Another Bad Year for U.K. Music Sales

Despite the success of artists like Adele, the U.K. recording industry, one of Europe’s most important, suffered another disappointing year with sales down for their seventh consecutive year. The Guardian reports figures from the BPI.

According to the latest figures from the BPI, combined sales of digital and physical albums fell overall by 5.6% to 113.2m last year. At the industry peak in 2004, 163.4m albums were sold.

Spain Clamps Down on Illegal Filesharing

Spain’s new government has made it clear where it stands on unauthorized file sharing; strongly against it.

According to BitTorrent the Partido Popular government has fully implemented the so-called Sinde Law.

After taking power in mid-December, Spain’s incoming Partido Popular (People’s Party) government has now fully approved their pending Sustainable Economy Law (LES), legislation designed to stop Spanish Internet users from accessing file-sharing sites.

Deputy Prime Minister Maria Soraya Saenz de Santamaria announced at a press conference that the so-called Sinde Law, named after outgoing Minister of Culture Ángeles González-Sinde, will now be fully implemented.

One-Quarter of Christmas Shopping Done in the Last Week

Consumers left it almost to the last minute before buying presents online, and late at night, according to figures released by express courier service Shutl.

According to CEO Tom Allason, who crunched the figures, half of all the deliveries they made took place over the 10 days from Dec. 14, with 25% of all Christmas deliveries peaking in the four days from Dec. 19.

Not too surprisingly for an express service, more and more men started to use the service as it got nearer to Christmas. According to Mr. Allason, “it peaked at 25% more than normal”. He also said there was a dramatic surge in night shopping, some 600% higher than normal. The busiest evening was the Sunday before Christmas, with deliveries ordered for the next day.

TechEurope Takes a Festive Break

TechEurope is off to enjoy minced pies, mulled wine and indulge in the Christmas and New Year season. We will be pulling down the blinds later today and then re-opening them for a bright new year on Jan. 3.

So what of 2012? What will the new year bring? It was a mayor of Toronto who said “predictions are difficult, especially about the future”. But giving hostage to fortune there will be a 2012 predictions piece early in the new year. What do you think will be the big tech stories of 2012?

2011 was the year of the entrepreneur. It was the year that governments across Europe embraced the start up and realized that the best way out of the financial crisis was to grow your way out.

Apple Slides in Europe

Apple might appear to be all-conquering, but in many places its market share is slipping.

It’s easy to get the impression that, despite the slightly underwhelming launch of the iPhone 4S, consumers across the globe hurried to form lines outside their nearest Apple store. In fact, it appears that the only European country that had a real 4S rush was Britain. The Giga Om Apple Blog reports on new data released by Kantar Worldpanel ComTech.

It says:

“In other parts of Europe, including France, Germany, Italy and Spain, the iPhone 4S hasn’t stopped the steady decline of Apple’s smartphone market share. Google’s Android platform continues to outgrow Apple’s in those markets, something Kantar Worldpanel ComTech Global Consumer Insights Director Dominic Sunnebo says could be due to increased “price sensitivity” in European countries.”

Another explanation that has been touted for the decline of Apple’s European market share is that the most-publicized new feature for the iPhone 4S, Siri, the voice-activated virtual assistant, does not support most European languages.

BBC Tests Surround Sound for Ordinary Headphones

Home cinema with surround sound delivered from multiple speakers is pretty commonplace. The BBC is trialling broadcasts which create the same effect through normal headphones.

The BBC is asking listeners to join an experiment in creating surround sound through standard headphones. Radio Today explains how the trial works using a “binaural” format to create an immersive sound experience.

“The Radio 3 website will offer a recording of Nine Lessons and Carols from 2007 in binaural sound until the end of the Christmas period. The service was recorded in surround sound as an experiment by BBC engineers and processed to create binaural audio by BBC Research and Development. Listeners can simply plug their standard headphones into any computer with a stereo output and then stream the specially processed audio, which should make them feel as if they are hearing the music from speakers around them, not just their headphones. There are six different surround settings to choose from, to suit different types of headphones and head shape…The trial is part of BBC Radio’s continuing innovation in audio, including the launch of HD Sound, the Wimbledon NetMix experiment and ongoing trials of ‘3D Sound’ technology.”

You can listen to the experimental surround sound Christmas service on the BBC, Radio 3 website.

Radio Today : BBC Radio experiments in surround sound.

Exploding Movie App Hits Apple

The company behind the special effects for the latest Mission Impossible film has developed an app. Now you can create your own disaster movie on an iPhone.

This is supposed to be the season of goodwill. So nobody should be filled with the desire to blow things up. But there are times when the festive cheer gets a bit too much. There is now an app for that.

It comes from Bad Robot Interactive, the special effects company of which Hollywood writer, producer and director J.J. Abrams is president and C.E.O. His latest movie is “Mission Impossible – Ghost Protocol”.

Texting Is for Liars

If you want to do a deal with somebody on-line have a video chat. Do not rely on SMS.

That seems to be the lesson of a new study.

It is perhaps a case of social scientists proving the obvious. A study from the Sauder School of Business at the University of British Columbia suggests that people are more likely to lie in a text message than face-to-face or in a video chat. Not only that, but those who are lied to in a text are more inclined to be angry. Mashable reports that 170 students were given “buyer” or “broker” roles and conducted mock stock sales via text, audio chat, video chat or face-to-face.

Scientists Closer to Developing Self-Healing Chips

It sounds as if it is a low-tech solution to a complex problem. Scientists are working on chips with a layer of liquid microcapsules that can fill gaps in circuits if they break.

It is a nuisance when microprocessors fail in gadgets, but it is a disaster if it happens on a space flight. Scientists and engineers at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, U.S.A. are working on what seems, in concept at least, to be a fairly unsophisticated solution according to the BBC:

“The process works by exploiting the stress that causes the initial damage in the chips to break open tiny reservoirs of a healing material that fills in the resulting gaps, restoring electrical flow.”

Social Networks Account for 20% of Time Spent Online

The phenomenal growth of social networking on the Internet is tracked in a new study. There is no escaping Facebook.

It is easy to lose track of just how fast social networking has conquered the world until it is laid out in figures and easy-to-understand infographics. ComScore has done an impressive job in its report It’s a Social World (PDF). And even for seasoned technology watchers there are surprises in the document.

The main point the report illustrates, however, is the way social networking has, almost in no time, become the world’s most popular online activity:

“Social networking sites now reach 82 percent of the world’s online population, representing 1.2 billion users around the world… In October 2011, Social Networking ranked as the most popular content category in worldwide engagement, accounting for 19 percent of all time spent online. Nearly 1 in every 5 minutes spent online is now spent on social networking sites – a stark contrast from when the category accounted for only 6 % of time spent online in March 2007.”

And growth is not limited to a few regions…