Thoughts from the Shelf

Early in 2008 Apple announced the launch of the 32GB iPod Touch to the extremely popular 8GB and 16 GB range. Knowing the new iPod Touch is due to be launched in the future is not breaking news, however some sources are reporting that there are new clues suggesting significant developments will be made in the new model.

It is being reported today that there are references being made to an Apple iPod Touch 2,1, which would insinuate a big step forward in the devices capabilities.

Currently the iPod Touch models are know as 1,1 the same group as the first generation iPhone. With the addition of models carrying extra capacity the group number is not usually altered, as was the case in January with the launch of the 32GB version.

Instead these numbers are often changed when the device launched has new features, such as the iPhons’s 3G model is now know as 1,2.

This certainly goes a long way to argue that the new iPod Touch will carry more features. What features these might be remain guarded, but with the recent launch of the new iPhone ant iPod Touch developments are bound not to overshadow that.

Some are expecting the addition of GPS with potentially a 64GB memory.

Just a quick post today to update on the Google/ Digg acquisition.

It turns out that we missed this late last week but Google has officially pulled out of its proposed purchase of Digg for $200 million.

The rumour had been circulating for months that Google was looking to add social bookmarking site Digg to its catalogue of acquisitions. The proposal was worrying for Microsoft who only last year signed a three year advertising deal with Digg which would have been extinguished.

“Sources close to the companies suggested that some issue that came up during technical due diligence was to blame”. and that “that the issue was more personality driven, and that Google decided after spending more time with Digg’s top team that there just wasn’t a fit.”

Many had debated the proposed acquisition with Google having a varied track record when it came to buying popular social networks. YouTube was one success story with the purchase of Jaiku as big a failure user-sign ups having been closed for the last 10 months.

Former employees of search giant Google today launched a rival search engine called Cuil which founders claim does a better and more comprehensive job of indexing information online.

The engine is constructed to index content on the web in relation to the context surrounding to web page, and concepts driving search requests.

Needless to say that due to the shear size of Google Cuil cannot hope to match and defeat Google immediately, and many analysts believe it will struggle to put a dent in Googles 70% US market share in the long term too.

The name was conceived from the Gaelic word for Knowledge and Hazel and is pronounced ‘cool’. Results are also displayed in a magazine format with a introduction paragraph as opposed to a list format in Google with a text snippet summarising the page.

One of the corner stones in the search engines marketing strategy is that is doesn’t retain any information on what users search for, a policy of Google’s that has resulted in several high profile cases, as governments request these logs of user search data.

Already Cuil boasts to have indexed over 120 billion web pages and is claimed that is more than Google users to deliver the most relevant pages for any given search query. This is however improvable as Google has stopped publically releasing how many pages it indexes.

“The time may be right for a challenger,” said Danny Sullivan, editor in chief of Search Engine Land. “Competing with Google is still a very daunting task, as Microsoft will tell you.”

Due to the popularity of the single article The Shelf posted on the Hydrogen Age at the beginning of the month, marking the launch of a new eco friendly section, we have brought you news on the latest green projects bidding to harness energy from the Severn estuary in South Wales.

Over the next 24 months ten rivals eco friendly schemes will be studied and narrowed down until one successful renewable energy scheme will be funded, harnessing the natural energy of the Severn.

Among the contenders for the project are six barrages, two lagoon proposals, a tidal fence and a tidal reef.

Environmentalist, bird charities, engineers and opposition politicians have all welcomed to array of projects that will be part of the multi million pound feasibility study, and will each state the proffered scheme.

Business Minister John Hutton spoke of the scheme - “Harnessing the power of the Severn Estuary could be an engineering project of breathtaking scale and we will look at the full range of technologies and locations.”

The ten proposals are as follows:

1. A giant outer barrage that will stretch from Minehead in Devon to Aberthaw in Glamorgen, with critics fearing the projects size could become impractical. That said the project is among the top energy providers and it is estimated it could produce 20 terawatt hours of power annually.

As well as being popular for the amount of energy the project is expected to produce, the project is favoured by conservationists as it would be better than other for bird life as well as protect Somerset from flooding such as that seen across the county in 2007. It is however expected to be an expensive project and could prove difficult to build in such deep waters.

2. The Cardiff Weston Barrage would stretch from Lavernock Point in Sully to Brean Down in Somerset and could cost an estimated £15 billion to build. The project could produce a fifth of Britain’s electricity generating 17 terawatt hours a year and is thus far the best studied option based on proven technology.

The project however is unlikely to gain the support of environmentalists as it is expected to damage rare bird breeding mudflats in the Severn estuary and disrupt shipping in the Bristol Channel.

3. The Cardiff Weston Barrage II would stretch from Lavernock Point in Sully to Hinkley in Somerset costing more than the 15 billion predicted for the first Cardiff Weston Barrage. Avoiding breeding grounds this option may be preferred; however it is based on unproven technology but includes more turbines which would produce more power.

4. The Inner shoots Barrage would be located near the second Severn crossing costing 10% of the Cardiff Weston Barrage at £1.5 billion. It would provide 2.5 terawatt hours of electricity annually, a seventh of the second barrage.

At a cheaper cost to both investors and the environment it may be a popular option, however the energy produced isn’t as clean as that in other proposals.

5. The Beachley Barrage will stretch from Beachley to Aust near the first Severn Bridge and is similar to the inner barrage.

6. The Tidal Fence will stretch from Lavernock Point in Sully to Brean Down in Somerset and cost £3.5 billion, producing 1.3 GW of electricity, 1% of Britain’s needs.

There are questions about the unproven tidal stream power, and critics say it is not ideally suited to the Severn estuary.

7. The Fleming lagoon would be constructed between three sites two up against the Welsh coast, one against the English coast. With an unclear price an estimated 6.5 terawatt hours of electricity would be produced but the scheme is backed by Friends of the Earth who say the scheme is less environmentally destructive.

The drawback to this scheme seems to be the fact it is founded upon as yet unproven technology.

8. Tidal lagoons if chosen could be situated in several places in the Estuary or Swansea Bay, with the cost believed to be comparable to offshore wind power. This option is potentially cheaper and would cause less damage to bird habitats than other schemes.

9. There is a Tidal reef proposal but as yet the details of the scheme are very vague, but it would be based on tidal stream technology that would cause less damage to bird habitats. This scheme doesn’t however take advantage of the massive tidal range of the Severn Estuary.

10. The Severn Lake Scheme would stretch from Lavernock Point in Sully to Brean Down in Somerset at a cost of £650 million. Cheaper that other scheme the Severn Lake Scheme is estimates to generate up to 20% of the UK’s power, but there are doubts about the efficiency of the scheme.

Today it was announced that Internet Service Providers have finally agreed plans with the music industry that will aim to tackle piracy online.

The Shelf first discussed the proposed plans back in February in an article titled ‘Government Turns Up Heat On ISP’s and Online Piracy’ which discussed how the government was steadily growing impatient with ISP and the music industries failure to come to such an agreement, threatening that if both parties failed to come to agreement legislation would be introduced to curb online Music Piracy

Negotiated by the government, the deal has seen BT, Virgin, Orange, Tiscali, BSkyB and Carphone Warehouse all sign up and will mean hundreds of thousands of letters could now be sent to users suspected of illegally sharing music online.

The music industry is pushing for measures that would see users who ignore written warning having their connections disabled; however ISP’s are unwilling to enforce such measures.

The plan is “a first step, and a very big step, in what we all acknowledge is going to be quite a long process” said Feargal Sharkey, chief executive of British Music Rights.

In contrast to the US which has seen thousands of lawsuits launched against alleged file sharers, over the last couple of years the BPI has been focused on educational efforts to prevent music piracy online, with limited legal action being taken against copyright infringers.

As part of the deal, drawn up by the Department for Business, Enterprise & Regulatory Reform (BERR), ISP will be expected to ensure customers realise that file sharing online is illegal, and take measures to tackle repeated infringements.

The government is still considering plans to give ISPs a legal requirement to tackle copyright infringers.

Recently BT and Virgin have been reported to have been sending letters to customers on behalf of the BPI, a controversial move that many say puts the BPI in the role of net police, a role they don’t belong in.

It is currently he BPI who works out who it thinks is illegally file sharing by trawling file sharing websites and tracing back the IP addresses of users.

In previous posts on The Shelf we have followed the plans of several companies who have recently entered the digital music download market, including 7digital, (7digital to offer DRM free music from Warner), and PlayDigital, (PlayDigital Offers DRM Free Downloads)

Sky is now the latest player to enter the digital download market, with plans to launch a subscription based music streaming and downloading service.

A Sky representative said of the plans to launch the service that it is “Providing a simple new way for fans to consume music, both streamed tracks and downloads to keep are available through just one monthly subscription, a world first.”

It is expected that a range of subscription options will be available to customers that offer differing download packages which can be tailored to the individual needs of users.

With contracts already signed to offer the complete back catalogue of Universal Music users are sure to get access to some of the biggest names in the music industry, and with negotiations ongoing with major and independent record labels, Sky’s catalogue of digital music offering is likely to expand significantly.

Currently Apple’s iTunes dominates the music download industry in the US and UK and Universal has long been unhappy with the company’s reluctance to offer a subscription based service, instead opting to sell tracks individually.

The digital download market it one of the few areas of growth in the music industry and Universal also believe Apple’s dominance is strangling its development.

Recently Universal, the world’s biggest record label, has stopped providing Apple with exclusive annual rights to sell its catalogue and is instead looking to retain greater flexibility as to where it can sell its tracks.

The new service from Sky will be launched independent of Sky, with the satellite provider acting as majority stake holder providing “expertise in the delivery of subscription services… content aggregation, packaging and marketing”

As yet the plans are unclear as to what format music tracks will be available in and whether there will be any form of digital rights management, but the tracks will be playable “on any mp3-compatible fixed or portable device”. Some reposrts have gone as far to say that it will be offering a DRM free format

Both services from 7igtal and PlayDigital are offering DRM free music to customers.

As yet the name and date of launch is undecided, however it is thought to go live at the end of the year.

Universal said of the deal that – “The new Sky service will provide a compelling digital music experience, built for the ever growing digital appetite of music fans. In a world where a majority of UK homes have high speed broadband access, consumers will welcome a safe, state-of-the-art service and legal alternative to those services which exploit musicians without compensation.”

The long awaited update to social networking site Facebook, aimed at making it easier to receive update on the activities of friends that was first announced on The Shelf in ‘Facebook Plans A Facelift‘ back in May, was unveiled today.

As part of the redesign Facebook users will be able to see the activity of users they are networked with through a central interface, which is intended to give the site a tidier look.

At the end of 2007 Facebook was reported to have recorded its first ever drop in users figures, with an additional 5% also recorded in the UK through the first three month of 2008. The loss was estimated to account for up to 400,000 users, and many suggested that users were growing tired of the increasing number of third party applications that resulted in congested profile pages with longer loading times.

By tidying up the site and combining several different menus into a single navigation bar, and adding together features such as adding photos and videos to one single tab called ‘publisher’, Facebook aims to have a cleaner and less cluttered look, and essentially win back the users it started to loose in early 2008.

Social networking rival MySpace also launched a new cleaner look last month after it had experienced similar drops in user activity.

As part of the new look Facebook has launched, users will still be able to add a range of third party applications, however these will now reside under a new tab away form the user main profile.

If you would like a sneak peak at the new Facebook site then visit new.facebook.com

For some detailed user statistics on Facebook and other Social Networking sites read Social Network Stats: Facebook, MySpace, Reunion

Today The Shelf has learned that broadband provider Redten is pushing the boundaries of the highly competitive broadband market by offering new customers a free PC worth £500.

Already taking orders for the promotion, Redten have also promised to reward the first 10,000 customers with an upgrade to a 19” monitor instead of 17”.

The spec of the PC being offered is pretty good too:

- Intel Pentium 4 3GHz processor
- 512MB DDR2 Ram
- 160GB hard disk drive
- DVD player/rewriter
- 17”/19” LG LCD monitor
- Microsoft Windows Vista
- 3-year warranty
- 365-day support

The free PC is available to all customers who enter into three years of 8Mb broadband which will cost £19.99 a month. The company has also stated that it will upgrade customers to a 24Mb line, when the BT exchanges are upgraded.

As part of the broadband package you get:

* Up to 8Mb broadband (powered by BT)
* Unlimited * internet downloads
* FREE LG Redten PC and 19” LG LCD monitor
* FREE ADSL2+ modem
* FREE upgrade to Microsoft Windows Vista
* 365-day telephone support
* Anti-virus/anti-spyware software
* Parental control software
* Three-year hardware warranty
* Free software worth up to £20 each month
* Optional home-installation and static IP
* Costs as little as £19.99 per month

The only catch with the promotion is that as a customer you don’t actually own the PC until your three year contract has been completed, and if for some reason you cancel the contract the PC must be returned as the customer’s expense in decent working order. There is also a £49.99 connation fee making the broadband £7.50 a month for the term of the contract minus the price of the PC, as well as the telephone line rental which has to be BT.

Concerns were raised on consumer forum moneysavingexpert that the service may contain a range of unwanted adverts. Others stated that by the time the contract was up the PC would be out of date, or that the internet connection could be poor leaving customers stuck for three years in a contract they are unhappy with.

Additionally one clause in the terms and conditions stated that “we (Redten) cannot guarantee that the equipment will work with our Broadband Service”.

Nick Mounfield, marketing manager at Redten said - “There will be a web portal which will have revenue streams - we’ll be selling advertising space on the portal, and also emailing offers to people from selected companies and partners,” and that “customers won’t be forced to watch adverts and that they can change their internet homepage from the Redten portal, should they choose to.”

It seems that the company also said it will cross-sell IT products from its Savastore.com brand and other electronics retailers. It claims to be partnering with BT, Intel and Microsoft on the deal.

The company claims on its site to be the first broadband and PC package provider, and uses BT wholesale, Cable&Wireless and Tiscali networks to deliver its broadband service claiming 99% coverage.

For those without a home computer or those in need of an upgrade but simply don’t have the money, it seems that this PC and Broadband solution could be the answer. Additionally it puts pressure on other providers to deliver more which cannot be a bad thing for consumers.

Electronics firm Pioneer have developed a new 16 layer read only optical disc that has the capacity to store 400 gigabytes of data.

Each layer of the disc is capable of individually storing 25 gigabytes which is the same as that of a Blu-ray disc. The multilayer recording technology will also be applicable to recordable discs, boosting confidence that optical disc storage will remain a viable option in the future as increased storage capacities are required.

By using optical disc production technology that the firm has already has in place in the DVD field, pioneer has overcome problems of crosstalk from adjacent layers by using a new disc structure. This results in a 16 layer optical disc capable of playing back high-quality signals from every layer.

Pioneer achieved stability in the playback of recorded signals by employing a wide-range spherical aberration compensator and light-receiving element that can read out weak signals at a high signal-to-noise ratio in the optical pick-up mechanism.

Since the optical specifications of the objective lens, such as NA (Numerical Aperture), are the same as those for the existing BD discs, it is possible to maintain compatibility between the new 16-layer optical disc and the BD discs.

In our second post from this year’s E3 games conference in Los Angeles we look at what leading games manufacturer Nintendo is planning next for its market leading console the Wii.

Nintendo it seems have responded after Sony made claims earlier this week that the Wii console was an expensive novelty, and that Sony did not see it as future competition to its own console.

The response came in the form of a demonstration of the consoles latest add on called MotionPlus, an addition to the Wii controller that is intended to add more realism and depth to the games on offer.

“It renders every light shift of the wrist or arm into the gameplay.” - Nintendo America boss Reggie Fils-Aime

With the demonstration the firm also said that even the first Wii sports title took advantage of the new add-on.

The company also unveiled a Grand Theft Auto game in development for the DS console and a new Wii title, called Music, which sees gamers play more than 50 musical instruments by using the Wiimote motion-sensitive controller.

Selling more than 10 million consoles since its launch, the Nintendo Wii is currently the market leader. The company have also sol 70 million DS machines worldwide.

Nintendo stated that it was selling 200,000 units a week in Europe alone.

Earlier this week we wrote about how Sony have plans to release a larger version of the PS3 and push online gaming with the planned launch of Little Big Planet’, a social-networking game that can be played online through the two-year-old console.

Sony also intends to push the Blu-ray capability of its system with a series of movie download services due to launch.