Technology meets people.

April 2009 Blog Posts (27)

Can Amimon’s New WHDI Chipset Help Usher in the Over the Top Video Revolution?

We have said before that, for Over the Top Video to truly achieve mainstream adoption, it needs to find its way to the HDTVs in the house either by using the existing home wiring or through cost-effective wireless solutions for distributing HD video. While we have covered home video distribution methods using coaxial wiring, such as ZeeVee’s ZvBox and… Continue

Added by Brian Mahony on April 30, 2009 at 9:00am — No Comments

Panasonic Attempts Leap-Frog of Vizio and Samsung Internet TV Plans

Not to be outdone by rivals Vizio’s and Samsung’s plans to bake Internet interactivity into some models of HDTVs, Panasonic… Continue

Added by Brian Mahony on April 28, 2009 at 9:00am — No Comments

Mental Illness

It’s here, it’s there, and it’s everywhere. A google search would yield millions of sites but none that have gained recognition among consumers, at least in my opinion. I know there all sorts of information about mental illness and there are chat groups and forums. How can a site about mental illness be utilized to actively help people when they need help the most? How can it provide a therapeutic environment without a licensed professional? How can this site reach out to such a vast group of… Continue

Added by Angela Crane on April 27, 2009 at 8:01pm — 2 Comments

Privacy Issues: Online and Device Usage Behavioral Targeting by Advertisers

The dichotomy of service providers (SPs) and advertisers trying their level best and within reason to track and act upon consumers’ daily online and offline activities whether at work or at play, and consumers’ interest and even efforts to refrain from or hide all that they do online and offline at work or at play to keep their lives as private as possible seems to be a never-ending dance between all the interested parties. At issue is the extent that SPs and advertisers utilize technologies,… Continue

Added by Robert A. Clark on April 27, 2009 at 4:59pm — No Comments

Linking Up Your Tunes at Home Wirelessly, Courtesy of Linksys

Linking Up Your Tunes at Home Wirelessly, Courtesy of Linksys

When we moved into our suburban Philadelphia stone center-hall Colonial home in 1996 we were delighted that it came with so many bells and whistles: an in-ground sprinkler system, alarm system, work-out room with cable TV hook-up,… Continue

Added by Patti A. Reali on April 23, 2009 at 11:58am — 1 Comment

Roller Coaster TV Consumption

In the last four years, my TV watching experience has dwindled from slim to none. We were TIVO folks around here for many years and with the 30 second skip hack, happy as a clam TIVO folk. Forgoing ads gave us 20 minutes per hour back of our time and allowed us to save precious brain cells for the next highly engaging episode of "Junkyard Wars" and "Queer Eye for the Straight Guy". Seriously, that peanut shaped remote was an ergonomic gift from the heavens. Never having to miss American Idol… Continue

Added by Leigh Steele on April 23, 2009 at 1:30am — 2 Comments

Next-Generation TV: What Do Consumers Know, Understand and Care About?

Has anyone been asking any family members or friends if they’ve gotten their IPTV or OTT Video service yet? If you or they have AT&T U-Verse or Verizon FiOS TV services, do you or they know or care that AT&T is a pure IPTV service, or that Verizon is a hybrid Cable/IP TV service – and what the differences are and mean for you as a subscriber? Do you or they know that the way your channel programming is delivered, in a linear fashion, is… Continue

Added by Robert A. Clark on April 22, 2009 at 7:30pm — No Comments

RoboBusiness Conference: Too Many Robotic Hammers Looking for a Nail?

Last week’s RoboBusiness conference in Boston was chicken soup for the geek’s soul. For the inner kid inside all of us, it showed how all that we have imagined over the past 50 years in books and movies can become a reality. Star Wars, Transformers, Terminator, it’s almost all possible now through advances in robotics technology. However, for the outer business person in us, the RoboBusiness show left you thinking: “What’s wrong? Why isn’t the… Continue

Added by Brian Mahony on April 22, 2009 at 12:00am — No Comments

Mobile Televion Trial Launching in Washington DC This Summer

A consumer test of mobile TV broadcasts is scheduled to launch this summer in Washington, D.C. Another trial of similar technology is scheduled to appear in both Atlanta and Seattle in the coming weeks. This, on top of a trial that launched in Raleigh, N.C. a short while ago.

The technology (mobile bandwidth, mobile handsets and the like) has been available to bring video and movies to mobile…

Continue

Added by Dan Kusnetzky on April 21, 2009 at 8:32am — No Comments

Nightmarish-Looking iRobot Looj Turns Gutter Cleaning into a Dream

iRobot Looj

I spent the past two days at the RoboBusiness show in Boston. Robotics is an exciting growth industry, but one that has been troubled by too much cool technology and not enough solid business plans and marketing. I will be discussing some possible reasons for this in a separate post. One of the leaders in consumer robotics, and the founding sponsor of the show, iRobot stands out as one of the success stories in an… Continue

Added by Brian Mahony on April 17, 2009 at 2:30pm — No Comments

Video Game Industry and In-Game Advertising: Is There a Happy Medium?

I can respect the gaming purists out there who believe that in-game advertising is ruining some games with their injection directly inside the games themselves. With forecasts for in-game advertising expenditures as high as $1 billion by 2010, it appears the gaming industry has little choice but to accept its fate same as most other digital content creation and delivery means whose continuing existence can be owed to being ad-supported. Some of Sony’s… Continue

Added by Robert A. Clark on April 17, 2009 at 8:30am — No Comments

T-Mobile Joins the Move to Lower Plan Pricing

T-Mobile has joined the move to reduce program pricing (see Unlimited Plan Price War Developing - Virgin Mobile Announces $50 per Month Plan. Here are the changes we've noticed:

T-Mobile's Family myFaves plans have been changed. Now the top two subscription programs have…

Continue

Added by Dan Kusnetzky on April 16, 2009 at 11:05am — No Comments

Podcast: Roku’s Internet Video Player— It’s Not Just for Netflix Anymore

In our continuing podcast series on Internet video, we spoke with Roku’s Tim Twerdahl, Vice President of Consumer Products. A little over a year ago, Roku’s Netflix Player was spun out of an internal development effort and launched the first version of its Internet Video player in May of 2008. Since then it has become clear that the box, originally named the “Netflix Player by Roku” can be a platform for a range of… Continue

Added by Brian Mahony on April 15, 2009 at 12:00pm — No Comments

Tech Hi-Lo: Meade Telescope Wins Close Duel

In the first of our "Tech Hi-Lo" series, the very sophisticated ETX-LS telescope from Meade beat out the simple but useful Touchless Trashcan by iTouchless Housewares Products in an informal Internet poll on our site, with 55% of 49 respondents choosing the fancier device over the… Continue

Added by Brian Mahony on April 14, 2009 at 8:00am — No Comments

Are Content Delivery Networks (CDNs) a Competitor to Traditional TV and Video Service Providers?

I ask this question mostly due to the fact that the major CDNs are for the most part the engine that drives home video content to PCs or other devices, whether it is event-based, live or archived, and streamed especially versus downloaded-to-own. They are especially behind the scenes of live events that are broadcasted over the Internet, and heretofore were the primary means for delivering short-form video (YouTube). In recent years their technology has developed to the point of the ability to… Continue

Added by Robert A. Clark on April 13, 2009 at 5:30pm — No Comments

Unlimited Plan Price War Developing - Virgin Mobile Announces $50 per Month Plan

MetroPCS Communications and Leap Wireless started the price war by offering customers an unlimited prepaid service in limited areas for between $35 to $50 per month. In January 2009, Sprint Nextel responded with a $50 unlimited plan under its own prepaid brand, Boost Mobile. It appears that it's Virgin Mobile USA's turn to lower its prices.

Virgin Mobile USA Inc. is dropping the price of their unlimited service plan from $80 per month to $50

Who's next? AT&T? T-Mobile?… Continue

Added by Dan Kusnetzky on April 13, 2009 at 6:30am — No Comments

How to Monetize Social Media

So the buzz continues around social media, and the membership numbers of social networking sites continues to soar. According to Alexa.com statistics, Facebook is now the 4th most visited site in the world, followed by MySpace at 9th, Twitter at 55th, and LinkedIn at 100th. These are impressive numbers.

What is more impressive is that social networks become stickier and stickier as time progresses, and thus the amount of time spent on these… Continue

Added by Neal Schaffer on April 9, 2009 at 2:00pm — No Comments

Will People be Forced to Purchase a new Phone to Get Windows Mobile 6.5?

I read an interesting article, Windows Mobile Users Complain About Upgrade Policy, by Nancy Gohring of IDG News Service. It appears that Microsoft's facing another challenge brought on by its own business model. Even though Windows Mobile 6.5 was launched a while ago and quite a few of today's mobile devices could use that software, the upgrade…

Continue

Added by Dan Kusnetzky on April 9, 2009 at 8:01am — No Comments

TomTom’s IQ Routes Feature Blends Social Networking to Avoid Bad Traffic

TomTom, a leading provider of portable navigation devices, announced several new aggressively priced features that used to only be available on the higher end TomTom Go series. The new TomTom ONE 140 series and TomTom XL 340 series incorporate TomTom’s innovative IQ Routes Technology and Advanced Lane Guidance feature. TomTom also announced a deal with TrafficCast International to provide its Go 740 Live users with continuously updated traffic,… Continue

Added by Brian Mahony on April 8, 2009 at 10:00am — No Comments

Top Advertising Industry Challenges and Technology Trends that are Changing Advertising as We Know It

The advertising professionals in the hit AMC series Mad Men, and the real life ad pros of the 1950s would feel like dinosaurs if they were living present day and witnessing changes going on in the advertising industry. The primary trends and challenges current day include creative populism (consumer interests, rights and wisdom in participating in advertising), personalized measurements, interactivity, open inventory platforms and greater consumer… Continue

Added by Robert A. Clark on April 8, 2009 at 9:30am — No Comments