Thursday August 31, 2006

A hack to Windows Media Digital Rights Management (DRM) versions 10 and 11 (the latter being a new beta version) has appeared on various sites. The so-called Fairuse4wm program finds the encryption key to WM DRM files and uses it to circumvent the DRM from legitimately obtained audio and video files. The application will strip Windows Media 10 and 11 files of their DRM.

In the online music world, the overwhelming market share winner is Apple's iTunes Music Store, whose protection has been bypassed several times already. Microsoft's Windows Media has been a perpetual also-ran, but it has too received attention from the hackers. In 2001, the version that came with Windows Media Player 7 was defeated by a hacker going by the pseudonym "Beale Screamer." Microsoft then updated their protection, and for years have been touting its invulnerability to hackers.

Again this shows that Digital Rights Management can never be really 100% secure. And that proprietary solutions from single vendors might not help as well... I am very sure that DRM is all about keeping the honest people honest - if someone has enough energy to hack music, software or whatever he will be hack it... It's only about making it VERY difficult, isn't it?

And again, I think it's finally time for a community approach for DRM. Sun's project DReaM is an initiative to develop open Digital Rights Management (DRM) solution for multiple domains (media, documents, enterprise, personal, etc.). DReaM specifications are developed through Open Media Commons (http:///www.openmediacommons.org). This open source project develops an end-to-end Reference Implementation for the DReaM Specifications.

Read more about Hacking Digital Rights Management at arstechnica.com.

Friday August 25, 2006

As I already mentioned I attended the Game Convention in Leipzig and its Developer Conference, named GCDC this week. Like last year I was there to be a speaker again and so I introduced our SunLab project around a game- and device-agnostic Gaming Server, called Project Darkstar . If you haven't heard about this please find a short report and interview here at Gamasutra.com (and many thanks to Chris Melissinos to point me to this article as I haven't seen it before).

At GCDC I visited some other slots as well. One of the most interesting speaks had been from Don L. Daglow, President of 1988 founded game company Stormfront Studios Inc (The Lord of the Rings: The two Towers (EA), NASCAR (EA), Neverwinter Nights (AOL) and actually finishing Eragon for Vivendi). He shared his ideas about “Next Generation Game Development issues - Ten Trends for the Future”.

Here are his Top 1: Trends:

1. Next Gen is THIS Generation. Future is happening now!
   
2. Fewer titles: Average Budget will jump sharply and being able to manage large teams is now an essential skill. Handheld games take a larger share. Good time for new ideas and new IP. Bad time for second-tier licenses: “I've got a movie which will come out in near time which will be kind of good! Do you want to buy a license to built a game?” This won’t work any more…
   
3. Daglow's Law of Media (“I do every year a new law, hoping it makes me more important…”): Bigger budgets mean more “suits”. Creativity most come from “jeans”. Quote: ”In any entertainment industry, the degree to which predictability is valued over creativity grows at the same rate as the ratio of suits to jeans.” Inevitably, the budget managers exert control over the creative managers.
   
4. Sony will succeed – “don't underestimate the ability of change in prizes” so Don in his list. The battle for the living room: Which rooms of the house do we spend money to fill? That's at the end of the day, where we have the most expensive things - beginning with our sofas and ending with the biggest TV, the best audio system and the loudest music. Sony is in every technical system - Microsoft is coming from the desktop area. Nothing is sure - but future will not be decided in 6 months. “European people understand this because of their understanding of history. For us in America things are very old if they're 200 years old. In San Francisco already if they're 100 years old - and in LA, if they are 2 weeks old...”
   
5. A handful of mayor studios control much productions and distribution. Only they can afford to promote films to create mainstream expectations. But with all their money no studio can guarantee a hit. Money is important - but creativity will help you to get absorbed into the systems, even if you have no money. Exampel: Sim City which was refused by all of the big companies to publish.
   
6. New Champagne and old Magazines: The phenomenia of aging on the shelf: Like the short fiction magazines in North America - after a period of exploration and innovation, the survivors settle into niches. There will be more good games than customers to pay the rent for their developers.
   
7. The future is not only with Massive Multiplayer Online Games – but by 2008 most major titles will have multiplayer functions.
   
8. Multiplayer - but not always online. The “Guitar Hero” effect: Games with focus on family and groups. Here are smaller budgets needed and they won't require special and fullblown PCs.
   
9. It is WE who put the “next” in Next Gen. The HW manufacturess set the table - but it is the game designer who prepare and serve the meal. “Our precious children are the ones who will shape our future...”, so might have said an old greek philosopher, “unless we can band together and stop them first!” (Homer Simpson).
   
10. The Individual drives the Art. Passion can be inspired but not required - and without passion (“commitment of the heart”) you cannot create great games. “Kings, Dictators and Captains cannot compel a game to be a hit.”

Finally Don ended his passionate preso with german poet Johann Wolfgang von Goethe: “All the knowledge I possess everyone else can acquire, but my heart is all my own.”

Thursday August 24, 2006

In a report entitled "Mobile Video Devices, Services and Subscribers", analyst firm Infonetics Research projects that revenue from mobile video services will soar from US$46.2 million in 2005 to US$5.6 billion by 2009, representing a staggering increase of 12,000 percent over a five-year period. If mobile video providers are able to resolve a number of quality- and content-related issues...

Mobile operators are expanding the bandwidth of their existing 3G networks through HSDPA and MBMS, rolling out dedicated, RF-based broadcast networks, and deploying new mobile video service delivery platforms (SDPs), all steps that pave the way to offer the same content as we see on regular satellite, digital, or cable TV at home.

Infonetics’ report indicates that sports will serve as a major content anchor for most mobile video service providers, as exclusive coverage will help drive advertising revenue, subscriber growth, and support for other prime time programming. In the US, Sprint/Nextel has a 5-year $600 million deal with the National Football League (NFL) to deliver highlights from the week's games and real-time updates of scores and player statistics. And in South Korea, Japan, and throughout Europe, mobile video operators who streamed and broadcast the 2006 World Cup games and highlights saw a huge spike in mobile video subscriptions. Infonetics says we can expect more of the same in the future.

Please find in following the main findings of this report:

1. The number of worldwide mobile video subscribers will jump 8,006% between 2005 and 2009
   
2. Asia Pacific leads with roughly half of the world’s mobile video subscribers and the largest portion of mobile video service revenue, every year from 2005 to 2009
   
3. The number of mobile video handsets sold worldwide is expected to grow from 28 million in 2005 to 336 million in 2009

Tuesday August 22, 2006

The winners of the international developers’ competition Java Masters, organized by BenQ Mobile and Sun Microsystems, have been decided. In the “Student” category, Weijian Chen from the People’s Republic of China convinced the jury with the music player application LyricShow Player which runs song Iyrics synchronously, and enables to show E-books in parallel. In the “Professional” segment, the German developers Thomas Bauer and Heiko Vogeler prevailed among the 10 finalists. Their GPS application Bike GPS Mobile is a Java-based application for outdoor navigation. It enables active mountainbikers not only to track downloaded routes and altitude profiles, but also recording of GPS tracks is enabled with this application. Actually - it's gone public already and can be found here: http://www.bike-gps.com/.

The participants in the Java Masters 2006 competition were required to develop new Java applications for the Siemens SXG75, S75 and CX75 mobile phones. The prizes were awarded yesterday during the Developer Conference on August 22 at Games Convention Developer Conference (GCDC) in Leipzig, Germany. (A short report will follow about this conference - please be patient...)

The aim of the Java Masters is to motivate developers around the world to dedicate themselves to programming new mobile applications on the basis of the Java Platform (J2ME). This year’s competition again attracted a high level of international interest. The most numerous submissions came from countries like China, India, Germany, Ukraine, Turkey, and Brazil.

More than 10,000 online voters visited the www.javamasters.org website from June 16 to July 16 and reviewed the 10 best candidates on the basis of demos and project descriptions in order to select their favorites in both categories and vote for them. The liveliest interest came from Turkey, China, UK, and Brazil. All applications were specially developed and submitted for the Siemens SXG75, S75 and CX75 mobile phones.

The jury in the elimination round, which comprised technology and marketing experts from BenQ Mobile and Sun Microsystems, based its evaluation not only on the innovative potential and user-friendliness of the applications, but also on their commercial possibilities. The final winners of the “Java Masters” were decided by online voting of visitors to the Java Masters website.

This year’s prizes were awarded for two categories: “Student Java Masters” and “Professional Java Masters” In the first category, apart from Weijian Chen from China, who took first prize for the music player application LyricShow Player, Vladimir Vasilyev from Germany came away with the second prize for the Webcam Application Mobile Webcam (server based), where the pictures from your camera phone can be sent directly in your internet album. Cumhur Cevik from Turkey won the third prize with the community based multiplayer game ChatRise.

Among the professional Java Masters participants, the winners Thomas Bauer and Heiko Vogeler from the Germany took first prize with the GPS application Bike GPS Mobile, while Markus Koch from Brazil garnered second place with the dancing game Dance Mania. The Thailand’s Permbun Aimsupasit came third with Sim President, a economy simulation game which can make the game player acting the role as the country's president who manages and controls the countries economy to grow.

Here's a picture of Weijian Chen, Vladimir Vasilyev and myself in the middle:

The prizes were awarded to the winners on August 22 during the Developer Party at Games Convention Developer Conference (GCDC) in Leipzig, Germany. The first prize winners receive high-end BenQ-Siemens mobile phones and their travel costs to the awards ceremony, as well as a visit to the Games Convention in Leipzig combined with a few days’ stay in the historic city. Attractive technological prizes from BenQ Mobile and Sun Microsystems awaited the second and third prize winners.

Thursday August 17, 2006

"Mobile games to remain a niche market" an article by Guy Daniels for TelecomTV mentions the latest Frost & Sullivan report about Mobile Gaming in Europe. According to this report the launch of new handsets and game titles will support growth in mobile gaming markets across Europe. But growth will be steady rather than exponential, due to games remaining a niche market application and the complications of implementing effective billing mechanisms. The report reveals that the European mobile gaming markets earned revenues of €850 million in 2006 and estimates this to reach €2.4 billion in 2012.

Frost & Sullivan suggest that off-portal storefronts, combined with "super-distribution", will be the most important sales channel for the mobile games markets. While operators will attempt to create awareness and educate customers about with embedded offerings, the market will grow and mature only with the variety offered by large off-portal storefronts who play the role of discounted super-markets.

Meanwhile, a new US-based mobile gaining company launched yesterday, offering free downloadable games to consumers. GameJump.com offers over 75 games and relies on advertisers to offset costs. "We've shaken up the existing model for pay-to-play mobile games and introduced a way for everyone who owns a mobile phone to access and play games for free through our ad-supported network," said CEO Michael Chang. "By taking a percentage of the advertising revenue, we can offer a wide collection of popular mobile games."

Saturday August 12, 2006

According to german newspage TecChannel Gartner has just published his new Hype Cycle for Emerging Technologies. Gartner's Hype Cycle for Emerging Technologies names Web 2.0, Real World Web and new Software Architectures as most important topics.

Interesting - beside of Web 2.0 technologies Gartner mentions Social Network Analysis (SNA) as very important as well. Social network theory views social relationships in terms of nodes and ties. Nodes are the individual actors within the networks, and ties are the relationships between the actors. There can be many kinds of ties between the nodes. In its most simple form, a social network is a map of all of the relevant ties between the nodes being studied.

This picture is from TecChannel's german article:

Tuesday August 08, 2006

Worldwide E-Commerce Market ist still growing. In the first two quarters of 2006 consumers spent around 80.8 billion USD shopping in internet stores. That's a incline of 20.1 % compared to last year. According to a new study named Total E-Commerce Spending by Consumers from market research company comScore, booking travels in WWW raised by 15.1%, retail sales by 24.6%.

Several retail categories achieved significant growth compared to last year. Office Supplies, the top gaining retail category, saw online spending rise 54 percent, while Computer Software grew 39 percent. Also experiencing strong gains in the first half of 2006 were Sport & Fitness (up 38 percent), Home & Garden (up 36 percent), and Toys & Hobbies (up 33 percent).

Total Online Spending to Reach Approximately $170 Billion in 2006
Overall, comScore forecasts that total online spending in 2006 will reach approximately $170 billion. Of that total, comScore estimates that non-travel e-commerce spending will hit approximately $102 billion in 2006, breaking the $100 billion threshold for the first time. Approximately $24 billion is expected to be spent on non-travel during the 2006 holiday season (November 1st – December 31st).

“Despite the sluggishness of retail growth in general, online consumer spending remains strong,” noted Gian Fulgoni, Chairman and Co-Founder of comScore Networks. “Growth in non-travel online spending continues at a rate of 25 percent year-over-year, which suggests that consumers’ online purchase behavior has been relatively unaffected by the general economic trends. This news certainly bodes well for online retailers for the upcoming holiday season, with online consumer spending expected to reach $24 billion in the November through December period.”

Monday August 07, 2006

A colleague of mine, Jeff Kesselman, did a really good job! Explaining how you can write a text adventure he started a serial about this topic... Please find more infos at http://blogs.sun.com/roller/page/gameguy (all the other articles can be found after this entry from July 26, 2006).
Just wanted to share this with you as I think this is really cool! And sorry for the short entry!