'Happy slapping' teenager bailed
A 16-year-old girl arrested after an attack on a teenager that was filmed on a mobile video phone has been bailed by police until next month.
Becky Smith, 16, was knocked out and suffered temporary paralysis when she was attacked near her Manchester home.
The teenager from Blackley, who went into a police station voluntarily, was questioned on suspicion of assault, a police spokeswoman said.
The attack was filmed on a mobile phone - a craze known as "happy slapping".
Police said the girl who was arrested had been released on bail until 21 June.
Miss Smith's family have now called for a ban on video phones in schools.
The schoolgirl, who starts taking her GCSEs next week, suffered serious head injuries and spent two days at North Manchester General Hospital after the attack.
'Life savers'
Her mother, Georgina Smith, described the attack as "absolutely horrendous".
Mrs Smith said measures needed to be taken to stop the video from being shown.
A spokesman for Plant Hill High School said: "This is a police matter which happened outside school."
Andrew Buckingham, from Victim Support, told the BBC such attacks left victims traumatised for months afterwards.
However, he did not think a mobile phone ban was a good idea, as for some people they were "life savers".
"Clearly you should take away the phones from the perpetrators of happy slap incidents but I think for many young people who use their phones sensibly and responsibly that would be a backward move," he said.
He said the best approach was to educate the perpetrators on the "impact of the crime" and deal with them through the courts.
Story from BBC NEWS:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/go/pr/fr/-/1/hi/england/manchester/4566603.stm
Published: 2005/05/20 16:02:25 GMT
© BBC MMVII
Tuesday, 15 May 2007
Mobile & TV
3GSM It's not just the slow uptake of video services that should worry network operators, it seems that more than half of European users who've tried TV on the move decided it wasn't worth the effort. This data comes from a survey of 22,000 European users, commissioned by Tellabs and carried out by M:Metrics.
Cost is the biggest issue turning off users. Forty-five per cent of disconnections came down to money, but 24 per cent dropped the service because of quality and reliability issues.
Price and quality generally go hand-in-hand, so it's safe to assume that better quality would have reduced concerns about price.
Nearly 30 per cent of UK users cited quality as the reason they wanted out.
The study didn't establish what technology was being used, so unfortunately there's no opportunity to compare broadcast with narrowcast solutions. But overall it seems that users aren't enjoying the experience of video on the move and, once they've shown it off to their mates, seem to have little time for it.
This does not bode well for the industry, which is betting a great deal on consumers wanting video on the go and being prepared to pay for it. ®
By Bill Ray in Barcelona @ http://www.theregister.co.uk/2007/02/12/no_to_mobile_tv/
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Cost is the biggest issue turning off users. Forty-five per cent of disconnections came down to money, but 24 per cent dropped the service because of quality and reliability issues.
Price and quality generally go hand-in-hand, so it's safe to assume that better quality would have reduced concerns about price.
Nearly 30 per cent of UK users cited quality as the reason they wanted out.
The study didn't establish what technology was being used, so unfortunately there's no opportunity to compare broadcast with narrowcast solutions. But overall it seems that users aren't enjoying the experience of video on the move and, once they've shown it off to their mates, seem to have little time for it.
This does not bode well for the industry, which is betting a great deal on consumers wanting video on the go and being prepared to pay for it. ®
By Bill Ray in Barcelona @ http://www.theregister.co.uk/2007/02/12/no_to_mobile_tv/
Related stories
Orange puts the Beeb in your pocket (30 March 2007)
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2007/03/30/eastenders_goes_orange/
Bristol TV trial proves 3G won't interfere with 3G (14 February 2007)
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2007/02/14/mbms_is_top/
Mobile entertainment market will hit $38.1bn by 2011 (21 December 2006)
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2006/12/21/mobile_entertaiment_growth/
Sky signs up Google (7 December 2006)
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2006/12/07/sky_signs_google/
Sony and Ericsson get loved up over mobile TV (27 November 2006)
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2006/11/27/sonyericsson_mobile_tv_deal/
3's mobile phone TV service could land users in trouble (23 November 2006)
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2006/11/23/3_slingbox/
Mobiles On Music
Sound future for music on mobiles
By David Reid
Reporter, BBC Click
Mobiles can come equipped to play movies and TV, but that puts a lot of strain on your eyesight, and their data storage capacity.
Omnifone is putting up a fight against Apple's iPhone
Music phones are emerging as the quality players in mobile entertainment.
Some of the models on show at Europe's largest mobile phone show, 3GSM, already look slick enough to nudge MP3 players off the shelf.
The secret of their success is that phones can now become mass-storage devices, using tiny, removable memory chips many gigabytes in size that can take thousands of tracks. Some have embedded memory that can hold yet more.
The relentless pace of technology innovation means those storage capacities are only going to grow.
Dan Inbar from computer memory maker SanDisk said: "In the past, the doubling of capacity has been every 18 months. Now it is coming down close to 12 months.
"Of course the other side of that is the applications that go with it. Currently the applications are running very, very fast as well."
Mobile downloads
Music on your mobile is about more than just a phone with room for more than just the top 20. The owners of music phones really want the ability to download songs when they are out and about.
Apple boss Steve Jobs unveiled the iPhone in January
iPhone launch
Lots of companies are lining up to offer these sorts of services and while they jockey for position they know there is an elephant waiting in the wings: Apple's iTunes.
Apple's previous foray into phone music, the Motorola-designed Rokr, could not do mobile downloads; the recently announced iPhone, while not yet on the market, should.
UK-based Omnifone is offering a download subscription service which it is promoting as a cheaper and fresher alternative to what it says may come from Apple.
"Apple's business is an Apple-centric solution," said Rob Lewis, head of Omnifone. "Steve Jobs wants to be centre stage of hardware and digital music sales.
"We believe that together with 23 mobile operators and all the other manufacturers - who are already creating a billion devices every year - we can create a really compelling alternative for consumers that gives them the freedom to play and download music wherever they want on whatever device they want to buy."
The figure of a billion phones a year is the reason everyone is so interested in music phones and downloadable tracks, not least because the number of MP3 players knocking around is a fraction of the number of mobiles.
High costs
But there are concerns about cost. Consumers already complain that downloads to mobiles are overpriced and come with some hefty hidden charges.
Andrew Bud of the Mobile Entertainment Forum told us: "We have to give consumers confidence by making the pricing transparent. Customers have to know what they are going to pay when they buy it.
"Today that is not the case, because today they can buy a full track download for £1.50 or a couple of dollars, but in many territories they will be charged an additional amount of money that is not clear and sometimes may be as high as £20 ($39) for the data download charges associated with that. And that's a real problem."
Music phones look all set for take off but, as always, buyers beware.
As you are weigh up the pros and cons of which phone to buy and how much memory to install for downloading on the move, be sure to read the small print of your phone contract first.
Do that and these phones could put a skip into all our of our steps.
Story from BBC NEWS:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/go/pr/fr/-/1/hi/programmes/click_online/6366261.stm
Published: 2007/02/16 14:57:27 GMT
By David Reid
Reporter, BBC Click
Mobiles can come equipped to play movies and TV, but that puts a lot of strain on your eyesight, and their data storage capacity.
Omnifone is putting up a fight against Apple's iPhone
Music phones are emerging as the quality players in mobile entertainment.
Some of the models on show at Europe's largest mobile phone show, 3GSM, already look slick enough to nudge MP3 players off the shelf.
The secret of their success is that phones can now become mass-storage devices, using tiny, removable memory chips many gigabytes in size that can take thousands of tracks. Some have embedded memory that can hold yet more.
The relentless pace of technology innovation means those storage capacities are only going to grow.
Dan Inbar from computer memory maker SanDisk said: "In the past, the doubling of capacity has been every 18 months. Now it is coming down close to 12 months.
"Of course the other side of that is the applications that go with it. Currently the applications are running very, very fast as well."
Mobile downloads
Music on your mobile is about more than just a phone with room for more than just the top 20. The owners of music phones really want the ability to download songs when they are out and about.
Apple boss Steve Jobs unveiled the iPhone in January
iPhone launch
Lots of companies are lining up to offer these sorts of services and while they jockey for position they know there is an elephant waiting in the wings: Apple's iTunes.
Apple's previous foray into phone music, the Motorola-designed Rokr, could not do mobile downloads; the recently announced iPhone, while not yet on the market, should.
UK-based Omnifone is offering a download subscription service which it is promoting as a cheaper and fresher alternative to what it says may come from Apple.
"Apple's business is an Apple-centric solution," said Rob Lewis, head of Omnifone. "Steve Jobs wants to be centre stage of hardware and digital music sales.
"We believe that together with 23 mobile operators and all the other manufacturers - who are already creating a billion devices every year - we can create a really compelling alternative for consumers that gives them the freedom to play and download music wherever they want on whatever device they want to buy."
The figure of a billion phones a year is the reason everyone is so interested in music phones and downloadable tracks, not least because the number of MP3 players knocking around is a fraction of the number of mobiles.
High costs
But there are concerns about cost. Consumers already complain that downloads to mobiles are overpriced and come with some hefty hidden charges.
Andrew Bud of the Mobile Entertainment Forum told us: "We have to give consumers confidence by making the pricing transparent. Customers have to know what they are going to pay when they buy it.
"Today that is not the case, because today they can buy a full track download for £1.50 or a couple of dollars, but in many territories they will be charged an additional amount of money that is not clear and sometimes may be as high as £20 ($39) for the data download charges associated with that. And that's a real problem."
Music phones look all set for take off but, as always, buyers beware.
As you are weigh up the pros and cons of which phone to buy and how much memory to install for downloading on the move, be sure to read the small print of your phone contract first.
Do that and these phones could put a skip into all our of our steps.
Story from BBC NEWS:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/go/pr/fr/-/1/hi/programmes/click_online/6366261.stm
Published: 2007/02/16 14:57:27 GMT
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