"I see these opportunities as HBO 1990 all over again, when Blockbuster and videocassette and PPV were going to put HBO out of business," Mr. Miller said. "It has come roaring back by offering product you can't find anywhere else on television. That's the key to turning things around at AOL."  (Courtesy of the Electronic Media).

Currently, HBO has over 20 m subscribers paying upwards of $14 a month for its content.  That's a great business and is worthy of replication online.  However, Jonathan needs to watch out.  He can't pursue a strategy that merely packages repurposed content from existing Time-Warner assets.  Why?  It's been tried before and it won't work.  Caveat:  if this effort includes throwing open the massive archives of out of print books, music, and movies that AOL-TW owns as part of the subscription, then it might work (although, given the complexity of the contracting process necessary to do this, I am not hopeful).

Like HBO, AOL needs to provide an original experience.  Further, it needs to be an experience that is uniquely suited to the Web/Internet (or in AOL's case, a simulacrum of the Web).  What does that mean?  In my view, that means connecting people.   AOL's unique experience needs to revolve around the content created by its members and the connections they make between each other (and one that utilizes P2P and desktop resources to keep costs low).  What exactly do I mean?  Chat.  P2P multimedia chat.  Desktop publishing (weblogs).  P2P desktop publishing (multimedia weblogs).  To attract members they should throw open the front doors to these AOL produced sites.  However, the hook is that in order to participate, people will need AOL's client software.   In combination with vast libraries of out of print (or low volume) professional content, this becomes a killer app. [John Robb's Radio Weblog]
1:22:55 PM    comment   

Trevor Marshall on antennas: Just met Trevor Marshall here at 802.11 Planet. Follow the links on the top of his site to the links for antennas: he's produced some excellent visualizations of antenna patterns. Trevor is speaking on antenna design this afternoon.

12:37:08 PM    comment