Thoughts from the Shelf

Today news broke about mobile phone network 3’s plans to release the first handset which enables mobile users to use Skype. The handset will allow users to make free calls and send texts over VOIP, but at the same time as working as a normal mobile phone.

Skype is an encrypted internet telephony system that allows for the exchange of files, and with over 9 million members is used throughout homes and offices across the country. Based on peer to peer technology Skype allows users to make calls to landlines or mobile phones for a few pence a minute from their computers.

The Skype phone mobilises this Skype technology, and although phone software is available for download, this easy to use handset should be popular among Skype users. The Skype phone will be available free of charge with monthly contract subscriptions and available for £49.99 to pay as you go customers. The mobile handset will provide 4,000 free minutes and 10,000 text messages a month free of charge.

Users will automatically be logged into internet telephony accessible via one click of the Skype button, and the VOIP contacts list will also be integrated with the normal mobile phone book too.

The Skype phone also comes with a 2 megapixel camera, bluetooth, an expandable micro SD card slot and weighs only 85g. The phone will be available from Skype and 3 shops from 2nd November.

Like so many people my home was in a continuous state of redecorating whilst growing up. Thanks to the the trend of home improvement programs on television you could be assured that at least one room in the house was having a facelift at any one time.

Now I find myself setting up home and the mantle seems to have somewhat been passed onto me in my quest to get the most out of my current one bedroom flat. Unfortunately we have a converted flat from a large old Victorian terrace house. The advantages of the high ceiling and large rooms are great, unfortunately they have added a bathroom where there hadn’t previously been one making it a bit cozy to say the least.

As such the bathroom was my first point of call when redecorating. I found a good website in Trueshopping that proved a good starting point for my bathroom redecoration. With a range of bathroom accessories and Bathroom Suites it was easy to find parts that fitted into an unconventionally shaped bathroom which helped relieve some of the stress of redecorating.

With the bathroom now complete, next up is the kitchen.

It is another sad day to be a spurs fan. As if our underachieving start to the season wasn’t good enough with only one league win in ten, last nights manor in which Martin Jol was axed as head coach and then left in charge for one final UEFA cup match was nothing short of embarrassing.

Now as an avid Spurs fan I am not saying that Jol should not have been sacked, but more the manor in which things have unfolded over the last couple of months that have concerned me. The ways in which the club have acted recently and the dignified way in which Jol has continually reacted, has meant that regardless of the lacklustre performances this season Jol can leave with his head held high and Tottenham Hotspur Football Club looking rather sheepish.

It was as far back as August that that the club were spotted meeting Seville coach Juande Ramos, and with the club touting his position in such ways his position at the club has always been in jeopardy. This can only serve to undermine his authority in the dressing room which has only been seen in public bust ups with several key players.

Whilst publicly backing Jol at the same time this grooming another of Europe’s most promising coaches, the club maintained that Jol would be given time. In my opinion the damage had already been done, and although the club had been caught with their pants down should then have made the replacement as Jol was a dead man walking from this point.

I must however question the ethics of a club I have loved for years, investing £40 million pounds in Jol’s team over the summer to be phased out in August. I personally think that although he was a fans favourite after steering the club to consecutive fifth place premier league finishes (a club first) Jol was due for the boot a long time before August. The Tottenham board clearly had an agenda to fill and the believed that Jol wasn’t the man to deliver which was reflected in some big money summer signings that Jol didn’t agree with Damien Comolli (Director of football) over.

I look back to matches against Seville and Chelsea away last season where the board could have seen tactical weaknesses in Jol’s managerial style begin to appear, but I am not disputing his floors, yes he had them, but it is the events which culminated in the news of Jol’s departure being leaked during an important European game that I am most upset about.

The fans reacted in the only way they could with a standing ovation for the man for the man who has the highest league win ratio of any previous manager over his three years at the club, delivered two fifth place finishes, and put Spurs back on the European map. What was clearly meant to be a match where Jol could go out in a blaze of glory in front of the home fans who adore him clearly backfired as we lost miserably 2-1 to Getafe.

In my view Jol’s departure was a result of the boards need for quick returns on the money spent this summer, and with a top four finish looking bleaker by the week they became ever more impatient. Jol should have been given time to turn the season around, but this was impossible due to the clubs own sabotage through the meeting of Ramos and his role at the club became untenable. As a result man whose record should have bought him more time to turn things around was axed.

I look forward to Blackburn with Clive Allen and Alex Inglethorpe at the helm, although it would not surprise me if Ramos was in place soon after.

It seems in the next step in combating digital piracy the government has opted to step in, as news broke this week that they are considering file sharing legislation in an attempt to push internet service providers to take a more active role in the crack down of illegal file sharers.

The move is directed towards ISPs and industries who are yet to come together to fight the problem. It is thought the preferred solutions for all are voluntary partnerships between creative industries and ISPs so that regulation is not required, but this news seems to says that unless these companies come together and put such schemes in place then the government is ready to intervene.

“”For the most part I think there are going to be successful voluntary schemes between the creative industries and ISPs. Our preferred position is that we shouldn’t have to regulate,” said Lord Triesman

The argument of ISPs is that they cannot feasibly track every packet that is sent across there networks, and although a route by which illegal file sharing took place, does not condone it in any way, shape or form. Searching single data packets that are sent across networks would also break data protection laws in place to protect individuals.

The arguments currently hindering the ideal voluntary agreements seem to centre around the two issues of intellectual property rights and privacy of the user, and the stalling block is trying to find a balance between the two. Privacy advocates will object to any legislation, but it also seems true that illegal file-sharing affects the income of many musicians.

Either way it seems the pressure is increasing in regard to illegal file sharing within the UK. As previously posted about on The Shelf, the US has seen several case studies demonstrating the growing pressure to protect copyrighted material, and in such cases end user pirates have been targeted, but with this announcement came assurances that the government has no interest in hounding young teenagers who share music.

The legislation is more aimed towards “software pirates that sell bootleg copies of programs, games, movies and music, for profit”, and users of P2P programmes who download songs to listen to without paying are not being directly targeted.

This threat of legislation comes at a time when the music industry is already trying new innovative ways of combating piracy. Recently Radiohead released their latest album “In Rainbows” digitally online, with users only paying what they wanted. However even though fans didn’t have to pay anything to get the album legally it was still reportedly pirated 500,000 times.

It seems that in some instances online file sharing is as much a cultural activity as it is about saving money and making profit of bootleg copies of material with copyright in place.

Do you, like so many people find yourself wanting to get onto the property ladder but simply cannot afford the practicality of buying your own home? If you are from the south west where the biggest deficit between average wage and house prices can be found then you could forgive yourself for being even more disheartened. Just remember that feeling when reading the following and perhaps you will take it that little bit more seriously.

Earlier in October of this year a new type of house went up for grabs on Tyneside, and costing £150,000 gave low income earners the chance to buy their own homes. The houses on offer are provided by the infamous home improvement store Ikea, and have aptly been nick named ‘flat-pack homes’.

The BoKlok – Swedish for live smart - structures as they are correctly known are timber framed and have low living costs. Each coming with a small plot of land and shared garden they are said to create unique communities and a safe environment that is particularly attractive to families.

Although new to the UK these properties are already well established in Sweden where they first appeared ten years ago in 1997. In 2002 they spread to Norway, the following year to Finland and then to Denmark in 2004, demonstrating the success of the BoKlok throughout Scandinavia. After the addition of the 92 square metre BoKlok villa in Sweden in 2005, it seems the planned apartments for Tyneside are yet another expansion of this popular housing product.

The initial sixty BoKlok houses being built in the UK will only be available to those earning between £15,000 and £35,000 who are not already homeowners. Although topping out at £150,000 there are a range of flats and townhouses available with up to three bedrooms from only £99,500.

As well as this initial build of sixty houses, approval has also been granted for a further 57 BoKlok properties on Tyneside. released on the 22 October, Alan Prole, Managing Director of Live Smart @ Home, the developer of the product said

“The first blocks of flats are already going up at St James and will be ready to move in to by the end of January next year, and now we will be able to build the houses, which will be particularly attractive to families,”

Although much is made of the lack of progress made by the government when it comes to affordable housing, I am glad to see one such innovative idea come out of the private sector that gives people the chance to get on the property ladder.

I read recently about a novel award that marks achievements that at “first make people laugh but then make them think”. The Ig Nobel award for improbable research has been awarded since 1991, and this years winners included the ‘Gay Bomb’, posted about on right here on The Shelf in February 2007.

Winning the peace category, the Gay Bomb was a concept first coined by the US military and intended to make enemy soldiers sexually irresistible to one another. The Gay Bomb was just one of a variety of non-lethal chemical weapons that were conceived in order to disrupt both discipline and morale.

Past Ig peace award winners have also included the electromechanical teenager repellent in 2006, a device which makes an annoying high pitched sound audible only to teenagers, and the inventor of karaoke for providing a new way for people to tolerate each other.

Other winners in the 2007 competition included work on treating hamster jetlag with impotency drugs and extracting vanilla from cow dung.

Winners of the award walk away with a hand made trophy, certificate and more importantly the prestige of winning such an award. Currently in their seventeenth year, the awards

“Celebrate the unusual, honour the imaginative - and spur people’s interest in science, medicine and technology.”

The coveted award ceremony is seen as a way to prove the science doesn’t have to be boring, and that fun science can end up having a real life impact on millions of people.

Not long after a recent post about Kanye West’s latest success in the charts at the expense of rival 50 cent, the Hip Hop star has announced another high profile song release with an upcoming duet along side Michael Jackson.

The announcement has only fuelled further rumours that Michael Jackson himself will be releasing a new solo album in the near future. The single with Kanye West will be his first release since 2001, since the release of invincible.

Kanye West is not the only star to have teamed up wit Michael Jackson in the studio lately, with Will.i.am and Ne-Yo both said to be working with him to create a new sound which will be eagerly anticipated by fans.

A quote from Kanye on the sure to be successful partnership read
“I’m working on stuff for Michael Jackson. If I like a person’s outlet or what a person brings to the table, then I’ll speak to them.”

I really don’t know what to expect from this collaboration, but with the input of Kanye West it will defiantly be worth a listen.

It seems that if you want to sunbath topless in your back garden, a tall fence would normally be an adequate measure in place to maintain your privacy. Apart from the risk of a peeping Tom, you would have been forgiven for thinking your privacy was fairly well guarded.

It seems this wasn’t the case for one lady who didn’t take into account that the a Google Earth imaging satellite was due to make a fly over. A subsequent stint of topless sunbathing resulted in the Dutch women getting logged in Digg, and then over 3,000 Diggs later her assets had been splashed across the internet.

There is a debate as to whether the pictures are in fact a real topless women, as the image is quite grainy. It could well be a blow up doll or even a man! Maybe the debate should in fact have been on the technological threat to privacy, but the former seemed more popular across the interwebs.

Instead, next time you want to go out into your garden for a spot of topless sunbathing simply call Google and check they are not scheduling a fly by. That should ensure privacy in the home.

Recently on The Shelf, Google’s private enterprise competition was discussed, and how by offering a $30million the search giant hopes to boost non-government backed missions to the moon.

Such incentives only boost private funding for missions into space, and although a moon landing seems the next frontier for the private sector, it has already been successful with other areas of space travel.

So much is this the case that already the concept of ‘Space Tourism’ is not foreign to most. Although the Russian Space Agency is currently the only provider of tourist space flights, people are well aware that with enough money the opportunity to take a trip into outer space is available to anybody.

Although currently restricted to an elite group, trips into space are thought to become commonplace in the next five years, with trips to the moon estimated by 2050. There is already an inflatable hotel being developed for commercial use by Bigelow Aerospace after a successful prototype was launched into orbit last year.

So if space is the next tourist frontier, then what will participants use to pay for goods and services whilst not on Earth. Coins would be deemed to sharp and would pose a danger to astronauts, whilst chips and magnetic strips used in debit or credit cards on Earth would be damaged beyond repair by cosmic radiation. This was a question answered when I stumbled upon an unusual story today about the development of a new currency, the QUID.

The new inter-planetary currency has been designed to withstand the stress of space travel and has no sharp edges or dangerous chemicals. Made of the polymer the QUID (Quasi Universal Intergalactic Denomination), was designed was designed for Travelex, the popular foreign exchange company, and currently quotes the currency at £6.25 to the QUID.

It seems that the message that the sharing of music file online is music piracy is still being hammered home in an effort to protect the revenues of the music industry. Music companies have taken increasingly drastic steps in an effort to clamp down on illegal music file sharing, starting with peer to peer software providers all the way through to individuals who share music files ignoring any copyright in place.

Just how much the industry loses to piracy is shady. A recent report put the cost of piracy at $12.5 billion annually to the US economy, whilst many critics instead say that when this figure is broken down as it should be, the entertainment industry loses around $1.6 billion to fake CDs, and another $3.7 billion to illegal downloading.

Whatever the exact figure it is a threat to the industry and the loss in revenue has led the music industry to take action against illegal file sharers. As a result there have been several high profile cases against music sharing sites that offer peer to peer file sharing services, the most famous of which being the Napster case in 2000 that trail blazed the way for legal proceedings brought by the music industry as a collective.

The latest file sharing site to face legal action has been allofmp3.com, in which a Moscow court threw the case out, sending ever more confusing messages to consumers.

Such legal action is not just restricted to peer to peer service providers, individuals have also found themselves amongst high profile judicial proceedings for participating in the sharing of copyrighted music files. These cases simply highlight the consequences that come with music piracy.

A recent case has seen a court in the US order a woman to pay $222,000 (£109,000) in damages for illegally file-sharing music. Jaime Thomas 32, from Minnesota, was ruled to has shared 24 specific songs illegally, costing $9,250 a song. Although the case was focused around the top 24 songs, it was claimed that she shared 1702 songs.

So far there have been around about 26,000 lawsuits filed against alleged file-sharers, but most defendants settle privately by paying damages amounting to a few thousand dollars. It seems contesting the charge has ended up costing this specific file-sharer near a quarter of a million dollars. Interestingly with this particular case, the hard drive of the women in question was not required for a guilty verdict, having been replaced shortly after she had been contacted by the record industry.

But with different messages coming from different areas of the music industry could file sharers be forgiven for stepping into grey areas in the law. For instance Sony’s philosophy means that transferring music from your CD albums onto your MP3 player is a form of piracy, yet (as previously mentioned on The Shelf) Microsoft seems to be heading in a different direction with the upcoming launch of its Zune Social. Microsoft it seems is actually encouraging music downloaders to share their music collection with friends through the wireless feature on the Zune player.

It seems that cases like that of Jaime Thomas send a clear message people abusing peer to peer networks, that the industry will come after with the full extent of the law if you leave yourself exposed and break the law. When the law is and is not being broken in terms of file-sharing however, seems to be an area where the goal posts are shifted depending on the latest stance of different players within the industry.