We're Not Who You Think We Are
by Jim Connelly
According to the New York Times, in a desperate attempt to goose CD sales, major labels are considering stepping back a decade, and experimenting with the concept of not releasing advance single downloads from upcoming albums.
So just as iTunes hits it’s billionth download; and it’s clear that people are embracing downloading as a viable option the major labels decide, welllll, that ain’t good enough.
by Lopy
Todays links of interest:
by Jim Connelly
Recently, I wrote about how disappointed I was with my first cable company-supplied Hi-Definition DVR. My main issues were that, compared to the Replay I had been using for several years, the actual functionality and usability were a huge step downwards. In addition, the cable guy kept going on about how it just too bad that I wasn’t getting something called the “Moxi,” which he said was much better.
And he was right: after being contacted by a guy from the company that made the Moxi, I did some research, and, yup, it pretty much has all of the features I want. Fat lot of good that does me. After all, it’s not like its easy to find a day to unhook everything, wait for another cable guy; rebuild my entire setup, and learn yet another DVR.
Meanwhile, I’ve discovered even more issues with the Scientific Atlanta box:
So I’m thinking that rather than upgrading to the Moxi, if we’re going to make that much effort, we might as well switch to the satellite company that has the TiVo HD DVR.
Microsoft Geeks (yes, they do exist) are salivating over the official release of Origami. As we told you last week it’s not an iPod killer at all. Instead it’s a UMPC.
What’s a UMPC you ask? Seriously, you’ve never heard of UMPC? Ok, we’ll tell you, but just this once, so please take notes. UMPC = Ultra Mobile PC.
In case you’re still confused I’ll spell this out further. As far as Microsoft is concerned an Ultra Mobile computer is 6 by 8 inches with a 2.5 hour battery life. In other words, it’s too big to fit in your pocket, and you can’t go very far before you need to charge your UMPC. I said UMPC, not Pocket PC.
Origamis will be folded by a number of different manufacturers. As with standard PC’s each will presumably offer their own unique configuration and pricing. In general, though, you can expect these new devices to cost in the $600 to $1,000 range.
Oh, it’ll run some variant of WinXP, ensuring that Microsoft enthusiasts everywhere will enjoy the full blue screen experience on buses and in restaurants.
So, where do you want to go today?
I’m going to tell you a little secret: Hollywood is in a state of panic (it’s also in California, but that’s another issue). Those of you who have been paying attention have surely noted that the new media is moving at warp speed. Now you could say, in the studios’ defense, that this rapid turn of events has been, well, rapid, but the Dawn of the New Media has been predicted since Amazon.com sold its first book.
Hollywood has been actively digitizing product for years now. Every studio has been scrubbing and remastering and relicensing music in anticipation of a digital windfall. Maybe it’s that DVD has been so dominant, so profitable for so long, but the studios remain unprepared for the future. Item Number Ten on the Absolute Value analysis of Google’s Analyst Slide Show asks the question that has Hollywood biting its nails:
Do you know exactly how many assets you have? By assets, I mean all the content you’ve ever owned or created. Do you know exactly? Do you have the count? (Remember, I’m a computer scientist. I have to ask these things.)
[Read more…] about What Really Keeps Studio Executives Awake At Night
by Lopy
Todays links of interest:
Q. What do Jon Stewart, Stephen Colbert, and Ricky Gervais all have in common?
A. Consumers can now buy paid subscriptions to their latest programs through iTunes.
While Steve Jobs has resisted subscription pricing since the inception of iTunes, today’s launch of the Multi-Pass subscription video service is the first sign that Apple may be willing to tinker with it’s highly successful standardized pricing model. For $9.99 consumers can now buy 16 episodes of The Daily Show or The Colbert Report. That’s only $3 more than you’ll pay for four episodes of The Ricky Gervais Show.
Strangely, Apple is claiming that Multi-Pass isn’t a subscription service. Apparently the fact that you happen to be paying in advance for a month’s worth of programming doesn’t make it a “subscription”.
Apple’s vice-president of iTunes, Eddy Cue, said MultiPass is not a subscription service, even though customers would pay for it on a monthly basis.
“This is something that you can always own as a download,” he said. That makes it different from other online music subscription services like Napster or Real Networks’ Rhapsody, where consumers lose their music if they unsubscribe.
Right, but I also won’t lose my back issues of the LA Times if I unsubscribe, and that’s still called a subscription.
Semantics aside, the new Multi-Pass service does seem to solve a potentially major problem that could plague iTunes as it expands the scope of it’s entertainment content. Standardized pricing just isn’t suited to certain types of programming. While consumers have shown a willingness to shell out $1.99 per episode of The Office, it seems less likely that they would be willing to pay the same for an episode of The Daily Show or The Colbert report, both of which run new episodes four days a week. As iTunes expands to include daily programming they need a different pricing model. The multi-pass seems to be the answer.
by Jim Connelly
A PC World blog has published photos of a pair of Origami devices — including the Samsung Q1 — on display at the CeBIT electronics show in Germany. It’s really hard to tell much from the photographs, which look like they were taken surreptitiously with a cellphone, and kinda have same perspective as pictures from Mars: is that rock 3ft tall or 300ft tall.
In any event, an accompanying article explains the following:
What the article didn’t explain, and I guess is up to Microsoft’s marketing department, is exactly why I might need one. However, that didn’t stop Microsoft’s stock from going up after the announcement.
by Lopy
Todays links of interest:
by Jim Connelly
As these things go, I’m a relative latecomer to the podcasts of The Ricky Gervais Show: I only got ’round to listening to them a couple of weeks ago. Better still, I came into it totally cold, not knowing what to expect, and I was instantly hooked on the mad ramblings of Karl Pilkington. So much so, that as a matter of fact, I have no issues with paying for the podcasts of the second season.
It totally passes my Blackjack test: do I anticipate getting more pleasure out of this than playing a single hand of Blackjack? And in this case, the answer is a resounding “yes.” To be fair, Ricky was on Letterman last week, and explained that they are charging for this season to recoup the hosting and bandwidth costs for all of the downloads.
However, for those of you who don’t want to pay for your monkeynews, or you want to see to find out what the buzz is all about  prior to  paying — it looks like the Podcast Series  1 archive will also cost $5 to grab in one fell swoop — I’ve discovered a secret online stash of dozens of episodes of The Ricky Gervais Show.