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Hmmm..from Pam's Sandisk link: Lucent
Other
Device Name
Product Type
Capacity
Info
EPAC Internet Player
CompactFlash (CF)
All
SDMI Suspends Deliberations, Rethinks Role
[great link 2manyfatcats, thanks]
By Joseph Palenchar
TWICE
5/28/01
AMSTERDAM, THE NETHERLANDS — The Secure Digital Music Initiative (SDMI) has suspended deliberations after reaching an impasse over selecting a Phase II screening technology that would be used on future packaged media and in authorized downloads to control digital copying.
The group will meet again in September to debate its future role.
"There is currently no consensus for adoption of any combination of the proposed technologies," SDMI said in a statement released after its mid-May plenary session here. The technologies were intended to mark authorized downloadable files and legacy packaged media, including prerecorded CDs, with copying instructions. The instructions could be written to prevent SDMI-compliant player software or devices from copying marked downloads and CD tracks or to allow one or more copies.
In September, the group will decide whether to make another attempt at choosing a Phase II technology and whether to approve copyright-protection specs for additional consumer devices, said SDMI spokesman Paul Jessop.
The initiative's 2 1/2-year effort produced voluntary copy-protection measures for designing SDMI-compliant flash-memory music portables, wireless phones, AM/FM/CD boomboxes, tuner-equipped flash-memory portables and portable voice recorders. Such measures include locking a song to a particular device or memory card. The effort also produced a Phase I watermark that could be applied to downloadable music files and to future packaged media, including CDs, to signify that the user needs to upgrade Phase I music-management software to Phase II in order to download or rip a protected song.
"It's a good time to take a breath and start looking at things with a fresh outlook," said Jessop.
Members have been asked "to come to the next meeting [in September] with proposals or think pieces on how we can move forward," he said.
Jessop stressed that "no one is talking about dissolving" the organization. The existing SDMI spec is in use and "needs care and maintenance," he said. SDMI "will continue, but we must decide if we will move forward with new copy-protection technologies and new device specifications."
The introspection was triggered by the Phase II deadlock, Jessop said. "It became clear that no consensus could be built around any particular combination of technologies. None of the combinations seemed to fit all the needs of all the people." The initiative, he pointed out, demands "substantial consensus," which he described as "pretty close to unanimity."<yeah baby, our little MicroOS thrives on chaos and disorder and multiple codecs and DRMs-keep building the tower of babble, e.Digital will sort it out>
The initiative also faces a challenge in writing specs for additional consumer devices. "In the convergence world, it's not as easy to write a definitive spec," he admitted. While the group prepares for its September meeting, however, "technical work [on device specs] will continue to go on an individual basis or by e-mail," he noted.
One SDMI member contended that support for continued SDMI deliberations has eroded because multiple digital rights management technologies have been developed by technology companies and have been adopted by different music companies for their authorized download services.
2001-05-01 Must read...
Media Engine To Provide Music Subscription Services a Versatile Client Application
Baton Rouge, LA - Vedalabs, Inc., and IBM today announced that Vedalabs has licensed and integrated IBM's Electronic Media Management System (EMMS) into its Vedalabs Media Engine software program. As a comprehensive electronic media distribution and digital rights management system, EMMS will provide security features for protecting the intellectual property rights of content owners during the downloading and playback process in the Vedalabs Media Engine. EMMS is designed to support a broad range of media types beginning first with music and audio content. The Vedalabs Media Engine? (VME), is an open architecture, small footprint media player that handles content from multiple sources. The player was designed to easily port to various operating systems, including cable set top boxes, PC?s, PDA?s and wireless devices. "It is our mission not to become the brand, but, instead, license our software suite to companies who have established relationships with consumers. Our business model allows us to offer a powerful, brandable solution that supports a wide variety of both protected and unprotected audio formats. Many people have been challenging the idea of record labels launching subscription services that ties people to their PC?s and that does not have to be the case. We will demonstrate this system to key customers over the next several months,"says Jason Hewitt, CEO of Vedalabs. The Vedalabs Media Engine will provide a peer-to-peer network for secure streaming of protected files. The application will unlock the content once it is transferred providing a legitimate peer-to-peer solution.The ability of the EMMS system to support super distribution aligns with Vedalabs? strategy. Like Napster, Search and Share Streams?, an upgrade to the VME, will allow end users to search for content on multiple users? machines. Once the software is installed it identifies and authenticates content on the end users? hard disk?only supporting the sharing of legitimate content. If suspect files can be identified, a legitimate track will be offered or the user can insert the audio CD. The track is then streamed instead of downloaded to the other user. Each song is tracked when streamed enabling performing rights society royalties and record label royalties to be tracked, collected and distributed where required by law. "Vedalabs has assembled a very strong product and cross platform plan for its Vedalabs Media Engine. By placing the VME onto various devices and not tying it just to the PC, Vedalabs has established a strong case to provide the client side application for the new digital music services that will be launched." Says Brian Queen Global EMMS Solution Manager. Vedalabs software supports IBM?s EMMS solution and the company will be demonstrating it at the National Association of Broadcaster Conference (April 2001, LasVegas), and LINUX World (August 2001, San Francisco), in IBM?s booth. In addition, Vedalabs will be featured on www.ibm.com. About Vedalabs Vedalabs (http://www.vedalabs.com) is a business-to-business software and infrastructure-enabling development company building products to move the entertainment industry fully, and securely, into the world of digital media distribution. About Electronic Media Management System EMMS is a comprehensive electronic media distribution and digital rights management system designed to support a broad range of media types, beginning first with music and audio content. EMMS provides the foundation for new business models created by the digital delivery of assets and offers a rich set of security features designed to protect the intellectual property rights of content owners throughout the delivery process. EMMS has an open architecture to allow technology advances in audio compression, encryption, formatting, watermarking, and end-user devices and applications to be integrated. EMMS is part of IBM's broadbased digital media management portfolio which offers comprehensive, enterprise-wide solutions for creating, managing, storing and distributing digital assets. Additional information on EMMS can be found at www.ibm.com/software/EMMS. About IBM IBM is the world's largest information technology company, with 80 years of leadership in helping businesses innovate. IBM is helping media and entertainment companies worldwide take advantage of the business opportunities made possible by digital technology. IBM offers a comprehensive portfolio of solutions, networking and service offerings that is transforming the traditional creative and business processes of media and entertainment companies and positioning them to leverage their intellectual assets into new commercial opportunities. Additional information on IBM strategy for the media and entertainment industry can be found at www.ibm.com/solutions/media. Vedalabs, Vedalabs Media Engine, and Search and Share Streams are trademarks or registered trademarks of Vedalabs, Inc. All other companies and products listed herein are property of their respective owner(s).
Thanks Matt. Trippers been asking for it.eom
Patrol Officers Soon to Carry Minicomputers on Gun Belts
May 24, 2001
By THOMAS J. LUECK
eighing five ounces and closely resembling the ubiquitous black pocket pager, it might be overlooked on the overstuffed gun belts of police officers on foot patrol. But the device, a $3,500 minicomputer, will let the officers check whether a car has been stolen or someone they stop on the street is trying to conceal an arrest record.
After putting 15 of the gadgets through their paces in housing projects, stolen vehicle ''chop shops'' and crime scenes in the last year, senior police officials said yesterday that they planned to buy 200 more this year in the first phase of a plan to equip a larger segment of the patrol force with the devices. The decision to give officers the new computers was first reported yesterday in The Daily News.
''It works discreetly, without creating a fuss,'' said Rafael Pineiro, the assistant chief in charge of the department's Management and Information Systems Division. He added that the New York Police Department would be the first in the nation to use the minicomputers on routine street patrol.
Existing Police Department computers can instantly provide reams of information on traffic infractions, the addresses of parolees, outstanding warrants and other details of criminal behavior. The new devices seek to make such data available quickly and quietly to those on foot patrol. ''It can be just like the cop on the street is checking his e-mail,'' said Ari N. Wax, the department's deputy commissioner for technology and development.
The minicomputers, worn on small clips on officers' belts, are equipped with small keyboards used to punch in names, license numbers or other data, and rely on the same transmitters that power cellular phones to communicate with the Police Department's central computers.
So far, the police say, they can point to one stellar success in using minicomputers to make an arrest. In April, when two housing police officers confronted a man drinking beer on a stoop in Harlem, they asked for his identification and punched his name into the minicomputer they were testing. As it turned out, the man, Adrian Bowman, was wanted for a triple murder in St. Louis.
Assistant Chief Pineiro said the devices had proved effective for foot patrol officers who confronted suspects drinking in public, fighting or committing low-level ''quality of life crimes'' since they provided quick, unannounced background checks without forcing the suspects to wait for information to be retrieved over the phone or through patrol car computers.
Such patrol car computers, known as ''mobile digital terminals,'' have been deployed in police vehicles across the city in the last decade. But the police officials said yesterday that the newer and far smaller hand- held devices could be carried into buildings and other crime scenes away from the street.
The department's supplier of the computers is Datamaxx Applied Technologies, a Tallahassee, Fla., company that specializes in law enforcement equipment. Kay Stephenson, the company's president, said yesterday that it provided the software for the devices, which were made by a Canadian company, Research in Motion, and that other manufacturers, including Panasonic, were expected to begin making similar devices soon and drive their cost down.
Two other agencies in the city — the New York regional office of the Federal Bureau of Investigation and the Bronx district attorney's office — said yesterday that they were also experimenting with small numbers of the devices. Ms. Stephenson said state police organizations in Florida and Tennessee had also begun tests.
For now, Assistant Chief Pineiro said, the department has budgeted $700,000 to buy its 200 additional microcomputers, with delivery expected in the fall.
The Police Department has roughly 15,000 officers assigned to patrol each day.
IBM technology quadruples disk space
By Deni Connor
Network World Fusion, 05/21/01
IBM is developing a technology that it says will
quadruple the capacity of a disk drive and
dramatically increase the amount of data that can
be stored on disk.
The company is adding a new type of magnetic
coating, called ruthenium, to its current disk
drives. The ruthenium is layered between the two
magnetic layers of the disk platter. IBM refers to
ruthenium as "pixie dust," but it is also known as
antiferromagnetically coupled (AFC) media. The
technology can be implemented without
redesigning current disk drive plants, IBM claims.
By 2003, each disk drive made with AFC
technology will be able to store 100G bits per
square inch, the company says. The technology
is most likely to be used first in notebook hard disks, although it should eventually
move across all IBM product lines. Shipping implementations contain up to 25.7G
bits per square inch.
The technology is expected to be helpful for storing digital music[\u], presentations and
videos, while consuming less memory, IBM says. The company claims that within 2
years, 100G-bit density would allow 400G-byte desktop drives, 200G-byte notebook
drives and 6G-byte or 13 hours of MPEG-4 compressed digital video in handheld
devices, the equivalent of eight movies.
Magnetic hard drive density doubled every 18 months through 1996; since 1998, it
has doubled every 12 months.
The company says it will be sharing the technology with other vendors.
IBM is at www.ibm.com
L&H voluntarily delists from Nasdaq Europe
By Reuters
May 18, 2001, 12:15 p.m. PT
BRUSSELS, Belgium--Belgian speech-technology company Lernout & Hauspie, which went from market highflier to a group struggling for survival, said on Friday it had voluntarily delisted from Nasdaq Europe.
L&H said in a statement that it had requested the delisting because it did not meet Nasdaq Europe's listing requirements, including sufficient market capitalization. L&H shares had been indefinitely suspended on Nasdaq Europe last November, when the company disclosed that its revenues for the two and a half years from 1998 to June 2000 had been overstated.
U.S. Nasdaq delisted L&H in December. The company, which once traded at above $70, has since been trading on the over-the-counter U.S. market known as the "pink sheets," where it closed at 40 cents on Thursday.
Nasdaq Europe said in a statement that it had accepted the voluntary withdrawal and would continue to cooperate, to the extent possible, with the judicial investigation under way.
L&H, which has said that its revenues were overstated by $373 million, has been under investigation by the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission and by Belgian authorities.
Its two co-founders, Jo Lernout and Pol Hauspie, remain jailed in Belgium under a fraud investigation. The company is operating on bankruptcy protection both in the United States and Belgium.
Story Copyright © 2001 Reuters Limited. All rights reserved
Little wealth or fame for Internet music pioneer
By Adam Tanner
ILMENAU, Germany, May 18 (Reuters) - At the top of a drab pre-fabricated building works the man who helped launch the Internet music revolution with a discovery that has brought him little fame or fortune in an era of overnight millionaires.
Karlheinz Brandenburg, 46, developed the MP3 format that dramatically compresses digital music files to a size small enough to allow easy downloading of songs over the Internet.
The compression, a result of years of research, spawned online music swap services such as Napster, with millions of fans downloading songs for free and the recording industry complaining of billions of dollars in lost revenue.
Brandenburg says the music industry, not he, deserves blame for the resulting music piracy because it failed to realise the potential of Internet music in the mid 1990s.
``I wouldn't subscribe to the view that the maker is never to be blamed. You have to show some responsibility but I think we have showed responsibility,'' he said.
``We tried to tell the music industry about it (in 1995) but we were not able to get any other response than 'that is nice, we'll look at it.'''
MANY YEARS OF RESEARCH
Brandenburg's road to MP3 began as an electrical engineering student in 1980. The digital music revolution was still far off; IBM (NYSE:IBM - news) started selling their first Personal Computer in 1981 and two years later music compact discs appeared.
In the early days, it took researchers 10 hours to decode a minute of digital music, something now done instantaneously.
After years of hard work, Brandenburg became lead researcher at the Fraunhofer Institute of Integrated Circuits near Munich and received a doctorate for his compression work.
In 1990, the Boston-based Christian Science Monitor news organisation became the first to use compressed digital audio to feed sound to radio stations.
The engineer was one of hundreds in Germany, the United States and elsewhere researching compression. But Brandenburg's work on Moving Pictures Experts Group (MPEG) layer-3, later known as MP3, emerged as the standard after a new generation of faster computers in 1995 became able to decode compressed music in real time.
SOLITUDE STANDING
A visitor to his office in ``Haus M'' -- next to an identical ``Haus N'' -- climbs six floors by foot to his office in a converted dormitory room at the local university where Brandenburg heads Fraunhofer's electronic media group.
The room is sparse. A postcard of folk singer Suzanne Vega decorates the wall, a memento of the many hours Brandeburg spent perfecting music compression algorithms.
MP3 reduces a music file's size tenfold while maintaining near-CD quality fold by stripping away extraneous sound. To test the technique, Brandenburg needed music with a wide dynamic range, and settled on Vega's 1987 song ``Tom's Diner''.
``I am sitting in the morning at the diner on the corner,'' Brandenburg heard Vega sing over and over again as MP3 was born.
MP3 was standardised in 1991. By 1995 Brandenburg and his collaborators saw the potential to make MP3 the Internet audio standard and thought free downloads of an MP3 player over the Net would help establish its foothold.
The underground world of music file swapping was born. In some developing countries, MP3 meant all Beatles songs could be put on a single CD and sold for a few dollars on pirate markets.
In 1999, Napster started changing the way millions get music, and at times last year more Internet users searched for ``MP3'' than ``sex'', according to Searchterms.com.
``When sex moved back to number one and MP3 went down again, I said 'okay, there's hope for mankind,''', Brandenburg joked.
Fans were delirious about MP3, the music industry incensed.
Brandenburg said while his sympathies are with musicians, the industry hurt itself by failing to offer a better alternative.
``They have at least part of the blame for moving too slowly,'' he said. ``For me it was, of course this is going to happen because there is no legal channel to get music to customers.''
In December 1999, the industry struck back.
The world's biggest record labels - including Vivendi Universal's Universal Music, Sony Music , Warner Music (NYSE:AOL - news), EMI Group Plc (quote from Yahoo! UK & Ireland: EMI.L) and Bertelsmann AG's BMG -- sued Napster, saying it was a piracy haven that would cost them billions of dollars in lost music sales.
In March, a federal court ruled that Napster must block the trading of copyrighted files on its system. Brandenburg sees a long fight against Internet piracy continuing, with compact video files likely to become the next battleground.
``MP3 and free music offerings from people who want it for free will be there for a long time,'' he said. "If it is done right, paid music will be there as a supplementary channel.
``I still see a big future for the music industry.''
COMPRESSED WEALTH
MP3's soaring popularity did not significantly enrich Brandenburg although his non-profit, government-established institute owns the patent and he is entitled to a royalty.
In a country where entrepreneurial spirit is less common than in America, the engineer stayed with the Fraunhofer Institute, a link between university researchers and companies.
``There was a time in 1998, '99 when I thought and did a little bit of checking (to see) if I was to do my own company, how much would I get,'' he said. ``In early 1999 it was a couple of tens of millions. But I would need a business plan where I was convinced and I was not convinced.''
With major software companies such as Microsoft (NasdaqNM:MSFT - news) paying licensing fees for MP3, Brandenburg says he is satisfied with his growing share of the royalties.
``My definition of rich is that within the bounds of what I think is reasonable to do I don't have to ask can I do that,'' he said. ``From that point of view I feel rich.''
He said he splurges on an occasional expensive meal with his wife while on vacation. He drives a Mercedes, albeit one of the automaker's most economical A-Series hatchbacks.
Fraunhofer did reward Brandenburg by letting him set up a new branch of the institute in Ilmenau, a town of 30,000 in ex-Communist east Germany. Today he spends his time as a manager, but just down the hall audio discoveries are coming into focus.
New compression techniques are ever in the works, including an MP7 for multimedia data that may allow more efficient searching through video, audio and text on the Internet. Copy protection techniques is another area of work.
In one room, a team has mounted 48 small speakers in a row as they seek to develop the intelligent stereo set of the future, one that may be able to reproduce sound as though musicians were actually playing in the room.
Another group is working on a stereo system with a vast memory of songs that will play back music after the user hums a few notes of the tune.
``I feel very successful. I'm relatively famous, certainly in this science area,'' he said, adding MP3 royalties were giving him a nice pay boost. ``It's already more than something I would expect from someone doing technical work.''
cksla, sounds like we could be there.eom
House Subcommittee to Gauge Views on 'Net Music Licensing
by Dave Brigham
May 16, 2001
industry . policy-law
Members of the music industry will present widely divergent views on Internet
music licensing in testimony before a U.S. House subcommittee hearing
Thursday.
The House Subcommittee on Courts, the Internet and Intellectual Property is
collecting data on the status of music licensing negotiations, and considering
how performers and songwriters will receive royalties for use of their work. At
issue is whether Congress should put laws into effect spelling out terms on
how record companies should license music for commercial use on the
Internet.
At the hearing, MP3.com President Robin Richards will advocate for the need
for compulsory licenses, according to an MP3.com spokesman. Many online
music companies, including MP3.com and Napster, feel that record labels
have been too slow to license music for commercial services.
MP3.com has been busy on Capitol Hill, lobbying Congress since last fall to
support the Music Owners' Listening Rights Act of 2000 [see 10.02.00
Copyright Bill Faces Uphill Battle]. The act would let companies copy CDs,
store them online and stream music to users who can prove they own the CD.
MP3.com offers such a service, but had to pay tens of millions of dollars to
major label groups and publishers to settle lawsuits over the service.
Rep. Rick Boucher (D-Va.), who introduced the Music Owners' Listening
Rights Act last year, plans to reintroduce the bill this year.
Plenty of opposition to MP3.com's viewpoint is expected. For tomorrow's
hearing, the American Society of Composers, Authors and Publishers
(ASCAP) recruited singer-songwriter Lyle Lovett to stress that "the clamor for
a compulsory license is misplaced," according to Ben Palumbo, the
performing rights organization's representative in Washington, D.C. While
firmly behind the notion that songwriters need to be compensated for music
use online, ASCAP believes that the marketplace for digital music should be
allowed to develop without government oversight, Palumbo said.
ASCAP has signed licenses with more than 2,200 web sites since 1996,
Palumbo said. "ASCAP has never turned down anyone," he added.
Major labels and their trade group, the Recording Industry Association of
America (RIAA), support ASCAP's view. At a Senate Judiciary Committee
hearing last month, RIAA President and CEO Hilary Rosen assured the
members that they needn't get involved in licensing procedures [see 04.03.01
Sen. Hatch Hopeful Congress Can Avoid Compulsory Music Licensing].
Edgar Bronfman Jr., executive vice chairman of Universal Music Group parent
Vivendi Universal, is scheduled to testify before the subcommittee tomorrow.
A source familiar with Bronfman's proposed testimony said that as of
Wednesday afternoon, the text was "still being worked on."
Others slated to give statements before the subcommittee include songwriter
Mike Stoller ("Hound Dog," "Stand by Me"), appearing on behalf of the
National Music Publishers' Association (NMPA), and RealNetworks Chairman
and CEO Rob Glaser. Glaser will present the first public preview of MusicNet,
the digital music platform the company is developing with AOL Time Warner's
Warner Music Group, EMI Recorded Music and Bertelsmann's BMG
Entertainment.
The subcommittee is the latest government body to collect information on
compulsory music licensing by major label groups for online services. The
U.S. Copyright Office has been collecting information in advance of
proceedings on rates for compulsory licenses beginning July 30, and the
Senate Judiciary Committee held a hearing last month on digital music.
In advance of the Judiciary hearing, major label groups issued well-timed
announcements touting music licensing deals, albeit between themselves
[see 04.02.01 RealNetworks to Launch Subscription Platform with Labels].
RealNetworks announced the MusicNet joint venture, which will license its
platform to companies hoping to offer online subscription services featuring
music from MusicNet's three label partners. That same week, Universal Music
and Sony Music Entertainment trumpeted a pact to promote their jointly
developed Duet subscription service with Yahoo [see 04.05.01 Yahoo to
Market Duet Music Service, Music Strategy Still Unclear].
One industry source said that when the label groups officially launch Duet and
MusicNet, Congress is likely to scrutinize the services to ensure that they are
being presented in a "consumer-friendly" environment.
Interestingly, Bronfman and Stoller are opponents in an ongoing court case.
Last December, Stoller and songwriting partner Jerry Leiber joined music
publishers the Rogers & Hammerstein Organization, Irving Berlin Music and
MPL communications in a lawsuit against Universal Music, claiming that the
label group used the publishers' compositions in a test version of
Farmclub.com's subscription service without the publishers' permission.
The House Subcommittee holding Thursday's hearing is chaired by Sen.
Howard Coble (R-N.C.), who spearheaded last year's successful House
repeal of the "work for hire" bill that made it virtually impossible for artists to
recover the rights to their recordings [see 09.20.00 U.S. House Approves
"Work For Hire" Repeal]
A spokesman for the subcommittee said that because there are so many
issues to consider surrounding Internet music licensing, the subcommittee's
next step is unclear. "We don't know where we're going with it at this point," he
said.
**RealNetworks Publicly Previewing MusicNet on Thursday
by Dave Brigham
May 16, 2001
Tomorrow, RealNetworks Chairman and CEO Rob Glaser will show the first
public preview of MusicNet, the digital music platform the company is developing
with three major label groups.
Real's readiness to preview the platform reinforces the claims of its music label
partners that the record industry is working swiftly to provide legal online music
to consumers. It also suggests that the platform should be ready to launch on a
timetable that's competitive with the planned launch of Napster's commercial
music service.
Glaser will be testifying Thursday at a U.S. House hearing on Internet music
licensing, alongside representatives from Vivendi Universal, MP3.com, the
National Music Publishers' Association and the American Society of Composers,
Authors and Publishers [see 05.16.01 House Subcommittee to Gauge Views on
'Net Music Licensing].
A RealNetworks spokeswoman would not provide details of Glaser's
presentation.
The company announced MusicNet last month, in advance of another hearing
on Capitol Hill [see 04.02.01 RealNetworks to Launch Subscription Platform With
Labels]. MusicNet is a joint venture with AOL Time Warner, EMI Group and
Bertelsmann. With minority investments from the three media groups, MusicNet
will combine downloadable and streaming music with digital distribution
technology developed by Real. Working as a stand-alone company, MusicNet
will license its platform to companies hoping to offer online subscription services
featuring music from Warner Music, BMG Entertainment and EMI Recorded
Music.
Following a year of technical development, RealNetworks revealed last month it
was fine-tuning the MusicNet platform, and working on royalty payment systems
[see 04.20.00 MusicNet Makes Its Platform Real for Major Label Execs]. A
MusicNet spokesman said that the code for the company's platform would be
available to partners during the summer. With a summer release of the code, it's
possible companies could launch commercial MusicNet services late this
summer or early this fall.
MusicNet appears to have an advantage over a competing commercial music
service that Universal Music Group and Sony Music Entertainment are
developing. Called Duet, the label groups' service is intended to be a
multi-tiered subscription and pay-per-play streaming service -- with high quality
downloads possibly added later. But Duet has been hampered by technical and
business problems for months [see 05.15.01 The Song Remains the Same:
Universal and Sony Music's Duet Still a Plan].
A Duet source said the project is on schedule for a late-summer launch. A major
label source told Webnoize that two of the three music companies backing
MusicNet have held discussions with either Universal or Sony to obtain a license
for MusicNet. Duet and MusicNet sources believe, however, that the two services
will not be merged into one endeavor.
OT IBM Set-Top-Box Chip Expands Use of Linux in Consumer Applications
EAST FISHKILL, N.Y.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--May 16, 2001--IBM today announced it is working with MontaVista Software, Inc. to make its Hard Hat Linux operating system available for IBM's PowerPC based single-chip Set-Top Box (STB) Controller.
Combining high-performance PowerPC-based STB controllers with Linux-based open standards software, IBM is providing electronics manufacturers with the ability to develop new classes of home gateway products such as television set-top boxes, that will serve as an interactive medium between content and service providers and consumers. Netgem, one of Europe's leading developers of interactive services applications, plans to develop new products based on the IBM STB controllers running the Hard Hat Linux operating system.
Advanced STBs are part of the fast-growing category of ``pervasive computing'' devices helping to make information available to more people in more ways.
``Our customers have been requesting support for Linux, and this is a major step forward in meeting their needs,'' said Scottie Ginn, vice president for pervasive technology, IBM Microelectronics Division. ``The support of a leading interactive service developer like Netgem is evidence that versatile, adaptable hardware coupled with open software is a valuable combination to help our customers accelerate their pace of innovation in the digital television arena.''
The MontaVista Hard Hat Linux 2.0 operating system and cross development tools for embedded applications are based on Linux Version 2.4 and are developed by MontaVista Software, Inc.
``Hard Hat Linux and IBM's set top box integrated controller represent a natural integration of software and hardware functionality,'' commented Sheila Baker, MontaVista Software vice president of Marketing. ``Leveraging Hard Hat Linux for IBM's PowerPC-based architecture will empower customers to speed their designs to market, on time and at the right price.''
Netgem's new interactive digital software platform supports innovative interactive services such as electronic program guides, multimedia mail, Internet access, and video and audio on demand.
``Television has not evolved to offer the same additional services as the PC and mobile phone until now,'' said Joseph Haddad, Netgem CEO. ``By developing an interactive software platform based on IBM's set-top box integrated controller, Netgem has given digital television operators the ability to capitalise on existing Internet infrastructure and to offer interactive services suited to consumer needs. This makes our new software a cost-effective solution for our customers.''
IBM's STB034xx chip family includes an MPEG-2 audio/video decoder, a memory interface subsystem and a range of peripheral interfaces all on a single piece of silicon. Based on the PowerPC processor, it features high-speed operation at 162 MHz, with a 16-KB instruction cache and an 8-KB data cache, providing the performance necessary for a range of new services.
IBM's scalable PowerPC architecture provides a common Linux programming platform across the e-business infrastructure. IBM's PowerPC microprocessors, embedded processors and cores are suited for high-end workstations, data storage devices and servers that feed the network; wired hubs, routers, and switches that make up the network; and the hand-held communications devices and other pervasive computing applications that access the network.
Both IBM and Netgem plan to demonstrate MontaVista Software's Hard Hat Linux running on the IBM STB034xx chip in their respective booths at the upcoming MediaCast show to be held in London from May 21-23.
IBM's Third-Generation Integrated Controller
IBM also intends to make available in the second half of 2001 its third-generation integrated controller for digital set top boxes. The next-generation STB Integrated controller is being designed to extend performance from today's STB03xxx 225 DMIPS up to 350 DMIPS, utilizing the embedded Power PC 405 processor running at speeds up to 252 MHz. This extra on-chip power is intended to enable advanced features such as personal video recording, Internet gaming, interactive TV, web browsing, and secure on-line transactions.
Plans for the third generation architecture includes support for an external processor interface, a new advanced 2D graphics subsystem, simultaneous dual-stream recording to HDD with single stream playback, and other peripheral interfaces. This statement of intent underscores IBM's commitment to interactive and digital TV, and IBM's plans to address the requirements of both service providers and STB manufacturers.
IBM is currently shipping engineering samples to customers with general sample availability intended for June.
About IBM
IBM Microelectronics is a key contributor to IBM's role as the world's premier information technology supplier. IBM Microelectronics develops, manufactures and markets state-of-the-art semiconductor and interconnect technologies, products and services. IBM makes chips for a wide range of devices from the world's most powerful computers to the smallest cell phones. Its superior integrated solutions can be found in many of the world's best-known electronic brands. More information about IBM Microelectronics can be found at: www.chips.ibm.com.
IBM and PowerPC are registered trademarks of IBM. Linux is a registered trademark of Linus Torvalds. Hard Hat is a trademark of MontaVista Software Inc. All other names mentioned are trademarks, registered trademarks or service marks of their respective companies. IBM's third-generation integrated controller represents a statement of direction and the company's current intent which represent goals and objectives only and is subject to change without notice.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Contact:
IBM Microelectronics
Michael Loughran, 845-892-5463
mloughra@us.ibm.com
IBM and PatientKeeper Join Forces
NEW YORK (AP) - International Business Machines and PatientKeeper Inc. are collaborating to create a wireless, mobile system to improve communication between doctors and hospitals.
Brighton, Mass.-based PatientKeeper manufactures software used by doctors in their personal digital assistants to keep better track of patient information.
PatientKeeper chief operating officer Richard Hall said the relationship with IBM will help the company further develop its product which allows a doctor's hand-held computer to send and receive information from a hospital.
For example, a doctor could use a hand-held computer to order the hospital to perform a test or to check on the location of a patient within the hospital IBM will provide the hardware and technical support services to PatientKeeper's hospital clients. It currently has 18 such clients while about 45,000 doctors use its personal computer software.
``We needed a partner with IBM's breadth and depth to support our customers,'' said Hall.
This is the second time in two months that Armonk, N.Y.-based IBM has announced a health care initiative. In March, IBM, Pfizer Inc. and Microsoft Corp. announced they were collaborating to develop a computer system for physicians offices.
-
AOL and MSN face off over music promotions
Fri, 11 May 2001 09:27:57 GMT
Gwendolyn Mariano, CNET News.com
Forget Oasis versus Blur, or the Beatles versus the Stones - the serious music battle of the moment is AOL versus MSN
AOL Time Warner's America Online and Microsoft's MSN Network are entering a battle of the bands as they increasingly turn to recording stars to promote their online services.
MSN said Thursday that it is hosting pop superstar Janet Jackson in an online chat and giving MSN subscribers the chance to purchase a limited number of presale tickets to her concert tour. Although the chat at 6pm PDT Thursday will be free to everyone, the presale tickets are exclusively available to new and current MSN subscribers, the company said.
America Online, meanwhile, has been aggressively pushing stars from AOL Time Warner's stable of musicians, notably offering presale tickets to subscribers this week for Madonna's highly anticipated concert series scheduled to kick off this summer.
The concert wars highlight the growing importance of music in the race for dominance on the Web. They also show the advantages of partnerships that meld online access and content, as epitomised by the $107bn merger that created AOL Time Warner, analysts said.
"This is the year that the real heavy hitters are going to be getting into the digital music game in a serious way," said Aram Sinnreich, an analyst from research firm Jupiter Research. "Online events, historically, have been one of the best ways to raise awareness and participation in any kind of online service, so AOL and MSN have been using events of various kinds for years as ways to bring in new users."
The Janet Jackson promotion is not the first for Microsoft. In November, MSN launched a co-branded Internet service with pop group N'Sync, offering fans access to content specifically tailored to them, including exclusive electronic newsletters, photos, unseen video footage and special N'Sync-branded versions of the MSN Messenger and Microsoft Windows Media Player. The company declined to reveal how many new subscribers it received from the N'Sync deal.
But analysts said AOL has the upper hand in the contest, thanks to its recent merger.
"AOL definitely has one advantage: access to Warner music, which is what MSN doesn't have," said PJ McNealy, an analyst at research firm Gartner. "But this is still early on in AOL Music. They still haven't done much with music up until the announcement last month. [However], MSN hasn't licensed any deals with the Big Five yet... so they need to get on board."
AOL said that with its Madonna deal, it sold out the block of tickets reserved for current members in one hour and 45 minutes -- a situation that left some subscribers unhappy when they were locked out of the deal. One fan who contacted CNET News.com wrote in an email that many subscribers were greeted with nothing but busy signals when they tried to take advantage of the promotion.
An AOL representative said the problems affected only current members and that tickets are still available in a second block reserved for new members who sign up during the promotion.
"Obviously this was a concert with high demand, and our members responded so enthusiastically to it," the representative said. "On the AOL end, the servers never shut down or anything like that. It was just a slow process."
The representative said the problems were similar to when people call for concert tickets over the phone and find that all lines are busy.
Sinnreich said that although the Internet service providers are never going to completely eradicate customers' bad experiences, they can make some significant strides toward improving overall quality, such as providing enough bandwidth, resources and customer service.
"Back when most online events were completely free, open-access events... nobody minded that they got booted off because, hey, it was free and it's experimental," Sinnreich said. "But if you're selling these bill of goods as part of a paid service and you're trying to build brand equity for something that you hope to charge for month after month and year after year, you better make sure it works well."
MSN said it is confident that its service will be able to meet the demand, and it doesn't anticipate having difficulties as it provides new and current subscribers with the presale tickets. The company, which began selling tickets Monday for the first three concert dates, plans to offer tickets a week or two before they go on sale for each subsequent concert date. The tickets range in price from $45 to $120.
The company added that new subscribers will receive one month of service free but will be required to pay $21.95 per each additional month. It said subscribers do not have to maintain the service for a specific amount of time. AOL, however, required people who signed up for Net access during the Madonna promotion to maintain the service for at least three months.
"MSN's vision in the music space is really about providing the best digital music experience for consumers online," said Amanda Casemore, product manager in MSN marketing.
"We really feel like this is going to revolutionise the way people are thinking about their online music experience. Moving forward, we're going to provide more personalised content and subscription-based service that will make MSN customers' destination for all their music needs."
torpeym, sounds like a variant of the DataPlay SOC...
STMicroelectronics Introduces First Single-Chip Solution for DVD-ROM Drives
Designed for 16X DVD and 48X CD-ROM drives, new system-on-chip solution integrates all functions except memories and actuator drivers
Geneva, February 12, 2001 - STMicroelectronics (NYSE: STM) today announced the first system-on-chip solution for DVD-ROM drives - an advanced integrated circuit that includes all of the functions of a high speed DVD-ROM/CD-ROM drive except for external memories and actuator drivers.
Called 'Verdi' (part number STA1000), the new system-on-chip contains an ST10 16-bit microprocessor core, a proprietary digital signal processor (DSP) core, memories, interfaces and application-specific digital and mixed analog/digital functions. To be manufactured initially using 0.25-micron CMOS technology, the STA1000 is housed in a 233-lead Ball Grid Array (BGA) package and needs no heatsink.
Thanks to the very high level of integration, the STA1000 makes it possible to build high performance DVD-ROM subsystems that are very compact and cost effective. In addition, it supports very high speed read operation, up to 16X DVD-ROM and 48X CD-ROM.
"With this leading edge system-on-chip solution ST is entering the DVD-ROM business just in time to benefit from the explosive growth of this segment," commented Aldo Romano, Corporate Vice-President and General Manager of ST's Telecommunications and Peripherals/Automotive Groups. "This is a market that in two to three years time is expected to be equal in size to the hard disk drive market, a traditional strength of the Company, and ST is well positioned to extend its leadership from magnetic to optical drives."
Leveraging the Company's advanced embedded technology, ST plans a second generation DVD-ROM system-on-chip, which will embed both Flash and RAM memory, further reducing the component count for DVD-ROM drives. ST also has a future version in design that adds DVD recording capability.
The microprocessor core used in the Verdi chip is the ST10, a 16-bit microcontroller core widely used in hard disk drives and automotive applications. ST is a leading supplier of ST10 based system-on-chip solutions, many of which include embedded Flash memory capable of reliable operation even in the automotive grade temperature range. Recently ST introduced an enhanced ST10 core called Super10, which adds DSP instructions and doubles performance of existing ST10 code by executing instructions in a single clock cycle.
"Verdi" is the second system-on-chip solution for optical drives to be developed by ST, following closely behind a similar solution for the new DataPlay micro-optical data storage engine. The DataPlay disk is a new small format optical disk targeting markets such as digital music players, handheld games, digital cameras and e-books, where its very small size is ideal. ST is the partner chosen by DataPlay Inc to develop and manufacture the highly integrated SoC solution for its drives.
ST is a leading supplier of semiconductor components for the data storage industry and is the only company to offer all of the technologies required in this market, including system-on-chip controller solutions, head preamplifiers, actuator drivers, read channels, memories and MEMS devices. ST can also deliver complete solutions for hard disk drives, including all of the chips and firmware.
About STMicroelectronics
STMicroelectronics (formerly SGS-THOMSON Microelectronics) is a global independent semiconductor company, whose shares are traded on the New York Stock Exchange, on the ParisBourse and on the Milan Stock Exchange. The Company designs, develops, manufactures and markets a broad range of semiconductor integrated circuits (ICs) and discrete devices used in a wide variety of microelectronic applications, including telecommunications systems, computer systems, consumer products, automotive products and industrial automation and control systems. In 2000, the Company's net revenues were $7,813.2 million and net earnings were $1,452.1 million. Further information on ST can be found at www.st.com.
For further information please contact:
STMicroelectronics Technical Press Relations:
Richard Stockdill
Tel : +33 4 5040 2558
Fax : +33 4 5040 2540
Saint Genis-Pouilly, France
E-mail: richard.stockdill@st.com
Sentinel, didn't EDIG report they were designing such a device for Samsung in the PR?
cheers
Diffuser Makes Full Album Available As a Free Download
Business Wire (May 9, 2001)
BURBANK, Calif., May 9, 2001 (ENTERTAINMENT WIRE) -- Hollywood Records is offering the entire Diffuser album, "Injury Loves Melody," as a free download in three formats: MP3, Windows Media and Liquid Audio.
This marks the first time a major label has offered a full album download in all three formats. "Injury Loves Melody" will be available in its entirety for the whole month of May. Fans can hear and download the album by visiting sites such as www.diffuseronline.com, www.windowsmedia.com, www.music.msn.com, www.liquid.com, www.launch.com, www.musicmatch.com and Rioport affiliate sites www.mtv.com and www.sonicnet.com.
Transworld's Twec.com has been chosen as the exclusive retail partner for the download. Fans who buy a copy of the CD on Twec.com will get a free Diffuser T-shirt with purchase.
The Diffuser online event coincides with the release of the band's latest single, "Tidal," the follow-up to the band's successful leadoff hit, "Karma," which appeared on last summer's star-studded, platinum-plus "Mission: Impossible 2" soundtrack.
" ... fall in love with Diffuser's 'Injury Loves Melody.'"
-- Entertainment Weekly (Mar., 01)
"'Injury Loves Melody,' the debut album from New York's Diffuser --
is a colorful collage of pop-punk hooks and boombastic guitars."
-- Guitar Player (June, 01)
"(Diffuser) ... -- Nirvana-meets-Cheap Trick quartet."
-- Bass Player (Mar., 01)
In addition, Diffuser is currently on tour with the Toadies. The dates and venues are as follows:
MAY 2 Milwaukee, WI The Rave
3 Minneapolis, MN First Ave.
4 Chicago, IL Double Door
5 Detroit, MI The Majestic Theatre
7 Cleveland, OH The Odeon
8 Pittsburgh, PA Banana Joe's
9 New York, NY Bowery Ballroom
10 Boston, MA Paradise Rock Club
11 Philadelphia, PA The Trocadero
12 Washington, DC Black Cat
15 Carrboro, NC Cat's Cradle
16 Myrtle Beach, SC House of Blues
17 Columbia, SC Uncle Doctor's
18 Atlanta, GA Cotton Club
19 Nashville, TN 28 Performance Hall
21 Ft. Wayne, IN Piere's
22 Louisville, KY Jillian's
23 Cincinnati, OH Bogart's
27 Lake Buena Vista, FL House of Blues
28 Ft. Myers, FL Indio Room
29 Ft. Lauderdale, FL Chili Peppers
30 St. Petersburg, FL The State Theatre
31 Jacksonville Beach, FL Lillians June 1 Birmingham, AL 5 Points Music Hall
2(a) Biloxi, MS Mississippi Coast
7 New Orleans, LA House of Blues
(a) w/Days of The New, Stabbing Westward, Buckcherry & Saliva
For more information on Diffuser, contact the Hollywood Records publicity department at 818/560-6197.
CONTACT: Hollywood Records, Burbank
Sharrin Summers, 818/560-6197
RB johnqlaw:Dataplay listed as "Next Top Company"
http://www.fsb.com/fortunesb/articles/0,2227,1615,00.html
Napster a model for music, AOL's Levin says
by Stephen Lawson, IDG News Service\Hong Kong Bureau
May 09, 2001, 00:30
HONG KONG - The Napster Inc. music-sharing service is a model for the next
generation of music distribution, AOL Time Warner Inc. Chief Executive Officer
(CEO) Gerald Levin said here Wednesday during a panel discussion at the Fortune
Global Forum.
Levin, along with other top executives on the panel, also expressed high hopes for
Internet and IT industry development outside the U.S. Levin pointed out that
wireless technology is better developed in Asia and Europe than in the U.S. and
China offers more freedom to quickly develop communications infrastructure.
In addition to Levin, whose Fortune magazine is hosting the three-day business
summit, the discussion featured Yahoo Inc. Co-founder Jerry Yang, Dell Computer
Corp. CEO Michael Dell and Computer Associates International Inc. Chairman
Charles Wang. Led by U.S. TV talk show host Charlie Rose, the executives
discussed a wide range of topics, including the aftermath of the stock-market
downturn, the future of digital devices and the "next big thing."
Levin said Napster has pointed the way to network-based delivery of content, which
will be the future direction of both music and other entertainment delivery.
"The value of Napster, now that it's being legally tamed and put in a box, is
essentially to be the first iteration of a new model for consuming entertainment
with a digital space that doesn't have a physical location, that I can access at any
time with any handheld instrument, and music is just the leading edge of where
we're going to take entertainment," Levin said.
The leader of one of the world's largest media conglomerates prefaced his praise
for the Napster model by saying that the peer-to-peer model runs afoul of legal
principles. He envisioned music being accessed from a user's "digital locker,"
probably on a subscription basis.
Levin said subscriptions are at the core of AOL Time Warner's businesses and may
be the best future model for broadband access and video-on-demand.
"The fundamental culture is all about subscriptions," Levin said. Following the
recent merger of AOL and Time Warner Inc., "We actually have 133 million
subscriptions," he added. That model will allow the company to rise above the
current woes of Internet advertising.
"It's all about delivering a message, providing the consumer with information that
can be activated into a transaction, all at one time. We used to call that direct
marketing. Now you have the best medium that's ever been invented for the
execution of that," Levin said.
Yahoo's Yang expressed confidence in his portal company's fundamental business
plan, which is primarily based on advertising revenue, but hinted Yahoo might look
to paid services in the future.
"Fundamentally, the advertising and interactive marketing proposition on the
Internet is as strong as ever," Yang said. However, he added, "Having a direct
relationship with the customer through a subscription model or billing model is
extremely powerful . . . we do need to think about ways to diversify our revenue
base." To do that, Yahoo already is beginning to offer paid services to small and
medium-sized businesses and ways for enterprises to develop better relationships
with their employees, Yang said.
Levin expressed hope for developing countries such as China to leapfrog to new
technologies.
"Here in China, for example, we know that the opportunity to develop broadband
capability through fiber directly to the home doesn't get caught up in a whole
patchwork of either historical development or antiquated regulations," Levin said.
Other panelists likewise said they see the greatest growth prospects in China and
other developing countries. Dell said his company's greatest percentage growth in
sales is coming from Asia today and is likely to continue doing so in the future.
Asked to name the "next big thing" in IT, Dell and Wang both touted wireless
technology. Dell said by year's end 30 million users will have wireless LAN
equipment using the IEEE 802.11 standard, meaning those users will outnumber
handheld computer users by that time. Yang named high-speed Internet access
available across many devices, and Levin identified anytime, anywhere access to
content on demand as the next major trend.
The forum continues here through Thursday.
More information on the event is available on the Web at
http://www.fortuneglobalforum.com.
Going It Alone
Singer-songwriters like Jonatha Brooke and Aimee Mann are using the
Net to work their careers from outside the major-label system - and
doing quite well for themselves, thank you.
By Julene Snyder
There's little glamour to be found at the Doubletree Inn in Omaha,
Neb., but Jonatha Brooke isn't complaining. The independent
singer-songwriter is in the midst of "touring her butt off," hitting
what must feel like every town in the country to support her latest
record, "Steady Pull."
Skipping the glitz that comes with touring on a major label has its
challenges, but that's part of the price you pay for controlling your
work and keeping a bigger cut of the profits. At a time when the
entire music-industry landscape is in flux - with artists and labels
alike trying to hammer out issues over copyright and compensation for
digital use - former major-label artists like Brooke, Aimee Mann and
others are finding that going independent and using technology to
their advantage can pay off both financially and creatively.
After all, it's certainly no secret that the current major-label
system is set up to make stars in the short-term, not to build careers
for the long haul. "Major labels don't have much of an attention span
unless you're 19 and really cute in hot pants." Brooke says ruefully.
Brooke, formerly with the critically acclaimed folk-pop group, the
Story, says that on a major label, her new record - which came out in
mid-February - would probably have been shunted to a back burner by
now. But by releasing music on her own label, Bad Dog Records, she's
already sold twice the number of records at this point in her new
albums' life than she ever did on a major label, and she's just
getting started with her own media blitz.
While it's standard today for artists to have their own Web sites,
Brooke is more involved with hers, JonathaBrooke.com, than most. Her
official bio calls the site a "remarkable tool in her independent
marketing quest," and says that she uses the site to respond to fans
directly and let them feel like they're part of the songwriting
process.
So far, doing it her way is paying off, big-time. Brooke says her
record's first single, "Linger," has reached the top 10 on
adult-alternative charts, which is better than she ever achieved on a
major label. She attributes this at least in part to her own passion
for the music and, of course, being single-minded about promoting the
record. Bottom line? "I get more of that money," Brooke says.
Having creative control is another significant reason for going
independent. Aimee Mann, who came to fame as the lead singer of
new-wave band 'Til Tuesday in 1985 and was nominated for an Oscar and
a Grammy last year for her soundtrack to the movie "Magnolia," is also
finding that independence suits her better than being signed to a
major label.
Her turning point came in 1999 when Interscope decided not to release
her album "Bachelor No. 2." "They'd basically inherited me and didn't
know what to do with me," Mann recalls. "Since I'd come in under
budget, if they'd released the record, they would have had to pay me."
Instead, in an unusual deal, she used the money the label owed her -
which she says was in the low six figures - to buy back the record and
put it out herself. She considers herself the winner in the deal, even
though she spent the money she'd been planning to live on for a year
to regain ownership of her work. "I do exponentially better
financially releasing my music myself," Mann says. "I've sold more
records with my rinky-dink system than Geffen ever did with their
whole staff." That rinky-dink system consists of Mann, her manager and
an assistant, who've done whatever it takes to get her music to the
people who want to hear it.
Mann also has relied heavily on the Internet, especially before she
got a distribution deal for "Bachelor No. 2." She used her Web site,
AimeeMann.com, as a way for fans to mail order the album, and she
offered the entire album for paid download for just under $10.
To date, Mann says she's sold about 185,000 copies of "Bachelor No.
2," and the "Magnolia" soundtrack - composed almost entirely of Mann's
songs - recently went gold with more than 500,000 copies sold. "On a
major, you might make 50 cents a record - and you have to pay back the
costs to make that record," Mann says. "As an indie, you make $8 a
record."
Not to mention the psychic toll that being on a major label can take
on an artist. "Nothing makes anyone happy," Mann recalls. "As an
artist, you start to think, 'Maybe I'm not that good.' To go from that
to being nominated for awards, getting great reviews and a great
response from fans makes you think, 'Hmm. Maybe I've been hanging out
with the wrong people.'"
OT Flash gets speed hike
By Chris Edwards
Electronics Times
(05/08/01 10:06 a.m. GMT)
Atmel has developed a flash memory that works on the
same bus as SDRAM, anticipating a move towards higher
bandwidth memories in embedded systems such as
smartphones.
The company has shipped a version of its Sflash to a
laser printer manufacturer and has lined up 50, 75 and
100MHz versions.
For the cellphone market, Atmel, Intel and Micron
Technology have produced synchronous devices that can
burst data at up to 50MHz. The Atmel design can double
that speed for bursts of four or eight words. But Richard
De Caro, its director of strategic marketing, says the
'sweet spot' for the 32Mbit memory will be at 75MHz.
"Mobile phones will incorporate more SDRAM as well as
adding pseudo-static ram because of the cost per bit equation," said De Caro.
He says there will be pressure to adopt SDRAM interfaces on flash from cost as well as
performance reasons because SDRAM will turn up in advanced phones, particularly for
the Japanese market.
"They want the flash to reside on the same bus," said De Caro, adding that
high-speed flash reduces the need to 'shadow' code to SRAM or DRAM which
historically has been faster.
But he says that power consumption will have to come down, with a shrink from the
current 0.25µm process design to 0.18µm, before SDRAM flash will move into mobile
applications.
Clifford Smith, European marketing manager for Intel's wireless, comms and
computing group, said: "We constantly evaluate the interface types and Intel is
heavily focused on the cellphone market. Customers [in that market] tell us that
synchronous burst is good in terms of improving bandwidth, but they have not asked
us for an SDRAM interface.
"The automotive customers will ask for one and the set-top box designers may ask.
We continue to look at it but we have no current product plans."
Atmel has not changed the memory cell to get burst cycles down to 10ns but has
worked on the data access design.
"To get the speed, it takes a ton of sense amps. To get to a burst length of eight
doublewords, you've got to have 256 sense amps," said De Caro.
A little dot connecting...Cirrus no, Zoran yes
EASTECH also made waves when it announced its latest 6.1AV receiver at the 2000 CES. It was the
world's first 6.1AV receiver to sell for under USD600, a product that traditional retailers would have to sell
for as much as USD1,000. The receiver was produced together with Outlaw Audio, Inc., a company that
offers high quality audio, video and consurner electronic products via the Internet, and Zoran Corporation
which develops and markers integrated circults (ICs) and software for digital audio and video applications.
EASTECH's role in this partnership was to provide the design and engineering capabilities, and will be the
manufacturer of the receiver.
04-02-01
QDesign Corporation,
a leading provider of advanced digital audio compression solutions for
the Internet delivery, broadcast and new media markets, has established
an office in Mountain View, California, to support the company
rapidly expanding business development and sales engineering activities.
Senior Vice President of Professional Products Paul Goldberg, responsible
for directing product development, marketing and commercial deployment
of the QDesign professional product family, will also direct and manage
QDesignÕs Intellectual Property activities from the new location.
We are extremely pleased and excited at these developments,"
said Richard J. Beaton, President of QDesign Corp. "A base of operations
in Silicon Valley makes us more accessible to a rapidly growing number
of current and potential licensees, as well as provide a home for our
U.S. engineering team, as we continue our expansion there.
QDesign's recent acquisition of media security intellectual property complements
the company's existing portfolio of state-of-the-art digital audio compression
technologies and dovetails perfectly with Paul Goldberg's arrival. Added
Mr. Beaton, "Paul's wealth of experience adds considerably to our
existing knowledge base, and he will be invaluable in attracting engineers
of the highest caliber for our Silicon Valley Group. His decision to join
us was a strong vote of confidence in our ability to provide the most
flexible platform for the secure, profitable delivery of high quality
digital audio over any wired or wireless network and on any physical media.
Mr. Goldberg recently joined QDesign from Zoran Corporation, where he
was Vice President of Audio Products and Intellectual Properties. His
experience there and at Dolby Laboratories, where he was responsible for
directing the research, development and commercialization of the Dolby
Digital sound on film system, firmly supports QDesign's objective: to
provide the secure technologies needed to move the music industry from
a distribution model based on non-secure physical media to one based on
the combination of secure physical media and secure electronic distribution.
Mr. Goldberg holds a total of seventeen patents in film sound, optical
data storage, video image printing, medical ultrasonic imaging and medical
diagnostics. Seven additional patents, six related to the secure distribution
of entertainment content and one associated with the virtualization of
multichannel audio signals, are pending. He is an active member of AES,
With the release of the world's first real-time MPEG-2 audio compression
software in 1996 and the subsequent introduction of its own MP3, QDesign
Music and QDX technologies, QDesign has established itself as a leading
provider of the most advanced audio compression solutions in the broadcast,
new media and Internet delivery markets. From the inclusion of the QDesign
Music Codec in Apple QuickTime as the audio compression solution for Internet
streaming, multimedia authoring and digital music, to the cross-platform
MVP jukebox application, QDesign has received numerous industry accolades
for delivering the best web audio technology. QDesign's audio technologies
appear in hardware processors, digital audio production, automation and
distribution systems as well as consumer multimedia software. QDesign
is a founding member of the Secure Digital Music Initiative (SDMI). For
more information on QDesign and its products, please visit:
Coming soon to a cell phone near you: Live TV
By Ben Charny, ZDNet News
Thursday May 03 04:15 PM EDT
Three European telephone service providers are testing a way to stream live TV events including horse races
and financial news updates to cell phones.
Three European telephone service providers are testing a way to stream live TV events including horse races
and financial news updates to cell phones. The companies may debut the service on the tiny screen by year's
end, one of the service providers involved said Thursday.
The hardware technology at the heart of the effort comes from Celvibe, an Israeli company that recently has
been on a venture capital winning streak that netted the 50-employee start-up a total of $12 million.
Streaming video to handsets is among the applications being proposed for the next generation, or so-called
"3G," phone systems that telecommunications carriers throughout the world are in the midst of launching.
These new systems will allow cell phones to have Internet access at broadband speeds.
But the 3G marketplace has been rattled as of late. NTT DoCoMo (news - web sites) was supposed to launch
the world's first such 3G network in May. Instead, because of problems with the network, it will wait until
October. Other carriers in Europe and Asia also announced delays.
Some remain optimistic that such sophisticated services can work on a cell phone.
"There is, generally speaking, a potential for this to be a mass market type of product," said Keith Waryas, IDC
research manager for mobile e-business. "It will do quite well, but for the next few years, it will be quite (a
small) niche."
John Marchioni, Celvibe's vice president of business development, refused to identify the carriers testing the
service, but indicated they could include British Telecom, which has more than 5 million customers.Marchioni
said that people "shouldn't be surprised," to see at least oneEuropean telephone service provider offer the
service as soon as the end of this year.
There are other companies developing the same type of technology as Celvibe's, including PacketVideo,
which has received more than $100 million in financing, plus recently won a patent for some of its
hardware.PacketVideo offers video content through a portal. Celvibe is differentbecause it says it can offer a
way to access TV events as they are broadcast.
What is streamed to handhelds is up to the carriers. ButMarchioni thinks one of the first kinds of content that
could be offered are financial market updates, he said. He also envisions thatvideo caught by traffic cameras
posted on freeways and highways could be streamed to devices placed in cars, so drivers could see for
themselvesjust how crowded the streets are.
Streaming video on phones and personal digital assistants continues to meet with mixed reactions from
analysts. They are awed by the technology but say it is a few steps ahead of its time. Celvibe's claim that some
carriers might begin offering the service by year's end still hasn't swayed many analysts.
IDC's Waryas doesn't expect the video itself to be of such high quality. Videoviewed on personal computers
with 56K modems are often blurry, and theaudio doesn't track the video images. Most phone networks are
evenslower, which could cause even more problems, he said.
"Think about 56K connections to computers," Waryas said. "The video isstill choppy on a broadband. Now
imagine doing it on a 14.4K," which isthe typical speed at which data can be sent to a phone.
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OT Speak...and your TV obeys
YOUR VOICE controls your TV, VCR and more...with InVoca Voice Operated Remote Control.
During interplanetary space probes, NASA uses highly sophisticated voice activation technology to control intricate, multi-million dollar equipment. A recent breakthrough brings that voice-activated technology into your home with what could be the world’s most advanced remote control device.
What’s so advanced? Speak and your TV obeys your command. 54 commands, to be precise. Now you change channels, raise or lower the volume, start a movie, start recording, switch input sources and much more simply by commanding your TV, VCR, Cable Box or Satellite. InVoca translates your voice into electronic infrared signals. Or, press the “old-fashioned” buttons. But who’d want to?
Easy to train. InVoca is smart. You train it to recognize you--your voice, your language, your accent--and up to 54 specific commands. InVoca remembers commands from up to three other family members too, even if its battery is removed. Sophisticated macros can command multiple button-presses, and the multi-string macros create different button-presses in response to subsequent commands.
Deluxe Voice Activated TV Remote . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . $79.95
Promo Code: WW-2124-80290
Intel or MSFT who will buy LHSP..i wonder?? eom
Japan and convergence...
http://www.japaninc.net/mag/comp/2001/05/may01_converge.html
Big Blue's Big Brother Lab
By Elisa Batista
2:00 a.m. Apr. 24, 2001 PDT
SAN JOSE, California -- Viewing the future through the eyes of IBM scientists at the Almaden Research Center is both awesome and unnerving.
Imagine living in a world with sensors inserted everywhere, including sunglasses, so any time you meet new people their names appear before your eyes.
If you're blind their names could be whispered to you through earplugs, thanks to voice-enabling software. Even if you don't speak the same language as the people you encounter, you'll have their words translated for you in real time.
No one would remain anonymous -- you'd know the name of anyone you encountered in the world.
To the chagrin of privacy-minded people, crossing that fine line into someone else's space is part of IBM's job -- especially in the field of pervasive computing.
Perched on top of rolling green hills that resemble a golf course without the carts or people, the Almaden Research Center stands alone in a secluded section in the southeast portion of Silicon Valley. There isn't even cell phone coverage out here, which is a sharp contrast to the saturated technology hub just to the north.
But this hive of activity, IBM's second-largest lab and the one that in 1956 developed "magnetic storage" -- what eventually became the hard drive, is abuzz with curiosity. The IBM scientists cooped up in the building are working on projects they believe will revolutionize the universe.
IBM touted 2,886 patents last year, of which a third -- 962 concepts -- shipped in the form of products. IBM raked in $1.6 billion in intellectual property license fees last year, according to company spokesman Tim Blair.
Blair said the scientists' work underwent a series of "complex reviews" by the business development office to determine which of their ideas would become products. Blair emphasized that the business department doesn't give the inventors a quota or tell them what to make in the labs.
"You can't tell a painter what to paint," he said.
However, even if a product doesn't make it into the hands of the public, the concept for the invention could survive. Daniel Russell, the senior manager at the Almaden Research Center, draws an oft-repeated analogy with how wireless evangelists predict that streaming video over mobile devices will become a hit.
"Video streaming on mobile devices is oversold," he said. "(The killer application for wireless devices) will be something other than you thought."
Still, after spending an afternoon perusing the wacky ideas of scientists in a lab -- which is filled with cameras and sensors -- it's easy (and fun) to slip into their psyches and dream how the inventions could be used someday.
The scenario of everyone in the world knowing each other's names would be possible if everyone's face were scanned into a database. Then a camera with gaze-tracking technology -- which IBM calls the "Vision Pad Identifier" -– would identify the face and display the name of the person in a device, such as sunglasses.
IBM showed off the technology, or what exactly would appear in the sunglasses, with a photograph of actress Alyssa Milano and her name displayed. Another photograph showed a police officer wearing headgear with a camera. To demonstrate how the camera would adjust itself to identify a person or object, a robot named Pong noisily adjusted his ping-pong eyes to gaze at someone in the room.
It was creepy.
M. "Flick" Flickner, a manager at the lab, said IBM doesn't plan to get into the business of selling robots. An IBM spokeswoman later said she doesn't expect the technology to be used to track everyone in the world.
"Gosh, I hope not," she said. "You couldn't stalk the person. I don't think that would be possible -- you would need to know that person and need to program the technology. That's why we're not researching for face recognition. We're trying to use it more for sign translation."
She envisions something more like the technology being used at a home or a business to remind people whose faces are scanned of appointments, or even a co-worker's birthday. IBM expects the technology to be available to the public in a couple of years.
Russell said it could help police officers find suspects, or aid tourists visiting museums and buildings in foreign countries. For example, if you are an American and wanted to translate the name of a restaurant in Chinese characters, you'd wear these camera-enabled sunglasses to view the name of the building in English.
"It may make a difference to you whether you're eating salmon or flying fish eggs," Russell said.
The scientists at the lab live what they create. The company has a chalkboard-sized screen, called the BlueBoard, which is an electronic communal bulletin board that gives everyone whose personal information is in a database access to their desktop computer applications by simply looking at the screen. The screen, if you haven't guessed already, has gaze-tracking technology.
Every office in the Almaden Research Center has a miniature electronic board outside the door, which contains schedules and even the names of websites visited by the people in that office. The screens, which are powered by the wireless Ethernet standard 802.11b, can flash at any moment to give people messages or let them know someone is looking for them.
Russell said there are no cameras in the bathroom.
Not all the technology had Big Brother written all over it. Most of the demonstrations, Flickner pointed out, were possible with existing equipment and were even being used -- like surfing the Web with voice-recognition software.
Users could also input data into a personal computer or handheld device with their hands -- or their eyes.
With a camera and tracking system embedded in the computer -- IBM calls the product Magic Point -- users look at a certain spot on the screen, their eyes are measured up and the screen's cursor follows their gaze.
"Clicking" a choice with your eyes is still not possible with IBM's software, but you can use your voice or lightly touch a mouse embedded with sensors to make a selection on the screen.
For the early adopters of wireless devices, which require arduous typing, IBM touted a virtual "Hooke's keyboard," which lays out the letter keys in a circular form. The location of the keys is different from your typical keyboard or phone keypad. An algorithm determined the most popular order of typing letters.
"The layout of the keyboard allows you to type 41 words per minute, which is a lot faster than graffiti," Russell said.
This technology may work on cell phones, if there's coverage.
Vivendi Looks to Expand Pact With Yahoo! to Match AOL
April 24, 2001
PARIS -- Vivendi Universal SA hopes to broaden its two-week-old music-licensing deal with Yahoo! Inc. to encompass movies and television shows in a bid to match the distribution clout of more vertically integrated AOL Time Warner Inc.
In a 90-minute interview at the Franco-American media giant's Paris headquarters, Vivendi Universal Chairman Jean-Marie Messier spelled out his vision of a close and mutually beneficial partnership with Yahoo that would stop short of a takeover.
"We believe that Yahoo could be the privileged partner of Vivendi Universal and vice versa," he said. "We have other content. Let's discuss this other content with Yahoo."
Mr. Messier also confirmed that Vivendi and News Corp. have reached a deal to merge their unprofitable Italian pay-TV businesses. Vivendi's Telepiu subsidiary will effectively take over News Corp.'s Stream unit, according to people familiar with the deal.
Vivendi will own two-thirds of the merged entity, while News Corp. will own one-third and hold an option allowing it to raise its stake to 50% within three years. The deal could be announced as early as Tuesday. Telecom Italia SpA, which owns 50% of Stream, is angling to sell its stake to News Corp., but no agreement had yet been reached on that aspect of the deal as of Monday afternoon.
Broadening its deal with Yahoo to areas other than music would enable Vivendi to reach consumers through a wider array of channels in the U.S., where its distribution network is for now limited to movie theaters, traditional retail outlets and cable-TV network USA Networks Inc. By contrast, AOL Time Warner already is in a position to pipe its films and TV shows straight to people's homes through the AOL Internet-access service and its vast network of cable lines. Owning its distribution platforms also enables AOL Time Warner to cross-sell and cross-promote each of its products to a wider audience.
"Unlike AOL Time Warner, Vivendi Universal has to rely on third parties," said Carlo Campomagnani, an analyst with Credit Suisse First Boston in London. "That is a potential weakness. You're much more limited in the flexibility you have to package and price products."
As he outlined the shape that a tighter alliance with Yahoo could take, Mr. Messier gave previously undisclosed details of the companies' music licensing deal. Under the terms of the agreement, Yahoo will make the Duet music-subscription service, a joint venture between Vivendi and Sony Corp., available on its Web site in exchange for a take of "well below 20%" of revenue, Mr. Messier said. That compares with the 40% take the online music-swapping service Napster Inc. would pocket under a proposal agreed to by Bertelsmann AG's BMG Entertainment but rejected by the other major music labels.
Yahoo's take of the revenue will increase once it has signed up 500,000 paying subscribers to Duet and rise again once the Web portal has signed up two million subscribers for Duet, Mr. Messier said. Although the deal is nonexclusive, Vivendi will make Yahoo its preferred promotional outlet on the Internet, he added. "For us, it's a very important and close deal," he said.
Although the partnership between Vivendi, Sony and Yahoo will compete with MusicNet, a rival online music alliance between AOL, Bertelsmann and EMI Group PLC, Mr. Messier said he was in favor of striking a cross-licensing deal with the members of the other alliance. "At the end of the day, our music has to be distributed on AOL and vice versa. That's what consumers want."
Mr. Messier welcomed the appointment of Terry Semel as Yahoo's new chief executive officer. Noting that the former Hollywood executive had played a key role in bringing Vivendi and Seagram together last spring, he called Mr. Semel "a great manager with a great vision joining a team that we are already pleased to be working with." However, Mr. Messier played down speculation, stoked by Mr. Semel's appointment, that Yahoo could sell itself to Vivendi, saying that for now Vivendi was only interested in "a soft alliance" with Yahoo.
Yahoo spokeswoman Nicki Dugan said, "As with all of our content partners, we're always open to exploring extending our relationships in ways that benefit consumers."
Vivendi released strong first-quarter earnings Monday, which Mr. Messier said partly reflected progress already made from merging Vivendi's European businesses with Universal Studios and Universal Music Group. Excluding Vivendi Environment, Vivendi's majority-owned utility arm, earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation and amortization reached 900 million euros ($812.5 million), more than double the pro forma earnings of Vivendi and Seagram a year earlier. Revenue increased 10% to 5.9 billion euros. Mr. Messier said he was confident Vivendi would "reach 100% of our ambitious 2001 targets" of 10% revenue growth and a 35% increase in Ebitda.
Mr. Messier reiterated his interest in swapping Vivendi's 23% stake in U.K. pay-TV group British Sky Broadcasting PLC for Liberty Media Corp.'s 20% share of USA Networks. Such a swap would bring Vivendi's stake in USA Networks to 63%, giving it full control of Barry Diller's network. Under a deal reached with the European Commission last fall in exchange for clearance of its merger with Seagram and French pay-TV group Canal Plus SA, Vivendi has 18 months to sell its BSkyB stake.
Mr. Messier said he had already discussed the idea of a swap with Mr. Diller and John Malone, CEO of Liberty Media. While Messrs. Diller and Malone both look favorably on such a deal "in principle," Vivendi and Liberty Media are still far apart on a valuation and "there are no active discussions at this date," Mr. Messier said. "Hopefully, we'll come to a middle ground someday."
-- Mylene Mangalindan in San Francisco contributed to this article.
Write to John Carreyrou at john.carreyrou@wsj.com , to Charles Goldsmith at charles.goldsmith@wsj.com and to David Woodruff at david.woodruff@wsj.com .
Capitol Records and Radiohead Create First Instant Message 'Buddy' in Music History
Record Label Partners with ActiveBuddy, Inc. to Market Music
And Interact with Fans Through Instant Messaging
NEW YORK, April 24 /PRNewswire Interactive News Release/ -- ActiveBuddy,
Inc., the messaging industry's foremost provider of interactive agent
technology, and Capitol Records announced today an agreement to build branded
interactive agents. Capitol Records will deploy the technology to promote its
artists and new album releases beginning with a Radiohead-branded interactive
agent. Capitol Records plans to launch the Radiohead agent as part of its
global marketing campaign for Amnesiac, the Grammy Award-winning band's fifth
album due for release on June 5th. Through Active Buddy's technology,
Radiohead will be the first band to provide exclusive Radiohead content
directly to its fans through Instant Messaging. The Radiohead agent will be
the most thorough and comprehensive source online and offline for accessing
exclusive information and services related to the band and to the album.
"The Radiohead custom buddy is a fun, new and compelling way to deliver
exclusive Radiohead music and information to their fans," said Robin Bechtel,
head of New Media for Capitol Records. "By doing it through Instant
Messaging, which is already an incredibly popular way to communicate, fans can
get information about their favorite band as easily as chatting with friends."
In direct contrast to the band's notorious press-shyness, Radiohead has
long been one of the most proactive musical entities on the web, especially in
terms of fan outreach. Prior to the release of last year's platinum-plus
Grammy-winning KID A, band site Radiohead.com would feature spontaneous
recording and tour diary entries, and even the occasional unannounced
streaming audiovisual performances of new material. With the creation of the
Radiohead interactive agent, the band once again takes advantage of technology
to enhance and expand its relationship with its fans.
The Radiohead agent will reside on a user's Instant Messenger buddy
contact list. The agent will be able to recognize and respond to natural
language questions and requests for information about the band and Amnesiac.
Tour dates, song lists, artists' bios, album credits, purchasing information,
contact information, current web site information, and other album related
material will be available. Capitol Records has also enlisted Radiohead's
fans to determine what other content should be included. Additionally, the
service will provide other entertainment related content areas such as music
news and horoscopes.
"Capitol Records is the first to benefit from using ActiveBuddy's custom
built interactive agent technology to market one of their artists through
Instant Messaging," said Peter Levitan, CEO of ActiveBuddy, Inc. "The
Radiohead interactive agent is a great early example of how companies like
Capitol Records can leverage IM to extend their relationships with their
customers into the fastest growing segment of the Internet."
About ActiveBuddy, Inc.
ActiveBuddy, Inc. develops and markets interactive agents that deliver a
wide range of personalized content and applications via PC-based instant
messaging and wireless messaging platforms. ActiveBuddy(TM) interactive agent
technology is designed for use by instant messaging networks, advertisers, the
enterprise, and content and service providers across all platforms that
support instant messaging. Founded in March 2000, ActiveBuddy is based in New
York, NY, and Sunnyvale, CA. Principal investors are Wit SoundView Ventures
(Nasdaq: WITC) and Reuters (Nasdaq: RTRSY).
About Capitol Records New Media
Capitol Records New Media, founded in 1993, creates and implements online
marketing strategies, Web sites and enhanced CDs and DVDs for its artists.
Early pioneers in Internet marketing, in 1994 Capitol Records New Media
created the first website destination called Megadeth Arizona, which won
numerous awards and was the first website to garner major media attention.
The department also broke new ground by developing the Web's first digital
postcard and first real-time chat room. The Capitol Records label site --
Hollywood and Vine -- was nominated "best music site" by Yahoo! Internet Life,
and was called "one of the best music-related Web sites to be found," by the
Los Angeles Times. Hollywood and Vine received more public recognition when
they became the first major recording label to enter into the world of
e-commerce by offering the sale of the first digital single for Capitol artist
Duran Duran. The department's innovative, worldwide campaign for Radiohead's
KID A was credited with "helping the band scale new heights" by Inside.com.
Harman Consumer Group and iBiquity Digital Plan to Bring AM and FM Digital Radio to the Home Market By 2003
Leading Audio Products Manufacturer and Digital Radio Technology
Developer Agree on License Terms For IBOC Technology
LAS VEGAS, April 24 /PRNewswire Interactive News Release/ -- NAB2001 --
iBiquity Digital Corporation, the leading developer of AM and FM digital
broadcast technology, and the Harman Consumer Group, a leading audio products
manufacturer, announced today at the National Association of Broadcasters
convention in Las Vegas that the two companies have agreed on business terms
to permit Harman to license iBiquity Digital's IBOC (In-Band On-Channel) AM
and FM digital broadcast technology. Harman plans to incorporate iBiquity's
technology into its new line of digital home receivers scheduled for launch
under the Harman Kardon Brand in 2003.
"Since the early '50s, Harman has been both a pioneer and innovator in the
development of quality audio products," said Tom McLoughlin, president, Harman
Kardon. "We plan to once again lead the industry by offering consumers high
quality IBOC technology in our digital receivers with all the exciting new
services that radio broadcasters will provide."
"Harman Kardon is one of the most progressive and technologically
innovative brands in the consumer electronics business," said Robert Struble,
president and CEO, iBiquity Digital Corporation. "We are proud to be working
with them to make digital receivers with IBOC AM and FM digital broadcast
technology available to consumers in the near future."
Today, radio in the United States is broadcast using analog signals.
iBiquity Digital's technology uses an IBOC approach to broadcasting, enabling
radio broadcasters to transmit a digital signal capable of delivering digital
quality audio as well as wireless data for a wide variety of consumer
applications, including traffic and weather information. In the future, in-
vehicle radios, home audio and potentially a host of consumer electronics
devices, such as personal digital assistants and smart phones, will receive
wireless data transmitted by digital AM and FM radio stations.
About Harman Consumer Group (http://www.harman.com )
The Harman Consumer Group (http://www.harman.com ) is a division of Harman
International Industries, Inc. (NYSE: HAR), a leading manufacturer of high-
quality, high-fidelity audio and video products for the consumer and
professional markets. HCG is a leading designer, manufacturer and marketer of
a wide range of high-fidelity loudspeakers, audio, and video components for
use in homes and automobiles. The Group's brands include JBL, Infinity,
Harman Kardon, Mark Levinson, Madrigal Imaging, Revel, Proceed, Audioaccess,
and Lexicon.
About iBiquity Digital
iBiquity Digital (http://www.ibiquity.com ) is a leading technology
innovator working to develop and commercialize digital radio and audio
compression technology solutions. Its AM and FM digital broadcast technology,
iDAB(TM), will transform the terrestrial radio industry from being providers
of audio-only analog to being providers of high quality digital audio and
wireless data services. PAC is a highly customizable audio compression
technology currently being incorporated into wireless solutions, such as XM
Satellite Radio's service. iBiquity Digital was formed from the merger of
Lucent Digital Radio and USA Digital Radio. The company is privately held with
operations in Columbia, MD, Warren, NJ, and Detroit MI.
iBiquity Digital's owners serve as a major source of guidance and support.
The broad ownership group includes 14 of the nation's largest radio
broadcasters, and other prominent technology, media and investment companies:
ABC, Inc., New York; Allbritton New Media, Inc., Washington, DC; Beasley
Broadcast Group, Inc., Naples, Florida; Bonneville International Corporation,
Salt Lake City; Citadel Communications Corporation, Las Vegas; Clear Channel
Communications, Inc., San Antonio; Cox Radio, Inc., Atlanta; Cumulus Media,
Inc., Milwaukee; DB Capital Partners, New York; Emmis Communications,
Indianapolis; Entercom Communications Corporation, Bala Cynwyd, Pennsylvania;
Flatiron Partners, New York; Gannett Co. Inc., Arlington, Virginia; Granite
Ventures, LLC, San Francisco; Grotech Capital Group, Timonium, Maryland;
Harris Corporation, Melbourne, Florida; Hispanic Broadcasting Corporation,
Dallas; J.P. Morgan Partners, New York; J&W Seligman & Co. Incorporated, New
York; Lucent Technologies, Murray Hill, New Jersey; Pequot Capital, Westport,
Connecticut; Pictet, Geneva, Switzerland; Radio One, Inc., Lanham, Maryland;
Regent Communications, Inc., Covington, Kentucky; Riggs Capital Partners, LLC,
Washington, DC; Saga Communications, Inc., Grosse Pointe, Michigan; TI
Ventures, Dallas; Viacom Inc., New York; Visteon Corporation, Dearborn,
Michigan; Waller-Sutton Media Partners, New York; Whitney & Co., Stamford,
Connecticut; and Williams, Jones & Associates, Inc., New York.
Twenty-Six Additional Companies Endorse Intel Personal InternetClient Architecture for Wireless Internet Devices
Business Wire (April 23, 2001)
TAIPEI, Taiwan, Apr 23, 2001 (BUSINESS WIRE) -- INTEL DEVELOPER
FORUM--Twenty-six wireless device and equipment manufacturers, application
developers and service providers based in the Asia Pacific region today endorsed the
Intel(R) Personal Internet Client Architecture (Intel PCA). The 26 companies are joining
Intel in the effort to accelerate the development of applications and hardware for
next-generation wireless Internet devices.
The number of Intel PCA supporters has grown to more than 50 companies since last
September when Intel introduced the architecture, which is tailored for Internet-ready cell
phones and other wireless Internet devices.
"We are extremely pleased at the tremendous response the Intel Personal Internet Client
Architecture has received in Asia and around the world," said Ron Smith, senior vice
president and general manager of Intel's Wireless Communications and Computing
Group. "These companies recognize the advantages Intel PCA brings to speeding up the
application development process for Internet cell phones."
The 26 additional companies endorsing Intel PCA are based in China, Taiwan and
Korea. They include:
-- China: Device and equipment manufacturers, Cellon Wireless R&D
Ltd., Chinese Star Cyber Technology Limited; Group Sense
Limited; Hi-tech Wealth Electronic Product Co. Ltd., The Konka
Group Co., Ltd., Legend Handheld & Wireless Communication
Group and UTStarcom Incorporated; applications developers,
CStar, GWcom, Inc. and Hanwang Technology; and wireless
technology developer, LinkAir Communications.
-- Taiwan: Device and equipment manufacturers, Acer Communication
& Multimedia Inc., Arima Group, ASUSTeK Computer Inc., Compal
Communications Inc., DBTEL Incorporated, GVC Corporation, HTC
Corporation and Quanta Computer Inc.; application developers,
Avxing International Ltd., Coventive Technologies Ltd. and
VerbalTek Incorporated; and service providers, KG
Telecommunications Co., Ltd. and Taiwan Cellular Corporation.
-- Korea: Device and equipment manufacturers, Cyberbank, Co and
Trigem Computer, Inc.; and an application developer, ZIO
Interactive Inc.
"We share Intel's view of the need to have true open architectures that enhance
development of wireless Internet applications and services across standards and
next-generation wireless devices," said Liu Zhijun, vice president and general manager
of Legend's Handheld & Wireless Communication Group. "This is vitally important to
accelerate the growth of wireless Internet usage among consumers in China and
worldwide."
"The wireless industry needs open standards like Intel PCA that proliferate the
development of software and content on next-generation wireless devices," said Jason
Sun, president and chief executive officer of Cellon Wireless R&D Ltd. "We're working on
the development of this architecture through our partner, CELLon Corporation, which is
designing modular products including a software platform and hardware modules that
will adopt Intel's architecture and products. This architecture is critical to accelerate the
growth of wireless Internet usage among consumers worldwide."
"With its open and parallel development nature, Intel PCA will become the future for
wireless Internet clients, said Chris Chung, president of Trigem Computer, Inc. "Trigem
expects PCA to be widely accepted as the common platform for accelerating the wireless
client industry. Trigem's core competency in manufacturing -- building on Intel PCA
wireless architecture -- will become a major force in driving the development of the
wireless client industry."
Intel PCA
Intel PCA is an open architecture that allows rapid development of new wireless Internet
applications and devices. The architecture enables software applications to be written to
a general purpose microprocessor with scalable performance. Intel will offer a wide
range of products and support for PCA to help facilitate the growth of these new wireless
solutions.
About IDF
The Intel Developer Forum is Intel's premier technical forum featuring more than 250
sessions and hands-on labs, and numerous demonstrations of cutting-edge products
and technologies. Now in its fourth year, the semi-annual conference provides hardware
original equipment manufacturers, and independent hardware and software vendors
with in-depth information on Intel technologies and initiatives. Visit
http://developer.intel.com/idf for more information. Subscribe to the Intel Developer
Update Magazine at http://developer.intel.com/update/ for updated information throughout
the year.
Intel, the world's largest chip maker, is also a leading manufacturer of computer,
networking and communications products. Additional information about Intel is available
at www.intel.com/pressroom.
Note to Editors: Third party marks and brands are property of their respective holders.
CONTACT: Intel
Daniel J. Francisco, 916/356-0546
daniel.j.francisco@intel.com
OT: Vbrick Systems And Texas Instruments to Demonstrate Streaming
Video Over Wireless NetworkRevolutionary Wireless Ethernet
Network Uses Ti's Dsps And Analog Micro-Mirrors to Deliver Mpeg2
Quality Video Content
Business Wire (April 23, 2001)
LAS VEGAS, Apr 23, 2001 (BUSINESS WIRE) -- VBrick Systems, Inc. and Texas
Instruments (TI) Incorporated announced today that the companies will demonstrate an
innovative wireless network developed by TI at the National Association of Broadcasters
(NAB) Conference and Exhibition, here. The companies said that they will demonstrate
streaming MPEG2 video, delivered by VBricks, over TI's optical wireless network. The
demonstration will be presented in the VBrick booth, #M9368, during the show.
"VBrick is excited about this technology demonstration. It will highlight not only the
advances in wireless networking, but will demonstrate how organizations can use
today's extremely high-quality video, over wireless or regular Ethernet networks to
improve communications, enhance education and streamline processes," said Rich
Mavrogeanes, president, chairman and founder of VBrick Systems, Inc. "This is a great
illustration of the simplicity with which high-value visual communications applications
can be created using these newer technologies," Mr. Mavrogeanes continued.
"High quality video products such as those from VBrick can take advantage of more
bandwidth than most wireless networking approaches can provide. The ability to rapidly
provision a network capable of supporting interactive video-based applications should
lead to exciting new opportunities in the video over packet space," said Jose Melendez,
worldwide manager, Analog MEMS Networking Products, TI.
VBrick products provide a convenient and simple way to improve communications.
Organizations can increase productivity by monitoring assembly lines for reduced
downtime, inform personnel by streaming news and information directly to their PCs,
reduce costs by training personnel and educating students remotely and enhance
security by observing critical areas with high-quality surveillance.
TI's Optical Wireless Solutions reference design allows system developers to wirelessly
deploy dedicated 100 Mbps 802.3 compliant Ethernet connections -- 100 times greater
than currently available wireless systems. This development expands the multi-billion
dollar market for companies building systems or delivering services that harness optical
networking technology, enabling high-speed broadband access networks for homes and
offices. (See http://www.ti.com/sc/alp).
Used by educators, corporations and broadcasters throughout the country, VBrick's are
ideal for a wide-range of applications. VBrick's low-cost, ease-of-use and high reliability
enables organizations to establish television-quality one-way or two-way visual
communications quickly.
Cost-Effective Network Video Solutions
Since its inception in 1998, VBrick has established new price/performance levels for the
network video equipment market. Its new MPEG-2 products continue that leadership by
incorporating important features and functions in small footprints with easy-to-use
configuration, management and user interfaces. VBrick extends its leadership by offering
these new products at a fraction of the cost of competitive products.
See Streaming DVD at these upcoming events
VBrick will also demonstrate its new MPEG-2 streaming DVD products at the
Networld+Interop (N+I) conference and exhibition in Las Vegas, May 6th through the 11th.
About VBrick Systems
VBrick Systems, Inc. enables customers to deliver quality vision across their networks
through innovation in the size, cost, functionality and quality of its networking products.
The company designs, manufactures, and markets affordable high-performance
audio/video networking systems for broadband and wideband network applications.
VBrick Systems provides true DVD-quality video and CD-quality audio on an end-to-end
basis for videoconferencing, distance learning, remote monitoring, video-on-demand
and video authoring applications. The company is located in Wallingford, Connecticut
USA. Additional information can be found at the VBrick web site www.vbrick.com.
VBrick and the VBrick logo are trademarks of VBrick Systems, Inc. all rights reserved.
CONTACT: VBrick Systems
Mary Brandon
(203) 265-0044
maryb@vbrick.com
or
The Strayton Group, Inc.
Rob Strayton
(508) 655-6965
rob@strayton.com
or
Texas Instruments
Anne Prewett
(214) 480-3774
a-prewett@ti.com
OT: Interesting..TI rolls out optical platform for wireless Ethernet
By Darrell Dunn
EBN
(04/23/01 16:05 p.m. GMT)
Drawing from resources throughout its semiconductor
operations, Texas Instruments Inc. today will unveil a
platform for the optical delivery of wireless 100Mbit/s
Ethernet connections.
The reference design includes an analog micromirror and
transceiver based on technology TI developed over the
past 20 years for use in its digital light processing (DLP)
display systems. The wireless platforms also will include
a TI DSP and ARM-based processor similar to the
company's wireless handset solution, as well as analog
and mixed-signal ICs.
The platform is expected to wirelessly connect
high-bandwidth corporate Ethernet networks, eliminating
the expensive and often cumbersome practice of
stringing fiber cable through office buildings, said Matt
Harrison, business manager at TI's recently created
Optical Wireless Solutions unit.
“We're providing fiber-like capability without the cable, directing light through an
open-air medium,” Harrison said. “This technology will allow companies to provision
their networks much faster, while getting the same bandwidth they've been
accustomed to with their wired networks.”
The optical platform could either compete against or complement other wireless
technologies such as Bluetooth, HomeRF, wireless LAN (WLAN), or IrDA, providing data
at much higher rates than the other technologies while avoiding a licensed frequency
spectrum such as RF. The platform is intended for stationary uses such as office
equipment, as opposed to mobile applications, which
are more suited to RF-based wireless technologies, Harrison said.
“This is a surprising and very novel offering,” said Will Strauss, an analyst at Forward
Concepts Co., Tempe, Ariz. “It's the first time I've heard of anyone using a
micromirror approach to local area networks. It's certainly allowing TI to basically use
its whole product line.”
The key new component of the optical wireless platform is the TALP1135, a dual-axis,
gimbaled microelectromechanical systems (MEMS) mirror. The mirror is made of
single crystal silicon layered in gold to improve its reflective ability. The
electromagnetically actuated elliptical mirror measures 3.6 ¥ 3.2mm and is hinged to
a frame.
On the frame are four magnets and behind the mirror are four coils that create an
electromagnetic field. The separate processor controls the amount of current going to
each coil and directs the movement of the mirror to acquire and track the end target
for the optical signal.
The TALP1135 chipset is about the size of 30,000 DLP micromirrors, and its ability to
move in two directions enables it to direct light in any direction.
The TALP2010 platform combines an ARM7 microprocessor, a TMS320C54x-based
DSP core, and two 10/100 Mbit/s Ethernet media access controllers (MACs). Future
platform designs are expected to use TI's newer TMS320C55x DSP core to provide
increased functionality, and 1Gbit MACs to provide a 1Gbit/s bandwidth.
The chipset can be used in both an optical gateway box placed in a central location in
an office, and in individual optical boxes in typical cubicle-style offices.
To be cost-competitive with WLAN technologies, TI believes the optical boxes will
eventually retail between $200 and $300. The TI silicon solution is expected to be
priced as low as $10 in million-unit volumes.
In addition to eliminating the cost of manually stringing cable, the wireless optical
system can be simply reconfigured to allow for movement of individual cubicles and
related office equipment, Harrison said.
The technology is being targeted primarily at indoor networks, although it is also
expected to be applied to outdoor systems, including metro-free space optics and
last-mile residential connections.
Vbrick Systems Inc., a Wallingford, Conn., communications systems equipment OEM,
will demonstrate the TI optical networking solution this week at the National
Association of Broadcasters conference in Las Vegas. No other customers have yet
been announced.
OEM products based on the TI reference design are expected to be introduced in
June, Harrison said.
Thanks for planting the seed duke.oems
HammacherSchl. link...
http://www.hammacherschlemmer.com/gift_sea.htm
nice find guys
Iomega making 1 Gig IBM Microdrive...
Ten O'Clock Tech: Iomega Goes Micro
By Arik Hesseldahl
In simpler days, if you purchased a storage product from Iomega , it was safe to assume the unit was
manufactured by Iomega. But, in this industry especially, times change--quickly.
The company that brought you the Zip disk and the Jaz cartridge now sells a whole line of data storage
products, some it cooked up in-house, but others are licensed from other companies. The latest to join the
Iomega family is a 1-gigabyte version of the IBM -made Microdrive.
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It comes with a PC-card adapter, making it ideal for laptop computers, and is compatible with laptops from
most major manufacturers, including Apple Computer . But it also fits into nearly any CompactFlash Type II slot
on devices like digital cameras and audio players. Inside there's a tiny spinning hard drive that holds up to 1
gigabyte of data. That's a lot of music or pictures. But the drive itself weighs only 16 grams and measures less
than two inches wide by less than two inches long.
Iomega's been playing the percentages lately. Having beat out most of its original competitors in the removable
storage space contest, the company found it couldn't make enough money just selling Zip drives and hoping
that customers buy lots of the disks. So it's been diversifying into other areas where its storage technologies
can be useful. It now makes an MP3 audio player and another product that displays digital photos on a TV
screen.
But the company has also started selling nonproprietary storage products under its own brand, including CD-R
and CD-RW drives, and removable flash memory. Since there are so many choices available for storage
products, Iomega is playing it smart by dabbling its hand in many different areas to see which consumers
respond to with the most enthusiasm.
This is its second move with the IBM Microdrive technology. It first announced plans to sell a 340-megabyte
version of the Microdrive in November 2000.
And if a gigabyte in such a small a package doesn't impress you, then consider this: The first gigabyte-capacity
hard drive debuted in 1980. It was the size of a refrigerator, weighed more than 500 pounds and cost $40,000.
This one packs the same capacity into a package smaller than a matchbook for $500. How's that for progress?
What's an investor to do?
By Philip Rueppel
April 19, 2001
Where have all the product cycles gone?
Volatility in the markets always brings up a bit of nostalgia regarding the "way it used to be." This is no different when we're talking about the stock market or the market for technology goods and services, a market where even executives from mighty Cisco Systems have commented about the recent slowdown occurring faster than in any other time of their careers.
But having professionally followed the stock market for over a decade, I'm not helped by nostalgia these days. Why? Because before the sky-high price-to-earnings ratios, the ponzi-like-momentum investing schemes, and news release-driven euphoria, investors had to focus on fundamentals that drove better-than-expected results--and a key aspect of these fundamentals revolved around new product cycles.
Today, I just don't see a way to invest in product cycles. Even grouping technologies and finding new "waves" of growth is difficult; the landscape is just too cluttered and diverse, and investment time-horizons are now longer than most product cycles.
Twenty years ago, one could invest in a mainframe product cycle, and if research indicated that the new product was good, this would be enough to improve results and drive the company's stock upward for a number of quarters. Even during the heart of the PC era 10 years ago, investors could make money by spotting cycles--whether they were hardware-related (black-and-white to color monitors, 486 to Pentium chips) or software-related (like the Windows 95 upgrade).
Reading tea leaves
But today neither of these will work.
The mainframe, while it still has lengthy and meaningful upgrade cycles, is too small a segment (even for IBM) to have a big impact on earnings or stock prices. Regarding PCs, the eternal hope for the next "killer app" remains just that--a hope.
The "Web," broadly defined, was the most recent widely used application, and it hasn't required a new product cycle in either hardware or software.
Possibilities for the future are speech recognition and video communications, but these appear no closer to significant commercial reality than we thought they were two years ago.[I think he errs here LOL]
Even so-called sector or computing-trend investing is getting more challenging. Perhaps the hottest segment recently, Internet infrastructure--which was dominated by networking and storage companies whose growth far outstripped expectations--has abruptly slowed.
Yes, I'm a believer in more bandwidth, the need for optical technologies, the benefits of vast pools of virtual storage--but demand just isn't as robust today for any of theses technologies compared with even six months ago.
Many investors made money on playing technology "waves"--the PC-distributed computing wave, the client-server wave, the Internet-ubiquitous communications wave, and finally the wireless computing wave.
One could build portfolios of companies in the semiconductor, software, hardware and services industries that would benefit from these technology trends and significantly outperform the market.
What's an investor to do?
Still, today even the trends that will likely evolve in the future have already been hyped, whether it's the potential of WAP (Wireless Application Protocol) and third-generation, or 3G, wireless technologies, or of streaming video and digital media--hence my opinion that expectations are already too high.
So what is an investor to do? In my view, finding new products that change the game are what's left for the technology investor. It's not easy determining what are disruptive technologies that are imbedded in new products; it requires more than a grain of technical understanding. But that will be the key to investing success in the future.
One only has to look at Cisco and EMC to see examples of disruptive change--and of how long new product technologies can drive a company's superior results. Intra-computer communications used to be handled by computers themselves, whether it was mainframes or a Vax. But standalone routers grew to be significant once multi-protocol connections were needed in the distributed computing landscape. EMC was once a small company going after IBM's 80 percent share of system storage, but it introduced a product that was faster, more reliable and less expensive than the competition.
Both companies, by the way, looked like hardware companies, but significant value was (and remains) in their software.
In the future, don't look for evolutionary product cycles--they will happen too fast to invest in. Try to find the revolutions that are based on real new products that customers can't get enough of.
Sonicblue, MPMan Look to Secure Patents - Peter @ 17:30 EDT
MPMan.com, one of the first MP3 player manufacturers that owns patents for much of the technology, is looking to seal royalty agreements with other MP3 player manufacturers who use the patented technology. Sonicblue, which jointly holds patents for the technology used to retrieve sound on portable audio devices with MPMan.com, will help MPMan.com secure the agreements. MPMan.com acquired the patent from the Korean Intellectual Property Office in January this year. This could be a very important revenue stream for the companies, as MPMan.com expects about 50 billion won in royalties over the next three years, in the Korean market alone; however, critics argue that he U.S. has not yet permitted such patents for portable digital MP3 player technology, according to the Korea Herald.
Anyone up to the task? Lydstrom beta tester...
Lydstrøm - Consumer Interests.
Lydstrøm is working with audio companies to produce products similar to our SongBank™ CD Memory System with the engineering and design excellence you'd expect from established hardware companies.
We are also working with major content owners to enable the release of their mainstream catalogs for purchase and download over the internet. By executing in these areas, Lydstrøm is working to make the promise of digital audio and Internet music a reality.
We frequently run beta tests of new products. If you would like to participate in one of our beta tests please send an e-mail to Beta-Test-Request@lydstrom.com You will be asked to fill out a brief questionnaire to gauge your background for participation, and there may be some requirements once you have been selected. The details will be made available once you have been contacted and/or selected.