| With broadband becoming the norm and connection speeds continuing to quicken, what has happened to music companies and newspapers is beginning to happen to broadcast networks and cable companies. People like me are using the Net to bypass the customary providers of television programming, along with the ads they show and the fees they collect |
| Television companies, desperate to protect their sources of revenue, are trying to figure out ways to control or at least influence the shifts in our viewing practices. If a transmission company like Comcast — although it owns a few cable stations, Comcast’s main business is providing cable TV, Internet and telephone service — were to own more of the programs it distributes, it could, at least theoretically, wield more power over how that content reaches viewers.Read more at www.nytimes.com |
Looks like Eventbite will be a startup to watch… Can Eventbrite Shine in Ticketmaster’s World? |
For big rock concerts and sporting events held in huge venues, Ticketmaster dominates the landscape. For the kind of event you might find promoted with a flyer on a telephone pole, there’s a budding startup called Eventbrite. |
| The San Francisco company, which has less than 30 employees, announced this week it raised its first round of venture capital: $6.5 million from Sequoia Capital. |
Eventbrite’s founders say they are not targeting big sporting or music events-that’s Ticketmaster’s well-defended turf. They say they will use the cash to focus on smaller markets like conferences and nightclubs, as well as to further integrate their event planning tools into mobile phones and social networks like Facebook and Twitter. Read more at bits.blogs.nytimes.com |
For its December issue, GQ ushers in the next generation of magazines. GQ Creates a $2.99 iPhone App |
Conde Nast is creating a paid iPhone application for GQ’s annual “Men of the Year” issue in December, signaling something of a breakthrough in the magazine giant’s embrace of digital publishing. |
| The application, expected to launch Nov. 18 when the print issue hits newsstands, will cost $2.99 at Apple’s iTunes store. Unlike many other magazine applications, which focus on topics like recipes or celebrity news, the GQ app offers a full replica of a single issue of the monthly men’s magazine. |
Seems like everyone’s doing it except U.S. |
Foreign Airlines Rush Ahead of U.S. on Cellphone Use
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| while domestic airlines rush to wire their cabins to provide in-flight Wi-Fi connectivity, there is no indication whether, or when, passengers in the United States might be able to make a phone call at 37,000 feet. |
| But in much of the rest of the world, passengers on various foreign airlines are already routinely using cellphones and other personal wireless devices to make and receive calls in-flight. |
Emirates lets passengers to use their mobile phones on 93 routes outside the United States via the airline’s AeroMobile system.
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The AeroMobile system activates once the airplane reaches 20,000 feet. The system automatically sends a free text message asking passengers to switch their phones to silent mode.
Read more at www.nytimes.com |
A new Starbucks app lets users download gift cards and pay by scanning the phone’s screen. Awesome. Starbucks Turns iPhone Screen Into Gift Card |
Starbucks is introducing two new applications for the iPhone that will make it easier for java junkies to get their fix — and make it possible to pay right from the phone, which has broad implications for mobile commerce. |
I really like where Skype is focused right now. The enterprise and more functionality over the wireless network. How Skype Plans to Dominate Business Telephony |
| Skype, a division of eBay is likely to announce tomorrow that the beta version of its Skype for SIP offering will interoperate with Cisco Systems’s Unified Communications 500 system. |
| These are a few of the many moves made by Skype to expand its business to the corporate market. |
| “We are pretty big on video calling,” Silverman said. The company is putting a lot of resources into building better video conferencing experience, because he believes that person-to-person video calling is going to be as big as video. That absolutely makes sense because today the definition of communication is constantly changing. In the past, the world was all about voice, then instant messages and now video calling. People are sending messages and status updates via Twitter and Facebook. The communications are now multimodal.Read more at gigaom.com |
Services such as Robo.to are adding life to online status updates. Microbloggers, Meet the Microvideo |
There are just some things in life that are better with a visual accompaniment, such as business presentations, cooking classes, a film theory seminar. |
According to Ray Flemings, chief executive of Particle Brand, status updates posted to Twitter and Facebook should be included on that list. His San Francisco company created a service called Robo.to that allows users to publish 4-second videos that act as visual status updates. |
Our new CIO asks, “Why should the government pay and build infrastructure that may be available for free?” Good question. Now, Even the Government Has an App Store |
| Vivek Kundra, the federal chief information officer, unveiled Apps.Gov, a Web site where federal agencies will able to buy so-called cloud computing applications and services that have been approved by the government to replace more costly and cumbersome computing services at their own locations. |
“According to the nonprofit Conference Board, nearly a quarter of U.S. households now watch TV online, up 20% from last year.” Nielsen plans to start monitoring what they’re watching. New “Internet Meter” will Officially Measure Web TV Audience |
| Yesterday, Nielsen announced that they will make their new “Internet Meter” available by year’s end to measure the online television viewing audience. Until now, this ever-increasing demographic has been left out of U.S. television ratings as Nielsen currently focuses only on live and time-shifted (i.e. DVR) TV viewings. |
25 years later, John Gage and Bill Joy’s quote is reality… In 1984, John Gage and Bill Joy of Sun Microsystems were credited with saying, “The network is the computer”, one of the most memorable slogans of the information age. This concept, based on the tenet of making computing resources available to all users irrespective of location, as long as they are connected to the network, forms the basis of the Internet as we know it, and foretold the advent of cloud computing. Read more at www.analysysmason.com |
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The Future of TV in the Internet Age
