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In the slashdot article they reference this "Yahoo Blog" in Kroea's broadband market. http://kr.blog.yahoo.com/ With both MSN and AOL experimenting with blogs, some kind of Yahoo move was inevitable.
Yahoo Experimenting with Blogs?. Tee Emm writes "Sven Latham reports on his Yet Another Blog that Yahoo is (probably) experimenting with its blog services for its general users. The test bench ... [Slashdot]
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From Gilder / Forbes 2003 Telecom Conference in Lake Tahoe, CA. Samsung presented the picture that a 3.5G wireless technology will emerge by ~2007 that would provide a 5-20 Mbps data rate. An interesting application that they are hypothesizing is using 3.5G as a transport mechanism to connect WiFi hotspots
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When you start to see something like this bandwagon of PC and CE guys all converging on the same [entertainment oriented] convergence place, it starts to look pretty ugly. Remember, these are the same guys who brought us 8000 different models of television remote controls with incompatible codes and buttons in the wrong places [not to mention the fact that we can never find the darn things.]
Gateway's Chief Insists the PC Yield to a Digital Future. Ted Waitt, chief of Gateway, plans to transform underused outlets from bland showrooms into touchy-feely retail boutiques. By Carolyn Marshall. [New York Times: Technology]
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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]
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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.
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There is a significant battle going on for control of the intellectual property surrounding the delivery of targeted television and internet advertising.
Ad firm 24/7 pushing for patent power. 24/7 Real Media wins another patent for delivering digital ads, giving it new authority over the online-ad serving market as it pursues patent licenses to improve shareholder value. [CNET News.com]
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Wednesday, August 13, 2003 |
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A group of investors including Time Warner, Comcast and Shaw invested about $4.0 million in SkyStream, a company that develops IP-Video delivery systems based on a Gigabit Ethernet switching architecture. SkyStream apparently has a number of U.S. patents including several in the area of bandwidth optimization for delivery of IP-video and data services.
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It looks like Samsung is convinced that the standard for UWB proposed by the Multiband OFDM Alliance [http://www.multibandofdm.org/] is likely to win the standards race, so they are trying to get jump on the industry with commercial products. What markets they will go after first should be interesting, but they apparently aren't saying yet.
Samsung to team on ultrawideband. The consumer-electronics company pairs with chipmaker Staccato Communications to develop products using ultrawideband, a technology that's 100 times faster than Bluetooth. [CNET News.com]
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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.
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Wednesday, August 06, 2003 |
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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]
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The NYT's latest pontification on Cable vs Satellite. It doesn't really come to much of a conclusion [as usual].
Cable or Satellite? Please Stay Tuned. Cable and satellite companies are waging an escalating battle by offering video on demand, digital recorders and high-speed data services. By Seth Schiesel. [New York Times: Technology]
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Reacting to Verizon's previous wifi announcements, SBC is now getting into the act.
SBC, Wayport sign hot spot deal. The telecommunications giant becomes the latest major company to ink an agreement that will let its customers use Wayport's 650 Wi-Fi hot spots across the nation. [CNET News.com]
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This woman's name was Jane Barbe. She died July 18 in Roswell, Ga., of complications from cancer. She was 74 years old. Her's was the voice that we heard when we dialed a wrong number, called a number that was out of service or just called to get the current time or temperature. There is something very sad about knowing that we've lost that voice we've all grown so accustomed to.
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Moto Labs apparently thinks it has discovered a viable commercial process for manufacturing television displays based on carbon nanotube technology, which would theoritically provide a CRT quality image at a cost that is significantly lower than current plasma and LCD displays.
"Motorola’s NED [nano emissive display ] approach to displays could enable low cost, flat panel wall-mounted television, greater than 50“ diagonal, and just one inch deep to become a reality in the not too distant future. The technology also could be used for much larger displays, such as those used in billboard advertising or sporting events."
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A number of news media have been reporting that Harris Interactive and Teenage Research Unlimited studies show that "the Internet has surpassed television in overall time spent to become the primary medium of choice among the 13-24 age group."
According to an article in PubZone [ http://www.pubzone.com/newsroom/2003/1x20030730x085831.cfm ] quoting the study results: "an average week for the teens and young adults includes 16.7 hours online (excluding email); 13.6 hours watching TV; 12 hours listening to radio; 7.7 hours talking on the phone; six hours reading books and magazines (personal, not academic). "
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Carat has an interesting little item on their web site.
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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They claim that EchoStar IX [operating at the 121 degree West Longitude orbital location] will be the first commercial Ka-band spot-beam deployed over the United States. They are a little vague about what they are going to use the Ka-band capacity for suggesting that "the Ka-band portion of the satellite will be used to deliver future broadband initiatives for the company." The Ku-band FSS (fixed satellite services) transponders that will add capacity to EchoStar's current DISH Network DTH service. The satellite also has a C-band component that Loral will operate.
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An interesting experiment with exposing patients to robots and teleconferencing to enhance doctor / patient interaction.
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Diller's InterActiveCorp reported solid second quarter results. On the conference call with Wall Street analysts Diller characterized his company this way: "The trinity of Amazon, eBay and Yahoo! has been expanded by one to include us." InterActiveCorp (formerly USA Interactive and which includes Expedia, Hotels.com, Match.com, Ticketmaster, HSN and is now acquiring LendingTree) had quarterly revenue of $1.5 billion [up 38% for the quarter] and generated ~$400 million in free cash flow.
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Agere is building a chip set solution that should make low-cost, mobile phone calls over the Internet possible by integrating 802.11b WiFs (wireless networking) functionality with VoIP (voice-over-Internet Protocol) technology in a single platform. Sample quantities are to be available in September, with volume production expected in Q1-2004. Unit pricing for complete chipsets will begin at $30 in sample quantities.
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Woz goes wireless. New York Times: "Mr. Wozniak described WozNet as a simple and inexpensive wireless network that uses radio signals and global positioning satellite data to keep track of a cluster of inexpensive tags within a one- or two-mile radius of each base station. WozNet, he said, will include a home-base station that has the ability to track the location of dozens or even hundreds of small wireless devices that can be attached to people, pets or property."
This could be extremely cool. So far ad hoc wireless networks for location-based applications have been targeted at industrial/commercial applications, but there are plenty of consumer opportunities. If the price of the Wheels of Zeus products are low enough, and the system is open at the software layer, I can imagine users building some amazing and unexpected services on top of it. [ Werblog]
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Cell Phones, Billboards Play Tag. Hyperlinks are spreading to the real world. A new infrared technology allows mobile-phone users to point and click their phones at a museum exhibit or outdoor advertisement to link to relevant websites and downloads. By Lakshmi Sandhana. [ Wired News]
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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]
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Alloptic announced today that they have been awarded U.S. Patent 6,470,032 for "transporting legacy time division multiplexing (TDM) services over Ethernet-based passive optical networks (EPON)."
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I recently took a little informal survey at my company to find out how many people had even heard of weblogging. Surprisingly few people had any idea what a weblog is and they were also surprised to find that the weblog movement was growing so quickly.
Coverage in the NYT [such as the article referenced below] will soon change the awareness situation.
Blogs in the Workplace. Corporate Web logs are catching on. Are they performing a useful business communications function, or simply giving bores and blowhards one more opportunity to blather? By William O'shea. [New York Times: Technology]
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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]
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Vonage is claiming the first "direct-to-consumer" deal for VoIP telephony with a cable MSO.
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Microsoft announced that they've signed the OCAP agreement with Cable Labs. Here's what they say about it:
"Microsoft has agreed to contribute pertinent intellectual property rights to the OpenCable™ project, including the OpenCable Application Platform (OCAP™) software project. In addition, Microsoft and CableLabs have agreed to work together to explore the potential of adding .NET common language infrastructure (CLI) to a future version of OCAP "
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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.
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DSL Forum launched a new initiative at Supercom to challenge the cable industry for dominance of the Home Network. It's called "DSLHome" and is described in there press release as follows:
"DSLHome has two components: technical innovation and support, as well as market awareness and promotion. This two-tiered approach in tandem with DSL Forum's drive toward fully interoperable equipment will create a real broadband DSL mass market with low consumer prices and simple setup of high-speed broadband powered home networks. As part of this program, the DSL Forum has initiated new technical work to address some key areas:
- LAN side DSL customer premise equipment (CPE) configuration specifications
- Dual port router requirements
- WAN-side DSL CPE management specifications
- Interface & System configuration for ADSL on customer premises
- Privacy and Protection Security
In addition to this technical work, the DSL Forum will be launching programs to improve users’ knowledge of DSL powered home networks, and equip these users to make educated home network decisions and broadband choices. The first outcome of this effort is a pair of home networking user guides, currently under development and scheduled to be released in 4Q03. "
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The DSL Forum announced that broadband DSL experienced its largest quarterly increase ever, adding 5.5 million new DSL subscribers worldwide in Q1- 2003. They estimate that there are now 41.3 million DSL subscribers worldwide [residential and business] and they are projecting this to grow to 200 million by 2005.
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Software Anoints the PC as an Alternative to TiVo. People who adore the idea of TiVo but can't afford it may want to weigh the option of recording television shows on the hard drive of a personal computer. Personal Video Station 3 is the latest version of a software program from SnapStream Media that bestows TiVo-like powers on the humble PC. By J.d. Biersdorfer. [ New York Times: Technology]
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Cisco announced today that Time Warner Cable "is now delivering the first Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP) cable primary-line residential telephone service, Digital Phone, to customers in Portland, Maine. Using the industry-leading Cisco® Internet Protocol (IP) voice solution"
Here's the article in telephony online about this announcement. http://telephonyonline.com/ar/telecom_time_warner_cable/index.htm
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© Copyright 2003 Douglas L Ross.
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