Exploring the impact of broadband and technology on our lives, our businesses, and our communities.
Play a Zune for me
Microsoft has released details of its long-awaited music player, and it is pretty interesting. It's called Zune, and is obviously trying to beat the iPod by adding stuff that the iPod does not have. Included extras are WiFi networking, a slightly bigger screen, and an FM receiver. It comes in three colors, including brown, and I have to say that from the pictures, brown seems like an awfully unattractive choice.
The iPod has long been criticized for not having an FM tuner, but I do not think this is a particularly big selling feature. Other music players have offered this and it has not helped their sales. The underlying issue is that once you have all your music loaded on a portable music player, FM radio seems tedious and bland by comparison.
The Zune Marketplace (think iTunes Store) will selll music and videos, and the WiFi features allows you to share music and movies on a "sample" basis with nearby friends; it is not clear exactly how the "sample" sharing will work. In any case, it will be interesting to see how Zune does.
Technology News:
Diebold voting machine hacking continues
Three researchers at Princeton have written a detailed analysis of the many security problems with Diebold voting machines, and have included a video demonstrating how simple it is to tamper with the machine. Meanwhile, voters get the short end of the stick with both the potential for utterly compromised elections and the need to replace hundreds of millions of dollars worth of these machines with new ones, using our tax dollars.
Knowledge Democracy:
Skype is redefining the "phone"
eBay's purchase of Skype, the Internet phone service, appears to be reaping dividends in terms of new features for the phone service. Skype has been making more frequent upgrades to the software and service, and in the process, is redefining the telephone.
We used to think of the telephone as an object. It is now a piece of software and an associated service, completely independent of a particular physical object. You can run Skype on your computer with a headset, but manufacturers are also producing "Skype phones" which have the basic Skype service protocols built in, so you can plug them into your computer but use the phone to dial calls just like an "old fashioned" phone.
The company is taking many different features and services and combining them into a unified interface--something other companies are trying to do but with less success. Skype seems to be taking a page from Apple and focusing intently on designing really good software to make the service easy to use from beginning to end. The company has excellent help tips and instructions, and the newest version of Skype with videoconferencing recognized my camera without making me do anything to set that feature up.
Skype is adding SMS, file sharing, conference calling, video calls, and voicemail, among other features. And Skype can also call to "old" telephone landlines. Some of these things cost money, but Skype is pursuing the now classic Internet model of giving part of the service away for free. With eBay's deep pockets, Skype may well come to dominate the phone space, whether we like it or not. Internet advocates are working on an Open Source equivalent called Gizmo, which has many of the same features, but Gizmo, which relies on volunteers to add new features, may not be able to keep up with a steady stream of new features coming from Skype. But free does not always mean good. I've tried to use Skype's conference call feature, and the quality is mixed, as is just person to person Skype calls, because the service is heavily dependent on the quality of your Internet connection and all the connections between you and the person on the other end. Skype is one reason the phone companies are calling for a two tier Internet with toll booths. The phone and cable companies want to extort, er, I mean, charge Skype fees for carrying their traffic. But that's not a solution, it's just another problem, mostly for users.
What is likely is that the notion of having a single "phone" number or even just one or two phone numbers, is long gone. We'll have to have multiple voice services and accounts to accommodate friends, family, and business associates. As long as we can forward our phone calls from one "number" to another, we should generally benefit from a very rich set of features....if we can figure out how to use them all.
Technology News:
Amazon vs. Apple
Glenn Harlan Reynolds has an article about problems with Amazon's brand new Unbox video download service, which serves as a contrast to Apple's new video service. The Unbox system only works on Windows (iTunes works on Windows and Macs), just for starters. But the gripes are apparently about a "phone home" feature (sometimes called spyware) of Unbox that seems to constantly want to connect to the Internet so that your computer can talk to Amazon's computers. Harlan writes about the experiences of another Tech Central Station columnist, who flatly recommends against using the service because of the difficulty installing, uninstalling, and the "phone home" spyware.
Most amusing is a quote from the Unbox documentation that a reader posted in the Comments section:
"If your device is Plays for Sure compliant it may work, but we cannot guarantee performance on untested devices"
So "Plays for Sure" apparently means "Plays Maybe."
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Knowledge Democracy:
The rest of the Apple movie download story
Apple unveiled its iTunes movie download service yesterday, which is very nicely done from a customer experience perspective. But many people are likely to be frustrated with download speeds. Apple talks about 30 minutes to download a feature length movie, but the company noted that is if you have a 5-6 megabit cable modem connection. About 60% of broadband users have cable modem connections, and many of them are supposed to be three megabits/second or more, but few actually deliver that. The cable companies coyly use the phrase "speeds UP TO 6 megabits," meaning snowballs in heck will likely freeze solid first.
My home is on an Adelphia system now owned by Cox, and I rarely see speeds of much more than 1 megabit/second. Sometimes I see more, but last night, as an example, I was barely getting 500kilobits/second. The problem with cable and wireless systems that promise huge speeds is that you share that bandwidth with other local users, so the theoretical maximum the marketing people love to tout is just that--theoretical--as in, if you are the only person on the Internet in your local area. Which almost never happens unless you work the night shift and tend to be up at 4 AM.
We observed this phenomenon many years ago when I was still running the Blacksburg Electronic Village. In the afternoon and evenings, people go home and get online, and do so much more now than then. So if everyone pushes back from the dinner table about 6:30 PM on Friday night and decides to download a movie instead of going to the video rental store, you won't be getting that movie in anything like 30 minutes. It will more likely be a couple of hours, or even longer. Dedicated download enthusiasts will start downloads the night before and go to bed while pulling the movie down.
This is why cable and phone company promises of 5, 10, or even 30 megabit speeds are grossly inadequate. Apple's highly compressed movie offerings don't even match current DVD quality; they had to do this to make it possible to download them at all over current broadband systems. But as more and more people demand to watch movies in HD format, the current copper-based "broadband" network in the U.S. (i.e. cable modem and DSL) is simply not up to it. A high quality HD video stream requires 18-20 megabits/second for a single movie, and if you two of you in the household want to watch different movies at the same time, you are right up to around 40 megabits/second, just to watch a TV show or movie.
And despite promises of 54 megabit and 108 megabit wireless systems, those are the theoretical maximums, not the real world average throughput. For any wireless system with multiple users (almost all neighborhood systems), a simple rule of thumb is to divide the maximum throughput by 10 to get the likely "good" bandwidth you will see most of the time. So a 54 megabit wireless system might be able to deliver 5 meg/second when usage is moderate. On Friday nights, you might be lucky to get 1 megabit consistently.
Communities need fiber, for business and for entertainment, and to make the system pay, you need both kinds of content. As Design Nine helps more and more communities design true Open Service Provider Networks (OSPNs), our financial models consistently show that you can't just build out to business or just to residential neighborhoods and make the network pay for itself. You need to bring both market segments into an integrated business plan.
Technology News:
Apple promotes music, TV, movies
Apple announced a slew of new and upgraded products yesterday that disappointed some Apple fans who had hoped for an iPod phone. Pundits have begun yet another "Apple is becoming obsolete" mantra, but beating up on Apple is nothing new, and for nearly thirty years, the pundits have almost always been wrong about Apple. With cellphones challenging the iPod as a music player and Microsoft's new music player about to be released, it is easy to see why you might think Apple's best music days are behind it.
But yesterday will likely prove the pundits wrong again. While no new "gotta have it" devices were announced yesterday, the fullness of Apple's multimedia strategy has emerged, in many small ways, mostly with Apple's superb design leading the way.
The iPod Shuffle, the smallest iPod, was long overdue for an upgrade, and Apple made the diminutive player even smaller; it is now no bigger than an oversize postage stamp, and instead of somewhat cheap-looking plastic, it is housed in a beautiful brushed aluminum case with a built in clip--perfect for people who want to carry music but don't want another big gadget to lug around. This new Shuffle is also likely to be popular with sports enthusiasts.
The iPod nano, which has been wildly popular but heavily criticized for its easily scratchable case, has been redesigned in durable aluminum and now comes in five colors, along with more capacity and longer battery life.
The full size iPod has a 60% brighter screen, longer battery life, lower prices, and increased capacity for better handling of movies. Apple also rolled out a revamped iTunes Store that now sells music, audio books, podcasts, TV shows, and full length movies. This was no surprise, but Apple's design efforts for the store are stunning. You use the new iTunes software to access the store and shop for content, and the two work together extraordinarily well. Among the additions to iTunes is the ability to capture cover art for both music and videos, and a new cover art browsing feature is really impossible to describe in words--I did not pay much attention to it as I read about it, but when I saw it working on my computer, I was awestruck, and with more than 30 years of technology use under my belt, that's pretty hard to do.
Apple has labored for years to slowly integrate media as part of the "computer," and the work is beginning to pay off. The seamless integration of hardware, software, and content can't really be appreciated until it is experienced, and if Apple wins the media wars, it will not be because of any single product or service, but because of an end to end commitment to detail and design that bigger companies like HP and Microsoft have never mastered.
Apple also previewed a $299 box that connects to your TV, stereo, or HD flat panel television; the device has both cabled Ethernet and wireless network access so you can stream music, TV shows, or movies from your computer to your TV. This is where Apple is diverging from the rest of the industry. Microsoft's media vision is that the computer becomes the TV, which means you end up with the computer NEXT to the TV, which is not where most people want to use the computer for other tasks like email, the Web, and work. Apple's vision is that the computer can be anywhere in the home, and you can effortlessly pull your music and video to wherever you want to use it.
Community economic development check: In just about every rural community I have ever been in, leaders talk about the need to attract and retain young people. But when I ask for a show of hands to see how many of these leaders have iPods or have used iTunes, it is ordinary for none of them to have an iPod or to be familiar with how these devices are used. But virtually everyone under thirty has a music player, and nearly 80% of those have an iPod. If you want to attract and retain young people in your community, you need to know what interests them and why. Step One of a revamped economic development plan: Buy each of your key leaders an iPod and install iTunes on their computer (yes, it runs on Windows).
Technology News:
Broadband in gas lines
A San Diego start up company has announced plans to sell broadband delivered by gas pipelines. The problem with these schemes to put broadband in {insert your favorite utility here: gas pipes, electric cable, sewer lines} is that you can end up spending a significant portion of what it would take to build out a complete, communitywide fiber system, but in most cases, you will have a second class broadband system that could put your community permanently behind communities that do invest in fiber--and from an economic development perspective, the result could be difficult to overcome.
These are typically vendor driven solutions, not community needs based solutions. These systems may well have a niche role to play in the market place, but the future is fiber--no other delivery system has the same ability to increase in capacity over time. I want to make sure communities invest in systems that are going to last for decades, and fiber, when you look at the total life cycle costs, is much cheaper than any radio-based solution, which includes over the air wireless, BPL (Broadband Over Power Lines), and the gas pipe system.
Vendors tend to want to push a single system, but it does not have to an either/or choice (either fiber or wireless). It is better to design an integrated system from the ground up with fiber throughout your service area and a wireless overlay so that our mobile devices (phones, PDAs, etc.) work anywhere.
Technology News:
Wikipedia defies China
The free online encyclopedia Wikipedia has refused the Chinese government's request to remove certain material from the Wikipedia Web site, and in retaliation, the Chinese have blocked access to Wikipedia for everyone in China. Unlike other the leaders of other companies like Microsoft, Google and Yahoo!, who have collaborated with the Chinese government and agreed to assist with censorship, Jimmy Wales, the founder of Wikipedia, has taken a principled stand and refused to participate in censorship.
Apparently, among the items the Chinese want removed are articles about Tiananmen Square and the massacre of thousands of Chinese students by the Communist government. Wales will continue to meet with Chinese officials to encourage them to allow complete access to Wikipedia.
Knowledge Democracy:
Amazon offers an eBook
Amazon is offering an eBook. Dozens of companies lost their shirts with ebooks in the late nineties. Back then, laptops were expensive and PDAs had tiny screens and were hard to read (Apple's Newton was the exception). So many thought that ebooks--light, portable readers--would catch on. But the number of titles available for any given platform were limited, and too many manufacturers opted for proprietary book formats that made publishing a nightmare. A successful book might have to be made available in several different formats. At least one company (I can't remember the name) had the good sense to adopt PDF as the file format, but nonetheless, ebooks never really caught on.
File formats were just part of the problem. There was also digital rights management, the mechanics of buying, downloading, and installling the files was another, battery life was yet another issue, finally, some were awkward to use. It's hard to beat books, which have had hundreds of years of design packed into the format.
Amazon's design has a keyboard (for taking notes, which was usually impossible with earlier ebook systems), probably uses e-ink, which extends battery life, and comes with EVDO wireless, meaning you can download books easily and probably also does email and other common chores.
It will be interesting to see how this does. If Amazon can afford to play the "give away the razor, make money on the blades" game and sell it cheap with the hope of making it up on book sales, it could catch on--if the books are cheap enough.
Despite the popularity of online music sites like iTunes, music prices did not come down any because music publishing houses were and still are greedy--they want all the money they used to make on CD sales, but they no longer have any distribution costs. If book publishers take the same route, Amazon may have tough sledding. And if it is hard for authors and publishers to prepare a manuscript for the ebook, it may be even worse.
Having said all that, I think ebooks are inevitable. A lot of books are read once and discarded, and many technical books have time sensitive material that becomes less useful in just a year or two. And the high cost of college textbooks could be brought down with cheap ebooks. So we will have ebooks; what is uncertain is what platform we will read them on. Most of us don't want both a laptop and a second ebook "thing." We'd rather have a single device that serves as both, and a tablet computer would do nicely.
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Knowledge Democracy:
Is the iPod cooling?
This article argues that the age of the iPod may be over. For the last two quarters, iPod sales have fallen slightly, if you can call selling more than 8 million of the devices in each quarter "slow sales." The theory is that because so many people have iPods that youth no longer see them as cool. I guess it is pretty horrifying to discover that your grandfather has the same music player that you do.
Another theory, and a more likely one, I think, is that phones with music players are beginning to eat into iPod sales. It's what I call the "one too many gadgets" problem. If you can buy something that eliminates a gadget and charger, you may be motivated to get it and drop the other gadget. But there was much wailing and gnashing of teeth a couple of years ago when most cellphones began adding camera features. After a while, most people figured out that the cellphone cameras took really crummy pictures and kept buying digital cameras.
The most likely explanation is that nearly everyone who wants an iPod has one. There is no market that can continually sustain double digit growth. Eventually you have sold your widget to everyone. At that point, the market matures and sales are primarily replacement units. Tomorrow, Apple is supposed to announce movies for sale on the iTunes store. Recall that when the iTunes store opened, few thought it would amount to anything. Since then, nearly every record company has had to begrudgingly admit the world has changed. There are dozens of competitors to Apple selling online music, and the there are already several other online movie stores in the wings.
Downloadable movies may spur sales of the bigger iPods with hard drives, because they have the storage space for movies. Apple may have the last laugh yet.
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