Technology360

New WiMAX variation may make it more alluring to carriers

Eric Bangeman writes:

... WiMAX is poised to break out in 2008. But one of the things that could conceivably hold it back from even wider adoption is its confinement to a relatively small slice of spectrum. That may change, as the WiMAX Forum has begun work on a variation of the mobile WiMAX spec that will allow it to operate in spectrum currently used for 3G networks. ...

Link:  Ars Technica.  --Dennis

Get nostalgic and listen to good old FM radio!

I just bought a Nokia N810 "Internet tablet," a very cool under $500 device that I'm hoping will replace my HP PDA and my Sprint multimedia phone.  The device uses OS2008, an operating system that's essentially Maemo, which in turn is based on the Debian flavor of Linux.  Among the software offered is a software-defined FM radio.  Great, I thought before I learned it works only on the older N800. 

The software offer on the Nokia site carries the headline I used for this post plus this description (ouch!):

Before the internet and the digital revolution, music was analog and most of us listened to FM radio. You might remember fixing the antenna in the most perfect position, and the noise when tuning the channels. If you don't remember or you want re-experience it, download the FM radio application now!

Link:  Nokia. 

For its size (smaller than the HP PDA), the N810 has a great screen and ditto for its stereo speakers -- the first really listenable ones I've seen in a portable device -- and comes with its own "Internet radio" pre-programmed with a bunch of stations.  More and more I think we broadcasters need to figure out how to get on these lists.  The N810 connects to the 'Net by a user-friendly WiFi implementation and also has Bluetooth so you can connect through your phone.  Oh, and it has GPS, too.  --Dennis

BBC iPlayer puts rocky start behind...

Daniel Langendorf writes:

The BBC heavily promoted its iPlayer, an online TV catchup service, on TV, in the press, and online during the holiday season. The effort seems to have paid off. Sort of.   ¶  UK Internet traffic to the iPlayer Website increased “14-fold between the week ending 8 December 2007 and the week ending 5 January,” according to Hitwise, and the service ranked as the 80th most visited Website in the U.K., having peaked at No. 62 on New Year’s Day.  ¶  It appears that the BBC has recovered from its rocky online TV start. When the initial iPlayer was launched, it was not without controversy. The BBC was accused of being corrupt due to the player’s reliance on Microsoft technology and lack of Mac/Linux support. UK ISPs were also critical of the iPlayer’s use of peer-to-peer technology and potentially high bandwidth costs. ...

Link:  last100.  --Dennis

Key To Recession Survival: Master Consumer Media Habits

Diane Mermigas writes:

... According to the North American Technologies [Technographics®] Benchmark Survey published by Forrester Research, all adult consumers still devote more than twice as many hours in a typical week watching television as using the Internet.  Gen Yers 18-27 are moving toward parody [parity] in spending as many hours online as watching TV.  But they also spend nearly as much time watching DVDs–a hybrid activity on TVs, PCs and video-game consoles.  It suggests what other surveys also reflect: Young consumers move fluidly from one media-related activity to another (whether interactive or passive) because a screen is a screen is a screen.  ¶  However, as interactivity becomes more pervasive and all of television goes digital in a year, more Boomer consumers will follow suit.  So the increasing interactive attention and spending of consumers ages 42 to 62 is key.  These 78 million Boomers (the single largest demographic segment) already make a healthy showing in an array of interactive activities–from managing and printing personal photos to conducting finance and security checks.  The focus should be on how to increase maturing consumers’ routine use of interactive devises for potentially profitable social networking–e-commerce, entertainment and communications –not a comparison to younger early adopter habits. ...

Link:  MediaPost.  Link and corrections added.  --Dennis

Internet radio developments

Update 14 January 2008, correcting earlier post.

Here are a couple of reports on Internet radio developments, the fastest growing disruption of broadcasting to date.

In Radio's next evolution is on a tabletop now...and it's not HD, Mark Ramsey writes about RCA's "Infinite Radio."  The unit tunes standard AM and FM (not HD Radio), Internet radio, and Slacker radio, the latter a service that allows one to set up custom "radio" channels that customize and optimize music choices from user preferences and gestures.  Mark is a long-time critic of HD Radio, but there's no reason why HD Radios in the age of IP-to-the-dashboard (see Rob Patersonn post, The Last Web Frontier - The Car) can't also seamlessly do something very similar (see my post from March, A many-to-many radio using HD + IP).  Use your imagination.  Link:  hear2.0.  Thanks to Katy June-Friesen at Current Karen Everhart at Current for the tip.

Rafe Needleman has a report from CES on FlyTunes, an Internet radio aggregator that makes your iPhone or iPod touch into an Internet radio.  Pretty cool.  The article also has a picture of a tabletop Internet radio from Asus.  Link:  CNET CES 2008.  --Dennis

Steve Jobs' Video Dreams

Peter Burrows and Ronald Glover write:

... While Apple's dramatic comeback thanks to digital music and the iPod reads like a Hollywood screenplay, Jobs' efforts in video-land won't follow the same script. Indeed, two years after Apple added video capability to its iPod line and began selling a smattering of shows and movies on the iTunes Music Store, its share in video remains minuscule.  ¶  Jobs is planning a major offensive to try to change all that, with at least some of the details to be announced at Macworld on Jan. 15. Most important, he plans to launch a movie rental service on iTunes for the first time. Apple is in furious negotiations with top studios to make their new releases available for the service, as well as for sale. BusinessWeek has learned that Apple is nearing deals with Warner Bros. ... and Paramount ..., and has already secured deals with Disney ... and 20th Century Fox. Apple is also planning a major upgrade of the slow-selling Apple TV set-top box. ...

Link:  BusinessWeek.  --Dennis

Learning from CES and the music industry

Mark Ramsey has two must-read posts.  Here's one on what we should be learning from this year's CES, including:

... The fundamental problem in our industry is, frankly, that we have so little content unique to us and so little content bigger than us.  ¶  If you're all about the music then you're about nothing unique at all. And it has taken the obliteration of radio's monopoly over listeners' ears for this to be made apparent.  ¶  Get this straight: It doesn't matter that you have a tower. It doesn't matter how many HD sub-channels you have. We have been borrowing the attention of millions of listeners all this time and now we must earn it. ...

Link:  hear2.0.

And this is from one about music industry trends:

... the transitional nature of all - ALL - recorded technology that distributes music to consumers. That is, one technology shrinks as another expands, ad infinitum. Radio, too, is a technology, a very well established and popular one. The erosion we're currently seeing in radio usage - especially among the young - is not a hiccup. It is part of a long-term trend we are only beginning to experience. The more we face competitive alternatives which substitute for radio's core benefits, the more this trend will accelerate. ...

Link:  hear2.0. 

Update 10 January 2008:
Mark's writing about lessons for radio.  Marketing guru/writer Seth Godin has also posted about lessons from the music business, but targets all purveyors of digital distribution with his advice, starting with this gem:

The first rule is so important, it’s rule 0:

0. The new thing is never as good as the old thing, at least right now.
Soon, the new thing will be better than the old thing will be. But if you wait until then, it’s going to be too late.  Feel free to wax nostalgic about the old thing, but don’t fool yourself into believing it’s going to be here forever. It won’t.

Link:  Seth Godin's Blog.  Thanks to Paul Maloney for the tip in Kurt Hanson's Radio and Internet Newsletter.  --Dennis

Horowitz Assoc.: news video has top online usage

Horowitz Associates has released a study of broadband video consumption on multiple platforms.  It's the first I've seen that gives information about the relative popularity of what people are using.  And it's good news for those of us in public media.  News video segments top the list, moving from 22% to 36% online weekly usage, 2006 to 2007.  That beats "non-professional online videos," which doubled from 15% to 30%.  The report overview says this about motivation:

... While consumption of broadband video has grown, the study shows that television is still the preferred platform for traditional TV content.  The vast majority (70%) of Internet users who watch TV online say do so because they missed the episode on TV.  About two out of ten (18%) of these respondents say they watch TV shows online to watch them a second time (after having watched them on TV), or that they watch TV shows online just when they happen to find them or when someone else tells them about them (20%).  Conversely, one out of ten (13%) Internet users who watch TV shows online say they watch them directly online, and not on regular TV. ...

Link:  Horowitz Associates.  Thanks to Craig Birkmaier on the OpenDTV mail list.  --Dennis