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Sunday, January 9, 2005
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 Sunday, January 9, 2005
started 1/9/2005; 12:19:52 AM - last post 1/9/2005; 8:35:35 AM
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Doc Searls - Sunday, January 9, 2005 
1/9/2005; 4:19:52 AM (reads: 6245, responses: 2)
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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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MS Mobiles - Re: Sunday, January 9, 2005
1/9/2005; 7:52:59 AM (reads: 489, responses: 1)
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"who is to TVs what Russell is to mobile devices"?
Russell Beattie is not expert or guru in mobile devices. He is amateur. He doesn't even has basic knowledge about Microsoft mobile devices and he can't even spell some basic terms from this area correctly.
Russell's knowledge is limited to playing around with some Symbian devices that he got or bought around the corner, but he has no in-depth knowledge about Palm devices (Treo is number one smartphone in USA still) and about Microsoft mobile devices.
I too don't agree that game is over for non-Microsoft media players particularly because first cell phones with iTunes Mobile Player will be released this year and particularly because such giants as Sony have their own DRM. In my view all DRMs should be accessible on all smartphone platforms - and it is indeed possible technically.
On top of that Russell spreads personal attacks, lies and libel on his website, so I really suggest you, Doc, to be more suspicious about anything that this guy writes!
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lou josephs - Re: Sunday, January 9, 2005
1/9/2005; 12:35:35 PM (reads: 538, responses: 0)
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I read what Scoble had to say and I read your comments.
From a marketing standpoint you've missed this one. This is a device no one wants.
Ok so you can get digital radio in band on channel, great the radio suits are spending the money to make it happen, but you can't walk into Frys and buy a radio that will get HDR can you?
The same is true with DRM on Shortwave, that's the digital broadcasting standard for the sw am folks. You can download software but you can't go out and buy an off the shelf radio.
You can't do that with a converged PC either. The media center PC just doesn't do it.
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