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.

Time Out for a Little RSS Reading

This isn’t quite within the realm of what I’d normally cover on ZNF, but it’s probably relevant to anybody who’s reading this site. Yesterday I had time to kill on a train from Trenton, NJ to New York’s Penn Station. Given that: blogging takes up so much time primarily because of the reading involved (jkOnTheRun agrees), Google recently launched Google Gears, and I have no mobile broadband connection, I decided it was the right time to try out the new offline Google Reader feature. Here’s how it went:

Step 1
Download Google Gears and restart browser.

Step 2
Click the new offline button on the Google Reader home page to transfer the latest 2,000 items in my RSS subscriptions from the Web to my desktop. (The file download was remarkably quick.)

Step 3
Unplug and hit the train with new offline reading material.

Hands On with YouTube’s Remixer

I’ve drooled over Final Cut Pro for years, but unfortunately in this lifetime I don’t have enough hours to learn the software, much less use it on a regular basis. So, I’m thrilled with the fact that there are now a bunch of Web apps that make video editing exceedingly quick and easy. YouTube is of course the latest to offer such a tool with its addition of Adobe’s Remixer app. I tried it out and was initially all set to sing YouTube’s praises. Unfortunately, the published version of my first remixed video looked nothing like the very-promising preview. The basic editing cuts worked, but the transitions I’d added in were gone.

Wondering how other people had fared, I decided to check out the comments on YouTube’s blog post about its site updates. Ouch. There are a bunch of very unhappy people out there. A few people mentioned having trouble with the editing features (audio problems, text rendering issues, problems with graphics, etc.), but far more people wrote to say they are having trouble with other parts of the site that worked fine before. That plus the fact that YouTube has added a “Videos Being Watched Now” section to its front page that seems to highlight rear shots and outright adult topics, makes me wonder what YouTube was thinking.

Get a Good Gadget Deal with Retrevo

A while back I had a chance to talk with Vipin Jain, CEO of Retrevo. Retrevo is a vertical search engine for consumer electronics that I first saw back at DEMOfall ’06. I loved the idea, particularly because of the search engine’s ability to bring up product manuals for CE devices I bought in the 1990s. However, I wasn’t convinced that it could be terribly successful, given how well Google has cornered the search market.

In talking with Jain, however, I found out about a new category that Retrevo has tagged on to its search results in addition to the already-present “manufacturer info,” “reviews & articles,” and “forums and blogs.” The new category is “daily deals” and I found it quite handy a couple of weeks ago when buying a GPS system for my husband’s birthday gift. (His birthday is now past, so no secrets being revealed here.)

I’d done my research on which product to buy (the TomTom ONE) and I started searching for the best price. At first I thought I’d go with Amazon because I still had my Amazon Prime trial membership running and I could get free 2-day shipping. But then thankfully I remembered to check out Retrevo. A Retrevo daily deal saved me more than $70 on the total price. And there were no rebates to deal with, only a simple coupon code.

Net Neutrality Negotiations

There’s something very interesting going on in the net neutrality wars outside the hallowed halls of our legislature. Internet or “over-the-top” companies are not sitting still waiting for broadband providers to shut them down when consumers start over-consuming in the bandwidth department. Instead they’re actively courting network operators to make sure their content gets transported effectively over broadband networks. In other words, the net neutrality issue has already moved far outside our legislative process. It’s being negotiated in the halls of business.

Wired noted that the FCC is currently conducting an inquiry into whether broadband regulation is needed. Unfortunately, the deadline to submit comments was June 15th, but you can still reply to comments until July 16th.

Ars Technica suggested sending in a comment if you know of examples of “broadband providers charg[ing] upstream providers for priority access to end-users.” I don’t have any proof in that area, but I do have two examples worth citing where it’s clear business discussions are in the works:

Regarding the selection of former Cisco executive Mike Volpi to lead online video company Joost, In-Stat analyst Gerry Kaufhold suggested that the choice was “more significant than most people realize.” He went on to comment:

“To make P2P really work, they’re going to have to get buy-in from broadband operators,” he says. “If you’re Comcast and have a hundred thousand people sharing Joost bits up and down your network, you’re going to be impacted. I think Joost wants to be a good neighbor — another reason the Volpi appointment is useful. If Joost can find a way to allow those who have made a large investment in last-mile access to participate, I think that makes them an even better service and able to grow faster. If Joost wants to get preferential transport, Mike can call people up and make things happen.”

This quote comes from a recent article in ScreenPlays Magazine. (Italics my own)

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Verizon Customer Service Not As Bad As I Feared

I was all set to blast Verizon for manipulating my parents into buying their DSL service when my dad gave me the surprising update: Verizon had admitted to making a mistake and fully refunded my parents’ money. Yup, you read that right. Full refund.

Here’s the story in brief. My parents have had trouble with Comcast in their neighborhood (it works great in mine) and decided to make the switch to DSL when Verizon told them it was available. Unfortunately, when they made the switch, Verizon’s broadband proved flakier than Comcast’s. They lost their Internet connection constantly and nobody could explain to them why the service was so unreliable.

Fast forward to a few weeks later and some savvy support technician finally figured out that my parents’ house was outside the recommended distance from a Verizon hub. In other words, they’d been sold a service that was virtually guaranteed to fail.

Uninterested in A La Carte

Forrester Research just released the results of a survey showing that consumers don’t care that much about a la carte channels and wouldn’t be willing to pay very much for the privilege. I might not have agreed a few years ago, but here’s why my opinion has changed:

Better shows on more cable channels
ESPN and Comedy Central used to be the only networks I watched on cable, but now I regularly tune in to FX, TNT and the SciFi network at the very least.
On-demand viewing
By ordering Netflix DVDs or downloading shows from the Web, I can get access to almost any content I want. If I wanted to drop my cable subscription, I’d virtually be able to get a la carte viewing through other distribution sources. (ESPN being the big exception)

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Time Warner Gets Switched

Ben Drawbaugh over on EngadgetHD reports that Time Warner Cable will be deploying switched digital video (SDV) to 50% of its markets before the end of 2007. That’s great news in the sense that SDV should free up significant bandwidth. Like analog reclamation, SDV will make it possible to offer more HD content as well … Read more

TV Networks Going Down the “Series of Tubes”?

I heard some interesting news on a call today. Apparently this past weekend may have been the worst ever for the big three TV networks. On Saturday night CBS, ABC and NBC got a total audience share of 14. Eek! I was just remarking yesterday that there seem to be fewer shows on network TV … Read more