Thoughts from the Shelf

This week has seen the Nintendo Wii reach an important milestone in establishing itself as a console that can compete with more established brands that are responsible for the likes of the PS3 and the Xbox 360.

This week Nintendo released the 200th title for Nintendo’s Virtual Console service, and as part of the celebrations is releasing a sequence of revamped titles not seen since the days of the Commodore 64.

Originally promised back in February ‘International Karate’ and ‘Uridium’ are due to be released after Commodore teamed up with Nintendo of Europe to launch the games that were integral in the revolution of computer gaming.

Released on the new C64 channel Nintendo have said there will be plenty of updates following these initial two titles, so retro gaming fans can be sure to experience more Commodore nostalgia soon.

A little closer to the modern day ‘Cruis’n USA’ is also to be released a game which was originally released in 1998 on the N64.

Each of these commodore 64 titles will cost 500 Wii points which is the equivalent of around £3.50, whilst the N64 title will cost 1000 Wii points.

To get some heads up on extra Commodore titles that could soon feature I have found a link to some Commodore 64 Classics. Enjoy!

An online game that has been launched aimed at young girls, has come in for a wave of criticism from parents this week after it was said to be encouraging children to diet and seek plastic surgery.

Launched in the UK last month, the game is titled Miss Bimbo and is aimed at nine to 16 year olds. The game gives each player an unique avatar which then competes against other players with the aim of becoming “the most famous, beautiful, sought after bimbo across the globe”.

Within the game players register and compete in beauty contests and send text messages to the site to earn currency which then can be used to buy lingerie, diet pills and a range of plastic surgery operations within the game. Alternatively an avatar can attract the attention of a rich celebrity.

The game states among its objectives to “Become a socialite and skyrocket to the top of fame and popularity.” With another stating “Even resort to meds or plastic surgery. Stop at nothing to become the reigning bimbo”.

The site has over a quarter of a million registered users in the UK and over 1.2 million play it in France, its country of origin.

It is not surprising that some parents are concerned about the mixed messages the game sends out. One parent said “It sends out all the wrong messages about what it takes to get ahead. I would rather my daughter learned that brains are more important than looks.”

It is not just parents jumping on the messages being sent out by the game either, it seems that the site is also being heavily criticised by groups working with vulnerable children.

“This is as lethal as pro-anorexia websites,” Dee Dawson, medical director at Rhodes Farm Clinic.

Chris Evans business partner of founder Nicholas Jacquart countered the criticisms saying: “It’s a fun game, many positive areas are being overlooked.” He added “members can send their Bimbo to university and are encouraged to love and nurture her”.

Personally I can’t help but question whether this game is as bad as games such as the immensely popular Grand Theft Auto series, which itself sends out the message that gun crime and grand theft auto is a reputable and cool way to make a living. This title is not on its own either with the recently banned Manhunt 2 due to be released in the UK.

I realise that these games are certified for 15+ but this is still leans towards the older age bracket of Miss Bimbo’s target audience. Is the nature of this game not meant as a fun spin off of celebrity tabloid magazines that spawn the idea of a Miss Bimbo!

Would like to hear your thoughts on this.

In a step to increase wi-fi hotspots to the American public Google were today reported to have approached the US government for permission to you unlicensed TV frequencies known as ‘white noise’ to be used for wi-fi.

The approach from Google was made a week after the Federal Communications Commission completed the nation’s landmark 700 megahertz auction.

Made to industry regulators, Google described proposals for potential access to the unused white space as a “once in a lifetime opportunity”. Google has called the proposals part of a “wi-fi 2.0 age”, an informal, loosely regulated low cost wirelss broadband network that could offer customers “data rates in the gigabits-per-second”.

White space describes the unused frequency blocks that lie between regulated television channel broadcasts on analogue airwaves. There has been an argument for some time that these parts unused spectrum could be assembled to support a new high speed wireless service.

“The vast majority of viable spectrum in this country simply goes unused, or else is grossly underutilised. Unlike other natural resources, there is no benefit to allowing this spectrum to lie fallow, ” - Google’s Richard Whitt

It has very much been the case that existing broadcasters have been opposed to such moves amid fears that use of this white space would interfere with the quality of existing television programming. However, with the development of several spectrum sensing technologies designed to prevent signals interfering with each other Google is pushing the authorities in the US to reconsider.

Microsoft has had an embarrassing failure with such moves last year when its prototype broke during FCC testing. It later was said to have worked adequately with a repaired version of the technology.

Of course expanding wi-fi capability will have major implications for mobile search and if the FCC accepts the request and Google wins airwaves, devices supporting the technology could be out as early as next year. Let mobile monetization commence.

It seems that in relation to a post back in December on The Shelf titled ‘Using Mobile Phone Contracts To Your Advantage’, telecoms regulator Ofcom are due to take increased action on mobile phone retailers offering cash back deals, after increased numbers of complaints have proved a voluntary code of practice that was put in place has failed to work.

Ofcom stated that complaints have risen from 460 to 700 complaints a month since the voluntary code of practice was put in place in the summer of 2007. In moves aimed at protecting consumers, Ofcom have now stated that tough action will be taken against mobile phone operators who fail to pay cash back that was offered when the contract was first taken out.

A general condition has now been proposed that will mean it is the network operator’s duty to “to ensure that the terms and conditions of cash back deals offered by their retailers are fair.” If operators fail to do this it could result in firms being fined as much as 10% of there turnover, a move that surprisingly some mobile operators have welcomed.

“We think Ofcom should be tough on offenders but not burdensome on those that are trading responsibly,” - O2 spokeswoman Emma Hart.

Operators are also responsible for carrying out due diligence and a number of checks in respect of their retailers.

In the voluntary code of practice that has seemed to have failed, there was a list of banned sales and marketing tactics, which were later agreed to by Britain’s biggest mobile phone companies. One technique that was featured on the list was the provision of inaccurate information to shoppers when purchasing mobile phone contracts.

“Strong competition is no excuse for marketing malpractice,” - Ofcom chief executive Ed Richards.

In the latest news in the battle of next generation consoles, Microsoft has announced that thanks to its price drop it has recorded a 36% increase in sales of its Xbox 360 games console.

In the same healthy pre-Easter period, Sony’s Playstation 3 also recorded 6% rise in sales, but it seems that the price drop has given the Xbox 360 hardware the biggest boost.

Since the price drop came into effect on the 14th March, making the entry level Xbox 360 available for as little as £159.99, ChartTtrack told MVC that sales in Xbox 360 consoles were up 36%. Other models saw around £40 knocked off their retail price.

In the same period it seems that the Playstation 3 was the only other console to buck the trend, with consumers opting out of buying hardware, with every other games console recording sales drops. Software sales also dropped in the same period after the release of big titles such as Army Of Two and Bully last week were said to have tempted gamers out to the shops early.

However impressive this pre-Easter jump, Microsoft couldn’t get anywhere near the 260% rise in Xbox sales seen in after price cuts in August 2007.

“We need to wait two or three more weeks to see if the 360 sales surge will carry on,” Bloch sated.

He continued “I would predict that it will increase again over the Easter period. It’s a bit of an odd year for the industry - Easter is early, and doesn’t coincide with the end of Q1 - when publishers traditionally release very big games - like it usually does.”

With news elsewhere stating that Chinese firm OEM has just sealed a contract to build 500,000 Xbox units a month, the same company making the PS3 unit, it may well be part of Microsoft’s long term aims to under cut the PS3 whilst ensuring supplies remain plentiful.

Here on The Shelf I don’t usually make a point of linking to video elsewhere on the interwebs, but today, on topic of something that I will be looking more closely at over the next coupled of weeks, I thought it worth pointing out this interview with Sir Tim Berners-Lee. Dubbed the ‘creator of the web’ Sir Tim gives his opinions on systems which track user activity such as Phorm, with the intention of using the information gained through user tracking to target personalised adverts.

The interview on the BBC news site is available here.

In the video he explains that that he does not want such systems to track the websites that he has visited, using an example of health insurance companies putting up premiums on the basis of visiting caner related sites.

“I want to know if I look up a whole lot of books about some form of cancer that that’s not going to get to my insurance company and I’m going to find my insurance premium is going to go up by 5% because they’ve figured I’m looking at those books,”

He also makes explain his ideas of a truly collaborative web when it was first invented which we are now beginning to see the tip of with blogging sites, wikiepedia type collaboration and the sudden growth of social networking on the web.

He goes on to say that although we need a greater understanding in the fact that any content we display is displayed in a public space, we also as consumers should be protected as essentially any given persons we history belong to them. Why should ISP have free access to our personal trends in order to sell this information off to advertisers?

On a persons web history he says “It’s mine - you can’t have it. If you want to use it for something, then you have to negotiate with me. I have to agree, I have to understand what I’m getting in return.”

The Phorm system that is being discussed in the video has responded stating that it actually makes the web a safer place, offering increased protection against phishing sites.

“We believe Phorm makes the internet a more vibrant and interesting place. Phorm protects personal privacy and unlike the hundreds of other cookies on your PC, it comes with an on/off switch.”

Talk Talk are one ISP to adopt the service although customers will have to opt in to it, meaning by default the average user who may not understand the repercussions such a system could have will be protected. BT a Virgin are also signed up to the service but will put these users at risk by offering an opt out only service.

In even more social networking news, it was announced today that internet portal AOL has bought social networking site Bebo for £425 million.

Bebo was launched three years ago and has a membership of over 40 million worldwide users, combining “community, self-expression and entertainment to enable its users to consume, create, discover and share content.”

Bebo is one of the leading social networking sites in the UK and the US trailing rivals Myspace and Facebook. Bebo also leads the market in New Zealand and Ireland, and is run by only 100 employees spread across three global office locations.

At first this seems a lot of money for a company with such few resources, but when you consider News Corp bought MySpace for $580m in 2005 which is now estimated to be worth more than $15bn, and Microsoft bought only 1.6% of Facebook last year for $240m, the price doesn’t seem so high.

A quote from AOL chairman Randy Falco says: “Bebo is the perfect complement to AOL’s personal communication network and puts us in a leading position in social media. This positions us to offer advertisers even greater reach and marketers significant insights into the desires and needs of consumers.”

With its acquisition of Bebo it is clear that AOL see the social networking site as an advertising goldmine which will allow them to offer advertisers access to user targeted adverts based on comprehensive user profiles and trends.

The average Bebo user views on average 78 pages a day with a daily average of 33 minutes a day being spent on the site.

“Bebo has an incredibly strong brand identity, particularly with the teenage and young adult market, so it will be very interesting to see how AOL makes best use of their new youthful Trojan horse.” - Alex Burmaster, European Internet Analyst

Research outfit eMarketer recently released a report stating that by 2011 $4.1 billion will be spent worldwide on social network advertising, up from $480 million in 2006. It is clear the struggling internet portal is looking for a significant chunk of this to turn its fortunes around.

In relation to The Shelf’s popular social networking themed posts, news broke last week that Facebook has raided Google in order to fulfil the position of chief operating officer. The position was filled in order to provide Facebook, who last month saw their first ever dip in visitors, with a more experienced management and advertising figure as the company tries to make more money out of targeted advertising without alienating users.

The defection by Sheryl Sandberg from internet search giant Google was first announced last Tuesday marks a period of adjustment for Facebook who only three months ago suffered huge setbacks in efforts to inject more commercialism into is social site.

In her time at Google Sandberg has helped the search giant build up one of the most rivalled advertising models in the world in the position of vice president of global online sales and operations.

No doubt 23 year old founder Mark Zuckerberg will use the opportunity as somewhat of a mentoring scheme in how to future direct Facebook’s expansion, who Sandberg will report directly to.

Of the capture of Sandberg Mark Zuckerberg stated that she is “a great manager who will help scale Facebook’s operations globally,”

In the past eleven months Facebook has seen its user base triple to 66 million users, becoming the second largest social networking site behind Myspce. But Facebook remains dwarfed even further by Sandberg’s former employers who make more than $16 billion to Facebook’s $100 million in annual revenue.

There have also been recent mistakes by the Facebook owner that have led to questions about Zuckerberg’s judgement after marketing tool Beacon was allowed to track users’ purchasing patterns across dozens of sites and display the information on pages of listed friends within the Facebook network.

But although mistakes have been made and the social networking site has plateaued of late, many still expect great things in the future. Planning to go public in 2009/10 Facebook could still turn out to be the biggest internet success story since Google went public in 2004.

Following a post on The Shelf about the BBC’s new free on demand TV service being delivered through iPlayer in January, the BBC has today announced that a version of its iPlayer on demand service will be available for both the Apple iPhone and iPod touch.

Marking the first time the BBC’s on demand service will be available of portable media devices, the iPhone and iPod touch will stream shows from the iPlayer website over wi-fi networks.

“We started with iPhone because it is the device most optimised for high quality video currently available.” - Anthony Rose wrote on the BBC blog

Currently the iPlayer software is available in two versions, one which will download content from the BBC archive to a Windows PC, the other a streaming service available to all users over the internet.

The iPlayer version used for both the iPhone and iPod touch will allow streaming over a wi-fi connection, however the EDGE mobile network that the iPhone utilises is to slow to support a video streaming service.

Wi-fi firm The Cloud has recently secured a contract to provide all the BBC’s online services for free in 7,500 wi-fi hotspots across the country.

After news broke last week that Play.com had launched PlayDigital, offering DRM free music to its customers in direct competition with iTunes, Warner has now increased pressure on Apple by striking a deal to sell its own catalogue DRM free to customers of 7digital.

7digital is one of the biggest online music retailers and has now started selling more than 150 of the most popular albums from Warner, £3 cheaper than iTunes offers the same music for. The deal will allow customers who do not own an iPod and don’t use iTunes to get access to Warner’s offerings.

The DRM protection Apple uses on tracks sold through its iTUnes service has been a frustration for many music lovers for a long time, as in essence it is meant to prevent customers transferring music to portable music devices that are not iPods.

By offering tracks in a DRM free format Warner’s albums are available to customers of 7digital in Britain, Spain, Ireland, France and Germany and playable on almost all digital music players. Material owned by Warner includes that from artists such as Madonna and the Red Hot Chili Peppers.

With the deal 7 Digital becomes the first major European download sevice offering Warner Music and EMI tracks in the MP3 file format. PlayDigital itself is yet to strike a deal to sell the Warner music catalogue. 7digital are also said to be in talks with Sony BMG and Universal to sell DRM titles from the catalogues of these big industry players.

“The addition of Warner Music’s MP3 catalogue means that over 80 per cent of 7digital.com’s 3.5 million track catalogue is now DRM-free.” - Ben Drury, 7digital’s CEO

7digital hope to make their entire catalogue DRM free by 2008.

This deal is just one example of how, due to a decline in CD sales and increased illegal music downloads, the record industry is being forced to find new ways to appeal to music fans.

“Hopefully this will lead to a price war, as I think Apple have had things their own way for too long and are simply too expensive.” - Tim Wiggins of Stuff Magazine