Is 2012 the Year Media is Revolutionized?

The new year is upon us again. Many folks have looked back on 2011 in many different formats, and contexts, covering many aspects of the past year. Everything ranging from events that happened in current media, ala, ETv, to TCM, and their annual look at all of the actors, directors and other classic Hollywood personalities who passed last year.

Of course there are are obvious losses like Peter Falk, and Steve Jobs.
Much as been made of the loss of Steve Jobs. Yes he did revolutionize the way we think of and use media, even the hardware we use to work with the media.
His earliest days with Steve Wozniak , one of the co-founders of Apple Computers, lead to a great leap in technological advancement, not just in computers, but in anything that a microprocessor could be put into. As microprocessors got smaller and more powerful, they became more accepted by the general public.
Soon there were a handful of theses new devices that played a new digital music format called MP3, which is a compressed copy of the music, thus taking up less space on a hard drive , but still sounding reasonably good to the ear. What Jobs did in 2001 with the IPod was take the big clunky MP3 Players that were out there, and redesign them into a sleek elegant , easy to use, player that worked as good as it looked. Along with that he developed ITunes, to handle the interface between the music and the computer, Mac being the only computer it would work with for several years.
Eventually, ITunes was developed for the Windows platform, thus opening up the IPod experience to the rest of the world.
The Importance of Steve Jobs on the world can't be understated, However, its easy to forget at the end of the day he like the rest rest of us was just a man, but a man with a grand vision.
Many of us have “grand visions” of ideas or concepts that we would like to make happen. However, the reality is that very few of us have what it takes to articulate what they see, much less being able to lay out a plan or pull together a team to make it happen. Steve Jobs, was one of those rare few, who were in the right place at the right time with the right vision. Apple has big shoes to fill, to continue the grand vision Steve Jobs let us with. I read recently that Apple is working a new version of the Ipad, and Possibility's even a Apple Tv. All rumors, until they are announced. However, the upshot of the rumors is that Apple is still working to redefine the way we use and treat Media, preferably keeping as much as possible in their wall garden of Itunes.
The predictions for 2012 have been varied and interesting. The main point most of what I’ve read is centered around two things. Mobile, and tv content. There seems to be a drive towards making as much content available on as many mobile platforms as possible, which is good. However, content distributors need to figure out ways to keep the content available on as many venues and platforms as possible. Having ones content limited to one place is essentially putting all your eggs in one basket. If that basket falls through, your left with a mess. However, if you have several deals with different distributors, such as Netflix, Amazon etc, and one goes bad, you still have your content out there hopefully making my money in the other places. And a bunch a smaller deals taking less for each one could pay off in the long run. Eliminating pay walls, and sign in as much as possible is something consumers will appreciate. and help keep them going back and using a service that has the content they want, without hoops to jump through to see it.

CES is this week, Jan 10-13, For those of you don’t know what CES is, here are a couple of links http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Consumer_Electronics_Show , http://ces.cnet.com/ This is the Be all and end all of consumer electronic shows. Held every year in January, in Los Vegas. It brings out the best and brightest and biggest, and even some very small electronic are showcased here. Everything from 55” and up tvs and a variety of tablet PCs will be seen including accessories to go with them. and items one probably hasn’t even thought of yet. many items will be prototypes or first generation. How many will actually make it to the consumer hands remains to be seen. The hype and clamor of CES is matched only by the Hulu of the Super Bowl, In many ways CES is the” Super Bowl “of the Tech Wold. The difference being, that there are usually no clear cut winners. There will be some who shine and bring products, that consumers need or at least think they need.. How many of those products will actually make it to market and how many consumers buy them once their there remains to be seen. And there will be many more with great concepts or products, that for one reason or another will never be seen again. Little companies who spent their last dime to get there and rent a booth at CES and in hopes to make a the right impression with people who can help them get their idea or product out of the development stage. Essentially do or die, and if they don’t get deals they need they go home very empty handed.

Television is something I’ve talked about on many venues and have expressed many ideas on the possible future of television. There is a lot of discussion about the break up of the traditional package programing models that we’ve been using for the last 25-30 years, starting when cable companies started bundling channels together to get deals for both them and the consumers. Problem is the bundles aren't getting better, and the prices for what one typically get in a bundle has continued to rise substantially over the last few years. This coupled with increased use of DVR and other time shifting tools has made it increasingly harder to get accurate numbers of who is watching what and for how long.The traditional “shotgun approach” to advertising is no longer working, not that it ever worked to begin with, but until recently there wasn’t a better way to do it. Now with content being migrated to the web and, new ways to counts views and exactly who is watching and for how long Advertisers are looking for ways to put this to use and, the consensus is that it will scale up as the year goes on. However, they need to consider the consumer, they are tired of being bombarded by commercials every few minutes as they have been on traditional tv for years. A few well spaced, and relevant ads will do more then a slew of ads they don’t want to see. This will drive them away quicker then anything. The ala carte’ model has been kicked around on and off for years, What that means instead of buying a bundled package of channels you pick and chose the channels you want. There are problems with that, same as there are problems with the way we do it now, so nothing is prefect.
The cable companies have been trying to avoid going to a model of this type for years for a number of reasons. A good article that I commented, on discussing tv and the future of IP tv is here. I read this site a lot and have commented on many of his articles over the last couple years.
http://www.videonuze.com /Disney-Comcast-and-Why-TV-Everywhere-Alone-Is-Not-Enough/&id=3346
Poke around their site they have a number of site that they link to that have excellent articles concerning a wide varieties of aspects of the media business.


On the subject of adding content to your tv, and competing with traditional cable/sat companies; there are set-top boxes that can stream a host of Internet based content directly to your tv. A couple of more widely known ones are the Apple Tv which brings the Itunes experience to your tv, allowing you watch your bought tv and movies, not only on you computer but now on your tv. and the Roku.
Having received a Roku Box for Christmas, I find that is much more varied and interesting then I ever thought. It does the obvious streaming Netflix, Amazon and Huluplus to your tv, its only a matter of activating the account on the Roku site and box. and your good to go. However, going though the on screen channel store, you will find a wide variety of channels to chose from that will keep you busy exploring content. If that isn’t enough, there are what are called “private channels” that you you can add. For those you will need to do a google search to find pages that list them and the codes that you need to enter into your account on the Roku site. once entered, they usually show up fast and work. Boxes like this and the Boxee that can add a large amount of nontraditional or mainstream content to the consumer are something the cable and content providers and creators need to take into consideration. If they’re smart they’ll make as much content available on boxes like Roku and Boxee as they can. The basic idea is they need their content in front of as many eyes as possible.
Consumers generally only have a limited time to spend watching tv. The choices of what to watch are almost endless. Cable and Sat companies are having to work very hard to maintain every viewer they have, and attract new ones, which is harder as the choices of content, and where to get it increase almost daily.
In the end the consumer has the upper hand; they can tell content producers and distributors what they want to watch and where and how they want to watch it by voting with their pocketbooks. If ventures like Comcasts idea of TV everywhere are left to fly and get started in a big way, we will have a very fragmented ecosystem of Internet tv. which should be avoided at all cost.

So whats the bottom line for this year?
Television is no longer a big wooden box in the living room with a 27’ screen that the whole family gather around to watch Jack par, and “I Love Lucy”, and later “Gunsmoke”, and “Whats my line?” and a host of other now classic tv shows.
Today. television is more of a concept. Yes there are still physical tvs although they don’t look or work like the tv of old. What would be a more accurate description of a television would be a monitor that plays whatever is piped into it it. be it your DVD or Blue-ray player, to your sat or cable box, or Roku or Boxee, even your computer, it don’t care. Its a content/media player. Much the same as other media/tech terms we use today. The oldest of those is probably the “clicker” referring to the remote control. The term Clicker goes back to first tv remotes which did in fact click when you pressed the button .
For a history on the long and varied story of our beloved remote control see this;
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Remote_control
Another term refuses to die is “tape” at least in terms of recording television content to be stored for later use. Tape as a recording medium goes all the way back to the 1950’s or so in studios to record records, the eventually there were consumer reel to reel recorders, and 8 tracks and cassettes. All for audio material only. In the late 1970’s into the 1980’s the rises of the VCR came about and suddenly everyone could get their favorite movies on tape. and as taping from tv became common place, the phase taping came to be. Fast forward to today. Our remote don’t click anymore, and can run a host of componets in a entrainment system. Also today the list of everyday household items that never needed a remote, and now come with at least a simple ir remote is growing everyday. Tape in the media world has nothing to do with tape anymore today its either to a hard drive, or a DVD. We use the term tape when referring to recording content to either a DVD or a hard drive.

As the media landscapes evolves over this year both consumers and content providers and creators, and advertisers will struggle to find the right balance of content distribution, advertising and control. Hopefully the consumer won’t get either caught in the middle, or left behind.

Getting Back to Basics in Business

Over the last few months much has been made of relatively new tech companies, less then, 2-5 years old coming out and announcing that they want to do a IPO, which is a Initial Public Offering. There are several questions that have been risen, such as do they have a solid business plan, and are they actually making money. While I don’t pretend to completely understand all the ins and outs, of big time money management and all of the ramifications of events to both the economy or the business itself.

There are several basic ideas that I do understand, The primary object of any business is to both make money, and give the consumer the most value for their money as possible. If you give the customer value above and beyond what they expect , and follow it it up with support and service, whatever, that might entail everything from basic hand holding, to either going and fixing or replacing the product with no hassle, and a BIG smile on your face. You’ll do far more more good for your business then any amount of advertisement can ever do. Happy customers come back, and Happy customers talk,, a lot. Word of mouth can go a long way to either building your business, or destroying it slowly. Just remember that the next time a customer is driving you crazy over something YOU think is stupid, to them its important, how you handle what they think is important, is important to them. So much for business 101.

Netflix has become the 800 pound guerrilla in the room when content and tv companies get together. No matter what else they talk about, what deals they may want to do, Netflix is in their shadow waiting to take their market share way form them. Content providers need to go back and reevaluate their core objectives.
As I mentioned in the opening segment, the object of any business, be it a small family business that sells fruit out on the side of the road, to a multi-million dollar conglomerate is to give the customer value above and beyond what they expect.
Quite simply the TV/media industry at least on the broadcast and consumer provider side, not the theatre side so much, has dropped the ball a LONG time ago.
Way back in the 1950’s at the beginning of TV, advertisers knew they had a captive audience and played it up to the max. Having corporate sponsors,and having host of talk and game shows actually plugging the product as part of the routine show, is was annoying, but far less annoying then today's commercial breaks which can last from 3-10 minutes long, and often repeat the same ad several times in a roll.

That just covers what broadcast show “live” on a daily basis to the masses.
That includes those who don’t have the technology to bend their TV to their will.
Those of us with DVRs can record,pause and rewind and generally bring the TV to its knees. And advertisers hate this. they can’t count on you seeing their ads every time you want to see your favorite show. and Appointment Viewing is long dead. That is to say if you wanted to watch a certain show you had to be in front of your TV at that exact time, or you missed it until next week. Worse yet, if there were two shows on at the same time, on different channels you had to choose which one you liked better. Advertisers loved that, it helped with getting numbers, they could tell much better what was being watched, and who commercials were being seen. Today, consumers demand to watch what they want when and where they want. The devices and platforms that media is available is constantly expanding. Content owners and providers need to embrace the new directions and come up with models that allow them to get access to the content they want, when they want.
They need allow consumers to watch their content on a variety of platforms.
The basic concept is to spread your content around as much as possible; instead of trying to do a deal to limit ones content to one venue and asking a exuberant sum for a very short year deal, try spreading it out out over several venues with less for money each deal, and make more money in the long run.
Better yet they make their content readily available to whole new audiences which might not have discovered content they didn't know about. Making content easier to access or rent, either via Netflix Amazon, any number of other places to rent or view content, doing such deals to let ` the consumers find the content and play it where they want, or need to, with out having to resort to to other means to get the content they want.
A YouTube search will yield many movies and TV shows put up in short 10-14 minute segments watching a series of 8-10 segments in a row will allow you to essentially watch the whole program. Whether this is legal is another question for another time. However, the bigger point, is the is people want to see the content, and will put it out one way or another. So content providers do yourself a favor and make you stuff easy to rent, buy or otherwise enjoy the content, and moving content from one platform to another should be seamless with a DRM issue and no issues with software formats not being capable. Everything should just work.
The notion of cord cutting that the industry pundits are taking about is probably right to a degree, However, As people get the new TVs that can connect to the web, either directly or through a computer, easiest being hooking a laptop and piping everything from the laptop to the TV, the uses for a fast connection are increased, suddenly you can fire up Netflix, on the laptop and send it to the TV and enjoy the same content from the laptop on the big TV, same for YouTube, any other web content, be it podcast, or videos etc. Suddenly the pipe from the cable provider is’nt as important as it was, However, there’s still a lot of content that only available on broadcast TV. While a large percentage will cut down on the size of the package that keep, both for budget reason, and because content is available on line and they can get it there and pipe it to the platform of choice to watch it. I don’t think its cord cutting, so much as its cord switching, and sharing, one supplementing the other.
Some content providers are making strides to make their content available on mobile platforms with limitations, while its a good start. But there’s a long way to go.
Netflix has pretty much set the standard for streaming video, and a business model that works. They have been able to get themselves placed in a wide variety pf platforms from DVD players, TVs themselves, I even read at one point, there was talk of them actually having a physical button on a remote, on some TVs, weather anything has come of it, is not important. What is important is their dominance and saturation in the video industry . They do have some big hurtles to jump, the biggest is the deals they have to make with content owners. Every time they try to do a deal the price goes up or the owners want to renegotiate a deal halfway though a contract. The point is if content owners would quit being so worried about their content and how its being used, and work to get it into as many venues as possible and not make is prohibitively expensive that small providers to get into. They would in the long run probably make more then they trying to do with the high price deals they’re doing now, only it’s be spread out over more companies, and longer terms, so if there was a loss somewhere it won't be as much as it it was in one big deal the lost.

The long and short of it content owners, and providers need to go back and reevaluate their core business model, and why they are in business. Are they in business to serve the stockholders, or the customer, aka, public? If its the customer, they need to rethink how and what kind of deals they do, to get their content out, with a minimum of constraints both on the provider and especially the end user. If the customer is is happy and willing to pay the reasonable rental fee or subscription fee, and can get what they want when and where and on what platform they want, with no issues, the profit for the stockholders will come.

Better Late, Back to Keyboard, Then Never..

As many of you know , in spite of best intentions and plans, Real Life gets in the way. Projects such as writing and publishing their blog or other personal projects get put on hold. Essentially this is what has happened to me.
This last July, not long after I put out the last article, on the publishing industry, My family and I moved and had to essentially start over again. Needless to to say I have had a lot of other thing going on theses last few months, and not having a fast easy to access connection had made it difficult to work the way that I was used to.

So instead of trying to cover news I should have been commenting on for the last six months, Let me start fresh, so to speak.

Verizon now has the holy grail of Smart phones,,, the Apple IPhone,,,
But is it enough and soon enough? Yes it is a big deal, However, it seems to me if it had happened before Android had gotten a serious foothold in the Verizon market base it would had a much more of impact. many folks who would have loved to get a Verizon IPhone and couldn’t are now solidly in the Android camp and are not interested in jumping to the IPhone, now they have their Android.
I know if and when I get into a position that I can get a Smart Phone I’m going Android. Yes Apple will make inroads into Verizon but it will take time and not as much as they would like.


CES, this January was the grounds for the first round of the tablet wars. Apple true to form, created a monster when they created the IPad, As I’ve said before in other article, tablets have been before, by various manufactures mostly by trying to shoehorn a standard desktop operating system into a platform that was never designed for it. The most common of those being Microsoft and their various Windows versions. which never did completely work right or stable.
Along come Apple, building on the success of the small tablet form factor, and a custom os, The IPhone and the IPod Touch which they had sold millions of and had all of those millions already familiar with the platform, now its scaled up to a 9 inch screen with better functionality .. A immediate hit. Needs to say.

There was a lot of talk before it was actually released to the masses of weather it would work, It did, once consumers got their hands on it and used it they loved it.
Of course everyone started jumping on the tablet bandwagon. CES saw the announcement of no less then 18 tablets from everyone from Blackberry, to Samsung, and many others. How many will make it to consumers shelves and get a fair chance is another matter. Most of the competing tablets are running Android, which makes sense because the next biggest platform on phones next to Apple IOS is Android. Android scales up to a tablet nicely and can be offered with just wifi, or with ¾ G bundles with the major carriers. However, that this point there is abig downside to using 3 or 4G that, being bandwidth caps, not that they’ll cut you off if you use too much, they just charge you for the privilege of going over, by the megabyte. I haven’t had the chance to play with the IPad or Android tablets, So I can’t say which I like better. Both offer comparable features and both will fill a certain need for certain consumers, while others will want the specific features of one or the other, thus driving their choice. On the whole a consumer should be able to use any tablet easily and do basic web surfing and media playing without having to do a learning curve to figure out how to do essential functions, they should be self-explanatory .

The FCC is pushing a plan to get broadband to rural areas, that is nothing new.
They have been fighting with the cable and wireless companies for years trying to get them to invest in rural technologies for years. However, the companies in question see investing in rural broadband as dumping money into a big black hole, where they will be forever getting their money back, if ever. Yes its probably true they may never get all their money back. But the bigger issue is public safety and supporting the communities they are supposed to be serving. Yes they are in business to make money, However, the bigger picture is they are granted these big essentially monopolies to serve their communities. All of their communities, not just the parts the make them money. of the are easy to support . Telecommunication companies have a obligations to provide at least reasonable access to good phone service, and should be able to provide at least DSL speeds if not faster, where they can lay fiber and increase the speeds. It goes with out say the should be no limits on use and and throttling is no acceptable.
With the increased options for streaming material form the net directly, ie You Tube and the like, and NetFlicks, and other streaming services putting caps on monthly downloads would result in a consumer revolt to rival the revolutionary war .

Well, Folks I seems to have run out of steam for now, This is the first article in at least six months, and I hope that I can continue to put more out in a more timely fashion as the summer goes on.
I hope you found my ideas interesting and worthy of reading and commenting on.
Ken Lawson

Redefining Publish Or Parish In The Electric Age

The continuing quandary the publishing busness finds itself in as it struggles to adjust to new pricing and more importantly, new methods of distribution is life threatening . While the traditional paper books aren’t going anywhere very soon, it is having lots of company. The new kids on the block aren't all so new. Audio books have been around for many years, Only they were books on tape, and they weren't marketed to the general public. In the early1950's the first audio book was made, only then they were put on records. and played on a turntable. In the 1970's they advanced to the cassette. The first of the recording were made available to the blind, by the Library of Congress. I knew about them generally because I have a step-grandmother who is blind, and I had seen them, along with her brail books. In the late 1970's they advanced to CD, along with all other forms of music and audio in general.. It was then the phenomenon began to take off with the general public. Fast forward to today; Today, every form of audio recording is done digitally. The audio book has become a viable industry of its own. The largest publisher of audio books Audio.com boasts approximately 75,000 titles in a wide range to topics and authors. The downloaded digital books can be played on a wide varity of devices ranging from a traditional MP3 player, to a phone such as an Iphone, and any number of smart phones, and devices such as the IPad. The portability allows one to listen to a book when and where reading a traditional paper book would not be possible. This alternative to a paper book has found a new life and is giving life to many books that would remain unread because the folks who want to read them can't or won't sit still long enough to read a paper book. The audio book has its own history which many people will never know of, and probably care even less about..

The growth of non-traditional book formats has exploded. Any format that is not paper is what I would call a non-traditional format. Another what I'd call Non-Traditional format is e-books, or e-publishing, as its called in some circles. This too, has been around for a while.
The e-book goes back to the early 1970's wen the fist ebook was produced on a IBM mainframe computer, to the Internet where specialty and hard to find books were essentially PDF of books that popped up on the screen. Even until recently the last 10 years or so they were a novelity and ralerly seen and even more rarely used by the general public. The publishing industry was terrfified of the concept of the e-book and e-ink.

In the last 10 years or so, e-books have come into their own with the development of readers such as the Kindle from Amazon and other makers of readers the idea of buying an e-book and downloading it and carrying around several large volumes of books in one small flat screen has exploded.
Traditionally, publishers had treated e-books in much the same ways as they had traditional paper books. That is until now. Amazon had made a huge market by selling their own device to read e-books, the Kindle. Once you had the Kindle it was easy to buy books from Amazon directly from the kindle, so you just used your Kindle and were happy to read.. Then along comes Apple..
Apple comes along first upsetting the status quo of the music industry and in the process reinventing it, and in many ways saving it from itself.

Now its looking to do the same for the book publishing industry. With the much hyped release of the IPad, earlier thsis spring, and as part of the Ipad scheme is the IBook store to sell ebooks . The ebook on a Ipad is a entirely different experince then on a Kindle. On the Kindle ones is limited to "black and white" ie, plain text on a white background, with no color pictures, maybe some illustrations. While very usable, it is limited in many ways. On the IPad, one is treated to a bright colorful screen that can do much more then just show e-books. The experince of reading a ebook is completly different, turning a page is much faster and eaier, The pictures are beautiful color and nore book-like then a kindle ever thought of.

One of the thing many things Apple has done is to upset the price structure that had been at Amazon. Where Amazon set the price and the percentage that the publishers and authors get, Apple came in and said they would sell their Ibooks as they call them for exactly the same as Amazon, thus eliminating whatever advantage Amazon had over Apple. It should be noted that Amazon has a Kindle app for the IPad that apparently works very well, It even lets you sync your books between the Kindle and the IPad, and go back and forth between them, picking up where you left off on one device from the other. This is good. Barnes and Noble just released a ap for the IPad for their e-book reader the nook,
There are bigger issues here then price and and who is the price leader, and even how much who gets.

What the Ipad and other tablets do is open up the possibilities of what an e-book reader could be. No longer limited to displying e-ink in basic black & white and presenting limited pictures or drawing. It can now display full color. The addition of a full color screen and native web integration between the e-magazines and the web opens up a world of possibilities for content developers . The introduction of tablets running other os, ie, android, HP's webos, and even Linux bring a whole range of choices for the consumers, that is if they are produced and consumers will use them. I suspect that for the near future, even after other tablets are on the market, there will be Apple and everyone else.

I don't think books are going anywhere any time soon, but their relevealance to today’s generation is not the same as it ws to ours and our parents; they don't hold them in the respect that they were once held,, The same could be said for other physical media, LP, tapes. now, cd. and dvds. We have a whole generation of people who only think of content as bits and bytes they can store on a hard drive and watch on whatever they can plug it into. The idea of having a room filled with books is disappearing fast. This is one of the problems that the publishing industry need to address.
One way to encourage book sales is to give the buyer a incentive to buy a hard cover book instead of going and just buying a digital copy, be it either e-book, or audio. That is to allow him to have the book and listen to it at the same time. Towards the end of proping up book sales I have the following idea;

My idea is that of a cross promotion of media types; mainly books to e-books and audio books. Include a special code for a audio book from audio.com to allow the buyer of the HB book to download the audio version free.

In limited runs of paper books, to start with; probably hard cover books; Include a special code for a audio book from audio.com to allow the buyer of the HB book to download the audio version free.
The code would be specific to that run of books and would let them know that it come from the book. There would be extra content along with the book, specific to the code. In other words if one used another code they would get the regualr audio version of the book, without the extras, thus justifiy the extra cost of the hard cover book, and give the consumer a value ad for buying a hard cover book. instead of just the ebook, or audio book. The same deal cold also be arranged for ebooks from Amamzon, they could get either the ebook with extras, or the audio book with extras.
Also none of the books would have the same number or code so the same code couldn't be resused several times, it would be checked against a datase to tell where the book was sold and when, allowing tracking of how many codes where used, and on what, ebook or audio etc.. and what part of country etc...like the promo code tv shows use to tell how many people respond to their ads..
As for Amazon and Audio, they would be paid a fee by the publishers for every code redeemed like coupons are now, and Authors would get royalties from the original book sales, with a bonus from the publisher for every code redeemed, granted not as much as if the electronic book had been bought, but some... The idea that the publishers and others would make up money on volume and not per unit,, and the the addition of having the electronic version out where people are going to see and talk about it and how they got are essentially free advertising, promotion for the books, they would never get if they just sold the paper book and it just sat on a shelve at home..

This a idea to help get the publishing industry to rethink how they look at books and content in general. They are not just publishing a book to publish a book, they are publishing intellectual material, and not just paper books and magazines.
They are publishing ideas and which more important the how much they make in the traditional way, Hard Cover Books, and paperbacks, which will always sell, or getting the ideas out where it can be seen and talked about, the way to do that is to make the same material available in all formats. and make it easy to use the content on any platform, and move between the platforms.

Theses are just some ideas for bridging the gap between traditional publishing and the new forms of publishing and medias,,
All of the media industries are wrestling with the same issues, how to get their media out and still keep control. and make money. As for control, If one looks at the music industry, they find that DRM dose not work. It only makes it hard for honest consumers to use the media, and and only slows the serious pirarites down, slightly, so its not worth it. The movie indusrty also has yet to learn this. The best thing the publishing indursty can do is open it up so any ebook will play on any ereader, and be transfereable, the same with audio books, Publicity is their best friend. seing people reading and listing to books out and about is the best advertisement there is. People talking about what their reading is what they need, not people talking about how they can't read something because its locked down.
Well, there are probably many aspects that I didn't discuss . If you jave any thoughts on this please feel free to email or leave a comment.

Ken Lawson

The Summer Of Apple..?

Christmas-Like excitement abounds with the the imitate release of Apples IPad. Scheduled to hit stores April 3rd.
Never has there been so much written and talked about, about a product that only announced, and not yet released.
The Apple IPad will either be a huge success and a huge flop. My feeling is that once its out and people can touch it and use it, and word get around how amazing it is to use, it will find more believers. Over the last month I have read numerous articles touting its future uses in a variety of business applications, both corporate and small business. The major ap developers are rushing to get new versions of their aps out in time for the release on April 3rd. So far, all of this is being done with the SDK that Apple put out when the announced the IPad. So they are developing for a product they haven't even touched yet.. Once its out and the aps can be tried on a real product the real fun begins.


The idea of a tablet pc has been tried before several times. Each time it died a slow painful death, and generally faded off the market into tech history. Theres has been some limited success with tablet pc, in specialized situations, it has not done well with the general public.
The recent success of the Apple Iphone, Ipod Touch, and more recently the Google Android series of Phones has shown that there is a market for tablet devices, if done well. The major lesson being you can't just stick a regular PC desktop OS into a tablet and add touch, and handwriting recognition and call it done. It won't work, its not intuitively and easily, its clunky and a pain to use in a hurry to take notes, or other uses where one would want quick access to information, or to add information quickly. This is where the Iphone and its little brother the Ipod Touch come in, They are easy to use, and get information from, and in many cases easy to get it into.

Apple has taken on a new venue with the IPad, that of the ebook reader. For many years the ebook market has been limited to Amazons Kindle product line, and more recently Barnes & Nobles offering the Noook ebook reader. Both of which use a plain text format limiting it to pretty much just text and no pictures. While it works well, its not breaking any new ground. Then Apple comes along with the IPad, and introduces the IBook store and wakes up the publishing industry and upsetting the price structure that Amazon had set up for the ebooks they sold. That's not even discussing the whole color and multimedia formats that the Ipad is able to bring into play.The idea of publishers and writers being able to produce not only a written book, but a multi media experience to complement it is huge. magazines being able to play videos of subjects of the articles, or related to the articles Nativity in the player, and adding links to supporting content and other ways to enhance the ebook experience are astounding. Again Apple has possibility changed a entire market, as it did with music, and video and Itunes. At this point its only guessing, but given Apple past track record for redefining markets, and in some cases creating markets, its a pretty safe bet.
As I asked in the last article ; "Is the Apple IPad a game changer?" Very soon we will begin to know the answer.. This will be the summer of Apple. Possibly Apple's biggest summer in recent years.

Apple's IPad: The Shape of Things To Come?

Wednesday was a big day in the tech world, particularly, if you’re into Apple. After months of speculation, guessing posturing, and predicting by pundits and everyone else the Questions were finely answered.

Its called the Apple IPad. What it is essentially is a scaled up version of the hugely popular Apple Ipod Touch media player. Which means it syncs with your apple I-Tunes and can play music, videos and run all of the applications that you can run on a I-touch or I Phone now. This gives it a huge leg up on most new products. Using it is the same as using the I touch.

While Apple did not invent the MP3 player, and the Smart Phone, they did set the standard by which all others are judged in those lines. The same goes for Portable Media Players. While Apple didn't invent the Portable Media player they just may have set the stranded.. again..

Obliviously, its way too early to tell for sure. as they have just announced it today, and they won't ship for 60 days . But the bigger questions will take a while to answer. They have been critiquing something that very few of them have really seen, much less actually held yet. So essentially what they are doing is guessing. Until it ships and get out to the public and they use it no one will completely know what the impact it will have.

With the ability to get models with 3G and a no contract option for buying 3G from AT&T it becomes a platfrom for use in situations where one probably wouldn't do Internet and letting you do things you couldn't do on your IPhone because the screen is too small.

But the bigger question is will the public buy into it? Will they use it like they do the IPhone, and Ipod models, particularly the I touch ?

The IPad has already been called the Kindle Killer. The ablilty to buy and download e-books and audio books and play them on here as well as music and video, and aps defiantly even the playing field. Will aps makers buy into it? How soon will aps written specify for the IPad, and how many aps will be ported up to the IPad, so they can work natively on the larger 9 inch screen, and other features of the IPad?

Theses are many of the questions that will be answered over the course of this spring and summer.

I followed the news of the Apple announcement not on the TV so much as it was covered and commented on on the big new stations, But on my laptop, watching live streaming coverage by a number of websites, and web news venues, cheifly My favorite, Leo Leporte and his gang at TWIT.TV. Leo was actually in the convention center and saw the Steve Jobs presentation and afterwards was able to go and see and play with the demo units they had set up for the press. They then did live discussions with many of the people who were there for quite a while before Leo headed home. All of this was streamed and shown live . I don't remember the exact number they had watching at one time but it was huge, 2-3 times more then they had figured on. This not the first time they have done live remote streaming of events. In fact they were at CES in Los Vegas earlier this month, for 4 days straight and streamed and did live overage, and did several of the regular TWIT network shows live from the CES floor. What he had done on a relatively small budget is bring as good in some cases better coverage of events like CES and The Apple doings today to an audience who care what is happening, and given them the news they wanted when they wanted it.

So this was a news day in several ways, while Leo was covering Apple, He was interviewed by a reporter from I believe it was Fox , which was streamed to us right along with everything else.

So now all of the pundits can stop guessing and betting on whats it got,, they can now guess about the future of the Apple IPad.

Ken Lawson

2010;... The Year of Living Dangerously

As the year and decade come to a close it is time to consider how far technology has evolved over the last ten years. It’s hard to remember where we were back then.

In the last ten years, I've had probably four different computers and on the third laptop, each one more powerful and more capable , and cheaper than the last one. Other technology has evolved over the last ten years. To go into the many changes would be redundant: as many other places are comparing then and now, better than I ever could.

The state of Media has been in flux for the several year as the big media companies struggle to find a balance between traditional broadcast style programming and distribution, and new venues and uses of their content.

They are finding that a mix of new and old content seems to be a draw. Sites like Hulu.com have done surprisingly well, combining a mix of both new and classic TV content. To many, they have set the bar for on-line streaming of video content. Various other network site have offered streaming media with mixed results. The media/content producers are desperately trying not to repeat the mistakes the record industry made with DRM on music and MP3s. Yet they want to continue to control how "their" media is used and how the consumer, their customers who put them in business, in the first place. Something they seemed to have forgotten.

In the way of physical media, VHS tapes have come and gone, DVDs are still here, although they compete with High Definition disc ,which we went through another "war' over deciding which format was to be the default format. Blu-ray won. The price of Blu-ray HD DVD players has come down, however it has to come down to DVD player levels to help it really take over.

However, delivery methods have evolved over the last several years. No longer is going to the DVD rental store and then having to remember to return the movie needed. Physical movie rental has all but disappeared in many areas.

With the mass adaptation of broadband, online means of delivery have taken over as more and more products that connect to the consumers local wireless network and allow for streaming of movies and other content either from the consumers local networked media, or from other online sources such as Netfliks, or Amazon and other Video on Demand sources.

For many years the line between traditional production media and web produced content has been a barrier for the growth of user-created content, which is what the vast majority of on line content is. Everything from YouTube video of silly people being silly, to semi-presesionall podcasts produced with a minimum of production standards. To original creative story productions. All of this content was confined to the computer. Getting to watch this content on any other screen was a challenge for even serious geeks. That was then; This is now; Now more and more machines are come through with options to hook directly to a new HD TVs either through a regular monitor connection that is on almost all new TVs, and some new laptops have HDMI out ports on them allowing them to plug into a free HDMI input on any HD TV. Web content is also being made available on a variety of platforms, ranging from "web Enabled" TVs to Blu-ray player that connect to your local wireless network, many will allow to use your Netflick on demand to stream movies directly over your network and through the player to your TV. What is meant by Web enabled is that the TV has what are called widgets built into the TV software that allow for a limited access of the net through your TV.

Other platforms have also emerged ranging from game consoles both the Sony PS3, and the Microsoft X-Box 360 both allow for access to the web in different foms, The Wii also allows for general web browsing through its Opera browser, which works good, but doesn't support the newest versions of flash, thus making it useless for watching anything other than YouTube which is built into it natively, Hopefully this will change soon, However it does work good for checking web based e-mail and the like.

Over the last several years, a number of company's both hardware, and content produces has come out with various set-top boxes the bridge the gap between the traditional TV screen and the computer screen along with several programs to turn a computer into a TV tuner and DVR. Also many cable and satellite companies now offer DVRs built into their set-top boxes. A product that I am particularly excited about is a box from Roku. They have a small set-top box the hooks up to your TV, and connects to your local network either wirelessly or wired. What this allows you to do is to tie your Netflicks account to the box, and then stream any of the movies in your queue to your TV via their box. Also Amazon on Demand has their content available though their box. Amazon offers both rental and movies to by as well as shows. Also as a side note MLB is also on there to. If you want to subscribe to their content. If you don't use Amazon, Netflicks, or MLB. the box cost you nothing. But it was pretty useless with at least a Netflicks account tied to it. Now there is more content available. Many web only services are now offering their content on the Ruku Box. They have offer what they call the channel store which offer a variety of free content. All streamed directly from the web. The list includes, Pandora, music streaming, FaceBook, Mediafly, Frame Channel, Flicker, MotionBox, Blip.tv, Revision3, and my favorite Twit.tv, Suddenly this become a really interesting box to connect to the TV, and bring in content that had been stuck on the computer.

Speaking of getting content off the web and into other venues; Mediafly is a big player in that regard. They make their content available to most portable platforms, iphone/ipod, and many smartphones such as the Blackberry, and any platform that can at least either download or stream audio, most will do audio and video content.

All of this merging of different types of content and media may leave one wondering what’s next. That is a interesting question. It’s impossible to say for sure who going to do what and in what format they will do it. I know of several different approaches to bring different media to platforms to which it has not been traditionally available . The mixing of platforms has traditional media content producers and distributors looking for ways to monetize their content.. without giving up control.. and still keep the consumer happy,,,

2009, and the decade before it brought about many changes. Many of these changes are still being felt now. The changes in 2009 will be helping to shape the digital future. Apple and I-tunes changed the look of music, and how and where it is played and how and where one can get it. TV and other media are going through the evolution as the music industry did during the last decade. Watching how this plays out will be interesting.