed entertainment complex where shoppers buy DVDs, CDs, software and computer gaming equipment. "Some of my friends have older brothers who buy stuff online for them, but most of us just have to go to the store."
And while marketers note with irony that this very wired generation is also the least likely to buy online, many big-name e-commerce companies popular with adults don't seem too worried. Some pointedly ignore or even discourage teen shoppers, content to wait until they hit 18 and start getting credit card offers.
At eBay, where each transaction amounts to a legal contract between buyer and seller, you must be 18 to even have an account--the only way to buy and sell on the site. And leading e-commerce site Amazon.com acknowledges that it hasn't done much to court the teen market.
Teen shoppers are "just not something that we focus on," Amazon spokeswoman Patty Smith said. "We make it very clear that our site is intended for folks 18 and older who have a credit card."
Other sites say they're reaching out to teens--even though they're a relatively tough sell--so that they'll have name recognition when teens enter adulthood.
Louise Solomon, spokeswoman for Sacramento, Calif.-based Tower Records, said teens have always been "a small, small percentage of our audience." Still, the company sends its monthly magazine, Pulse, to a disproportionate number of young people and promotes its Web site in all Tower stores.
"Our stores are our No. 1 resource. They're one of teens' favorite places to hang out," Solomon said. "Hopefully they'll feel the same thing about our site."
Generation ICQ comes of age
Nicknamed Echo Boomers because they're children of Baby Boomers, teens make up the most computer-savvy generation in U.S. history.
Also called Generation ICQ for their fanatic use of instant messenger applications, they've learned to depend on the Web for researching school assignments, and those with home computers use the Internet more than the telephone to communicate with friends. According to a January survey by AOL subsidiary Digital Market Services, 81 percent of all Americans age 12 to 17 regularly use e-mail, and 70 percent use IM.
They're also prodigious consumers. According to Northbrook, Ill.-based consulting firm Teenage Research Unlimited (TRU), Americans age 10 to 19 spent about $155 billion last year, an average of $116 a week, with half of the money going toward clothing. One in four teens have checking accounts, two in three have savings accounts, and one in four own stock or bonds.
Internet teen talk
These are the top 10 sites for Web surfers between the ages of 13 and 19, according to a recent study*.
• SparkNotes.com
• Alloy
• Seventeen.com
• Subprofile.net
• Imchaos.com
• Deadjournal.com
• Badassbuddy.com
• Subprofile.com
• Imtools.com
• eCrush
*Adult Web sites are excluded.
Source: Nielsen/NetRatings
But less than half of 18- and 19-year-olds have credit cards, and the percentage drops precipitously for younger teens, according to TRU. The average teenager spent only $31 online in 2001, according to TRU. By contrast, several studies suggest that new mothers spent more than $500 online in the same period.
"When you look at sites popular among teenagers, e-commerce sites are not top on the list--or anywhere near the top," said Lisa Strand, director and chief analyst for Milpitas, Calif.-based research firm NetRatings.
"Entertainment sites, especially teen-specific sites, are very popular, as well as IM or anything involving communication. But when they do go to e-commerce sites...they're going primarily for information, like release dates. They won't buy anything."
In addition to the credit card issue, e-commerce companies' ability to appeal to teens hits a formidable psychological roadblock. Teenagers are notorious impulse buyers--scooping up deals on clothes or equipment whenever it strikes their fancy. Like younger consumers in previous generations, they generally dislike the idea of waiting three days or a week for an online order to arrive in the mail.
"Adults see buying online as convenient, but teens are really driven by immediate gratification," said Michael Wood, vice president of TRU. "They go to the mall on Saturday afternoon to try to find an outfit they can wear Saturday night. They tend not to plan in advance for their purchases--something that's required for most transactions online."
It's unclear whether e-commerce companies are losing an opportunity to build brand awareness with teenagers. Wood and other teen experts say consumers tend to develop shopping habits early--so today's teens might not automatically gravitate toward e-commerce simply because they have credit cards.
Darryl Lewis is an e-commerce marketer's nightmare. The 17-year-old, headed to University of California at Davis later this summer, has 154 IM buddies and spends roughly five hours a day online. He'd love to be able to order computer software and foreign goodies such as Japanese candy online, but he can't because he doesn't have a credit card and no one in his family will loan him one.
He's already figured out ways to work around the problem. The Oakland, Calif., resident knows which local specialty stores sell Asian sweets, and he spends most of his time online at sites that offer free software. He's become so used to software freebies that, at this point, he doubts he'll use a credit card for online purchases even after he gets one.
"Using credit cards (is) like paying with invisible money, and I don't trust them," Lewis said. "They could be stolen. Plus, there's always going to be software available for free. Even if one site shuts down, there's always a shell knockoff that I'll be able to get for free from another site."
Targeting teens
But some sites that see teenagers as their core market have gone to great lengths to overcome the credit card issue--with mixed results. Although they can attract large numbers of teens to use chat sites or to read articles, most struggle to get readers to spend money.
"The credit card issue is the No. 1 issue people ask us about our business plan: How will teens ever buy from you?" said Jim Johnson, chief operating officer of New York-based teen site and e-commerce shop Alloy. The site's core audience is teenage girls, and roughly 85 percent of sales are done by credit card--much lower than most online sites.
"They tend not to plan in advance for their purchases--something that's required for most transactions online."
--Michael Wood, vice president, TRU
To reach out to teens, Alloy sends paper catalogs to registered users' home addresses--roughly 45 million last year--and uses IM for customer service because teens are so comfortable using it.
"We're not sitting there saying, 'If teens could only get their hands on credit cards, we'd sell a lot more,'" Johnson said. "We'd like it better if they had credit cards, but it's not stopping them from ordering. We're obviously doing everything we can to make it as easy as possible for them to get to know us and trust us."
Marketers know that motivated teens will find a way to buy an item online--even if it means sending a check or money order to the company by snail mail. And credit card companies are trying to solve the problem, issuing cards that are connected to their parents' accounts or pre-paid credit cards such as Visa Buxx, which summarizes teens' purchases on their parents' monthly bills.
Some teen-oriented sites simply offer really popular products--notably games and other computer services.
"Gaming is such a passion center that people will do anything to get the money," said Elizabeth Drucker, director of investor relations and corporate communications for Brisbane, Calif.-based gaming site IGN.com. Their average visitor is 22 years old and 45 percent of users are under 18. The site charges $4.95 per month or $24.95 per year for subscriptions.
"We even have subscribers sending us cash--honest to gosh. They're so passionate that they send cash with a note saying, 'Please accept my cash and keep the extra 50 cents as a tip.' The finance dept has some pretty interesting stories."
Brother, can you spare some plastic?
Some teens get around the credit card issue by getting permission from parents or siblings to use their cards and pay them back, just as they might beg to borrow the family car for a Saturday night on the condition they fill up the gas tank.
Myung Kim, a 17-year-old from Dublin, Calif., said he frequently purchases computer parts online--thanks to his dad's Visa. He has built three computers with parts bought on the cheap from overstock electronics specialists online, and he recently bought a laptop in an eBay auction.
"Sometimes he gets surprised when he gets those $700 bills," said Kim, who's headed to the University of California at Berkeley in the fall. "But I just tell him to chalk it up to necessary expenses. I'm very selective about what I buy and I don't abuse the credit card, so he's been OK with it."
In part to overcome the credit card issue, IGN created an "Adopt an Insider" program so that subscribers may sponsor would-be members who are unable to pay on their own. Still, the company faces some interesting customer service issues because of its subscribers' payment woes.
"We do get calls from parents saying, 'I have this weird charge on my statement. What exactly is IGN?'" Drucker said. "They're worried it's some porn outfit, but once they realize that it's just a gaming company and their kids aren't doing anything unsavory, they're OK with that."
EarthLink beams up new music center
By Gwendolyn Mariano
Special to ZDNet News
July 8, 2002, 3:10 PM PT
Internet service provider EarthLink said Monday that it has tapped FullAudio and MusicMatch to launch a new digital music hub that offers both streaming and downloadable music.
EarthLink said subscribers to its Digital Music Center will have access to a custom version of Microsoft's Windows Media Player. Through the service, people can download up to 50 music tracks each month for a $9.95 monthly fee or up to 100 tracks each month for a $17.95 monthly fee. The service does not yet offer any burning capabilities. Subscribers can connect to their accounts from up to three PCs.
FullAudio has deals with four of the five major record labels and offers some 75,000 tracks for download. A companion streaming radio service is provided by MusicMatch, which offers both free and paid programming.
EarthLink's new service comes as the digital music landscape undergoes a transformation from services that allow free file swapping to ones that require people to pay for online music. Internet service providers, which already have billing relationships with customers, are considered a natural marketing partner for the music labels and other publishers seeking to charge for content, particularly as customers gravitate toward high-speed Internet connections.
"What you're seeing here is the first of a new wave of announcements we're likely to see of Internet service providers offering incremental services for incremental fees," said Phil Leigh, vice president of digital media research at investment company Raymond James & Associates. But "the real advantage of digital media is going to be for those ISPs that have broadband capability."
Although EarthLink has a total subscriber base of 4.9 million, the vast majority of its customers still connect through a dial-up service. EarthLink said it has 530,000 broadband subscribers.
"What we want to do is get beyond just offering the (Internet) connection," said Mark Griffith, senior brand manager at EarthLink. "We're really trying to provide the content and the application for our customers to have the best of their Internet experience...We look at music as being a killer application for our broadband customers."
FullAudio CEO Chris Gladwin said EarthLink is the company's first partnership with an ISP. He added that FullAudio aims to sign similar deals with other ISPs.
The partnership with EarthLink "really validates our business model," Gladwin said.
However, Raymond James' Leigh said FullAudio's service falls short on the number of tracks that it offers. Listen.com, which landed deals with all the five major record labels, now boasts more than 180,000 tracks, compared with FullAudio's 75,000 tracks.
FullAudio "is not going to be the strongest current that's going to be played here," Leigh said. "The other services offer a lot more tracks, and they can be more appealing to the consumer."
earthlink music subcription powered by fullaudio
http://www.earthlink.net/music/player/
Burn your favorite tracks to CD or port tracks to MP3 players!
Full Audio Inks Universal Deal
By Joseph Palenchar
TWICE
12/3/2001
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Chicago— Full Audio has signed a two-year nonexclusive deal with Universal Music to add select songs from the Universal catalog to its planned cache-download music-subscription service, which will initially be delivered to PCs but might be expanded to home CE devices.
Full previously signed a deal with EMI for its full catalog of titles.
In its first distribution-partner agreement, FullAudio will deliver its service beginning in January through websites operated by Clear Channel-owned radio stations in five markets: Chicago, Houston, Los Angeles, Phoenix, and Salt Lake City. Monthly fees will range from $5 to $15/month, depending on the service level.
Clear Channel will use the service to let listeners of its stations download music in the format played by the stations. The service will also give listeners access to other music formats.
To eliminate music-quality problems caused by poor Internet connections, the service doesn't stream music to a PC. Instead, it lets users download music for storage on, and playback from, their PC's hard drive. Listeners have full access to the music as long as their subscription is paid up.
For now, music can't be transferred to an Internet audio portable, but down the road, Full hopes to allow for transfer to portables that use Microsoft's WMA codec and DRM, a spokeswoman said. "The portable device would have to understand all the rules supported by the DRM," she said.
Warner Music Group Grants FullAudio License For Digital Music Subscription Service
NEW YORK & CHICAGO--(BUSINESS WIRE)--April 10, 2002--
WMG Is The Third Major Label License for FullAudio's Cache-Download Subscription Service
FullAudio and Warner Music Group (WMG) today announced that the companies have entered into a non-exclusive licensing agreement. Under the agreement, subscribers to FullAudio's unique cache download music subscription service will be able to download and stream tracks from WMG's extensive catalog. The agreement also allows FullAudio subscribers to transfer WMG-controlled tracks from their PCs to secure portable devices and set-top boxes, as soon as these devices become commercially available.
WMG is the third major label to grant FullAudio a license for sound recordings. Previously, FullAudio secured sound recording rights from EMI Recorded Music and Universal Music Group. FullAudio also has obtained publishing rights from Universal Music Publishing, EMI Music Publishing, and BMG Music Publishing as part of its continuing effort to secure legal content from all music publishers and five major record labels.
"FullAudio has developed an innovative online subscription service that will enable consumers to experience a wide variety of artists and music in a dynamic listening environment," said Paul Vidich, executive vice president, strategic planning and business development for Warner Music Group. "With the addition of FullAudio to the group of companies we have licensed for online music subscription services, we can continue to offer our labels and artists powerful resources to reach more music consumers in exciting new ways."
"Every new license that FullAudio signs is a big win for us and our distribution partners, so we are very excited about our new relationship with Warner Music," said Chris Copeland Gladwin, chairman and CEO of FullAudio. "As we get closer to launch it is important that we provide as much quality content as possible to our distributors and their subscribers--and Warner Music is certainly a great addition to our rapidly growing music library."
FullAudio plans to include the WMG-controlled tracks in its launch of the ClearChannel music subscription service. Clear Channel, the world's largest radio network, plans to launch music subscription services for 30 of its radio stations in the spring of 2002, branded with the individual ClearChannel stations and powered by FullAudio's content and technology.
Cache-Download vs. Streaming Technology
FullAudio's patent-pending solution provides a high-quality music experience, offering consumers two distinct advantages over streaming providers. First, whereas the listening quality of streaming music is only as good as a user's Internet connection, FullAudio delivers superior sound quality, regardless of connection speed. Second, FullAudio enables consumers to play tracks when they are not connected to the Internet.
The FullAudio Subscription Service Model
FullAudio is creating a cache-download subscription service platform provided to distribution partners, on which they can build the engine for their own co-branded, consumer digital music services.
For a monthly fee, the FullAudio subscription platform provides fans with unlimited play of the tracks they choose. Much like the subscription models of cable television, fans will have access to their FullAudio music service only as long as their account is in good standing. Also very much like cable, FullAudio offers varying levels of subscription service, providing fans with competitive pricing options related to the amount of music to which they choose to subscribe. The higher the level of subscription (Gold or Platinum), the more slots consumers are given to fill with their favorite and new music. Music transferred to fans through the FullAudio service is unlocked from the memory on the consumer's PC by the FullAudio service, a seamless process for easy listening when the subscription is maintained.
About Warner Music Group
Warner Music Group is home to some of the world's leading record companies, including The Atlantic Group, Elektra Entertainment Group, Rhino Entertainment and Warner Bros. Records Inc. The company's Warner Music International, with a roster of more than 1,000 artists, operates in more than 70 countries through various subsidiaries, affiliates and non-affiliated licensees. Warner Music Group also includes one of the world's leading music publishers, Warner/Chappell, and WEA Inc., which is composed of three companies, WEA Corp., WEA Manufacturing, and Ivy Hill. Warner Music Group is an AOL Time Warner company.
About FullAudio Corporation
FullAudio Corporation provides a secure platform for the digital delivery of intellectual property. This platform is available to distribution partners, who then offer their own branded content services directly to their customers, leveraging existing branding and marketing, customer bases, as well as acquisition, loyalty, and retention skills.
Having completed a digital music subscription service platform, FullAudio has developed the software and processes to cover every aspect of content aggregation and delivery, including: content acquisition and management, secure storage and delivery, digital rights management and the infrastructure for efficient distribution. FullAudio provides to its partners all back-office functions including billing, reporting and analysis, and financial services, such as content use reporting. The company believes that music subscriptions will be the first large market created in the digital delivery of intellectual property, due to relatively small file sizes, and the consumer demand evidenced by the extraordinary success of illegal file sharing services. FullAudio looks to expand its subscription service platform into additional digital content markets over the next 2-5 years, including video/movies, video games, software, and books.
Founded in April 1999, FullAudio's advisors and investors include Larry Rosen, both founder and CEO of N2K, the company behind Music Boulevard, and co-Founder and CEO of GRP records; Joel Schoenfeld, former general counsel and SVP of BMG Entertainment; Randy Komisar, who helped launch both TiVo and WebTV; Kettle Partners; New Enterprise Associates; and Venture Strategy Partners. For more on the company, please visit www.fullaudio.com.
DEAL OF THE DAY: FULLAUDIO, $15M September 11, 2000
As MP3.com and Napster get pummeled in court for their unlicensed use of copyrighted music, a slew of "legal" music startups are tuning in VC dollars. The latest recipient is Fullaudio (www.fullaudio.com), which just raised its second round, bringing its total funding to nearly $20 million.
The Chicago startup plans to make money by selling a new wireless device and service that allows consumers to play digital music over their stereos and radios. The device, which has yet to be priced, will be available by the end of March. Fullaudio plans to make the bulk of its money by charging audiophiles $10 to $20 a month to use its service. The company also plans to license its audio device and platform to consumer electronics companies, PC manufacturers, high-speed broadband suppliers, and Internet audio companies.
The company, founded last year, has yet to crack the charts. For starters, 36-year old CEO Chris Gladwin still has to get permission from record labels and music publishers to use their content. Fullaudio is talking with Universal BMG, Warner Music, EMI, and Bertelsmann. Mr. Gladwin must also work out an agreement on how to divvy up the revenues from the service. But Fullaudio’s biggest challenge will be breaking through the noise in its space. Competitors include Kerbango, SonicBox, Liquid Audio, Panja, ZapStation, MP3.com, Emusic, S3, and Rioport.
INVESTORS: Venture Strategy (lead); New Enterprise Associates (NEA); Kettle Partners
FullAudio Gets Licenses Amid Industry --from 7/01
Publishing Debate
By Sue Zeidler
LOS ANGELES (Reuters) - As a rift over publishing rates threatens the
record industry's plans to launch online music services, tiny upstart
FullAudio Corp. on Sunday became the first company with all the
licenses necessary to offer a major label's music on an Internet-based
subscription service.
New York-based FullAudio late on Sunday said it reached a licensing
deal with EMI Group's EMI Recorded Music, enabling the company to
provide the music of EMI, home to Janet Jackson and Radiohead, on
its service.
The agreement with EMI Recorded Music comes on the heels of
FullAudio's licensing deals with EMI's and Bertelsmann AG (news -
web sites)'s music publishing arms, which hold the separate rights to
the compositions underlying the recordings.
Licenses for both compositions and sound recordings are necessary
to launch online subscription music services, something which remains
a sticking point for the music industry amid a continued debate over
terms.
The world's five major labels have split into two competing online
camps with EMI, BMG and AOL Time Warner in one venture known as
MusicNet and Vivendi Universal and Sony Corp (news - web sites). in a
tie-up known as PressPlay.
Both PressPlay and MusicNet hope to launch subscription services by
late summer, but their plans could be scuttled if they fail to obtain the
underlying publishing rights for the music they hope to offer.
Talks between the two sides are ongoing, but have snagged on the
question of what rates that are due publishers for the songs provided in
on-demand or interactive music services streamed over the Internet.
PUBLISHING BATTLE COULD DELAY MAJOR LABEL PLANS
``We're still talking. The ball's in the labels' court,'' Carey Ramos, an
attorney for music publishers, told Reuters, adding, ``I think there would
be a good deal of relief on both sides if some agreement can be
reached.''
Officials from the recording industry say an agreement is necessary to
move forward. ``The dispute remains an issue and could delay the
introduction of subscription music services,'' said Cary Sherman, senior
executive vice president and general counsel for the Recording
Industry Association of America (news - web sites).
Meanwhile, FullAudio, which employs 40 people and is one of the few
remaining stand-alone online music providers, hopes to launch its
subscription service in the fourth quarter. It is currently negotiating
deals with distribution partners.
``Having already secured major publishing licenses, FullAudio has a
very strategic advantage over competitive offerings in the market,
allowing us to launch our music subscription service quickly,'' said Chris
Copeland Gladwin, chief executive of FullAudio.
James Glicker, president of FullAudio, said the company is talking with
distribution partners, retailers and other major labels.
``We're going to cut deals with portals and record retailers. That's the
last piece that we need, now that we have enough rights to launch from
a content point of view,'' Glicker told Reuters.
FullAudio said it will provide digital rights management for EMI and
plans to provide a platform for music downloads that would allow digital
music files to be kept in subscribers' PCs and accessed for as long as
subscription payments are current.
If the subscriber fails to pay the monthly fee, the user would be unable
to access music already downloaded. The service will be available as a
stand-alone service and could also be provided via other distribution
partners. It is expected to be priced at between $5 and $20 a month
Full Audio Alters Launch Plans (includes portables!)
Staff
TWICE
7/23/2001
CHICAGO— Startup Full Audio will concentrate on launching its subscription music-download service and put a hold on plans to offer related hardware, which would have wirelessly connected a PC to a home stereo system via 900MHz to stream content from the PC's hard drive.
That customized service (see TWICE, Jan. 22, page 32) works like this: Users pay a subscription price to download and store Windows Media Audio songs, which is protected by Microsoft's digital rights management (DRM) technology, onto their hard drives. The PC will play back the downloaded music as long as the subscription is in effect. The intent is to guarantee sound quality by letting users play back music from their hard drives rather than from a Web site.
The music can also be transferred to any portable music device incorporating Microsoft's DRM.
The company has secured publishing rights to the entire catalog of EMI and BMG music, but before it can upload the songs to subscribers, it must also obtain master recording licenses from the two companies. FullAudio said it has already obtained a master recording license for all tracks to which EMI has digital distribution rights. Currently, that includes about 30,000-40,000 tracks, a spokeswoman said.
01. 1998 Founded DnC Tech. Inc.
01. 1998 Developed and supplied S/W DVD Player for PC to Myths Inc.
01. 1998 Started low-cost MPEG-II chip design project.
03. 1998 Developed Integrated Multimedia player & AV player/module
05. 1998 Developed videoconference engine and provided to ETRI
06. 1998 Received 2 awards from Minister of Information Communication for its contribution
07. 1998 Established partnership for Internet business with DBS Korea
07. 1998 Started MP3 encoder(Fixed Point DSP porting)development project
09. 1998 Developed IBS provided to DACOM
11. 1998 Awards from the Minister of Commerce, Industry and Energy.
01. 1999 Developed video e-mail sys.
04. 1999 Developed MP3 Encoder(Fixed Point DSP Porting)
06. 1999 design house contract with TEXAS INSTRUMENT KOREA LIMITED
12. 1999 WMA development contract with MS.
02. 2000 Portable MP3 player development contract with AIWA MAR.
02. 2000 Selected as best venture company by KTB
07. 2000 Introduce AIWA Encoding MP3 player in the market.
11. 2000 Contract with TI Golden 3rd Party.
11. 2000 Developed WMA Decoder(Fixed point DSP porting)
01. 2001 Developed Multi-codec solution
02. 2001 Announce the watermark PD(with MarkAny) in SDMI TOKYO Meeting
05. 2001 Announce the low cost MP3 Encoding solution
06. 2001 Received the prestigious Multi-Media Award from the Minister of Information and Communication
06. 2001 Developed our only own Encoding technology for Microsoft Windows Media Audio the first time in the world
06. 2001 Succeed the development of AAC decoding technology
06. 2001 Signed “ Development and License Agreement “ with Japanese firm OKI for multi-format decoder
11. 2001 Received INNO-BIZ Award For Technology Innovation from The Small and Medium Business Administration
11. 2001 Contract with Microsoft Corporation to develop Windows Media Video technology
The World's First and Unique WMA Encodable Player
for more : http://www.dnctech.com/
In addition to the basic function to play MP3, WMA and AAC format files, DnC Tech's portable music player (model: 2U4U), have an amazing function to encode audio stream from various sources into Windows Media Audio (WMA) file format, which is unique in the world.
Features
Supports real-time digital recording from Music devices without a computer
Direct recording from CD player, cassette tape players, mini component systems and/or any other music source
Supports MP3, Microsoft's Windows Media(WMA) and Dolby Laboratories' Advanced Audio Coding(AAC) Formats
Supports voice recording function with built-in microphone
Easy transferring one's voice message to a PC for storing, editing and email attachment
Non-mechanical architecture offers skip-free, continuous playback
128MB of Built-in memory
1 slot memory for Multi Media Card (MMC) and Secure Digital (SD) Memory card - Up to 128MB
Universal Serial Bus (USB) connecting for high fast music transfers
Supports storing or transferring one's presentations, pictures, documents and digital movies on the memory
Backlit LCD for clear readability in all low-light environments
Adjustable equalizer, repeat and play mode
Innovative design for pocket size and lightweight, plus easy operation
Wide 20 to 20,000 Hz frequency response for high-fidelity sound
Secure Digital Music Initiative (SDMI) ready device for playing digital music in secure
Management software to play, upload and download contents for PC
DnC Tech., Inc.
> General Supplier Information
> Additional Office Locations
General Supplier Information
Contact Name: Jang Ae Kyung
Role: Marketing
Street: 12fl, Sinsung Officetel 1589-14, Seocho-Dong Seocho-Gu
City: Seoul
State/Province: *
Zip Code: 137-070
Country: Korea
E-Mail Address: akjang@dnctech.com
Phone Number: 82-2-5254093
Fax Number: 82-2-5254095
Web Address: http://www.dnctech.com
Company Background: DnCTech., Inc. specializes in audio and video compression core technology and system design technology.
Major Products:
* Portable MP3 Encoder / Decoder solution (Low-power)
* Portable WMA Encoder / Decoder solution (Low-power)
* Total PD(Portable Device) Solution like Digital Audio Player
* IBS (Internet Broadcast System)
* MPEG 4(WMV) Video Solution (Low-power)
Jul. 03, 2002 New era in home movies: DVDs
By Ron Harris
Associated Press
Some of you may fondly remember the tear-filled day when you junked your Bell & Howell 8mm film projector to make way for a shiny new VCR back in the early 1980s. No more tilted screens by the fireplace. No more sprocket hunting in the dark.
You may even have faithfully transferred some of those old home movies to VHS tape or 8mm magnetic tape, hoping to preserve fading memories a bit longer and watch them on TV.
It's now officially time for the next major home entertainment storage upgrade -- the age of home DVD has arrived.
Hewlett-Packard is among companies that hope to usher in the new dawn.
I tested HP's new dvd200i ($499), an internal DVD-writing drive that allowed me to immediately begin storing high volumes of MP3s, scanned home snapshots and various data on a single disc.
While writable CDs store about 700 megabytes, blank DVDs store 4.7 gigabytes -- more than six times as much -- enough for two hours of high-quality home movie footage.
That's the real benefit to adding a DVD writer to your home PC -- the ability to create DVD home movies. High-quality editing and production of memory-hogging video was never realistic for home users until now.
After a brief reading of the dvd200i manual, I took a stab at producing my first very own DVD home movie.
I had already taken some snowboarding footage with a Digital8 camcorder and edited it down to a 7-minute, 38-second work of art with titles and layered music. But I never had anywhere to watch the file other than my desktop -- until now.
HP included some nice, easy-to-use software called MyDVD to help me produce my first DVD.
The program calls up a screen to help me design an interactive menu, similar to those introduction screens on professional DVD movies that allow for navigating between scenes and other options.
Next I imported my video footage. It took MyDVD 20 minutes to render the 1.6-gigabyte .avi file into a readable DVD format and burn it to a blank DVD disc, with very little button clicking to get the process going.
Dean Sanderson, an HP product marketing manager, says video rendering and transcoding time can be reduced somewhat by increasing my PC's memory and getting a faster microprocessor. But I'm running a Pentium 1.5-gigahertz microprocessor with 256 megabytes of RAM and it seems plenty fast enough.
The finished DVD, once plunked in my stand-alone Panasonic DVD player atop the television, was faithful in quality to the original digital video footage. The DVD also worked, of course, on the desktop using the same HP drive that created it.
With the included HP software, the user also can capture the video from a digital camcorder or other device to a PC hard drive. I had already performed this task using the top-notch video editing software Adobe Premiere 6.0.
Capturing video is a real-time affair, so I had 21 minutes of original raw footage in DV format and it took that long to get it on my hard drive via my FireWire connection. FireWire cards are, incidentally, completely affordable these days. They can be as cheap as $40.
HP also includes Arcsoft ShowBiz, a user-friendly program for editing a composition, moving around sections and laying down a smooth musical soundtrack.
While ShowBiz is a functional editing program, more cash gets you something more robust -- such as Ulead's DVD Workshop ($279) or even better yet, Adobe Premiere 6.0 ($549).
HP's dvd200i drive can write to blank CD-Rs, CD-RWs, DVD+R and DVD+RW.
Those ``+'' signs denote a format technology developed by HP, Philips and Sony and supported by other companies. As opposed to the still more common DVD-R and DVD-RW, the new version is promoted as creating DVDs more likely to be compatible with a wider range of devices.
HP specifically decided not to allow the dvd200i to write to the competing DVD-R and DVD-RW format blank discs, as part of a push for makers of DVD players to adopt the ``+'' format as the writable DVD standard.
It's a bummer, because DVD-R and DVD-RW discs are more prevalent, and less expensive.
The upside of the DVD+RW standard is that it lets the user partially overwrite old recordings on DVD projects instead of starting from scratch and re-recording the whole project.
The manual is sorely lacking in details such as read and write speeds of the hardware, and the types of video file formats that can be imported for DVD creation.
At $499, the HP unit is priced competitively with most other DVD writers. But the discs are still too pricey.
HP sells single blank DVD+RWs for $8.99 and single DVD+Rs for $5.99. These high-capacity discs are a great solution for multimedia storage, but not yet a nicely affordable one.
HP also sells the dvd200e model ($599), an external DVD writer with USB 2.0 and FireWire connections
DaiLin-- I am happy for you because it must be 4:20 wherever you live 24/7. Let me know, I'll be glad to lend you money at the very favorable rate of 3.28% along those same lines--LMAO
TI showcases its 2.5G/3G applications developers
By John Walko
CommsDesign.com
(12/20/01, 01:10:29 PM EDT)
Texas Instruments has brought together 25 of the companies that use its OMAP platform and processors to develop applications for 2.5 and 3G phones, wireless PDAs and mobile Internet appliances at a showcase event held at its European headquarters near Nice, France.
The companies, all members of the OMAP Developer Network, demonstrated applications for multimedia, audio, games, speech, location based services, messaging, security and mobile commerce.
The OMAP platform is TI's family of wireless modem and application processors for mobile phones and mobile Internet appliances. The processors support all the popular high-level operating systems and programming languages, including Symbian's EPOC, Microsoft Windows CE, Java, Palm and Linux, and the platform is already used by companies such as Nokia, Ericsson, Sony, Sendo, LG and Acer in their wireless devices. The latest OMAP application processor, the 1510, is based on TI's 320C55xx digital signal processor core and an enhanced ARM processor.
At the event, TI highlighted the $100m investment fund to help developers accelerate the creation of applications for third generation mobile networks, which it launched at the GSM World Congress in Nice in February. However, TI would not say how much of the $100m earmarked for the investment fund has been spent or allocated, or how many software developers and technology partners it has invested in as part of the project. To qualify, small, entrepreneurial groups have to deploy the OMAP platform to develop applications.
Companies demonstrating their developments at Nice included:
*BitFlash, the Ottawa, Canada based mobile software developer, which revealed at the event that it is collaborating with TI to deliver the first application of mobile scalable vector graphic (SVG) technology on the OMAP platform. The BitFlash Reflexis technology, once ported to the OMAP, will allow handset makers to render and transmit scalable interactive graphics and animations such as mobile postcards, as well as create a high quality graphical user interface.
Donna Ronayne, vice president of business development at BitFlash, said her company's technology already delivers sophisticated graphical content that performs adequately. “But by combining this Reflexis technology with the OMAP processors will greatly improve the quality of mobile applications and content, offering high performance SVG rendering on mobile devices while minimizing power consumption”.
*PacketVideo, the San Diego, California headquartered specialist in wireless multimedia, demonstrated the Studio application development environment that allows developers to quickly assemble a host of streaming multimedia applications for next generation wireless devices based on the OMAP platform and PacketVideo's PVPlatform.
*Pace Soft Silicon, which is developing what it claims will be the first commercially available multimedia terminal for synchronized voice and video at low bit rates. The company, which has offices in London and Dublin and a development centre in Pune, India, concentrates on silicon resident software IP and integration services to speed OEM product development and reduce risk.
Paul Dyer, vice president of business development at Pace Soft Silicon, said, “our multimedia terminal solution is architected for maximum configuration, flexibility and re-use by OEMs building very complex products. The handling of real-time streamed data such as integrated audio, voice, video and graphics is a computationally intensive task, traditionally best executed on high performance DSP devices.
“Our architecture is optimised to run on the OMAP DSP, thereby incurring minimal processing overhead on the main application code running on the ARM core. Also, a broad range of multimedia functions can be dynamically configured and managed from the ARM application via our application-programming interface”.
*NTRU, an 18 month old company based in Burlington, MA., which is developing a high speed encryption, decryption and authentication system for the OMAP platform. NTRU says the security software helps eliminate the traditional trade-offs between price, performance and usability in mobile systems .The security can be processed simultaneously with the application (multi-tasking), enabling operations to run up to 125 times faster than any competing solution. The speed efficiency also reduces the drain on power consumption, memory and processing bandwidth.
*Eyematic, the Los Angeles, California based group developing a synthetic video platform for wireless applications. The development platform incorporates authoring tools that combine patented real-time facial tracking software with synthetic templates to make the visual creation process simple and inexpensive; and a delivery platform which integrates lightweight 2D and 3D animation formats with synthetic character encoding that is said to dramatically lower mobile infrastructure requirements.
Typical applications include two-way rich media enhanced SMS, picture mail, 2D &3D games, jokes, horoscopes and delivery of news to mobiles. Eyematic is backed by companies such as Deutsche Telekom, Omron and TRW and has already developed systems used by partners that includes Qualcomm, NTT DoCoMo, Sun Microsystems, Verizon Wireless, SK Telecom and Nokia.
*Advanced Recognition Technologies (ART), the Tel Aviv, Israel based specialist in embedded speech and handwriting recognition technology for wireless devices, whose human interface software is already used in over 19million handsets made by companies such as LG, Mitsubishi, Panasonic and Samsung.
*NeuVoice, a spin-out company from Neural Systems Ltd that was established to exploit research from the Centre for Neural and Adaptive Systems at the University of Plymouth in the UK, also demonstrated voice recognition technologies for wireless devices based on the OMAP platform. The company currently offers a development kit for the Symbian OS, with another for Windows CE to be launched soon.
NeuVoices's recognition engine is based on biological models of hearing and speech production, and the resulting algorithms code to an extremely small memory and processing footprint. The system does not require any special DSP or floating point processor.
http://www.csdmag.com/story/OEG20011220S0040
Posted by: cksla
In reply to: None Date: 12/6/2001 11:01:43 AM
Post # of 13387
DMOD Showcases Secure Audio on TI's OMAP Platform at Windows Embedded Developers Conference
BOSTON--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Nov. 28, 2001--DMOD, Inc. a leading provider of secure distribution solutions for digital assets, today demonstrated the first secure audio playback implementation on Texas Instruments OMAP(TM) platform for 2.5 and 3G wireless Internet devices. DMOD's implementation delivers secure digital media content across numerous networks and platforms, including wireless devices. DMOD, a member of TI's OMAP Developer Network, demonstrated this technology for Microsoft Windows CE wireless devices at today's Windows Embedded Developers Conference in Las Vegas. The demonstration can be viewed today through Friday, Nov. 30, at TI's booth #54.
The market's insatiable appetite for digital media delivered to all types of devices continues to grow. Wireless devices present formidable challenges to application developers who need to provide adequate security for the distribution of digital content while keeping the experience user-friendly. DMOD, in its implementation of TI's OMAP platform, has opened the door to more widespread digital media applications. DMOD's flexible solution allows the quick and secure migration of all kinds of digital media, such as audio, video, graphics, text and games, to both wireless and traditional network computing devices.
Efficient, Yet Highly Secure
DMOD's on-the-fly encryption engine, enabled by NTRU public-key cryptography and also included in TI's wireless security library for the OMAP Platform, provides a ``double layer' of protection that encrypts both the content and the channel of communication. For the highest level of security, DMOD dynamically rotates the content encryption keys as the content is sent through the encrypted channel. At the same time, DMOD's security is completely transparent, allowing users to focus on the media itself, not the technologies that protect it.
``DMOD's secure distribution technology is an important component in increasing the proliferation of digital media on wireless devices,' said David Potts, OMAP applications manager at Texas Instruments. ``We're excited that TI's OMAP platform, combined with our leading-edge OMAP security library, has enabled DMOD to deliver secure digital media across a variety of form factors -- expanding the market potential for all kind of wireless Internet products.'
``TI's OMAP processor platform and security library are a superb foundation for DMOD's secure digital media transfer technology in wireless applications,' said Mark Overington, president and CEO of DMOD. ``DMOD was the first company to publicly distribute secure MP3 files, and we remain committed to taking digital content into new frontiers of applications to protect intellectual property.'
About TI's OMAP Developer Network
TI's OMAP Developer Network is a group of software developers writing wireless applications for mobile Internet devices. OMAP developers enjoy a variety of tools and support to enable rapid application development for leading operating systems and programming languages plus the opportunity to collaborate with a range of developers designing applications such as multimedia, security, location based services, mobile commerce and gaming. OMAP developers also benefit from TI's open, scalable OMAP platform, which has been selected by Nokia, Ericsson, Sony, Sendo, LG, Acer, HTC and others for their 2.5 and 3G wireless devices. For more information about the OMAP Developer Network, please visit www.ti.com/sc/omap.
About DMOD
Digital Media On Demand, Inc. (DMOD) is the leading developer of secure distribution and commerce solutions for digital assets. The ``end-to-end' design of the DMOD solution, with its multi-key encryption technology, combines a seamless user interface with the highest level of encryption available for all digital content formats, thus enabling the safe and manageable content distribution of music, video, software and text. Founded in 1996, DMOD is a pioneer in the field of secure content distribution, and was the first company to publicly distribute secure MP3 files. Headquartered in Boston, Mass., DMOD also has offices in New York and Los Angeles. DMOD is privately held and funded by Greylock Partners, Pilot House Ventures, Sage Hill Partners, and Intel Corporation. For more information on DMOD, visit www.dmod.com.
Tight quarters Slimmed-down encryption for Java devices
Margot Suydam, Technology Editor -- CommVerge, 7/3/2002
The major handset manufacturers have announced plans to include Java in every wireless phone, which means that hundreds of millions of Java-equipped handsets will ship in the next two years. Meanwhile, strong security will be a key requirement for mass adoption of wireless applications involving payments, corporate data, financial information, and medical or other personal information.
Now here’s the rub: To date, only high-end wireless devices, such as smartphones and PDAs, have the memory footprint and processing power to provide robust Java security services. To overcome the constraints that prevent deployment of secure Java applications in midrange and low-end phones, encryption software provider NTRU has announced Neo Java, a small and fast public-key-based Java security product, which provides encrypted data transfer and user authentication.
Security is a processor-intensive procedure, and performance is further degraded when running inside a Java virtual machine. NTRU claims that Neo Java smashes through these problems, requiring less than 5 kilobytes of space and performing more than 100 times faster than existing Java security offerings.
Neo Java suits a range of devices, from low-end phones to high-end smartphones. NTRU's developer toolkit includes a standard version of Neo Java and Neo JavaKE (kilobyte edition), a smaller version designed specifically for space-constrained environments. Available now, the software supports J2ME (Java 2, Micro Edition) and Java virtual machines.
cksla In reply to: mike.w who wrote msg# 1800 Date: 5/8/2001 11:40:36 AM
Post # of 13385
TI tries to secure the wireless future
By Richard Shim
Special to CNET News.com
May 7, 2001, 5:25 p.m. PT
A new wireless technology will allow consumers to make secure purchases on next-generation cell phones and wireless handhelds, Texas Instruments said Monday.
The new security technology is a software library for TI's blueprint for wireless devices that use its digital signal processors. The blueprint is known as OMAP, or the Open Multimedia Applications Protocol.
"At TI, security is a religion. And to keep themselves in the No. 1 spot in the DSP (digital signal processor) market, the company is already addressing new services for the next generation of wireless phones," said Will Strauss, president of market researcher Forward Concepts.
TI's efforts will allow consumers to perform activities over devices with high-speed Internet access, such as buying products, downloading and streaming content, performing bank transactions and interacting with corporate networks.
The software library consists of programs from securities companies such as SafeNet, NTRU, WhiteCell, SnapShield and AuthenTec. The applications provide capabilities such as memory protection, advanced public and private key encryption, virus screening, firewall protection and fingerprint identification.
Security has already been tagged as a key feature for wireless devices.
"In Europe and Asia where (next-generation) phones are already being used, customers are already complaining about being spammed and compromised," Strauss said. "TI is just getting ahead of the game."
Multimedia has also been identified as a key feature for future wireless devices. But TI Chief Executive Tom Engibous recently warned that manufacturers should remember to keep features simple.
Handset manufacturers such as Nokia, Ericsson, Sony, Sendo and HTC have selected OMAP as the framework for their next-generation phones.
Programmable chips reach high-end communication applications
Maury Wright, Editor-in-Chief -- CommVerge, 7/3/2002
Vendors of FPGAs (field programmable gate arrays) continue to amaze with denser chips and—more importantly—more potential speed and processing power. FPGAs were once limited to prototype and low-volume applications, but are now finding a place in high-end products like network gear. In fact, full-fledged ASIC (application-specific integrated circuit) development is hard to justify unless companies know they will be making millions of units. So communication systems will increasingly be based on off-the-shelf network or packet processors augmented by FPGAs.
Actel has targeted exactly this trend in system design with its new Axcelerator (AX) family of FPGAs. Actel claims that FPGAs based on static RAM (SRAM), which are the highest volume sellers today, have architectural limitations when it comes to handling high-speed data streams. The AX architecture uses antifuse technology, which has been primarily limited to specialty applications in the past but which addresses the speed issue.
With internal 500-MHz performance, the AX series is designed to handle data streams used in a number of 10-Gbit/sec standards including SONET, Fibre Channel, and 10-Gbit Ethernet. The architecture can process a 64-bit data path at 156 MHz, thereby achieving the 10-Gbit/sec speeds.
SRAM-based FPGAS can typically handle only half that rate, meaning system designers must use more datapaths and add a significant amount of circuit overhead, including pipelines and serializer/deserializer circuits. Actel will offer the AX family in devices with gate counts ranging from 125,000 to 2 million.
Feed Your Head
By Mark Long -- e-inSITE, 6/21/2002
Unwired Technology reports that the company has developed new digital wireless technology that will enable the reception of up to four stereo or eight monaural audio channels simultaneously via a wireless headset. Called WhiteFire, the technology promises to give passengers the ability to select audio from various inputs such as DVD movies, CD players, video games, Internet devices, radios, or other devices that have been installed in their vehicles.
Unwired Technology intends to aggressively license WhiteFire technology to manufacturers of other entertainment devices as well, including those employing Digital Signal Processor (DSP) technology in automotive head units (automotive radios) and home stereo systems. According to the company, the first consumer product to employ WhiteFire technology will be an Unwired-branded wireless headphone system that will be released toward the end of this year. In addition, the company reports that its OEM customers are also expected to introduce similar systems under private-label agreements beginning in early 2003.
End-users will employ Whitefire-enabled devices to enjoy a variety of channels in much the same way as they currently use the entertainment systems found on commercial airliners. Because WhiteFire is an Infrared-based wireless delivery system, the technology can be instantly applied to any IR-equipped product generating audio, data, or compressed video. The line-of-sight technology, can be deployed in those applications where separate broadcasts are desired for individual rooms. In movie theaters, for example, WhiteFire could be used to enable viewers to hear a single movie in multiple languages, or a museum could transmit audio commentaries within the confines on an individual gallery.
'Today's passenger vehicles, particularly SUVs and vans, are rolling
entertainment centers containing a broad range of video and audio products,' said president Lawrence Richenstein in a prepared statement. 'With the overwhelming popularity of such systems, vehicle owners are looking for ways to allow passengers to listen to, and switch between, different devices. WhiteFire gives people the ability to enjoy the entertainment they want, when they want it, without affecting other passengers.'
WhiteFire technology is implemented in vehicle entertainment systems using a series of three devices. The encoder generates the WhiteFire signal for the in-vehicle 'broadcast,' an LED (Light Emitting Diode) transmitter installed in the vehicle headliner emits the IR signal, and the wireless headphone recieves the signal. WhiteFire's proprietary code can also be embedded into a DSP to eliminate the need for an encoder box, reports the company.
June 24, 2002 Speech Recognition Market Talking to Dollars in 2001 and Beyond
Despite an economic climate that was particularly damaging to new technologies and the financial difficulties of Lernout and Hauspie, one of the leading providers of the technology, the US speech recognition market continued to grow in 2001, according to In-Stat/MDR. The high-tech market research firm reports that, while not the watershed year of 2000, the market, as a whole, continued to embrace speech recognition products in 2001 as a means of lowering costs, providing greater customer service, and launching new, innovative, products. During the year, market leaders such as Speechworks, IBM, and Philips Speech increased penetration, while the previous market leader, Nuance, experienced a 24% decrease in revenues.
We are just on the cusp of a speech recognition revolution. Carriers are only now adopting the products, the technology has just reached the point of combustion, and standards such as Voice eXtensible Markup Language (VXML) and Speech Application Language Tags (SALT) are poised to change the velocity of the market. Given these factors, speech recognition will find its way to the mainstream and very soon we will be using it in our homes.
In-Stat/MDR believes that the following will contribute to the continued growth in adoption and pervasiveness of speech recognition:
The use of standards such as VXML and SALT, which will open up vast new markets and opportunities.
Continuing increases in processor speeds that will allow for greater speech recognition vocabulary size and accuracy.
The importance of measuring Return on Investment (ROI) in a tight economy, and voice recognition’s ability to adequately demonstrate it.
Significant advances in development tools and the resulting increase in production speed and lower costs.
Carrier demand for churn reduction and greater customer revenue.
An increase in the number of wireless subscribers.
Increased regulation of the use of wireless handsets while operating a car.
dailin--you have the God-given (oh sorry, strike that since I live within the jurisdiction of the Ninth Circuit)right to disagree with me but you would be wrong:
"a $200,000 finance fee that increased the principal amount from $1,200,000 to $1,400,000"
my math tells me 200,000/1,200,000 is 16.66%; since the loan extension is for six months, you need to double that number to come up with an annual percentage for the "finance fee" which according to my calculations comes to 33.33%
edig was then required to pay $300k up front which i presume is for the $200k finance fee and the first monthly principal reduction of $100k
tell me where I am wrong and how you arrived at 19%-- note my calculation DOES NOT INCLUDE the additional interest amount at 4% which of course would increase the cost of the money even more--but who's counting.....
lickily--sweet, it only cost them 33% annualized of the loan amount paid up front along with an extra $100,000 of the principal debt to get the loan extended 6 months- an exception to usurious interest no doubt--generous indeed!
GERN- no editorial req'd; just the facts as reported:
EDIG Reports FY 2002 Results, Going Concern
Ridgeland, MS, JUL 01, 2002 (EventX/Knobias.com via COMTEX) -- eDigital Corporation (OTCBB: EDIG) filed its 10-K on Friday, for the fiscal year ended 3/31/2002.
EDIG reported Revenues of $2,417,034 for FY 2002 vs. Revenues of $1,828,012 in FY 2001.
EDIG posted a Net Loss of $(5,793,066) for FY 2002 vs. a Net Loss of $(3,646,378) in FY 2001.
The auditors' report on the consolidated financial statements raises substantial doubt about the Company's ability to continue as a going concern, due to substantial operating losses and the need for additional sources of financing to fund operations through 3/31/2003. As of 3/31/2002, the Company had a Working Capital Deficit of $(2,543,657) and an Accumulated Deficit of $(58,366,990).
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eDigital Corporation (OTCBB: EDIG) filed its 10-K on Friday, for the fiscal year ended 3/31/2002.
EDIG reported Revenues of $2,417,034 for FY 2002 vs. Revenues of $1,828,012 in FY 2001.
EDIG posted a Net Loss of $(5,793,066) for FY 2002 vs. a Net Loss of $(3,646,378) in FY 2001.
The auditors' report on the consolidated financial statements raises substantial doubt about the Company's ability to continue as a going concern, due to substantial operating losses and the need for additional sources of financing to fund operations through 3/31/2003. As of 3/31/2002, the Company had a Working Capital Deficit of $(2,543,657) and an Accumulated Deficit of $(58,366,990).
Toshiba Shows off Hot New Music Player
Gigabeat device features a removable hard disk, allowing it to store as many as 1,000 songs.
Martyn Williams, IDG News Service
Tuesday, June 18, 2002
Toshiba's new digital music player is a hot little number. Instead of using a removable flash memory card, the company has chosen a removable hard-disk drive, which means a physically larger player but one with a much greater capacity for your favorite music.
The Gigabeat will playback music stored in the MP3, WMA, or WAV digital audio file formats and Toshiba says the bundled 5GB hard disk offers enough space for around 1,000 MP3 files of 5 minutes length recorded at 128 kbps. That's 20 or 40 times the capacity of current memory cards.
The hard disk drives are 1.8 inch models developed by Toshiba. They are encased in PC Cards and so can also be used with most notebook PCs or other devices with PC Card slots.
With all this data storage space, transferring files to the player could take some time. So Toshiba has implemented the new USB 2.0 interface, which can transfer data at 480 mbps--a much higher speed than the 12 mbps supported by USB 1.1, which is found on most digital music players today. Using the bundled application software, Toshiba says an entire CD worth of audio can be transferred to the device in 30 seconds.
Familiar Shape
With its rectangular shape, liquid crystal display, and circular control panel, the Gigabeat bears a passing resemblance to Apple's iPod, which has a fixed 1.8-inch hard disk drive (produced by Toshiba) buried inside.
Partly because of the hard disk slot and ejection mechanism, the Toshiba player is slightly larger but not by much. It measures 2.8 inches by .9 inches by 4.4 inches which puts it around .4 inches wider and taller than the iPod. At 6.3 ounces with no disk and 8.3 ounces with the drive inserted, it also weighs more than the Apple player, which is 6.5 ounces including its internal hard disk.
Other features include an on-screen menu in English, Japanese, French, Spanish, or German. The screen has 160 by 120 pixel resolution and is slightly smaller than the iPod's 2-inch screen.
The Gigabeat MEG50JS will go on sale in Japan on June 22 and is expected to cost around $402 bundled with a 5GB hard disk. At the same time, Toshiba will put removable hard-disk drives in 2GB and 5GB sizes on sale for $160 and $320 respectively.
Toshiba said it has plans to put the Gigabeat on sale in the U.S. and then Europe although the company has not decided on a schedule for an overseas launch.
FOMA: Too Ambitious, Too Soon
By Rob Hellstrom / 06.12.02
For anyone with an eye on the Japanese mobile market, the rumor late May that NTT DoCoMo Inc. (NYSE: DCM - message board) was "shifting its strategy" to pull its 3G service, FOMA (Freedom Of Mobile Multimedia Access), out of the limelight was both intriguing and disappointing.
The aspiring mobile carrier has spent a great deal of time, effort, and money bringing this network to fruition in the face of many obstacles – mostly technical – and has been desperate to convince the world of its success. Its positive message, however, appears to have fallen on many deaf ears (see Japan's 3G Needs a Kick Start).
DoCoMo may just have been too bold in its efforts to be first with a major, commercial, third-generation network and service. Its existing PDC (2G) subscribers have been much happier with their handsets and services than the progressive, experimental, early 3G adopters. Typically, price and voice coverage are the two most important factors in a mobile network, with call quality third: Perhaps all FOMA has really achieved is to confirm this.
Yet despite all its 3G problems, DoCoMo's strategy shift is disappointing because FOMA epitomizes the ambitions and desires of the global mobile industry. Who else is going to fly the mobile high-speed integrated voice and data flag now?
Instead of pouring further resources into FOMA to attract subscribers, it appears DoCoMo will now concentrate more on its existing PDC-based i-Mode service, according to one of the carrier's spokespeople quoted by Japanese newspaper Asahi Shimbun.
But how sensible is this move, given the strategic momentum behind 3G within DoCoMo? Its PDC network must be bursting at the seams, given that, among other things, FOMA was meant to deal with the lack of spectrum on 2G caused by all those i-Mode subscribers.
DoCoMo's greatest problem, I believe, is in the FOMA handset. Having used a 2.5G handset for a year or so, a casual five minutes with a 3G FOMA handset would have told you the user experience was a step backwards. For example, to use the person-to-person video service you need to know another FOMA subscriber who is in the center of Tokyo. This is not a new problem: Lack of market penetration sealed the fate of the mobile videophone service launched by KDDI Corp.'s CDMA network operator (then called IDO) in 1998.
The most intriguing strategy issue surrounding DoCoMo's backward shift is the effect it will have on the other domestic mobile operators. I am sure J-Phone Co. Ltd. and KDDI regard the NTT Communications Corp. unit's greater domestic focus as bad news. While they are technically innovative, the marketing position of these key competitors has left a lot to be desired. DoCoMo, on the other hand, has shown how willing it is to spend ridiculous sums of money on marketing, something J-Phone and KDDI have never felt they could match.
But they have done their best to win market share, while DoCoMo's attentions have been elsewhere. For the past six to nine months, it could be argued from new subscriber statistics that J-Phone has been "stealing" more than its fair share of subscribers from DoCoMo, luring them with innovative handset and services packaging.
To compound DoCoMo's 3G misery, KDDI's CDMA2000 network appears to have been far more successful in delivering widespread mobile data services than FOMA, and in a fraction of the launch time. Its subscriber numbers have recently been boosted by geographic positioning system (GPS)-enabled services. Most impressive is the introduction of a little electromagnetic compass component in the handset that determines the geomagnetic direction of the phone, so adjusting the orientation of on-screen maps as you turn a corner, for example.
Yet DoCoMo appears undaunted, as it reaches forward into the even larger investment black hole of 4G.
At the 3G Mobile Summit in Tokyo in January, DoCoMo president and chief executive Keiji Tachikawa presented his company's vision of mobility in 2010. According to DoCoMo's video presentation, we can expect free-space 3D holographic experiences by the turn of the decade.
At a time of retrenchment in the global telecom industry, this sends out the message that DoCoMo is going way beyond its core business of person-to-person communication. To achieve some of these 4G goals would probably require a theoretical physics research budget bigger than that of the U.S. Department of Defense (or perhaps just a minor percentage of Japan’s concrete construction budget).
Of course, no other carrier in the world is facing the same challenge as DoCoMo – to produce something more successful than i-Mode. What is even more compelling is that, in this hotbed of wireless innovation, its competitors will be right there with NTT, waiting to step in if, or when, DoCoMo slips up.
tolstoy-- but suppose they didn't short the entire 2.1M before closing the acquisition at 38 cents...
to all: answer me this--
since apriori probably shorted well above the $0.38 level, are they still selling below 38 cents since they would still make a tidy profit????!!!
06/11/2002 Lycos launches subscription music service
WALTHAM, Mass. (AP) — Internet portal Lycos will launch a new paid subscription music service offering access to 10,000 albums with 150,000 songs.
Lycos, a subsidiary of Spanish communications conglomerate Terra Networks, is the largest Internet partner of Listen.com, the San Francisco-based company that has agreements with four of the five major record labels to provide "streamed" CD-quality sound.
The Lycos Rhapsody service will be offered free through this month. Then it will offer three tiers of service: free radio service on 20 channels of FM-quality sound; access to more than 50 commercial-free radio stations with CD-quality sound for $4.95 per month; and unlimited streams of individual songs plus access to the 50 stations for $9.95 per month.
Customers won't be able to save songs on their hard drives or record them on compact discs.
Listen.com's deals with BMG, Sony Music Entertainment, EMI Recorded Music and Warner Music Group would give Lycos users access to artists including Christina Aguilera, Jennifer Lopez, Jay-Z, Lauryn Hill, Bruce Springsteen and Simon and Garfunkel.
Industry-sponsored sites MusicNet and PressPlay limit how many songs can be downloaded.
Terra Lycos, which is trying to draw more users to subscription-based content, claims 115 million unique users per month. It has a presence in 43 countries.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Music industry burned by CD piracy
By Gwendolyn Mariano
Special to ZDNet News
June 12, 2002, 4:50 AM PT
CD burning contributed to a surge in music piracy across the globe in 2001, with sales of pirated discs jumping an estimated 50 percent from the previous year, according to an industry report released Tuesday.
The International Federation of the Phonographic Industry (IFPI), a lobbying group, said pirated disc sales jumped from 640 million units in 2000 to 950 million units in 2001.
However, declining prices kept the total value of the unauthorized CD market nearly flat, at an estimated $4.3 billion worldwide in 2001 compared with $4.2 billion the previous year. Because those numbers use the prices for pirated discs and not legal prices, they do not measure the full economic loss to recording industry, the IFPI said. In addition, they do not include the value of music traded online over free file-swapping services.
The IFPI attributed the proliferation of illegal music to organized CD-R (CD-recordable discs) piracy. It said illegal production is roughly split between large-scale manufacturing plants and small garages and laboratories. The group added that the widespread availability of cheap disc-replication equipment, the prevalence of high-speed burners, and a drop in blank CD-R prices are fueling the growth of CD-R piracy in countries including the United States.
According to the IFPI, 2.8 million pirated CD-R discs were seized in the United States last year, compared with 1.6 million in 2000.
Moreover, the IFPI said various online peer-to-peer services have encouraged the widespread unauthorized copying of music. The IFPI said the Web is being used to sell counterfeit, unauthorized compilation and other physical pirated products. The IFPI estimated that in May 2002, there were approximately 3 million people and 500 million files available for copying at any one time on all of the peer-to-peer services worldwide.
The report comes as the recording industry increases its enforcement efforts, including lobbying for federal anti-piracy funding. In addition, the industry has filed lawsuits targeting peer-to-peer file-swapping services including Audiogalaxy and the distributors of Morpheus, Kazaa and Grokster. A suit against Napster was put on hold after the company filed for bankruptcy protection.
The IFPI said that last year it and its affiliated national groups removed from the Internet approximately 1,060 unauthorized peer-to-peer music servers, 28,000 Web and FTP (file transfer protocol) sites offering pirated music, 2.8 million people using unauthorized peer-to-peer services, and 700 million unauthorized music files in 51 countries.
The group added that the global market for pirated music--including discs and cassettes-- totaled 1.9 billion recordings in 2001, compared with 1.8 billion in 2000. The IFPI said this means that almost 40 percent of all CDs and cassettes sold around the globe are pirated copies--the highest proportion ever recorded by the organization.
"Piracy is sometimes and mistakenly called a 'victimless crime.' It is not," IFPI Chief Executive Jay Berman said in a statement. "The economic losses due to piracy are enormous, and they are felt thought the music value chain. Piracy also nurtures organized crime across the world, and it stunts investment, growth and jobs."
Tech Giants Make a Mobile Deal
Newly formed Open Mobile Alliance will try to guarantee that wireless services and products can work together.
Sumner Lemon, IDG News Service
Wednesday, June 12, 2002
Network operators, handset makers, and IT companies are lining up to back a new industry group that has been formed to drive the development of standards for mobile telecommunication services and guarantee interoperability between mobile products and services.
The Open Mobile Alliance brings together more than 200 companies and consolidates the activities of several industry bodies, such as the WAP Forum and the Wireless Village initiative, according to Jon Prial, vice president of business development at IBM and a member of the Open Mobile Alliance board of directors.
"The intent is to grow the market so all of the members can compete within that," Prial says.
Setting the Standards
Among the issues that will be tackled by the Open Mobile Alliance are the development of standards such as XHTML, Multimedia Message Service interoperability, and standards for location-based services, Prial says.
Future initiatives will focus on developing digital rights management and device management standards, he says.
Members of the new group are drawn from across the technology industry and include Motorola, Nokia, L.M. Ericsson, Siemens, Sun Microsystems, OpenWave Systems, Microsoft, Oracle, Hewlett-Packard, BEA Systems, Vodafone Group, NTT DoCoMo, KDDI, and MasterCard International, Prial says.
Posted by: gernb1
In reply to: None Date: 5/29/2002 10:43:43 PM
Post # of 12846
OT USB dongle reference design combines USB plug-and-play with embedded Bluetooth
29-May-2002-A Bluetooth USB dongle reference design that provides low-cost Bluetooth functionality for electronic devices was co-developed by Texas Instruments (TI-Dallas, Texas) and Widcomm (San Diego, Calif.).
The reference design combines USB plug-and-play with fully embedded Bluetooth functionality without requiring software installation and configuration. It allows wireless connectivity between a PC and peripherals, printers, or cell phones.
Based on TI's BSN6050, an integrated point-to-multipoint Bluetooth solution, the reference design helps embed the Bluetooth protocol stack into the dongle to reduce cost by eliminating the need for a processor host. This also improves user experience by getting rid of the need for any software installation. The out-of-the-box dongle solution is suitable for any USB-compatible device for a plug-and-play experience.
The BSN6050 is a high-performance solution that supports 723 kbytes/s of data, or the full Bluetooth data rate. Features include support for up to 7 piconet links and up to three simultaneous Synchronous Connection Oriented (SCO) voice channels. The device also supports master-slave switching and Park, Sniff, and Hold modes for power reduction applications. The BSN6050 uses advanced 0.15-micron technology to ensure low power consumption for users.
Prototypes for Human Interface Devices (HID) support are available now for Bluetooth-enabled peripheral devices such as keyboards and mouse. Future releases will include dial-up support to be used in combination with cell phones (DUN-profiles) and printing support. A GVC dongle based on the Widcomm/TI USB dongle reference design will be released in the third quarter of 2002 for under $20 in volume quantities. Widcomm can be found on-line at www.widcomm.com. Visit TI's Web site at www.ti.com.