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Friday, August 22, 2003 |
The NYT wrote another editorial in its news pages by focusing about 75% of the arguments in this article on the anti-monopoly viewpoint and backhanding the logic for why the FCC had no business interferring in an emerging technology in the first place.
F.C.C. Lifts Ban on Video for AOL Instant Messaging. The Federal Communications Commission has granted a request by AOL Time Warner to drop restrictions on adding video to its AOL instant messaging service. By David D. Kirkpatrick. [New York Times: Technology]
12:06:20 PM 
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Hauppauge [HAUP; Nasdaq] and others are making these devices that the NYT's Mcmanus describe as "bridging the gap" between the PC and the TV enabling consumers to display "media content" that resides on PCs. Curiously, there is no word on the Hauppague website about the MediaMVP product that Mcmanus references in his article [From PC to TV Screen, a Stream of Multimedia. Your PC is brimming with great photos, MP3's and videos. But your family and friends are glued to the television. By Neil Mcmanus. New York Times: Technology] and no indication of its price or feature set.
Among other things, Hauppaauge makes a 350 Meg PC/DVR card that sells for $200.
11:50:43 AM
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Monday, August 11, 2003 |
ABC recently launched it's "Search for the sexiest man in America" contest in conjunction with TV show All My Children [ http://amc.tcsinteractive.com/phase3/index.cfm ] . The contest is comparable to some of BSkyB's iTV programs in the UK. Consumers can use their cell phones to vote by sending a premium text message to the show. [This requires a subscription to premium text messaging plus a transaction charge $0.50 per message.]
This is something of a milestone. It is the first time in the USA that we have seen a linkage between a television program and the use of cellular telephone text messaging premium services.
3:10:26 PM
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Wednesday, August 06, 2003 |
This article is about the expansion of the bid-for-ad-placement concept from strictly the search domain to the general "web-site" browsing context.
If You Liked the Web Page, You'll Love the Ad. Online publishers are beginning to sense the possibilities of having Google or Overture serve ads to their audiences. By Bob Tedeschi. [New York Times: Technology]
1:33:18 PM
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Carat has an interesting little item on their web site.
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Is interactive TV advertising a lost dream? |
09-Mar-2003
To many observers, interactive TV is starting to look like an unfulfilled marketing revolution. Potentially, iTV can bring a new dimension to advertising by adding relationship-building and transaction to what is already the most powerful brand-building medium. But operators' financial problems, over-promised and under-delivered technology and poor communication of digital's benefits have stalled mass take-up by consumers. With the current mismatch between potential and reality, is it worth investing time and money in interactive advertising?
Evidence collected by Carat strongly suggests that it is, and that iTV advertising can already deliver marketing ROI.
Although almost no-one switches to digital TV for the interactive services, Carat research with Netpoll has found that once people have access to them, they use them to an increasing degree.
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11:01:04 AM
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Monday, July 21, 2003 |
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Tuesday, June 10, 2003 |
Autonomy (Nasdaq: AUTN) announced the purchase of a small company called Virage (Nasdaq-SCM: VRGE) which they apparently intend to integrate with their existing Dremedia division. Dremedia software uses Autonomy's Intelligent Data Operating LayerTM (IDOL) technology and enhances it by providing a technology platform that automatically analyzes, understands, and manipulates video and audio content.
Acquiring Virage adds a software product suite that covers the creative side of video production, Internet publishing and webcasting. Virage is headquartered in San Mateo, California, and was established in 1995. It's products include:
- VS ProductionTM for professional video production
- VS PublishingTM for developing content into compelling Internet programming
- VS WebcastingTM for planning and producing interactive, live and on-demand webcasts
The company has ~400 customers including: Cisco Systems, Empire Blue Cross Blue Shield, Harvard University, NASCAR, Oracle Corporation, Pfizer, the United States Senate, Xerox and others. www.virage.com.
Here's an article in The Register about the acquisition. Autonomy swoops on Virage. Video Play [The Register]
8:24:45 AM
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Sony plugs TV into Vaio notebooks. The Japanese company looks to boost its PC fortunes with a notebook that lets people pause and record live TV for future playback and another that packs Centrino wireless technology. [CNET News.com]
4:03:06 PM
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Yesterday at NCTA, Microsoft introduce Microsoft® TV Foundation Edition what they descirbe as "a new digital TV software platform designed to help cable operators get more value from on-demand and other digital TV services"
They simultaneously announced support (http://www.microsoft.com/tv/mstvIndustrySupportPR.mspx) for the platform from cable industry vendors Motorola, Inc., SeaChange, Concurrent Computer Corp., MetaTV Inc., Two Way TV Ltd. and Advanced Digital Broadcast Ltd.
They also announced a customer win (http://www.microsoft.com/tv/cablevisionselectsmspr.mspx) for the software platform with Televisa's Cablevision (CVC) subsidiary, one of Mexico City's largest cable MSO with ~450k subscribers announcing that they will adopt it.
3:10:46 PM
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Friday, May 02, 2003 |
Disney has announced a service called Moviebeam which will deliver "VOD" movies to consumer homes via analog broadcast tv signals using datacasting technologies. The service requires a side-car TV settop box that will apparently have enough [PVR-like] memory to store up to 100 movie titles [~150 to 200 GB]. Disney plans to test the service in Salt Lake City apparently via its ABC affiliate station there.
This brings up the interesting question again about whether or not cable operators are obligated to carry the "datacasting" information embedded in the ABC television signal and thus to enable the use of Cable's network to compete with their own VOD services without any compensation from a broadcaster like Disney?
11:32:23 AM
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Friday, April 04, 2003 |
This is an interesting analysis of the DRM issues surrounding Windows Media9.
Microsoft's digital media mogul. Dave Fester, general manager of Microsoft's Windows Media, needs to balance the use of digital media to boost Windows sales with the piracy concerns of the entertainment industry. [CNET News.com]
10:29:39 AM
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Thursday, April 03, 2003 |
Wave Systems announced their earnings for Q4 2002 today. According to their press release [see exerpt below] they are looking for strategic partners.
"Steven Sprague, Wave's president and CEO, said, "In order to raise the additional capital required to fund Wave's operations, we have engaged an investment banking firm and are exploring a number of financing alternatives which include debt or equity financing (or a combination of both) or one or more commercial or strategic transactions."
"The personal computing industry is now committed to a historic transition to trusted computing. The most influential players -companies including Microsoft, Intel, Hewlett-Packard, AMD, National Semiconductor, Infineon and others - have publicly committed to a trusted PC environment secured by a hardware chip. Without a doubt, today's inherently insecure PC is morphing to tomorrow's secure and trusted PC which will offer a range of productive services for users. Wave's long commitment to hardware and services-secured trusted computing has made us influential in the evolution of this huge and evolving market opportunity."
1:48:21 PM
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Monday, March 31, 2003 |
EETimes reports that Cirrus Logic has licensed the DivX technology for its DVD processors. http://www.eet.com/sys/news/OEG20030326S0049 According to the article:
"By early 2004 Cirrus Logic said its chips would allow users to play DivX content from the web in real-time as well as access the Internet and play streaming audio content. The devices would also enable service providers to offer direct video-on- demand services. "
11:12:51 AM
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Tuesday, March 18, 2003 |
CNet reporting on Microsoft's launch of Media2Go software at CeBit.
12:34:20 PM
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Thursday, March 06, 2003 |
The basic principal is that clelbrities are traded on an exchange like stocks. Their value is influenced by player trading which in turn is influenced by, among other things, what the BBC broadcasts every Friday night at 10:30pm on BBC3. A very clever idea and apparently a sensation in the UK. Here's the link to the Celebdaq website: http://www.bbc.co.uk/celebdaq/index.shtml
10:23:43 AM
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Wednesday, March 05, 2003 |
An interesting summary of what Google is by a guy named Jason Kottke: "Google is not a search company." via Kevin Werbog's weblog. [Werblog]
10:48:40 AM
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Tuesday, March 04, 2003 |
Google announced today (http://www.google.com/press/pressrel/advertising.html) a "content-targeted advertising" service which proposes to replace general website ads with "relevant sponsored links" similar to those displayed in its own search engine, and in the search pages of its affiliates.
Here's how "content-targeted advertising" by Google appears to work:
- Google's proprietary classification engines identify "the meaning of a web page"
- Based on that, and presuming a 3-way arrangement between Advertisers - Google - Websites, Google then automatically serves "relevant" ads from its stable of participating advertisers
- Relevance to a website is [apparently] based on Google's classification scheme, and the order of relevant ads served is [apparently] based on Google-measured click-through response rates [now competing with Double-Click and others].
Here's a link to a Motley Fool article about this: Google's Banner Day. The search king moves into third-party advertising. [The Motley Fool] and another in Wired News: http://www.wired.com/news/business/0,1367,57900,00.html
4:04:09 PM
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Monday, March 03, 2003 |
© Copyright 2003 Douglas L Ross.
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