Posted on

How Fun, the Publishing industry looks like mimic the mistakes of Music and Movies

WSJ.com is reporting that both Simon & Schuster and Hachette Book Group are looking to delay the release of e-Books by 4 months following the release of a hardback.

“The right place for the e-book is after the hardcover but before the paperback,” said Carolyn Reidy, CEO of Simon & Schuster, which is owned by CBS Corp. “We believe some people will be disappointed. But with new [electronic] readers coming and sales booming, we need to do this now, before the installed base of e-book reading devices gets to a size where doing it would be impossible.”

How awesome – not! It amazes me how people in the content industries still regard the consumption of bits differently than other formats. Consumers don’t care. Charge a fair price for goods delivered and we’ll pay. Choose to play a different game and well … things work out differently don’t they. Let’s just ask our friends in the music and movie businesses.

Posted on

AT&T’s new mobile rules are BS

update – AT&T Caved!

I’m just catching the news on AT&T’s new TOS which seriously limits the potential for bringing your own mobile capabilities.

I think we all get that carriers don’t want to be just a dumb pipe, but let’s be honest the more advanced the mobile device, the less likely you are to be using the carrier offered services – music, navigation etc.  In today’s smartphone market, we are seeing all kinds of manufacturer and 3rd party offered applications and services and the user is really in control of what they do and more importantly, how they do it.

Instead of trying to force us to use devices or specific services (which usually only work on a limited set of devices), I would much rather just pay for my usage – exactly the same way I buy access from my home broadband provider.  Provide a reliable consumer service at a realistic price and everyone wins.  Consider this – the new TOS from AT&T means that applications like Qik, Sling or Hava, and Joikuspot are all violations of your basic unlimited plan since unlimited means exactly the opposite – plenty of limits.

Should be interesting to see who gets caught doing anything that’s no longer allowed.  I wonder what the real penalty is actually and if we’ll even receive a formal notice on the change as a precursor to some formal action against the consumer.

Posted on

Nokia and Skype – With an Open Phone it Won’t Matter

It was only a matter of time for carriers to make stink about the inclusion of Skype on the N97.  I had first read about the issue via Simon Judge and was surprised it had even take this long to be a public complaint.

Carriers will always hate things that compete with their bread and butter and when you look at the possibility of Skype operating as a voice over data service the carrier is reduced to a mere pipe.  From my perspective as an end user, I’m always looking at more opportunities for just this situation.  I don’t use any operator services currently other than the connection on on either my home broadband or mobile connections.  I have not purchased a phone from a carrier outside of the original iphone since that was released and before that it was years earlier.  When I moved to Cingular (now ATT) I only requested the SIM since I knew I knew I’d be bringing my own devices.

One might argue that Skype delivered pre-loaded on a device would greatly impact the conversion to use numbers and I can’t argue that, though I would suggest that the Skype base is strong and enthusiastic enough that installing it yourself – with or without the Ovi Store – is going to happen anyway.  As it happens there are already no shortage of VOIP options for mobile devices … Skype just happens to be BIG!

I hope Nokia does not back down on the potential for the partnership here.  If it’s really a mobile computer they are looking to sell, I should be able to use any compatible application I want to make the most of my purchase.  That is after all how computers work.

Posted on

The entertainment business just doesn’t get it

Let’s face it. It’s easy to acquire video content these days regardless of whether you subscribe to a particular tier from your cable company or even whether you live in the country. Regardless of this the content companies still do not offer a legit path to offer content direct to consumer on a broad enough scale and so piracy continues. The same basic practices occur across media whether it’s movies, music or even books. For some reason the media business still feels the need to limit who gets to see, hear or read something rather than simply enable access to content given that it’s all bits and has been for a very long time.

It’s this type of mentality that has clearly driven Hulu’s content partners to demand that Hulu prevent Boxee from distributing shows across the Boxee platform.  This is an ignornat decision based on old media thinking end of story.  When you consider that Boxee offers Hulu as is – with commercials as they were originally sold, it’s clear this is simply based on believing that the content can be controlled through the old methods.

Boxee is a free software product available to download and install on your (Mac, Windows or Linux) PC or AppleTV and has yet to charge anything more than your time to install it.  Content passes directly to you on the platform and screen of your choice and though instead of using your web browser to surf across a bunch of web sites, you get a clean 10′ UI which keeps things really simple.  Boxee also adds a social layer which lets you share what you’ve viewed or heard and even make recommendations directly to your friends.

Given that network television content remains “free” and culturally we still tend to gather among friends online or at work and socialize about the shows we watch, it’s ludicrous for the media companies to want to stop something that actually enables shared enjoyment of the very content they are trying to promote.  Hulu and Boxee together are just another outlet / channel / option for people to consume the content they want.  An important detail which I’m sure will be lost on the TV creation and distribution world is that while Hulu is working to make it from niche to mass, Boxee is still early in the technology adopter territory which makes it ripe for influential discussion and most importantly spreading the word – whether good or bad.  Ironically, when tech savvy consumers get burned or blocked on one route there always seems to be another which was there all along … still free, without commerical interruption and easily viewable on any platform.

Posted on

Psion is really working hard to keep netbook for themselves

02/07/2009 - Netbook For Mobile Internet

jkOnTheRun reports on how Google is now honoring Psion’s trademark of Netbook effectively killing the search term for anyone else.  If this pushes further we are likely to see devices currently called netbooks go through a rebranding.

What’s strange about this is that Psion has effectively been a dead company for years and has no active product in the market – even if they did in fact invent one called a netbook though it was discontinued in 2003 – long before the notion of low cost computers we now know as netbooks came around.

Why now?  What are they cooking here?  There’s no known effort underway that would require Psion to protect the term so their device alone could be marketed that way … and it’s not looking lie a legal battle is mounting to do anything other than stop people from saying netbook.

Sites like netbooknews apparently get 50% of their earned ad revenue from the term netbook and this change is going to sting initially for sure.  I’ve been debating removing the sticker on my NC10 which reads Netbook for Mobile Internet but now I might just have to keep it there out of spite.