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ETO Technology News - April 2006 edition
Mmm. Inviting Looking Portal.
Private Media Group, based in Barcelona, announced on March the 7th the launch of their D2C WAP (Wireless Application Protocol) portal - wap.private.com. This portal uses the latest technology and billing systems to deliver Private's premium erotic and pornographic content, featuring their stars and DVD blockbuster mini-sites, plus games, downloads and SMS chat. Private have partnered with Cherrysauce for the design and management of the portal, based on platform technology from Safira Solutions. It's specifically tailored to be easily and quickly expanded, adapted and updated to take best advantage of the rapidly developing mobile D2C market. Mibill's Textbill is providing global billing solutions for the service, which has been launched in the UK, Germany and Spain using premium-rate SMS short-codes. Globally, Credit Card billing is used, and both payment methods incorporate a thorough age-verification system.
Managing Director of Cherrysauce, Julia Dimambro, said: "With Private's hugely successful content portfolio and our in-depth expertise in mobile erotica, we have been able to create a truly compelling mobile experience, not only for Private's loyal customer base, but also for a wider scope of mobile users looking for top quality adult entertainment."
Berth Milton, Private Media Group's CEO commented: "The launch of our own dedicated WAP portal is a new exciting feature adding to the tremendous growth we expect in our wireless business going forward. Our business development in 2005 in this high-margin segment has been phenomenal. We've increased sales year on year in 2005 by 83% to one million Euros with 80% of the increase coming from the fourth quarter alone."
Director of Wireless Technologies at Private Media Group, Tim Clausen, added, "According to Juniper Research, global sales of mobile adult content will hit $2.1 billion in 2009. We believe that adult content and gambling will offer the greatest potential revenue streams within the mobile Internet sector. Today, the key is to use both on-portal and off-portal as a strategy. WAP today, through new generation technology, enables a new customer experience and with our innovative off-portal solution we gain a bigger slice of the revenue pie by saving money on aggregator/operator revenue sharing. Furthermore, with tested age verification in place, we are able to offer explicit content, as opposed to the existing soft content through operators' portals. This allows us to meet consumer demand by offering the product they are really looking for."
Digital Convergence takes a step forward.
The CeBIT show in Germany last month was host to the unveiling of the long-awaited Ultra-Mobile PC (UMPC) from Microsoft and Intel, with the tagline; Go Anywhere, Do Anything. Without the oomph wanted by hardcore gamers it's going to be marketed as an all-purpose consumer and business applications (including Office) device. With a 7" 800x450 pixel touch-sensitive widescreen, running the Tablet PC version of Windows XP, the PSP/Archos personal video player sized device has been aimed at the mobile audio and video market, with battery-life to match. It's expected to retail at $600-$1200 depending on features and manufacturer and will connect to desktop/laptop PCs via WiFi and/or a Bluetooth phone for file sharing or 'net surfing. Clearly ideal for portable pornography, especially anything with a degree of interactivity, it offers the best features of a PC with the convenience and portability of a (albeit rather chunky) mobile phone. Samsung, Founder and Asus have versions poised to ship and there's talk of optional GPS so you can find the closest lap-dancing club too. With a built-in web cam, memory card reader, digital stills/video camera and still weighing only 2 lbs/800g, it can handle email, IM-chat, VoIP, and can download films or music wirelessly while you're on the move. Based around a 30-60Gb 1.8" hard-drive there's no shortage of storage for media, and USB2 ports means rapid wired data exchange too. All in a sleek and sexy box!
Woops.
iBill, the online payment people who were major players in the adult content payment market have had almost eighteen million customers' details 'hacked' and stolen. These details, which included names, phone numbers, email and IP address, user-names and passwords, credit card types and purchase values, are already circulating in fraudster, phishing, spamming circles. Luckily actual card numbers aren't thought to be included but the transactions from 1998 to 2003 still highlight who was using this billing service, which was pre-eminent in the online porn trade during that period before it ran into financial and legal difficulties. Launched in 1997, it's estimated 85% of iBill's $400m yearly transactions came from porn sales - DominaBDSM and Top-Nude.com used them, for example. Two batches of data were found; firstly by Secure Science Corporation who located a 4.5Gb file on a 'private' web site, and by Sunbelt, who found a file called ibill_1m.txt on another site. This contained a million peoples' details from 2003. It appears neither iBill nor the FBI who are investigating (it seems to have been an inside job as the SQL database was exported in the CSV format and would have been very large to download. It probably 'walked out the door' on a DVD-R) chose to alert affected customers to the security breach, perhaps fearing they'd only compound the problem if they did. Under US law, only actual credit card, social security or drivers-licence numbers being found misused require the compromised individuals to be informed. This is just the latest occurrence of the ongoing problem of firms keeping data secure, but it adds weight to the argument that it should be destroyed after a set time if it can't be 100% protected, preferably in a secure location off-line.
Google spill their guts.
In an unusual move from the Internet giant, who usually keep search information very much to themselves (as witnessed in US courts recently, when they were asked to reveal search query data), access to over a million mobile search records have been given to two computer scientists, Maryam Kamva and Shumeet Baluja, in the hope of discovering the unique needs of wireless web wanderers. The study of 'untraceable' information from 2005 revealed that over 20% of Google searches from phones via an unnamed US carrier (either Sprint or Cingular) are for adult services. This is the highest fraction of any named 'topic group'. In contrast, less than 5% of searches via PDA are for porn. The report speculated that this is because PDAs are used for business, and phones are perceived as an entertainment as well as communications product. Another difference is in general, mobile searchers leave the Google site after a single search but those looking for erotica tend to make more than one search. The text-input system that phones have is also a factor, keeping mobile users connected to Google for longer as they type their requirements in. To contrast, a figure of 8.5% of 'traditional Internet' PC searches via Google for adult material was given. There's no suggestion of Google launching a mobile porn portal although, arguably, the demand for one is clearly there.
Evil Angel signs worldwide deal with Hustler TV.
LFP Broadcasting LLC, who own Hustler TV have announced they're struck an exclusive new deal with Evil Angel to use their films on its PPV and VOD services. EA's catalogue is added to those of VCA Pictures, Hustler Video, Red Light District, among others, available via Hustler TV in 33 countries. AVN's DVD sales and rental charts are often lead by Evil Angel and the studio were the over-all winner at the 2006 AVN Awards, taking more gongs away than any other organisation. They shook-up the explicit movie world in the 90's by having their directors retain ownership of their films. The producer/directors pay to shoot and master their movies and Evil Angel uses their sales department to bring the film to market. This encourages directors to spend money to make the best film they can. Evil Angel founder and President John 'Buttman' Stagliano said, "Evil Angel is dedicated to providing viewers with unique and original titles that continue to define what adult entertainment is all about. It's an honour for Evil Angel to be associated with the legendary brand of Hustler." Michael H. Klein, President of LFP Broadcasting LLC added, "As the pre-eminent provider of adult entertainment, Hustler TV is bringing our viewers top titles from some of the most recognised companies in the business. Our winning formula offers viewers exclusive, high quality adult entertainment and has been the key to our success and popularity and we are thrilled to have Evil Angel as part of this exciting programming mix." Hustler TV also recently took on cable television veteran David de Beauchamp as Director of Operations. With over 20 years experience in Broadband and VOD, plus satellite and cable TV, Mr. de Beauchamp is based in LFP Broadcasting's LA offices and has strengthened their business growth, driven by rapid expansion into 33 counties.
Sony ads cause- what's smaller than an uproar?
Recent poster adverts for the Sony PSP games and movie (via UMD discs) portable consol have caused a certain amount of murmuring. Especially one on a Manchester platform telling (potentially suicidal?) travellers to 'Take a Running Jump'. Bus stop and Tube posters seem to encourage owners to fill their PSPs (they have a Sony memory-stick card slot) with home made porn with the phrase 'Your girlfriend's white bits here'. Sexist and racist all in one short slogan. Intended to promote the handheld as a multifunction device to young adults rather than a consol for game-playing kids, perhaps it's another example of 'controversy sells' advertising.
Jenna Jameson shows off her talented mouth.
Viacom's Comedy Central, best known for shows like South Park, has taken on Jenna Jameson to voice a lead character in a non-pornographic 'made for mobile' animated series called 'Samurai Love God'. It's their first foray into mobile video animation and will also star 'The Daily Show' (another Comedy Central show) correspondent Ed Helms as well as comedian Lisa Lampanelli. Eight two-and-a-half minute episodes will premier via three US carriers, Verizon, Amp'd and Sprint Nextel and will be available to all subscribers of their standard video services. Samurai Love God follows on Comedy Central's successful MotherLoad 'broadband' video clip service, which already includes original content for mobile phone users.
Linda Barrabee, analyst at Yankee Group, told Reuters, "Even though it's still really early with just two percent of the market with videophones to watch, these services are very important to the operators and content providers. But consumers are still not aware of them though young people are starting to take them up."
Viacom's CEO Tom Freston was also reported as having emphasised the growing importance of digital content to the future of the company in a meeting with investors. "It's about scale and distribution. Outside our own properties we need to make sure we are accessible everywhere to consumers - beyond our own destinations, which presents a huge upside."
Cameraphone Calamity.
Byron Kelleher, star of the All Blacks rugby team, was reportedly shocked to hear the Sunday News newspaper in New Zealand was been offered sexually explicit pictures and video of him and his ex-porn-star girlfriend last month. He contacted the police after his partner (star of over eighty films including Space Nuts and Getting Lei'd in Hawaii) Ashley Spalding's mobile phone was stolen. She performed as Kaylani Lei during her adult film career and is now a model. $100,000 was the asking price for the phone's memory card when a mystery man calling himself Mark approached the paper, saying, "My friend has the card and there are lots of pictures of the couple in the nude. There's also 12 video clips of them having sex. What would it be worth? My mate reckons maybe $100,000."
Halfback Kelleher, 30, is understandably furious over the theft and said, "The police are taking it as a very serious matter. They are very concerned and will take action on it. They're very keen to find out who stole the phone." Dean Hegan, Kelleher's agent, confirmed the CIB (Criminal Investigation Branch) was investigating the theft. Another case of celebrity mobile indiscretion, who'd have thought it?
More Google Goings-on.
A Federal District Court in LA is considering if Google is guilty of infringing copyrights by making thumbnails of image-search hits available. The adult content provider Perfect 10 originally brought the action in November 2004 as they felt Google's policy of showing thumbnail versions of their copyright pictures was an infringement of that copyright and not fair use. Especially as these thumbnails are ideal as mobile wallpaper, impacting on the revenue gathered from the images. Since the full-sized images appear in a self-generated HTML frame 'via' Google, if there's any copyright infringement going on it's by the owner of the page/web-space the picture is on and not Google. However, it seems the 'cache-copy' thumbnails produced while web crawling for full-sized pictures may fall into a different legal category.
Judge A. Howard Matz granted in part a motion for preliminary injunction against Google as the court had proven a likelihood of success for Perfect 10's claims specifically about thumbnails, but not full-sized images. Although the case is still at the preliminary injunction stage, and any final decision on the action's merits is still a long way off, it still has significant implications. Firstly it's good news for any site 'inadvertently' displaying copyright infringed material via frames or in-line linking. To show where they are isn't 'to display' them - in the sense that they've not passed through or been hosted on their servers. Whether thumbnails are naughty remains to be seen, but if they are, the ramifications for Google, any owners of pages with a Google-powered search-box and 'Internet businesses' as a whole, are huge.
Taxi! - A new form of mobile porn?
Outrage has struck in Durban, South Africa, over CDs being played by minibus taxis to commuters. Featuring graphic descriptions of sexual encounters and 'lovemaking' sounds, enraged commuters say the songs lyric are tasteless and offensive, especially as they're being indiscriminately played to the public, of all ages. Parents whose children ride the minibuses to school have voiced their concerns about them being exposed to audio-pornography by the taxi operators. The CDs are apparently being distributed to taxi drivers but it's not clear where they're being produced. There are also claims that some taxis even play adult DVDs while transporting customers.
Ntombizethu Ninela from Newlands said she was shocked by the content of the music as she travelled to town: "I was extremely embarrassed when the song started playing. There were teenagers in the taxi and despite us demanding that the song be turned off, the driver ignored us. I think that it is really irresponsible of the driver to play such music. As commuters we are treated like dirt and we have no voice. Some of the drivers are rude and don't respect us," she said.
The Provincial Department of Transport has sworn to investigate the music and find the source of the CDs. Transport spokeswoman Nonkululeko Mbatha said the department had not been aware that such songs were being played to the public. "We will have to address this matter urgently with the taxi leadership so that the message is relayed to the owners and drivers."
Simon Mkhabela, a taxi owner from KwaMashu, said that as a father and businessman he was very concerned with the harm the songs would do to children. "It concerns me when children are exposed to such things, especially when they are not yet of the age where they can make decisions for themselves". He added he'd noticed that school children would often be late for school because they would wait for certain taxis and upon further investigation he discovered that they wanted to travel in those taxis because of the music being played for them. "I personally saw a taxi playing a DVD which had scenes of sex and I made it a point to stop them and demanded that they turn it off." (Not to self: Black cab, blacked out windows, licensed to show adult films to passengers. Could be a winner.)
If you have a story or press release you think should be included in a future Technology News feature, please contact our Technology Editor, Paul Smith via Paul@EroticTradeOnly.com.