Register for free to join our community of investors and share your ideas. You will also get access to streaming quotes, interactive charts, trades, portfolio, live options flow and more tools.
Register for free to join our community of investors and share your ideas. You will also get access to streaming quotes, interactive charts, trades, portfolio, live options flow and more tools.
CPRM phones home
By Andrew Orlowski in San Francisco
Posted: 11/10/2001 at 18:35 GMT
If you're expecting tomorrow's consumer devices to be as open as today's PC, you're in for a disappointment. Smartphones and connected PDAs will feature strong digital rights management technology, with CPRM tipped as the DRM software of choice for removable media.
Nokia announced its 5510 handset today, which integrates an MP3 player, radio and a QWERTY keyboard. The 5510 takes some bold steps with the traditional phone form factor, and if you're a fan of interesting industrial design, it's worth having a look at here.
And in common with Nokia's earlier MP3 player, it enforces digital rights management for media files.
A CD ripped using Nokia's Audio Manager software will only be encoded in an encrypted AACAAC format. Even if you use a third party ripper to create an MP3 format file, the Audio Manager upload software ensures it arrives on the phone as an encrypted AAC file.
The Nokia 5510 has a page illustrating how users will be able to exchange media files with each other, but Pekka Isosomppi, a spokesman for Nokia, told us that the scenario wouldn't extend to music ripped from Audio CDs.
"The quality of something recorded from the radio is FM standard, not digital quality," he said.
He hoped consumers would accept the AAC format because of its compression benefits over MP3, with AAC file sizes typically half the size of MP3 files.
"It's a win-win for consumers: it enforces positive behavior, and it informs the user of good copyright practices," he told us.
CPRM
Future smartphones using the Symbian OS will support CPRM for removable SD cards in hardware, Bill Pinnell, Symbian's Strategic Product Manager for Multimedia, told us.
This is hardly a surprise: Matsushita backed the CPRM specification for its SD card, which was specifically designed as a SDMI vehicle, and the Japanese giant is a shareholder in Symbian, and the two announced the arrangement almost a year ago. SD cards are becoming the defacto removable media for small devices, and are standard in new Palm devices and as an expansion option for Microsoft PocketPC PDAs, so it's becoming increasingly rare to find a device without SD support.
"We're an open phone OS, and you'll still be able to move media around," said Pinnell.
Nokia is the biggest phone manufacturer, and its handset shipments alone dwarf today's PDA market. It wouldn't say which DRM technologies it was examining, or if CPRM was amongst those on the list. But as the most enthusiastic Symbian shareholder - it's said half of its 3G handsets will be Symbian-based by 2004, it will have the option once CPRM becomes supported in a forthcoming release of the Symbian OS.
"We are looking at DRM," Isosomppi told us. "there are different solutions but it's very hard now to say how things will evolve."
CPRM gained its notoriety after moves to incorporate the technology into the ATA standard used by PC hard drives became public. CPRM's backers Intel, IBM, Toshiba and Matsushita quickly dropped the proposal, and declared that it would only be used for removable media. (Adding somewhat disingenuously that this was only ever their intention.)
As it turns out, with so much of the typical hard drive's command set comprising private, vendor-specific commands, they needn't have bothered: CPRM can, and probably will make its way into hard drives without recourse to an ANSI standards committee, as T.13's Hale Landis has pointed out.
But work on incorporating CPRM into removable formats has continued apace, and we'll be able to judge market acceptance next year when SD-equipped phones and PDAs appear in volume. ®
Stealth copy protection - where we are now
By Andrew Orlowski in San Francisco
Posted: 29/12/2001 at 11:05 GMT
This day a year ago, as I was throwing some clothes into the car trunk on my way to the desert, I saw the most welcome newspaper headline I'll ever see. Our coverage of the incorporation of CPRM (Content Protection for Recordable Media) into the ATA standard used by hard drives had been picked up by the San Jose Mercury which splashed it on the front page.
Since December 21, the story had generated enormous interest and outrage. And Boxing Day saw the start of a concerted attempt to kill the story by discrediting us. We'd done all a news outlet can do - stick to the facts that we know to be true, but for a few days it looked like that might not be enough. There was a real danger that the PR effort to neutralise the story would be successful simply by keeping the broadsheet print and TV media away.
But once the Merc began to make waves, the movers behind CPRM changed focus from attacking The Register to promising that CPRM would remain a way of protecting removable media. A compromise measure was sought.
CPRM on ATA was never easy to explain. Howls of innocence from the 4C members followed our initial story, suggesting that CPRM was only ever intended for removable storage, and heavens no, it would never find its way onto a hard drive. But as you can read to this day, an hour with CPRM's creator prior to us publishing the first story hadn't refuted this suggestion. CPRM on hard drives was in its infancy, for sure, but we came away with valuable advice on how to implement corporate backup strategies to workaround CPRM-protected hard drives.
But the CPRM gambit was an early indication that the entertainment industry was deadly serious about removing the free movement of digital media on what has been, for fifteen years, on open platform.
You don't need to know about command sequences to figure out what these guys want. In August a draft bill called the Security Systems Standards and Certification Act (SSSCA) was proposed by Senator Hollings (D). It proposed mandatory inclusion of copy-protection schemes for domestic and imported PCs, anything in fact, capable of recording digital media. (There was an opt-out for TiVO players). Hollings, who's received a number of donations from the entertainment industry, remained elusive
Although dismissed as a kite, it's been kept alive by the lack of opposition to a slew of hysterical "anti-terrorist" legislation that's followed since September 11.
The other significant share-denial move was the issue of a patent for a "Secure PC" to Microsoft. We reported on this internal Microsoft research project earlier in the year. Approval was granted in December.
It's highly speculative, describing general techniques of locking-down a PC without delving into implementation details. But it's a significant milestone, nonetheless. Microsoft, as you'd expected, has tried to show that it supports cool open formats while planning for their elimination .
Whatever happened to CPRM?
CPRM is alive and well: as we reported in October it's being built into anything that supports a SD card. Microsoft, Palm and the Symbian operating systems all support, or will support, CPRM.
That's where most people would agree it belongs.
The future of the PC however, looks bleaker. The righteous crusade against CPRM by the EFF may have made detecting and blocking CPRM a lot more difficult, some EFF members now privately acknowledge. In March, the T.13 committee blocked a proposal erroneously described as 'son of CPRM' but which was simply documented an interface where otherwise hidden commands may be detected.
The important context in all this, is that with much of each hard drive's command set undocumented, the DRM-lobby never needed to approach the standards body at all.
Hale Landis posted this bleak summaryof the industry landscape in March, and it remains a must-read. By stealth, by private litigation, or by public statutes, the entertainment lobby is determined to kill fair use. ®
DRM CPRM ... Windows Media Player ... Secure PC
Napster et al ... copy bummable CDs
Doom for .NET? Intertrust opens up
WinXP is now 'best OS for MP3 users' says MS
MS plans 'Secure PC' that won't copy pirated audio files
'Killer DMCA' to mandate digital-rights compliant hardware
Copy-control Senator sleeps while fair-use rights burn
http://www.theregister.co.uk/content/54/23516.html
Year of Living Geekily: Even the Dogs Evolved
By DAVID POGUE The New York Times
For observers of human nature, the end of the year presents a golden opportunity for spotting geeks in their native habitats. So where were they in 2001?
FOR observers of human nature, the end of the year presents a golden opportunity for spotting geeks in their native habitats. Normal people pull tags off gifts; geeks put batteries into them. Normal people spend the week watching movies and reading newly unwrapped books; geeks hook things up to the television. Normal people make up New Year's resolutions like "Clean the garage," "Learn French" or "Get more exercise." Geeks pledge to "Clean up the Web site," "Learn JavaScript" and "Get more RAM."
While waiting for the computer to reboot, we geeks may also pause to reflect on the industry itself. For stockholders, this was the year that the high-tech bubble burst with a definitive pop. And it will be some time before venture capitalists back any 20-year- old with a clever PowerPoint pitch.
Even so, some fundamental truths still apply. Prices continue to fall, as this season's owners of $100 DVD players are happy to point out. Computer power continues to climb (2-gigahertz processors), even if many consumers already have more megahertz than they know what to do with. And manufacturers continue to revise and improve their products with disconcerting speed.
As evidence that the innovation engine is still chugging along, you have but to consider this column's topics over the last 12 months. Here is a look at what has become of some of the year's most notable products, updates that you can clip and paste into your carefully archived originals.
NET APPLIANCES
Almost all the Internet appliances I reviewed a year ago have gone to that great Circuit City in the sky.
You didn't need a Ouija board to foretell the death of 3Com's Audrey ($500). Its tiny screen could show only part of a Web page; its punctuation keys were mere slivers; and it offered only a single e-mail account for each machine. As for its rival, the Gateway Connected Touch Pad ($600), you could have measured its Web-page download speed in ice ages.
Only Compaq's IA-1 seemed to be poised for success: it was relatively fast, inexpensive and well designed. (A few IA-1's are still available at Walmart.com for $200.)
But just $600 could buy a full PC, with a CD-ROM drive, a bigger monitor and so on. The limited, awkward Internet appliances simply couldn't compete.
Only one device survives: Honeywell's WebPad (now $1,970). It's a flat-panel touch screen that maintains a fast, cordless link to your cable or D.S.L. modem as you walk around the house or office. Both the price and the requirement for a high-speed connection should tip you off that this machine isn't aimed at non-techies.
Funny, isn't it? The big companies had it wrong. It wasn't the everyday consumers who wanted Internet appliances. It was the geeks.
DIGITAL PETS
Aibo the robot dog by Sony was, and is, a remarkable machine. Useless, but remarkable. It can walk on its own seeing with cameras, hearing with microphones, thinking with software. It can even learn new tricks.
But not everyone considered Aibo a steal at $1,500. Within nanoseconds, toy companies leaped into the fray with their own models: copycat dogs that did less but also cost less. Eventually Sony's engineers, no doubt sighing with resignation, set about the task of designing an Aibo knockoff of their own.
The result was the new Aibo LM series ($850): cuter, rounder, smaller dogs that still respond to vocal commands and can "learn" new behaviors. The cheaper dogs cannot send audio and video to your PC wirelessly, as the more expensive Aibo can when equipped with a $150 software kit. But for anyone who longs for companionship yet doesn't have the energy to care for an analog dog, the price for the ultimate laptop has dropped considerably.
MAC'S NEW CORE
With all the hoopla about Windows XP (news - web sites), it is easy to forget that there is another good-looking, super-stable operating system gaining popularity: Apple's Mac OS X (news - web sites).
The overhaul of OS X, version 10.1, released in September, was so sweeping that it made the original look like a dress rehearsal. The current version is much faster, includes a long list of useful features, and restores the DVD playback and CD burning that were missing from the original.
Even better news is that by now, most big-name programs have been revised to take advantage of Mac OS X's beauty and stability, including Microsoft Office, America Online, FileMaker, Illustrator, Freehand and Final Cut Pro. Mac fans should take note that it's finally safe to make the switch, as long as they're prepared to pay the upgrade fees for the programs they use.
THE MASTER'S VOICE
For all the attention given to computers that understand human speech in sci-fi movies, it's strange how little fanfare surrounds this category now that it's here.
In any case, both leading Windows speech-recognition programs are available in new versions. The chief virtue of I.B.M.'s ViaVoice Release 9, a minor upgrade, is its inclusion (in the deluxe version) of a U.S.B. headset microphone that improves accuracy. Naturally Speaking 6, meanwhile, is an ambitious merger of features from the onetime rival programs L&H VoiceXPress and Dragon Naturally Speaking.
The most impressive feature of NatSpeak 6, however, is its very existence: it was born during the public disintegration of its maker, Lernout & Hauspie. Only two weeks ago the company sold its speech software to Scansoft, so that NaturallySpeaking and its descendants may live on.
(There is also news for Mac fans: The last few months have seen the release of both ViaVoice for Mac OS X and iListen for Mac OS 9.2.1.)
DICK TRACY'S LENS
Casio's weird and wonderful Wrist Camera ($230) still shows only shades of gray on the watch face when you take pictures. But the recently upgraded watch (model WQV3-1BNDL) actually stores color photographs (80 at a time), which you can see when you later beam them, via infrared, to your PC.
These pictures aren't what you'd call gargantuan in fact, they're 176 by 144 pixels, just over two inches square. But when you need to be surreptitious or spontaneous, there's no smaller digital camera outside the C.I.A.
TUNES TO GO
Apple's iPod is a spectacular music player. It holds 130 CD's worth of music in a white-acrylic-and-mirror-finish player not much bigger than a box of Tic Tacs. No MP3 player offers this capacity in anywhere near such a small size, especially not with 12 hours of battery life.
But Apple said that the iPod could synchronize its music library only with Macs. Fortunately for PC fans, xPlay, a $40 Windows program being readied for a January release, will let you load your iPod with music and use it as an external hard drive for your PC, just as on a Mac. An early version is available at www.mediafour.com.
PIXELS' PROGRESS
The PC industry is no longer the youngster it once was, exploding with monthly leaps in sales growth and features. Nowadays, it's the digital camera industry that behaves that way.
The cameras I reviewed in 2001 are already smaller, cheaper and better. As noted last week, 2.2-megapixel models now sell for under $300. Four-megapixel cameras cost less than half what they did a year ago. And Sony's CD1000, which burns its images directly onto mini-CD's, ready for archiving or inserting into your computer, no longer requires $1,500 and a wheelbarrow. Today, Sony's CD200 offers about half the bulk and price ($800).
The lesson from the camera business is the same one that we've learned over and over again from the PC business, the VCR business and the DVD business: The longer you wait, the better the deal you'll get.
Of course, you know what we geeks would say: Where's the fun in that?
First Look: Pressplay
A Review of the New Online Music Subscription Service
By James Kim
Dec. 20 — After months of hype and countless delays, the online music subscription service pressplay has arrived. The service, which is backed by major labels Universal Music Group, Sony Music Entertainment, and EMI Recorded Music, plus a number of independent labels, offers consumers more user-friendly features than its chief rival, MusicNet, which made its debut a couple of weeks ago.
Still, subscribers will have to pay for the right to stream, download, and burn music, and they will only have access to tracks from pressplay labels.
The service is currently available through MSN Music, Yahoo!, and Roxio, and will soon be available through MP3.com. The easiest way to sign up is to go to pressplay.com, where you'll be directed to any of these distribution partners.
We signed up for the limited 14-day free trial of pressplay through Yahoo! and, besides the fact that we had to give up credit card information, we found the process of downloading the Windows Media Player-based application straightforward.
Unlike MusicNet, which uses the RealAudio 8 format, pressplay uses Microsoft's WMA format.
Users may choose from genre-based featured tracks or search the database by artist, album, or track title. Downloads and streams are reliable and users can be assured that the tracks are of high quality.
More Attractive Features
Pressplay's delay could be attributed to technology problems but we view it as a strategic move. By allowing MusicNet to launch first, pressplay could be certain to launch with more consumer-friendly features. Here are a few items that make pressplay a more attractive option than MusicNet:
Interface — Clean and easy to navigate, the pressplay application isn't as all-encompassing as the RealOne Player, and it doesn't offer many jukebox features such as CD-ripping. However, "Top 10" lists of downloads, artists, albums, personalized selections, and other featured content are helpful and the search feature is intuitive and responsive. The pressplay application will most likely be used in tandem with Windows Media Player or any other full-featured jukebox player.
Burning — This is one of pressplay's key advantages. Using technology licensed from Roxio, pressplay allows users to burn selected tracks to CD in Redbook audio. Users may then copy that CD as they would any other audio CD. Initially, we thought the burnable tracks would be limited in scope, but we've found a fair selection of tracks available for burning (indicated by a fire icon next to the track). The number of tracks that a user can burn depends on the service plan (see below).
Sample streams — Even though pressplay offers a large number of stream credits, the user may sample a track free for 30 seconds.
Downloads — Unlike on MusicNet, where a track loses its license after a month (the user must download the track again), pressplay members may keep and accumulate their downloads as long as they continue their subscription.
Synch/restore — This feature allows users to download and transfer their library to another computer without having to sign up for another subscription.
Parental advisory — The "PA" notation gives parents an indication that a track contains explicit content. Users may filter out this content if they so choose.
Playlists and message boards — Message boards on many relevant topics allow users to join a community. Furthermore, playlists can be shared among users.
Although quite a few features distinguish pressplay from MusicNet, there are still some problems for the end user.
First, although thousands of tracks are available (more than 100,000 on pressplay and more than 78,000 on MusicNet), both services only offer content from their respective label partners. That means that a pressplay user won't be able to access popular artists such as Britney Spears and Nsync. Likewise, MusicNet users won't be able to access pressplay artists such as Eminem and U2.
Users will have to join both services — a costly choice — if they want access to content from all the major labels. The resulting consumer backlash could force the two services to partner up.
The Hole in the Wall: Morpheus
As long as file-sharing applications such as Morpheus and WinMX persist, pressplay and MusicNet will have a difficult time luring customers. The reasoning is as simple as downloading an MP3: By using file-sharing applications, users can find a virtually unlimited number of tracks (from all the labels) and download them for free.
In the record industry's view, this may not be the most legal of methods, but more than 500,000 constant users (on Morpheus) can't be denied. Consumers will flock to these services because they are effective and free.
Unlike MusicNet, where licensees such as Real and AOL have unique interfaces and may set their own pricing terms, pressplay's interface and pricing is uniform throughout its distribution partners.
Here's how the pricing breaks down. Not including the introductory free 14-day trial, users can sign up for one of four plans:
Basic: $9.95/month for 300 streams, 30 downloads
Silver: $14.95/month for 500 streams, 50 downloads, 10 burns
Gold: $19.95/month for 750 streams, 75 downloads, 15 burns
Platinum: $24.95/month for 1,000 streams, 100 downloads, 20 burns
Pressplay's service plans place more emphasis on streaming, with 10 times as many streams as downloads. MusicNet (RealOne and AOL) offers 100 downloads for $9.95 per month whereas pressplay offers the same number of downloads for $24.95 per month. You do, however, get 900 more streams on pressplay than on MusicNet if you join the Platinum service.
If you're an active streamer (we prefer downloads), pressplay has a distinct advantage. Conversely, if you're a downloader, MusicNet looks like the better option.
Let's look closer at the Silver plan, which costs as much as the average store-bought CD. You get more than enough streams and a decent number of downloads, and you can burn 10 tracks — enough to fill up a single CD. If you equate your burning privileges with a store-bought CD, then this plan makes sense. But you may not have access to your favorite artists.
Bottom Line: Should You Pay?
Pressplay has moved to make its service more attractive than MusicNet's. The ability to burn tracks, albeit a small number of them, gives pressplay a distinct advantage by letting users own rather then simply rent tracks. The 30-second free sampling of streams, the synch/restore feature, and the parental advisory notation also show that pressplay is thinking about the consumer's needs. However, it's not going to be enough to lure the majority of digital audio enthusiasts.
Summary: MusicNet's rival pressplay has entered the ring. Although the service has more user-friendly features than its competitor, it still needs to face the fact that free file-sharing applications — for obvious reasons — attract the majority of potential customers.
Pros: Burnable tracks; clean, intuitive interface; accumulates tracks over time; synch/restore feature.
Cons: No content from BMG and Warner Music; emphasis on streaming; other free "services" exist.
Company: pressplay
Available: Now through MSN Music, Yahoo!, and
IBM Leads the Way in Mobile Security
Big Blue's entrance into mobile security signals serious industry interest in facilitating secure mobile infrastructures for m-commerce transactions
Adam Stone
December 20, 2001
With business-to-consumer mobile commerce still limping toward the starting post, analysts are keeping themselves busy by poking holes in the present ruler of the roost: mobile enterprise applications. Now one major vendor is poking back.
Mobile enterprise apps promise to extend the reach of traditional commerce into the mobile environment, bolstering the power of on-the-go sales and service personnel by linking them back to the corporate hive.
Trouble is, wireless LAN leaks. Despite encryption algorithms and passwords galore, some enterprises still shy away from mobilizing their commerce out of concerns for security - concerns that many analysts and techno-experts say are justified.
In November, however, IBM announced a suite of wireless-security services and products that some believe could help turn the tide.
On the services side, IBM has launched a new wireless-security consulting service. For businesses looking to go wireless, IBM consultants will come in at ground level "to help them understand how to mitigate vulnerabilities as they build out their solutions, rather than after the fact," explained Mike Bilger, global practice leader for IBM security and privacy services.
On the products side, IBM's Tivoli software group has begun including IBM's Wireless Security Auditor along with its risk-management product. The auditor allows continuous monitoring of wireless networks for possible security flaws. In addition, IBM has begun enabling some of its laptops with a cryptographic coprocessor, which allows for encryption of wireless data.
Why now? "We saw companies wanting to do wireless things, especially in the business-to-employee environment, and we saw the holes that existed in the current standards," said Bilger.
While others are also working to address concerns about wireless security, Bilger suggested that IBM's sheer corporate muscle power makes its entry into the field especially significant. "We bring a depth of experience worldwide," he said. "The other thing we bring to the table is the investment that IBM makes into research in this area. With our Global Security Analysts Laboratory and other research facilities, our folks are constantly doing research in this area."
Security professionals agree that such a high-profile move by IBM could encourage more enterprises to leap into the mobile fray, which could in turn give a boost to the overall development of mobile commerce.
"The fact that IBM is coming out and saying that it can do secure wireless will certainly lend more seriousness to the industry," said Ron Gula, president of Network Security Wizards in Columbia, Md. "When you hear vendors talking about wireless solutions, most security people sort of snicker, because they know that WAP can be hacked. With the sheer size of IBM, though, if they say they can deliver a secure wireless solution, people will take that seriously."
At ProHome Systems Engineering, an Oakland, Calif. systems integration firm, systems engineer Jerry Richardson backed this assessment. "If IBM's getting involved, there is a good chance that they could tighten up the security flaws," he said. "I have not seen them venture into anything - especially in this market - without really thinking it through."
That being said, even Big Blue is willing to admit that its new security offerings cannot provide absolute data security in the wireless environment.
Security is an ongoing problem, and it involves far more than just technological solutions," cautioned Bilger.
"There is a lot of things that IBM can do to help clients secure their networks, but at the end of the day the security of that network will rely on the policies, procedures, and security education and training that have been conducted at the client's site," he said. "If the client does not follow through with the appropriate policies and procedures, all it takes is for one person to make a change in the network in order to reopen vulnerabilities."
As a business strategy, IBM likely is angling to catch an early ride on a rapidly swelling wave. Some industry analysts have projected that the global market for information security services will more than triple from 2000 to 2005, at which time it could reach the $21 billion mark.
War, music, magic on minds of Net users in 2001
Scarlet Pruitt, IDG News Service\Boston Bureau
December 21, 2001, 10:28
Inquiring minds searched the Internet on a virtual cornucopia of topics during 2001, stretching from war and terrorism to music, magic and prophecy, according to a listing of top queries released this week by Google Inc.
The popular search engine compiled results from its 150 million daily searches, to produce lists of the most-sought-after people, products and things in 2001.
Perhaps it wasn't all that surprising that during this tumultuous and unpredictable year, the subject that most plagued the thoughts of Internet users was 16th-century French prophet Nostradamus, who came in the top male query and the top gaining query on Google's lists. While the search engine didn't speculate on why Nostradamus nabbed these spots, in all likelihood rumors that the prophet predicted the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks in the U.S. fueled public curiosity.
In fact, the events and personalities surrounding Sept. 11 permeated Google's 2001 zeitgeist. Suspected terrorism mastermind Osama bin Laden ranked the number-two male query, as well as the seventh top-gaining query. The World Trade Center was the third gaining query, while the Taliban was the ninth and Afghanistan the 11th. The anthrax scare garnered the bacteria the number five gaining query spot and popular news destination CNN ranked second in gaining inquiries.
Internet users weren't solely focused on these sobering topics, however, as many users sought the more intoxicating subjects of sultry singers Britney Spears, Jennifer Lopez and Madonna. Teenybopper Spears ranked the top queried woman, while Lopez came in third and Madonna fourth. The second most-sought-after woman was buxom actress Pamela Anderson.
Male singing stars also garnered ample attention, with Eminem standing up as the third most searched male, followed by Michael Jackson at number four. Beatle George Harrison, who passed away earlier this month, was the sixth most-queried male, according to Google.
In terms of top searched musical groups, The Beatles ranked number one, followed by U2, 'NSync and the Backstreet Boys.
Peer-to-peer file-swapping sites came and went this year, however. According to Google, free file swapper Audiogalaxy was the number eight gaining query and KaZaA was the 17th gaining search. Napster, the file swapper that started it all, was the fifth declining query, however, and Gnutella came in as the fourth declining search.
The top declining query for 2001 was Pokemon, followed by "Olympics." In a sign that the public has lost interest in the problem-fraught 2000 U.S. presidential election, "vote" came in third in top declining queries and "election results" was the sixth declining, followed by "electoral college."
Apparently having had enough with problems, Internet users turned to fun and games. Google's top new products ranked by search queries included Microsoft Corp.'s new gaming system Xbox at number two, followed by Sony Computer Entertainment Inc.'s PlayStation 2 and Nintendo's Gamecube. The number one new product in terms of search queries was Microsoft's new Windows XP operating system.
But the software maker didn't appear on the list of top brands for the year. Heading that list was Nokia Corp., then Sony at number two and luxury car maker BMW in third place. Handheld vendor Palm Inc. ranked number four in brands, just ahead of Adobe Systems Inc. and Dell Computer Corp.
In terms of movies, Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone took the most-searched prize, with Lord of the Rings close behind.
From searching on magic to music, to current events and a centuries-old seer, once again the Internet proved itself to be a rich and varied resource.
DoCoMo Buys More of AT&T Wireless
By allNetDevices Staff
December 21, 2001
Japan's NTT DoCoMo said Friday that it will exercise its option to purchase more shares of U.S.-based AT&T Wireless.
The Japanese company previously purchased 16 percent of AT&T Wireless. DoCoMo said in a statement that it's additional purchases will maintain that percentage of ownership.
DoCoMo said its decision is contingent on AT&T Wireless' acquisition of TeleCorp PCS, a regional wireless operator in the U.S. That acquisition would occur through a stock exchange, which will increase AT&T Wireless' total number of offered shares.
DoCoMo estimated that its additional share acquisition will give it a total of 26.6 million shares of AT&T Wireless' common stock worth about $380 million.
Through it's initial buy-in, NTT DoCoMo received one seat on AT&T Wireless' board. Also part of that initial deal, AT&T Wireless agreed to add a GSM/GPRS overlay to its existing TDMA wireless system, a process it already has started.
It also is expected that services based on DoCoMo's i-mode technology, which is wildly successful in Japan, will be launched by the American carrier.
DoCoMo in the last year has acquired, or attempted to acquire, stakes in a variety of wireless operators around the world. For instance, it recently invested in Dutch operator KPN Mobile, which said recently that it soon will launch i-mode services. However, earlier this week it ended talks with Korea's SK Telecom to acquire a stake in that company.
Microsoft wins, AOL loses in AT&T-Comcast deal
SEATTLE (Reuters) — Microsoft stands to win big from the $47 billion sale of AT&T's cable network to Comcast, with the software giant finally seen making inroads in high-speed cable Internet access and interactive television, analysts said Thursday. The deal calls for Microsoft to convert its $5 billion investment in AT&T debt into 115 million common shares of AT&T Comcast, giving it a vote in what will be the country's biggest cable network with 22 million subscribers.
There is no new investment from Microsoft, and the company declined to comment on whether there were any firm agreements for the new company to use Microsoft products or services.
But a spokeswoman outlined a broad vision of the deal's implications for Microsoft and said executives from its interactive TV unit and its MSN Internet operations had talked to AT&T and Comcast as the deal was put together.
"Microsoft will have the opportunity to bring high quality software, services and interactive TV to consumers. Microsoft's partnership with the new company will help deploy high-speed Internet access and broadband services," a spokeswoman said.
Analysts agreed the relationship is more promising for Microsoft than the previous one, which never lived up to expectations that it would give Microsoft a leg up in offering a new generation of Web-based services.
Microsoft next year plans to roll out a subscription product called .NET MyServices that will include things like an online calendar, event notification and easy shopping. It is also banking heavily on online music and video that require fast connections.
But Microsoft co-founder and Chairman Bill Gates has lamented frequently and loudly that the slow adoption of broadband is hampering such a strategy.
"From what I can tell, Microsoft is now going to get a little bit more influence in the combined company," said Matt Rosen, an analyst with Directions on Microsoft, a Kirkland, Wash.-based research firm that focuses on the company.
"It's pretty key to a lot of their initiatives, particularly consumer services," Rosen said. All those things require high bandwidth, always-on connections."
Shares in Microsoft fell $2.23, or 3.2%, to $67.28 by late afternoon on Thursday. While the stock is off its year high of $76, it has risen 67% off its year low and has proved a "safe-harbor" stock amid recent market turmoil.
Satisfyingly to Microsoft, Comcast's winning bid is a body blow to Microsoft arch-rival AOL Time Warner, which had sought more outlets for its America Online Internet access service and deep vaults of content.
"At the very least it should provide a block to AOL Time Warner," said Rob Enderle, an analyst with technology consultancy Giga Information Group.
Cable is a key battleground for a high-stakes war to see who will dominate the dawning age of Web services and on-demand entertainment. While only 9% of U.S. homes had fast Internet connections last year, that is expected to rise to 41% by 2006, with cable seen as the main on-ramp, according to market research firm Jupiter Media Metrix.
Interactive television is another area of keen interest by Microsoft.
Beefing up cable set-top boxes with fancy software can turn the TV into a center for a suite of entertainment services such as video-on-demand, digital music and instant messaging.
Microsoft has struggled to get its TV software deployed, and suffered a blow earlier this year when AT&T scaled back plans to rollout advanced interactive services with Microsoft products, instead opting for a more modest plan.
While Rosen felt Microsoft could be backing away somewhat from interactive TV, Enderle said the market was a big one because it demanded a deeper commitment than the high-speed Internet access business.
"I-TV is more important. It's a proprietary top-to-bottom deployment. The set-top box is a closed environment and if they get that, they keep it," Enderle said.
Music fans pan subscription services
By Reuters
December 21, 2001, 9:55 a.m. PT
LONDON--Napster is grounded, digital music downloads are going "legit," and yet college students and corporate desk drones continue to get busted swapping songs on the Internet's gray market.
This is bad news for the major music labels. They launched subscription download services MusicNet and Pressplay this month in an effort to combat the rise of music piracy on the Internet, which the labels claim is eating into CD sales.
These subscription services have had a lackluster debut as music fans and product reviewers contend they are an inferior alternative to the illegal sites, which of course are free and have more music variety and features.
"The music industry is vulnerable. It's still so easy to download this stuff," said Jon Fowler, director of marketing at NetPD, a London-based company that gained notoriety last year for helping rock band Metallica identify thousands of Napster users who were downloading the band's songs from the file-swapping service in violation of copyright laws.
Fowler said the introduction of MusicNet and Pressplay has had no noticeable affect on the rate of online music piracy.
The figures from Download.com support his observation. Music fans are downloading rogue software that allows people to swap music files through online services Kazaa, Morpheus MusicCity and Audiogalaxy, to name a few, at a clip of more than three million per week. Download.com is a division of CNET Networks, which publishes News.com.
In contrast, Real Networks' RealOne media player--the software associated with MusicNet--was downloaded 7,506 times during the past week, according to Download.com.
MusicNet, the digital service backed by Warner Music Group, a unit of AOL Time Warner, Bertelsmann's BMG Entertainment and EMI Recorded Music, launched Dec 4. Pressplay, a joint venture between Sony and Vivendi Universal, launched Wednesday.
"There's no demand for it," Fowler said of the services. "The volume of file-sharing is much greater now that when Napster was alone."
Reviewers have criticized Pressplay and MusicNet for offering fewer songs and fewer features than the illegal services. Furthermore, the services won't be available to consumers outside the United States for months.
Music fans have been blunt on Internet message boards, too. For MusicNet, the most common complaint on the message boards is that would-be customers cannot view the music library until after they've paid the $9.95 monthly subscription.
MusicNet also does not permit the download of tracks to a portable MP3 player or to be burned on a CD, a feature that rival Pressplay includes.
"Pay 10 to 20 bucks for music that you CANNOT listen to in your portable MP3 player or burn to CD and have the music vaporize once you terminate your subscription," reads one UseNet message about MusicNet. "Is the music consumer that stupid?"
MusicNet could not be immediately reached for comment.
Web surfers also have taken Pressplay to task. A parody site takes a jab at Pressplay's decision to limit the number of songs that can be burned onto a CD and thus played on a portable music player. The site carries the fictitious disclaimer: "You many not use this service unless your computer weighs over 180 lbs and is classified as a tethered, non-portable device."
A representative for Pressplay in New York said future versions of Pressplay may be more flexible with portable downloads.
"It's a new consumer proposition. It's not going to make everybody happy out of the gate," the representative said.
MusicNet and Pressplay executives are optimistic there is a market for their services, particularly as their songs libraries expand and features improve. They also say some music fans are wary of downloading files from unauthorized file-swapping sources as they may contain computer viruses, a common concern discussed in Internet discussion groups.
But breaking the "all-you-can-eat-for-free" habit first popularized by Napster, and now satisfied by next-generation file-swapping sites, will be difficult to overcome, experts say.
"I don't think anyone can sell music downloads over the Internet until the commercial services are better or the free services are gone," said Bruce Ward, co-founder of NetPD.
NetPD is keenly aware of online piracy activities. It scours the Internet and tracks people who swap copyrighted material belonging to its clients, which include the Recording Industry Association of America, Sony Music Entertainment and artists such as George Michael and Paul Simon.
In addition, the company said it recently landed work from Hollywood studios and computer game publishers.
In a sweep last month, a NetPD report revealed that 2.5 million copyrighted and generic files traded hands in a six-minute period, a typical tally. Among the hundreds of songs swapped, hip-hop/R&B artist Alicia Keys chart-topping hit "Fallin" was traded the most--1,883 times.
Over the past two years, NetPD has notified hundreds of commercial Internet service providers and private networks operated by universities and corporations that their users were guilty of copyright offences.
"I don't know anybody who hasn't downloaded copyrighted material off the Internet, excluding my parents and grandparents, maybe," said Ward.
Handheld Media Subscription Service Unveiled
By allNetDevices Staff
December 21, 2001
A product that manages digital rights and delivers digital media to Pocket PC handhelds was unveiled Thursday.
Mazingo Network said that its software enables publishers to deliver movies. television shows and other digital video to handhelds based on Microsoft's Pocket PC platform. The media can be delivered via wireless transmission or a standard Internet dial-up connection.
In addition, Mazingo said it is preparing to launch a monthly subscription service for Pocket PC users with content from a variety of movie studios, record companies and news outlets. In a statement, the company said that the subscription would cost $14.95 a month, but did not say when the service would begin.
Nor did Mazingo say who the content providers were, but said in a statement "on a regular basis."
In addition, the company said that it has signed an agreement with Pocket PC Films to use the digital rights platform. Pocket PC Films is a subsidiary of Tunein Entertainment Company.
"The security of the Mazingo approach was critically important, but equally important was ... in our tests, people found the Mazingo platform 'goof-proof' and fun to use," said Tunein president Darrell Griffin.
a contender-SONY'S subsidiary--AIWA:
AIWA Chooses Texas Instruments Audio Solutions to Power New Automotive Digital Music System
TI's DSP Fuels Industry's First Car Audio Player to Support MP3 and WMA
DALLAS, Dec. 4 /PRNewswire/ -- Continuing to drive innovation in the Internet audio industry, Texas Instruments Incorporated (NYSE: TXN - news; TI) today announced that its power-efficient digital signal processor (DSP) has been selected as the engine for AIWA's new, automotive digital audio system designed for in-dash installation. The car audio player, model CDC-MA01 and CDC-MA01R, is the industry's first car audio system designed to support both MP3 and Windows Media Audio (WMA). This design-win, in addition to its numerous other customer successes, places TI's DSP in the driver's seat as the semiconductor of choice for consumer electronics manufacturers due to its flexible design, high performance and low power system capabilities. (See www.ti.com/sc/internetaudio for more details .)
``As one of the leaders in producing industry-first audio technology, AIWA has developed an innovative product with the addition of the first automotive multi-format audio player, just as the CD-R market begins to take off,'' said Jennifer Wu, worldwide marketing manager of Internet Audio CD at TI. ``AIWA's new car audio player adds to the extensive list of consumer audio products that feature TI DSPs, including products for the home, car and portable use.''
Now available in the U.S., AIWA's car audio player is a 1-DIN type car audio system that supports CD-R, CD-RW and standard music CDs. Designed for sale and installation by aftermarket resellers only, the 2-disc audio player features an LCD display for song title and artist name. The CDC-MA01R model will also come with a Radio Data System in select parts of the world, delivering the best quality radio reception and minimizing interruptions.
TI provides high-performance, low-power, programmable DSP and analog-based solutions for many digital audio segments and designs ranging from portable Internet audio players and digital radios to home jukeboxes and home theaters in a box. TI's award-winning DSP technology is designed into more than 80 Internet audio devices, including products from eight of the top 10 consumer electronics manufacturers.
About AIWA
AIWA Co., Ltd, based in Tokyo, Japan is one of the world's leading manufacturer and marketer of consumer and professional audio, visual, mobile and communications products. The company is also going to create a line of unique, high quality products for personal use which meet the needs of the era of AV/IT integration and broadband networks applying highly renowned miniature mechatronics technology as well as audio/visual and recording technology such as DVD and Mini Disc.
About TI
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. The company's web site is www.ti.com .
Mobile Innovations
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
By Rich Warren
Las Vegas, Monday, January 8, 2001, 5:25 p.m. ET—In our book ME stands for Mobile Entertainment, and at CES you could add mobile excitement. Nearly every product designed for the wheeled world paid homage to DVD, MP3 and satellite radio.
In fact, in Sony's case you could call it "rip 'n' roll." Last year Sony introduced a model that would record CDs from the radio or CD change while rolling down the road, of new model of which appeared this year. However, Sony's new DJ Bank rips MP3s from its CD player onto its integral 6 GB hard drive. Capable of scores of hours of music, it beats the largest CD changers. Sony also sticks it to you with units that play MP3 sound files from it Memory Stick, and even showed a possible Memory Stick changer that holds 10 of them.
At the Clarion booth: in-dash and rear-seat video displays.
If you don't want to rip while you roll, Delphi offers a car unit that networks using the IEEE 802.11b wireless standard with your home PC or other wireless home devices. You can download more than just music into the unit's 1 GB hard drive, including navigation data. Delphi is collaborating with 3Com on the system. Another Delphi advance, its double-DIN Communiport Mobile Productivity Center (MPC Pro) car unit allows users with Ericsson cell phones and Palm V or Vx hand-helds to access the Palm via voice activation.
When Bose teamed up with Delco in the early 1980s to custom tailor sound to an individual car model's acoustics, it took a pretty powerful computer to run the computations. Now Blaupunkt 's San Francisco CD70 CD receiver automatically equalizes to the car interior, using both the company's Digital Sound Adjustment (DSA) and, better still, Dynamic Noise Covering (DNC) to monitor relatively constant sounds (wind, road noise), analyze the frequency content of the noise, and raise the volume level automatically only at those problem frequencies. That improves audibility without blasting occupants' ears.
Blaunpunkt also showed its new "iMac" styled series of mini amps that range for 2x75 to 4x100, using the company's proprietary TriPath technology that draws upon the best attributes of both class AB and D.
Clarion showcased wall to wall video, with branded monitors and OEM (original equipment manufacturer) models it sells to car makers. It was a stunning display of color. The video compliments Clarion's new "Joyride" multimedia system that offers multiple entertainment zones within the car. So while the kids watch Toy Story 2 in the backseat, mom and dad can listen to Neil Young in the front. Navigation also can be integrated into the system. The Joyride DVD player includes Dolby Digital and DTS 5.1, and plays standard CDs as well as MP3 or Windows Media Audio CDs. Clarion offers the system in three levels, from all-out deluxe at $3,000 to merely lavish at $1,100.
Alpine goes head-on with Clarion with its F#1 Status multimedia system. The F#1 combines the PXA-H900 Multimedia Manager with the CDA-7990 tuner/CD player, the MRV-F409 "V12" 100x2 / 40x4 power amp, and the TME-M790 7-inch widescreen LCD monitor. The system is one of the few that not only handles MP3, Dolby Digital and DTS, but also HDCD decoding for CDs. Alpine offers other models that play MP3, and obviously a DVD player for that 7-inch monitor.
Kenwood premiered what it claimed to be the world's first in-dash DVD/CD receiver with motorized LCD video touch panel. The Excelon KVT-910DVD combines every feature you could ever possibly desire, and, of course, plays MP3 CDs. This dream unit costs $2,800.
In the office you might place a picture of your loved ones on your desk. Pioneer provides the equivalent for your vehicle. It new DEH-P930 and DEH-P9300 head units utilize Pioneer's stunning Advanced Organic electroluminescence display. Either with a home download kit or at a Pioneer dealer, you can load the photo or graphics of your choice into virtually any PC-photo or graphics format.
Jensen introduced the CH4001 in-dash 4-CD changer head unit with plenty of power, 40x4. The unit has a lot of features for its $450 price.
Speaking of brawn, the JVC KS-FX470 pumps out 45 x 4. It connects to what JVC claims is he world's smallest 12-CD changers, the CH-X1000 and the CH-X1000RF, the latter broadcasts the music to the radio in the head unit. The CH-X1000's price also is small at $230. (The RF adds another $20.)
Samsung showed a prototype wristwatch / cell phone. Now you'll never miss a wake-up call.
At this CES, more than at any previous, mobile-electronics companies have proven you can take it with you. Anything once confined to the home now rolls.
Photo: Rich Warren for Mobile Entertainment
Clarion, the world leader in multimedia automobile products, teamed with Zandiant to produce Joyride, a new automotive multimedia entertainment and information system. Joyride was designed to make driving an entertaining experience, while utilizing voice recognition and text-to-speech features for safe, hands-free operation. The product plays DVD movies, MP3 music and CDs. Designed to satisfy the unique needs of those in the back seat, Joyride offers a front and back entertainment zone so the passengers can watch a movie while the driver relaxes to his or her favorite MP3 music. Joyride’s GPS navigation system helps drivers find their way, while simultaneously receiving up-to-the-minute traffic, sports, news and weather information. In addition, the Joyride system includes front and back LCD displays, 5.1 channel Dolby Digital surround sound, voice recognition and an AM/FM car stereo with CD player.
The Zandiant-designed Joyride product will be released in the summer of 2001
Innovations: MP3 on Wheels [which one of these will edig be in?]
By Scott Memmer
Last updated: 2001-04-19
There's been a lot of noise lately about MP3 for the mobile environment. What's the big deal? Why would you even want an MP3 player in your car?
Well, how does 1,000 hours of uninterrupted music sound?
Of course, the jury is still out on this one. Literally. With Napster fighting for its life in the courts, we could end up with a format without a home. But this wouldn't be the first time that happened, would it? Remember the Sony Betamax boondoggle in the '80s?
But hold it, you're saying, this is an automotive column, isn't it? Why are you guys even talking about this stuff?
That's just the point. With all the new technologies coming into the car, we're bombarded daily with the latest fad. The current rage is telematics -- a seemingly endless array of entertainment and communications systems, including everything from cellular technology to Internet access to MP3 audio, that are being adapted to the mobile environment. What does it all mean?
OK, so maybe we sound a little old-fashioned, like an Internet version of Walter Brennan, minus the limp and the corncob pipe. But what does it all mean?
Well, for one thing, it means someday you're going to have a dashboard that resembles a laptop screen more than an instrument cluster. And yet this isn't necessarily a bad thing. Think of the love affair you have with your TV set. These are more widgets to warm the cockles of our hearts. And who doesn't need a warm cockle now and then?
OK, now for the serious stuff -- and make no mistake, MP3 is serious stuff. With the capability of storing and playing back hundreds of hours of high-quality audio signal, this is a technology whose time has come. And according to some industry experts, MP3 players may first appear in larger numbers in factory-installed systems before the aftermarket makes any serious inroads.
What is MP3 and why is it so cool? MP3 is a digital compression technology that allows users to "shrink" or compress audio files into smaller, more manageable units, thereby making them easier to transfer, send across the Internet and, ultimately, play through speakers. Once an MP3 file arrives at its desired location, it can either be stored on a hard drive, listened to, or burned onto a compact disc (many users do all three). In playback mode, the file is decompressed with MP3 software and sent to the speakers for reproduction. The quality and capacity depend on the compression rate chosen, but some MP3 files burned on a compact disc can hold as much as 100 times more data than a traditional CD audio file.
"It's like having a CD-ROM drive in your dash instead of a music CD," says Rich Truesdell, an independent photo-journalist who writes about high-end car audio for various publications. "And in a moving vehicle, you can't hear the difference between an MP3 and CD."
Anyone who has been awake the last few years has probably heard of Napster. The song-swapping service has built its name -- and notoriety -- on the strength of the format and the ease with which its users, many of them young technoids with a love of music, can download and trade MP3 files without paying royalties to the record companies. The pending court action, brought to a head this spring by the major record labels, threatens to put Napster out of business.
Regardless of what happens in the Napster case -- and it may take years to sort it all out -- most experts believe the MP3 format is here to stay. It's simply too easy and powerful to ignore. Nevertheless, with legal issues still pending, aftermarket suppliers have been reluctant to jump into the fray. So far, the proliferation of MP3 units has been limited largely to portables, with over 50 models from the likes of Sony, Panasonic and Aiwa entering the market.
On the other hand, aftermarket car audio manufacturers have, with few exceptions, been content to sit on the sidelines. Instead of selling production head units that offer full MP3 capability, radio manufacturers such as Alpine, Pioneer and Sony have introduced MP3-compatible head units. In other words, they don't make an MP3 player, but they allow you to plug a portable MP3 player into their radio. For those old enough to remember, this resembles the early days of CD.
"It's definitely a wait-and-see attitude out there," says Truesdell. "But the format will eventually become popular."
While most radio manufacturers have steered clear of MP3, a few have taken the plunge, with decidedly mixed sales results. Here are a few of the current offerings.
Visteon MACH MP3 Jukebox: Billed as an in-dash head unit with the capability to play "4,000 high-quality music tracks," the Visteon offering utilizes a removable storage cartridge that plugs into your home computer. The storage cartridge contains a hard drive onto which the user can transfer MP3 files. The unit then plugs into a docking station in the car and plays through the Visteon head unit. Retail price: $369.00. For more info, go to www.evisteon.com.
Clarion Joyride: As part of the company's in-car computing series, the Joyride line (formerly known as AutoPC) offers several in-dash head units that are MP3-compatible, with the DXZ-815MP ($750.00) being the top-of-the-line model. More interesting, though, is the prototype (unnamed at this time) displayed at a recent trade show displaying a docking station setup similar to the Visteon product. Although no pricing has been set, and the company displayed the system mainly to "gauge interest," rest assured that Clarion will come to market when there is sufficient demand. For more info, visit www.clarion-usa.com.
Rio Car by Sonicblue: A new player on the scene, Santa Clara, Calif.-based Sonicblue offers four different removable in-dash versions of its Rio player -- ranging from an $1,199 unit with a 10-gig hard drive to the top-of-the-line player with 60Gb for $1,999. Visit the company at www.riohome.com for more details.
Rockford Fosgate RFXMP3.8: Known mainly for its amplifiers and subwoofers, the Tempe, Ariz.-based manufacturer entered the MP3 fray last year. Its solution is the RFXMP3.8, an MP3 changer that includes a PC docking station and a multimedia card (4Mb, 8Mb, 16Mb or 32Mb). The changer can hold up to eight multimedia cards. Unlike the Visteon unit, the multimedia cards are solid state, with no moving parts. The system sells for $299.95. Check out www.rockfordfosgate.com for detailed information.
Blaupunkt: Taking a slightly different tack, the German-based company is bringing to market a DVD player that doubles as an MP3 player. Called the DVD-ME1, the unit will play both formats. According to Gordon Sell, spokesman for Blaupunkt, "One MP3 CD can hold more music than a 10-disc CD changer and with much more variety." MSRP: $499.95. Visit the company's Web site at www.blaupunkt.com for updates.
Kenwood: A company not usually known for skirting the cutting edge, Kenwood has jumped into the MP3 format in a big way. Calling itself "America's first supplier of MP3-capable radios," the company has announced two new in-dash CD/MP3 players. Unlike most of the competition, which, as stated above, is delivering mere MP3-compatible head units, Kenwood's new models are the first car audio receivers that play CD, CD-R and CD-RW discs containing either CD audio or MP3-encoded files. The two radios -- the Z828 and the KDC-MP8017 -- will ship in spring 2001, and have MSRP's of $650 and $360, respectively. Get the full story at www.kenwoodusa.com.
As mentioned above, we may actually see more MP3 players delivered in factory sound systems in the beginning than in the aftermarket. In fact, one automaker, Mazda, has already jumped on the bandwagon. And Ford is close behind. Here's what's going on at the factory level.
Mazda: At the 2001 Los Angeles Auto Show, Mazda introduced a new model called the Mazda MP3 -- a buffed-up version of its popular Protege youth-mobile. In addition to offering Dunlop rims, 17-inch wheels, a larger air dam and 140 ponies (not to mention 142 foot-pounds of torque), the Mazda MP3 boasts a bodacious 280-watt Kenwood audio system with a 10-inch trunk-mounted subwoofer and -- yep, you guessed it -- an in-dash MP3 player (which will also play regular audio CDs). Although details are still sketchy at this time, it sounds like a winner to us. For more info, go to our review of the 2001 Mazda MP3.
Ford: Not to be outdone, the folks in Dearborn, Mich. -- close cousins of Mazda -- are making noises about MP3, as well. Although nothing is official yet, look for Ford to deliver MP3 in its more youth-oriented products starting in 2002 (the Focus is a natch for this sort of thing).
That's the current state of MP3. Although it's anyone's guess how it will eventually fit into the marketplace, it will certainly become more visible in the coming years.
CES 2001-[auto apps: a precursor of CES 2002?]
by Rodney Wills
According to the Consumer Electronics Association (CEA), some 122,422 people from 120 countries came to the oasis in the desert to see and showcase the latest and greatest in digital technology. The show was spread out over 1.2 million net square feet of exhibit space. That's a whole lot of walking, so much so that even with the four days I had I was unable to meet and see everyone on my list. But I think we made a good impression as a team, and covered a lot of ground at CES.
After quite a few press conferences with the majors such as Sony, Xtant, Pioneer, JBL, Kenwood, JVC, Coustic, and MTX it was time to go see what the satellite buzz was all about at both XM Satellite Radio and Sirius Satellite Radio. Their booths were filled with people who wanted to get the inside scoop. It was nice to see that "music" itself was the big ruckus of the show.
We love music and these two new services for content delivery are going to help supply the demand for the information and entertainment which are so limited on regular radio. The second big buzz was about MP3. With all the major head unit manufacturers developing technology to compete with early-bird companies like Rio/ empeg it is clear that compressed music is here to stay. Obviously there is a lot of money to be made, as well as a lot of room for development in this nascent area. As of this writing Rio plans to drop a 10 gig, single DIN in-dash head unit come April. I actually met someone at the show with the UK version. The UK cats are so ahead of us when it comes to this whole music/MP3/Internet thing.
What you will read in our coverage of CES that follows is a survey of sorts of what the CA&E troopers thought about the show, what was the hot new gear or car audio vehicle, and what we thought of the technology that is on the horizon. Last year we were the first car audio-related magazine to break the MP3 story, thanks to Tim Kelly; so of course we asked him to follow up with this year's findings. If you did not read my opening letter please go back and do so before you read my CES picks.
• Satellite Radio from XM & Sirius: The revolution will not be televised, the revolution is in the air!
• Blaupunkt "plastic" amp: compact and cool; keeping up with technology and fashion, it's a great new look for the car audio environment. I can't wait to try this new item!
• Kenwood's satellite/MP3 head unit Z828: hot-looking and first on the market to combine all of what I want.
• JBL Gti Subwoofers: 5,000 watts and sound quality integrity.
• Radar plate from BLINDER: anything to fight the system.
• Xtant octi'woofer: best new design; what a creative fashion move.
• Sony's world's smallest 6-disc player: it's all about making things more compact while improving quality.
• Sony's DJ bank: don't think turntables or CD mixers; this is a serious downloading machine.
• Alpine's E30 M3 demo car: absolutely pure; pure sound and pure performance all in one package.
• Pioneer's new DVD/Nav unit and advanced OEL screen: pioneers indeed.
• JVC KDSH99 heat unit: for the budget-minded with some real beef with all metal face. People need to recognize...
• Rainbow's Reference Line 260.30 / $7,000 separates: if I had Master P's money this would be it! Component speakers and crossover transported in a super deluxe aluminum carrying case with membership card; the sound has to be great with this much attention to detail!
• Garmin's Street Pilot III GPS unit - I used last year's model on a trip from Florida to California driving the Intrax rig. It works like any military tracking device.
As you can see, I have not built a complete dream system or a budget system with all my picks, but these are a few major pieces that caught my attention. We will see how things go over the next few months. Review the directory well!
This year's Consumer Electronics Show was one of the best I can remember. There were a great deal of products and new ideas, as well as enthusiasm about the future. It was really good to see all this because I have been to a few shows where people were just plain glum.
For the last 18 months CA&E has been covering so many new emerging technologies and trends -- and the 2001 CES was hard proof that a great many of these products, services and concepts are going to be a reality.
Three things really struck me as innovative enough to really cause a stir or a shift in car audio as we know it.
1. Satellite Radio. It's finally here and it's every bit as good as we hyped it, maybe even better. By some time this summer, you will be able to sign up for satellite radio from one of the two companies, XM or Sirius. What seems to differentiate them is that XM is concentrating on creating a radio station feel with DJs, live bands and original content. XM has created a giant facility with over 80 studios to accomplish this. Sirius, on the other hand, is focused on content. Their 50 music channels will not have DJs interrupting the music and the other 50 variety channels will feature great stuff like Sci-Fi channel, Comedy World, even Speedvision (how they'll do that I don't know). It's going to be fun to listen to the radio again.
2. MP3. Actually I probably shouldn't use MP3 specifically -- more of a format that's compressed so you can get more songs in a smaller space. In 2000, only Kenwood and JVC sold CD players that would play CD-Rs with MP3 on them. At CES, I couldn't keep track of how many companies would be shipping decks to play MP3, CD-Rs or even memory cards (e.g. Sony's Memory Stick). The big news was at Sony and Pioneer. Both showed a CD player with a hard drive built-in. The good news is that they don't use MP3; they use Sony's new and improved ATRAC compression (used on MiniDisc). Sony now has it working so well that a single MiniDisc can now hold up to 5 hours of music versus the old 80 minutes. Both the prototype Sony and Pioneer units would rip music to the hard drive at high speed, letting you listen as it ripped or listen to the tuner instead. Sony claimed 100 CDs would fit in their unit; Pioneer, even more. Don't look for these units this year, but that these big players are even showing prototypes means that's where the market is headed.
3. Amplifier technology. Digital amps are finally here. At the 2000 CES it looked like there might be two competitors for a true voltage amp, Tripath and Texas Instruments. TI has decided to focus on smaller, low-powered devices and Tripath has truly excelled. Class T amps as they're called, work slightly different than TI's true voltage amp solution, but who cares when you can get over 75% efficiency and awesome sound quality. There were two prototypes at the show that really blew my mind. First was Blaupunkt's new plastic amp. We brought you the exclusive scoop on this amp in the January 2001 issue. Blaupunkt had the real thing at the show and it's going to be awesome. Next was in Tripath's booth, where they had modified an Alpine CD player by putting in their own Class T amps just to prove how much power you could get from a small chip. It was rated at 4 x 80 watts and was every bit of it. Powering top quality 6.5-inch speakers, the deck was easily bottoming the four cones and showed no sign of clipping.
I have to say that 2001 is going to be a great year for CA&E and for you the consumer, because so many new and cool things are going to be coming your way. To help keep you up to date and on the edge, I'll be covering a new technology or service every month starting with the June issue. You'll not only get an explanation of how it works, but, if possible, I'll be using it and relaying to you my first-hand experience. Get ready for some real car audio excitement!
Telematics
When asked to share my impressions of the many new things I saw at the 2001 CES, a single theme kept coming to mind. "Telematics," that new industry buzzword used to describe anything and everything having to do with communicating information to and from the vehicle.
As I wandered the exhibit halls that housed the booths of all the various mobile electronics manufacturers, I began to detect a recurring pattern developing. Several of the large mainstream vehicle security manufacturers were presenting, or are on the verge of presenting, some form of new telematics product. Many of the lesser known companies are following suit. Although the actual products being offered by each of these companies are different in appearance, they all share a single common denominator. They are all supported by a communication infrastructure provided by a new name on the scene, Televoke.
Televoke, based in San Francisco, California is an ASP, which stands for Application Service Provider. To employ a rather awkward analogy -- regardless of whatever head unit you may have you still need radio stations out there for you to be able to use your head unit. Similarly, Televoke has designed and built a telematics communication infrastructure (the radio station) through which these new telematics products can operate. With the Televoke infrastructure, it is possible to allow the user to send commands to a car, from a telephone or computer (e.g. such as unlock doors or arm the alarm system). If the telematics product employs a GPS capability, then the Televoke ASP can allow the user to request their car's location via any Internet connected computer, and receive a map on screen showing the car's location. These features and much more are possible with the Televoke ASP.
Some of the companies who have chosen to use Televoke as their ASP to support their new telematics products include: Audiovox; Omega Research & Development; Satronics; SecuraTrak; and Clarion/UNGO.
http://www.caraudiomag.com/archives/features/0501_features01.shtml.
Telematics in Cars
By Shannon Dorey
When you combine a car with a computer and add some wireless Internet access, you have what is known in the automotive industry as Telematics.
Telematics means having things like voice activated Internet access, phone, news, sports, email, stock quotes and navigation features, all from the comfort of your car.
If you think this sounds like just a little bit too much to think about while your driving, you're not alone.
There has been a great deal of controversy over the technology that is seen as a contradiction providing both safety features and safety hazards.
At a time when talking on a cell phone is seen as dangerous, the public seems in no mood to embrace some of this new technology.
While services like navigation systems and roadside assistance are perceived as positive features, access to email, entertainment and stock quotes are viewed as negative.
In an April survey released by Greenfield Online, 62 percent of people polled said that mobile phone use should be banned while driving. There were only 6 percent who wanted email and Internet access in their cars and only 5 percent who said they would like to be able to download music from the Internet in their cars.
Rachel Konrad of CNET News reported in July that legislation was being considered in 40 states that would ban handheld cell phones and other devices while driving.
The same month, Justin Hyde of Associated Press quoted Terrence Connolly, director of GM's Safety Center, who told a National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) panel that 'the automaker believed voice- controlled devices were the best answer to safety concerns over in-car computers and cell phones.
"We understand that it's not the end all, and it doesn't resolve all of the cognitive work load issues by any stretch of the imagination," he said, "but part of what OnStar is doing is off-loading tasks... from the driver of the vehicle."'
Geraldine Sealey of ABCNews reported in June, "in the interest of cutting down on driver distractions, many automakers and wireless communications companies are focusing on hands-free and voice recognition devices, similar to the OnStar system, which are considered by many to be safer than handheld units."
According to Sealey, Ford and Qualcomm's Wingcast system will also provide hands-free phone and e-mail as well as personalized news, stocks, movie listings and a range of other data when it debuts in Ford vehicles next year.
But will hands free devices really make that much of a difference on safety?
Not according to research reported by Konrad, which was done as far back as 1997 and published in the New England Journal of Medicine.
"Back then, Dr. Donald Redelmeier of the University of Toronto and Dr. Robert Tibshirani of Stanford University determined that talking on a cell phone while driving-- even a hands free phone-- quadrupled the risk of being in an accident.
The pair surmised that keeping the driver's mind focused on the road is more important than keeping his or her hands on the wheel. They recently revisited their 1997 study for the Canadian Medical Association Journal, finding that they may have originally underestimated the risk."
She further reported that a similar study was done in Japan during a six month period between 1997 and 1998. Japan's National Police Agency found that drivers using cell phones caused 2,297 accidents, 25 fatalities and 3,000 injuries and that 43 percent crashed when trying to receive a call, 22.9 while dialing and 16.7 while talking.
In June Glenn Derene of Forbes reported that the NHTSA estimated that driver distraction was a major factor in up to 25% of traffic accidents.
Derene asks, "How focused will a driver be if he's got a real-time stock feed in his car and the market's plummeting, dragging down his life savings? Do you want to be on the same road with this guy?"
In June Jerry Flint, reporting for Forbes on the Fiat system, said, 'there's a small screen on the dash "to allow drivers to read the information without taking their attention from the road." We will have all this available, too, and it will work. And we'll probably add sound-alarm radar that warns us when we're about to run into someone because we're watching the little screen on the dash instead of the road.'
Sealey reported that Clarion's Auto PC, Siemen's Automotive system and Quick-Scout also work on a '"visual interface"' model. The Quick-Scout system, allows a handheld device to slip into a docking cradle on the main console of the vehicle so drivers can download e-mail address books, calendars and phone lists.
'"At this point, safety and human factors... lag far behind electronics development... If action is not taken a significant number of information system- related deaths and injuries will result,"' Hyde quoted Paul Green, a senior research scientist at the University of Michigan Transportation Research Institute.
He further reported Green as saying studies show drivers have a tendency to take their eyes off the road even with a voice-activated computer. Greens views were echoed in other papers, one by another University of Michigan scientist, Barry Kantowitz, and by four researchers from the University of Iowa.
According to Sealey, the Ford Motor Co. announced plans for a $10 million laboratory at its research facility in Dearborn, Mich. to study how much data drivers could safely digest while behind the wheel. A government lab studying driver distraction was also to open at the University of Iowa.
Konrad reported that Ford's Virtual Test Track Experiment (Virttex) in Dearborn is the first automotive lab to feature a driving simulator that tracks drivers' eye movements while using onboard gadgets. At the same time the driver tries to maneuver curves on simulated highways. She said Ford plans to release test results later this year.
But how much more research is really needed? Doesn't our own experience tell us that it is difficult to keep focused on two things at once? Until researchers can come up with a car that can drive itself, ignoring the safety hazards of some of this technology is negligent?
On top of the safety issue, there is also the added issue of privacy. Although the Global Positioning System (GPS) technology offers the safety feature of knowing where you are at all times, records are being created that tell where you've been, where you are and where you're going.
Cameron Crouch reported for PC World in April, "Advertisers are eager to take advantage of location services to alert you when you pass near a store that might be of interest. They call it the tactic mobile commerce or "m-commerce."
Konrad wrote, "OnStar is actively researching text-to-speech software from small technology companies as the division aims to push location- based commercials from banks, gasoline stations, movie theaters and retailers to drivers. So-called push ads, beamed via a wireless network and overriding a driver's stereo system, are becoming part of OnStar's "Virtual Adviser" -an automated, cellular- based concierge service offered as an option on most GM vehicles since January."
Crouch interviewed Alan Davidson, associate director of the Center for Democracy and Technology who was quoted as saying, '"Location services monitor movement and habits, something many consumers may not want known.... If a carrier collects information, somebody will want to use it for litigation or an Investigation ...While the Fourth Amendment protects individuals, the rules are very different for third party companies that collect information."
Crouch also interviewed HP Lin, president and chief executive officer of Televigation who said the location data would be destroyed after one day to prevent third party requests.
Aside from the privacy issue the technology does offer some positive safety benefits for drivers. Eric Young of the Industry Standard reported in April that telematics makes it possible for Cadillac Seville drivers who subscribe to the OnStar service to get directions by pressing a blue button on their rearview mirrors. A button with a red cross on it calls for a tow truck. Sealey reported that OnStar offers roadside assistance, stolen- vehicle tracking and routing services to 1 million subscribers.
According to Crouch the On Star and Televigation's Navigation service not only provide directions as you drive but other services include location tracking once your airbag has been deployed, and the remote unlocking of doors.
Derene reported that if "an OnStar- equipped car is reported stolen, its doors can be locked or unlocked remotely, its location can be reported to police, and an agent can even cut off the car's engine." He further reported that GM had integrated OnStar into 32 of its 54 models for 2001. Toyota was to use OnStar in its Lexus-division LS430, and the Acura unit of Honda was to have OnStar on its 2002 RLs.
According to Young, in the event of an accident, ATX Technologies, which is working with Mercedes -Benz and Ford's Lincoln and Jaguar lines, provides a system that automatically notifies a call center to send help.
He further reported that according to analysts, by 2004 buyers could be looking at cars that automatically transmit diagnostic information to dealers, who then can schedule maintenance.
Dan Neel of InfoWorld reported in January that at the 2001 International Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas, Chet Huber, the president of OnStar, said GM had begun engineering all of its cars to eventually have OnStar technology "organically embedded" in nearly every part of the vehicle.
He quoted Huber as saying, '"If the vehicle is designed knowing that it will have [OnStar], then every time you are about to take your car in for service, the dealership hits a button and at two in the morning they download your car's computer and are ready for the car when it comes in the next day. You'll have your parts teed up before you get there... In some cases, you'll be able to download a software patch that completely eliminates the need for the service experience."'
Vehicle diagnostics is one of the features that Motorola is planning to add to its telematics services in BMW cars, Richard Shim reported for CNET in July.
He further reported that Motorola has a deal with BMW and Audi to equip their cars with telecommunications and computing capabilities including wireless communications and global positioning system (GPS) satellite tracking.
Young is quick to point out that telematics is in standard top of the line vehicles because of the annual subscription for these services that range anywhere from $199 to $399.
Neel reported that OnStar was shipping in every Cadillac and shipping in one of every four of GM's other car models.
Writing for ABCNEWS in April, Andrew Seybold, said that General Motors' OnStar service had expanded its offering to include many of the General Motors brands of cars. It was also providing the first year of service for free.
He further reported, however, that customers were balking at renewing their service, which cost between $120 and $240 a year, because they did not believe that safety alone was enough of a reason to pay for it.
Although consumers don't want to pay extra, they do like the safety features of telematics. In the April survey by Greenfield Online 30 percent of consumers said they would like theft deterrent systems and 22 percent would like hazard sensors installed in cars. The built-in global navigation system was also popular with consumers.
'"Telematics is too young to be thought of as a revenue generator. Customers don't really know why they need to pay for services that aren't well defined," Gartner analyst Thilo Koslowski was quoted by Shim. "Automakers shouldn't look at it as being about revenue, but rather improving the customer's experience and maintaining --if not growing --market share."'
Hyde reported, however, that automakers see telematics as a lucrative source of new income. Saul Rubin, an auto industry analyst with UBS Warburg, estimates that worldwide revenue from telematics will grow from $4.2 billion this year to $47.2 billion in 2010.
According to Seybold, "because the telematics area is seen as the next hot market it is attracting lots of other players. Recently Intel announced a set of partnerships with Microsoft, IBM and others that will bring its chip technology into the automobile. In addition all of the car companies are on board as are entertainment device vendors such as Clarion, and Visteon with their soon to be released MP3-CD player."
John Spooner reported for CNET in April that in-car computers based on Intel's chips could begin shipping as soon the second half of 2002.
According to Hyde, Delphi will soon start building an Internet capable docking port for cell phones and Palm computers.
The BBC reported in June that the UK's Trafficmaster had fitted sensors to more than 8,000 miles of major roads. The sensors collect traffic speed information for users so they can avoid traffic jams.
The firm had also installed networks in France, Italy, Benelux states and Germany. In February Trafficmaster announced the purchase of California -based Teletrac to build a US presence.
In July Oracle had formed an alliance with the telematics company Wingcast. Wingcast is a joint venture between Ford Motor and Qualcomm and is expected to outfit the 2003 model Fords with features like Internet and email access. The two companies were to establish a research facility in San Diego to develop the applications that some believe will make telematics a $42 billion industry by 2010, Ben Charny reported for CNET.
According to Ian Fried of CNET, Sun Microsystems had inked a deal with General Motors' OnStar unit earlier this year to try to make Java technology the computing standard for the automotive industry.
In other developments, Crouch reported that Airbiquity provides a Global Positioning System accessory that fits onto most Nokia phones so that users can reach a call center so they get can directions or assistance. Airbiquity was expecting to partner with AAA or JD Power Car Club. Sprint PCS and other wireless carriers were also expected to roll out similar services, he reported.
The telematics industry seems to be evolving in various directions but car manufacturers should rethink the need for things like in-car email and Internet access. Not only will these services distract drivers but they will also be redundant. With other mobile devices already supplying these services, there will be little need for motorists to have further access from their cars?
On the other hand, vehicle diagnostic services and safety features from global positioning systems will provide services that consumers won't be able to get elsewhere.
And the one thing we will all live for is the day when diagnostic tools are embedded in every car part so that owner's visits to service stations and auto mechanics will be limited. By then, it is hoped that downloading a patch from the dealer's site will do most of the work.
In the meantime, however, with winter soon approaching, most of us would just settle for a plain old remote control device that has the ability to start and warm up the car.
December 20, 2001 -- In a major development that could simultaneously affect the movie, telecommunications and Internet industries, the U.S. Justice Department is investigating and subpoenaing a mega-business venture by five major Hollywood studios to distribute films digitally directly to consumers, The Post has learned.
No public disclosure about the probe has been made. But sources said government officials have opened and are now intensifying an antitrust examination of MovieFly, the joint initiative of Sony Corp, Warner Bros. Pictures, Paramount Pictures, Universal Studios and Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer Inc.
The partnership was just announced on Aug. 16 and is to provide video-on-demand of new release movies through broadband connections.
Insiders at the studios confirmed Tuesday that the DoJ Antitrust division quietly began notifying the movie companies of the preliminary probe starting some weeks ago. But now they say some of the MovieFly participants are beginning to or are about to receive a flurry of more serious civil investigative demands (CIDs) demanding to look at documents connected with the venture.
At issue is whether the movie companies are creating a cartel in their need to finally fulfill the decades-old promise of letting consumers see recently released movies whenever and wherever they want to.
"If they can pull it off, it's a big business. But they've got to get by the government," said a source. "If the government won't let them combine as five or even four, they must fall back and revisit their whole business plan."
It appears that Movies.com, a rival venture involving the Walt Disney Co. and News Corporation's Fox unit which was announced Sept. 5, is not under investigation at this time. News Corp. owns The Post.
One reason why MovieFly may be targeted is that it is further along in development than Movies.com. Insiders said MovieFly already is expanding past high-speed Internet connections on personal computers into the cable TV universe with the goal of making its recent releases available to everybody.
Sources also disclosed that a chief executive was selected to run MovieFly six weeks ago but not publicly announced. He is Los Angeles-based James Ramo, a 25-year veteran of the delivery of entertainment and information who was CEO of Geocast Network Systems, COO of TVN Entertainment and, most notably, a primary founder and executive vice-president of DirecTV. He also is the son of Simon Ramo, the "R" in TRW who helped make the United States a missile power.
The movie companies want to increase their pay-per-view revenue from the present 50-50 split to 60 percent upwards. Unlike MovieFly, Movies.com will keep back some exclusive distribution rights on new releases. And Disney and Fox aren't planning to deal with the cable companies' current per-per-view suppliers.
Both ventures, however, aim to compete directly with Blockbuster, which is owned by Viacom, which also owns Paramount, one of the MovieFly partners.
This latest DoJ probe comes on the heels of the ongoing federal investigation into the music industry's licensing practices relating to Internet music services, MusicNet and PressPlay. MusicNet is the online music partnership formed by RealNetworks, AOL/Time-warner, EMI Group and Bertelsmann AG. PressPlay is a competing venture started by Vivendi Universal and Sony Corp.
MTV Mobile Launches on NTT DoCoMo's "i-mode" Service Today
Debut on Japan's Biggest Mobile Platform Follows Successful Launches on "EZweb" and "J-sky"
MTV is Only Music TV Brand to Offer Content on Japan's Top Three Mobile Carriers
December 18, 2001
MTV Japan will launch a new MTV Mobile content service on NTT DoCoMo, Japan's biggest mobile platform with 27 million users, starting today. Available on NTT DoCoMo's popular "i-mode" service, the debut of the MTV Mobile service follows successful launches in May on KDDI and TU-KA's "EZweb" and J-Phone's "J-sky." The launch makes MTV Japan the only music TV brand in the market with a content presence on the three top mobile platforms in Japan, the world's biggest wireless market.
"The launch of MTV Mobile on NTT DoCoMo's 'i-mode' platform, the largest in Japan, is significant because more Japanese youth access the Internet via mobile than PC," commented Nigel Robbins, President & CEO, MTV Group Japan. "As the only music TV brand with a presence on the three largest mobile platforms, MTV Japan will continue to offer young people exciting, innovative content on-air, online and through other new technologies."
Users can subscribe to MTV Mobile for 200 yen per month and have the ability to access exclusive contents such as news, playlists, MTV logos, wallpaper (designed by internationally renowned creative groups like Future Farmers, North and State Design), and voting mechanisms for MTV Japan's video request shows such as Control Freak. The launch also provides creative sponsorship opportunities that can be linked to MTV Japan's on-air and online content.
Other features on MTV Mobile include a database with information about popular signature MTV shows and events such as MTV Unplugged and the MTV Video Music Awards, a forum for users to offer their opinions on a variety of topics including the latest music releases, and video streaming of artist spots and promotional idents. NTT DoCoMo "i-mode" users can exclusively access a feature that offers information about the popular MTV Japan programme World Chart Express, which introduces music fans to video clips popular on other MTV channels worldwide.
MTV Mobile set records over the summer as the most accessed content within the music category on the menu lists of KDDI and TU-KA's mobile Internet platforms. Recent popular initiatives included a Backstreet Boys competition in November where the winner got to meet the popular band during their Japanese tour as well as a promotion surrounding the newly opened Tommy Girl shop in Tokyo by Tommy Hilfiger. The multi-platform (TV, Web and mobile) one week promotion offered consumers the chance to win a t-shirt via mtvjapan.com and MTV Mobile as well as by visiting the Tommy Girl shop.
All MTV channels worldwide seek interaction with young people across multiple media platforms with content strands seen on PC broadband, interactive TV, the World Wide Web, mobile phones, pagers, personal digital assistants, and more. Last month, MTV Networks Europe announced the launch of a branded MTV Mobile content delivery service for the first time in Europe in partnership with content wireless applications service provider Distefora Mobile. The pan-European service utilises popular SMS (short message system) technology to cohesively link TV, online and mobile content through MTV's network of 14 localised TV channels and nine Web sites in Europe. Offering SMS voting for video requests, teletext chat, competitions, news, trivia and picture messaging related to MTV, the easy to use service is also the first to operate using a short code (2MTV or 2688) to access content instead of a traditional telephone number. Each localised MTV Web site will have dedicated MTV Mobile pages where users can access quizzes, games and find out what else is on offer in each market in local languages. The company plans to extend content delivery via SMS to its other popular European brands, including VH1, Nickelodeon, TMF (The Music Factory) and KinderNet, with more details to be announced soon.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
MP-Kaiser-----Korean audio player
Using TI's TMS320C54x DSP, GGKaiser has developed the
"MP-Kaiser," a multi-format digital audio player that features wireless radio frequency technology allowing connectivity between the player and compatible wireless headphones, car audio and home audio. The MP-Kaiser features real-time mp3 encoding, FM-tuner and voice-recorder.
MP-KAISER is the world's best portable digital multi-format audio player which is eligible for being called "KAISER" in the crowded portable MP3 arena. This model will conquer the MP3 market.
Wireless R/F(Radio Frequency)Technology
allows for easy communication between the MP3 unit and wireless headphone, car audio and home audio through application of R/F technology(Max 30meter).
Real-time MP3 encoding Technology
"MP-KAISER" player, without using PC, offers the tool for users to llisten to near-CD-quality music through the audio receiver or CD player, which is connected to "MP-KAISER" player by cable between either the audio receiver or CD player's output terminal and "MP-KAISER" player's input terminal. When the audio receiver or CD player link up to "MP- KAISER" player properly and press the "RECORD" button , the analog audio file will be transmitted into the digital audio file without distortion. Also, "MP-KAISER" player can support real-time recording from any FM station through the built-in FM Tuner. If users want to record their favorite music from the airwaves, just press the "RECORD" button, which makes the analog signal into digital signal on the MP3 audio file and reproduces it with near-CD-quality music. There are two ways to select the recording mode either music recording (sampling rate: 44KHZ and 22KHZ) or voice recording(sampling rate: 16KHZ, 11KHZ and 8KHZ) depending on the user's need.
CD-quality music from the Internet
plays digital quality stereo audio using the anti-noise technology and surround supporting function
Ultrafast USB port connection with PC
downloads lightening fast from a USB port with a speed of just a few seconds per song (about 4MB).
Multi-format digital audio player
supports MP3,WMA,AAC and real-time MP3 encoding audio formats with TI DSP-5416 decode chip.The unit is even upgradable, so you'll be ready for future audio formats.
Convenient memory expansion
64 embedded flash memory with convenient memory expansion by using optional MultiMedia card.
Upgradable future Softwares
The unit is even upgradable, so you'll be ready for future audio formats.
http://www.ggkaiser.com/en/Specifications.html
http://www.ggkaiser.com/en/features.html
can someone send me text versions of these pdf files by PM--just the OMAP portion is fine--TIA
http://www-s.ti.com/sc/psheets/swpy001/swpy001.pdf
http://www.manufacturingsystems.com/custompub/sunspring0301.pdf
Telematics Services Ramping Up
In-car systems may hold the key to wireless revenue growth - unfortunately for carriers, they have to share with the car companies.
by Keith Dawson
CommWeb.com
12/18/01, 4:20 p.m. ET
In-car systems may hold the key to wireless revenue growth - unfortunately for carriers, they have to share with the car companies.
Telematics - the subsector of the wireless industry that deals with getting voice and data services into automobiles - is one of the hottest segments for deals and, potentially, for revenue.
In-car services have the potential to piggyback richer screen-based and location-based services than traditional handheld cellular. Systems can be more powerful, processor intensive, and graphical. They can present information on a scale that can't yet be matched with screen phones. This, in turn may present a better environment for targeted advertising, as well as subscription revenue. And paradoxically, services in cars can take advantage of the fact that the user is "captively mobile" - kids in the back seat, drivers in traffic, workers on the move. The potential is enormous.
But it's more than just potential, at least in the eyes of the automotive companies. Wingcast, for example, is a company founded by Ford and Qualcomm that's providing services to the automotive customer market. They've just made an arrangement with Verizon Wireless to deliver wireless voice and data when the Wingcast service launches next year.
The exclusive alliance with Verizon Wireless enables Wingcast to offer consumers a variety of voice-activated services, including emergency services, high-speed data, and location-based applications, which it will deliver over the Verizon Wireless network.
Wingcast's initial telematics service, including hands-free, high-speed data and voice services, will be available in certain Ford and Nissan vehicles. Under the agreement with Verizon Wireless, Wingcast will offer voice plans and service bundles exclusive to Wingcast customers.
In addition to wide network coverage, Wingcast is taking advantage of Verizon Wireless' use of digital CDMA technology to provide fast and reliable in-vehicle wireless services. In areas where the Verizon Wireless 1XRTT Express Network for data is available, Wingcast customers will have faster sustained data transmission speeds. This enables more reliable delivery of mainstream applications such as email and enterprise software, customized graphics packages, accessing company Intranet and external Internet services, commercially available information services, instant messaging, and streaming video.
"Our agreement with Wingcast provides Verizon Wireless with a whole new opportunity for incremental business in the increasingly important telematics arena," said John Stratton, Chief Marketing Officer for Verizon Wireless. "Our CDMA footprint will enable us to deliver the highest quality of voice and data services to Wingcast and its customers."
It's a reasonable supposition that over the long term, revenue per subscriber could be higher in telematics apps than in handheld wireless. (At least until the handset technology overcomes interface and screen barriers.) Telematics services are an easier sell than more dubious 3G handheld services, or WAP-based Internet browsing. For one thing, safety and security has long been a major selling point of GM's OnStar service, rather than connectivity. Packaged bundles of services that go beyond raw minutes of telephony usage will be a major attraction to customers in the next few years. In addition, the core technology can be built into the vehicle upon purchase, with the cost masked into the overall cost of the vehicle - bringing down the perceived cost to the user.
Safety and security is also the selling point for a suite of integrated voice/data services offered by WebTech Wireless and Airbiquity (under WebTech's brand). Their offerings will soon include the Quadrant System, an end-to-end vehicle location and telematics services system and the WebTech Locator, a vehicle-based wireless services gateway expected to include emergency roadside assistance, navigation, and automated crash notification for call centers and fleets.
They cite recent research from the Strategis Group that projected the private and for-hire Automated Vehicle Location market (AVL) to expand to over $1 billion in annual revenue by 2004.
That's just one subset of the larger telematics market, albeit one that's very attractive to businesses (especially in the transportation sector, where fleet management and shipment productivity are key profit drivers).
One estimate has telematics as a whole generating $42 billion by 2010; OnStar alone is reported to be in nearly two million vehicles.
Giants team for wireless Web via Java
By Stephen Shankland and Ben Charny
Staff Writers, CNET News.com
December 18, 2001, 4:45 p.m. PT
Sun Microsystems, BEA Systems, IBM and several other companies have joined a software plan that uses Java to link cell phones and servers while keeping Microsoft out of the picture.
The move, which was announced Tuesday, is the second phase of a plan that No. 1 cell phone maker Nokia began in November to standardize how cell phones and other mobile devices connect to the Internet. Many telecommunications and phone companies supported the first phase; now the plan has expanded to include all the top makers of software that runs Java programs on servers.
If the effort succeeds, programmers writing server software won't need to worry about whether the person tapping into it is using a cell phone, a handheld computer or a desktop PC.
"The consensus now is we need a single infrastructure that will be multichannel," said Eric Stahl, senior product-marketing manager at BEA Systems, the top Java server software company.
The effort is guaranteed to repel Microsoft, which shuns Java and would prefer companies to write software that works directly with Windows. If the plan succeeds, Microsoft could be hampered in its protracted efforts to extend its desktop stronghold into servers and gadgets.
But the battle is only in its initial stages. Cell phone users have shown little interest thus far in using their phones to connect to the Internet.
Microsoft representatives weren't available for comment Tuesday.
The group plans to expand the capabilities of Java 2 Enterprise Edition (J2EE), the software many servers use to run Internet applications such as e-commerce "shopping carts." The idea is to assemble some of the existing standards that mobile devices use for communication and presenting information and then make sure J2EE servers use those standards, Stahl said.
The alliance hasn't yet announced which standards will be supported in J2EE, but candidates include XHTML for displaying Web pages on small wireless devices, SyncML for synchronizing information between mobile devices and other computing equipment, and version 2.0 of the Wireless Application Protocol (WAP) to tap into Internet services. Most significant, perhaps, is support for Multimedia Messaging Service (MMS), which carriers hope will mean new revenue as people send video messages or e-mail documents with cell phones.
The J2EE extension needs a standard for authenticating people's digital identity, and the Liberty Alliance Project is a leading contender, Stahl said.
J2EE runs on numerous servers, from multimillion-dollar IBM mainframes and Sun Unix servers to comparatively inexpensive Intel servers running Microsoft Windows. Theoretically, programs written for J2EE can run on any of these systems without having to be changed.
Pressuring Microsoft
Tuesday's move doesn't outflank Microsoft's .Net initiative, but it does apply some pressure. Sun's Java has become an established way to run software on servers, but Microsoft leapfrogged Sun with its Web services plan. Sun and its allies now are trying to catch up, building full support for Web services standards into the next edition of J2EE, version 1.4.
But Tuesday's move indicates that the Java camp has retaken some of the initiative. And with all the biggest J2EE application server companies on board--BEA, IBM, Hewlett-Packard, Sun, Borland and Oracle--the challenge will be in establishing and implementing the new standard, not in making sure the right partners are involved.
The allies hope the new wireless standard will be incorporated into the next big version of J2EE, 1.4, said Rich Green, general manager of Sun's Java software group. The main focus for 1.4 thus far has been incorporating Web services standards, and 1.4 is due out in late 2002 or early 2003, he said.
Tuesday's effort will help to blur the line between different computing devices, especially as cell phones get more processing horsepower and high-speed "broadband" connections gradually become available for wireless Internet connections.
"There are new classes of devices, ones in which the question of whether it should be wireless or wireline is irrelevant," said Jon Prial, IBM vice president of marketing and strategy. "Today what people are focused on is phones, but tomorrow it will be phones connected to a broadband Internet connection."
The companies also hope the alliance's project will diminish the hurdles imposed by today's world of multiple standards, Stahl said.
American wireless carriers AT&T Wireless and Cingular Wireless and Japan's NTT DoCoMo and Vodafone, which is the largest carrier in Europe, are all part of the initiative, according to a Nokia representative.
All these carriers use a cell phone network based on a standard called GSM, or global system for mobile communications. About 75 percent of the world's carriers use GSM. Another phone standard, called code division multiple access or CDMA, is used in about 15 percent to 20 percent of the world's phone networks.
The initiative is focusing on GSM carriers for now, Stahl said, but he didn't rule out participation by CDMA carriers, such as SK Telecom in South Korea.
Some of the standards the initiative is working on are just now being embraced by the industry. Multimedia messaging services are still at least a year off, but carriers have already debuted Java phones.
Nextel Communications already offers Java phones to U.S. customers. Sprint intends to introduce Java phones by the end of next year.
AT&T Wireless is investigating whether to offer phones that use Java, with an eye on possibly introducing a service within the next couple of years, spokesman Ritch Blasi said.
Nokia has also made a heavy commitment to Java. It plans to manufacture 100 million Java phones next year, for example, said Nokia spokesman Keith Nowak.
Nokia's first U.S. based Java phone, the Nokia 9290 Communicator, is due in spring 2002. The phone is also the first combination personal digital assistant and cell phone created by Nokia. A version of the phone is already on sale in Europe.
Nowak said that cell phone users in Europe and Asia will likely be the first to see new Nokia products that result from the initiative. The company plans to introduce its new video phone, the Nokia 7650, by June 2002 on those continents.
"Ít makes sense right now to move in this direction," he said.
Sharp Microelectronics Ships High Performance, 200-MHz System-on-Chip with ARM® Core for Multimedia Applications
CAMAS, Wash., Dec. 12, 2001 – Sharp Microelectronics of the Americas (SMA), a U.S.-based company and a division of Sharp Electronics Corporation, today announced that it has shipped beta customers the LH7A400, a 200-MHz System-on-Chip (SoC) with ARM922T™ core, offering high performance at the lowest power consumption available.
Beta customers span a wide range of applications: Wireless Handheld Gaming Devices, SmartPhones, PocketPCs, Home Entertainment Controllers and Industrial Web-Tablets & Point-Of-Sale Devices.
The LH7A400 is the second in a family of highly integrated SoCs to be shipped out of the Camas, Wash. facility since it was designated Sharp’s North American Design Center for microcontrollers (MCU) and SoC components earlier this year.
"The LH7A400 is targeted at today’s Internet and Multimedia-centric applications," said Terry Thomas, SMA’s director of marketing for Microcontroller and SoC. "Offering the performance of 200-MHz with high integration and functionality coupled with low power consumption and world-class development tools, the LH7A400 allows designers to lower system costs, shorten development cycles and bring their product to market sooner."
Customers require multimedia devices to be fast and loaded with features. Yet they also expect them to be affordable and have a long battery life. The LH7A400 provides the right balance between performance/feature and cost/power consumption.
To provide high performance, the LH7A400 integrates a 200MHz ARM922T core (ARM9TDMI™, 8KB Instruction Cache, 8KB Data Cache, MMU, Write-Back Buffer) with a processing speed of about 220 Million Instructions Per Second (MIPS). The 80KB of on-chip frame buffer allows a 160x240 16-bit image to reside on-chip reducing power consumption and optimizing system bandwidth. System bandwidth is further optimized by the on-chip 10-channel DMA engine.
To provide high integration and reduce cost, the LH7A400 integrates a host of functionality to lower total chip count. The programmable LCD controller supports up to 1024x768 resolution, up to 64,000 colors and 15 gray shades allowing direct interface to STN, Color STN, TFT, Sharp’s Highly Reflective & Advanced TFT. For storage and expandability, The LH7A400 provides glue-less interface to SRAM/SDRAM/Flash devices, MMC, PCMCIA/CF and Smart Cards. For communication, the LH7A400 provides serial as well as parallel interfaces (USB, UARTs, Synchronous Interfaces, and AC’97 Codec Interface). The LH7A400 has also a special Watchdog timer to protect the overall system.
To reduce power consumption and increase battery life, the LH7A400 balances performance (200 MHz) with very low leakage current (25uA). This is accomplished by a programmable on-chip PLL and a flexible power management unit that provides the system designer total control over the activities of each function on the LH7A400.
Inclusive Development and Debugging Support
LH7A400 customers will be able to draw from the extensive array of software development tool kits available for the ARM9TDMI™ from Advanced RISC Machines (ARM) Ltd. and many third party sources, and use Sharp’s own hardware development tool kit and evaluation board for prototyping and expediting applications development. Designers can plug in their custom hardware, experiment with different kinds of memory, and evaluate the chip’s performance quickly without having to make their own boards.
Sharp’s recent announcement of a strategic relationship with Lineo for embedded Linux® support will soon be followed with additional support for operating systems such as Microsoft’s Windows CE 3.0 and Windows CE .NET operating systems.
Price and Availability
The LH7A400 will be priced under $24 in 10,000 units with production scheduled for Q2, 2002.
About Sharp Microelectronics of the Americas
Sharp Microelectronics of the Americas (SMA), Camas, Washington, is a U.S.-based company and a division of Sharp Electronics Corporation which is a subsidiary of Sharp Corporation, Osaka, Japan. Sharp is a worldwide developer of core digital technologies that are playing an integral role in shaping the next generation of electronic products for consumer and business needs. SMA offers breakthrough memory, LCD, opto, CCD, RF/IR, microcomputer and system-on-chip components, along with packaging and integration skills that help design engineers throughout North and South America bring their ambitious ideas to market. SMA is dedicated to improving people’s lives through the use of advanced technology and a commitment to innovation, quality, value and design.
Note: All trademarks and registered trademarks are the property of their respective owners. ARM9TDMI™, ARM 922T are trademarks of Advanced RISC Machines (ARM) Ltd.
###
A Call to End Copyright Confusion
By Declan McCullagh and Ben Polen
2:00 a.m. Dec. 18, 2001 PST
WASHINGTON -- Jack Valenti predicts that Congress will require copy-protection controls in nearly all consumer electronic devices and PCs.
The lobbyist nonpareil for the Motion Picture Association of America delivered a stark warning to technology firms on Monday: Move quickly to choose standards for wrapping digital content in uncopyable layers of encryption or the federal government will do it for you.
"If we don't sit down and talk, others will do this for us," Valenti said, in a not-so-veiled reference to his allies on Capitol Hill. "Unless you put a marker down for a deadline, nothing gets done."
Valenti's remarks came during a one-day workshop titled "Understanding Broadband Demand: Digital Content and Rights Management." Organized by the U.S. Commerce Department, it was designed to ask whether some form of digital rights management is required before more broadband content appears online.
Hanging over the event was the specter of federal legislation to embed digital rights management in any "interactive digital device," from personal computers to wristwatches. Sen. Fritz Hollings (D-South Carolina) has circulated drafts of his bill, the Security Systems Standards and Certification Act (SSSCA), which is on hold until Congress is done with spending measures and work related to Sept. 11.
Now it may be set to move forward early next year. "I think Senator Hollings and Congressman (Billy) Tauzin do believe in deadlines if we delay in getting things done. If they want to move in, they will," Valenti warned.
His remarks drew applause from the Walt Disney Company, one of the MPAA's member companies and an unabashed fan of Hollings' SSSCA approach.
"I am openly, unabashedly in support of the government stepping in to set standards," said Preston Padden, head of government relations for Disney.
Rhett Dawson, president of the Information Technology Industry Council, said: "I don't think that's a healthy way to do business. We need to look at how these things do on technical standards.... What I don't want to do is start down a path where we're not relying on technical merit, where the threat of legislation is motivating us."
The bill drafted by Hollings, the powerful chairman of the Senate Commerce Committee, represents the next round of the ongoing legal tussle between content holders and their opponents, including librarians, programmers and open-source advocates.
Hollywood executives fret that without strong copy protection in widespread use, digital versions of movies will be pirated as readily as MP3 audio files once were with Napster. With the SSSCA enacted, the thinking goes, U.S. technology firms will have no choice but to insert copy-protection technology in future products.
The SSSCA draft says that it is unlawful to create, sell or distribute "any interactive digital device that does not include and utilize certified security technologies" that are approved by the U.S. Commerce Department. An interactive digital device is defined as any hardware or software capable of "storing, retrieving, processing, performing, transmitting, receiving or copying information in digital form."
It also creates new federal felonies, punishable by five years in prison and fines of up to $500,000. Anyone who distributes copyrighted material with "security measures" disabled or has a network-attached computer that disables copy protection would be covered.
Academics and free-speech groups such as the Electronic Frontier Foundation have savaged the SSSCA. The EFF even has a sample letter to send Congress that argues it will stifle technology and thwart fair use rights.
Disney's Padden wasn't buying it. "There is no right to fair use," Padden said at the event. "Fair use is a defense against infringement."
A Bush administration official suggested that a government standard would be better than one adopted by the private sector. Bruce Mehlman, assistant secretary for technology policy at the Commerce Department, seemed to like the SSSCA: "The irony is if government builds the technical standard, it might include bigger fair use (rights) that the private owners wouldn't build in."
For its part, Microsoft doesn't seem to be a huge fan of Hollings' approach.
Andy Moss, director of technology policy at Microsoft, said the "Marketplace should answer this.... Where's the evidence the marketplace doesn't work?"
The SSSCA and existing law work hand-in-hand to steer the market toward using only computer systems where copy protection is enabled. First, the 1998 Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) created the legal framework that punished people who bypassed copy protection -- and now, the SSSCA is intended to compel Americans to buy only systems with copy protection on by default.
Last week, the first person prosecuted under the DMCA, Russian programmer Dmitri Sklyarov, was allowed to return home under court supervision.
Nokia introduces a new entertainment category for mobile phones
(October 11, 2001)
The Nokia 5510 is a music player, FM radio, messaging machine, games platform and phone - all in one
Nokia today unveiled a new entertainment category in its product portfolio with the Nokia 5510 phone. The Nokia 5510 is a device designed specifically for mobile entertainment, featuring a digital music player, stereo FM radio, games, and advanced messaging capabilities. Shipments are scheduled to begin in the 4th quarter, 2001.
"Every now and then it is crucial that you turn your thinking around. This time we took a phone, turned it sideways, added a full keyboard, music, and some fun! This new concept reflects not only a change in our perspective, but also a more fundamental transition that our industry is going through. Phones are no longer only voice and sms driven, but are increasingly functioning as platforms for other services, such as entertainment. With this phone, we're introducing a new category of devices functioning as integrated entertainment platforms, which are complemented by related relevant services from Club Nokia," said Anssi Vanjoki, Executive Vice President, Nokia Mobile Phones.
The Nokia 5510 has an integrated digital music player for AAC (Advanced Audio Coding) & MP3 (MPEG-1 Audio Layer lll) music files. Users can record their favorite music with the integrated digital music recorder and store up to 2 hours of music in the phone's 64 MB memory. The Nokia Audio Manager PC software and connectivity cable provided in the sales package enable users to rip music files from their own CDs and download them to the Nokia 5510. Users can listen to music either on the music player or the FM radio and simultaneously play games.
Featuring a full keyboard, the new entertainment phone is also the perfect device for messaging, incorporating multiple chat, multiple SMS sending, and the ability to send longer text messages with SMS concatenation. Faster typing and convenient use of WAP email is also made possible by the full keyboard. Other messaging features include the sending of templates, smileys, and picture messages.
The device conveniently functions as a games platform with game controls for two hands and keys located on either side of the screen. It comes with five embedded games: Bumper, Space Impact, Snake ll, Pairs ll, and Bantumi.
The games and entertainment dimensions of this device are further enhanced by services available from Club Nokia. Members of Club Nokia can download animated screensavers as well as new and more challenging game levels via WAP. Members can also compete with other players by sending in their high scores to Club Nokia.
Features of the Nokia 5510 include:
- a WAP 1.1 browser for mobile access to the Internet
- a 64 MB memory to store up to 2 hours of music
- the ability to create music libraries and play lists with the Nokia Audio Manager software
- automatic radio channel search
- the ability to answer and end phone calls with the stereo headset (HDD-2) while listening to music
- capacity to store up to 10 preset radio stations in the phone memory
- dedicated shortcut keys for fast access to music player and radio menus
- capacity for up to 42 ring tones
- voice dial for 8 names for quick and convenient voice activated phonecalls.
- talktime: 2h 30min - 4h 30min
- standby time: 55-260h
- a 950 Li-lon battery with standard charger: 3h 45min charging time
Club Nokia is an on-line community and loyalty program for Nokia phone owners. Today, it offers exclusive services to owners of Nokia mobile phones in Europe, the Middle East, Africa, and Asia-Pacific. The Club Nokia web and wap services can be accessed once the Nokia phone is registered with Club Nokia. In the near future Club Nokia services will be available to Nokia phone owners globally.
Nokia is the world leader in mobile communications. Backed by its experience, innovation, user-friendliness and secure solutions, the company has become the leading supplier of mobile phones and a leading supplier of mobile, fixed and IP networks. By adding mobility to the Internet Nokia creates new opportunities for companies and further enriches the daily lives of people. Nokia is a broadly held company with listings on six major exchanges.
Further information:
Nokia Mobile Phones
Communications
Tel: +358 7180 08000
www.nokia.com
NEWS! e.Digital to have a booth at 2002 CES! courtesy of silversurfer100
Go to this link and type in e.Digital. This is HUGE exposure for us.
http://www.cesweb.org/exhibitor_dir/exhibitor_name.asp?menuItem=2&subMenuItem=0&tabName=Atte...
e.digital CES Booth info
e.Digital
13114 Evening Creek Dr. South
San Diego, CA 92128
USA
Telephone: 858 679 1504
Fax: 858 748 6894
E-mail: steve@edig.com
Company Booths: Booth Number Venue Area
13338 LVCC So. 3-4
D-Link Launches Roq-it Jukebox With 10 GB HD on Board
- 10GB Jukebox Storage Capacity - ID3 Tag Support - Large Blue Backlit LCD Display - USB Interface - M3U Playlist Support
IRVINE, Calif., Dec. 13 /PRNewswire/ -- D-Link, an award winning designer, developer and manufacturer of networking, communications and digital electronic technologies, today launched its new D-Link Roq-it MP3 Jukebox (Model DMP-HD610). The D-Link Roq-it is a powerful portable hard drive-based MP3 Jukebox featuring a 10 Gigabyte (GB) hard drive that can store over 150 hours of non-stop music and a large, easy to read blue back-lit LCD screen that displays song title, album name, genre and other track information contained in each MP3 file's ID3 Tag.
(Photo: http://www.newscom.com/cgi-bin/prnh/20010327/DLINKLOGO )
``This Roq-it hard drive model really delivers the payload,'' said Steven Joe President of D-Link. ``It is an ideal gift for Christmas with room for over 2,500 MP3 files, an affordable price and both Windows and Mac compatibility. The Roq-it allows users to easily transport an entire library of digital quality music with them anywhere.''
The Roq-it delivers breakthrough digital quality stereo MP3 playback. Plug and Play software drivers combined with the USB interface ensures a fast and easy installation of the MP3 Jukebox. When connected through the USB interface, the Roq-it will show up as a new drive letter to allow a user to employ drag and drop functionality from a PC or Mac to copy music to the Roq-it. It is compatible with MP3 (MPEG 1 Audio Layer 3) standards, which provides audio compression specifications.
The D-Link Roq-it has all of the programming modes that are standard on portable CD and MP3 players including: Repeat, Repeat All, Program, Random and Random All. In addition, the D-Link Roq-it 10 GB Jukebox has preset equalizer modes for Jazz, Rock, Pop and Classic and showcases a user-definable preset equalizer mode that allows users to adjust the sound of the Roq-it to their particular taste.
Up, Down, Left and Right buttons on the face of the Roq-it control navigation to a particular song or album. The Key-pad Lock feature disables the use of all buttons so that the user cannot accidentally change any function. Further flexibility is added to the Roq-it with the included infrared remote control for ease of use from a distance. The Roq-it 10 GB provides an audio jack for connection to earphones or playing through speakers. A Line-Out stereo jack is also provided that enables the connection to an external audio input.
With 10 GB of hard drive capacity, the D-Link Roq-it provides up to 150 hours of digital-quality music and other recordings using the popular MP3 standard. In addition, Roq-it 10 GB can also double as a portable external hard drive so that users can copy any file (such as word processing documents, spreadsheets, presentations, graphics) to the Roq-it Jukebox in the same manner as a floppy disk. The hard drive compartment can be opened easily to replace the hard drive with separate 2.5`` hard drives. The capacity of the hard drive is limited only to the capacity of 2.5'' laptop hard drives available. The Roq-it 10 GB's USB interface allows for a full 800 KB of bandwidth to deliver music file transfers at blazing speeds.
Five minutes of Electronic Shock Protection (ESP) is supplied by 2 Megabytes of DRAM buffer to ensure constant playing without skipping. The included Lithium-Ion Rechargeable battery will give users up to eight hours of listening enjoyment and the provided AC Power Adapter also functions as a battery charger. The Roq-it 10 GB is usable out of the box with included headphones, shoulder strap, carrying case and USB cable for a complete Digital Audio Package. The D-Link Roq-it is compatible with Windows XP, Windows 2000, Windows Me, Windows 98SE, Windows 98, and Mac OS 9 and above.
Price and Availability
The D-Link Roq-it 10 GB MP3 Jukebox (DMP-HD610) is available now through authorized retail, reseller, and distribution partners at a Manufacturer's Suggested Retail Price ESP of $209. The Roq-it 10 GB MP3 Jukebox comes with a 1 Year Warranty and absolutely FREE Technical Support including firmware updates.
True Networking Pioneer and Hardware Manufacturing Since 1986
D-Link is an award winning designer, developer, and manufacturer of networking, broadband, digital electronics, Voice and data communications solutions for the digital home, Small Office/Home Office (SOHO), Small to Medium Business (SMB), and Workgroup to Enterprise environments.
The Company has increased its world-class production capacity to more than 1,000,000 square feet of manufacturing space in six state-of-the-art facilities in four countries -- Taiwan, China, India, and the United States. With ISO 9001, 9002, ISO 14001 Certifications and National Technical Excellence awards for R&D and manufacturing, D-Link delivers product excellence, quality, reliability, compatibility, high-performance within standards, and easy installation software, educational materials, and manuals.
With millions of Ethernet adapters and millions of hub and switch ports manufactured and shipped, D-Link is a dominant market participant and price/performance leader in the network and communications market. The company sells its products through a wide range of resellers, distributors, VARs, System Integrators, e-commerce & e-tailers, Internet service providers, and retailers. D-Link has been profitable every year since its inception in 1986, and continues to grow at a rate that will allow the Company to experience continued prosperity. D-Link sets the standards for market affordability, while focusing on ``Building Networks For People.''
D-Link U.S.A., Canadian, and Latin American headquarters are located at 53 Discovery, Irvine, CA, 92618. Phone (800) 326-1688 or (949) 788-0805; FAX (949) 753-7033; Internet www.dlink.com.
SOURCE: D-Link
Seeking the Perfect Harmony in Portable MP3 Players
By JON HEALEY, TIMES STAFF WRITER
How much music is enough?
Portable MP3 players offer consumers an array of options for storing songs--from cheap players with 30 minutes of solid-state memory to $300 or $400 devices with built-in hard drives. In between are a variety of players that use removable discs, as well as tiny but pricey units packed with memory chips.
If it's purely a bucks-per-megabyte issue, you can't beat a hard-drive-equipped player. But a recent test of nine portable devices found selling points for all the different types--as well as a few good reasons not to buy them. Make no mistake, storage capacity matters. But so does having good software, amplifiers and controls.
One thing that doesn't really matter is the quality of the headphones. Sure, it's a plus to get a pair that sounds good and stays on when you're jogging. But if a good set isn't included, it's easy to find a replacement for $25 or less.
An MP3 file is a compressed version of a song on a CD. Creating MP3s is simple: Just put a CD in your computer, launch a "jukebox" program such as MusicMatch Jukebox, Apple's iTunes or RealNetworks' RealOne, select the recording quality, then copy the songs onto your computer as MP3s.
Two alternatives to MP3 are Microsoft's WMA files, the only format recorded by Microsoft's free Windows Media Player, and AAC, the format recorded by Liquid Audio's Liquid Player. Both deliver superior sound in smaller files, but they're not supported by every MP3 player.
Although today's computers can store enormous libraries of MP3s, most people don't want to confine their music to one spot. That's where the portable players come in. The typical player connects to a computer's Universal Serial Bus and copies selected MP3 files, often with the help of custom music-management software.
Hard drive-based players
An MP3 player with a built-in hard drive probably has enough room to copy all the music on your computer--and conceivably all the music you own.
The trade-off is that such players tend to be bulkier and harder to navigate. That's because their postage-stamp-size displays can list only a few titles at a time, but their drives can store hundreds of albums and thousands of tunes.
Creative Labs offered the first hard drive player a little more than a year ago, and competitors have been creeping into the field ever since. The most notable is Apple's expensive but stylish iPod, which works only with certain Apple computers.
San Diego-based e.Digital Corp. just jumped into the fray with the palm-size Treo 10, which boasts a 10-gigabyte hard drive--enough to store about 3,000 songs, or 150 hours of near-CD-quality music. That's twice the capacity of an iPod, but about half the price: $249.
MP3 and Windows Media files load quickly and easily onto the Treo using e.Digital's music management software, and it's a breeze to navigate through the Treo's on-screen directory of songs while music plays.
And when it comes to volume, the Treo rocks. It was easily the loudest of the units tested, and it offered the widest range of volume settings.
The main drawback was a persistent hiss, particularly noticeable at low volumes or when the backlight was on. Beyond that, there's no way to reorganize songs or create playlists on the Treo--a major shortcoming on a player built to carry thousands of songs. Instead, the unit simply offers a number of ways to vary the order of songs played.
Weighing nearly 10 ounces, the Treo's also a bit heavy to run with. A lighter offering from e.Digital is the 4.9-ounce MXP 100, which stores music on IBM's tiny removable hard drives. The capacity ranges from 340 megabyte for about $300 to 1 gigabyte for about $400, providing room for 5those to 16those hours of music.
The MXP 100 shares the Treo's sonic and software strengths and weaknesses, including the persistent hiss and the rubber cap that doesn't stay capped over the AC adapter socket. The most notable difference is in the navigation controls and software, which are much less intuitive. Once you master their peculiarities, though, it's easy to scroll through song and album titles while a tune is playing.
One odd feature is the ability to use voice commands to select and start playing songs. The feature works only when the music is stopped, however, so you can't use it to flip quickly from song to song.
Both e.Digital players require special software to communicate with a computer, and no Mac version is available.
CD-based players
Another approach to providing large quantities of portable music is a CD player that can handle MP3 discs. It's cheap and efficient--blank CDs cost less than 50 cents each, and a single disc can hold more than 12 hours of music.
Like any portable CD player, the MP3 CD units tend to be clamshell-shaped devices too large to fit in a pocket. They're also heavier and tend to skip more than solid-state MP3 players.
To appreciate an MP3 CD player, you'll need a CD recorder. Then you'll need to burn some CDs with MP3 files. CD-RW drives typically come with the software necessary to copy MP3 files onto a blank disc, as do the latest versions of MusicMatch Jukebox and RealOne.
Sonicblue introduced the RioVolt MP3 CD player early this year, and it recently offered a stripped-down version for just under $100. And Philips just brought out a pocket-size MP3 CD player for $180 that uses 3-inch discs instead of the usual 5-inch variety.
The chief selling point for both is that they sound great, although Philips' high-fi earpieces have trouble staying in a moving ear. Both players also enable users to program a custom playlist in addition to offering multiple ways to shuffle the lineup of songs automatically.
The RioVolt SP90 is woefully short on accessories, such as an AC adapter, and it can't resume a disc at the point you stopped listening to it--an irritating lapse. It's also more susceptible than the Philips to skip when subjected to sustained jarring, as on a treadmill.
On the plus side, it's particularly easy to navigate through a disc's contents while playing songs. The player also can read both MP3 and WMA files as well as play conventional CDs.
The well-designed Philips exp401 features simple, intuitive controls. But it's a good thing the player uses smaller discs because it goes through batteries at a torrid clip.
A 3-inch CD holds about one-fifth as much music as a regular CD--164 MB, or about 2those hours of music--and the exp401's single AA battery lasts as little as three hours.
The unit's main drawback may be its inability to display song titles, artist names or other information beyond track number and elapsed time. Some users may also disagree with Philips' choice for a second format to support besides MP3: AAC, a superb-sounding but uncommon format used by Liquid Audio.
A third type of removable disc is the MiniDisc, a format Sony introduced years ago as a digital alternative to cassette tapes. Although it's popular in Europe and Asia, MiniDisc hasn't posed much of a challenge to cassettes and CDs in the U.S., in part because the units are comparatively expensive.
Sony's MD Walkman MZ-R900DPC ($350), a dense metal square the size of a lemon bar, feels solid, sounds clear and beefy, and can take a steady pounding without skipping. But it proved to be mystifyingly complex and hard to use, seeming more like a product from Microsoft Corp. than Sony.
It also was incapable of reading the artist and title tags in song files, forcing users to enter that information themselves or do without it. Worst of all, it recorded songs in real time, taking about 2those hours to fill a disc with 160 minutes of music.
Sony has promised a new line of MiniDisc devices, called the NetMD, which will copy song files from a PC instead of recording them as they play. That should provide song titles and speed up transfers somewhat. However, Sony's use of its own format, ATRAC3, means MP3 files must be converted before being copied.
Flash memory-based players
The lightest, smallest and most shock-proof MP3 players rely on flash memory, a solid-state form of storage. After connecting their player to their computer, users copy MP3s onto the player's built-in flash-memory chip or, in some cases, an expansion memory card the size of a Wheat Thin.
With the price of flash plummeting, consumers no longer have to pay $250 to $300 for 64 MB of storage, the minimum needed for a full hour of near-CD-quality music. In fact, you can pick up a player with 32 MB of built-in storage and a removable card with 64 MB of flash for less than half that price.
Sonicblue recently updated its venerable 32 MB Rio 300 player with a USB connection, renamed it the Rio One and put it on the market for less than $100. The size of a deck of cards, it's light, brain-dead simple to use and capable of head-thumping volume.
The volume helps to hide a low hum that the Rio One emits. Other annoyances include the unit's inability to display song and artist information, create playlists, resume at its last stopping point or scroll through its contents while music is playing. Nor does Sonicblue include accessories with the player, which works with either a Windows PC or a Mac.
Smaller but more expensive, Samsung's $170 Yepp YP30S is a matchbox-size player with 64 MB of internal storage that can't be expanded. It's incredibly light, yet its sound is loud and clean. The player's settings also can be adjusted in numerous useful ways, such as changing how long it takes the song and artist information to scroll across the screen.
Samsung's easy-to-use PC software enables speedy transfers of songs to the Yepp, and it automatically converts WMA files to MP3s (the only format the Yepp supports).
On the minus side, the tiny controls can be hard to use on the run, the unit can't make playlists, changing EQ and playback settings is laborious, and you can't scroll through the Yepp's contents while music is playing.
The Yepp's display is small, but at least it has one. No such luck with the $230 Digisette Duo64, a Windows-compatible MP3 player the shape of a cassette tape.
The lack of a display means there's a lot of guesswork involved when playing music on the Duo64. Digisette also offers little flexibility beyond the alternative EQ settings--for example, files can be played only in the order they're put onto the device's built-in 64 MB storage or optional 64 MB SmartMedia cards. Nor does the Duo64 crank out a lot of volume.
On the other hand, the Duo64 works in any tape player, enabling owners to enjoy their MP3 or WMA files in their living room cassette decks, boom boxes and car stereos. The device also has a solid feel, comes with extra rechargeable batteries and car recharger, and supports Audible audio books and recorded news.
Striking a balance between girth and capacity, the pager-size BA350 from Bantam Interactive has 128 MB of built-in storage and an expansion slot for more. The unit's display is first-rate, as is the accompanying music-management program for Windows PCs, and its built-in rechargeable battery lasts as long as 12 hours.
Bantam also throws in an array of accessories, including a rainbow of colored faceplates and an adapter for car cassette decks.
Unfortunately, users can't create playlists or scroll through the BA350's contents while music is playing. The buttons tend to be finicky, too, making it harder than it should be to start, stop and skip songs. Future versions should be better on that score, as Bantam says it's modifying the controls to make them easier to use.
*
Jon Healey covers the convergence of entertainment and technology. He can be reached at jon.healey
*
(Begin text of infobox)
*
e.Digital Treo 10
Price: $249
Capacity: 10 GB
The good: Holds more than 150 hours of music; powerful sound
The bad: Noisy and heavy; can't program song order
Bottom line: Relatively low-cost, no-frills way to lug around your collection
e.Digital MXP 100
Price: $299 to $399
Capacity: 340 MB to 1 GB
The good: Light and loud
The bad: Noisy and relatively high-priced for the capacity; nonintuitive controls
Bottom line: Audio problems may outweigh high capacity and portability
*
Sonicblue RioVolt SP90
Price: $100
Capacity: Removable CDs can hold 700 MB
The good: Excellent sound, easy navigation
The bad: Doesn't like sustained jarring; includes no accessories
Bottom line: Low-cost option for consumers with CD burners
*
Philips exp401
Price: $180
Capacity: Removable mini-CDs can hold 184 MB
The good: Excellent sound, good controls
The bad: Doesn't display song or artist information
Bottom line: Shaves a few inches, but costs more and delivers less music
*
Sony MD Walkman MZ-R900DPC
Price: $350
Capacity: Removable discs can hold about 2 1/2 hours of near-CD-quality music
The good: High fidelity; resists skipping surprisingly well for a disc player
The bad: Complex and hard to use
Bottom line: Wait for the next version, due early in 2002
*
Sonicblue Rio One
Price: $100
Capacity: 32 MB, expandable
The good: Light and loud
The bad: Noisy; little internal memory; doesn't display song or artist information
Bottom line: If your tastes run to rock 'n' roll, look for this one on sale
*
Digisette Duo64
Price: $230
Capacity: 64 MB, expandable
The good: Works with headphones or in any cassette player
The bad: No display; can't alter song order
Bottom line: Exceptional portability comes with significant trade-offs
*
Samsung YP30S
Price: $170
Capacity: 64 MB
The good: Tiny and light; good sound
The bad: Hard to control and configure on the run; can't program song order
Bottom line: Good option if you only need an hour's worth of music
*
Bantam Interactive BA350
Price: $199
Capacity: 128 MB, expandable
The good: Pocket-size with plenty of storage; long battery life; good display
The bad: Finicky buttons; can't program song order
Bottom line: Solid performer laden with accessories
For information about reprinting this article, go to http://www.lats.com/rights
Online music off to slow start
Recording industry strikes sour note with paid services
By Kim Peterson
STAFF WRITER
December 11, 2001
The drum roll that has gone on for years can finally stop.
The recording industry's long-awaited entry into online music is at last here -- long after people first began downloading tunes on Napster and other sites.
At least three new paid music services are out or will be launched in coming weeks. With them, the recording industry is attempting to establish some legitimacy in an online music world where piracy is the standard.
After all the hype surrounding the new services, few were impressed.
"It's as though the skies have thundered and the mountains have shaken and have brought forward a ridiculous mouse," said Phil Leigh, an analyst with Raymond James & Associates. "It's really just kind of a minimal move by the record industry to start offering music online."
Minimal for now, record companies say. These services could become the foundation for multimedia entertainment packages, where everything from videos to games are available to consumers -- for a fee, of course.
RealOne Music was launched last week by MusicNet, a joint venture between RealNetworks and record label owners AOL Time Warner, Bertelsmann AG, EMI Recorded Music and Zomba.
RealOne offers 100 music downloads and 100 streams for $9.95 a month, or an expanded package that includes news, sports and entertainment content for $19.95 monthly. The downloads and streams expire after 30 days but can be renewed.
Users say RealOne has some shortcomings. The songs can only be played from a computer and cannot be copied onto a compact disc or transferred to a portable music player. And there are wide gaps in available songs from some artists who presumably haven't hammered out contracts for offering music online.
Those contract negotiations could continue for some time, and some artists are reportedly requesting that their songs be removed from the services altogether.
Also, some experienced problems downloading and installing the software. "RealOne hits a flat note," said online magazine PCWorld.com after conducting tests.
MusicNet has said it is in the online business for the long haul and doesn't expect to be an immediate hit.
"We are not even worried about what the subscriber number is going to be in the first six or nine months," said Richard Wolpert, a strategic adviser to MusicNet, in a conference call. "We are worried about making this a business in the next five years."
MusicNet's chief rival, pressplay, will face the critics with its online music offering, due within weeks. The service is a joint venture between record labels Sony Music Entertainment and Universal Music Group, which is a unit of French media giant Vivendi Universal.
The venture says pressplay will be the first commercial service to allow listeners to copy music onto CDs -- a feature that could give pressplay an advantage over its competitors.
Vivendi bought San Diego-based music service MP3.com earlier this year and is using technology developed by the company to run pressplay.
Independent music labels also have a subscription service, called Rhapsody, which was launched Dec. 3. Rhapsody is owned by digital music company Listen.com, and includes Internet radio and music from nearly 50 independent labels.
The service costs $5.95 a month for songs in Rhapsody's catalog of either classical music or multigenre music, or $7.95 a month for songs from both catalogs.
All three services face major barriers to mainstream popularity, perhaps the biggest is getting people to pay for music they have been getting for free.
The recording industry was successful in pressuring music swap site Napster to shut down, but dozens of alternatives have sprung up since. People using the FastTrack file sharing network downloaded 1.8 billion files online in October -- a 20 percent increase from the month before.
The number of people using FastTrack simultaneously has probably surpassed the 1.57 million Napster had at its peak, said Matt Bailey, an analyst with media research firm Webnoize.
In a sense, the recording industry is trying to follow Napster's footsteps in revolutionizing consumer attitudes. Napster encouraged people to view music as an online commodity -- something they could find on the Internet instead of at the store.
RealOne and other subscription-based programs are trying to persuade people to view music as a service -- something they can rent by the month -- instead of something they own.
The new way of selling music is establishing a relationship rather than a one-time transaction, said Jim Griffin, chief executive of Cherry Lane Digital, a Los Angeles company focused on music and entertainment delivery.
"We don't consume music anymore," Griffin said. "That's the key to understanding the new world."
Other companies are hoping that the debut of RealOne and pressplay will help consumers accept their music subscription services.
"I think it's going to change our landscape," said Eric Briceño, chief operating officer of Ampcast.com, a Connecticut-based company that allows musicians to showcase their work. "It's going to force consumers to accept the notion that they're going to have to pay for music to get it."
The new services have by no means simplified the complex online music landscape. If anything, they are adding a host of new problems.
Record labels are worried about security, and for now are not allowing songs to be downloaded onto portable music players.
That leaves manufacturers of these devices out of the game. It could be months before MusicNet and pressplay come up with a secure way to transfer music to players, said Steve Ferguson, vice president of sales and marketing at Poway-based e.Digital, which develops music players.
"It's a frustrating time for us," Ferguson said. "We don't have much to do in terms of having any power to control anything."
The formats of songs are changing also. The recording industry is questioning the security of the MP3 format, which is a way of compressing a song into a digital file. A number of other companies, including Microsoft, are developing other formats for songs.
Music players will have to be upgraded to handle any formats that become popular -- an enormous task.
And it could be even longer before any service can offer a variety of songs comparable to what Napster alternatives boast. Record labels must renegotiate past contracts with past artists to include online broadcast of songs -- an arduous, time-consuming process.
For most people in the music industry, one thing is clear. Digital music is in its infancy, and a sophisticated product that will draw the consumer masses is a long time coming.
Griffin at Cherry Lane Digital said: "It is our first nascent step, the beginning of resolving the business."
Kim Peterson: (619) 293-2022; kim.peterson@uniontrib.com
kdhd44 $$$$
Reply To: None Tuesday, 11 Dec 2001 at 7:22 PM EST
Post # of 855760
Ok. Talked with a supervisor in Customer Support...
She said it was backordered. I asked why. She said they are selling a lot of units..not just the MXP 100 sports.
They are averaging 10 units sold per representative per day. Usually, there is 35-40 reps during normal business hours and around 20 after hours. Now is when I start sounding like LongTooth...
60 x 10 = 600 units sold per day...
7 days a week x 600 x 2 wks = 8,600 units
Now 8,600 units x 2 ( 1 month ) = 17,200 month.
By January 34,000 should be sold.
34,000 x avg $300 = $10,200,000 dollars.
Dec 11, 2001 AOL releases MusicNet beta
America Online on Tuesday joined the growing crowd of Internet music-subscription services with the release of the beta version of AOL Presents MusicNet 1.0.
The beta MusicNet service from AOL--set for an official launch in January--will cost $9.95 a month. It will include access to 100 streams and 100 downloads per month from a selection of over 78,000 songs from the catalogs of BMG Entertainment, EMI Recorded Music, Warner Music Group and Zomba Records, the company said. --Sandeep Junnarkar, Special to ZDNet News
LGJ--note that one of the last DP partners is iRiver who just came out with a multicodec player today--see my post below.
From: redjr... (nospam@newsranger.com)
Subject: Re: best way to record loud live concerts? MD or DAT?
Newsgroups: alt.audio.minidisc, alt.music.bootlegs, rec.music.phish, rec.audio.pro
View: Complete Thread (191 articles) / Original Format
Date: 2001-05-30 14:44:19 PST
I'm not sure if Sony is going to suppport the DataPlay disc format, but the
DataPlay form factor and density factor shows much promise for either extended
recording, or uncompressed recording or both. Overcoming some of the current
issues with MD's LP2 and LP4 modes. If this format takes off and is strongly
supported by manufacturers the impact to current removeable media and devices
will be dramatic. I believe to the point of affecting all future portable
devices. We'll see devices only dreamed about just a few years ago. Within a
short time I'm sure the DataPlay disc will support higher densities - ever
driving the amount of data to be carried easily - in a portable device - to new
heights. Let's start a list of current portable devices to benefit from such
removable media and new ones not yet on the horizon...Audio recorders, PDA's,
Cell Phones, Smaller Video devices, Super small computing devices, portable
medical equipment, portable electronic diagnostic equipment...etc.
Technology...it's a wonderfull thing!
redjr...
PDA Makers Come Closer to System Integrators
December 10, 2001 (TOKYO) -- Many personal digital assistant makers are beginning to get closer to system integrators.
PDA makers, working together with SI vendors, aim to make efforts to sell their products to firms that wish to use PDAs for their mobile systems.
Makers, including Toshiba Corp., Casio Computer Co., Ltd. and Palm Computing KK, are trying earnestly to obtain system integrators' cooperation. Toshiba, which entered into the PDA market with the introduction of a Windows CE-based PDA, GENIO e, in August, made a partner agreement with Intec Communications Inc. in October for building enterprise mobile systems. Prior to that, in August, Toshiba already made similar agreements with Nihon Unisys Ltd. and Nomura Research Institute Ltd. (NRI), and currently has a total of 15 partners.
Casio, which sells the Windows CE-based "CASSIOPEA E-707," also is building up its business relationship with system integrators. The company established a partner consortium in September in order to encourage enterprise mobile system construction using the CASSIOPEA series. Listed as members of the consortium are NTT Data Corp., Fujitsu Ltd. and others totaling 70 integrators. Prior to this, the Japanese affiliate of U.S.-based Palm Computing Inc. entered into partner agreements with seven integrators, including NS Solutions Corp. and Otsuka Corp., to offer enterprise mobile system solutions using its PDA.
The reason PDA makers are enthusiastic about partnering with integrators is that they want to competitively sell their mobile products in the growing enterprise mobile system market. "This market is more promising than the consumer market," said a Toshiba official. In fact, there is an ever-increasing need for sales people facing customers to access their company's information system with their PDAs to get necessary customer data.
Selling PDAs to enterprises will require the makers to offer applications for PDA and server systems for information processing as well as PDA hardware. Hence, PDA makers rely on SI vendors who are "specialists" to integrate systems.
There are expected benefits on an integrator's side, too. NRI, one of Toshiba's partners, says, "As high-performance PDAs become more available, its becomes easier for PDA holders to access the central database and retrieve necessary information from outside. We are planning to develop promising mobile systems in close cooperation with PDA makers."
Some PDA manufacturers also are partnering with telecom carriers in order to secure communications infrastructure. In order to leverage wireless communications infrastructure, major PDA makers made partner agreements with Japan Communications Inc., which offers a PHS data communication service . For example, Compaq Computer KK, which sells the "iPAQ Pocket PC," made alliances with Japan Communication in September and NEC Corp. in October when it launched the new PDA, "PocketGear."
Japan Communications is Japan's first Mobile Virtual Network Operator (MVNO) service provider. It leases bulk circuit capacity from telecom carriers' networks like DDI Pocket's PHS data network, and provides enterprises with data services. PDA makers are steadily expanding their business opportunities supported by these partners
Texas Instruments Presents New Fourth Generation Bluetooth(TM) Baseband Processor
TI's New ROM-Based Point-to-Multipoint Solution Addresses the Needs Of Cost-Sensitive Wireless Devices
SAN FRANCISCO, Dec. 11 /PRNewswire/ -- A new ROM-based Bluetooth baseband processor which addresses the growing demand for short-distance wireless connectivity was announced today by Texas Instruments Incorporated (NYSE: TXN - news; TI). Offering significant reductions in system cost and board space requirements, TI's new BSN6050 baseband solution provides high performance, full data rate Bluetooth links at a volume price as low as US$5*, making possible the advent of new mass market consumer products at affordable prices. For more information on TI's Bluetooth solutions, please visit www.ti.com/sc/bluetooth .
New Lower Price Opens the Way for New Applications
The BSN6050 baseband solution (Baseband + TRF6001 RF) is designed to meet the requirements of a wide range of Bluetooth applications, such as wireless information devices (cell phones, PDAs, printers, etc.), wireless device accessories (phone and music/MP3 players), access points (e.g. home automation), car telematics, and entertainment or PC peripherals. According to a survey by Strategy Analytics (www.strategyanalytics.com ), US cellular telephone users are willing to pay a 27% premium to see Bluetooth added to their handsets. Given the average price of cellular handsets, the low price of the BSN6050 solution will turn this into reality, allowing manufacturers to introduce a whole new range of consumer products at a price that users are willing to pay.
ROM-based for Low Cost and Small Footprint
Functionally compatible with the BSN6040, the BSN6050, like other TI Bluetooth products, will address Bluetooth developers' needs for full bandwidth, optimized connections, minimized data transfer times and very low power consumption. The BSN6050 represents a fourth generation processor with the inherent stability necessary for reliable use in volume production.
The new point-to-multipoint BSN6050 solution is ROM-coded up to HCI. For certain high volume, embedded applications the entire protocol stack and application can also be ROM-coded, enabling standalone Bluetooth solutions for small peripherals such as a mouse, keyboard or joystick. A Patch-RAM is provided so that minor code enhancements can be included without requiring a new ROM version. By removing the requirement for external flash memory, significant savings in PCB area can be achieved.
The BSN6050 will be supported by modules from third parties, as well as custom board developers. Whatever the individual needs of Bluetooth developers, specialist partners are available to support their development work.
Full Feature Set and Rich Connectivity
The ROM-based BSN6050 is a high-performance, point-to-multipoint solution delivering the full Bluetooth data rate of 723 Kbps (DH5 packets). It is fully compliant to Revision 1.1 of the Bluetooth specification. Features include support for up to seven piconet links and up to three simultaneous SCO (Synchronous Connection Oriented) voice channels. The device also features master-slave switching and, for power reduction applications, Park, Sniff and Hold modes as well as a ``deep sleep'' mode for power sensitive applications.
For the needs of mobile users, the BSN6050 is designed for very low power consumption using advanced 0.15-micron technology (L-effective, 0.18 micron drawn). TI's BSN6050 also offers a large variety of interfacing options. For system interfacing, it supports two 1Mbps high-speed UARTs and for PC applications, a USB interface offering 12 Mbps bandwidth.
Part of a Growing Family
TI continues to expand its already broad Bluetooth portfolio by rolling out new Bluetooth products. These include three baseband products and one RF device: the newly introduced BSN6050, the BSN6040, with which the BSN6050 is fully compatible, the BSN6030 (a low-cost, ROM-based, point-to-point baseband controller now available as a solution with the TRF6001 for well under $5 in volume quantities) and the TRF6001 (a -86dBm receiver sensitivity transceiver).
Full compatibility means that as applications based on a BSN6040 mature, they can migrate to a BSN6050 with all of the cost and space savings this entails. Single chip solutions currently under development by TI will continue to drive further price reductions in the future.
Availability and Packaging:
Engineering samples of the BSN6050 will be available to initial customers in December 2001. Volume production is scheduled for mid-2002. The BSN6050 comes in a 10x10mm 151 BGA package.
About Bluetooth
Providing up to one Mbps in data transmission, the Bluetooth(TM) standard uses the 2.4 Gigahertz (GHz) unlicensed portion of the radio frequency spectrum and is a leading standard in the emerging short distance wireless market. Wireless networking technology such as Bluetooth will be increasingly significant as consumers find that they can simplify the deployment of networks in homes and offices by implementing wireless technology instead of traditional wired networks.
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
Safe Harbor Statement
Statements contained in this press release regarding future product developments, their effect on pricing of related consumer products and other statements of management's beliefs, goals and expectations may be considered ``forward-looking statements'' as that term is defined in the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995, and are subject to risks and uncertainties that could cause actual results to differ materially from those expressed or implied by these statements. The following factors and the factors discussed in TI's most recent Form 10-K could cause actual results to differ materially from the statements contained in this press release, changes in product plans or market conditions. We disclaim any intention or obligation to update any forward-looking statements as a result of developments occurring after the date of this press release.
Trademarks
Bluetooth is a trademark owned by the Bluetooth SIG.
*Price for quantities in excess of 2M units in 2002.
SOURCE: Texas Instruments Incorporated
SpeechWorks Teams with Texas Instruments to Enable Advanced Speech Applications on 2.5 and 3G Wireless Devices that Use TI's OMAP Platform
BOSTON--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Dec. 11, 2001--
Affiliation with TI Part of SpeechWorks' Strategy to Serve Customers in Device Arena
SpeechWorks International, Inc. (Nasdaq: SPWX), a global leader in speech recognition and text-to-speech (TTS) technologies and services, today announced that it has developed an application for Texas Instruments'(TI) (NYSE: TXN) family of OMAP(TM) wireless processors for 2.5 and third generation (3G) mobile Internet devices. The application, using SpeechWorks' ETI-Eloquence embedded TTS engine, reads text in a human-like voice, and lets users listen to emails, alerts and other data on wireless handheld devices.
SpeechWorks' affiliation with TI, and as a member of the TI OMAP Developer Network, is an important part of SpeechWorks' strategy to serve customers in the device and automotive markets. (See related press release: SpeechWorks Forms New Business Unit to Serve Customers in the Automotive, Mobile Device and Set-Top Box Industries, December 10, 2001.) TI's OMAP platform has been embraced by the world's leading wireless manufacturers including Ericsson, Nokia , Sony and many others.
"TI will continue to work closely with top innovators in speech recognition technology such as SpeechWorks, as well as leading wireless phone and PDA manufacturers to quickly enable highly anticipated advanced voice applications for consumers," said Paul Werp, worldwide director of marketing for TI's OMAP platform. "Speech recognition technology on 2.5 and 3G mobile devices is going to significantly change the way mobile users communicate, and SpeechWorks' technology using TI's family of high performance, power efficient processors will enable this unique functionality."
Future applications of SpeechWorks' technologies on the OMAP platform include support of TI's DSP (digital signal processing), which extends the life of a device battery fourfold for extended consumer usage, and speech recognition capabilities based on Speech2Go(TM) software, SpeechWorks' small-footprint speech recognition engine.
"We are very excited to work with TI to bring our device technologies quickly to market," said Alan Schwartz, vice president of business development and head of the Automotive and Mobile Devices Customer Focus Unit at SpeechWorks. "SpeechWorks' support for the OMAP platform is critical to reaching a broad audience of device manufacturers and, ultimately, hundreds' of millions of end-users."
About TI's OMAP Developers 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, advanced speech technology, 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 SpeechWorks International, Inc.
Through the power of SpeechWorks technologies, the human voice is all a user needs to access instant information and conduct transactions from any phone or device. Around the world, customer service innovators such as America Online, Microsoft, OnStar and Singapore Telecom are realizing returns on SpeechWorks applications that consistently delight and serve customers 24 hours a day. With over 100 partners, SpeechWorks (Nasdaq: SPWX) delivers natural language speech recognition, speaker verification and text-to-speech (TTS) solutions to leading corporations, telecommunications providers, device manufacturers and government organizations worldwide. For a description of our products, services and unique customer programs such as the SpeechWorks Here(TM) STEP call 617.428.4444 or visit www.speechworks.com.
SpeechWorks, Speech2Go, ETI-Eloquence and SpeechWorks Here are trademarks or registered trademarks of SpeechWorks International, Inc. in the United States and other countries. All other trademarks are the property of their respective owners
Cirrus Logic Powers SANYO's Newest Portable Internet Audio Player; Cirrus Logic Chip Key to Ultra-Small Form Factors and Rich Feature Set of SANYO's New SSP-PD10
AUSTIN, Texas--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Dec. 11, 2001--Cirrus Logic Inc. (Nasdaq:CRUS) today announced that SANYO Electric Co. Ltd. has selected its Maverick(R) EP7309 Market Specific Processor (MSP) to power SANYO's new SSP-PD10 Portable Digital Audio Player.
Reinforcing Cirrus Logic's reputation as a driving force of the digital entertainment revolution, the design win extends the company's leadership position in the portable Internet audio space, and provides SANYO with a sophisticated, low-cost feature set.
The SANYO design win builds on Cirrus' momentum in the portable Internet audio market, where the company's microprocessor is included in a number of market-leading, flash-based players including SONICblue's Rio 600 and Rio 800 Diamond, Creative Technology's Nomad II, Nike's PSA Play120 and Nakamichi's SoundSpace 2.
"The sleek, ultra-small design of the SANYO SSP-PD10 is a compelling feature that appeals to today's digital entertainment consumers," said Hiroshi Kuroda, manager, SANYO Technosound Co. Ltd. "Cirrus Logic's EP7309 processor helped SANYO provide a rich feature set while maintaining a small form factor for the device."
Unveiled recently at World PC Expo in Tokyo, the SSP-PD10 features built-in 64MB flash memory and supports WMA, MP3 and AAC audio compression formats. In WMA mode, the device stores and plays back music at near CD-quality for three hours. Additionally, two security standards, WMRM(tm) by Microsoft and Secure Portable Player Platform(tm) (SP3) by Liquid Audio, are included for secure download of music over the Internet.
The SANYO player also features Spatializer Vi.B.E.(tm) technology, which works with Cirrus' EP7309 processor to deliver a dramatic bass enhancement experience for consumers. The complementary technologies provide SANYO with a powerful, cost-effective solution to the inherent challenge of delivering superior audio performance despite size, processing resource and power consumption issues.
"The outstanding performance of the Cirrus EP7309 processor, together with the audio player's rich feature set and small, accessory-style form factors make the SSP-PD10 a truly state-of-the-art product," said Matthew Perry, vice president and general manager of Cirrus Logic's Crystal Products Division. "SANYO's new Internet audio player is a perfect showcase for the EP7309 processor's ability to maximize Internet audio playback performance and help manufacturers meet consumer demands for smaller, higher-quality entertainment devices."
The Maverick EP7309 is designed for ultra-low power applications such as digital music players, Internet appliances, smart cellular phones and any hand-held device that features the added capability of digital audio compression. The chip integrates an interface to enable direct connections to many low-cost, low-power audio converters.
Cirrus Logic Inc.
Cirrus Logic is the premier supplier of high-performance analog and DSP chip solutions for consumer entertainment electronics that allow people to see, hear, connect, and enjoy digital entertainment. Building on its global market share leadership in audio integrated circuits and its rich mixed-signal patent portfolio, the company targets mainstream audio, video and Internet entertainment applications in the consumer entertainment market. Cirrus Logic operates from headquarters in Austin, Texas and major sites located in Fremont and El Dorado Hills, Calif. and Broomfield, Colo., as well as offices in Europe, Japan and Asia. More information about Cirrus Logic is available at www.cirrus.com.
Safe Harbor Provision
Except for historical information contained herein, the matters set forth in this news release are forward-looking statements that are dependent on certain risks and uncertainties including such factors, among others, as the ability of the EP 7309 processor to perform as expected and the risk factors listed in the company's Form 10-K for the year ended March 31, 2001, and in other filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission. The foregoing information concerning Cirrus Logic's business outlook represents our outlook as of the date of this news release, and Cirrus Logic undertakes no obligation to update or revise any forward-looking statements, whether as a result of new developments or otherwise.
Cirrus Logic(R), and Maverick(R)are trademarks of Cirrus Logic Inc.
Spatializer Vi.B.E.(tm)is a trademark of Spatializer Audio Laboratories Inc.
Third-party trademarks and names are the property of their respective owners.
CONTACT:
Cirrus Logic Inc., Austin
Jack Taylor, 512/912-3231
jackt@crystal.cirrus.