Submitted by acohill on Wed, 09/01/2010 - 13:45
Apple has announced a new version of Apple TV. Apple has cut both the price and size of the device; it's now tiny compared to the old version, and costs only $99. The old version of the product was able to store movies and TV shows, but the new version only streams movies and TV, either from online sources or from content stored on a nearby Mac computer.
TV shows are going to typically rent for ninety-nine cents, and HD movies will go for $5. At a buck a TV show, a typical household could watch a lot of "must see" TV before you would spend more than the average $65/month cost of cable TV. And you can watch Netflix movies on demand for free if you are already a Netflix customer. The new device also retains the ability to stream and play music from a nearby iTunes music library; ditto with photos from a local iPhoto picture album. And Apple TV can be controlled with an iPhone or an iPod Touch. Apple has pretty much completed the transition to an all-digital, fully integrated music/TV/movies/pictures system.
Submitted by acohill on Mon, 07/26/2010 - 09:37
The InterTubes are a a-flutter with articles about Wal-Mart's plans to use RFID smart tags on clothing. The little tags are readable via wireless handheld devices, and the new system will allow Wal-Mart to manage inventory better. Every article I have read, including this reasonably well-balanced one from USA Today, talks about "privacy concerns." But USA Today, near the end of the article, provides the necessary information to understand just how big the privacy threat is: not very big. The RFID tags will be removable, and will probably just be embedded in or attached to existing price/product tags. So when you take the item home, you cut off the product tags as you usually would, and Wal-Mart can no longer 'track' your item. And they could only track it if you went back in the store, and so on.
I have a lot of issues with privacy, especially with "free" Internet services that track what I do online. I'm planning a camping trip and have been using several search engines to find some camping items. And lo--almost every Web page I look at now seems to have ads from camping supply stores, meaning that the search engines have a dossier that is actively updated with the results of my searches. That I don't like at all, and no, I don't find it "convenient" that the search engines helpfully pepper me with targeted ads.
But the Wal-Mart tags? That I'm not at all worried about.
Submitted by acohill on Mon, 07/12/2010 - 12:42
Like all popular Internet services, Facebook has enjoyed rapid growth over the past three or four years, as the service added many hundreds of thousands of users a week (or more--millions in some past months). But that growth has finally stalled out, as everyone who wants to be on Facebook already is. Geometric growth is a wonderful thing, but there was always a finite limit to that growth. Even more telling, the amount of activity by registered users has also dropped.
Facebook is a handy tool for staying in contact with friends and family and for organizing groups for things as mundane as a family reunion or scout troop. The service also gets wide use for causes (Friends of Calico Cats, Save Lindsay Lohan from Herself, etc.). But I have observed this growth phenomena repeatedly with other services, dating back to the early nineties and the first "killer app," email. Eventually everyone that wanted one got an email account, and that was the end of the email boom.
Facebook is vulnerable to competitors and perhaps the biggest danger is not managing internal costs; the company must now trim costs and manage budgets closely, and this does not always happen in time following a rapid and prolonged growth phase.
Submitted by acohill on Mon, 06/07/2010 - 08:16
Lately, visiting some of my regular "regular read" blogs, I'm finding not only fewer posts but notes from the bloggers that after five or six years, they are turning the blog off or just posting a lot less. The comments all seem to run in the same direction: "I've said everything I have wanted to say." And regular readers of this blog may have noticed that I am posting a lot less than I was three or four years ago. Part of the change is due the the growth in Design Nine; we're planning and building more networks in more places around the country than we were three or four years ago. But the technology of broadband has also matured, and there is less to write about. But I'm not turning the blog off yet. There is plenty of broadband news, and lots of other interesting technology. Nor do I think the age of blogs is over, but I think the "newbie" phenomenon of blogs has peaked. As I have written in the past, good bloggers are good writers, and there are few good writers. Anyone can post a few odd items to a blog, but only a love of writing will sustain a blog over a longer period of time. The fact that some blogs are slowing or shutting down is a sign that this particular medium is maturing. Fewer, higher quality blogs are, all in all, a good thing.
Submitted by acohill on Wed, 06/02/2010 - 07:50
Here is an article that says the median age of traditional TV viewers has moved up to nearly 51 years old. For an industry that covets the 25-44 year old demographic, that has to be bad news. It explains why you see so many laxative,Viagra, and arthritis ads on TV--nothing but creaky and cranky old folks watching. A massive wave of tablet computers, optimized for video, are going to accelerate the trend away from sitting in front of the "TV." Indeed, the term "TV" is rapidly becoming an anachronism, as more and more people are going to be saying, "What's on the pad?"
Submitted by acohill on Fri, 05/21/2010 - 12:49
Google has announced the fall, 2010 availability of Google TV, which is a set top box but may also be built in to some new TVs. The little video that is embedded in the linked article shows an interface that looks remarkably similar to the interface used by the Apple TV appliance, which is also a set top box. Either Apple nailed the interface design for this kind of device, or Google could not come up with anything better, or both.
The problem I suspect I will have with Google TV is that I"m pretty sure the Google TV device will send everything I watch or anyone in my family watches to Google, where they will add it to the massive dossier they have already collected on me and everyone else in the country. Google TV will also conveniently, I'm sure, provide handy connections to other Google services like Google Docs. Google is going to take over your life, one little "free" service at a time, until you can't do anything on the Web without touching some kind of Google service. Google could easily build in an "opt in" feature that only allows them to collect personal information if you expressly agree, but their general tendency for other products and services is to collect first and ask later, or worse, include a requirement to let them have all your personal information in return for the "free" service. It's a Faustian bargain.
Submitted by acohill on Fri, 05/07/2010 - 13:19
Design Nine has been an advocate for open access for many years--long before it became fashionable. So it is nice to see that some places are finally figuring out that open access is the right way to do telecom. Via Ars Technica, the Australian government has announced a $38 billion (in U.S. dollars) plan to take fiber to most Australian homes and businesses. The government intends to operate it as a open access network, with private sector providers offering all the services. The article notes that the country has decided it will not impede economic development by allowing a single incumbent to make long term decision about how much broadband is enough.
Submitted by acohill on Tue, 05/04/2010 - 08:39
Almost everything written about the iPad to date has been speculative and overwrought because most of the writers had little or no time actually using the iPad. Depending on what you read, you might come away believing the iPad was the worst device in the history of handhelds (...NO USB PORT MAKES IT USELESS!!) or the most important new device since the mainframe. Here is a thoughtful review that compares the iPad to the Kindle for reading books. My take: Kindle still has a bit of an edge, but as the software book readers for the iPad improve, the Kindle is toast.
Submitted by acohill on Tue, 05/04/2010 - 08:11
Microsoft has announced that for Internet Explorer 9 (IE9), the company has a preference for HTML5 and the H.264 video codec. Flash plug-ins will continue to be supported, but IE9 will only have native support for H.264. This follows on the path blazed by Apple, which decided a while back not support Flash at all on the iPhone and iPod. The controversy has heated up with the release of the iPad, which continues the Apple strategy of no Flash support at all. With both Apple and Microsoft coming out against Flash, Flash is essentially dead, and Adobe has lost this battle. Some years ago, Adobe elected to "win" by buying up competitors and killing off their products rather than competing on price. As a result, professional graphics designers and Web designers have fewer pro-level tools to choose from and much higher prices. Adobe is now beginning to pay the price for its monopoly-style attempt to control the marketplace.
Submitted by acohill on Thu, 04/29/2010 - 13:29
Apple is now worth more than Google. Last year, profits increased by 39% to almost $10 billion. That's a profit margin three times bigger than Hewlett-Packard. Over ten years, Apple profits have increased by more than 2,000%. Apple is bigger than Intel and Cisco.
Submitted by acohill on Mon, 04/05/2010 - 13:27
This article from Cory Doctorow is similar to a couple of other contrarian articles that have come out in the past week--they all complain about the perceived "closed" nature of the iPad and/or say that the iPad is not going to save the publishing business.
Doctorow complains that there is little opportunity to hack the iPad; he is coming at this criticism from a hardware perspective. He wants to be able to open it up and do stuff with innards, and talks about how great the Apple II was because you hack that to your hearts content. But I remember those days, and did a fair amount of hacking myself. While it was fun, hackers back then were still a minority, and they still are today. It is pretty hard to make something that weighs a pound and a half that you can hold in your lap AND take apart and mess around with. If Doctorow wants to hack stuff, well, that's what the Arduino is for. I would have killed for an Arduino back in the Apple II days. I don't really get his complaint here, as there is plenty of stuff that can be nicely hacked, but that's not the market Apple is going after.
But I would argue that the iPad is very open--from a software perspective, and one only need look at the three thousand plus applications that already run on the iPad. Most of these apps are being written by small, wrote it in my bedroom, software outfits--the very kind of "hacker" types that Doctorow claims are locked out by Apple. Before the end of 2010, there will be tens of thousands of apps for the iPad, because Apple has created great software development tools that make it really easy to write software for the iPad.
Doctorow, like Jose Vargas and many others, also insists that the iPad is not going to save "traditional" magazine and newspaper publishers. I agree, but I think they are missing the point. The iPad is not going to help magazines like Time and Newsweek. But Apple's end to end publishing model that includes the iPad and the iTunes Store makes it possible for almost anyone to go into the publishing business. And so the big traditional media rags like Time and Newsweek and many newspapers will continue their slow decline toward irrelevance. But in their place, a host of new publications, with new pricing models, new editorial and writing models, and more relevant content will take their place.
The iPad is not going to save traditional media, unless traditional media wants to change to adapt to the times. Instead, the iPad is going to be a boon to new media, in many forms--the written word, the drawn image, the video, the TV program, the game. We will not know the full extent of the iPad's influence for at least a couple of years, but I think its effects will be more far-reaching than the iPod.
Submitted by acohill on Tue, 02/02/2010 - 09:36
The iPad continues to generate enormous discussion on the Intertubes; while I have seen a lot of commentary about how it might be used in higher ed, I have seen very little about how it might be used by kids. The most obvious higher ed connection is as a replacement for textbooks, which are murderously expensive. A college student with an iPad can carry around an entire library of textbooks and should be able to save a lot of money at the same time. Textbook costs ought to decline over time, not to the $15 dollar level, but perhaps by 50% from $60 to $30 (and many technical textbooks are pushing $100 or more).
But the iPad strikes me as the perfect computer for middle school and high school. Smaller, lighter, no moving parts, much less to go wrong, and with plenty of horsepower to handle routine school assignments, which are mostly typing essays and papers. And you could do a lot of interesting basic math with a program like Apple's Numbers spreadsheet application. Apple is selling its three productivity programs for $9.99 each (word processsing, spreadsheet, presentations), about a third of the price of the cost of them for a laptop. With the dock and keyboard and wireless printing to a shared printer, kids have everything they need for school at much less than you might spend for a bare bones Apple laptop. I know there are very inexpensive Windows laptops available, but they still come with all the drawbacks of a laptop--heavy, moving parts, more susceptible to viruses, expensive software, etc.
Like the iPod, the iPad is going to change the way we do a lot of things. And like the iPod, it will create a lot of new business opportunities.
Submitted by acohill on Mon, 01/25/2010 - 17:24
A short, good analysis of six industries that Apple's tablet computer could change. Apple is expected to roll out the device next week.
Submitted by acohill on Tue, 01/05/2010 - 10:15
Here is a roundup of rumors about the new Apple tablet. Apple has announced a media event late this month, but is not saying what the announcement is about. Until very recently, most pundits were guessing Apple's table computer would not be announced until June of this year, but I think the increasing interest in the Google Android phone may have caused Apple to move up their announcement to suck all the oxygen out of the room and take the media focus off Android.
If that is Apple's strategy, it is likely to work. The iTablet or iSlate (nobody really knows what the final name will be) will relegate the Amazon Kindle and other bookreaders to strictly second tier status, much like the iPod put all other MP3 music players into a permanent also-ran status, and completely transformed the music industry.
There is still much debate about whether the new device will have an iPhone style interface or a Mac style interface, with the conventional wisdom betting on the iPhone. But what a lot of people forget is that it probably does not matter very much, because the iPhone is a Macintosh underneath. Every single iPhone has the full power of a desktop or laptop Macintosh. So the iSlate may look more like an iPhone, but as it evolves, Apple can easily and quickly add more functionality just by peeling away the cover on the hidden power.
Why is this device going to be revolutionary? It won't be just the technology--Microsoft has a tablet operating system for years. What Apple is likely to unveil along with the iTablet is a new section of the iTunes Store, stocked with magazines and newspapers. iSlate owners will be able to subscribe to a wide variety of publishing content and get the content wirelessly on their iSlate. This will save the rapidly collapsing magazine and newspaper businesses, which have been unable to find or build their way out of the two century old paper-based distribution model. With the cost of distribution of a newspaper or magazine slashed to nearly zero, papers and magazines will be able to focus on high quality writing and reporting, which is always in short supply.
As with other breakthrough Apple technologies, new kinds of opportunities will emerge quickly, creating new businesses and jobs where none existed before. One big sea change will be in higher ed, where colleges and universities that are smart will simply issue every student an iSlate on the first day of freshman year. Faculty will be able to provide their students with very high quality (book quality) class notes, multimedia presentations, and even administer tests via the iTablet. Can't they do all that now? Sure, but not with the kind of high quality interface and superb usability that the iSlate will bring. And textbook prices should come down, although some textbook publishers will resist.
The iTablet will allow new college textbook writers to enter the marketplace quickly and easily, just the way the iPhone App Store has created thousands of new software publishing businesses. Writing a textbook will no longer require years of negotiation with publishing houses still operating on a business model developed during the era of Charles Dickens. Instead, textbook writers will be able to market directly to faculty at colleges and universities, with the textbook distributed at very low cost via the iSlate Textbook Store.
The big, sheet of paper size screen of the iTablet will allow colleges and universities to create "virtual registrar" interfaces that will give students the ability to fill out and submit forms quickly and easily from anywhere, with much better interfaces and ease of use than Web forms (because of the direct input pen interface).
The iSlate will also boost TV show and movie sales, with the existing iTunes TV/movies section all ready to send video content directly to a large, comfortable, easy to watch screen.
Apple has been planning this for years. Note that Apple has had wireless keyboards and mice for some time, and continues to roll out improved wireless devices like the popular Magic Mouse. Prop the iTablet up on a desk, start typing away on your wireless keyboard, and you have most of the functionality of a laptop.
If the first decade of the 21st century was dominated by Apple and the iPod, the second decade will be dominated again by Apple with the iSlate. Stand by and watch the fun begin as the publishing world is turned upside down.
Submitted by acohill on Tue, 12/29/2009 - 15:05
The recently announced Blockbuster store closings will cut about 20% of the firm's stores. Blockbuster plans to replace them with kiosks and smaller stores in more densely populated urban areas. Blockbuster also has a Netflix-style subscription service, but will only one-fifth the customer base of Netflix.
Based on my own experience, Blockbuster may have alienated too many customers with their outrageous late fees. They "eliminated" late fees two or three years ago, but replaced them by billing you for the full retail cost of the DVD if it was late. Once you returned it, they credited your account for the DVD, less a "restocking" fee, which, of course, is a late fee by any other name.
In practice, the service being sold (watching a movie) is identical no matter which company you get the movie from. So the movie rental business is based 100% on the quality of service. And so this is why Blockbuster is losing--Netflix does not have the late fee baggage of Blockbuster, and Netflix service is great--so great, you don't even think about it.
Watching movies may not seem to have much to do with economic development, but communities that don't have their eye on this ball will be losers later, in two different ways. High performance community-owned broadband is the only way some communities are going to get to watch movies over the Internet. Cable companies are just barely keeping up with the bandwidth demands now, but as more homes dump driving to the video store in favor of watching movies on demand, legacy cable and DSL networks are going to begin to influence where people WON'T live. That's right--young professionals don't want to live anywhere now where broadband is not available, and within a couple of years, they won't want to live in communities that only offer "little" broadband--that is, the low performance cable and DSL services.
So attracting and keeping the right kind of workforce is a community broadband issue. The second issue is how broadband is changing retail. Video stores have served as anchor tenants in retail shopping districts, as the stores provide a steady and predictable flow of people to a shopping area. As the video stores disappear, what happens to those retail buildings? What happens to the rest of the stores nearby that relied on that traffic?
In our broadband planning work, we continue to see too many communities clinging to a 1960s style of retail planning and economic development. Retail is going away entirely, but the combination of big box stores and the Internet has changed it drastically, and few places can lead with retail as an economic revitalization strategy--perhaps none can. Instead, communities need to think more broadly about how to put empty retail locations to new uses, including office space for entrepreneurs, start ups, and established white collar businesses. And the way to start that process is to begin placing duct and fiber in commercial and retail areas. Call Design Nine if you want help with thinking about your retail and economic development strategies.
Submitted by acohill on Mon, 12/14/2009 - 09:27
The "Did you know" video has been around for years, but I just noticed it has been updated recently. It's worth watching again, and really should be required viewing for community leaders who are skeptical that community investments in broadband are important for economic development and jobs growth.
Submitted by acohill on Thu, 12/03/2009 - 17:29
With newspapers and magazines going belly up almost weekly, is there any hope for them? The much speculated upon iPad or iTablet from Apple may end up saving the day. Part of the appeal of a newspaper or magazine is the convenience--easy to carry, easy to read, and you can get up close with them. It's hard to get up close to your computer, even a laptop, the same way. The mouse or a trackpad is no substitute for just turning the page. But what if you could subscribe to Sports Illustrated and have it turn up on a light, easy to use tablet device with full color, high resolution images and text that looked just like, well, a magazine page?
One thing that could happen is that we could break out of or away from the Web browser as the catch all container for content. Why or how would this happen? Just look at the iPhone. It comes with a Web browser, but Apple's superb operating system and programming interface makes it easy to create custom applications for specialized content. So when you subscribe to Sports Illustrated, you don't view through the still clunky Web browser, but instead view it using a specially designed application that really unleashes the content and graphic design without the legacy restrictions that have to be dragged along when squeezing content through a Web browser.
As the Internet destroys old business models, it enables the creation of new ones. We may be at the dawn of the golden age of newspapers and magazines, if they can just let go of the paper and barrels of ink they keep in the back room.
Oh, and one more thing....
If you play the YouTube demo of Sports Illustrated, you will notice they plan to include high resolution video, which will really change the way we think about newspapers and magazines--suddenly a magazine looks a lot like a TV channel. Interesting all by itself, but when we all sit down to the breakfast table in the morning with our coffee and iTablets to read/watch the news, guess what we will need?
Bandwidth. Lots of it. More than you are going to be able squeeze over WiFi connections. Fiber to the home is the only technology that will deliver the bandwidth for these next generation news and magazine services. Communities that are building fiber to the home, next generation infrastructure will have a huge edge over communities that rely on incumbent copper-based solutions or wireless only.
Submitted by acohill on Tue, 12/01/2009 - 11:22
Barnes and Noble is about to release an ebook reader called Nook. The bookseller and publisher wants to compete with the Amazon Kindle and the Sony Reader. It is easy to find people who say they love their Kindle, but I remain skeptical. I do think that within a few years, we will reading many more books using some kind of reader device, but I think the long-rumored Apple tablet is likely to crush these dedicated devices.
One of the arguments for dedicated book readers is that it is no different than lugging around a paperback--which I do all the time when I travel. But a paperback can be handled roughly--I don't have to worry about cracking the screen of a paperback, it never runs out of battery life, and it requires no charger. Once you have an ebook reader, you have to think constantly about charging it, loading the books on it, handling carefully, and even losing it--lose a paperback, and you are out $10. Lose or misplace your ereader, and you are out hundreds of dollars, and the hassle of replacing all the books stored on it.
A tablet device the size of the Nook or the Kindle that also does email, Web browsing, and handles light office tasks is going to be much more popular than adding another electronic device to your life.
Submitted by acohill on Wed, 11/18/2009 - 09:46
In case you have been worrying about Planet Nibiru swinging too close to earth and destroying the planet in 2012 (just two years away!), the good folks at NASA have a handy FAQ on the whole 2012/Nibiru/doomsday thing. In case you have been living off the grid and only just yesterday got an Internet connection, the new movie "2012" posits that the mysterious planet Nibiru makes its every 3600 year swing near earth and just about wrecks the planet. The movie trailers look like the whole film is just a pretty flimsy excuse for two hours of computer-generated disasters, but apparently some folks are writing to NASA asking how to prepare for the coming apocalypse. Hence the handy FAQ to try to quell the hysteria. Note that the end of the world was predicted on May 5, 2000 when a major planetary alignment was supposed to rip Earth to shreds. And apparently, according to NASA, Nibiru was supposed to do that in 2003, but it never happened, so it's now scheduled for 2012.
Submitted by acohill on Tue, 10/27/2009 - 07:50
We've been telling our clients for over a year that they need a plan for a pandemic in which people are told to stay away from the office and work from home. But the Internet was never designed for that--at least not the cheesy "entertainment" Internet that most of us have at home. I put the word "entertainment" in quotes because once when I was working at home and was having Internet problems, my Internet provider told me their home Internet service was strictly for "entertainment" and they could care less about my inability to get any work done.
And there is the whole flu pandemic/work from home problem in a nutshell. DSL and cable modem Internet services were never designed to support business class work. Cable modem service, while typically faster than DSL, is a shared service, so in peak load times, your cable modem connection can quickly slow down to dial up speeds. And the asymmetric bandwidth (very small upload capacity) means you can forget about trying to upload business documents of any size from home.
If we all have to stay home for two weeks because of a major flu outbreak this winter, don't expect to get much work done. The Intertubes will be as clogged up as our nasal passages.
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