Thoughts from the Shelf

Microsoft today launched their new Messenger TV service (Screen shots of which are here), an add-on to their popular MSN instant messaging service, allowing users to watch videos online whilst exchanging messages.

Through the Windows Live Messaging console these videos can then be easily shared amongst friends in your IM community, creating what is said to be a unique social experience and opening up an untapped advertising market.

The service will provide a range of TV clips several minutes in length, provided by companies such as UK based Channel 4. Channel 4 will provide clips of shows including Peep Show, Property Ladder, Father Ted and Shameless, whilst other content producers will include ITN, Reuters and National Geographic as well as record label EMI.

Other content tipped to be played on the service includes South Park and Pimp My Ride, as well as music videos from Kylie to Britney Spears. The service will run adverts ahead of the clip as well as an advertising banner throughout the duration of playback.

The service is initially being launched in 20 countries, many throughout Europe, which is home to 95 million Windows Messenger users. Microsoft has around 14 million monthly unique users of Windows Live Messenger in the UK alone. It will also launch in New Zealand, Australia, Singapore, Brazil, Canada and Mexico but not the United States.

“We see Windows Live Messenger as media in its own right, one that has been somewhat untapped as an opportunity,” - MSN UK exec producer Peter Bale.

Channel 4’s director of new media technology John Gisby commented on the deal with Microsoft.

“Our core audience is spending increasing amounts of time online and expects to be able to watch its favourite Channel 4 shows this way.”

John Mangelaars, the vice-president, EMEA, of consumer and online for Microsoft said “Online video has exploded in popularity over the last year, but to date it has been something people watch on their own. Messenger TV is set to change all that,”

The move by Microsoft comes less than a week after they pulled out of a long run take over approach for Yahoo, aimed primarily at its position in the online advertising market. This move certainly demonstrates the company’s eagerness to expand into that market.

Yahoo has implemented technology into it search facility that will provide a warning for users if they are about to click onto a site that hosts viruses, spyware or spam.

Using SiteAdvisor from McAfee Yahoo will warn users via a SearchScan facility of potentially risky sites. The SearchScan facility will be in place as default to produce on screen alerts to its users.

“Our goal is to protect users by allowing them to make a more informed decision about the sites they visit,” said Yahoo’s Priyank Garg.

The tool that is being introduced as a free embedded tool which will warn users of three types of security risks, browser exploits, dangerous downloads and unsolicited emails.

The facility went live today and an example error warning can be seen with a search for ‘free music’ with a red explanation mark highlighting potentially hazardous sites.

By teaming up with McAfee Yahoo are trying to calm fears from users who accidentally click on wrong links in search results.

“Yahoo users have clearly told us that among the most important concerns for them are all these lurking threats on the Internet,” said Priyank Garg, director of product management for Yahoo’s search division. “They know the damage they can do but they don’t know how to protect themselves.“

The add on demonstrates Yahoo’s plan to grab a bigger proportion of the search market amid a recent financial slump after a takeover bid from Microsoft was withdrawn seeing shares slump by 15%.

Politicians in the Europe have voted against measures that would see illegal file sharers thrown off of the internet.

Ideas that were outlined on The Shelf earlier in April in the post titled Virgin Media to Pilot Three Strike Policy? were including in a report on creative industries written for European parliament.

In the vote MEP’s backed an amendment that said the proposed termination of users contracts conflicted with “civil liberties and human rights”. The ruling went against the numerous European governments who are trying to implement tough action against pirates on the internet.

“The vote shows that MEPs want to strike a balance between the interests of rights holders and those of consumers, and that big measures like cutting off internet access shouldn’t be used,” said a spokeswoman for the European Parliament after the vote.

However the amendment called on nations to “avoid adopting measures conflicting with civil liberties and human rights and with the principles of proportionality, effectiveness and dissuasiveness, such as the interruption of internet access.”

The International Federation of the Phonographic Industry (IFPI) who represents Europe’s music industry accused the amendment of being badly drafted and stated that

“We (The IFPI) look forward to a full discussion in the European Parliament in the coming months on how best to address copyright theft online,” said the IFPI.

In more news regarding the BBC iPlayer and following on from last months post about the service launching on both the iPhone and iTouch, iPlayer Launched on iPhone and iPod Touch, it seems the service has stepped up a gear and is now available on the Nintendo Wii.

Having struck deals with Apple to be the first mobile platforms to support the service, it seems the BBC is now pushing the service into living rooms of the public through the Nintendo Wii.

It has been rumoured that both Sony and Microsoft were eager to sign the iPlayer for their respective PS3 and Xbox 360 consoles, but the deal feel through due to increasing demands of the games console manufacturers.

“If you want to get [iPlayer] on the PlayStation or Xbox, they want control of the look, the feel and the experience; they want it done within their shop, and their shop only.” - head of BBC Future Media and Technology Erik Huggers

Darren Waters, BBC technology editor said “The BBC’s announcement of a deal with Nintendo to put the iPlayer’s streaming service on the console makes something of a mockery of claims by Sony and Microsoft that their consoles are the true multimedia machines.”

With Xbox live having no browser it seems Microsoft are unwilling to work with the BBC without retaining control over the look and feel of content delivery, however with the ‘open platform’ of the PS3 it does seem inevitable that the iPlayer will find its way to the PS3 before long.

“[Sony] has said often that PS3 is an ‘open platform’ and all it would take is a small update to let gamers access iPlayer in the web browser.” - Darren Waters, BBC technology editor

With the majority of iPlayer customers currently accessing BBC content through a PC, the publicly funded broadcaster is taking steps to make its services available directly to the big screen television set, and it sees the Japanese games console as a means of doing so.

Currently users can view content downloaded from the iPlayer through their television sets, although it requires using the S-video output on most notebooks and a suitable S-Video to Scart cable. For LCD or plasma screen screens this could be replaced by a higher quality VGA input/ output.

The advantage of this latest deal for the iPlayer is that the Wii consoles are already rigged up to TV set, and therefore programmes can be viewed directly on the console.

Wii players will need to install the Internet Channel which will cost 500 Wii points or £3.50 but there are plans for a free alternative in the future.

The service will remain in beta initially as the BBC experiments with the optimal video encoding techniques for superior playback. The BBC already encodes all 400 hours of weekly iPlayer video, and now must do the same again for the high quality H.264 iPhone streams, and the Wii.

Wii encoding will be of a poorer quality as the Wii only supports Flash 7.This is because of the fact that initially the Wii was only designed to support lower quality Youtube style video.

“Our regular Flash content is encoded at 500Kbps. We chose that bitrate because it’s the highest quality that could be reliably streamed on pretty much any UK broadband internet connection. However, for Wii we had to increase the bitrate to 820Kbps because the Sorenson codec used by Wii simply needs more bits to achieve the same picture quality,” - BBC’s Anthony Rose

After posted about the BBC’s new on demand iPlayer service in January ‘BBC iPlayer Offers Free On Demand TV‘, it seems not everybody is as happy with the service as others.

This week it emerged that Internet Service Providers have suggested that they should not be soley responsible for paying for the extra costs that have been highlighted as a result of the services success.

ISP providers have stated that on demand services such as the iPlayer are putting a strain on cable networks which need to be upgraded in order to cope with the increasing data that legal on demand television content brings with it.

In the first three months that the iPlayer service was live over 42 million programmes were accessed, taking up 3%-5% of the network. According to Ofcom it will cost ISPs around £830 to pay for the extra capacity needed to allow for services such as the iPlayer.

It is at this point that Simon Gunter from ISP Tiscali stated he believes that the BBC should contribute towards this cost.

With iPlayer the first major success in on demand television streaming, and other terrestrial channels all planning similar services in the future, why should the BBC as a pioneer, be responsible for the cost of this upgrade?

For a long time ISPs have had it far to easy selling ‘unlimited’ download packages to customers that in truth are not ‘unlimited’. With the users paying a broadband service fee to access such content and the BBC already paying to distribute the service, it seems now that ISPs are looking for money from the BBC for delivery of content over a connection the user is already paying for, effectively asking to be paid twice over.

The BBC hit back at the suggestions stating that it could effectively blacklist any ISP that attempted to charge it to distribute content.

“Content providers, if they find their content being specifically squeezed, shaped, or capped, could start to indicate on their sites which ISPs their content works best on (and which to avoid).” - Mr Highfield

The potential problem of clogged networks in the UK is not a new concern, for years the infrastructure of the net has been debated with a standstill predicted as early as 2010.

In the past traffic throttling has been used by ISPs to control users eating up bandwidth by downloading large amounts of material often from illegal peer to peer sites, but the legal provision of bandwidth hungry content by the BBC has changed the nature of the problem.

Users now want to use their unlimited connection that they pay for, legally!

Back in March The Shelf posted about Sir Tim Berners-Lee and his opinions on a sophisticated user tracking and ad targeting system. The Phorm system mentioned in that post has since been put increasingly under the spot light after it was divulged BT secretly trialled the software on its users in 2007, a move many believe was in fact illegal.

Backed by three leading internet service providers the system is designed to increase the relevance of online advertising by logging all the websites a particular user visits, a move the Foundation for Information Policy Research said infringed user’s privacy rights.

“Users should have to opt in to such a system, not merely be given an opportunity to opt out. Failure to establish a clear and transparent ‘opt-in’ system is likely to render the entire process illegal and open to challenge in UK and European courts.” – The FIPR

It is thought that by serving adverts based on a users browsing history, more relevant adverts will be served than if the advert was served in relation to webpage content.

A petition on the Downing Street website has now seen over 10,000 people sign it. It is to be delivered to the Prime Minister to review the country’s privacy laws.

On Friday the argument developed further when the Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO) said it would monitor a planned BT trial of the service with the FIPR claiming the ICO had simply brushed over doubts of the services legality.

“[Phorm] assure us that their system does not allow the retention of individual profiles of sites visited and adverts presented, and that they hold no personally identifiable information on web users. Indeed, Phorm assert that their system has been designed specifically to allow the appropriate targeting of adverts whilst rigorously protecting the privacy of web users.” – ICO

The FIPR responded by saying “[BT] appear to ignore the fact that they can only legalise their activity by getting express permission not just from their customers, but also from the web hosts whose pages they intercept, and from the third parties who communicate with their customers through web-based email, forums or social-networking sites. We sincerely hope that the Information Commissioner will reconsider what appears to be a green light for lawbreaking.”

Meanwhile an technical analysis of the system by Dr Richard Clayton has reinforced views that the system is in fact illegal.

Mobile phone giant Nokia has launched its revamped internet service platform know as N-Gage, which enables holders of the higher end handsets to download videogames directly to their mobile phones.

N-Gage’s growing library of games will be accessible as users download software that connects their phone to their internet platform. With 30 games expected to be available by mid-2008, it marks one of the biggest moves by a mobile handset manufacturer to get into the content market.

“The games, the devices, and the community are all here for you to finally get your teeth into. The Forums are back up and the new N-Gage application is here”. - Nokia said on the N-Gage blog.

Currently the service is only available on the N81, N81 8GB, N82, N96 and N95 8GB, but Nokia is also planning to launch N-Gage for other phone models, including the N73, N93 and N93i.

According to Nokia there is a keen interest in gaming on mobile phones.

“People have been put off mobile gaming because there is nowhere to try games, gaming experiences have been poor, and the games are difficult to use, but all these problems have been solved with the new platform” – said Nokia’s Christopher Joyau

Officially the site is not being launched until April 7th, when select Nokia mobile holders will be able access the site and choose between six games. From then onwards two to three new games a week will be added to the platform.

The release date has already been pushed back twice, originally targeted for a 2007 launch, and after the initial launch of the service in 2003 which bombed, Nokia are hoping for big things.

Game publishers including Electronic Arts, Gameloft and Glu Mobile, have signed agreements to get their games on to the N-Gage service. In the UK, launch titles include Asphalt 3: Street Rules, Hooked On: Creatures of the deep, Brain Challenge and System Rush: Evolution. Many of the games are free to try and, in the UK, cost between £6 to £8 for a full copy.

Nokia made 40% of handsets sold in the last quarter of 2007.

Following on from a post on the 14th February titled the ‘Government Turns Up Heat On ISP’s and Online Piracy’ it has been suggested that Virgin Media could be about to take steps to stop users using internet services provided by them for downloading files that infringe on copyright.

As part of the scheme Virgin Media has teamed up with the British Phonographic Industry to implement a three strike system upon users as early as summer 2008. As part of the plans, those who download illegal music could be issued with warning letters as a first warning.

A Second warning could be delivered in the form of an account suspension, with a third strike culminating in the disconnection of a user’s broadband service.

Tiscali is said to have looked at implementing a similar three strike system before talks collapsed over cost issues with BPI.

The proposed scheme would be the first time that an ISP has taken active measures in curbing piracy and decided to share responsibility of the problem. It comes amid months of stale mate between the record industry and ISP’s that has up until now failed to see an industry wide agreement reached.

The government has said that if an agreement is not reached by April next year then legislation could well be implemented to solve the problem.

Under rumoured Virgin plans BPI technicians will track networks logging individuals who download illegally. The account details will then be passed back to Virgin Media who will match a name and address and take appropriate action.

A Virgin media spokesman did respond by saying “We have not agreed to the three strikes scheme, not started trials with the BPI or any other rights holder, and not decided to snoop on customers and inspect their data”

BPI also responded stating “Unfortunately it simply isn’t true that we have agreed a pilot - or any sort of deal - with Virgin Media, though we continue to work towards that. We think that every socially responsible ISP should help their customers avoid the illegal use of their broadband account.”

Estimates put the amount of user’s engaging in illegal downloading each year at as much as six million, which record labels have been arguing results in billions of pounds of lost revenues in CD sales.

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.

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.