This one’s a somewhat lighter post, mainly a few observations about how, of all things, New York City weather, social networking and mobile technology all seem to gel quite effectively these days.

Last week, just back from the ITP Spring Show at Manhattan’s Tisch School of The Arts, I took a quick break strolling across Union Square, on my way to Yaron Samid’s latest NY Video 2.0 meetup event.
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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!

The trend is unmistakable: the consumer electronics industry has discovered the internet, and activities that have until now always involved a “computer” (such as internet video viewing and mobile internet access) will be increasingly done using a new generation of leaner and meaner dedicated CE devices instead.  This is all well and good: arguably, the modern home computer – more flexible and powerful but also more complicated and (let’s face it) maintenance-intensive than ever – is clearly overkill for such activities.  But as the computer justifiably loses the battle to convince us it’s also a CE device, CE devices are in turn left to grapple with an issue of their own: how much and how best to emulate the computer.

I’m talking software deployment.  You buy a computer, it includes a license for an operating system, and you’re free to go and install whatever software (or malware) you want – in other words, “you buy it, you break it” (in a way, an inversion of the “Pottery Barn rule ” invoked by Colin Powell over the war in Iraq).  But what about a smartphone, or that internet-enabled television you’ll be buying within the next year or two?  While the availability of a rich selection of high quality 3rd party applications is in the best interest of both the device maker and the user, a wide open ”no guard-rails” software deployment policy is in both parties’ worst interest: poorly written applications can harm both the user  as well as the brand, and (news flash) the average home user is a lot less interested in taking on that kind of responsibility than many companies in the computer industry have ever really understood.

For their upcoming line of internet-enabled televisions, Yahoo/Intel have addressed the issue by going with a “widget” rather than “application” model: lightweight software running on a JavaScript engine rather than the OS itself.  Taking another approach, Apple (which in terms of revenue has been a CE company with a side business in computers for a while now) has come up with the iTunes App Store: applications for the iPhone (and likely for the Apple TV in the near future) are installed on the OS itself, but must be first vetted by (and subsequently purchased through) Apple.  This offers the best of both worlds: the developer base for the device is virtually unlimited, but nothing’s going to break, and apps are guaranteed to be secure.  In fact, the “app store” model is currently being imitated by other smartphone makers such as Nokia because it’s been so successful and popular with users.

Well, 98% of us, that is – there’s also a growing geek subculture out there that believes they have the right to do whatever they want to with something they’ve purchased, thank you very much – and they’re dedicated to removing the iPhone’s software restrictions – “jailbreaking”, as it’s called.  Although the practice is in direct violation of the iPhone EULA (software license agreement), it’s gotten so widespread now that a Google search of “jailbreak” and “iPhone” currently yields 3.6 million results -and so the two sides (the Electronic Frontier Foundation and Apple) are set to face off this spring.

Apparently, this dispute is subject to the Digital Millennium Copyright Act , originally meant to fight piracy of copyrighted “works” such as film and music – therefore, it will ultimately fall upon those famously tech-savvy folks at the Library of Congress to decide the issue.  A case can be made for either side – but although I have to admit I’d love the ability to put my iPhone on a network that covers the NYC metro area better than AT&T , I tend to side with Apple on this one – not only because I feel the iPhone EULA puts them on a pretty strong legal footing, but also because I feel that it’s “good and right” to treat software for CE devices differently than software for computers.

One thing is for certain, though – just as developers will continue to write great App Store applications for Apple, others will continue to hack open the system.  What’s unknown is whether Apple go to the length of actually suing users – a tactic that didn’t work very well for the RIAA .

“You think we need this phone anymore?” I asked my wife.  Although I’d retired ye olde twisted copper line a few years back, going that one step further and losing the VOIP phone – well, that felt a little reckless.  But the fact remained that aside from a weekly call to my wife’s family in Germany, our use usage of that line had dwindled down to getting the occasional cold call for donations from the Police Benevolent Association of New York City (where I hadn’t lived for several years).

Live Simple.  Lean and Mean. (or our pale bourgeois version of it, at least) – to us, it seemed like a good idea at the time.   It turns out we weren’t alone: a recent US government survey claims that 17.5% (or 1 in 6) US households now depend exclusively on cellular networks for telephone service.

Nevertheless, I’ve found these major home network revisions require (ahem) particularly well documented key stakeholder buy-in, so I waited a week or two and asked Anja once again if Skype could be a workable Vonage replacement for her calls home.  Only after getting further assurance did I finally make the ‘Dear John’ call to break it off with Vonage (at one point, to spare the call center operator from having to go through his whole customer retention script with me, I think I might have actually said “it’s not you, it’s me”).

As it happened, though, both Anja and I came to rue that fateful day: my comeuppance coincided with a switch to the iPhone – or should I say to the remarkably dismal (in the NYC metro area at least) AT&T voice network that comes tethered to it like a ball and chain.  For her, it turned out she hated having to either boot up the laptop and run Skype or try to cradle a tiny cell phone on her shoulder during those leisurely Sunday morning calls home to Germany after all…

She’s one resourceful e-shopper, though, and soon came across what I think could be the Next Cool Geek Accessory – the retro cell phone handset. While she uses hers only at home for purely ergonomic reasons, I can imagine these things starting to turn up on the streets of the Williamsburg (and other ghettos of hip), just as black horn rim glasses did 10 years ago.  For the rest of us (those of us old enough to remember), making a call with these huge ancient headsets is somehow strangely reassuring.

Yep. I like this thing – both for the sheer comfort and clunkiness of it, as well as for the juxtaposition of vintage design and current technology – there are even Bluetooth and USB versions available.

Who knows, if my AT&T voice coverage ever improves enough to make it worthwhile, I might just get a Bluetooth handset for my iPhone…

As nice as the device is (and the more I use it, the more I like it), I’ve again found myself once again with a few thoughts on what could make the iPhone even better…

a (ahem) better network In a previous life, I wrote a fair amount of music for television commercials.  Once I was called back to do some alterations on a spot for an aerosol carpet deodorizer because of changes required by legal at the ad agency – in the commercial, the effectiveness of the product was illustrated using a (somewhat silly) ‘odor-smelling wand’ prop.  However, it was discovered that the number of (entirely fake) beeps coming from the prop didn’t accurately match the (entirely real) numbers coming from the focus group, so the spot needed to be reedited – such is the attention paid to truth in advertising and potential litigation.    How then does Apple get away with showing 3G web pages loading this quickly in their iPhone 3G ads?  (I mean, whose little blue Safari browser bar moves across that quickly?)

Good old-fashioned voice coverage is even more of an issue, though – I (along with an informal sampling of my fellow NYC iPhone users) are still occasionally suffering from the AT&T dropped call syndrome, and what’s worse is that despite having all the latest firmware upgrades, I still have to stand in the far corner of my living room to get enough bars to make a phone call from my apartment – and this is a 7 minute subway ride from Manhattan (i.e. not exactly the boondocks).   Even in the middle of New York City, coverage can be spotty:  I recently stood on the corner of 14th St. and University Place (Union Sq.) and had no voice service whatsoever (incredibly, I had to walk west along 14th St. past 5th Ave. before I had any bars).  The AT&T cell network needs some work, at least in the New York City area.

system-wide ‘undo’ It’s a little surprising the iPhone is missing a global ‘undo’ command at the operating system level, but I’m guessing it’s the result of a conscious design decision to keep the iPhone OS as lean and mean as possible (in computer science terms, a global undo requires a certain degree of ‘statefulness’, but the iPhone is largely a stateless device).   However, as iPhone Apps get more interesting and powerful, the lack of an ‘undo’ command is only going to become more of an issue (and meanwhile, what if you delete an SMS conversation by mistake?)
One cute idea would be to leverage the iPhone’s onboard accelerometer (which makes how the device itself is held a user input for flipping the display axis and for certain games) – because a rapid physical shaking of the iPhone would make a neat ‘undo’ command, wouldn’t it?  (reminding us all of our childhood Etch-a-Sketch…)

system-wide text ‘copy’ and ‘paste’ Again, a pretty basic function, but one the iPhone doesn’t support.  Here’s a great mockup of how this could work – from vimeo, a video sharing site I like a lot.

axis flipping for the mail app Again, back to the accelerometer – I get a fair amount of HTML emails. While the iPhone does a good job displaying them, it would be nice to be able to hold the device lengthwise and view what are essential web pages with the wider horizontal aspect ratio – as I’m already able to do with the browser, camera roll, and video player apps (and since the functionality is already in place for those apps, it would be very easy to implement).

In general, though, while the AT&T network is a disappointment, the device itself certainly is not – and recent sales figures reflect just how popular the iPhone has become: during the last quarter, Apple sold 6.9 million units, more than were sold during all previous quarters combined. In fact, over the last quarter, the iPhone sold more than any other mobile device (smart phone or not), beating out both the (often free) Motorola Razr in the consumer space and the RIM Blackberry line in the enterprise space.  Further evidence of the iPhone’s success can be found reading between the lines of a recent blog post from a Microsoft blogger concerning the new Office 2008 web apps and cross-platform cloud computing – iPhone compatibility is given top billing, over even Mac OS compatibility.

So the iPhone is a hit – as a believer in the importance of good product design, I’m glad to see it.

The AT&T network, though, remains a work in progress – at least in our neck of the woods.

Who knew? Porn on the New York subway. But then again, wasn’t it inevitable?

The place: A crowded afternoon N train from Manhattan to Brooklyn. The culprit: a Sony PlayStation Portable held by a young man sitting and watching in solitude, yet surrounded by plenty other strap hangers trying to get home.

What exactly happened here?

The first thing that got me was the audacity of it. With his PSP packed with genuine XXX fodder, simply put, what he was watching was nothing short of hard core pornographic visual certainly not intended for public transportation.

The next thing I noticed, no one seemed to pay attention. Hence – at least for the duration of my ride – no one seemed to mind.

What about the woman next to him, seemingly asleep? Another nearby busied herself reading, of all things, scripture. There were plenty  of other men and woman immediately around us while others got on and off the train.

Now, I know New York subway commuters have long learned to mind their own business.

But the video that unfolded in front of all of us (the sound was muted) clearly lowered the bar on anyone’s standard of privacy; clearly was so out of the ordinary that for it mere ostentatiousness I figured someone would have to bring it up.

Above and beyond my own discontent about the young man’s obvious lack of social skills, I quickly found myself rather intrigued by something else in this – the apparent disconnect between device and audience.

What used to be a consumer video experience “curbed” by the lack of technology’s reach, a TV set and a VCR simply didn’t lend itself to any practical use in full public view.

This kept anyone’s viewing choice a private matter. No matter how sexual, violent, or mundane the footage was, consumption and intent remained locked inside the home.

Fast forward, today’s “anytime anywhere” video consumption capabilities have changed the playing field. The new paradigm: Anyone’s personal video experience is super-portable, devoid of any particular time, place, and for that matter choice of companion viewers.

Think about it.

Sprint Nextel recently started delivering WiMAX-enabled wireless broadband service powerful enough to give you downlink speeds of 25 Mbps or more while driving down the highway.

Essentially an open pipe into and out of the World Wide Web, it’s going to be interesting to see what passing cars are watching in the back seats once content is no longer limited to wholesome satellite subscription services or Disney DVDs brought along for the kids.

And what about in-flight Web access, such as the service recently announced by American Airlines for select domestic trips?

No matter whether on a highway, on an airplane or inside a subway car in New York, what’s OK for the person to the left of you might be unacceptable to the one on the right.

Clearly, with the pervasive nature of digital content and enabling delivery devices, the meaning of “privacy” is undergoing change.

As to my personal opinion, I am in favor of self-regulating one’s public conduct. Anything beyond that might quickly collide with core principles such as net neutrality or freedom of speech.

Still, our old-world definition of privacy seems to be changing as more of our new world trends towards digital and portable at once.

It’ll be interesting to see how this pans out.