Wednesday, March 30, 2005

TiVo Pop-Up Ads Are Huge. I had thought, perhaps, that the TiVo users were getting a bit worked up over the TiVo pop-up ads that are in testing, because last I heard they only take up a quarter of the screen. Matt Haughey took this found this picture of it in action, though, and now I get the ire. That's really annoying, even if it is only when fast-forwarding. How are you supposed to see what you're forwarding through? Even if you can hit 'clear' to make it go away, it's still needlessly messy. Matt has a mock-up of what he'd like to see on PVRBlog and it's much more reasonable. Maybe that's TiVo's tack—make the first versions so over-the-top that by the time the intro the real deal, everyone will have forgotten how frustrating it is to get pop-up ads on a subscription service in the first place. "Icon" ads over commercials at TiVo [PVRBlog] [Gizmodo] 7:32:39 PM   comments[]

Thursday, March 24, 2005

Optek Fretlight Guitar. The Optek Fretlight combines a standard Stratocaster clone with a light-up LED neck, making it easier to learn how to play the guitar or learn new songs. The Fretlight happens to be a MIDI guitar, too, so you can send signals to it from standard music applications, or even other instruments. That means your instructor could play a short riff, which would light up on your guitar. And with quoted prices around $600 or so, it's relatively affordable (compared to other MIDI guitars, at least). Product Page [OptekMusic via JoshSpear] [Gizmodo] 11:31:03 AM   comments[]

Sunday, March 6, 2005

More on the HP DJammer. Wired News has more the HP DJammer we talked about before, including early reaction from the DJ community and new developments on teaching it to beat match and its Wi-Fi capabilities. And yes, you'll still look like you're five minutes into a seizure while using the DJammer, but that's how you indie kids dance these days, what with your hip hopping. Scra-Scra-Scratching Thin Air [WiredNews] [Gizmodo] 2:03:15 PM   comments[]

Wednesday, December 15, 2004

P2P in 15 Lines of Code. TinyP2P is a functional peer-to-peer file sharing application, written in fifteen lines of code, in the Python programming language. I wrote TinyP2P to illustrate the difficulty of regulating peer-to-peer applications. Peer-to-peer apps can be very simple, and any moderately skilled programmer can write one, so attempts to ban their creation would be fruitless. For more information about TinyP2P, see http://www.freedom-to-tinker.com/tinyp2p.html. [Freedom to Tinker] 3:47:25 PM   comments[]   Switched On: TiVo should skip ahead and kill subscription fees. Each week Ross Rubin contributes Switched On, a weekly column about the future of technology, multimedia, and digital entertainment: The sworn enemy of the savvy consumer is the asterisk. This pesky punctuation can sweep the wind from the sails of enthusiasm around a product. At best, it connotes a complication. At worst, it signals that something here is too good to be true, the company is overpromising, and that you better watch your back – particularly the pocket in which your wallet rests. For TiVo, it’s been an albatross preventing more consumers from enjoying their well-designed digital video recording product. The asterisk explains that – after you purchase a device — a subscription is required. TiVo, which was founded in 1997, did its business planning during the height of the dotcom era. The desire to create recurring revenue was a dream that reflected the overly optimistic investor enthusiasm at the time. TiVo saw some future threats, though. It knew that, despite its patent portfolio on recording digital video, other DVRs would come to market. Positioning TiVo as a service would allow it to work with a variety of products from different hardware companies. The company also had its eye on the cable and satellite industry, and a monthly fee would make it easy for those companies to resell a DVR service. Unfortunately, neither vision came to full fruition. While other retail DVRs – some using TiVo’s software — have come to market, the company has had to introduce a watered-down version to appease manufacturing partners rightly concerned about double-billing. And while cable and satellite companies are now shipping out hundreds of thousands of DVRs, only DirecTV’s use TiVo’s software. With DirecTV’s new sister company NDS offering DVR software, the writing is on the wall-mounted plasma for that relationship. TiVo’s time has shifted, and so should its business model. The subscription fee merely added insult to injury when the first TiVo units came to market north of $500, but now the company offers a basic Series 2 DVR for $99 after rebate. Embedding the $250 “lifetime” subscription fee would allow a complete package of $350, about the price of many DVD recorders now on the market. On one level, we’re talking about semantics — $350 is the effective price. However, removing the positioning of a subscription would eliminate an important psychological barrier as well as a good deal of hassle. Without the subscription fee requirement, TiVo would turn the marketing tables on cable DVRs that now soundly beat it at face value. Paying a one-time $350 fee for stable DVR service with home networking links and a great interface is compelling versus paying $8 or more per month to your probably beloved cable provider for which the only “Lifetime” option is a barrage of sappy women’s TV movies. TiVo will never be able to beat cable and satellite providers at a subscription price war, so why fight one? And when compared to a Media Center PC for $1,500 or more, TiVo would be closer to the price of a far less versatile Media Center Extender. TiVo could still force registration, or perhaps even a credit card, to activate its service. That would allow it to continue to sell research on DVR viewers, expand its audience for targeted “fast forward” billboards, and sell premium services such as Netflix rentals, Internet programming, or content that could be delivered to its boxes. In contrast, it has never done a good job articulating the naked value behind that monthly fee. TiVo might take a short-term hit losing the monthly revenue from customers who continue to pay by the month (or could simply make them a “lifetime” conversion offer), but its product’s gift value (which now represents the gift that keeps on taking) would grow tremendously. And the best part is, it would still amortize that subscription fee. TiVo started life as an application, but if it wants to become a content platform it has to expand its customer base. Even TiVo CEO Mike Ramsay admitted at last year’s Consumer Electronics Show that DVR was just the beginning. The landscape has changed; it’s time for TiVo to make bold moves and kick asterisk. [Engadget] 12:22:36 PM   comments[]

Monday, November 29, 2004

John Battelle's Vision for merging TV and Search. Half an hour later, you and your wife turn on your television to catch the Learning Channel show. As it starts, a small box appears on the bottom of the screen, alerting you to several advertisements that have appeared in your programming feed. You know that should you decide to watch them, your local cable bill will be reduced by a buck or so (or, alternatively, you've selected the programming option that gives you free cable, but requires that you review ads at preset intervals). No matter, that's not really the reason you might want to pause the show and check out the ads. Turns out, you rather like watching them, as they are often extremely relevant to your wants and needs, not to mention informative. [musings of a social architect] 9:34:33 PM   comments[]

Monday, November 15, 2004

Music download vending machines coming to Britain. A company called Inspired Broadcast Networks is installing music vending machines in a couple of subway stations in London that’ll let you download music to your cellphone or MP3 player. They’re going to charge £1 per track, with each kiosk having about two million songs to choose from, and that they have plans to install more than 20,000 of them at pubs, stores, and gas stations around the country. So let’s see, custom CD kiosks never really took off, why should music download kiosks do any better? It might be a little faster to use a kiosk, and there is a convenience factor for when you’re on the go, but it’s not like you can’t already download (and even legally buy) music pretty easily using a computer at home; we won’t even get into all the compatibility and DRM issues involved with connecting up different MP3 players and cellphones. [Engadget] 1:22:25 PM   comments[]

Tuesday, November 9, 2004

John Battelle's Vision for merging TV and Search. Compared to the unpredictable and untraceable value of a magazine ad or television spot, search looks pretty damn compelling. But at the end of the day, three lines of text sitting next to a set of results is a pretty meager way to declare your brand or inform a consumer about your new products or services. Clearly, there is room for both kinds of advertising - intent-based (search), and content-based (TV). But what if the two were to merge? [Searchblog] 12:39:39 PM   comments[]

Friday, November 5, 2004

BitTorrent Accounts for 35% of All Internet Traffic. BitTorrent now accounts for an astounding 35 percent of all the traffic on the Internet -- more than all other peer-to-peer programs combined -- and dwarfs mainstream traffic like Web pages. [Blogarithms] 10:26:28 AM   comments[]

Wednesday, August 4, 2004

AlchemyTV plug-in MovieGate burns video to CDs, DVDs. British developer Miglia Technology announced on Wednesday the release of MovieGate, a free plug-in for AlchemyTV DVR (Digital Video Recorder) that enables burning VCDs, Super VCDs and DVDs in the DVR application, as well as creating chapter stops for DVDs. The plug-in is based on the DVD mastering utility released by the developers at macetvideo.com. MovieGate converts recorded video to MPEG-2 and supports burning to the DVD+/-R, DVD+/-RW and CD-R/W formats. [MacCentral] 9:43:51 PM   comments[]

Sunday, July 18, 2004

Walkmen changed our social norms. This article on the 25th anniversary of the Walkman explores some of the fascinating social fallout from the rise of personal stereos. "The Walkman was critical in altering the rules of being with other people," Schiffer says. "People thought it was rude to listen to music in public. Now our standards have eroded to the route we've gone down with cell phones, which is to sanction rudeness. We are losing sociability." Reg Req'd Link [Boing Boing] 1:33:44 PM   comments[]

Friday, June 25, 2004

Tactic: mix digital video in real-time. Livid Instruments announced on Friday the release of Tactic, a hardware device that works with the included software to allow video DJs to mix and edit digital video in real-time. Tactic is made of handcrafted wood and features a USB connection, 16 buttons and knobs that can be assigned different functions, six buttons for triggering effects and 36 tactile buttons that let you rapidly trigger effects. The software offers a preview screen that monitors video clips and camera feeds as well as programmable sliders, buttons, wheels and knobs. As MacCentral posted this article, Livid had not yet posted system requirements or pricing for Tactic. [MacCentral] 12:30:58 PM   comments[]

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