Featured Blog Posts – March 2009 Archive (9)

ZeeVee launched the next version of its free Internet TV browser this week. Zinc 3.0, formerly known as Zviewer, is already getting rave reviews as a robust alternative to Boxee. Like Boxee, Zinc is designed to provide a “big screen interface” for navigating Internet video content on your HDTVs. It works great for use on a PC, and looks even better on an HDTV connected to your PC directly or through their ZvBox or another PC-to-TV device. Zinc works… Continue

If you want to predict which Internet TV products and services will take off, you need to follow the revenue stream. Not that money alone makes a great product that consumers will like, but it certainly takes money to fund the efforts of tech companies to try to build the right products. The big question at the TV of Tomorrow show was: where will that money come from?



The problem is that most of the money right now comes from cable TV based business models. You pay a… Continue

One of the take-aways from last week’s TV of Tomorrow show is that we are entering a winner-takes-all battle over Internet-connected, interactive TV. In one of the final panel discussions of the event twelve of the leaders in what is called “over the top” Internet TV technologies were on stage. Conspicuously lacking were representatives from the cable industry, but they were in the audience (more on that later).



While Cable TV has been… Continue

Updated on March 17, 2009 (I guess I feel lucky). Below is my updated BlackBerry Storm review. Most of my review has become more positive, but a few areas are still weak or worse. My new title should be "More Awesome Than Awful".



As I promised, I have now had a chance to set up and use my new BlackBerry Storm for a couple of weeks. Since one of my pet peeves is reviews that don’t go beyond the challenges of the initial box-opening… Continue

I spent last week at the “TV of Tomorrow” (TVOT) show in San Francisco. All the major players were there from the online and interactive TV worlds. Suffice to say, like every major technology trend, there was a jumbled mix of very cool and relevant innovation along with a chaotic blend of competing strategies and pipedreams for deploying interactive and Internet-connected television into our homes. I will… Continue

I recently wrote about LinkedIn and why you absolutely have to be on it if you are a professional. Although I am passionate about LinkedIn to the point where I am updating my blog (http://linkedinquestions.wordpress.com) daily and in the process of writing a book on the subject, I have found a new friend recently in Twitter.



"Twitter?" you ask, "I don't get it." Yes, I didn't get it either. And I don't pretend to fully get it now. But, to put it simply, if LinkedIn is about finding… Continue

A dear friend of mine has often been quoted to say "If only Google could run this country, we'd be golden". And who could argue with that? The plethora of free products and simplified technologies that Google offers has rocked my mama-world in more ways than one.



First of all, Google Reader (along with iGoogle) changed my life. I went from clicking on dozens of blogs each day to having them display easily and accessibly in a tiny little box on my iGoogle home page. This alone saved… Continue

Samsung LED HDTV 8000 Series



As I sat in Samsung’s press conference at the Consumer Electronics Show I couldn’t believe what I was seeing. A senior executive was speaking on a stage over 100 feet away from me. The room was packed with hundreds of people. Like lemmings, all we press and analyst types had stood in line for 45 minutes for this honor. It felt a little like a James Bond film. You know the one. It is the usual… Continue

It’s a familiar story. American companies outsourcing to companies in Asia that can produce quality products at lower cost. And not just outsourcing manufacturing and the jobs that go with it, but outsourcing innovation and entire product categories to foreign vendors.



So the Vizio story is quite amazing. The young Irvine, CA company, which only began ramping its operations five years ago, took over… Continue