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.

Infonetics Analyst Jeff Heynen on Home Networks, Bandwidth Caps, & More

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The analyst firm Infonetics came out with a report this week on the Broadband CPE market. CPE stands for customer premises equipment and refers to the home devices attached to a broadband network – everything from modems, to set-tops, and lately new gadgets like femtocells and a variety of home management controllers. Jeff Heynen, author of the report, sees short-term, recession-driven declines in the market, but also projects longer-term growth. I interviewed Jeff for a more detailed account of what types of gadgets he things we’ll see from cable and telco providers over the next several years. Here’s what he had to say.

Interview with Jeff Heynen, Directing Analyst, Infonetics Research

Q. One of the things you mention in your report is that you think we’ll see growth in broadband connections from 2010 to 2013 to support “converged” services – “voice, video, and high-speed Internet now, and home monitoring and automation services later.” What kinds of products do you think will support these services? Will we see more devices like the Verizon Hub and the AT&T HomeManager? They don’t seem to be getting much traction now.

A. Those two products are very early concepts for how home communications systems might work. The traction for those products is bad for any number of reasons, including macroeconomic conditions, their price points, and a general confusion among subscribers as to their utility. I really think both providers missed out on integrating some femtocell capabilities in those devices, rather than introducing separate femtocell gateways with yet another recurring fee. Why not combine the two, increase mobile reception in the home, while providing a low-cost, high-featured VoIP line to increase ARPU on a fixed broadband connection?

In the short-term, we really see growth in digital home gateways, which combine a modem, gateway, IAD (EMTA), and some type of home networking function (MoCA, HPNA, G.hn, etc.). Operators will be able to monitor these devices and their performance remotely and effectively move their sphere of influence into the home to ensure the stable performance of all their services, especially video.

Q. With potential growth in home monitoring and automation services, do you think we’ll see more supporting products (like cameras and home controllers) come to market through retail, through service providers, or through a hybrid retail-product-bundled-with-service model?

A. I think the hybrid approach, where operators distribute their own systems, but also have their own areas within retail stores, selling bundled packages is the likeliest scenario.

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New iPod Shuffle – Shiny but Tiny

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Apple is making hay again with yet another news announcement; the third big news day in three weeks. Today it’s a new iPod Shuffle. A very very tiny Shuffle with 4GB of storage and a talking interface. It’s available in black and silver for $79.

Right off the bat I see a lot of things I don’t like about the new music player> But analyst Michael Gartenberg, the one person I’ve seen with a hands-on review, has good things to say. Gartenberg in particular praises the new feature that reads your songs and playlists aloud to you: “It’s brilliant, works well and changes the way one interacts with their music player on the go.”

We’ve been through several iPod versions in my household, and  I was a big fan of the last Shuffle version, which I own in a pretty bright green. My second-gen Shuffle works well and looks adorable, but even though I used it for several months during workouts, I found I still missed having a screen to control music play, and after a while I moved on to a different player.  The new Shuffle holds a much larger library and I simply can’t imagine managing it without a screen, no matter how well the talking feature works.

Speaking of controls, to cut the size of the new Shuffle in half, Apple moved a lot of the controls up on to the earphone wires. It’s a neat add-on in some ways (already used on other iPods), but not my preference. And what’s the point of making the main device smaller if you’re just adding something on to the easily-tangled earbuds?

The smaller form factor has issues of its own too. If the second-gen Shuffle was a visual statement, the latest version is barely visible. Not that you need to make a statement with your music player, but that’s always been one of the selling points of the iPod line. As I mentioned, my Shuffle is adorable. The new one is simplified to the point of looking like a shiny battery cell. And, as Andy Ihnatko tweeted this morning, the small size practically begs you to run the  Shuffle through the washing machine, forgotten in a pants pocket.

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Accessorizing the Slacker G2

Not everyone is a Slacker fan. Analyst Michael Gartenberg blogged recently that the application crashed his Blackberry, and he subsequently dropped it from both the Bold and his iPhone. However, I’ve had good luck with the online app and certainly with the Slacker hardware, and as a result I’m interested when the company tosses out … Read more

Letting the GiiNii out of the Bottle

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GiiNii was perhaps the biggest surprise out of CES in January. The company seemed to appear out of nowhere with a brilliant line-up of CE devices including C-U-C-Me cameras, PixPlus Wi-Fi photo frames, and a touch-screen, Android-based handheld called the Movit Mini (think iPod Touch with an Android OS). Of course it’s one thing to put on a good show at CES, and quite another to bring good products to market, so I went digging for a few more details… and landed an interview with GiiNii VP Dennis Sones.

The most exciting gadget news I learned during the conversation is that GiiNii’s 7-inch touch-screen tablet, the Movit Max (due out in Q4), will be priced “about the same as other brands’ Wi-Fi picture frames.” In other words, for this year’s holiday season we could be looking at a sub-$300 tablet display. Other companies are focused on introducing their own “kitchen computers,” but the $600 price tag is simply too high for a secondary device. On the other hand, the 7-inch GiiNii MoveIt Max could well be within reach if it truly hits the lower price point. And that brings me to GiiNii’s overall strategy for CE products. In brief: emulate Vizio.

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Cable’s New Approach to Placeshifting

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Although we’ve seen some minor attempts by cable operators to let subscribers place-shift their TV programs – witness Comcast’s Any Room initiative – for the most part cable TV customers are stuck watching their shows in one place. Today several news outlets are reporting that the big cable companies have a plan in the works to change that. Time Warner Cable and Comcast are both looking to make their content available online to existing subscribers. The service would theoretically replicate Slingbox functionality, except without the extra box.

I have extremely mixed feelings about what Comcast and TWC are trying to do. As a consumer, this doesn’t do much for me. So much TV is already available on the Internet, I don’t feel like I’m missing much. On the other hand, it makes sense for cablecos to start aggregating content online. They need a presence on the Web, and as long as consumers are using up their bandwidth to watch TV online, the cable companies may as well be getting some of the revenue. In other words, what’s the downside?

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Wonderwall is No Cooliris

TechMeme is all atwitter this morning over Microsoft’s launch of Wonderwall. The browser-based app shows a wall of celebrity photos with links to short blurbs and more pics. Kara Swisher says it has “an ‘iPhone’ feel combined with a flipping-through-a-magazine tone.” Others have latched on to Microsoft’s foray into celebrity gossip content. Personally, I think it looks like a weak attempt to emulate the Cooliris platform for scanning photos and video. Slick? Wonderwall feels sadly static to me. Innovative? It’s treading content and platform ground that other companies have already walked.

Microsoft’s Wonderwall is lacking little touches like the feel of movement Cooliris gives when your scroll, and the interface is too busy for my taste. There is an aspect of discovery with the app, as you can click on photos that appeal to you and learn more, but Cooliris executes this function much more cleanly. New discovery categories appear on Cooliris all the time. For example, the top of today’s menu has Valentine ideas for him and her and funny ads (a la the Superbowl) available online. The one downside for some people with Cooliris is that you have to download the application. Compared to Wonderwall, a little downloading is well worth the effort.

Bonus video I found on Cooliris today after the jump: a banned Canadian ad for breast exams. :)

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DTV Coupon Exchange

Retrevo aims to solve the DTV transition converter coupon dilemma with a new exchange program on their site.