Archive for April 18th, 2005
Motorola is about to launch iRadio, a service which allows users to download music to their PCs, move it over to their mobile phone and then listen to it through their car stereo.
The phone itself with cost around $200, but there will be the further investment needed of a bluetooth adapter for your car stereo.
David Ulmer, marketing director, media solutions business, Motorola, said that they set out to find a way to get content into the devices that people actually use to listen to their music e.g. the home stereo or the car stereo. Then they considered what devices were becoming ubiquitous and settled on the mobile phone to act as a hub for the music.
iRadio devices will be sold in stores, but may also be integrated into car stereos directly.
April 18th, 2005
Buena Vista Games, the company behind Disney Interactive, has announced “Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man’s Chest” for the PSP.
The game is based on the upcoming movie “Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man’s Chest” scheduled for release in Summer 2006.
Building on the popularity of its successful portable games business, BVG will release games for the PSP and Nintendo DS in conjunction with the movie launch.
“The Pirates of the Caribbean franchise will develop over the next few years as one of the most exciting and important initiatives BVG will spearhead,” said Graham Hopper, senior vice president and general manager, Buena Vista Games. “Our upcoming games will expand the Pirates world and allow fans to take on the roles of some of the most rousing characters ever created, and experience firsthand their perilous adventures.”
In the upcoming Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man’s Chest video games, users will be able to play as Captain Jack Sparrow, Will Turner and Elizabeth Swann as they explore and brawl across land and sea on a memorable quest in search of the legendary Dead Man’s Chest. The games will not only feature thrilling moments from the movie, but will expand the fantasy of the franchise by offering exciting new adventures and locations inspired by the rich “Pirates of the Caribbean” universe.
April 18th, 2005
That’s a headline we didn’t expect to be typing when we woke up this morning.
Adobe and Macromedia, bitter rivals in the world of productivity software, getting into bed with each other. Adobe will pay $3.4bn in stock and will acquire products such as FreeHand, Dreamweaver, Fireworks and Flash which are the main competitors to much of its own portfolio.
There will undoubtedly be a product cull, but not only from Macromedia products. Dreamweaver should see off GoLive, but Freehand and Fireworks must be under threat from Illustrator and Photoshop.
This takeover will have little impact on the lives of most web users, but it will impact on the way websites and other digital media are assembled. Designers have an almost evangelical preference for certain products. Switching to a hated rival is going to cause a lot of angst.
April 18th, 2005
The United Arab Emirates only has 2 million cars on its roads, but somehow manages to have a fatal accident every 15 hours. We’re not making any conclusions about what that tells us about the standard of driving in the UAE, but the government there thinks that excessive speed is to blame, so they have hired IBM to produce the mother of all speed traps.
The $125 million system will attach a box of tricks to the underside of every car in the country which monitors location and speed. If the speed exceeds the limit for the location then action will be taken, probably in the form of a sound warning to the driver initially and then presumably the automatic issuing of a speeding fine.
Technologies used will include the General Packet Radio Service (GPRS) and Global System for Mobile Communications (GSM), Global Positioning Systems (GPSs), Bluetooth (define) and an optional driver identification feature based on RFID.
The UAe is hoping that the system will encourage safer driving.
April 18th, 2005
Those of you who have a wireless network will know that the range is pretty poor and the signal is blocked by anything more solid than a stud wall. So, it will come as a surprise to you to learn that Intel is pioneering a technology that will increase the range of a wireless broadband signal to more than 5 miles.
Intel will partner with worldwide communications giants such as British Telecom and AT&T to bring their WiMax chip to the market some time in 2007.
Long range wireless internet would open up areas where it was previously thought difficult to bring broadband, such as remote communities (which in the UK seems to mean anywhere not within 2 metres of a telephone exchange). It would also allow wireless hot-spotting to expand to cover massive areas - the whole of the City of London could become a wireless hot-spot. All you would need would be a WiMax equipped laptop to take advantage. There could also be big savings for telecoms companies as they would need less cabling.
Scott Richardson, general manager of Intel’s broadband wireless business, said WiMax equipment was too expensive now for widespread adoption, but that Intel and its partners were trying to push equipment costs below $200.
April 18th, 2005