Archive for January, 2007
Wednesday, January 24th, 2007
Digital media is changing the way students access classroom information in South Carolina’s Cherokee County School District. The district will soon support distance learning courses at two High Schools using a new media encoding system that captures and encodes broadcasts of the courses, which are then made available to students unable to attend those classes in person.
Using products from a company called Viewcast, the school district is now able to encode live streams and save them to local storage at Gaffney High. Students can access and view encoded files at their convenience and, in the future, will have the option of borrowing a mobile device, such as an iPod, and watching the selected class at home.
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Posted in File Sharing | No Comments »
Tuesday, January 23rd, 2007
This
Businessweek article makes social networking on mobile devices seem mostly anti-social. Instead of spending time with friends or paying attention at work people are spending their time in mobile chat rooms and searching for new friends to communicate with by text message. Many carriers now offer some access to mobile social networks that charge $2.99 and up per month.
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Posted in Mobile, What's New | No Comments »
Monday, January 22nd, 2007
“You know when I was your age I had to get up off the couch and turn a knob on the TV to change the channels!” I say to my son of 11 years. “Awww come on dad - stop making up stories,” he replies. “No really, and we only had three channels that came in halfway decent - don’t get me started about the ‘rabbit ears.’ I know it sounds crazy, but we had to wait for our favorite shows to come on at the time shown in the TV Guide magazine.” “The what?” he says with a quizzical look on his face. “If we wanted to listen to music we had to put a record on the record player or wait for it to come on the radio. Phone calls meant waiting for the single house line or calling from a payphone.” More quizzical looks. “Our video games were one dimensional and we only had one button to press to kill the aliens. And if we wanted to take a picture we had to take the roll of film to be developed, make prints and mail them to our friends and family.”
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Posted in Digital Kids | No Comments »
Sunday, January 21st, 2007
Back in April of 2000, a federal judge ruled that MP3.com had violated copyright law with the creation of its my.mp3.com service, which allowed users to stream music from a database of music the company stored on its servers. Before damages had been set in the case, the company settled its dispute with three of the major labels for reportedly over $60 million dollars then agreed to be acquired by a division of Vivendi Universal in May of 2001 for $350 million dollars.
A new service called Avvenue insists that while they let people share music stored on their PCs with other computer users or those with Web-enabled mobile phones, their service is legal because recipients don’t retain copies of songs - the streams only work when there’s an Internet connection, and only for five days.
What is so reminiscent of the MP3 suits is that Avvenu is allowing music files people wish to share to be uploaded to and streamed from its servers when the sharer’s computer is off. Using the free Avvenu Music Player, the playlists and songs are automatically copied to Avvenu’s secure media center for streaming playback and users can send links to friends via e-mail. Recipients click on the link to listen to the songs for up to five days on standard Web browsers.
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Posted in File Sharing, Music | 1 Comment »
Sunday, January 21st, 2007
Steven Colbert explains the twists, turns and returns for ATT over the past 35 years.
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Saturday, January 20th, 2007
Rutberg & Company has reviewed and analyzed the venture capital activity for the digital media sector in 2006. Their key takeaways include:
- Venture financings in digital media totaled $4.4 billion in 2006, as compared to $2.6 billion in 2005. The 2006 growth rate of 66 percent far exceeds the growth rates for the overall venture industry. Notably, though, the growth in venture financings for digital media has moderated over the past six months.
- The curbed growth of investment activity is consistent with Rutberg’s conversations with venture capital investors. On an anecdotal basis, they believe that investor sentiment is becoming more rational rather than exuberant, as was seen in the beginning of the year.
- The percentage of transactions with a financing size of $20 million or greater has increased, from 6 percent in 1H05 to 13 percent in 2H06. These larger transactions are driven, in Rutberg’s view, by activity in the capital-intensive Semiconductors sector and in the late-stage Advertising Infrastructure sector.
- The sector with the greatest increase in 2006 was Provisioning & Delivery Infrastructure, driven by both an individual $130 million financing by Limelight Networks and the overall investment growth in the CDN and Internet-delivered video infrastructure subsectors. Strong increases were also experienced in the Advertising Infrastructure and Applications sectors.
- The most active digital media venture capital investors during 2006 included: Intel Capital, Sequoia Capital, Draper Fisher Jurvetson, Benchmark Capital, Menlo Ventures, and Oak Investment Partners.
For More Details…
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Posted in Statistics | No Comments »
Saturday, January 20th, 2007
IFPI has released a report on the state of Digital Music in 2006. Digital sales now account for around 10% of the music market as record companies experiment and innovate with an array of business models and digital music products, involving hundreds of licensing partners. Get the whole report - 
Download Key Facts
- Digital music sales estimated to double to around US$2 billion in 2006
- Single track downloads estimated up 89% at 795 million
- Available tracks double to four million, via 500 online services in over 40 countries worldwide
- Portable music players help drive digital music consumption
- New revenue streams and business models emerge
- Lawsuits impact illegal file-sharing, but “gatekeeper” ISPs must act to curb digital piracy
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Saturday, January 20th, 2007
Technological innovations are rapidly redrawing the Chinese telco landscape. Operators are compelled to diversify in order to thrive in the competitive environment. China’s flourishing broadband environment is paving the way for IPTV to reach out to the potentially huge addressable market. In a new study, ABI Research forecasts the IPTV take-up in mainland China to pass the 23 million subscriber mark by 2012.
IPTV is the Chinese government’s platform of choice because it is aligned to its long-term plan of unifying broadband, Internet, and television. Hence the future of the industry continues to be viewed optimistically. More resources will also be allocated to making IPTV a success because it is to play an important role in multimedia communications and upcoming major events in China. According to Fong, “The growth of IPTV will remain modest for now, and take off only after 2008. Adoption will be boosted by major events such as the Beijing Olympics in 2008, and then the 2010 World Expo in Shanghai.”
For now, however, IPTV has to cope with certain bottlenecks that have been restricting growth. “While the IPTV service is regarded by the industry as a potential revenue generator, lack of content may prove a short-term barrier to increasing uptake rapidly,” says Fong. “Current program content, which is strictly controlled by media authorities and the government, is not rich enough to attract paying users, and overseas content, which is restricted and difficult to get approval for, does not help alleviate the situation.
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Posted in IPTV, Statistics | 1 Comment »
Friday, January 19th, 2007
NYC Mayor Michael Bloomberg announced today a plan to help fight crime by equipping 911 call centers throughout New York City to receive digital images and video from cell phones and computers. Apparently the city is basing the decision on the popularity of text and photo messaging and Internet services like Google and YouTube. Law enforcement and emergency management experts praised the plan.
“Anything you can do to advance the information flow is good,” said Jerome M. Hauer, director of emergency management under Mayor Rudolph W. Giuliani and now an antiterrorism consultant in Washington. “Imagine someone caught in a hostage situation transmitting pictures or video,” he added. “It’s just an incredible amount of information that can be gathered from fairly simple technology.”
The cost per call center phone will be about $10,000.
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Posted in File Sharing, User Generated Content | 1 Comment »
Friday, January 19th, 2007
Port Washington, N.Y. - U.S. video game sales rose 18% in 2006, to $13.5 billion, bolstered by top-selling PC title “World of Warcraft” and the release of new hardware from Sony and Nintendo, according to a report from market research firm NPD Group.
- The top selling titles of the year for consoles or handhelds included Electronic Arts’ “Madden NFL 07″; “Cars” (THQ); “Lego Star Wars II: The Original Trilogy” (LucasArts); “New Super Mario Bros.” (Nintendo); and “Need for Speed: Most Wanted” (Electronic Arts).
- Coming in behind Blizzard’s “World of Warcraft” in the top 10 for PC games were five of Electronic Arts’ “Sims” games, as well as “Star Wars: Empire At War” (Lucas Arts); “The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion” (Take-Two); and “Age of Empires III” (Microsoft).
- Overall, sales of PC games in 2006 rose 1%, to $970 million, while sales of games and accessories for consoles and handhelds totaled $12.5 billion, up from $10.5 billion in 2005.
“It’s refreshing to see an increase in retail sales of PC games after having experienced a few years of declines,” said NPD Group analyst Anita Frazier. “With revenues from digital downloads and subscriptions on the rise as well, the PC games segment of the industry remains healthy.”
Related Links:
http://www.npd.com
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Posted in Statistics, VideoGames | No Comments »
Friday, January 19th, 2007
Here’s an interesting article that showcases the challenges of creating and preserving digital art.
BERKELEY, California (Reuters) - The world’s great art has long been chiseled into stone, painted onto canvas and set in architectural gems meant to last across the generations. Today, a growing number of artists use computers to create, and with technology changing fast, their digital visions could face obsolescence in just a few years. “I often joke with my students that digital media will last forever — or for five years, whichever comes first,” said Richard Rinehart, digital media director at the Berkeley university’s Art Museum & Pacific Film Archive.
More from The
WASHINGTONPOST.COM By Amanda Beck
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Posted in Digital Art | No Comments »
Friday, January 19th, 2007
KENRADIO.COM
The majority of all digital content will be distributed over the Internet in the near future, and while that process is well under way in the music business, 2007 will see the TV and movie industries get much more aggressive bring their properties to the internet. Forecasts show that US consumer spending on digital music, movies and TV, which was $1.3 billion in 2005, will approach $7.8 billion in 2010,
according to a report done by eMarketer.
In 2006, iTunes successfully expanded its product line to include TV and movie downloads, and with Amazon and AOL opening their own digital download stores, the paid content market is set to rapidly grow. While a growing amount of Internet users are paying for digital content, that number still represents only a small fraction of the Internet users who regularly view or listen to online multimedia content.In addition to the billions of dollars that will be spent by consumers in the coming years on digital music, TV and movies, rich media advertising will also expand rapidly over the forecast period. According to recent data from the International Federation of the Phonographic Industry (IFPI), 11% of recorded music sales in mid-2006 were digital downloads or subscriptions (including mobile music), up from 5.5% at the end of 2005 — double the rate in only six months.
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Posted in Movie Downloads, Music, Statistics | No Comments »
Friday, January 19th, 2007
According to a report this week from the Consumer Electronics Association, homes in the U.S. now have 25 pieces of consumer electronics, compared to just 1.3 in 1975. And people are setting more money aside to buy devices than ever before. Households were on average spending $1,500 in 2006 on new gadgets, and this is expected to rise to $2,000 this year. The list of electronics topping the list for new purchases this year: LCD TV screens, digital cameras, computers/laptops, MP3 players, cell phones.
With those devices usually come monthly fees to fuel the content and services that the devices are purchased for. Let’s take a look at my monthly digital media and entertainment budget:
- Telephone - Vonage VOIP $29.99
- Satellite TV - DirecTV $80.00 (increase to $129 during football season)
- PVR - Tivo $4.99
- Internet Access - Comcast High Speed Internet $52.99
- Cell Phones - Cingular/T-mobile $250.00 (4 cell phone accounts)
- Audiobooks - Audible $22.95
- Streaming Music Services - Rhapsody $9.99
- Music/Movie Downloads - iTunes $10.00
- Videogame Rentals - Blockbuster $20.00
- VOD/Pay Per View - DirecTV $10.00
- Online Games - Maple Story $10.00
Average Total Monthly Digital Budget: $500
What’s your digital media and entertainment budget and where does it go?
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Posted in Statistics | No Comments »
Thursday, January 18th, 2007
Skype Launches IPTV — Calls it Joost
By: Priyanka Pradhan | Jan 17,2007
The much speculated IPTV service by Skype, previously codenamed ‘
The Venice Project ‘ is now officially out of the bag, as ‘
Joost’.
The free service will allow viewers to access all kinds of television from across the world, over the Internet.The ad supported site will try to replicate the complete television experience, in full-screen, broadcast quality, along with channel flipping, and interactivity. The service is still undergoing trials, but thousands of people have been invited to download the software on trial.
Joost aims to offer TV-like experience enhanced with the choice, control and flexibility of Web 2.0, which enables broadcasters to get their program in front of a global Internet audience. Joost CEO Fredrik de Wahl says the team plans to offer studios, cable stations and anyone else who wants to distribute high-quality video over the Internet, a fast, efficient and cheap distribution method. He says the company will use the same peer-to-peer technology used in Skype and Kazaa.
The Joost menu allows users to switch channels with the click of a link, TiVo-like control of the content and access to any show, any time of the day. Users may also move forward or backward within a show and skip commercials. There is a line-up of sports, documentaries and music programming, but the team says this is just trial programming and that when the full launch takes place in the next few months, there will be more impressive content on offer.
The site also promises to provide a platform for the ‘best television content on the planet’ to bring users the shows from TV studios, as well as the specialist programs created by professionals and enthusiasts. The Joost team also reveals that they’re working on a native Macintosh Intel version and expect it to be available in the next few months. A Linux version is also in the works.
Read more here.
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Posted in Cool Products, DMET Disruptors, IPTV, What's New | 1 Comment »
Wednesday, January 17th, 2007
Netflix announced today that it is launching a movie download service with 1,000 titles. Even though they are later to the game, I believe they will do well. They have great brand recognition and strong consumer loyalty - far above most of the competitors - Let’s see how that stacks up against the competition:
1. Vongo - offers over 1,000 movies - subscription service for $9.99 per month - currently offering a 14 day free trial.
2. CinemaNow - offers over 1500 movies - they seem to be trying a little of everything to see which model works best - available to purchase for digital playback, rent and burn to disc. There’s a small catlaog of films available to stream fro free with advertising. They also offer a subscription service - all you can eat for $29.95 per month or $99.95 for a year - currently offering a 7 day free trial
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Posted in Movie Downloads | 2 Comments »
