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Monday, May 06, 2002 |
 Dave. AOL is missing one thing: developers.
5:31:47 PM 
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Salon. I agree with the long boom analysis. A major underlying factor: the ability of the US to own the R&D, roll-out, and acceptance new tech, particularly those with underlying massive doubling rates of price vs. performance. This is one of the reasons Orin's (Orin Hatch -- the extremely smart US Senator from Utah) support for regenerative therapy is so important. With that in hand, the US will continue to dominate information tech, biotech, and nanotech. This is a sure fire recipe for massive wealth. The only gloomy items on the horizon: 1) terrorist nukes (in the press a lot lately), 2) a lack of fiber optics to the home and most companies, and 3) fundamentalist opposition to regenerative therapy.
4:51:56 PM
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Adam is covering in real-time the assassination of Dutch politician Pim Fortuyn.
3:22:29 PM
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WSJ. Microsoft to focus on TV guide pop-up menus for cable boxes. Wrong. Focus on media center technology for "homestation" that makes the PC a PVR, and use Mira as a customizable remote control. Don't court the cable companies, they don't have a clue. They are working hard on value added VOD services rather than focusing on increasing the bandwidth of the pipe. If all the money they were sinking into VOD was put into fiber to the home, we would have an explosion of economic activity in this area. Interactive TV dreams die hard. They are so attractive to the control freaks at the media/cable companies. Fortunately, they are on the wrong side of where technology is going.
9:04:02 AM
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NYT. Brian Roberts runs Comcast, the largest cable network in the US at 22 m homes (larger than John Malone at his peak). Here is his plan for video on demand (VOD) to hold off the onslaught of personal video recorders (PVRs):
>>>Let's break V.O.D. into three categories, all of which we will make available to all digital customers. Level one is movies and impulse events on demand. You push the button, you get a product, you pay for the individual transaction.
Level two is subscription video on demand. The best example of that is HBO. You buy HBO with the S.V.O.D. feature, and you get any episode of "Sex and the City" or "The Sopranos" anytime you want. You get to pull up HBO movies anytime you want them.
But the newest idea, and the one that I'm most excited about, is a third level of free video on demand. Why don't we go to CBS or ABC or NBC, and say, "Would you like your local or national newscast to be available anytime the consumer wants it after the original broadcast — and leave the commercials in. Why not give it a shelf life for the rest of the day? If I'm "60 Minutes" or "NBC Nightly News," why don't I want people to have more access to the show? I've already made it. All my costs are fixed. This way I get more people to watch the ads.<<<
There is also a method called multiplexing a channel, which from what I understand is merely a reshuffling of programming to make a channel appeal to different audiences.
8:13:20 AM
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© Copyright 2004 John Robb.
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