Technology360

Wireless Spectrum Bidders Put Down Billions

Om Malik reports interestingly on who is on the FCC's list of 168 qualified bidders for the Advanced Wireless Services spectrum auction.  Link:  GigaOM.  Update:  Katie Fehrenbacher has some analysis, also at  GigaOM.  --Dennis

Marshall McLuhan and the laws of the media

Ross Dawson just finished reading a 1998 biography of McLuhan and found the following:

One new thing I learned about in reading the book was what McLuhan called the Tetrads, or the “laws of the media”.  it stirkes [It strikes] me that these “laws” are actually highly relevant to strategic analysis of any industry which is undergoing rapid change. I still have to dig up the original material to interpret it properly, but the following is my loose interpretation of McLuhan’s Tetrads.

1. Any innovative technology enhances or accelerates some of what existed before.
[Q: What does it enhance or accelerate?]
2. Any innovative technology erodes or renders obsolescent some of what existed before.
[Q: What does it erode or obselesce?]
3. Any innovative technology retrieves something that has become obsolescent.
[Q: What does it retrieve that has eroded or become obsolescent?]
4. Any innovative technology, when pushed to the limits of its potential, reverses or flips into something entirely new.
[Q: What does it reverse or flip into?]

Link:  Future Exploration Network.

DVRs Are on the Rise

Meredith Deliso writes:

Use of DVRs is on the rise, and so are studies observing its users. The latest, from Mediamark Research Inc., culls demographic information on DVR households, such as education and media habits. The study found that the percentage of households with digital video recorders is up to 11.2% from last fall's 8.6%. ...

Link: Ad Age.

ABC's Streaming Video Success

Claire Atkinson writes:

ABC's streaming-video experiment earlier this year on ABC.com will become a real offering in October, said Anne Sweeney, Walt Disney Co. co-chair-media networks and president of Disney-ABC TV. The network said the experiment was a success for advertisers, given that research showed users had 87% recall of the advertisers involved.  ¶  Average recall of advertising on TV is about 24%. Each program that streamed was supported by a single advertiser. ...

Link:  Ad Age.

Social Networking Will Change How Companies Advertise

Gavin O'Malley writes:

Advertisers will spend $1.9 billion on social-networking sites in 2010, according to new estimates from eMarketer. And, while those sites will continue to capture a relatively small share of all online ad spending, analysts believe the phenomenon is having an incalculable impact on strategies for reaching newly empowered consumers.

Link:  Ad Age Digital.

Google rides the radio waves

Elinor Mills writes:

Google-powered ads, which have become a mainstay on Web sites, are now being played on at least one radio station in Detroit. And like so many other Motor City radio products, it won't be long before they go global. Google Chief Executive Eric Schmidt said in a conference call with analysts last week that the search giant plans to make its radio-ad business generally available within three months.  ¶ "We are in the process of introducing AdSense for radio, which is essentially the integration of the dMarc console and management tools into our advertising system. There are a number of very interesting deals being negotiated," Schmidt said. It's a typically ambitious effort for Google, which got into the radio business in January with its $102 million acquisition of dMarc Broadcasting, a company that had an automated radio advertising system. ...

Link:  CNET News.com.

The Attention Economy and the Music Business

Gerd Leonhard writes:

... 10 years after the birth of MP3, the music industry is now in the throngs of this powerful shift from 'having distribution' as a gatekeeper to 'having people's attention' as the holy grail. It boggles the mind, but it is now no longer relevant (or shall we say… sufficient) to have distribution, i.e. to have a replication facility, a retail network, reserved shelf space at the point-of-sale, or frequency slots (if you are radio company), or a satellite in orbit, or a cable network – what really matters is how many people care about what's IN your network!  ¶   What's more, soon, it will matter less and less that you can store 10.000 hours of video, or that you can pipe it through your network to users around the world, as it will get dramatically cheaper and easier to do this, and within 7 years pretty much anyone can be a broadcaster or media service provider; at least in technical terms. ...

Link:  Digital-Lifestyles.info.

Why [her] cable DVR stinks

Marguerite Reardon has been having problems with her cable DVR -- DVRs, actually.  She writes:

... In March, Cablevision announced plans to test a new digital video recording service that allowed users to record and manage content through their existing set-top boxes, which would access a network-based DVR housed miles away in a Cablevision office.  ¶  The network-based DVR could save Cablevision tons of money, because company won't have to deploy and manage sophisticated devices in every subscriber's home. And subscribers wouldn't have to deal with the headache of boxes that reboot or fail altogether. But content owners quickly responded with threats of legal action, citing concerns over protecting copyright material. As a result, Cablevision put its test on hold until the digital rights management issues can be worked out, the company said. ...

Link:  CNET News.com.

Life Online: The growth and impact of the internet (and related technologies)

Lee Rainie, founding director of the Pew Internet & American Life Project, gave a presentation with this title on Friday to the CTCNet (Community Technology Centers' Network) conference in Washington.  The slide deck for this conference has been posted to the Pew site and is a rich overview of Pew's research findings and environmental scan about "life online."  Check it out.  Link: Pew Internet & American Life Project. [pdf] --Dennis

WiFi Eyes the Empty Airwaves

Mark Gimein writes:

... Look at a chart of how the airwaves are divided, and you'll see sections devoted to radio, TV, cell phones, police radios, and other devices, each of which has its own band of frequencies. Policymakers have talked about allocating those frequencies more efficiently. Reducing the space given over to TV by moving to digital broadcasts has been one key aim. ¶  Now Michael Calabrese, a vice-president at the New America Foundation, a liberal Washington think tank, has advanced a new plan to use some of the wireless spectrum. It qualifies as one of the most promising and innovative ideas in communications. The idea: to open up "white space"—unused frequencies between TV channels—for unlicensed use to anybody who wants to put up a transmitter. ...

Link:  BusinessWeek.

But many broadcasters are pushing back.  See Charles Rhodes's, What Is That Noise in the White Channel?  (link:  TV Technology) and Unlicensed Devices Could Compromise EAS (link: TV Technology). 

I've been hoping for a "middle way" (see Interference to DTV reception by unlicensed devices).  --Dennis