Industry Archives - Page 26 of 145

Roku: “DVR is Dead”

TechCrunch has posted a series of video interviews of Roku CEO Anthony Wood. Who also happened to found Replay TV, one of the first two DVR products on the market. (Yeah, the other would be TiVo.) If nothing else, the link’s worth hitting to tally up the number and variations of “kill” and “death” in a … Read more

AOL, Google, The News, & I

In the last couple of days, two respected Engadget editors have resigned (details here & here). Amongst their publicly disclosed grievances, both cited the AOL Way – which appears to favor assembly line content. Quantity over quality, current, and search engine optimized. While Engadget hasn’t yet been subjected to the AOL Way, these defections make many wonder if the writing’s on the wall. Instead of continuing to evolve as a largely independent (and loved) entity, will Engadget be consumed Borg-like into newly appointed Huffington’s AOL media empire?

Along with this discussion is a renewed debate over ‘blogs as journalism’ and eHow Google might deemphasize the likes of low quality content farms. From a blogger with stints at Mashable and Engadget:

Almost everyone uses Google to find out more about news that’s happening right now, whether it’s tech industry stuff, celebrity breakups, or political revolutions. Unfortunately, the rules Google uses to determine which websites gain strong rankings — and thus frequent traffic, high impressions and strong ad revenues — betray journalists and the people who need them at every turn. Google’s algorithms and the blog linking customs built around them favor those who write first, not those who write accurately. I have no qualms about producing entertainment and other products to meet demand. But journalism must not function this way if it is to remain useful.

And it certainly seems like many pander to Google. For example, TechCrunch (another AOL property) was once a blog purely dedicated to Web 2.0. They were extremely successful and I was a regular. But I suspect it’s been even better for business to expand their reach by covering Apple’s every move.

Yet, building a business around Google’s indexing and oversized influence shouldn’t necessarily be burdened with negative connotation

Why Do Companies Pre-Announce Products?

Jeremy Toeman suggests one cannot beat Apple’s iPad by building an iPad clone. And, generally speaking, that’s probably a fair observation. Yet you can still grab market share and generate revenue, especially if manage to undercut the competition on price. Unfortunately, the once pricey Apple is now affordable thanks to a shift in revenue model … Read more

Apple, Google, and the Digital Publishing Wars

The slings and arrows are flying fast and furious. On the heels of Apple’s announcement yesterday of a new in-app subscription option for digital publishers, Google has news out today detailing its rival offering, the Google One Pass System. Google’s subscription plan is far kinder to publishers. As Dave noted, Apple takes a 30% cut … Read more

Apple’s Subscription Requirements Won’t Stand

Apple’s rejection of the Sony e-Reader app and announcement of App Store subscriptions, in conjunction with The Daily launch launch, seems to have agitated a large number of folks. I’d assumed the implications and resultant response was overblown. But it turns out that I was the one who misread the situation. From Apple CEO Steve Jobs yesterday:

Our philosophy is simple—when Apple brings a new subscriber to the app, Apple earns a 30 percent share; when the publisher brings an existing or new subscriber to the app, the publisher keeps 100 percent and Apple earns nothing. All we require is that, if a publisher is making a subscription offer outside of the app, the same (or better) offer be made inside the app

I can’t imagine many businesses will suddenly want to pass 30% of their subscription-based income on to Apple in exchange for a place in the App Store. In fact, those running on tight margins, like Pandora or Slacker, now find themselves confronted with a difficult decision — raise rates or abandon iOS.

But something’s got to give. Apple’s iPhone success is largely based on a vibrant ecosystem of third party apps and services. It’s symbiotic… and copacetic. At least it was. And not everyone will take this lying down. As Rhapsody stated in an email release I received:

One Plug to Rule Them All

One of the best conversations I had at CES this year was with the VP of sales and marketing for a company called Green Plug. Now granted, meeting with Graeme Finlayson was also the first chance I’d had to sit down in many hours, but even so, the GreenPlug story is one I’ve wanted to tell since coming back from Vegas.

GreenPlug was founded in 2006 with the goal of fixing the “broken” power model. You know how there are a bazillion different adapters for a bazillion different gadgets? Well, it would be nice to standardize them all and be assured that when your lovely little laptop power cord breaks, there’s another nearby that can be switched out from a different device. Unfortunately, as anyone in the industry knows, there is huge resistance from manufacturers around standardizing power accessories. According to Finlayson, the technical challenges of creating one power adapter for all major devices is essentially solved, though there would likely need to be different versions for different power needs – like a 15-50 watt version, a 50-150 watt version, etc. Trying to get manufacturers on board is the major nightmare. Apparently the IEEE is attempting to standardize power adapters for laptops, but when we’ll get any concrete solutions from that initiative remains to be seen.

Meanwhile, Green Plug has extended its efforts beyond just creating a universal power adapter. In order to make powering devices more efficient, the company is proposing to add a little CPU, and a new communication wire into the cord that goes between your device and the outlet on the wall. The purpose is to create a feedback loop that communicates battery status, enabling functions like rapid charge and power shut-off when a battery is powered to capacity.

This is a fundamental shift in the way we think about power. Instead of dumb power cords, we’re suddenly looking at intelligent power networks. The Green Plug concept also provides another way to connect devices into the smart grid, which has its own set of implications. That new communication wire makes it potentially possible to connect with a larger grid even when a device, for all other intents and purposes, is turned off.

Nokia’s Nuclear Option?

In the high-end smartphone market, Nokia’s clearly been lapped. Their Symbian mobile OS was getting long in the tooth even back in 2007 when my arsenal included a N95. In fact, that was probably Nokia’s smartphone apex. At least here in the US, where they’ve worked relatively few carrier subsidies — critical in our market. Since … Read more

Rovi Connected Platform is DLNA

Word surfaced earlier this week that Rovi has a new Connected Platform coming to Android. And while we assumed the underlying software stack had to be based on DLNA, a quick note to our Rovi sources has confirmed it. Rovi now joins Skifta in enabling media streaming from an Android mobile device to any DLNA-compliant … Read more