...more recent posts
Movie Downloads Coming Soon to the PS3
Any thoughts on this?
Matt's mentioned Tim Wu's most excellent paper on the American wireless scene twice now, but I don't think this horse is dead yet. Wu paints a nice -- and by "nice," I mean kinda horrifying -- picture of what an Internet missing the fundamental principle of neutrality might look like. Take, for example, the state of innovation in the cellular market. Here in the U.S., wireless carriers rule the roost. They control what phones hook up to their networks. Since equipment developers have to design for particular networks, carriers pretty much control their entry into the market. Carriers lock phones to their networks and cripple on them neat technologies like Bluetooth, wi-fi, and even call timers (so as not to have you compare your records to theirs). Couple that with no real standards for software development, and few people bother building exciting new cell phone apps. To get a snazzy new iPhone you have enter into a contract with AT&T/Cingular, which is roughly analogous to Apple telling you that your new MacBook won't go online unless you switch to Comcast. The way wireless works today, innovation is only tolerated if it benefits the carrier, not the consumer.
Wireline (you know, when phones have wires) is of course pretty different. Yeah, the landline phone companies once argued that it was technically necessary for theirs to be "totally unified" systems. But today we can hook up just about any device to a phone line -- like, say, a modem -- because we were smart enough to enshrine the idea of open networks into law.
Over at the Agonist, Ian Welsh has more on the American wireless landscape, written in sort of fairy tale prose. Whatever it takes. In convincing people of the dangers of a carrier-controlled Internet, I think we could do worse than to get them to reflect on their own personal experiences as cell phone consumers.
FTC urged to step up its oversight of telecommunications companies offering Internet access
(for tom) history of mp3 players.
Long Tail My Ass
When I gave away all my vinyl, I gave up the 1981 League of Gentlemen album (Robert Fripp, et al), which I've never found on CD. Well, it's not on CD. I haven't seen any legit MP3 outlets, including dgmlive.com. It's a really good album by an artist who is still very active. But my only legitimate route is to find a 26 year-old vinyl disk. I'd buy a friggin flac ... right now. But nooooooooooo!
Verizon Said No to Apple's iPhone Two Years Ago
AACS Attack: a Clear and Present Danger to DRM
Years ago, porn infiltrated CES. Then they were told to get their own show. The AVN show was winding up Thursday and CES was shutting down. Porn can have a big impact on consumer electronics. For example, porn helped VHS win, and now ...
AVN: Will Blu-ray walk into the anti-porn trap?
Bipartisan network neutrality bill introduced in Senate.
Everyone's doing the "connected home". By that I mean convergence of PCs, TVs, digital content, media servers, internet-based content, homenetworking, mobiles, yada, yada. Way too much stuff to try to process or even capture right now. Below is an angle from Sony -- a TV that gets content from the internet. A Sony TV pulling up content from the Sony media properties cuts a shitload of middlemen right out of the equation. Interesting.
Anyway, the issue is making it easy. I know people that get overwhelmed when a third remote control enters the equation. I don't know the answer, but whoever figures out how to harness the power of convergence is a way that's easy to use will do very well.
CES Update: Sony Bringing Internet Video To HDTV
January 8th, 2007
Sony Electronics today announced a first of its kind TV feature called BRAVIA Internet Video Link that will allow most of its new televisions to access free Internet video content, including high-definition, from providers including AOL, Yahoo! and Grouper, as well as Sony Pictures Entertainment and Sony BMG Music.According to Stan Glasgow, president and chief operating officer of Sony Electronics, “This initiative will not only enhance the entertainment experience for owners of Sony Internet video-ready HDTVs, but also reinforce our defining strategy of providing more personalization of products and content for consumers that no other company can offer.”
big 108 inch
Verizon set to broadcast TV shows to phones
CES 2007: Netgear and BitTorrent team up on high-definition content delivery -- IP-based media reciever. Competition to Akimbo?
CES 2007: 200 GB Blu-ray discs, 16.5 GB Mini discs in the works
Lessig: Dems to the Net: Go to hell
youtvpc
YouTube takes videos to mobile phones