We’ve been watching (and writing) about the rumored Apple tablet netbook for a while now - essentially an iTouch with a 6-10″ touch screen, we feel like this thing is gonna be huge.

Hulu’s been working on an iPhone App (using the more Apple-friendly MP4 format rather than than Adobe Flash) for a few months now - imagine a 10″ tablet for the home that can access iTunes, YouTube and Hulu.  Imagine all this running over your fast home internet connection rather than AT&T’s under-performing 3G data network.  Imagine (the admittedly more remote) possibility of the otherwise Microsoft-centric Netflix streaming service coming to the iPhone OS as well.

In short, this could be one compelling consumer electronics internet video device.

We had speculated on a holiday 2009 release, but recenty the Financial Times reported the iTouch tablet/netbook might hit as soon as September. There’s one (as yet unsolved) problem most of the somewhat breathless coverage of this device fails to mention, though:

Battery Life.

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Have you recently taken the New York subway, let’s say, to 23rd, 66th, 86th, or 103rd street?

If you exit at any of these stops you’ll notice some of your favorite entertainment stores vanished. Shut down. Closed for good.

At 23rd and 6th Avenue Barnes&Noble, gone! At Lincoln Center Tower Records‘ flagship store, gone! Over at 86th and 2nd Avenue Circuit City, vanished. And at 102rd and Broadway Blockbuster Video closed its doors, too.

Be it for books, music, movies, or consumer electronics (for anyone 30 years or older), those were among the brands you would likely turn to first - to discover, buy and play your entertainment retail. 

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It’s time to talk about Zillion TV.  Announced a week or two ago and slated for a 2009 Q4 launch, this set-top box streaming initiative has already received quite a bit of coverage. Here’s our quick take:

What They Got Right

• Investors - One impressive thing about Zillion TV is the stature of the companies behind it:  Visa is a major investor (and will implement the back-end billing transactions for purchasing streams), and content providers Disney/ABC, Fox, NBC Universal, Sony Pictures and Warner Bros. Digital Distribution are all also investors/partners.  In fact, while I’ve read Zillion TV described as the “Hulu” of set-top boxes (due to the innovative cooperation between otherwise competing companies Fox and NBCU), Zillion TV goes Hulu one further, having Sony, Warner Brothers, and even long-time Hulu holdout and rival Disney/ABC on board as primary stakeholders as well.

• Revenue Model – Although television viewers and web browser users have consistently expressed a preference for “free” (ad-supported) content over paying subscription or per-view fees, Zillion TV itself will be agnostic as to which monetization model individual content owners choose, and will be able to support either.  One thing Zillion seems to understand, though, is the game-changing impact targeted advertising will have, given a lean-back audience willing to tolerate the heavier ad-loads typical of traditional TV.  I touched upon this a few weeks ago here - and as Zillion TV’s initial press release puts it: “Gone are the days of mass market, untargeted television commercials.  Through the ZillionTV Service, advertisers clearly will reach a more highly-targeted and engaged audience.  This is a major boon for the advertising industry.”

• User interface - We believe that in the absence of a keyboard on the coffee table (which studies show nobody really wants), the problem of the remote control and the user interface will have to be solved.  One way or another, the current remote paradigm (dozens of never-used dedicated buttons) is going to go away - to be replaced by either a touch-screen iPhone-like device or a Wii-like pointing remote (something I touched upon a few weeks ago here).  While Apple’s been quietly filing for patents on the laser-recognition pointing technology necessary for such remotes, Zillion TV will be the first internet video device to market that actually features one (which, come to think of it, is probably why the Zillion TV “box” has to hang over the top edge of the screen - see image).

• Zillion TV and the Service Provider - Easily the most noteworthy aspect of Zillion TV is that like Time Warner’s “TV Everywhere,” access will be limited to customers with current cable and/or ISP contracts from selected vendors already in place (more on TV Everywhere here).  Could this be an emerging trend - internet video services sharing monetization with carriers?  Possibly - in Zillion TV’s case, the device will be marketed as a hardware value-add available through (as yet unnamed) service provider partners.  The decision to Include the carrier in the revenue stream is huge, because instead of an insurgent over-the-top internet video service threatening to dramatically increase user bandwidth consumption while simultaneously making cable TV access less valuable, Zillion will instead be a business partner.  Of course, as the issue of monetizing internet video remains up for grabs, incumbent service providers remain (to put it mildly) “concerned” over what services running “over the top” could ultimately mean to the business models they’ve come to know and love – but from the service provider’s perspective, Zillion TV will likely be seen as the lessor of several evils, because at least some participation is better than none.  And the arrangement works for Zillion TV, too: the company plans to install caches of video content at your local ISP.  The technical innovation of expanding the content delivery network one step closer out to the user (from the edge of the internet onto the user’s local service provider) is potentially huge- and yet another step in one of our favorite topics, the privatization of the internet (something I touched upon a few weeks ago here).   Which brings us to…

What Could Be A Problem

• Net Neutrality - With Zillion TV content caches sitting out there in ISP data centers, look for this to come up when Zillion TV launches later this year - and look for the issue to be ongoing, because If I’m a Vudu, Roku, TiVo (or any other 4-letter box making company) - or if I’m a Yahoo Connected TV, Amazon VOD (or any other television/set-top streaming service), even if I lose a legal challenge to the Zillion TV business model, I’m going to be out there doing continuous comparative testing to see if there’s any hint of Zillion TV-partnered ISPs slowing down my packets - in other words, it’s going to be a good couple of years to be a media (or antitrust) lawyer.

Conclusions

In short, I’m impressed with Zillion TV - the big players are clearly onboard, I think including the service providers is a smart business move, and I like what little I know about the user interface.  A few things to watch:

• As the year progresses, which MSOs and ISPs will announce they’ll be partnering with Zillion TV?
• WIll the hyper-localized ISP/CDN model offer dramatically enhanced performance over competing solutions using CDNs external to the carrier?
• If so, will the net neutrality/anti-trust challenges be equally forceful?
• Will Zillion TV expand from television content into film as well?

We’ve been going on lately about how much sense netbooks make.  Evidently, some smart people out in Cupertino might think so too: within the last 2 days, the online rumor-mill about all things Apple has kicked into full gear again, this time started by reports that a Taiwanese firm has just signed an agreement to begin supplying large touchscreens to Apple later this year.

What we’re talking about here is essentially a large (9″ or 10″ screen) iPod Touch - physically, it could well end up looking very much like this mock-up concept imagined by gizmodo (at left) - but under the hood (or ‘glass’, rather), I wonder if it will run a stripped-down version of the Apple OS or follow the closed iPhone/iPod Touch “App Store” model - in other words, will it allow traditional fully-installed applications, or will it allow only the more limited (but easier and safer) widget-like software products (running one layer up on a virtual machine) available on the iPhone?

Either way, if unlike the iPhone and iTouch, this device will (finally) run Adobe Flash (the ubiquitous video streaming application behind Hulu and YouTube), then this will be a hee-uge hit..

I’ve written before on what an ill-suited viewing platform I feel the PC and web browser make for viewing internet video. Keeping that in mind, the big unknown about this sleek full-screen “net tablet” is whether it will run Flash. If so, it could make the whole web video experience a lot nicer - and a lot less tied to the workplace and/or deskop…

As you might have noticed, laptop computers are getting more popular.  Users, meanwhile, are demanding more processing power and longer battery life from these machines, while at the same time expecting them to be as compact as possible and run as quietly (i.e. with as little cooling fan noise) as possible: in short, a perfect recipe for heat issues.

Research continues on cooler-running CPUs and longer-life batteries, but these challenges really have more to do with electrical and chemical engineering than with computer science.   Meanwhile, given the intensely competitive low-margin market computer makers find themselves in, companies are are finding themselves bumping up against the laws of physics - and often pushing the envelope (hence the infamous pickup-truck-destroying laptop battery incident).

While a burnt-out truck makes for a good story, the more likely adverse effects of heat fatigue are less dramatic - but still worth avoiding.  Usually, over time excessive heat leads to early hardware failure.  Often this can be an easily replaceable power supply, but just as often, repeated temperature extremes can cause early system circuit board failure (in which case the laptop is usually totaled) or early hard drive failure (and let’s face it, local laptop data tends to get backed up less than desktop data).   And to an unusual extent, it’s up to the consumer to protect themselves - because why wouldn’t a manufacturer (who might be just looking to make the next quarter’s numbers) be tempted to sell you a machine with great specs even if that means it runs hot and is likely to break a year or two sooner than it should?   To the extent that just puts you back in the market for a new laptop that much sooner, it’s kind of a win-win, no?

Conspiracy theories aside, this is all by way of saying that heat is a big issue - and it’s up to the user to be aware of it.  I’m a part-time musician, and for a while, I was doing shows with various groups in New York and Boston using a laptop in a live performance situation.  After that first heat-related shutdown in the middle of a show, I resolved to never suffer that embarrassing nightmare again - so I went online and found an entire cottage industry in primitive-looking but effective laptop cooling racks.  The  concept was simple: elevate the machine for more air flow, and slap on one or more USB-powered fans to help move more of that air through the machine.  I bought one of the first-generation unit shown below, and since then have never had another thermal shutdown (curious house cat purchased separately).

As a firm believer in the long-term benefits of keeping machines (and especially laptops) cool, I was interested to see that Microsoft has just come out with an updated (and much better-looking) cooling rack of their own (at left).  While this device might be met with a few ho-hums from a technology press more accustomed to covering the next world-changing smart phone, kudos to Microsoft - because with the current generation of small, powerful, barely adequately cooled laptops out there (laptops that we all happen to be depending upon more and more, by the way), the time is right for this device.

And hey, it also solves an ergonomic issue by putting the keyboard an a better angle - so it’s good for you and your leeetle friend….

Time Warner CEO Jeff Bewkes in a recent BusinessWeek article:
“We believe in TV everywhere, that consumers should have access on broadband to the same channels they see on television. But the online model has to support, not undermine, the distribution fee and advertising arrangements between programmers and distributors. Those with a subscription to a video service would also get access to shows online.”

“We believe in TV everywhere…” – it happens that TV Everywhere is also the name of a new cross-network, cross-industry initiative Bewkes announced several days earlier in an Ad Age interview. In short, TV Everywhere is designed to enforce the vision of the future Bewkes describes in the BusnessWeek article: to make internet access to cable network content possible only if you can prove you also happen to have a multi-channel  (i.e. cable, satellite or fiber) television account.

To the technical purists among us, this might seem a bit like limiting the availability of the Model T to those who can prove they already own a horse, but it’s worth remembering that an awful lot of money flows from the consumer to the cable carrier and on to the cable network: in fact, it amounts to 50% of the networks’ income.  In other words, the cable networks need the carriers - and they won’t make a truly comprehensive move onto the internet without bringing them along for the ride.

Conversely, the availability of cable network content is the primary value proposition of the cable/satellite industry, especially now that terrestrial networks are broadcasting in HD over the air.  In other words, since good reception of a local affiliate’s broadcast is less dependent on that cable connection, the cable carriers need the networks, now more than ever - and so are doing the heavy lifting of putting the “TV Everywhere” initiative together.

It’s a very lucrative (and interestingly circular) business relationship - and one that both parties have an interest in protecting from the wild-wild-west of the internet.

So, which major players are  on board?  On the network side, we have Viacom and (Hulu co-owner) NBCU, while (Hulu’s other co-owner) News Corp. and (Apple-friendly) Disney are said to be in talks.  On the carrier side, DirecTV and Dish Network have yet to officially announce, but Bewkes clearly intends to include the satellite carriers.  Comcast, meanwhile, plans to stick with their “Fancast” service for now, but has made some friendly remarks about the two services possibly becoming compatible.  Of course, the prospect of an ISP such as Comcast (the largest MSO in the country) selling both their own proprietary internet video walled garden while simultaneously selling internet access raises issues of net neutrality - so in Time Warner’s case, it’s interesting that the conglomeorate that includes cable networks Turner Broadcasting and HBO) will be splitting off the Time Warner Cable subsidiary on March 12th – just one week after announcing the TV Everywhere initiative.

So what exactly is “TV Everywhere” going to look like?  Evidently an identity-based access system running over the top  at “no extra cost”  to the user.  I imagine the pledge to make the service free is based on the fact that recent election-related spikes in internet streams of The Daily Show and SNL clips did not appear to cannibalize broadcast ratings and that all-important symbiotic relationship between the carrier and the cable network.   There’s something most coverage of TV Everywhere misses, though:

The most interesting thing about TV Everywhere is that it’s still only about the PC/web browser/mobile device - conspicuously absent is any mention of network-enabled televisions and set-top boxes.

The next generation of internet-enabled television hardware is the elephant in the room - and the content owners know it: how else to explain NBCU and Fox suddenly forcing Hulu to back out of Boxee once it became clear the service was ultimately aimed not at the (lean-forward) PC but at the (lean-back) TV?  (I would’ve thought the prominent placement of the letters ‘b-o-x’ in the company’s name would’ve been a red flag, but that’s just me.)

The whole TV Everywhere model is intended to preserve the current carrier/cable network revenue stream.  To that extent, it’s intended to prevent (or at least slow down the progress of) access to internet video from the television. That’s going to be difficult, though, because while users really don’t care whether their programs arrive at the TV via a cable stream or via IP packets, what they ultimately will demand is the same freedom from program schedule tyranny they enjoy over on a website - in other words, it’s not about “TV Everywhere” - it’s about “TV Anytime.”

CeBIT, held each year in Hannover (Germany), is the biggest technology show in the world.  What makes it larger than CES is that rather than limit itself to consumer electronics, it includes both home and office technology - in other words, all things digital.  I’m not at the show, but having read a few of the articles starting to show up online (the show’s currently running until March 8th), one company stands out as having at least a few good ideas:  Asus.

I’ve already written about how the time is right for netbooks - Asus has a 60% share of the European market and a 30% share of the worldwide market - so they’ve been doing something right.  In addition, the company has some serious plans for bring the Google Android operation system to the netbook.  It’s worth noting that while Android has had the iPhone headwind to fight in the smartphone market, no such incumbant hands-down winner exists in the netbook operating system market.  In fact, with netbooks gaining traction, Android evolving, and a lightweight netbook version of Windows 7 on the horizon, the netbook OS market could prove to be a major front in the epic battle between you-know-who and you-know-who.

But I digress.  Let’s talk some gizmo. At left is an Asus “concept netbook.”   It starts with the tablet computer concept from a few years back and takes it a step or two further - a completely touch screen-based interface, and a second monitor.  Although not yet commercially available, a few thoughts do come to mind:

• The clamshell design nicely solves the problem of maximizing screen real estate while at the same time protecting the portable device’s touch screens.
• To the extent a touch screen Netbook interface becomes popular, XP Home becomes obsolete as a netbook OS, forcing Microsoft’s hand in getting a Windows 7 Netbook OS out there quickly.
• Is this the perfect Kindle platform, or what??



Speaking of touchscreens - here’s an interesting device, looking very much like the result of crossing a computer keyboard with an iPhone.  While adding a touchscreen to a keyboard is a cool enough idea in and of itself (and as the most cost-effective way to enjoy the next generation of touch-enabled operating systems, probably something we’ll see a lot of), there’s more here than meets the eye: this is actually a netbook running XP Home! With an 802.11g wireless interface and a wireless HDMI interface (that’s a new one on me), you’ve yourself got a cable-free internet streaming solution, as well as a computer for the coffee table and the couch.  It’s my feeling users would be more interested in the former than the latter, but either way, a pretty cool device - and another idea that’s hard to imagining not becoming popular.

The other day I wrote about the New York subway (my favorite impromptu research panel), and a few “hang outs”, still more comfortable reading a real book rather than their e-version.

Of course, despite some anachronistic readership, the world of e-books continues its expansion undeterred. 

The latest: Online retail giant Amazon.com announced, the library of books available for it’s Kindle branded e-reader will now also be available on Apple’s iPhone and iPod Touch.

Why is this big? 

If you hear yourself or anyone else equipped with either Apple-branded portable, we’ve all started asking what’s on it, as if asking what’s on television or on the radio.

Couple that with the by-now impressive depth and breadth of repertoire available for either device, Apple portables are anything but shy compared to, yet again, television or radio.

In other words, the iPhone / iPod combination of devices has become a media platform in its own right.

For Amazon to jump on board makes perfect sense.

More on the subject:

Amazon’s Apple Deal: Kindle Cannibal? (Business Week)

Amazon releases Kindle for iPhone, iPod Touch (LA Times)

Amazon launches Kindle application for the iPhone (TechCrunch / Washington Post)

First Look video: Kindle for iPhone (cnet)

As an IT consultant/network administrator a few years ago, one of my clients was a small but fast-growing retailer with several remote locations spread across the country.  Having no trusted technicians available in some of these cities, it was a clear win when I chose to go with WYSE thin client terminals on many of these remote seats (I wrote a bit about that here).   While the idea of such simple and lightweight “web appliances” dates back to the late 90’s, despite a few short stints as The Next Big Thing, the devices never proved quite as popular as promised - but conditions now are more favorable than ever:

• Increasing functionality in the cloud mitigates much of the need for heavy client-side application installations (and the RAM/processor power/data storage they require)
• The current global economic climate certainly favors less expensive (and often computationally redundant) devices

There’s a third (and crucial) factor, though: now that wireless internet access has become nearly ubiquitous, we all place an increasing premium on portability (consider that by most accounts, laptop sales actually surpassed desktop sales for the first time during 2008).  What do you get, then, when you take all the innate advantages of thin computing and add today’s need for mobile computing?

The “netbook” - a small (8″ or 10″ screen) laptop with a lightweight operating system, long battery life, (and often) solid state disk (SSD) storage.  As with good bread, the Beatles, and text messaging, it’s Europe that’s been out in front on this, but that’s expected to change as US acceptance of the netbook grows.  In fact, while industry analysts at Gartner expect overall 2009 PC sales to decline by almost 12% (a historic high), they see netbook sales doubling.

To date, the low-power Intel Atom has been the netbook CPU of choice, but AMD and Motorola have each recently released new processors of their own aimed at this growing market.   As for what operating system runs on those chips, for now it’s come down to a battle between Microsoft and the Linux community (Apple having not yet demonstrated much interest in this lower-end market).  Google’s Android cell phone operating system has even been ported over to a netbook - an interesting possible future platform for the open source OS.

Many of the first netbooks ran a specialized Linux kernel, a trend that only looked to gain more momentum once Microsoft stopped stopped selling XP last June.  However, with the netbook trend starting to pick up, Vista proving too resource-hungry for many desktops (let alone netbooks), and with Windows 7 still months away, Microsoft had a change of heart - and recently decided to bring back XP Home, giving the OS a second life as their unofficial interim netbook operating system (until Windows 7 arrives, that is).  It’s an easy decision to justify: while netbooks are by definition leaner and meaner than traditional PCs, users still expect them to be more than mere terminals: in other words, people like their applications (and chances are pretty good the ones they’re used to are not going to be available for Linux).   Furthermore, despite (or maybe because of) the fate Vista met in the marketplace, many users still like XP - and in any event, to a less technical user, that oh-so familiar Microsoft desktop would have to look more reassuring (and less toy-like) than a Linux desktop - even if only on a purely emotional level.  Lastly, even if Vista was able to run on a netbook, licensing costs for the new OS would tend to put the machine well beyond the price point of the average netbook.

So, not surprisingly, the decision paid off for Microsoft: XP Home lives on and has beaten Linux out to ship on the majority of netbooks now sold (in a telling sign, HP recently stopped even offering Linux netbooks in otherwise penguin-friendly Europe).

Either way, in addition to all the other advantages, at only $200 to $400 each, these devices (much like smart phones) are inexpensive enough to be subsidized by long-term internet service agreements - so going forward it’s hard to imagine a scenario in which netbooks do not figure in heavily.   Microsoft, for one, agrees, and is committed  to releasing a lightweight version of Windows 7 optimized for netbooks (despite the economics of the netbook market dictating substantially lower license fees than Redmond is used to charging).

I think there might be one in your future too.

I know I want one - so it’s got to be cool, right?

The cell phone has been fodder for art projects for a little while now. Here are a few pieces I’ve come across recently - a few personal favorites…

This is an installation by a Boston artist by the name of Rob Petit. At the very least, you’ve got to give him credit for meticulousness - and the sheer number of discarded phones he uses in some of these pieces says a little something about how ubiquitous, disposable (and environmentally unfriendly) the devices have become. For more images of his images, go here. - this is clearly a guy who thinks a lot about cell phones.

    
Here we have an installation from the European art/technology collective informationlab.  “Cell Phone Disco” is basically a grid of sensors and LED that allows users to draw shapes with their with their active cellphones.  OK, maybe the concept strikes me as a bit shallow (an impression reinforced by the unfortunate title), but I think approaching technology with a certain amount of playfulness is almost always A Good Thing - and indeed the installation has proven very popular, showing across Europe and in several American cities as well.

   
I like cars. Like most car fetishists, there are a few websites I enjoy wasting a little time with from every so often, and one of my favorite bookmarks is rinspeed, a Swedish auto design firm with a soft spot for vintage Porsches.  At this year’s Geneva Auto Show, Rinspeed is showing the electric concept car the “ichange.”  What’s cool about the ichange is that most functionality (iginition, lights, ventilation, etc.) is controlled by an iphone app.  Not only is leveraging the power of a smartphone the driver already owns rather than building out a full traditional dashboard is an interesting take on green design - it also insures you won’t be able to make calls while you drive!