Technology360

Sprint Adding Sirius Satellite Radio to Mobile Service

Adding yet another wrinkle to the emerging music-on-mobile-phones trend, satellite radio provider Sirius has announced a partnership to provide some of its streaming programming directly to Sprint users.  ¶  Sirius and Sprint said they struck a deal to make select programming available to certain phones, with channels that stream new hits, classic rock, hip-hop, country, blues and other types of music among the first to be tested. ...  Link:  E-Commerce Times.

Eliminating tuners

Surprise!  The FCC's tuner mandate for 36"+ TVs goes into effect on July 1st  and apparently an early result will be tuners stripped from some sets.  Thanks to Mark Schubin for pointing in this week's Monday Memo to a story in Digital TV DesignLine, "Tuning stripped out of rear projection CRT TVs" by Dennis P. Barker and to David Liroff for bringing it to my attention.  I can't find the flyer now, but Costco is advertising for July sale an apparently tunerless 32" LCD set for under $900, so this is applying to smaller sets as well.  David's comments: "What few have noticed - with the notable exception of Mark Schubin - is that the FCC's requirement that digital TV sets of certain sizes must have off-air DTV tuners applies **only** to those sets which have analog tuners.  ¶  By not having any tuners in their sets at all (e.g., having consumers rely on cable and satellite set-top boxes and on DVRs and DVD players) the manufacturers can lower the cost of their sets.   ¶  Impact:   even fewer off-air DTV receivers, increasing reliance on cable (and perhaps ultimately on satellite local/local) for reception of broadcast DTV stations.)."  --Dennis

McCain Unveils Measure To End Analog Broadcasts

Here's an update of the story posted here on the 11th:  "Leaders of the commission that investigated the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks joined Tuesday with Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., to promote his legislation setting a fixed date for the end of analog television broadcasting.  ¶   Under the bill, which was scheduled to be introduced late Tuesday, broadcasters would have to return analog TV channels by Jan. 1, 2009 -- clearing stations numbered 52 to 69 and freeing 108 megahertz of spectrum for other uses, including those of "first responders" to acts of terrorism and disasters. ...¶...  McCain -- who chaired the Senate Commerce Committee until late last year -- said the 85 percent clause "is an impossible goal." He added that broadcasters "have committed several times that they would have that spectrum turned over," and he blasted the National Association of Broadcasters. ..."  Link:  National Journal.

Video content set free on Web

Paul Festa writes:  "Suddenly it seems that everyone on the Internet, from corporate giants to nonprofits, wants to host your bulky video content--free of charge.  ¶  For independent filmmakers and video moms, the trend promises to provide venues for distributing the videos that have made easier than ever to produce by a new wave of tiny cameras, inexpensive editing software and more powerful computers.  ¶  But the dot-coms and dot-orgs offering to host these works for free are in it for something potentially far more valuable--the chance to control a Web of the not-so-distant future, one that's overflowing with moving pictures the way that the online world of today teems with text and still images. ...¶... Since its launch two months ago, the site has collected more than 5,000 videos. Founders say they're in negotiations with Google, RealNetworks and Open Media Network, another video-collecting nonprofit started by Netscape pioneers Mike Homer and Marc Andreessen that aims to establish common protocols for sharing media. ..."  Link:  ZDNet News.  Disclosure: I'm chairing a group of public broadcasting stations and independent producers who are working to shape and bring pubcasting and related public service content to Open Media Network.  --Dennis

Sagging Radio Plays Digital Card

High-definition radio -- touted as the most exciting thing to happen to the AM and FM dials since they were invented -- is finally gaining some traction in the United States.  ¶  While hardly anyone can yet receive their gussied-up signals, more than 370 radio stations are now broadcasting in high definition, a digital format that boosts audio quality and limits static. A handful have begun experimenting with digital "multicasting," which allows broadcasters to spawn inexpensive sister stations and could give traditional radio a fighting chance against the pumped-up variety of satellite and internet competitors. ...  Link:  Wired.

Media revolution to be digitized, on demand

Diane Mermigas writes:  "The media and entertainment industries are about to be rocked by a perfect storm of change: the convergence of all-digital television transmission, the prevalence of DVR-type devices, and universal forms of on-demand content -- all of it facilitated by a new standard of personalized portable interactivity.  ¶  Granted, that is a lot to digest, but it is sink or swim time for all players: Hollywood studios and television networks, broadcasters and cable operators, publishers and video game makers, recorded music producers and advertisers. ..."  Link: The Hollywood Reporter.  Last week, this weblog linked to another Diane Mermigas column, Broadcast TV facing broadband realities.  Impressed with both, I googled up a third, B'caster pie shrinks as cable, Internet take off from May 10th.  Don't miss these.

Update, 12/26/2005.  Fixed links.  --Dennis

Bring Tha Noize!

Chris Anderson writes:  "Following my original post on the subject, I've been having some interesting discussions with smart folk about signal-to-noise ratios in the Long Tail. Those ratios are important because they dictate consumer behavior. Too much noise, and people don't buy. And without good filters (from search to recommendations), the Long Tail is just noise. ...  Link:  The Long Tail weblog.  Good, thoughtful post.  --Dennis

Sirius To Boost Programming Capacity

... Sirius Satellite Radio shares were up 5 percent today after the company said it has come up with a new technology that will expand its channel capacity by 25 percent and let it offer advanced services such as video.  ¶  Sirius said today that it has developed a new technology called hierarchical modulation that will allow it to expand its features without affecting the quality of its broadcasts. ...  Link:  E-Commerce Times.

The Power Of Us: Mass collaboration on the Internet is shaking up business

... At the same time, peer power presents difficult challenges for anyone invested in the status quo. Corporations, those citadels of command-and-control, may be in for the biggest jolt. Increasingly, they will have to contend with ad hoc groups of customers who have the power to join forces online to get what they want. Indeed, customers are creating what they want themselves -- designing their own software with colleagues, for instance, and declaring their opinions via blogs instead of waiting for newspapers to print their letters. "It's the democratization of industry," says C.K. Prahalad, a University of Michigan Stephen M. Ross School of Business professor and co-author of the 2004 book The Future of Competition: Co-Creating Unique Value with Customers. "We are seeing the emergence of an economy of the people, by the people, for the people."  ¶  That suggests even more sweeping changes to come. Howard Rheingold, author of Smart Mobs: The Next Social Revolution, sees a common thread in such disparate innovations as the Internet, mobile devices, and the feedback system on eBay, where buyers and sellers rate each other on each transaction. He thinks they're the underpinnings of a new economic order. "These are like the stock companies and liability insurance that made capitalism possible," suggests Rheingold, who's also helping lead the Cooperation Project [pdf] a network of academics and businesses trying to map the new landscape. "They may make some new economic system possible." ...  Link:  BusinessWeek.

Howard Rhinegold (above) has written a report published by Institute for the Future called Technologies of Cooperation (pdf).  Recommended, as is the BusinessWeek article.  --Dennis

Google readying Web-only video search

Google is expected to unveil a search engine for Web-only video this summer that will let people preview media clips from its Web site, CNET News.com has learned.  ¶  Google's planned service will let visitors find free short-form videos such as the popular "Star Wars" video spoofs, according to sources who asked to remain anonymous. The engine will complement the search giant's existing experimental site that lets people search the closed-caption text of television shows from PBS and CNN, among others, and preview accompanying still images. The new capabilities will let people watch roughly 10 seconds of Web video clips for free before shuttling visitors to the video's host site, sources say. ...  Link:  CNET News.com.