Out of the Box

Mark Cuban takes The New York Times to task for debasing itsesf by calling its blogs… “blogs.” Rather than having the Times’ imprimatur validate the blog, he argues, calling its blogs “blogs” drags the venerable newspaper down into that dangerous dystopia of dubious diatribe known as the blogosphere. Journalists, don’t go there alone at night if you value your kidneys. Once bloggers start moving into your publication, your media property values will sink like a stone.

The Times’ struggle against Internet commoditization began when the newspaper — like every other major news organization – established an editorial presence on the Web. Refusing to call its online presence a “Web site” in favor of something that nobody understands would not have changed the fundamental dynamics of the Web’s low barrier to entry. (That said,, the Times now follows Mark’s advice to tie into its print recognition by branding its Web site “all the news that’s fit to click.”) If blogging is as commoditized as Mark portrays it, then a flashy rebadge isn’t going to help much.

Also, I don’t see how Mark can dsmiss all of the positive connotations of blogs – intimacy, feedback, conversation, perspective and modernness. Calling the Times’ blog “realtime reporting” doesn’t convey any of this. ”Reporting” may reflect the Times’ traditional brand value, but doesn’t distinguish beyond what the Times may be doing online or, for that matter, what CNN does on television. Indeed, the Times could be doing a lot worse than blogs in attracting some sources of traffic.

Mark closes by referencing HBO’s “It’s not TV. It’s HBO.” marketing slogan, but that’s an easy distinction to make in a bandwidth-constrained medium by a premium cable channel. Over a decade ago, HBO (once better known as an acronym for Home Box Office) shifted its emphasis from commercial-free movie airing to creating its acclaimed lineup of original, exclusive TV series. The slogan, which came later, reflected the reality. It didn’t create it.

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Last May, I posted a response to a Randal Stross piece that I thought unfairly compared Apple and Sony stores. However, his Digital Domain piece today on how Microsoft should buy a large business software company such as SAP instead of taking on Google has me scratching my head.

Mr. Stross advocates that, rather than taking on a strong and nimble competitor such as Google, Microsoft should stick to its knitting and acquire a large software company such as SAP as opposed to another strong Web player such as Yahoo!, which one of his sources characterizes as “an old-style Internet access, in decline, and at a premium.”

This is like a trainer recommending that a boxer with a black eye lift more weights to improve his arms..Buying SAP may lead to further consolidation in Microsoft’s strongest market, but it does little to help it gain ground on the Internet advertising gold rush that Microsoft fears Google will use to launch applications that compete with its cash cows. Following Mr. Stross’s advice would effectively mean withdrawal from the online space. There’s a case for Microsoft spinning off that business, but for now Microsoft still sees the Web as its manifest destiny.

If Microsoft were to buy an enterprise vendor to address the Google threat, it should be salesforce.com. Such an acquisition would enable Microsoft to make a stronger foray in software-as-a-service. It could offer real applications to counter what Google might only hope to build one day under the pressure of an offering that is difficult to shoehorn into its free, consumer-focused, ad-driven model

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Last week, TechCrunch picked up a New Yorker story that notes that Eric Schmidt now recuses himself from the segments of Apple board meetings that discuss the iPhone due to a conflict of interest with Google’s Android operating system, about which Chairman Jobs is none too keen. I wonder if he uses that time off to field calls from his fellow Google executives imploring him to get in there and remember the part about organizing the world’s information.

Erick Schonfeld asks what good is a board member who cannot talk about a company’s hottest product, going so far as to suggest whether Schmidt should be on Apple’s board at all? At least for now, Schmidt is benefiting Apple according to the old adage about “the enemy of my enemy.” But I also wonder about the slippery slope. Can Schmidt be there when they talk about being able to access Flickr albums from Apple TV?

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Jeremy Toeman and Dave Zatz weighed in yesterday on the Netflix announcement that it will be partnering with LG on what it hopes will be the first of “100 Netflix-capable boxes” (putting its aspirational numbers significantly behind the thousand gPhones that Eric Schmidt is pursuing).

Jeremy notes the challenges of bringing a “fifth box” into the living room. It’s true that the standalone home network/broadband content access device has struggled for a number of reasons that I’ve explored in depth elsewhere. The alternative is easier said than done, though. Jeremy writes:

The “smart” marketing of the (rumored) $799 HD/Blu-Ray player will simply label it as having Netflix “built in” or something like that.

Right idea, wrong Trojan horse. The problem is that no amount of smart marketing will dramatically expand the market for a $799 dual-format high-def disc player, which is being hampered by nearly as many problems as Internet set-top boxes. There are standard-definition DVD players, of course, but that market has been completely commoditized.

Read the rest of this entry »

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Time-shifting terrestrial radio has been around for a while. with standalone products from PoGo Electronics, purveyors of fine windup remote controls, the unfortunately capitalized radio SHARK Mac and PC accessory from Griffin, and the new MP3 player filling station from PopCatcher, taking another stab after the TraxCatcher never came to market.

But now a new wave of Internet radio time-shifters are coming to market. There’s the imminent Slacker Portable and the definitely not portable iShift Internet Media Receiver (check out the introductory video with the pornotronica soundtrack), which  packs an 80 GB hard drive. Who needs to record 1,300 hours of Internet radio? in any case, this living room-sized component will be able to sideload its storehouse to the iPod and other MP3 players and uses an Internet recording service from Timeless Radio which looks competitive with the iRoamer service launched a few years back by Aussie firm Torian Wireless.

The MP3 filling station concept, whether it uses FM, Internet radio or some other source, stands to simplify the process of loading up a portable music player.

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With Blu-ray and HD-DVD being relatively new on the video scene, it’s not surprising that each has a logo to let consumers know that a disc is compatible with its respective formats. The HD-DVD one is an extension of the DVD logo (pictured), which informed consumers that the shiny disc they were considering contained more than just music. Each of the major video game console vendors also brands compatible software with the appropriate logo as well.

Thinking about my Vudu column posted today on Engadget and the news that the company is offering The Bourne Ultimatum in high-definition, I’m wondering how consumers other than Vudu owners might know that the movie is available on the service. Awareness of broadband video services is very low. It would benefit several companies at this early stage to develop some kind of logo signifying that a movie was available for legal digital rental or purchase. There have been a few on-air promotions showing that certain video content is available via iTunes, but I’ve mostly seen these for television shows.

It may be hopeless as, unlike with physical media, many of the video download services (iTunes, Xbox Live Marketplace, Vudu, Fanfare) are vertically integrated. However, a broadband video alliance might also have more leeway in negotiating with studios for better terms, such as the ludicrous 24-hour limit to finish watching a movie once it’s started (not that I’ve been burned by that… twice). None of the services (except maybe Vongo) seem to be competing on usage terms.

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The Beeb reports on Western Digital’s decision to limit file sharing of certain kinds of files using its Anywhere Access software. This is likely to generate as much if not more backlash than the Belkin router “parental controls” spamming fiasco of 2003. It smacks of someone in legal cautioning the company about limiting liability, but hardware companies are better off excluding the feature wholesale than driving bad PR in taking the moral high grand regarding what their customers should be able to do. Let DRM do its job. Or not.

This move is particularly ill-timed as more options are opening up for the legal sharing of music.

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There is an alternative way to send short bits of text between mobile phones! Oh, technology, thou art a fickle muse. I think I will start one of these companies and create a product called, ”I Seek You.” Yes, something like that, but catchier. Maybe there’s some way to shorten it.

Actually, this article doesn’t even come close to describing the real threat du jour. As Facebook becomes the growing Web within a Web, this community is going to hit the mobile world like a freight train with more people on it than the carriers themselves have. It is developing more leverage than AOL ever had during its heyday. AOL was a jail; Facebook is the Hotel California.

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Before my bank was Web-enabled, and before it even offered any kind of online banking via Quicken or Microsoft Money, it had an IVR-based bank-by-phone service that was actually pretty convenient, and worked fine for things like checking balances, transfers, making payments and other simple tasks. It was killed as e-banking moved to the Web, but it’s still difficult to do even simple financial transactions from a mobile phone. Now, we’re seeing Citibank, BoA and others start to launch mobile banking on mobile phone screens. My bank is not yet on board, but I’m sure won’t be far behind.

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According to Reuters, Microsoft will try offering an ad-supported version of its entry-level Works package as a counter to Google Docs, which I have written just about every column in for at least the past six months. However, Microsoft will distribute the software only through OEMs, which is somewhat strange as it limits the broad audience that Web distribution could bring.

Works may be more popular overseas, but we still see PC vendors bundling the far more functional if often just as ignored WordPerfect Office here in the U.S. and I suspect more companies will start looking to OpenOffice over time. It’s been especially challenged since the “student” version of Office became the standard consumer one for all intents and purpsoes.

It would be great to see Microsoft remake Works as a deluxe version of LiveWriter. For example, it could be a lot simpler to put a simple table or calculation in a blog post. Also, as ThinkFree is showing, much of the client value of software in an AJAX world is about seamless offline work and synchronization.

In any case, I remember when the future looked brighter for integrated packages, at least on the Mac, where there was once at least five integrated software programs including Microsoft Works, ClarisWorks, and the very obscure HandiWorks, Ragtime and ClarisWorks-like BeagleWorks. I did a comparative review of them eons ago in what must have been one of the sunset ssues of A+ Magazine.

After bringing the rebadged AppleWorks to OS X, though, Apple scrapped it in favor of iWork, which seems to be in a kind of limbo. Pages reminds me of the elegance of MacWrite II and Pro, but Keynote is just geared toward a different kind of presentation than PowerPoint — arguably a better kind of presentation but simply not how businesses communicate today.

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