Technology360

Aluratek's USB Internet Radio Jukebox

Eastern Region Public Media's Executive Director, Georgette Bronfman, was (if you'll excuse the expression) flashing around Aluratek's tiny "internet radio" in a thumb drive at the NPR board meeting last week.  I had to get one, of course, so ordered it from Amazon.  Turns out there's no radio at all in it.  It's just a small flash drive containing exe and autorun files that you plug into your computer's USB port while your computer is connected to the internet.  The exe file accesses a database of station streaming feeds (public radio is one category) and seems to access them pretty quickly when in use.  Visuals include a pretty light on the thumb drive and ads for other Aluratek products (including a real internet radio) on the control panel.  There are many other options for accessing public radio streams, including the excellent and free publicradiofan.com, but if you'd like an easy access point providing a large number of commercial radio streams, it's probably worth the $33 + shipping. 

It would be a simple programming task for someone to make an exe dedicated to your stations feeds and archives and, of course, adding a link to npr.org.  Put it in a small commodity thumb drive and you have a pretty nifty premium.

Not all public radio stations are in the database and those that are may not be described the way you want yours branded.  This is a good reminder that we need to find a way to stay on top of listings in the increasing array of databases such as this one and the one on Nokia FM-capable phones that I use regularly.  --Dennis

The remote control as platform

I've written here before about how, increasingly, remote controls need to be considered media platforms in their own right rather than mere appendages to other devices.  The wonderfully intuitive TiVo remote is one example and Nintendo's Wii remote is another (the Comcast DVR remote is IMHO a frustrating counter-example).

Pictured to the right is the Freespace™ from Hillcrest Labs.  The Washington Post Thursday carried a story about how Hillcrest had filed a complaint with the U.S. International Trade Commission and a suit against Nintendo in U.S. District Court for patent infringement.  The gadget blog, Gizmodo, had more details, and earlier had a very positive review about Hillcrest's loop-shaped remote control which characterized it as better than the Wii.

I don't know anything about the merits of this complaint, but think there's a bunch of room for innovation in this space.  Now, if they can just get Comcast to license them.  --Dennis

R.I.P., HD DVD

Back in the early 80s, I bought a Betamax VCR and replaced that with another Betamax VCR before that format bit the dust and VHS won.  I can really pick 'em.  Just over a year ago, I bought a Toshiba HD DVD when Costco dropped the price to $300.  It's now a pretty good upscaling DVD player, but you can buy them for under $100.

Cliff Edwards writes:

... while Toshiba lies vanquished, the Blu-ray camp now faces a slew of technical, business, and marketing challenges in driving consumer adoption of their victorious standard. To an extent, those issues have been just as much to blame as the format war for slowing the adoption of the high-definition successor to the standard DVD format. "Now that the format war is over, it's just dawning on everybody that our work is just beginning," says Andy Parsons, chairman of the Blu-ray Disc Association, and a senior vice-president at Pioneer. ...

Link:  BusinessWeek.  --Dennis

Boy Scouts, Meals on Wheels to help with DTV transition information?

John Eggerton reports:

How far has the federal campaign for the digital-TV transition gone? The National Telecommunications and Information Administration considered deploying the Boy Scouts of America to help inform over-the-air analog TV viewers that they could lose their TV picture at 12:01 a.m. Feb. 18, 2009, just one year from today, unless they get a converter box, a new TV, or are already hooked up to cable or satellite.  ¶  Converter-box retailers held talks with Boy Scout organizations about coming up with a DTV-transition merit badge for helping some older ladies and gentlemen cross the digital divide, although the plan may be scrapped over concerns about sending scouts into strangers' homes. Meanwhile, the Federal Communications Commission is talking to the Meals on Wheels Association of America about delivering DTV education along with food. ...

Link:  Broadcasting & Cable.  Help that elderly person cross the street and give him a $40 coupon, too.  --Dennis

Slacker's portable device is shipping

Slacker, an online music service that learns from user responses, is now shipping its portable listening device (think of it as a radio), according to Joanna Stern in Laptop magazine.  Her article carries an interview with Slacker's marketing VP that's worth reading, especially for what's coming next.  Slacker's approach is compelling because it combines personalization with portability in one device, and can update without a USB tether.  --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

Sony PlayStation Getting Internet Radio

Internet radio continues to grow much faster than did FM (or maybe even AM -- I'm old, but not that old).  Here's another development.  Dave Zatz reports:

Sony has announced that Japanese PSP owners will be getting an update (3.80) next week that includes Internet radio streaming. Interestingly, the screenshot (below) says “Powered by SHOUTcast”… which is produced by an AOL subsidiary. The software also includes enhanced RSS support for OPML and images. I assume these features will make it to the US in the near future, though we obviously won’t be receiving (or utilizing) the ability to schedule video recordings via digital tuner. ...

Link:  Zatz Not Funny!.  Thanks to Mark Ramsey for the tip.  --Dennis

Farewell to the Great CRT

Television engineering legend Charlie Rhodes has a wonderful history of television displays in an article of this name in TV Technology.  Thanks to Cliff Benham for the tip.  --Dennis

Why Low Def Is the New HD

Daniel Eran Dilger takes a while to get to his point (though along the way you get a very good education about consumer video), but that point is a very interesting one about the video marketplace today.  He writes:

... Apple happens to be positioned to ride the sweet spot of LD/SD content right now, and has the infrastructure and hardware to deliver HD content using the same iTunes ecosystem with Apple TV in the future. Apple has bet on the mainstream 720p HD format as the best balance between high quality content and downloadable file sizes.  ¶  That will enable the company to transition to offering HD programming from iTunes as consumer’s bandwidth availability increases and the demand for HD expands. Until that happens on a large scale, Apple will continues to sell the most content because it has targeted what consumers want–convenient downloads–not what other vendors are all trying to sell: high end, high priced HD. ...

... Estimates suggest that by the end of the year, there will be an installed base of about a million standalone HD-DVD and Blu-Ray disc players, besides the 7-8 million PlayStation 3 consoles that can also play Blu-Ray discs. That makes less than ten million HD players in total, compared to around 40 million video playing iPods, and hundreds of millions of iTunes installations capable of playing back iTunes content directly from a computer or through an Apple TV. ...

Link:  RoughlyDrafted Magazine.  Highly recommended article.  Thanks to Craig Birkmaier for the tip.  --Dennis

The Google Set-Top Box

Erick Schonfeld writes:

Deep in the Googleplex there is an engineering team thinking about how to extend Google’s reach into your TV. Its work goes way beyond the Google TV ads currently being tested by EchoStar (and targeted with help from Nielsen).  It even goes way beyond the development of a Google set-top box, which has been hinted at in the past.  In fact, Google may very well want to do to the set-top box what it is trying to do to the mobile phone with its Android operating system—create an open-source hardware platform and attract developers to build applications on top of it. At least that is the unconfirmed rumor I’ve heard from two knowledgeable industry sources. ...

Link:  TechCrunch.  --Dennis