2005/12/09

RIM faces uncertain future - vnunet.com

RIM faces uncertain future - vnunet.com

A judge has ruled that RIM's patent agreement with NTP Software is invalid, which could mean they are forced to stop sales of Blackberries at least in the US which accounts for two-thrids of their sales.

Shares of RIM were suspended on NASDAQ.

RIM are by far the dominant player in the "push Email" market, and this could allow others to get a foot-hold, but they are so far ahead it would still be difficult. It does give others the opportunity to get new customers who may be thinking that RIM have a difficult future, especially companies like Microsoft who have push-Email client in Windows Mobile 5 (and Exchange 2003 SP2) and Nokia who've embedded at least one client in their Series 60 phones.

Digit LIVE news - First Adobe and Macromedia bundles debut

Digit LIVE news - First Adobe and Macromedia bundles debut

The first fruits of Adobe's Macromedia takeover have just been announced, the new Design bundle which really just Creative Suite 2 and Flash 8, and the Web bundle which includes the full Macromedia Studio 8 set. Design bundles costs £1,175 +VAT and Web bundle £1,409 +VAT.

However the web bundle contains a lot of overlap as it has two web authoring packages (GoLive and Dreamweaver) and two web image packages (Imageready and FireWorks). It will take a while for Adobe to consolidate them as they're not allowed to work on that until the merger has fully completed. It's likely Adobe will utilise Dreamweaver as the basis for things going forward as that's definately the market leader.

They are expected to launch a video bundle next year, which will contain Flash, but no mention of what else.

Digit LIVE news - Panasonic adds dual-layer to Blu-ray

Digit LIVE news - Panasonic adds dual-layer to Blu-ray:

Panasonic Disc Manufacturing of America has added the ability to produce dual-layer Blu-ray Discs to a test production line the company is operating at its factory in California, Panasonic said this week.

Single layer BluRay disks have a capacity of 25GB and dual disks will store 50GB, current dual layer DVD's store 8.5GB.

Unfortunately the format wars are still in full swing with no winner yet, BluRay or HD-DVD.

HD-DVD is based on the current DVD format but supports 15GB per layer. HD-DVD is currently winning on the "good yield" rating with good yields approaching 90% while BluRay only manages 80%.

Players based on these formats aren't expected until next year.

2005/12/05

Digit LIVE news - New .eu domain 'as important as .com'

Digit LIVE news - New .eu domain 'as important as .com'

The .eu domain opens for business this week but only for EU trademark holders and public bodies. In February registered companies (with office in EU) can apply, and in April anyone (in the EU) can apply.

EURid are the registry for .eu registations, though many existing registrars will becomes EURid regisitrars as well.

There is expected to be a large take-up of .eu registrations, though it's unlikely to get to the size of .com.

ICANN (who oversee the DNS systems) dropped plans for the .xxx top level domain (which would have been used for sex sites) last week.

Digit LIVE news - RealNetworks opens Rhapsody for Mac

Digit LIVE news - RealNetworks opens Rhapsody for Mac

Well Real aren't completely opening Rhapsody to Linux and Mac users, only the new website which gives access to streaming music. Download will still only be available to Windows users through the Rhapsody client which uses Real's DRM technology.

Real haven't when or even if they'll produce Mac/Linux clients for the DRM system, so it's just access to streaming content for the foreseable future.