Orange launched its 3G services in the UK and France.

iTunes has been referred to the EU Commission over pricing.

London Underground is resorting to buying spare parts for some of it's obsolete equipment on auction website eBay.

Shopping via interactive TV will rise by 250% this Christmas compared with last year according to Retail Decisions.

Over half of the UK's online population of 22.8 million access the Internet via broadband, according to ACNielsen.

The Sun has removed content from its web site in an attempt to 'differentiate' it from the printed version after its success was seen to be at the expense of the traditional paper's circulation.

BT is being pressured to open up its network by Ofcom, or face anti-competition investigation.

The British Library has launched a wireless network for visitors' use.

Which? Magazine has proclaimed that 3G handsets are a waste of money because 3G services are still too limited outside of London and major cities.

The UK's (alleged) biggest spammer, 22 year old Peter Francis-Macrae, was charged with a variety of anti-social and spamming offences.

According to new research, Europeans spend 20% of their media consumption time on the Internet.

The Daily Mail bought findaproperty.com

AOL has split into four divisions in a bid to improve its fortunes, after a slump in subscribers.

There are now nearly 27,000 Wi-Fi hotspots across Europe, but they're still more expensive to use than equivalents in Asia and the US.

Universal Music has launched a download-only music label.

The Times online has launched a new women's section.

According to the European Commission, over 379m people use mobile phones throughout the EU.

A US dictionary publisher has chosen "blog" as it's top word of 2004, based on the number of times the word was looked-up.

A Japanese businessman has received a one year prison sentence for distributing a pirated film over the Internet.

Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year!

Welcome to the Christmas 2004 edition of Esquared. We would like to wish all our readers a very happy Christmas and a prosperous New Year from all of us at experience engine.

ADSL in seasonal “Bah! Humbug!” outburst!

BT Wholesale has issued a Christmas warning advising against the use of ‘cheap flashing Christmas lights’ that don’t meet UK electrical standards. The warning follows a number of instances of dodgy Christmas lights causing broadband ADSL lines to fail. Apparently the flashing on and off of some seasonal lighting generates high levels of radio frequency noise which causes broadband connections to lose synchronisation and fail.

Speegle harnesses the power of speech

Another day, another search engine? Well no, not quite. We think Speegle is fantastic, especially for visually impaired web users. Try the link below and make sure that your PC has speakers attached. Results are provided by Google, which makes this search engine pretty powerful.
http://www.speegle.co.uk/

(Really) early adopters

Children as young as two are the target audience for a new operating system called Easybits which is described as a 'children's own operating system'. The software will allow children to surf the web and send e-mails safely without help from adults.

The operating system is designed to sit on top of Windows and to offer a "protective shell" which filters out any unsavoury content. Parents will be able to set a "white list" of e-mail addresses and web sites which their children will be allowed to use.

When sending or receiving e-mails, a child would use clickable pictures and icons rather than text. So, to send an e-mail to mummy, the child clicks on the "Talking Parrot" button to record sounds and then clicks on a photo of mum to send the e-mail.

Children won't be able to exit the Easybits system, so it protects parents from over eager fingers accidentally reformatting your hard drive, or losing that all important word document that you neglected to save.

Wireless networks join the "Bah! Humbug!" sentiment this holiday season!

This news just in - it would seem that wireless networks can fail if they are in close proximity to Christmas tinsel. Apparently the multiple strands of reflective material found in tinsel disrupts radio waves causing wireless network connectivity problems. And no, we really aren't making this stuff up.

UK is set to become 'digitally obese'

A new study by Toshiba has revealed that Briton's are increasingly becoming digitally obese, as they carry around more and more data in their mobile phones, digital cameras, PDAs and MP3 players.

The study calculated that 1GB of data was the equivalent of a lorry loaded with paper and that many gadgets were filled with the equivalent of 10 lorry loads of 'weight' or 10GB. Data included music, e-mails, images and texts on an array of different devices.

If the trend continues, the study concluded that by next year people could be carrying around over 20GB of data, making the UK 'digitally fat'. With the festive season upon us, it appears that this year there is yet another way to 'over-do it' this Christmas!

Chinese man banned from naming his son "@"

A Chinese man has been banned from calling his new born son "@" because it can't be translated into Mandarin. Chinese law demands that any name must be translatable. The father argued that as the symbol was in common use on keyboards it was legitimate to use as a name, but the Chinese authorities disagreed.

This follows other cases of naming gone mad. In Michigan , USA, for example, an unfortunate baby boy was named Jon Blake Cusack Version 2.0 after his father. One hopes version 2.0 will grow up to be smarter than version 1.0.

Only on the web:

As Christmas is almost upon us, we thought we would bring you an expanded list of web lunacy this month as a yuletide treat.

Here's a seasonal management-themed Google goof:
http://google.com/search?q=%22office+manger%22

Not sure what to buy the geek in your life for Christmas? How about this 'tasty' piece of festive technology?
http://www.usbmincepies.co.uk/

It may not be in English, but the sentiment is universal. Just click the dialogue box with the mouse and then have fun de-stressing.
http://www.thestylemachine.com/metele/

Fans of Godzilla can have some fun with their company’s web site. Here’s ours under full attack!
Monster Attack!

Spookily, this site knows exactly what you’re thinking.
http://www.dslextreme.com/users/exstatica/psychic.swf

If you're last minute Christmas shopping, how about this unique product?
http://www.buydhmo.com/index.html

It's not what you're thinking! Web addresses can be deceiving!
http://www.shagthesheep.com/

Here's a great game for the new year when you're back at work.
http://www.perkigoth.com/home/kermit/stuff/bullshitbingo/

Blatant plug:

experience engine will close for the Christmas break at midday on Christmas Eve and will re-open on Tuesday 4th January 2005.

About:

Esquared is a regular digest of news, opinion and developments within interactive communications which we find interesting and hope you will too. If you want more information about anything that we mention, or have any comments, please call us on 01992 500990 or e-mail esquared@experience-engine.co.uk.