Welcome

Welcome to another edition of the Prompt Communications newsletter. This week we've got stories about the colossal effort to rebuild a historic WWII code-breaking computer, webmail services losing out to social media platforms, the future of online video and TV, and of course some stuff about robots. Enjoy…

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Technology News

State of the art comeback for Microsoft Zune
By Dave Wilby

Apple’s enormously successful iTouch and iPhone releases in the last quarter firmly cemented its position as the undisputed king of the pocket. But it’s nice to see Microsoft fighting back so creatively in a sector in which it finds itself an uncomfortable underdog. It took a major step this week with the launch of Zune Originals, a site showcasing and selling highly-customisable versions of its latest Zune 4GB, 8GB and 80GB MP3 players.

Visitors can choose their Zune by size and colour then select up to four lines of text to accompany a detailed engraving of one of 27 stunning works by 18 leading artists – all free of charge. A free v2.0 firmware upgrade for first generation Zune users is also ready to download.

Classic Colossus Competes in Code Cracking Contest.
By Duncan Heaney

The Colossus was the world’s first programmable digital computer, developed to decode and read messages sent by German commanders during the last stages of the Second World War. For fourteen years, a group of dedicated technicians and engineers at Bletchley Park have been attempting rebuild the classic machine, and they have recently completed their project. BBC News is reporting that the team is now putting the Colossus to work, making it do what it was designed for – cracking codes.

Radio messages are being transmitted from Paderborn, Germany. These will be scrambled using a Lorenz SZ42 machine, the same device the German high command would have used in the war. The radio technicians in Germany are testing the deciphering device by transmitting three enciphered transmissions of increasing difficulty.

Directly competing with the WWII code breaker is a modern PC; a virtual colossus running on a Pentium 2 laptop. Despite the age difference between in machine design, the team believe that the laptop will take about the same amount of time as the Colossus to break the ciphers.

The rebuilding of the Colossus has been a long and difficult task. After World War II, the ten original machines were destroyed in an attempt to keep the technology secret. The reconstruction team had access to a few photographs of the machines and this was all they had to guide them.

The Colossus has earned its place in computing history – many of the people who worked on the machine, such as Tommy Flowers and Tommy Kilburn, went on to produce work that led to the computers of today. The Colossus will be the centrepiece of the National Museum of Computing based in Bletchley.

US Media News

By Tarryn Morley

US

Gary Krakow has resigned from his role as technology and consumer electronics reporter for MSNBC. While at MSNBC, Krakowreported for MSNBC.com as well as nightlynews.msnbc.com. No replacement has yet been named.

Betsy Schiffman has been appointed new media staff writer at Wired magazine. In her new role, she will cover the new media industry. Previously, Schiffman was a business reporter for the Associated Press. She has also worked for Forbes.com.

Tim Arango is leaving Fortune to join The New York Times as corporate media reporter. He replaces Richard Siklos, who left the NYT this summer to join Fortune.

The Wall Street Journal Online has announced a new program that will enable its subscribers to submit WSJ.com articles to Digg, the popular news and content sharing website, and allow Digg users to view these articles for free. This announcement comes amid much speculation about Rupert Murdoch’s plans to make access to WSJ.com free. Murdoch said on Tuesday that he intends to drop subscription fees in exchange for the anticipated ad revenue generated by an influx of new visitors to a free WSJ.com. The site currently has 1 million subscribers.

UK Media News

By Tarryn Morley

UK

Steve Ranger has been promoted from news editor to editor of silicon.com. As editor, Ranger is responsible for the site's content. He replaces former editor Tony Hallett, who has been promoted to editorial director, business media at CNET Networks. Hallett's new responsibilities include driving the overall content strategy for CNET Networks UK Business Brands, including silicon.com and ZDNet.co.uk.

Amar Singh been appointed media correspondent at The Evening Standard. Singh has worked for the paper for over two years as a general reporter and on the paper's news desk.

Simon Duke has joined the Daily Mail city desk where he will cover media, telecoms and technology. Previously, Duke was a reporter at Thomson Financial News.

Jason Karaian has been promoted from senior editor to deputy editor at CFO Europe, a pan-European monthly magazine for senior finance executives. In his new role, Karaian will edit the magazine's recently relaunched website. In a further editorial change at CFO Europe, Tim Burke has joined the magazine as senior staff writer. Burke previously worked at Thomson Financial where he wrote for Acquisitions Monthly and Thomson Merger News.

Brains the size of planets etc…
By Dave Wilby

If you read a bit too much sci-fi between white papers and briefing documents, you might reasonably believe that the Earth’s most powerful machine is Deep Thought, a hypercomputer created by a pan-dimensional, hyper-intelligent race of beings to spend seven and a half million years pondering the ultimate answer to Life, the Universe, and Everything.

In reality though, the world’s most powerful supercomputer is officially still IBM’s Blue Gene/L, a feisty piece of kit using 478 teraflops of power to ensure US nuclear weapons remains safe and secure. When the 30th edition of the TOP500 List of the World’s Fastest Supercomputers was revealed this week, 232 out of the top 500 machines were from Big Blue, but for the first time a system from India, known as EKA, broke into the top ten taking fourth place. In Europe, the UK has confirmed itself as the top supercomputer user, with 48 systems out of the 500.

Webmail stuffed by social networks
By Reshma Raghavani

Increasingly we prefer to communicate with friends and contacts using the internet rather than face to face. So much so, that visits to social network sites, such as Facebook and Bebo, have overtaken traffic to webmail services such as Hotmail and Gmail, according to Hitwise.

Although traffic to webmail services may have fallen recently, the research may not take into account that most of us also use work email to communicate with friends or use IM in the workplace.

The research found that the younger generation uses social sites more than the silver surfers who prefer using webmail. But then that’s because the popular social sites are aimed at them - can you see a silver surfer throwing a zombie to another septuagenarian? If there were more sites targeted at the older generation, such as Saga Zone, the demographic difference may be less.

So, does this spell the end of webmail? Hardly, as some of us prefer straightforward email without being virtually abused by incoming food missiles and vampire attacks.

Robot Invasion Continues. Humans Still Not Enslaved
By Duncan Heaney

Robots continue to make the headlines. Last week it was robot cars; this week it’s robot guitars, and robot theme parks too. There can be little doubt an invasion is imminent…

MSN is reporting that Gibson Guitar is launching a limited edition robotic Les Paul Guitar, capable of automatically tuning itself. The really clever thing about this marvellous mechanical music-maker is that it keeps itself in tune after string changes, and allows players to select up to six nonstandard tunings with a simple button press.

The six default nonstandard tunings were used on hits ranging from “Honky Tonk Women” by the Rolling Stones, Jimi Hendrix’s “Voodoo Chile” and S-Club 7’s “Reach”. That last one was a lie. The guitar manufactures claim the guitar is designed to help amateurs who have trouble staying in tune and professionals who use multiple guitars in concerts.

In other robot-related news, MSN report that South Korea is planning to build two new robot theme parks. The South Korean Commerce Ministry hope the parks will increase tourism and draw attention to its rapidly developing robotics industry.

Few details have been revealed, but the project will cost $1.6 million, and combine culture and entertainment with robot technology.

No, we don’t know what that means either.

The project has yet to be approved in a feasibility study, but the Commerce Ministry hopes to start the project in 2009.

Web 2.0 Watch

By Fiona Blamey

Online video: the cause of, and solution to, all of TV’s problems?

Almost everyone in the media and entertainment industry agrees that the internet is the future, but no one seems to know how they’re going to build a profitable business online.

It’s this paradox that lies at the heart of the screenwriters’ strike currently crippling American television.

To recap: US television networks are refusing to pay scriptwriters residuals (royalties) when their work gets shown online, because the networks say they aren’t making any money from online streaming themselves. The writers are arguing that the networks may not be making a lot of money from digital distribution now, but they have every intention of doing so as soon as they figure out how. The writers want to be sure that when the networks do start making serious money from online streaming, they’ll get their fair share. Until they get some assurance to that effect, they’ll remain on strike.

With no end to the strike in sight, topical programmes like The Daily Show and The Colbert Report have started to shut down as they run out of scripts. If the strike goes on for several months, the impact on US television scheduling is likely to be severe.

For social media geeks, this is where it gets interesting. If there’s going to be a vacuum in US broadcast television, what’s going to fill it? The social media pundits, not surprisingly, think online video is the answer. Jeff Jarvis at BuzzMachine suggests that the TV networks should be trawling the internet for talented amateur videos to fill the gaps in scheduled programming, while Duncan Riley at TechCrunch thinks that more people will start watching online video if there’s nothing new on TV.

But Jarvis and Riley are naïve to believe that online video can be a like-for-like replacement for professional television programming. A few online-only productions, such as Bebo’s KateModern, have proved capable of drawing millions of fans. But they’re the exception, not the rule. Online sitcom Where Are The Joneses? rarely had more than a thousand views per episode, despite its impressive credentials (it was created by Steve Coogan’s production company, Baby Cow).

Even when an online-only show is produced by a major network and stars one of the hottest comedy properties of the moment, it doesn’t mean it will be a roaring success in broadcast industry terms. Clark and Michael, an American web-comedy produced by CBS and starring Arrested Development wunderkind Michael Cera, only counts its viewers in the tens of thousands – across the entire globe.

And these shows are the cream of the crop of online video: professional productions scripted by experienced writers who would undoubtedly refuse to cross picket lines to fill scheduling gaps created by their striking colleagues even if the TV networks were to follow Jeff Jarvis’s suggestion. The idea of *amateur* online video – whatever its inherent qualities – being able to replace prime-time TV programming is laudable, but laughable. Broadcast TV and web TV may become interchangeable in the future, but that day hasn’t come yet.

Website of the Week

By Sean McManus

Pac-Txt

Pac Man is one of the greatest computer game designs ever. It’s amazing to think that such playability and tension could be created by just five moving objects on the screen (Pac Man and the four ghosts). Back in the eighties, when Pac Man was still Pac Boy, text adventures were popular too. In those, you read a description of where you were and then typed in what you wanted to do. But you were either an arcade gamer or an adventure gamer: there wasn’t an awful lot of crossover.

Now someone has created Pac Man: The Text Adventure. It’s a nicely executed joke, although it would have been more playable if you could tell how far away the ghosts were, and hear them before you could see them. If you get lost in the tunnels, there’s a cheat mode. Read the instructions in full to find it.

We hope you find the Prompt Communications newsletter an interesting read. For any feedback on our newsletter, or to discuss how we can help you with your technology PR, marketing, social media/blogging initiatives, copywriting or surveys, please contact us using the details below. We are always delighted to hear from you.