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| Sunday, January 9, 2005 |
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Better than leaving your real ones 
| | The public voice here at the airport just said "If you're the person who left their false teeth in the men's room..." |
Viva Las Vegas
| | Hey look: McCarran Airport has free Wi-Fi. ...right now, we're offering it for free because we didn't like the business models that were available. Here's the model: free Wi-Fi at the airport increases chances that laptop-carrying travellers will come more often to Las Vegas, bring more business and spend more money. |
| | [Not much later...] Bummer: can't send email. Port 25 appears to be blocked. Can't ssh to my server, either. or do any kind of instant messaging. Strange. It's like the system is saying "You can browse and check email, but that's about it." |
Resistance isn't futile
| | Russell Beattie says "it's game over for a lot of Microsoft competitors." I don't buy it, and explained why in a comment that's still pending moderation. (When the link's up, I'll put it here.) |
| | ...it's not going to happen, no matter how much money is spent in the effort. Americans believe the TV is for entertainment and the PC is for work. New TV features that enhance the viewing experience, such as Digital Video Recorders, High-Definition TV, Video on Demand, Internet TV (the kind that streams Net-based video to the television, expanding programming choices) and some Interactive TV features (and, yes, just some), will succeed. Companies that focus on those features will also succeed. |
| | But the effort to force viewers to perform PC tasks on the TV will crash faster than a new edition of a buggy PC software. |
| | I realize that doesn't speak to all of Russell's points, or to more than a fraction of Microsoft's agenda in the consumer electronics world; but it makes a critical distinction (which I boldfaced, above) that's extremely important, and hard to see when you're coming from the PC world. |
| | Bonus link: Scoble begs to differ. Doc says that there's no way that consumers will buy a PC to hook up to their TV. Well, I didn't say that, and neither did Phillip Swan. So I'll try again. |
| | There's a subtle point here, that has to do with how most people understand TVs and PCs. Years ago, when "interactive TV" trials were busy failing, a Sony executive said something like "the only thing most TV viewers want to interact with is the refrigerator." That was Swann's point, essentially. Mine is this: No matter how much intelligence, integration, management or connectedness one adds to television (or anything), you don't change what it's originally for. |
| | To understand what I mean by for, read David Weinberger's The Longing. There he makes a critical distinction about the Web. Here I'm making one about TVs and PCs. |
| | Maybe Microsoft (and other companies, like Apple, Sony and HP) can blur, erase or overcome those distinctions with cool new products and services. I have my doubts. |
| | Meanwhile, here at CES I enjoy what independent TV/PC integration players (such as Sage) are doing, mostly because they operate outside of any one Big Vendor's silo. |
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