Into Tech

There’s more good news for rock fans everywhere, following a recent announcement that both Sony and Microsoft have agreed to make the instruments used in the various games compatible.

This one should please quite a few people as it’s a reaction to the general feeling that we’re being ripped off in this country for the price of the full package of instruments. Despite looking like nothing would be done about it, peer pressure, a guilty conscience or more likely, an urge to get one up on Guitar Hero World Tour has encouraged EA to drop the prices of the instruments package.

For those of you that don’t like shoving in-ear buds half way to your brain, then there are other ways to reduce ambient noise.

We all know that listening to music while travelling on tubes and planes is a real chore using regular earphones which is why I have been pleasantly surprised by my ability to erase [mostly] the outside world thanks to the new Sony MDR-NC500D noise cancelling headphones.

Launched in July and billed as the ‘world’s first digital noise cancelling headphones’, the NC500D provides you with a few more options than more common analog noise cancelling offerings. But first, let’s start with the headphones themselves. Design-wise, we are not looking at anything revolutionary here but they are a solid, well-made pair of headphones with glossy black finish, chrome edging, and leather cups.

The free gifts actually help in promotion of any product or service very easily. Moreover, the case of ‘monopoly’ no longer exists in any arena of business. Where there is only one individual earning profits in any particular he is bound to have a competitor very soon. The main aspect that rules the economy is [...]

For the past couple of years HD DVD and Blu-ray technology have been competing to become the industry standard format for next-generation DVDs.
Toshiba’s HD DVD system arrived in the market in April of 2006, the same year that Sony launched its Blu-ray system.
In February 2008, Toshiba announced that it would cease production of its HD [...]

Mobile phones nowadays are finding new ways to have an edge. Due to the stiff competition with other companies they need to be creative enough to outdo each other. One way of standing out among the rest is to offer the best free product. Mobile phones realized that they need to be updated to the [...]

Video sites are made available for many people with the recent advancement of internet technologies. The internet connection like broadband had made viewing videos online comfortable. Computer hardware being more affordable has also resulted in the surge of new internet users & they sure like video!
Comedy Variety on Google Video
Google Video is one of the [...]

Last month it was singer Jackson Browne suing the McCain campaign for using his song in a commercial. As we noted at the time, since it was used in a commercial, it was most likely infringing, but if McCain wanted to use it at an event, he could as long as he paid the proper performance licensing fees. So, now we have another situation where exactly that scenario has happened. At the Republican National Convention earlier this week, the speakers played the Heart song “Barracuda” for VP candidate Sarah Palin (who apparently went by the nickname “Sarah Barracuda”). This is perfectly legal, assuming that the RNC has paid the required performance license, and there’s no reason to think they didn’t, given how much music was used at the convention.

But, that’s apparently not good enough for the band, who complained and had its label, Sony BMG, and its publisher Universal Music Publishing send cease-and-desist letters to the campaign. On what legal basis? They don’t seem to have an answer for that. The whole thing is kind of silly. There’s almost certainly no legal leg to stand on here, but it’s surprising that the RNC wouldn’t check first, given how others, like Browne, have reacted and the fact that the press would almost certainly cover the story (as they are). So, while there may be no legal basis for the complaints, it still is surprising that the RNC and/or the McCain/Palin campaign wouldn’t bother to first check with the band to see if the members would be upset about the usage.

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Sony has been forced to recall more than 440,000 Vaio laptops due to wiring problems that could cause the laptops to get a little too hot to handle.

Thankfully, none of the laptops involved were sold in the UK but, according to the company, over 440,000 were sold in 48 countries around the globe, including 73,000 in the US and 67,000 in Japan. Sony has admitted that some people have been burned.

The recall involves 19 models in the new TZ family. These were manufactured between May last year and July 2008. The fault arises from wires which were mistakenly located too close to the hinge and could wear out quickly, as well as a dodgy circuit board that operates the screen.

Sony launched the super-skinny Bravia ZX1 TV this week at the IFA Show in Berlin and at 9.8mm deep, it really is something.

Check out the video above for a close-up of the ZX1 showing off its Keira Knightley waistline, thanks to side-mounted LED lighting arrays as opposed the the usual backlights on most LCD TVs.

Those looks are also helped by the Media Receiver, a box that you plug all your cables [consoles, set-top boxes etc.] into and which transmits the signal wirelessly to the TV in ‘real time’.

Since its launch in 2003 the UK’s fifth mobile phone network 3 has tried in vain to persuade customers to watch TV and video-call each other; experimented with a pile-’em-high-sell-’em-cheap strategy that saw prices across the industry collapse; infuriated its customers with clunky technology and poor coverage; blown through £10bn of its owner’s money; and more often than not been dismissed as a bit of a joke.

Now, after just over a year in the job, chief executive Kevin Russell reckons he can make it the one thing it has never been: a success. “We have spent all of 2007 and part of 2008 just getting back to the starting line,” the 42-year old Scot admits, seated in his office at the company’s headquarters in Maidenhead, Berkshire. “The key for us in the rest of this year and for the next five years is we have to be growing, not consolidating. We have got to more than double the customer base.”

That’s a tall order. The company has been stuck between 3 million and 4 million customers - it currently has just over 3.7 million active users - for the past three years. Even if Russell succeeds, 3 would still be only about two-thirds the size of its nearest rival, T-Mobile. He also has to stem the company’s losses as owner Hutchison Whampoa, the Hong Kong-based conglomerate that created Orange, seeks to push its entire mobile business - which includes operations in Italy and Australia - from a half-year loss of £228m into the black before financial charges by the end of this year.

But Russell reckons he has already scored a notable success with the company’s mobile broadband service, which has attracted over half a million users in a year. He has also clinched a crucial network-sharing deal with T-Mobile that will cut costs and moved the majority of the firm’s distribution into almost 300 own-brand stores.

The main problem now is the regulatory regime in the UK, which is preventing him offering the sort of all-you-can-call packages seen in countries such as the US and Germany. At issue are mobile termination rates. These incredibly complex charges are levied by the mobile phone companies on each other and fixed-line operators such as BT for the privilege of connecting calls to mobile customers. EU telecoms commissioner Viviane Reding wants to see them come down substantially and last week Ofcom raised the idea of scrapping them altogether when its current set of price caps expires in 2011.

But 3’s rivals are screaming in horror at the prospect of charges that make up almost a quarter of their revenues - several billion pounds a year - being taken away. Vodafone warns that 40 million Europeans could be forced to abandon their mobile phones as the mobile networks increase call charges and put up handset prices. If termination rates are scrapped, others have warned, mobile phone users will be charged to receive calls, not just to make them.

This is utter rubbish, according to Russell. “If you cannot economically justify termination rates all you have left is scaremongering, the essence of your argument is weak and all you have is rhetoric.” He adds: “We would not, categorically not, charge customers to receive calls.”

It’s a far cry from the company’s position before Russell’s arrival. He inherited a long-running spat with Ofcom in which the company was trying to defend its right to charge an even higher termination rate than its rivals.

Russell, who joined as deputy chief executive at the start of last year having got 3 Australia to break even and reach a million users before taking the top job last June, is reluctant to criticise his predecessors in public. But he has executed a complete strategic U-turn. Now he wants Ofcom to move even faster to scrap termination rates so the mobile phone industry can start offering the sort of flat-rate deals already seen in the fixed-line world.

“You expect your local regulator not to give you a leg up but to give you a level playing field to compete on. That has not happened in the UK in my view,” he says. “Ofcom’s recent mobile sector assessment is really encouraging. But - and it is a big but - the idea that we will deal with everything in 2011 … is not good enough. If you have identified an issue and you know it is not right then it should be dealt with earlier.”

As well as his U-turn on regulation, Russell has dumped any pretensions that 3 had of being a multimedia company. When the service launched under Colin Tucker, who had worked with Hutchison on the creation of Orange, it was all about video calling and football clips, but take-up was slower than expected and early customers found the handsets clunky and the network patchy. Less than a year after launch, the regulator was receiving 14 times more complaints about 3 than about any of its rivals. But the multimedia theme is one that Tucker’s successor, Bob Fuller, returned to as he looked to improve margins after trying to grab customers by slashing prices.

Russell, however, has little time for such grandiose ambitions. “We are quite simple - we provide communications-based services. I do not see us pushing to create a whole series of revolutionary behaviours - what I do see is us helping people to do what they do today, when they are out and about.”

With that in mind, he would rather like to get his hands on the iPhone if Apple’s exclusive deal with O2 comes to an end. He is also not particularly bothered by Nokia’s attempts to get into mobile music and mobile gaming because “I am not sure that we have done enough to own the content space. If Nokia or someone else comes forward with a product which provides a better experience than we can provide, we need to be open to that.”

It’s a refreshingly pragmatic change from the view of some of the other mobile phone companies that they can be all things to all people and is characteristic of Russell, who is plain speaking without the arrogance that often entails.

The question, however, is whether Russell will get the chance to see out his five-year plan. Ever since 3’s launch there has been speculation that Hutchison will sell out, having done so well out of other mobile businesses such as Orange and Hutchison-Essar in India, with T-Mobile seen as an obvious buyer. But Russell is adamant that “you cannot build a business with one eye on an exit” and his five-year plan is his idea, not that of his boss, Canning Fok, or Hutchison’s chairman, Li Ka-shing.

Russell has worked for Hutchison since 1995. At the time, he was working as an accountant and playing semi-professional football - a rather useful centre forward, apparently - in Hong Kong, having settled there five years earlier while backpacking round the world.

That is about all the personal information you can squeeze out of him, other than the fact that he has a house in Sydney and anyone who visits from Australia has to bring four packets of Tim Tam biscuits with them because he can’t buy them in the UK. He simply does not buy into the “cult of the chief executive”.

“I have quite clearly come with a view that by 2011/12 this is going to be a successful business. If I have done my job well then I will have brought through leaders and managers who can take this business forwards arguably better than I can. I do believe that chief executives have a finite value to add.”

His bosses in Hong Kong will be hoping the value he does bring to 3 will be the sort you can put in the bank.

CV

Born

July 22 1966

Education

Dunblane High School; Heriott-Watt University (accountancy and computer science)

Career

Accountant, Ernst & Whinney; group finance manager, Hutchison Telecommunications 1995; director of finance and operations 1996-98; chief financial officer, Partner Communications (Israel) 1999-2000; chief executive,3 Australia 2001-06; deputy chief executive 3 UK January 2007-May 2007; chief executive June 2007-

Family

Married with two sons

Hobbies

Sport, espec
ially football