Mobile Stew - content news/deals

ntl:Telewest Merge With Virgin Mobile - Customers To Be Enticed With Fourplay

Tue, 04 Apr 2006 01:47:00 -0700

ntl:Telewest have finally reached agreement with Virgin Mobile over the
terms of a takeover offer, which values the mobile operator at £962.4m
($1.62bn), together with an agreement to re-brand all consumer operations with the Virgin brand in the future. The combined company will have revenues of over £3.9bn which will put it on a par with Sky and Vodafone UK.

The new company, Virgin Broadband(??) will be the first company in the UK to offer quadruple play to customers - Broadband, TV, fixed and mobile telephony. I really think that fourplay combined with the Virgin brand will reshape the way consumers think about communications and entertainment. Telewest had great success with its tripleplay (TV, broadband and mobile) '3 for £30' campaign. Imagine how successful a strong fourplay offer will be, ...

Legal Movie Downloads In The U.S

Mon, 03 Apr 2006 04:32:00 -0700

Movielink and CinemaNow have both signed download-to-own
deals with major Hollywood studios such as Universal Pictures, Warner
Brothers and Twentieth Century Fox. Previously only rentals were available but now full movies will be available to download and own at the same time as the DVD becomes available.

I think this is a great move. The item I find most exciting about this service is not so much that the latest releases will be available, but also back catalogues. I'm not sure what format they will be using, but even if they supply the raw DVD on a 10Mb connection it will only take around 45-60 mins for movie to arrive. If they opt for something like DivX that time should be halved - just enough time to make some popcorn.

HDTV - Will It Live Up To The Hype?

Sun, 05 Feb 2006 17:00:57 -0700

May Wong has written a brilliant article which explains how many users still don't understand the benefits of HDTV, and how many users have purchased HDTVs but are still watching standard content by mistake.

I have to admit that I'm confused by all the various specs and features, although I haven't made an effort to decipher it all yet. At the moment a HDTV would be a unnecessary luxury for me as there aren't any HD broadcasts yet in the UK, so I would be buying a HDTV just to use with my Xbox360.

Newsvine Beta: - Pushing Web 2.0 To The Limits

Sat, 04 Feb 2006 17:20:57 -0700

Thanks to some very kind Connected readers last night I've been able to try out the Newsvine Beta service and all I can say is it is amazing. If Digg and Del.icio.us are Web 2.0 services then Newsvine is Web 2.5.

Newsvine collates stories from various Associated Press sources, but also allows users to create their own news columns. These columns can be seeded with articles created by each user or from links to external websites of interest.

Each article can be tagged a-la Del.icio.us, and also voted upon and in a similar fashion to Digg, with popular articles getting promoted to the homepage.

However, Newsvine has some key features that I think will make it stand out from the crowd:

- Revenue: Any ad revenue from any articles ...

Roundup of Online Storage Providers - Up To 25GB For Free

Wed, 01 Feb 2006 05:22:38 -0700

One of the projects that I keep on intending to look into at work is offering an online storage service to our users. However, I think might have to resurrect this project this year as a combination of falling storage costs and faster broadband is making these services affordable and usuable.

TechCrunch have done a great summary of all the main providers out there, including Streamload who offer a whopping 25GB for free.

More: TechCrunch � The Online Storage Gang

Who Will Digg It?

Sat, 28 Jan 2006 10:17:03 -0700

More speculation that Digg will get snapped up soon. My money is on Yahoo! or Google.
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Ditched Vonage

Sat, 28 Jan 2006 09:22:19 -0700

I've been doing a review of my finances over the last month or so. No item has been spared, no matter how small, and I noticed that I was hardly making any calls with my Vonage home phone.

I had a quick look around to see if there was a way to connect my DECT home phone to Skype and I found the uConnect VoIP Converter. This great little device will plugs into a USB port and can connect to any home phone, allowing me to make calls both to Skype users and SkypeOut calls using my handsets. So, I've made the switch to Skype as there's no monthly service charge, and the international rates, which I need to call my folks in Jamaica, are just as cheap....

Telewest Launch New Fixed-Line Tariffs To Combat Fixed-2-Mobile Substitution

Mon, 16 Jan 2006 03:24:08 -0700

Just spotted some new phone tariffs from Telewest that don't seem to have gotten any coverage, even though I think they are quite exciting and an interesting move. Telewest's new Talk Anywhere service is the first of its kind in Britain and will give consumers a choice of packages with 200, 400 or 800 minutes per month. The time can be used to phone local, national, international, mobile and internet numbers for a fixed monthly fee, which also includes the phone line rental. Unused minutes can be rolled over to the following month. The pricing is as follows:

- Talk Anywhere 200 - 200 minutes for �18 a month, including line rental

HMV CEO Quits After Poor Sales Due To Increased Online Competition From Amazon and iTunes

Fri, 13 Jan 2006 14:31:40 -0700

The CEO of high street music retailer HMV and Waterstones bookstores has resigned after poor sales over Christmas period, citing increased online competition from Amazon and iTunes. Once sales from new stores are stripped out of HMV's numbers, sales fell 2.4% compared to the same period in 2004. In an interview Giles said that 'one of the winners in 2005 was theInternet'.

It's good to see that the internet is finally having a real impact on the fortunes of high street stores. For too long they have been able to artificially inflate prices, even sometimes colluding with 'rivals' to maintain margins.

Digg.com's Influence Increasing - How Long Can It Remain Independent?

Fri, 13 Jan 2006 04:03:56 -0700

My article "More Ways To Speed Up Windows XP" got digged yesterday which nearly killed my site so I couldn't wait to see my stats this morning. Connected Internet got 28K visitors yesterday, an increase of 366% over my usual average and 166K page views, an increase of 1000% over my usual! I hope Blogware don't come after me as bandwidth usage yesterday was 9GB - my monthly allowance is only 2GB....

Microsoft Launching Music And Video Download Services?

Wed, 21 Dec 2005 03:57:12 -0700

Downloadsquad have picked up on rumours that Microsoft are planning subscription-based music and video download services which will provide unlimited or a high number of downloads each month.

I think this would be so cool, and would suit my needs down to a tee as I would be able to access this service via my soon to be completed Windows XP Media Center hub across my home.

Downloadsquad

Death of Hardware-Based DVRs?

Mon, 19 Dec 2005 12:57:58 -0700

ReplayTV, one of the forerunners in the DVR player market, is exiting the hardware market and shifting to software-only products. A deal has been struck with Hauppage to bundle ReplayTV's software with its videocards.

In my view this is a smart move by ReplayTV. For years it has been scrapping with TiVO to be top-dog in the market, and it has also been left punch drunk after numerous fights with the broadcasting industry over various issues such as allowing users to fast-forward through commercials.

By aligning itself now with one of the major card manufacturers it is positioning itself nicely for when Windows Vista hits the streets with in-built Media Center functionality, opening up PC-based PVRs to the masses. I'm sure ReplayTV are looking at more bundling deals as ...

Watch Free TV with your PC

Mon, 19 Dec 2005 12:27:54 -0700

gHacks have written an excellent guide on how to watch free TV over the internet, including sports broadcasts. Programming is streamed via P2P, so the quality is dependent on how many people are watching each stream.

I've used Pplive before but I've never come across Ppstream or Sopcast, so I'm going to give it them a try over the weekend.

Personalised AJAX Homepages: Roundup and Review

Sat, 17 Dec 2005 08:16:38 -0700

Personal homepages are making a comeback after being out of vogue for the last couple of years. Several of the established portals have teams working on developing new personalised homepage offerings as well as several new entrants hoping to gatecrash the sector. This week I've been playing with some of the latest offerings available, and below is what I think of the various sites.

In the early days of the internet setting up a personal homepage was a smart move. Internet connections were so slow that it was impossible, well painful at least, to surf lots of sites to find the interesting content to read. Personal homepages helped to save time by allowing users to have links to good quality content only one click away. Many portals fought quite hard to ...

New Service Provides Access To Gmail On Your Phone

Fri, 16 Dec 2005 03:51:28 -0700

Previously the only way to access Gmail on your phone was if you had a POP3 client on your phone, and by following these instructions. Although this method allows you to access your emails, it doesn't allow you to utilise the full tagging and search capabilities of Gmail and it also doesn't sync with your web-based account so emails will stay unread even if you read them on your phone.

There is now a simpler way to access Gmail on your phone which doesn't seem to be promoted anywhere yet by Google, which provides all of the useful features we've come to love from Google as well as some new ones.