Exploring the impact of broadband and technology on our lives, our businesses, and our communities.
Maybe newspapers will prevail
I've always thought newspapers were well-positioned to take advantage of the Internet, if they could break out of the dead trees model. The Roanoke Times gets a hap tip for jumping into IP TV.
The Flash-based news clips have excellent video and audio quality on my cable modem connection, and the somewhat sardonic commentary is closer to a blog in style than traditional television news. The clips are only a few minutes long, and the videocasts are a peak into the future.
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Maybe the music stinks?
The music industry has been complaining bitterly that online music has been cutting into the sale of CDs (legal and illegal downloads). But new data shows that online (legal) music sales have been flat for some months. This suggests what many people, including me, have been saying for some time--that the music industry has been serving up crummy music.
There is another explanation as well. Consumers are not stupid, and most people can figure out pretty quickly that it is better to pay an extra buck or two for the CD, which enables them to avoid all the protection schemes that come with legal digital downloads, which range from somewhat annoying to just plain awkward.
But CD sales are also down, which further suggests consumers think the music offerings are not that good. In the elusive quest to sell only gold and platinum groups, many good bands and musicians are being bypassed, and the irony is that with digital distribution, there is hardly any reason not to sign up lots of bands and see which ones become popular--distribution costs are virtually zero!
Meanwhile, there are lots of groups that seem to do reasonably well without any recording contracts at all, simply using live concerts and a Web site to promote their music.
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GoogleBase launch
Google has announced a new service called GoogleBase. The "base" part of the word is from "database," which Google appears to be trying to co-opt. They probably hope to create a new verb, as in, "Let's look in GoogleBase," or "Let's GoogleBase it."
The intro page on the new service sounds nice, but it is not really any different than setting up a Web site. GoogleBase, in effect, is a free Web site service that is document oriented rather than page oriented. Google claims it is different because you can attach attributes to your content, but you can already do that on any Web page, although it takes some extra effort.
What Google is really promising is that any material you give to Google will get indexed more quickly than a standalone Web site. And by making the attribute, or keyword tagging easier for content owners, Google is able to more precisely target and attach ads to the displayed pages.
It is quite clever, in that it offers an easy to use service that accrues huge benefits to Google at the same time. What I found disturbing is that on the two pages that describe the service and its rules, nowhere did it say what Google would or would not do with the information. Publishing on your own Web site guarantees that you retain control of your information. It is not at all apparent what control you have, if any, once you place it on GoogleBase.
Here are some questions I would want answered:
- What if I want to take the document off GoogleBase? Can I do so? How? If I take it off, does Google retain a "cached" copy?
- What if I want to update or replace the document with something different? Can I do that? How?
- What if I don't like the ads being served? Do I have any control over that?
Make no mistake about it; Google is out to own all of the information in the world, and they are becoming less shy about saying so, although they cleverly use the words "searchable" and "indexed" to hide their intentions.
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Truckers using hydrogen to save fuel, cut pollution
Truckers in the U.S. and Canada are using on-the-go hydrogen generation to cut fuel costs by 10% and as a by-product, pollution is also reduced substantially, with particulate emissions (the black smoke seen from some diesel engines) by up to half.
The hydrogen is generated by a small, bolt-on system that generates hydrogen by electrolysis, which uses electricity from the truck's alternator to strip hydrogen from distilled water. The hydrogen is injected into the fuel-air mix and produces more efficient burning fuel.
At current fuel prices, the system pays for itself quickly, and the only "fuel" needed is distilled water, which is much cheaper than diesel fuel.
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Cellular providers try radio
In yet another "new media" development--they seem to come almost daily--Cingular is going to offer a $6.99/month radio service that works with certain cellphones. It is an interesting offering, since lots of people have cellphones (yes, most of them don't work with this service yet).
It is hard to triangulate how this might work out; broadcast radio could be affected, but satellite radio providers may be harder hit, where the higher price and the need for dedicated satellite radio devices make it a tougher sell. For me, I'd have to wonder about the quality, given that my cellphone often sounds awful even when standing in clear view of a tower.
In a larger context, this is part of the continuing Betamax-VHS battle between Internet wireless and the cellphone industry. Technically, Internet wireless is a better platform that can provide more and better quality now, and can grow substantially in quality and performance in the future. But the industry itself is deeply fragmented, with many under-capitalized providers and a lack of infrastructure.
On the cellphone side, the technology is mediocre at best, but there are only a few players with very deep pockets, who have already made massive infrastructure investments and have a revenue stream from phone service to help pay for new services. Who will win? I'd prefer wireless Internet, but today, I'm not optimistic.
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Honda rolls out home hydrogen fuel cell station
Honda has announced a hydrogen generation fuel cell. Designed for home use, the system generates enough hydrogen to fuel a car for around town use, and also generates enough electricity to power an average home. It uses natural gas as a source of fuel.
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Nokia introduces Internet tablet
Nokia has announced an "Internet tablet" computer. Just three inches by five and a half inches, the device is powered by a variant of Linux and comes with all the software you would expect on a PDA, including a calendar, Web browser, email, chat, news readers, and much more. It also comes with WiFI, and has a battery life of three hours of active use, and up to seven days of standby time.
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"Web 2.0 is made of ....Outsauce"
The Register has a hilarious list of reader-contributed definitions of Web 2.0, which is the current buzz phrase for a whole new deluge of technology "solutions" in search of a problem. Web 2.0 offerings typically include other buzzphrases like "live" applications (apparently everything we've been doing has been dead), AJAX (not a soap, but a new set of programming tools), and the always delightful but overused "usercentric."
While Web-based applications have improved dramatically over the past several years, there is unquestionably another whole group of "Web 2.0" start up companies with often baffling offerings that manage to be simultaneously just plain amusing and incomprehensible at the same time. A site called TechCrunch provides a nice snapshot. Most of the stuff just leaves me shaking my head while humming Prince's "Let's party like it's 1999."
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Sony's sad saga
Sony has really made a mess of things with their Digital Rights Management software. In a utterly misguided attempt to prevent copying of their music CDs, the company hid software on the CDs that secretly changes the core operating system on Windows.
Just today, Macintouch said they had information from a reader that found a similar Mac program hidden on a Sony CD. But wait--there's more. According to Slashdot, a class action lawsuit has been filed in California against Sony, claiming the company has violated three state laws that prohibit hacking and putting secret software on computers. And a boycott has been announced against Sony.
All of this is going to hurt the company badly at a time when Sony has not been able to compete well in the consumer electronics market. The unwritten story is about outsourcing. The company outsourced the DRM to third parties and then apparently stuck it on their music CDs with little or no internal review, legal or technical. Outsourcing is often touted as a less expensive way to acquire products and services, but the DRM Sony bought directly affected their core product. It is a perfect example of why indiscriminate outsourcing is so dangerous. It looks good on the financials, but if it damages the company the way this has, it is a false economy.
But wait! There is still MORE! The Register reports that a virus has been found using the secret Sony software as a vector. The Sony software hides files that start with "$sys$", so a virus writer designed a little virus that comes attached to an email and is very difficult to find if the Sony software is installed. Murphy's Law is working overtime on this one.
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CNN jumps to IP TV
CNN has announced a beta TV news on demand service that will offer multiple news feeds and access to an archive of CNN video segments.
Why are so many players getting into this so quickly? For one, it is relatively simple. For the larger content providers like CNN and the other alphabet channels (CBS, ABC, NBC) they already have staff to throw at this. It is no big deal to digitize video (and much of it may already be recorded as digital) and stick it on a Web site. And they have enough server resources and bandwidth to support a pilot project.
But there is no free lunch. As more people start streaming and watching video via their feeble DSL and cable modem connections, those first mile networks are going to start glowing cherry red from the load and the end result will be chaos. The cable modem networks will show the strain first because of their architecture, but basically, performance will start to stink, all the time, just as it does now many evenings and when schools are out for snow.
The current connection-based fee structure for broadband simply does not work when everyone starts watching IP TV because the fee has no relationship to the actual cost of shipping bits across the network. The solution is to move toward a service-based fee structure where markets for content help set the cost of services. The current system treats all forms of services equally, and they are not. All this worked fine when the services were limited mostly to email and Web browsing. And even a little VoIP and some music downloads were too much of a problem except on college campuses, where file sharing crippled networks and forced drastic network changes.
But video uses hundreds and even thousands of times more bandwidth. The networks are jumping into this quickly in part because someone else has to pay for much of the cost of hauling their video across multiple networks to viewers. It is an unsustainable model.
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