Consumption

Will You Pay for Hulu? —

Will You Pay for Hulu? is a post from Chris Pirillo

I’m betting one of the biggest reasons you’re a Hulu fan would be the fact that consumption doesn’t cost you anything. It looks as though the company will soon be switching over to a paid model much like you’d find with Netflix. They are also looking to expand the service onto devices such as the Xbox 360 and iPad.

Hulu, which generated an estimated $100 million in advertising revenue last year, will continue to offer newer episodes of shows like Fox’s “Glee” free of charge, but it will also charge viewers a monthly fee to see older episodes and other content, two of the sources said.

Hulu gained about $100 million in advertising revenue last year. They will reportedly continue to offer new episodes of your favorite shows free of charge. Watching older episodes and other content will likely require a monthly fee. Advertising is what has allowed the service to remain free up until this point. Competition in this market is fierce, and Hulu is stepping up its game in order to be one of the top dogs in consumption services.

Will you pay a fee to catch up on your shows, or will you look elsewhere for them?

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• What was your first hand-held gaming system?
• China says that they will continue to censor the Internet as they see fit.
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• Would you run Linux on an MSI X600 laptop?
• Windows 7 was NOT your idea! It was mine.
• If you could ask your 20-years-in-the-future self a question, what would you want to know?
• What’s missing from iPhone 4?
• Have you gotten to play with a Panasonic Lumix G2?
• Could you give up any of your technology – even for a day?
• BP bought out top sponsor links from Google and Yahoo in an attempt to improve the company image.
• What social networking site do you spend the most time on?
• BeFunky offers awesome photo editing and effects tools for everyday people.
• Do you like your boss?
• The 2010 Mazda3: What’s up with that smile?
• If the iPad “goes anywhere,” why isn’t it allowed at Yankee Stadium?
• Are you a fan of “no-cost” software?

You don’t have to pay a monthly fee to gain access to all of the hottest software and apps for all of your machines and devices.

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• Do Your Research – on Every Topic
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• Do You Hulu?
• Want a CPU Magazine Discount Subscription?
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Even though anything growing in the Hudson immediately set off gag reflexes, the New Jersey Department of Environmental Protection doesn't trust Jersey citizens with their better judgment. Saying they can't adequately protect against poachers, the DEP has ordered a halt on oyster bed restoration projects in waters classified as polluted, even though the beds were built in the polluted water to help clean it up. The oysters are not meant for consumption, but the DEP fears people may get sick if poachers attempt to sell the oysters commercially, and that their sale could damage the legal oyster harvesting industry. The ruling just affects Jersey waters, so these kids are safe...for now.

Twitter COO Dick Cosotolo offered some updated stats at the Conversational Media Summit today in New York City. Twitter is now attracting 190 million visitors per month and generating 65 million Tweets a day. “We’re laying down track as fast as we can in front of the train,” says Costolo. These numbers are up slightly from 180 million self-reported unique visitors per month back in April, and 50 million Tweets per day in February.

The number of visitors to Twitter.com is not the same as the number of registered users. (ComScore, in contrsat, estimated 83.6 million worldwide unique visitors to Twitter.com in April and 23.8 million U.S. visitors in May, see chart below). Most users, says Costolo, don’t Tweet at all, but rather use Twitter as a consumption media. How many of those 65 million Tweets are automated spam is not clear.

Once again, Costolo reiterated Twitter’s stance that “We will not allow third parties to inject ads into the stream.” When Twitter rolls out its Promoted Tweets, it will control them 100 percent. Some brands doing early beta testing with Promoted Tweets are seeing, on average, 2.5 percent “engagement rates,” whatever that means. He also mentioned that Twitter will be rolling out an analytics dashboard for commercial customers and brands. Advertisers will be able to target messages by interest and topics, but not by individual users.

Not that interesting, really.

Preliminarily, I can tell you that within my sample, cannibalism seems to be on the rise, myctophid consumption is falling, and a lot more squid may be dying hungry.

Liveblog: UMG’s Francis Keeling talks digital music —

Universal Music Group International’s VP of Digital Francis Keeling took to the stage at The Great Escape conference in Brighton this morning, to discuss digital music business models, and how music consumption is likely to change in the years ahead.

Music Ally boss Paul Brindley was the man firing the questions. Keeling’s role at UMGI is on the dealmaking side, working with digital music services and stores around the world (everywhere outside the US). Everyone from Apple, Nokia and Vodafone through to the new breed of music startups like Spotify.

“Being the biggest [label] does bring responsibility,” said Keeling, saying UMG is keen to encourage as many business partners as possible, trying new models. “We don’t want lots of businesses launching the same old service that’s in the market though,” he says.

Keeling also said UMG is keen to speed up the licensing process, so startups don’t have to take six months to a year to get licences for music. “That’s what’s stalling our industry,” he said, referring to the time it takes to get licensing deals if you’re a music startup.

So, should we be optimistic about the future for recorded music? Keeling says yes, pointing to growth around the world. “Optimistic? Yes. Turned the corner? No. We’re still in the transition phase, where we’re fighting a very large battle against piracy… We need to get more retailers on board, solve licensing issues. There’s a huge number of issues that need to get sorted.”

Brindley pointed out that UMG just announced this week that its digital revenues were down slightly in the first quarter of this year. Has digital hit a ceiling?

“In terms of our results, look at us year-on-year,” he said. “Year-on-year the growth is very positive and strong, and we’re very pleased with that.”

Keeling said that UMGI is seeing encouraging growth internationally, as it signs new deals, particularly in countries where there hasn’t been a big digital music market before. An interesting point: in the US, iTunes is UMG’s biggest single music retail partner, in terms of generating revenues for it. In Sweden, it’s Spotify.

What new models is UMGI keen to support? “Subscription services are the future for us, and it’s very important that people around the world are supportive of subscriptions,” said Keeling, who went on to say that while people buy music a la carte from digital stores, “they don’t buy on a regular basis”. Which is why UMGI likes subscriptions.

Keeling also pointed out that some of the label’s partners – mobile operators and ISPs – already operate subscription-based businesses, so applying this model is a good fit. Or would be, if the licensing issues are solved.

“Spotify has been a big success,” said Keeling. “It works off this freemium model, which was always a big jump for us – to let consumers access music for free, and get them off pirate services, with the aim of getting them up the ladder…”

Brindley asked why the conversion rate from free to paid users hasn’t been as high as the labels had hoped in some markets. “It’s absolutely heading in the right direction. The freemium model is certainly working at moving consumers from pirate services to legal free services.”

An interesting contrast to WMG boss Edgar Bronfman Jr’s recent comments on ad-supported music – to paraphrase, Bronfman thinks subscriptions are the way forward, but is significantly more negative about the ad-supported free services.

Keeling said the most important thing UMGI looks for in new music services is the consumer experience. “Spotify is an incredible consumer experience,” he said, saying that its new Facebook integration is particularly impressive.

However, he also praised experiments from companies like Vodafone in bundling music, where people pay a monthly fee for a certain number of song downloads.

Brindley turned the conversation to UK ISP Virgin Media, which has yet to launch its planned unlimited MP3 downloads service, more than a year after announcing it with UMG. The other labels haven’t signed up, so what’s gone wrong?

Keeling said that two years ago Universal made the strategic decision to work with Virgin, and praised its determination to “not just be a dumb pipe”. The deal involves unlimited DRM-free downloads for customers, and at the same time a commitment from Virgin to implement anti-piracy measures across its network.

“We remain extremely supportive of finding the right service and solution with Virgin, and hope in the coming months they’ll have something coming to market that will fulfil both our ambitions,” he said, playing a straight bat.

Keeling played up Virgin’s anti-piracy promise though, saying it showed their commitment to launching a legal music service.

Moving onto the Digital Economy Act, which passed in the UK recently. Now there’s a new Conservative-Liberal Democrat coalition government in place, is the law threatened?

“Funnily enough, I don’t think it’s been high on their agenda!” he laughed. “The Tories have certainly been openly supportive of the bill, the Lib Dems less so. With the new members of the cabinet, it looks like they’re going to remain supportive of the bill. Now it’s going through the details.”

He said that “there is a lot more fighting” in store, as the DEA was just the framework for anti-piracy measures. Now ISPs and rightsholders have to bang their heads together to make it work (my words, not Keeling’s).

Keeling also talked about possible technical measures that may be taken against persistent file-sharers, pointing out that sanctions haven’t been decided yet, beyond the initial notification process where ISPs will send warning letters out to customers who’ve been caught file-sharing.

“Are you going to stop piracy? No you’re not. Can we make piracy socially unacceptable? Yes we can, and that has to be the ambition around the world.”

Keeling called for the notification process to be “persuasive”, with an initial “educative” letter explaining to people their responsibility not to illegally file-share, and pointing them to legal services. He suggested that subsequent letters might be more to-the-point though – and that ISPs may even go beyond letters.

Keeling also talked about “browser redirect” as an alternative to warning letters. For example, the kind of technology used for hotel Wi-Fi hotspots”, where users are redirected to a payment page when trying to access the internet. He thinks ISPs could use this instead of a warning letter – ‘notifying’ customers when they try to access, say, a torrent tracker site.

“We believe that solution could work extremely well as a method of notification,” he said, fending off a question about whether this would cost more than sending letters out. “We hope that the ISPs will look to more effective solutions, because ultimately over time they will reduce costs.”

Brindley asked about transparency in the digital world – and whether artists are making as much money as they should from sales (and streams) of their songs. He related this question to advances paid by digital music services to labels – including equity stakes such as those offered by Spotify.

Keeling replied that UMGI wants partners to “demonstrate that they’re taking it seriously and are going to make a success of it” – which is why the advance fees – “and clearly when royalty fees are due, they will be shared with our artists”.

Questions from the audience – someone asked about the idea of extension of blanket licences. “For us it’s unnecessary,” said Keeling. He admitted that it’s important that labels and publishers are licensing as quickly and efficiently as possible.

“Blanket licensing is not something that’s going to support that, and it’s not in many cases what business partners want, because they want to have a relationship with these companies… Blanket licensing doesn’t provide competition, and doesn’t provide for good market growth.”

Jez Bell from PRS for Music posed a question from the crowd at this point, asking if labels are being more flexible in the types of deals that they provide for upcoming services, and what barriers remain for new music services looking to get licences.

Keeling replied that “publishing is providing a major hurdle” citing Germany as a big example. “GEMA are stopping everything we have… they need to fix the problem, and they need to fix it quickly.”

Another question focused on this week’s summary judgement against LimeWire in the US. Will labels start to rely on that and the Digital Economy Act to “not be creative” – i.e. rely on anti-pirate legislation and not put enough effort into innovative new legal services.

“I hope not,” said Keeling. “The focus has to remain on new service development.”

21st Century Insurance Hands Media Account to Mindshare — NEW YORK (AdAge.com) -- Auto insurer 21st Century Insurance and Financial Services has shifted its estimated $50 million U.S. media planning and buying account to WPP's Mindshare without a review. The account was previously run by Omnicom Group's Omnicom Media Group.

A little over a week ago I moved my MacBook Air off my desk at home and jumped in using a slate to cover 90% of my work/personal needs (basically I just use my laptop to manage the slate). In the office, I only used my HP desktop for complex tasks that required it - like PowerPoint.

My verdict: if you are a knowledge worker and your computing needs center mostly around the web and text, as mine do, slates are ready for prime time. I am going to continue using my iPad as my primary device. And I hope to try HP's slate when it comes out (HP is an Edelman client).

I believe the slate format is the future - perhaps not mainstream today, but they will be soon. However, as the slates take off they're going to have an impact on marketing and media as well. Here are the three trends that I believe the format will accelerate...

1) Media Reforestation

Media is in a rapid state of evolution as consumption moves from atoms (e.g. print) to bits. I believe all tangible forms of media - everything you can see, touch, taste and smell - will be in sharp decline or extinct by 2012 in the US, and eventually globally.

Mobile devices, especially slates, are going to accelerate this trend. The experience of reading the Wall Street Journal on the iPad is better than the web site or the print edition. If News Corp. prices it reasonably, I will subscribe. I believe many millions will too.

Everyday a newsprint reader dies and is not replaced. However, newspaper readers will be around forever and slates give the medium a real shot in the arm. However, that's not to say there won't be pain - the economics are different.

2) The Attention Crash

On my iPad right now I have four feature-length movies, 2500 songs, two email accounts, Facebook, Twitter, six ebooks, dozens of articles I want to read (thank you Instapaper!), many news apps, games and more.

Now I am an extreme information junkie. Not everyone is. But these devices put infinite choices at our disposal. Yet the fact remains, we only have one brain.

We're deep into a crisis of attention. Slates will accelerate attention apnea. We will start and stop tasks, jumping from one to the other. The end result, more media snacking, fewer meals, And when we do consume meals, it maybe quality content like movies, news apps and TV shows that reign. Time will tell.

3) Work-Life Blending

The great thing about slates is the value they offer for the cost - $500 - as well as in their portability. This week I attended several meetings inside and outside the firm and I spotted iPads at every single one. Yesterday I attended a brainstorm at a major NGO that included people from around the globe. At one table of six there I saw four iPads. Most of these devices I suspect were purchased by individuals not their employers.

Slates, like instant messaging, Twitter, Facebook and the like, are going to sneak into corporations via the back door, though I suspect some employers will buy them for knowledge workers.

The trend here to note is that these devices blend our work/personal lives. Slates didn't cause blending but as more of us bring them to work, it accelerates. IT managers will need to provide sound guidance to ensure these devices and smart phones protect corporate information, while not stifling productivity. A byproduct: this is will likely encourage companies to become more social since slates and smart phones bring social networking deep inside the firewall.

That's what I see in my crystal ball. Slates largely accelerate trends that smart phones started. Now I may be wrong of course. Time will tell. But I see a lot of promise for these devices and potentially many winners, not just Apple.

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After two weeks I got one (see my review after 24 hours), I barely use my iPad, it must be me, but I miss the keyboard too much for normal stuff I do online, it’s mostly a reading device and when I read books, I generally read outside and it’s not very sunlight readable, so I use my Kindle… The net is I have not really found a real use for the iPad yet. It’s probably going to change, but I don’t really use it.

I thought I would use it to read the press and was very excited about the weekly mag apps such as the Time and the Paris-Match ones. I have never read Paris-Match but the idea of reading weekly or monthly press in such an experience is very attractive to me to catchup with what’s happening.

Well, I just realized many press apps are in fact, fakes, mocks, which were just done for the iPad launch. The TIME app hasn’t been updated and still shows TIME of april 12 or something, same with Paris-Match. It seems like those press titles rushed a mock app to be there at launch and frankly that’s very disappointing. I take it they will likely do a real one soon, still disappointing. My company is developing apps too, so I know how tough it is to be there in a launch, so I don’t blame them, but I wanted to share my feeling, I guess many people must feel the same and I hope they come up with real apps soon.

LeMonde and USA today are great, though.

Question is really if the readers will go to those apps (check Time, NYT etc) or just use the web or some kind of other apps. I find myself never going to home pages of those press publications and this has been going on for years, I end up on one story from my friends sharing it on social software, techmeme or from google reader, but not from me going to time.com of usatoday.com. I am not sure people will go to those apps directly, since they don’t really go to home pages anymore

What’s coming is the realtime consumption of news and stories, which the geeks already consume daily. The news from the eyes of your friends and  what’s popular online, not what an editor chooses to put on a home page and I think the same for apps. Don’t you think?

I’ve been thinking about how entering the content marketing space is not for the faint of heart. It can be a signifcant undertaking both in terms of resources and a change in an organization’s approach to marketing and sales. Obviously, content marketing is better for some companies and industries than others. Outside help also makes a difference.

While increasing numbers of companies are realizing they  must provide more than product information to satisfy customers, many of those same companies fail by implementing random tactics and missing out on benefits like better search visibility.

In order to take full advantage of the significant gains in search traffic that are available with a content focused marketing effort, it’s essential to answer some key questions:

What do you really know about your customers?

I put customers first before company goals because a social media and content focused marketing effort must emphasize the needs of those you’re trying to reach in order to meet your own. Think of it as, “Give to get”.

Who are you trying to reach? Have you developed Buyer Personas? How well do you understand your customers’ goals? What are your customers preferences when it comes to content discovery, consumption and sharing? What keywords do they associate with your products or services? Who are they influenced by? In what communities do they spend their time on the social web?

What business objectives are you trying to achieve?

What are your goals? What is your social media strategy? What must happen for your customers before you meet your business objectives? What are teh key performance indicators that will help you measure the buyer persona’s path towards conversion? Do you have the measurement tools in place to properly monitor and measure for research and to determine the effectiveness of your marketing efforts?

What does the competitive SERPs landscape look like?

What does the search engine results page look like for the keyword phrases you’re after? The SERPs page is a big part of the competitive landscape for SEO. What types of web sites appear in first page results? Who is linking to them and not linking to you? What type of Universal results are triggered? (News, Blogs, Real-time, Books, Products, Local) What types of media are included in the SERPs for your target phrases? (Images, Video). Will the new Google design have any impact on the SERPs landscape for your target keyword phrases? What other types of search engines should you focus on besides Google.com, Yahoo.com and Bing.com?

What resources will you need to succeed?

Most companies are not in the publishing business. In order to achieve longevity for an optimized content marketing effort, it’s important to outline the resources available to implement including: content, people, processes.

• Content. What content do you currently have available for optimization? What content will you need to create according to your keyword glossary and customer needs? Know what digital assets you have available for publishing online and indentify what new media you may need to create, and who will be creating/promoting it.

• People. Who will create that content in your organization? What in-house content development resources do you normally use? What new content resources, including other departments, could you leverage for SEO? What other groups in your organization will you need to coordinate with in order to execute on promotions?

• Processes. what is the current content creation and promotion process? Identify how can you make optimization a baked-in part of established content publishing processes. Determin whether manual keyword glossary sharing is applicable or if the content management system can be modified to dynamically pull in keyword options when adding new content.

Can SEO be made part of the corporate identity standards and incorporated into the style guide?

What is the right tactical mix to help you reach your goals?

Based on customer preferences, your goals, the SERPs and resources, what channels will you optimize?

What mix of content creation will be used? Web pages, press releases, white papers, case studies, online newsroom with press releases, articles, video, images, audio, rich media, sharing content on social sharing web sites.  How will you get the content creators within and external to your organization trained on content optimization? What oversight and monitoring methods will you use to ensure quality and avoid unfortunate overwrites?

Also, what link building tactics will be emphasized? How can you leverage existing communications and relationships to increase relevant links? Can you tap into existing dealer networks, affiliates, branch office web sites and marketing partners for quality links? Can you get public relations on board with using links that are more likely to be included in placements? Can links be better optimized for SEO within other online documents such as press releases?

How will you measure success and what tools will you use?

Measurement is the most critical piece of an optimized content marketing program. Measurement with social media monitoring tools up front can be essential in defining the social conversations driving content creation, sharing and consumption that are consistent with your marketing goals. Once a program is implemented, analytics will help measure key performance indicators (KPIs), conversions and anything in between.

There’s a lot you can measure so here are a few examples for SEO, Social Media and Online PR.

SEO related measurement often includes search referrals and keywords that drive traffic to the web site, what search engines send traffic and what the visitors do once they visit. Relative measures of rankings and links can be useful as well. Ultimately, conversions are an idea measurement for SEO, whether it’s a white paper download, webinar signup or an actual product/service sale.

Social media measurement often includes engagement metrics such as fans/friends/followers, comments, brand mentions & sentiment, referred traffic and links. Tracking buzzing topics on the social web can create opportunities for real time content creation/optimization and promotion.

Online PR measurement often depends on determining the effectiveness of press releases distributed via email directly to a short list of journalists or to a newswire service for broader exposure online. Blog and publication mentions (unsolicited) as well as links and sentiment are also important.

Do no underestimate the value and importance of using social monitoring and web analytics to help inform the ongoing content marketing opportunities and the creation of specific types of content in order to attract trending search traffic. Social conversations fuel search traffic. Understand the keywords most often used in social conversations and you may get a leg up on your competition by creating, optimizing and promoting content that’s being discussed and popular.

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© Online Marketing Blog, 2010. | Key Questions to Optimize Your Content Marketing Strategy | No comment | http://www.toprankblog.com

Are utility companies ready for full smart grids? —

In the Smart Grid Heavy Hitters video interview series I have been publishing here on GreenMonk, one of the questions I ask all interviewees is, “What is a Smart Grid?” Almost all the interviewees talk about an infrastructure capable of full end-to-end, two-way communications. That is, communication from utilities down to the appliance level in-home, and from appliances back up to utilities.

Great. But what does this mean in practice and is this something utility companies have given enough thought to?

Utility companies currently typically take one meter reading per month. With the roll out of smart meters and smart grids that will change drastically. If a utility goes to 15 minute meter reads, we are talking about a shift from one meter read a month to around 2,880 meter reads a month (4 x 24 x 30 = 2,880).

This has huge implications for a utility company’s IT infrastructure. They will need to capture and store orders of magnitude more information than they have ever needed to previously.

On top of that, the information coming from smart meters is vastly more complex than the simple output of analog meters, as well. Particularly if the consumer is also a producer, selling energy back to the grid (via generation or from storage), getting rebates for lowering consumption in times of peak demand and/or getting roaming bills for charging up electric vehicles at public charging facilities, for example.

What will utility companies do with this new data?

Well, the primary use of this data will be for billing. Do utility companies have billing systems in place which are able to take in these vast quantities of data and output sensible bills?

Today’s bills are generated off that single monthly meter read, however bills generated from 2,880 meters reads a month (or even 720 – one meter read per hour) will be very different. They should be easy to understand, reflect the intelligence gained from the extra information and offer customers ways to reduce their next bill based on this.

Crucially too, utility companies will need to be pro-active in contacting people who go out of their normal pattern of usage/billing, otherwise we’ll see even more consumer backlash against smart grid roll-outs.

Obviously, transitioning away from paper bills to electronic ones will vastly enrich the possibilities utilities have with data presentation for customers as well as offering utilities ways to monetise their billing delivery (Google Adwords for bills anyone?).

On the consumer side, consumers will need to be able to see their energy consumption in real-time. Not only that, but to ensure that they act appropriately on the information, the user interface will be critical. A poor user experience will see a deluge of calls swamping customer care as people struggle to understand their consumption patterns. Or worse, mis-understand and send their bills soaring!

Consumers will need to be given ubiquitous, secure access to their energy consumption information. But more than that, consumers will also need to be given the tools to help them reduce their bills, without necessarily reducing their consumption (i.e. load shifting).

This will also necessitate a move to smart appliances by the consumer (appliances which can listen for price signals from the smart grid and modify behaviour according to a configurable set of rules). The Smart Appliances market is expected to reach $15bn by 2015 so the move to smart appliances can represent a new revenue stream for utility companies. Especially if they, with consumers consent, utilise energy-profile information from consumers smart meters to make more appropriate energy saving suggestions.

All of these changes require seismic shifts by utility companies both in terms of IT investments, but also in terms of their approach to customer care and communications.

Are they up for the challenges ahead? With the increasing liberalisation of energy markets and growth in consumer choices, they better be!

Yes, you can work on the iPad. But why would you? —

One of the recurring themes in articles I’ve read and conversations I’ve had about the iPad is that Apple’s new tablet is a device for consumption of media, not creation.I don’t think that’s entirely fair, but I have to admit my early experiences mostly support that idea.

I’ve had the iPad since Saturday morning, and I’ve used it constantly — for the novelty factor if nothing else. Whenever I turn it on, I keep telling myself that I should try to do something productive. Then I find myself reading old Fantastic Four issues on the Marvel Comics app or playing Fur Elise on Magic Piano instead. Sure, part of that is because I’m lazy. But it also seems like the fun apps do a much better job than the serious ones of using the iPad’s slick interface.

The Mail application, for example, doesn’t offer much that you can’t find in the iPhone version — it gives you more space to read your email, multiple columns so you can see a list of all your messages while reading one of them, and a larger keyboard so it’s a little easier to type. But it still lacks the flexibility and ease of using Gmail on my laptop, so I use it for quick checks, not writing long messages. Just like my iPhone.

Or take the Pages word processing app from Apple, which costs $9.99 and has been highlighted in the company’s promotional materials. I decided to buckle down and write this post in Pages, but immediately ran into problems. In landscape (widescreen) mode, the keyboard is sized adequately, and the lack of physical feedback when I hit a key doesn’t bother me as much as I expected. However, there’s no convenient rest position, because I can’t lay my hands-on the keyboard without hitting all the keys.

And it’s hard to situate the iPad in the right relationship to my body for typing. At my desk it feels a little too high, like I have to peer over my hands to see my words on the top half of the screen. Sitting on the couch, the device sits awkwardly on my lap, and I have to crouch over it uncomfortably.

These are not critical flaws — after all, I managed to finish this post. But compare that to the different reading applications, where the interface is super-slick and easy to use. I would be interested in reading books on the iPad, because the experience, while imperfect, is in some ways better than a physical book. Writing, on the other hand, is slightly worse than a normal computer In almost every respect.

So yes, I can work on the iPad, but I can’t think of any situation where I’d want to. It would always be easier to whip out my laptop. I’m hoping that changes in the months to come, as developers become more acquainted with the device. I bet the really smart ones will come up with something completely new, rather than kinda-sorta replicating features that work better elsewhere.

Tags: ipad, Pages

Companies: Apple

Synthesizers.com has introduced a new version of SynthInvent – a a free Windows program that lets design your ultimate monster synthesizer by dragging and dropping modules into cabinets.

Systems can be saved and shared, exported to a spreadsheet, or made into a web page.

Features:

• Easy to use
• Select from any style of cabinet, up to 9 per system
• Drag and drop modules into cabinets effortlessly
• Add controllers, patch cords, etc.
• View front or back of cabinets
• Show modules as pictures or as function text
• Automatically totals price as you add/remove products
• Automatically adds power components if desired
• Calculates power supply and consumption
• Save, recall, share systems
• Start with a standard system or create your own from scratch
• Produces a complete product listing with pricing and shipping weight
• Creates a web page (HTML) of your custom system
• Exports product listing to a spreadsheet program

Hey folks,

I'm happy to say that we've published our Developer Analytics APIs for general consumption.  This set of APIs allows you as developers to ingest statistical data about your application to help you better understand how your application is performing in the MySpace ecosystem.

This new API provides information about all sorts of data points, including key metrics such as impressions, installs and notification clicks.  You'll also get access to valuable demographic information, being able to get data segmented by user information such as age range, gender, and geo-location, among other things.

We've also built out a little sample application to give examples of how to properly format a REST request, and how to effectively transform the output to various Google chars for charting the data.  The application transforms the data into annotated line graphs, spark graphs bar graphs, pie charts and geo maps.

We're glad that we can begin providing developers with direct access to the information they need to ensure their game or application performs well on our platform!

To get started, check out the documentation, found at: http://wiki.developer.myspace.com/index.php?title=Category:Developer_Analytics

Earlier this morning at DEMO, I was wowed by a presentation from a company called InVisage. InVisage is developing a product they call QuantumFilm which has the ability to make significant changes to the the digital camera space, most notably when dealing with small CMOS sensors on small form factor devices like camera phones.

The biggest problem currently with camera phones isn’t so much the megapixel rating, it’s how much light the sensor can capture. If you have a lot of light, camera phones can turn out great photos. However, right now, capturing more light requires using larger CMOS sensors.

QuantumFilm utilizes a custom-designed semiconductor material that is designed to replace some of the silicon in image sensors used in CMOS cameras. This material which is based on quantum dots, can capture much more light, and can plug into the existing CMOS manufacturing process.

Invisage claims that QuantumFilm can offer twice the light detection and twice the quantum efficiency of typical silicon-only sensors. The potential for QuantumFilm basically means that manufacturers could put cameras with substantially better quality into their products without having to adopt larger sensors or create a whole new manufacturing process.

I talked to Invisage at the show and they said they hope to have a prototype done by the fall and hope to be partnered with ODMs for end-user consumption within the next 18 months.

QuantumFilm is one of the more high-level products at DEMO, but if it can work, it genuinely has the possibility of pushing the next evolution of camera phone and other small CMOS devices forward.

Tags: CMOS, demo, demospring10, digital cameras, invisage, quantumfilm

Frost & Sullivan Analyst Apparently Has Never Heard Of Network TV: Says Video Can't Be Free To Consumers — It's really stunning to see people who obviously should know better continually insisting that content can't possibly be free to consumers. We've been seeing a lot of it in the news business lately, as newspaper execs who have built up an ad business for many years seem oblivious to the fact that consumers have almost never paid directly for news. And now that same sort of ridiculous thinking is showing up in the video market. Christopher Schneider points us to an article written by Dan Rayburn, who apparently is an analyst at Frost & Sullivan, but who appears to be wholly unfamiliar with network TV in claiming that video content can't possibly be free:

Frankly, I don't see where this idea of "free" comes from. Video content costs money to produce, to distribute and to consume. Yet even with those costs, many seem hell-bent on the idea that business models can somehow survive based on the consumption of free video content supported solely by an ad model. But in reality, that simply can't happen.

It comes from basic economics, Dan, combined with knowledge of how network TV has worked for many decades. In some businesses consumers pay for stuff. In others, third parties do it. In network TV, advertisers have always paid the freight. You would think that a big-time analyst would be familiar with that. But, of course, it looks like Dan doesn't get the economics right either:

If people are not willing to pay a content owner for their content, then it's not worth anything. That's the bottom line.

Dan, how much did you pay for the air you breathe? Ok. How much is it worth? Your "bottom line" is flat-out wrong. Value and price are two different things. Value plays into the demand curve, but price is set by the intersection of supply and demand. If something is priced at zero, it doesn't mean it's valued at zero.

In the comments, after people point out Dan's seeming blindspot for the largest distributor of video content for the past seven decades, Dan tries to redeem himself by pointing out that networks today get additional money from MSOs (cable/satellite providers) to get carried (you may have heard the recent battles over some of these). Of course, that's a recent phenomenon. For years, network TV was very much for free to users, despite the fact that "video content cost money to product, to distribute and to consume" and even as people were not willing to pay the content owner for it -- but it was still worth quite a bit to them.

And, of course, even in the case with cable and satellite fees, Dan's still wrong. People don't pay their cable provider for access to network TV (they can already get that for free). They pay for the bundle of channels, of which the network channels are not very important to most users, since those are accessible over the air (and, yes, in some cases people have trouble getting local stations). Hell, if we want to go by analogy, let's be direct: sure, people pay for cable TV, but they also pay for their ISP bill (sometimes to the same company).

Furthermore, Dan's analysis of YouTube's profitably seems woefully confused as well. He uses Viacom's filings in the YouTube case, which have already been shown to take statements out of context, and whose comments all refer back to a few years back rather than today. Yet, recent studies have suggested that YouTube may actually be profitable, or at least getting pretty close to it. Even Google has hinted at YouTube's profitability -- and some have pointed out that Google's dark fiber ownership could mean that its bandwidth bill is a lot lower than some analysts think.

Basically, there's proof that free-to-the-consumer video has worked in the past, and can work again. On top of that, there's growing evidence that Google is at least close to profitability with free-to-the-consumer video online, and the models that are working there are only likely to continue to grow. These are the sorts of points and trends you would expect an analyst following this market to know, so it's a bit surprising that this particular analysis seems to be lacking them. And people wonder why companies are looking to dump their analyst spend budgets lately...

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iPad to Kick-start an $8B+ Tablet App Market: Report —

Apple, with the iPad, has lit the fuse on an entirely new category of mobile devices: the tablet. Everyone from gamers to developers (even, ostensibly, dead communist leaders) are pondering its possibilities — especially publishers and media barons, who see a savior when it comes to helping readers find, consume and buy media.

At the heart of this opportunity lies the app. With a significant number of the 150,000 apps in Apple’s App Store set to be available on the iPad from day one, the market for paid tablet apps alone is expected to top $8 billion within just five years.

It wasn’t too long ago that the term “app” conjured up images of fried finger food, not software. But that all changed when Apple introduced its App Store for the iPhone and ushered in the modern day mobile app economy.

And now that economy is set to grow even larger with the launch of the iPad. As I’ve detailed in a new report on GigaOM Pro (sub req’d), tablet app downloads and consumption will be significant.

How big do I forecast the market for tablet apps will be?

• The paid web tablet app market will grow to top $8 billion by 2015 from just $183 million in 2010
• Downloads of paid apps will represent a bigger percentage of the overall app pie as compared to those for phones. In 2011, 179 million paid apps will be downloaded, and by 2013 that number will reach 630 million.
• Downloads of apps (both paid and free/ad-supported) will grow to total more than 12 billion by 2015 from 272 million in 2010

And remember: That $8 billion is only for paid apps on tablets. When you consider that other forms of app monetization will include advertising (why Apple bought Quattro Wireless) and free apps tied to content subscriptions (think Netflix Watch Instantly) or content downloads (such as, say, a Kindle app), the web tablet app economy will actually be much bigger.

Will this market be Apple’s alone? Of course not. In fact, I expect both Google and Microsoft to offer strong alternatives. That said, I forecast Apple and the iPad to be the web tablet market share leader throughout the forecast period. By 2015, I expect the web tablet market to be a 43-million-unit-per-year market.

Read the full report here.