901am

New Media News Every Morning

iTunes dealt a blow as it’s deemed illegal in Norway

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iPodApple’s download store iTunes was hit hard in the groin today, as Norway declares it illegal. Free competition is the background to this, and since Apple won’t open up iTunes to other MP3 players, Norway’s consumer officer ruled it illegal. Remove it, or go to court. Ouch.

This means that Norway is the first country in the Nordic region to actually take steps against iTunes. Sweden and Finland have declared the same stance in the matter, but has yet to act. Germany and France are also backing this, and them being a lot more lucrative markets than the small population of the Nordic region, this might actually mean that there will be some sort of impact on iTunes, other than it possibly being made unavailable in some countries.

Financial Times has more.

Now could someone please kill all DRM and give us open formats that we can play any way we please?

Tipster: Jonny Hansson

Originally posted on January 25, 2007 @ 4:08 am

Microsoft Expression Web is out, and so are the reviews

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Microsoft ExpressionActually, the web isn’t littered with reviews of Microsoft’s follow-up to hideous FrontPage, may it never return. The beta got some decent coverage last year, and now that the final product is out it might be interesting to know what the Microsoft solution to Dreamweaver can do.

For experienced developers who are happiest working in the code, Expression Web doesn’t get in the way. Unlike its predecessor Frontpage it doesn’t try to change your code to suit itself and the excellent rendering engine seems capable of rendering most layouts. As with any visual environment, working out how to create CSS visually takes a little effort, but if you are someone who enjoys working visually it would be worth the time spent as the rendering engine is very faithful to the view in a modern browser.

In other words, the Vitamin review is positive, rating Microsoft Expression Web 3 out of 5. However, it points to some silly problems with the beginner’s guide templates, with broken columns and that actually being the sample in the manual! Weird, how did that get through?

Lee Underwood over at EarthWeb WebReference wrote a review on it as well, however I didn’t tell me anything really, other than the direct link to the trial version of course, which you probably should check out if you’re doing your hacking in a visual editor (like Dreamweaver, FrontPage and so on). Me? Oh, I do it by hand in a text-only editor. That’s what you get when you’ve been doing web pages since 1996… It’s a feature!

Check out the Microsoft Expression Web product page, as well as the download page for the free trial, if you want to know more.

Originally posted on January 23, 2007 @ 4:33 am

BBC does Second Life for kids

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CBBC World is an online world for kids from BBC hitting the internet this Summer, with a full launch during the Autumn. The online game won’t have any of Second Life’s economical aspects, as well as being a completely safe environment without chatrooms where things can go astray.

“It will give children a chance to move around a safe, secure world where they can not only interact with familiar characters but have an opportunity to make that world a more fascinating place with their own imaginations.”

CBBC is a BBC TV channel for kids 7-12 years old, and CBBC World is of course a PR spin more than anything else. Still, it’s interesting to see how online worlds have had an impact, and this is certainly a proof if any.

Originally posted on January 23, 2007 @ 12:22 pm

BBC 2.0 and the 15 guidelines you should steal

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BBC NewsBBC is a very new media aware broadcasting company, their exceptional website have proven that over the years. And when the boundaries between TV and internet starts to blur, they announce the BBC 2.0 project, talking about why on demand changes everything.

Blogger Tomski works for BBC, and he shares the 15 guidelines that the BBC 2.0 project have lead to.

1. Build web products that meet audience needs
2. The very best websites do one thing really, really well
3. Do not attempt to do everything yourselves
4. Fall forward, fast
5. Treat the entire web as a creative canvas
6. The web is a conversation. Join in
7. Any website is only as good as its worst page
8. Make sure all your content can be linked to, forever.
9. Remember your granny won’t ever use “Second Life”
10. Maximise routes to content
11. Consistent design and navigation needn’t mean one-size-fits-all
12. Accessibility is not an optional extra
13. Let people paste your content on the walls of their virtual homes
14. Link to discussions on the web, don’t host them
15. Personalisation should be unobtrusive, elegant and transparent

Descriptions and clarifications in the blog post, because 901am believes in #3.

Originally posted on January 23, 2007 @ 4:08 am

Gawker doubles traffic, shows stats

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Nick Denton isn’t the most frequent blogger on his own little playground, but when he posts it’s usually interesting since it involves stats. I like stats, they are cool. Also, I like to see what other people are managing with their ventures.

Gawker Media is a solid blog network and they are apparently growing. In December 2005 they clocked in 40.4m pageviews, last year the same period was 90.6m. Not too shabby, especially since they’re using Sitemeter.

Uniques and graph over at Denton’s.

Originally posted on January 22, 2007 @ 1:51 pm