Mari Silbey

Mari’s tech career started when she became the default “IT guy” in her first job out of college. Since leaving help-desk duties to the experts, she’s focused on trends in technology as a consultant, writer, reporter, analyst and at-home gadget tinkerer. Her current paid gig is with the non-profit organization US Ignite where she focuses on how networks and digital technologies impact smart cities. All posts on ZNF represent her own opinions and not those of US Ignite. Mari is a sucker for anything in the digital media space and covers interesting happenings in cable, telecom, and whatever else she feels like. Find her on Twitter at @msilbey.

Seduced by Speed, I Bought the HTC Thunderbolt

After I managed to shatter my Droid Eris on the sidewalk yesterday (totally an accident!), I walked into the local Verizon store with a list of requirements for my new phone upgrade. I wanted something not too bulky, with a physical keyboard, and decent battery life. Instead, I bought the HTC Thunderbolt.

The Thunderbolt gives me Froyo, which I’ve been coveting for a while, and I’ve grown attached to HTC’s Sense interface. Beyond that, I sacrificed most of my must-haves for the sheer sexiness of 4G. That, and the idea that the Thunderbolt is a newer platform that will continue to get supported – and hopefully upgraded – for a while.

I’ve only lived with the Thunderbolt for a few short hours thus far, but I already have a list of likes and dislikes. (You’ll see that many of the likes are a product of the antiquated platform I was on until yesterday.) Here’s the good and the bad.

Microsoft’s Slow Road to TV Land

There was a lot of hype leading up to Microsoft’s keynote at the E3 conference earlier this week, with huge speculation that the company would launch a new live TV service on the Xbox. The announcement itself, however, was a bit of a let-down, at least for those of us in the US. After years … Read more

Hands On Fanhattan iPad App for TV/Movie Browsing

Yesterday at the D9 conference a new player entered the content discovery market. Fanhattan debuted an iPad app for finding TV shows and movie titles online. Reminiscent of the old Comcast Fancast site (now Xfinity-branded of course), Fanhattan shows you where to find the videos you want so you don’t have to go trolling around the net searching Netflix, iTunes, Hulu, etc. It’s competing against several other content discovery engines – Clicker, GetGlue, Miso and more – but Fanhattan’s focus isn’t as heavily centered on social sharing as its established counterparts. In my opinion, that’s a strength for the new app. You can get social if you want, but if you just want to watch TV, you can do that too.

There are nine basic modules for TV and movie selections: watch now options, episode details, reviews, cast and crew info, video clips (if available) soundtrack details, fan gear, connect options (Facebook or email sharing), and similar content. You get to this information by tapping through to either the TV or movie main menu and then browsing or searching through different categories. Filter selections include the ability to browse by user ratings, top picks, release dates, and much more. You can also search for titles by keyword.

The Fanhattan interface is quite visual, and, being an iPad app, entirely powered by taps and swipes. I have a few nitpicks about the design, but overall it’s very effective.

The Chattanooga Internet Train

This Chattanooga choo choo is more than the little engine that could. Reporting over at GigaOM, industry analyst Craig Settles has detailed in two posts some of the impact the city of Chattanooga Tennessee is seeing from its gigabit broadband network. While I’m looking forward to a consistent 15 Mbps downstream connection, the good folks of Chattanooga are thinking much bigger thoughts thanks to their significant (and apparently hard-earned) broadband wealth.

First, the city is getting its money’s worth by implementing smart-grid technologies to increase operational efficiencies and cut down on costs. According to Settles, with a gigabit of bandwidth, the city’s public utility company can reduce power outages from hours down to minutes. During a recent spate of tornadoes, the smart grid saved an estimated 730,000 minutes of power (more than 12,000 hours), and eliminated the need for 250 truck rolls. That’s money in the bank.

Second, the city is offering some serious Wi-Fi benefits to the local government with a mesh network that delivers 16 Mbps of symmetrical service. Current applications taking advantage of the Wi-Fi access include a fleet of wirelessly-controlled helicopter drones that stream video feeds from remote and/or dangerous locations, and a new imaging program that scans and uploads real-world 3D images to create static holograms. (Holodeck, anyone?)

Third, Chattanooga is wooing new business interests with broadband capacity that makes big-data computations possible. SimCenter Enterprises (above) is one example located in the city, and it uses the gigabit connection for high-end modeling and simulation exercises.

The Xfinity/FiOS Showdown

I am on the verge of a move to Takoma Park Maryland, and being the cable geek that I am, one of the things I cataloged closely during the house hunting process was the variety of set-tops in living rooms around the region. Not that cable services were a factor in choosing a place to live (they weren’t, I swear!), but it was still worth a note to see what broadband provider might soon be receiving a portion of my monthly paycheck.

As it turns out, both Comcast Xfinity and Verizon FiOS are available in Takoma Park. Currently I’m a Comcast customer, and there are certain advantages to sticking with my existing provider, but the prospect of switching to a fiber-to-the-home service is just too tantalizing. Here’s my personal list of top pros and cons for the two megaliths of broadband service. Keep in mind this is far from a comprehensive list of features, but it’s the stuff I care about most.

When Ads Don’t Work, Retrans Fights Get Nastier

In a research report released by SNL Kagan this week (hat tip to Multichannel News), new numbers show just how high retransmission fees are rising for cable, telco, and satellite TV operators. According to the Kagan report, operators paid $1.14 billion in retrans fees in 2010, with that number projected to rise to $1.46 billion in … Read more

Can We Get a Holodeck Now?

I’ve read an awful lot lately on innovations that should help with the next wave of advanced imaging techniques. I’m talking at the consumer level, not new NASA technologies or research in the medical field. Let me lay out a few examples. Macstories recently reported on an app being developed to support glass-free 3D viewing … Read more

New Age in Digital Music – Cloud, Radio, & More

In the last decade we’ve seen the launch of the iPod, satellite radio, and streaming music services on the Internet. But as great as those innovations have been, they haven’t always made life easy for consumers. iPods brought with them the inflexible iTunes marketplace and DRM lock-in, satellite radio added in another monthly fee with no music ownership option, and Internet radio requires (shockingly) an Internet connection. The result is that most of us cobble together our own listening system – part CD, MP3, and radio, and entirely dependent on where we are, and what service or hardware we have access to.

Thanks to the cloud, that’s all about to change. In theory, we’ll soon all have access to everything, everywhere we go. And in practice, the shift has already started to take place. Here’s a look at where music is headed.

To the Cloud

It’s been an interesting few months for cloud music services. First, Amazon launched its Cloud Drive service, offering users a space to store digital music files and play them back on the web or Android devices. Then came Google Music, a very similar offering, though one still in invitation-only beta at the moment. And finally, word has circulated in the last week that Apple is set to launch its own music service – with the one critical difference that it’s sewing up licencing deals with the major labels first. With licensing agreements in place, Apple will be able to help users avoid uploading an entire library of music, and instead scan and match any owned titles with copies already available in the cloud.