DAB radios being sold in the shops today will not be able to receive any of the many new stations that will launch using the new “AAC+” format in the coming years. Many of the new AAC+ radios will probably launch within the next three years, some as early as summer/autumn 2007:
“How quickly it will be before AAC+ is used on DAB is dependent on the proportion of DAB receivers in the UK market that support the new DAB standard. The good news is that DAB is still in the relatively early stages of growth, and sales are forecast to really take off over the next few years.”
OpenBusiness has interviewed Robert Cook, one of the co-founders of Freebase, a startup which aims to become the “Wikipedia for data”. Revenues will come through charging thrid party firms to access the API and leverage its data. Uses this coudld be put to include working out how many dentists are in one mile vicinity, if they are next to tube stop and are specialists in teeth whitening. Web 2.0 guru Tim O’Reilly already likes the idea.
Key quotes:
“As a database, it lets people ask complex and extemporaneous questions like… “Find me all of the Venture Capitalists in Silicon Valley who share a board membership and went to college together.â€? Up until a few years ago it was almost impossible to build a database like this. After several years of work, we’re now past the main technical hurdles to making such as system function at a worldwide scale.”
“We’re getting data from many places. Currently we have a team combining data about geography, government, school, business, restaurants, and products, as well as Wikipedia itself, which has data in a semi-structured form.”
“Freebase uses the very open “Creative Commons Attribution Licenseâ€? that allows anybody to use the data for any purpose, as long as they give attribution to the contributor. This license is more radically open than the more common “Creative Commons Noncommercial Licenseâ€? which is used by licensors wishing to provide their data only to academic researchers or hobbyists.”
Mobile handsets capable of displaying TV will hit 244 million by 2011, according to the Multimedia Research Group in the US. That’s double the number previously forecast for the uptake rate expected in 55 countries. Big leaps are expected in 2009 when 53 million broadcast TV enabled handsets are expected to ship. The bulk of the 80 mobile TV trials all over the world will become genuine services. Most will be good enough to watch for 30 minutes at a time. According to the report, service revenues from the global mobile TV market will exceed $24bn annually by 2011, with Western Europe likely to lead in revenue terms at over $10bn, followed by the USA and Canada at $7.7bn, and China and the Far East at $5bn. The question is, are technology start-ups positioned for this new media platform or are they still thinking in terms of the Web only?
Mobile handsets capable of displaying TV will hit 244 million by 2011, according to the Multimedia Research Group in the US. That’s double the number previously forecast for the uptake rate expected in 55 countries. Big leaps are expected in 2009 when 53 million broadcast TV enabled handsets are expected to ship. The bulk of the 80 mobile TV trials all over the world will become genuine services. Most will be good enough to watch for 30 minutes at a time. According to the report, service revenues from the global mobile TV market will exceed $24bn annually by 2011, with Western Europe likely to lead in revenue terms at over $10bn, followed by the USA and Canada at $7.7bn, and China and the Far East at $5bn.
Sony is going to allow PlayStation Portable (PSP) owners make VoIP and video calls using a camera and microphone which will hit the shops on 25 May. Gamers will be able to call other PSP owners and some BT phones. BT is developing the software, which was originally intended for the Nintendo handheld. The BBC reports the service will initially only be available in the UK and will only work on home or BT wireless hotspots, of which there are 2,000 so far. There are 24 million PSPs sold globally, eight million in the UK. Interestingly, this will be one of the first applications of BT’s 21 Century Network (21CN).
It’s not clear as yet, but it sounds like you will only be able to make calls if you are a BT customer already, meaning you’ll have to log-in with a customer ID to the network. We wait to be enlightened…
If the rumour that T-Mobile is in the front line to take the iPhone in Europe then the new rumour that the Apple iPhone will also be available on a pre-paid contract is pretty interesting. The Boygeniusreport.com says they got a few screen shots sent to them which show internal AT&T account codes showing the iPhone available to Pay As You Go subscribers with AT&T in the US. This would widen the market for the iPhone considerably, especially in the US where customers are generally locked into contracts for a long time. If the iPhone is pre-paid in Europe then expect a massive run on the phones – and yet more power to the iTunes music store.
If the rumour that T-Mobile is in the front line to take the iPhone in Europe then the new rumour that the Apple iPhone will also be available on a pre-paid contract is pretty interesting. The Boygeniusreport.com says they got a few screen shots sent to them which show internal AT&T account codes showing the iPhone available to Pay As You Go subscribers with AT&T in the US. This would widen the market for the iPhone considerably, especially in the US where customers are generally locked into contracts for a long time. If the iPhone is pre-paid in Europe then expect a massive run on the phones – and yet more power to the iTunes music store.
The online personalised music streaming service Pandora has signed a deal with US carrier Sprint to be pre-installed or downloaded to handsets. Pandora and other web broadcasters have been heavily hit by recent increases in the licensing fees for web broadcasters in the US. Pandora has also had to stop streaming outside the US. The new Sprint venture means a badly needed extra revenue stream on top of advertising. Pandora says it has 6.9 million registered listeners. Pandora founder Tim Westergren says if the new royalty scheme stays then the business no longer makes sense.
Watch out TIOTI.com? As Mashable reports, Denmark-based Tribler (note the .org domain) has created a BitTorrent client which works like Last.fm to find new media based on your downloading history. The non-profit group, a joint research project from Delft University of Technology and the VU University Amsterdam, already has $8 million in government funding. It's also about to be tested with video on-demand services for the Netherlands Public Broadcasting organisation:
Tribler is looking to be the ultimate aggregator that leverages the community as well as the wealth of content available on the net. That includes YouTube videos, and more content from other sources will be incorporated into Tribler’s service in the future. Tribler can be used for generic Torrent downloads and users P2P to discover other clients for exchanging metadata about downloaded files.
The online personalised music streaming service Pandora has signed a deal with US carrier Sprint to be pre-installed or downloaded to handsets. Pandora and other web broadcasters have been heavily hit by recent increases in the licensing fees for web broadcasters in the US. Pandora has also had to stop streaming outside the US. The new Sprint venture means a badly needed extra revenue stream on top of advertising. Pandora says it has 6.9 million registered listeners. Pandora founder Tim Westergren says if the new royalty scheme stays then the business no longer makes sense.
Update: TechCrunch has news that Pandora will release a mobile device powered by Zing.
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