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.

The Business of Wi-Fi

Usually when I go up to NYC I take the train from Trenton to Penn Station NY, but clearly I’m going to have to find a way to start traveling to Grand Central Station instead. The Weather Channel has announced it will sponsor free Wi-Fi at Grand Central for a year starting October 1st. It’s … Read more

Time to Light More Dark Fiber?

Broadband Reports put a post up yesterday about Maine having the slowest Internet speeds in the New England region. I only had dial-up service for the one year I lived in Portland, but in a corner of my brain I was pretty sure I remembered seeing a statistic then about the state having the most … Read more

Sling and DirecTV Stream the NFL with Supercast

There’s news out of Sling Media today, and since I don’t work for the company (unlike Dave), I feel perfectly justified in covering it. :) Sling is collaborating with DirecTV on a new offering called Supercast, which brings online streams of NFL games to the Web every Sunday. Subscribers to the DirecTV/NFL SuperFan package can … Read more

Slacker Cozies Up with EMI, Warner and Universal

Streaming music company Slacker has big news out today. The company has inked a deal with EMI, Universal and Warner Music Group to let customers access their music from soon-to-be launched Slacker Portable Players. This makes Slacker among the first companies to offer a mobile streaming music service that is not accessed on a cell … Read more

Gizmodo Gets Scoop on New ReplayTV Gadget

I have a soft spot for ReplayTV, having gotten an early Panasonic version of the company’s hardware back in 2001. However, there’s been virtually no word of the DVR pioneer since ReplayTV moved to a software-only business model last year. Now Gizmodo reports that the company is launching a new product – an HD/DVR tuner … Read more

Web-Only “Quarterlife” to Debut November 11th

This is what I’ve been waiting for. Something good to watch on the Web. Seriously, with the amount of bad television churned out by the networks these days, I’m all for having a few professionals take the plunge to produce for an online-only audience. Last week, MySpace announced that producers Ed Zwick and Marshall Herskovitz (Thirty Something and My So-Called Life) will debut Quarterlife on its site on November 11th. The show will not be seen on regular networks, only online.

While I don’t know if Quarterlife will live up to my TV-watching criteria (it doesn’t have Timothy Busfield after all), I’m extremely happy that professional producers are willing to give Internet-only distribution a try. Zwick and Herskovitz are almost sure to lose money, but they have a chance to convert some key TV-watchers to the Web and make the platform viable for other producers in the future. I could care less about watching TV online per se, but I’d do almost anything for good content, and it’s clear that producing quality TV for the networks is getting harder and harder.

FCC Meeting Does Happen… 11 Hours Late

Despite a failed webcast, yesterday’s FCC open meeting did take place, albeit 11 hours late. The result was a cable industry victory. The FCC voted unanimously to require cable operators to broadcast local digital channels in both digital and analog for three years after the DTV transition date. FCC Chairman Kevin Martin had been pushing … Read more

Picture of the Day: The FCC Non-Webcast

Seriously, if you’re going to offer an “audio/video broadcast” of an event, I expect a little more than muzak and images of businessmen casually conversing. That’s what I got for more than 4 hours when I activated the FCC’s AV link that was supposed to show me coverage of today’s open commission meeting. Guess I’ll be waiting for updated info on a-la-carte programming and digital must-carry rules from someone who made it there in person.

UPDATE: Multichannel News reports that the public meeting never happened because FCC leaders were “stuck in negotiations all day Tuesday.” The hold-up is primarily debate over the digital must-carry rules.

More exciting photos after the jump.