Wednesday, May 21, 2008

on paidcontent.org Earnings: Napster Revs Up 5.7 Percent; Net Loss Narrows; Watch That Positive Cash Flow. Will this be enough to fend off the barbarians at the gate? Music subscription service Napster (NSDQ: NAPS) has reported quarterly revenue of $30.7 million, a modest increase of about 5.7 percent from $29.1 million in the year-ago quarter. Losses from continuing operations slimmed $4.3 million from ($.10 per share) from $7.5 million ($.17 per share). The loss was narrower than the $.13 analysts had expected them to lose. For the coming quarter, the company expects relatively flat revenue and EPS, so there are no visions of the download store moving the needle too soon. The headline of the release touts loudly the fact that the quarter was cash flow positive, but don't lose your hat over this. At least in past quarters the company was able to show positive cash flow due to a delay in making royalty payments. Eventually it's going to have to make a big one-time lump sum to erase this. Release | Webcast (5:00 PM ET) Conference call: Given the company's performance, perhaps you can't blame CEO Chris Gorog for putting some major spin on the company's challenges and its prospects. He explained how customers always react positively when they see Napster's subscription music service in action, but that impressed response is always: "followed quickly with the below the belt punchâo[oe] does it work with my iPod?" Fair enough, it's tough not having access to the category killer. But then he added, in reference to the company's new DRM-free store that these issues "have been effectively eliminated." Not really: the subscription service still won't work on the iPod, even with the introduction of the new MP3 store. Basically, the purpose of the MP3 store is to attract customers and drive subscription sales, as Gorog admitted. It's kind of like how Apple (NSDQ: AAPL) uses track sales to sell iPods; that's the point of Napster's service, except with subs. Will it work? It will be tough, but things need to change. At this rate, Napster's market value is approaching the value of licensing its logo for ironic T-shirts at Urban Outfitters. Related Napster Shareholder-Subscribers Launch Proxy Fight Napster Starts Selling MP3s; 6 Million Tracks; All Majors Signed On Register for our EconAds seminar, June 3rd, at the New World Stages in New York City. Covering the economics of ad deals. [paidContent.org] 8:50:51 PM

RSS: Digital Media Format Held in Trust for Public Podcasting and RSS at Berkman. I mentioned here my surprise and pleasure that, at the Berkman@10 conference, Harvard Law prof Terry Fisher claimed, in his opening remarks, that Berkman played a pioneering role in podcasting. It's very true. And it happened in a number of ways. 1. The first meeting of people interested in the technology took place at the Oct 2003 BloggerCon, hosted at Harvard. You'll see this meeting mentioned prominently in every history of podcasting. A lot of the people working in this area were there and freely exchanged ideas, techniques and enthusiasm. (The Day 2 grid for the first BloggerCon.) 2. It was at Berkman, with the help of Bob Doyle and the talent of my fellow Berkmanite Chris Lydon and the support of John Palfrey and the rest of the Berkman team that we did the first podcast program, a series of interviews of early bloggers, technology leaders and people making news. We distributed these through Chris's blog, and also through, for the first time, an RSS 2.0 feed with enclosures. 3. It was also at Berkman, in June 2004 and through the Democratic Convention in Boston that summer that I started Morning Coffee Notes, my own podcast, that broke new ground. It seems that my amateurish but very enthusiastic (and imho creative) efforts served to inspire many others. Where people heard my rough podcasts many thought "Hey I could do that too." Nothing like podcasting ever takes off like people say things like that do, it's never a big bang, or the "build a better mousetrap" myth. It's always iterative, trial and error. You needed Chuck Berry and many others before the British Invasion could happen and then the Beatles. We're probably still in the early days of the art of podcasting, but there's no doubt that Berkman played a big role in incubating and nuturing the initial seed. John Palfrey gave an interview to Harvard Law Today where he summed up the story with remarkable economy. If you're interested in the area, the PDF scan is worth a read. John also talks about the invaluable role Berkman played in stabilizing the RSS 2.0 standard. PS: A list of topics discussed at all four BloggerCons. I keep looking for this list. [Scripting News] 6:02:10 PM

via Science Matters Explosions on the moon Astronomers once rolled their eyes when amateurs or professional colleagues reported seeing flashes of light on the moon. It had to be their imaginations, or cosmic rays striking their retinas. But years of careful observations have proven the flashes of light are real. Scientists have now documented more than 100 such flashes, which they've concluded are the visible-light emissions from meteor impacts. Incoming meteors generally burn up in the Earth's atmosphere. But there is no significant atmosphere on the moon, so the space rocks zoom into the lunar surface as tremendous speeds. The kinetic energy is transferred to the lunar rock and dust, which melts and cools, causing it to glow briefly for the cameras. Look on the upper left of this image. The pace of these flashes increases as the Earth passes through dense regions of space dust - the same ones that cause meteor "showers" on the Earth. Then things calm down. But they never really stop. There are plenty of rocks and dust particles floating around in "empty" space. And just as anyone can spot a stray meteor or two on any clear, dark night, the same sort of objects pepper the moon's surface all the time. That, of course, poses risks to the astronauts who will one day return to the moon and establish permanent bases there. Scientists say the risk of a direct hit on these tiny encampments will be negligible, but there is a more considerable danger that shrapnel from a strike - which will fly off in all directions in greater volume and at high speeds - will be something worth worrying about. NASA labs have been studying the problem. Here's a photo of a strike by a pea-sized glass impactor into a target of simulated lunar dust at 16,000 mph. Photo credit is Peter Schultz, Brown University and NASA. - Frank Roylance [Science Matters] 5:09:35 PM