Posts Tagged “bbc”
UK university websites are targeted by criminals peddling counterfeit drugs from fake online pharmacies. Read Full Story…
Lawyers go for developersTwo iPhone developers have been slapped with a 10-page cease and desist order from the BBC for trying to create an app that would cache iPlayer content.…
The power of collaboration within unified communications Read Full Story…
The US government admits that more needs to be done in order to protect the country and its citzens from cyber attacks. Read Full Story…
The choice of browsers offered to millions of European Microsoft users is not as varied as suggested, say web designers. Read Full Story…
Microsoft is to ask millions of Europeans who use Windows if they want to switch to a rival web browser. Read Full Story…
Feb
22
2010
 
Apple and Google compete at Mobile World CongressPosted by CompareMobiles.com in Mobile News
As the battle between Apple and Google hots up at the Mobile World Congress, the smartphone boom signals good times for media firms Richard Wray Announcing the BBC’s move into the mobile phone market with its own news, sport and video applications for the iPhone last week, Erik Huggers, the director of future media and technology, said the new generation of so-called smartphones are a “great conduit to our audience”. It is a conduit that until recently has been, if not closed, then certainly constricted for media companies. But the explosion of downloadable applications, rapid rise in mobile broadband take-up and, crucially, the weakening of network operators’ stranglehold on the market have opened up a massive opportunity. The attraction is easy to see: there are already four times as many mobile phones in the world as there are PCs, and those phones are getting cleverer. In the run-up to Christmas, one in four of the phones sold by Vodafone across the world was a smartphone – that is, a phone with the same computing power as a laptop you could buy a few years ago. Within a couple of years there will be more smartphones than PCs on the planet. Even the mobile phone operators’ reaction to the weakening of their position, banding together in order to mount a fightback in the apps world, should benefit media companies. Then there is Google, which has not only provided the industry with a serious, and more importantly open, competitor to the iPhone, but looks increasingly likely to usher in a new era of mobile advertising. Huggers made his announcement in Barcelona at the mobile phone industry’s biggest annual get-together, Mobile World Congress, which showed that while the iPhone began the boom in the smartphone market, the rest of the industry is catching up and a range of devices are set to hit the shops that will help media players get to a mobile audience. The iPhone drove a wedge between customers and the mobile phone networks. Other players had tried it, such as Nokia, but Apple succeeded. For years the mobile phone companies acted as gatekeepers to their customers. Content companies had to strike deals with each operator, jostling for position on the “portals” created by the networks. Consumers, however, did not want their phone company picking what content they could view on their phones and portal usage was minimal. So the networks knocked down their walled gardens. As consumers ventured into the mobile web, many media companies – including the BBC – created mobile versions of their websites that could be easily viewed on a phone’s small screen. But usage remained low because even the mobile web, on many devices, was a pale imitation of the “real” internet. The iPhone was different and when it switched to 3G technology a year and a half ago the mobile web came of age. It has weakened the networks and given media companies the chance to bypass them. The relationship an iPhone customer has is with Apple first and their network provider second. The network is merely paid for providing access – Apple gets paid for content. It is an aggregator for media companies worldwide, and what started with music has become a wide variety of content, thanks to its App store. But Apple does not have the market to itself. Already more than 20 phones with Google’s rival Android operating system have been produced, which have a crucial advantage over the Apple device: Android supports Flash, which should help advertisers realise the potential of the mobile web. “Crucially, Apple does not and will not support Adobe Flash on its iPhone or iPad products,” explains Brad Rees, chief executive of Mediacells Limited, the mobile market experts. “From an advertising creative perspective, this has meant iPhone application specialists win most of the pitches for mobile microsites. In the online world, the language of big-budget agency creatives is Adobe Flash, and this is precisely where Android hits the sweet spot. Even though Nokia has been offering full internet phones for a while, it’s the Google proposition which resonates.” In his keynote speech in Barcelona, Eric Schmidt, chief executive of Google, promised the search engine giant is “not trying to run roughshod” over the mobile phone companies or turn them into “dumb pipes” in the air. The companies, however, are not so sure. Two dozen of the world’s biggest announced during the congress that they are getting together to produce a completely open apps platform – allowing consumers to take their applications with them when they change handsets. In return for this portability, the networks would start to get a slice of revenues – although exactly how is still unclear. This is potentially big news for media companies as it raises the possibility that they will be able eventually to develop their apps just once, and put them on a massive array of handsets straight away. And it’s another indication that at long last the mobile floodgates are open. Full coverage of Mobile World Congress including galleries and analysis at guardian.co.uk/business/ mobileworld congress
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Millions of Internet Explorer users in Europe will get the chance to change their web browser from 1 March. Read Full Story…
Microsoft’s plans to buy Yahoo’s internet search and search advertising business are cleared by European and US regulators. Read Full Story…
Stick to your knitting, auntieNewspaper publishers are calling on the BBC Trust to rein in the broadcaster’s plans to start making applications for smartphones.…
The power of collaboration within unified communications Read Full Story…
Corporation to roll out official applications, beginning with BBC News in April and BBC Sport in May The BBC has announced a new range of free applications that will deliver its online services to mobile devices, starting with BBC News in April. The BBC is also considering an iPlayer application for release later in the year. BBC Sport will follow News, lauching its application in May. Both apps will be launched in a UK and a global version. Announcing the new mobile services today at Mobile World Congress in Barcelona, the BBC’s director of future media and technology, Erik Huggers, said: “It’s been 12 years since the launch of BBC Online, but as media converges and technology accelerates, licence fee payers are increasingly using sophisticated handheld devices to access information. They tell us that they want to access the digital services that they have paid for at a time and place that suits them.” A range of unauthorised BBC applications are already available and fairly popular. The new official applications now give licence payers an authorised alternative as mobile phones become more powerful and connectivity more accessible. According to the second largest app store GetJar, an unauthorised version of BBC Mobile was downloaded 110,032 times by January. In December, the mobile BBC site attracted by 1,851,000 visitors. BBC NewsBBC News for mobile will not only provide users with updated breaking news including video and audio, it will also allow them to send comments and pictures directly to the newsroom. However, the demo of the new app reveals that the user integration isn’t as prominent as with the BBC’s international rival CNN. The simple and intuitive navigation of thn ews app can already be tested online. “The main screen uses a carousel structure so you can quickly catch up on the news by sliding each row sideways to skim through the latest stories. You can also personalise the experience by reordering the rows to put your favourite news section at the top,” says David Madden of the future media and technology mobile team in a blogpost. BBC News will first be available on Apple’s iPhone and iPod Touch, followed by the BlackBerry OS and Google’s Android later in the year. BBC SportStarting with the football World Cup in South Africa, the sport app will focus on the live match experience. Content that is broadcast on TV by the BBC will be available for football fans as well as on-demand clips of every goal scored in the tournament. Users will also be able to access content from BBC Radio 5 Live, and live text commentaries from BBC presenters and blogs. The 2010/11 English football season, Formula One and coverage of other sports will be added later in the year. While the UK version of the spoart app will be free, the global version will be released separately by BBC Worldwide and, in line with other international BBC Worldwide services, will feature advertising. How will news organisations react?The BBC iPlayer is already optimised for mobile browsers, and available for Nokia’s Ovi app store, but there are plans to make further versions available for other smartphones available to UK audiences only. While news organisations have pinned their hopes on smartphone applications as a way to make revenue, the BBC will offer its applications for free. Recently, News Corporation’s James Murdoch said that a “dominant” BBC threatens independent journalism in the UK. Should the BBC charge for its mobile applications or does its licence fee already include them? What do you think? Let us know in the comments.
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Feb
17
2010
BBC’s education service Janala has delivered 1m lessons in three monthsPosted by CompareMobiles.com in Mobile News
BBC says project aimed at delivering English lessons through mobile phones in Bangladesh has got off to a good start In mobile technology, it is often the developing world that leads the way – by using mobile phones to teach people a foreign language, for example. In Bangladesh, more than 1m English lessons have been downloaded to mobile phones as part of the BBC’s Janala sercvice, the corporation announced today at the World Mobile Conference in Barcelona. Offering hundreds of three-minute audio lessons and SMS quizzes for less than 4p, Janala – meaning “window” – provides low-cost education through handsets – in a country where English is not as widely spoken as elsewhere in Asia. The service is very simple: by dialling “3000″, mobile users access classes ranging from “Essential English” to the more advanced “How to tell a story”. The BBC has also set up a website giving learners free access to content. According to Sara Chamberlain, the head of interactive for the BBC World Service Trust, the broadcaster’s aim was to make English – the international language of business – within the reach of millions of non-Anglophones. It is aimed at young people living on less than £2 a day. This news report shows students learning English with Janala. Since it was launched in November 2009, 1,030,583 Janala lessons have been accessed, with Bangladesh’s 50 million mobile users eager to learn English to improve their access to the global economy. More than two-thirds of people who use the beginners’ service return, which is impressive considering the 5% “return rate” for mobile products in Bangladesh. The BBC said overall 39% of callers returned to Janala. An impressive majority of Bangladeshis – 84% – consider English essential to securing a good job and educating their children, according to a BBC survey. “We knew demand for English was strong in Bangladesh, but the response to BBC Janala has been nothing short of phenomenal,” said Chamberlain. “The growth of mobile is clearly creating an opportunity to provide access to education in a way simply not possible before.”
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Microsoft shows off the latest version of its mobile phone operating system, called Windows phone 7 series. Read Full Story…
Feb
11
2010
Why we should pay more for our phone apps | Victor KeeganPosted by CompareMobiles.com in Mobile News
The only way to encourage developers to create great apps for all mobile phones, and not just Apple’s iPhone, is to reward them – and that means paying more Easy to use mobile applications of the kind that Apple is pioneering are a huge economic opportunity to generate growth and jobs but also a conundrum. At a time when the whole world of computing is migrating into the “cloud”, with data stored out there on the web rather than on our computer desktops, the mobile world is moving in the opposite direction: nearly all of these games and services are being downloaded on to our mobile devices. The result is that we are using our apps – and few more so than me – through dedicated silos rather than on the web. This has advantages, not least because data stored on your phone can be accessed more quickly, but also a big downside. This is partly because you are a prisoner of your service provider such as Apple, but mainly because if these apps were made for the web, then every phone would be able to access them, users would have big opportunities to share and developers wouldn’t have to spend money they haven’t got making multiple apps for incompatible phones. At the moment, if you want to port an iPhone app to devices running Google’s Android operating system, you have to start building again from scratch. Apps would be much cheaper if they could be built to run across different platforms. Tom Hume, managing director of Brighton based FuturePlatforms, points out that Apple developers have to work in the Objective C computer language, whereas the HTML5 standard requires only minor changes between platforms. FuturePlatforms operates a Google-style “gold card” system, allowing staff time off to do their own things. One developer used this option to produce an unofficial app of the Guardian for phones using Google’s Android operating system which in some ways is more flexible than the iPhone app (eg, it can download the paper during the night). Make no mistake, something really big is happening with apps as this amazing device we still call a mobile phone extends its tentacles ever deeper into our lives. Today it is games, social networks, reading, search, location-based services; tomorrow health, work, painting, education, who knows what. The stats are startling. According to technology research company Gartner, physical downloads of apps reached 2.5bn last year. These were overwhelmingly on iPhone and iPod Touch devices. But since iPhones amount to less than 1% of all phones, you don’t have to be a genius to realise the enormous potential. It could be that Gartner’s predictions of 4.5bn downloads this year and an astonishing 21.6bn in 2013, equivalent to more than three for everyone on the planet, will prove an underestimate. The good – or bad – news, is that a staggering 87% of these downloads will be free for users. That’s great for you and me, but it is not an obvious way to encourage a growing industry to hire people to make up for the black hole caused by the banking collapse. Many of these “free” downloads will be supported by advertising and others will be corporations promoting their brands. But most will be free because creators don’t think they can charge for them. At the moment, there is a grave distortion in the balance of power. Most of the money is going to the app shops such as Apple – which controls the gateway to the developers, who are often on £60 or more an hour – with the content providers squeezed in the middle of an increasingly crowded market. I have been talking recently to developers – partly to research this column and partly because I am trying to do an app of my own to see how difficult it is (more of that at a later date, maybe). The overwhelming message is how difficult it is to make enough profit to justify the investment when costs are so high and the market flooded with freebies. Sure there are some who make good money, such as existing branded games being repackaged in mobile form and niche services. The most successful income-earning apps last year – satellite navigation guides at £30 a pop – have been undermined by Google bringing out a free turn-by-turn street navigation option. Unsurprisingly then, ustwo of Shoreditch – maker of, among other things, mouthoff, an app that enables the phone screen to mimic movements of your mouth, which had mouth-watering publicity here and in the US – couldn’t make a respectable profit at 59p. Indeed, the company admits “the bottom line is that it’s impossible to make money at the 59p price point for 99% of studios”. Toiluxe, a neat 59p iPhone app that uses satellite signals to tell you where the nearest toilet is in London – whether the Ritz hotel or a public convenience – got publicity in several newspapers but not enough to make a respectable return given that the developer only ends up with only 60% of income after Apple and Vat (levied at higher Irish rates where the servers are based). The obvious answer is to raise prices, but that is easier said than done in an environment where so much is available for nothing – as newspapers in a different neck of the woods know full well. It is all quite crazy, really. People who pay more than £2.50 for a cup of coffee that is gone in a few minutes are reluctant to pay £1 for a paper that will last for hours or an app that will be with you for ages, probably with free upgrades. It is also becoming increasingly difficult to find an app among the hundreds of thousands on offer on the iPhone despite the growth of apps helping you to do just this (ie, looking for relevant apps) such as Chomp, or Mplayit on Facebook or Apple’s Genius. There must be hundreds of great apps that hardly anyone has discovered. Goodness knows what it will be like in a few years time. There is an elephant in the room even though it is invisible at the moment: the bedroom programmer, shorthand for individuals working on their own. The reason is that it is very difficult to write code for a phone in the way that kids could program their BBC or Spectrum computers in the 1980s, a phenomenon that led the same kids to create a thriving computer games industry. Uncle Steve won’t let you near his phones except on his own terms. It may start to change with Google’s Android operating system based on open source, and I know of at least one developer working on an app to enable people to do their own coding on a phone in a (relatively) simple way. If that happened maybe a new generation of cloud coders could send the apps revolution off in a whole new – and much cheaper – direction. The best things in life are not always free.
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