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The times, they are a changing…

The computer literacy gap between children and their grandparents may be narrowing. In fact, older people now spend so much time online that the AARP, the association for middle-age and older adults, has begun advertising on KaZaA Media Desktop, software used by millions of teenagers and young adults to swap songs online.

[New York Times: Business]

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TiVO not threatening to Advertisers?

Recent internal research by Procter & Gamble Co. indicates that consumers who fast-forward through ads with digital personal video recorders such as TiVo still recall those ads at roughly the same rates as people who see them at normal speed in real time.

…

“That’s probably not an unusual finding based on the way people recall things,” Mr. Schar said. “People hardly recall anything. So you’re dealing with low numbers anyway, and differences with low numbers take a lot to be significant. So I could see how statistically you could make that case.”

[Adage]

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Can AOL Survive?

John C Dvorak certainly does not think so….

Here is the problem, from the beginning. This kind of online information business has never made money. The Source (1980s) went out of business and was absorbed by CompuServe. CompuServe was always sketchy and was eventually absorbed by AOL. Ziff-Davis developed an online service that lost money and was sold to AT&T, which folded it. Prodigy always struggled. Apple tried an online service and folded it fast. Microsoft, thinking it should be in the business because AOL is so big, has lost money year after year with MSN. Hello? Earth to the business press, come in! This business is a loser. It has never made money, and only the dot-com house-of-mirrors anomaly made things appear otherwise. And this became truer for AOL once the company switched from metered rates to a flat fee.

Let’s compare AOL or MSN or any other closed system to the standard ISP model. An ISP connects the user to the Internet, period. There may be an informational Web site and some storage for users’ small Web sites, but an ISP doesn’t have server farms redistributing and repackaging what is already free on the Internet. That’s wheel-spinning. An ISP does not have massive chat rooms and large public forums that tie up the basic service, either. Pure ISPs make some money, but they are hardly setting the world on fire. How can an information utility such as AOL make money with all the additional overhead? It can’t and probably never could.

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Say goodbye to access from MSN?

“The new strategy,” according to IDC, “marks the eventual end of Microsoft’s most visible foray into telecommunications.” The report added that MSN was “increasingly likely to exit the market” for supplying Internet access, though it added that would be “a year or years away,” probably in a sale of its subscribers to another service provider.

[The New York Times]

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Is it real or is it Puma?

So by now you have probably read or seen the infamous Puma ads…. allegedly real, then fake. I personally believe them to be real, though claimed fake for the PR kick. You can’t beat the Buzz that has come from this. Everyone is talking about them – in Advertising and in general. Rumor has it, this is the work of these guys…. I guess we’ll know soon enough.

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HIT SONG SCIENCE

A Barcelona company says it has “developed an artificial intelligence application that could analyzed song and determine its potential to become a hit,” reports Neil Strauss in The New York Times. Really. Executives of the company, called Polyphonic HMI say that when they “loaded every song in the Billboard Top 30 over the last five years into the program, they found that “lo and behold, they all had something in common.”

Of course. They all sucked. They need a computer to determine this? Polyphonic sees things a bit differently, naturally. They think their killer app, which they call Hit Song Science, will help “raise the bar for music,” as suggested by Tracie Reed, vp of Polyphonic’s North American office. “We empathize with the people who buy a CD and only like two songs. Let’s get better music on more CD’s,” she says. Originally, the company thought their software could be used to “offer CD shoppers recommendations based on their favorite songs.” Now, however, they are promoting its use among record companies as a way to determine whether or not a song should be released. Several major labels, including Sony Music, RCA and Universal UK, “are either using it or considering the option.”

Jordan Berliant of Tenth Street Entertainment says he doubts a machine could measure the emotional content of a song, “in particular the lyrics.” Jaron Lanier, a computer scientist and musician, meanwhile dismissed “the science side of the application” as “sloppy.” He added: “As for the music side of things, I doubt pop music could get any worse, so using even a meaningless tool like this might result in some improvement.”

[Reveries]

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The Lamest Telemarketer…

Just got off the phone with a totally lame Telemarketing rep. She called me and the call went like this:

Rep: Hello, I This is Judy from “never heard of me” software company.
Rep: I was wondering if you were looking to make any changes to your business software.
Me: No
Rep: Ok then thank you, I guess I will check back with you down the road then.
Me: Ah, Ok.
Rep: Have a nice day.

I have no idea what this company does and they make no effort to explain. How general is business software?!

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Mobile Business Plan:

The Details

Here’s the services offered by .Mac: Mail, Address Book, desk, Home Page (including iPhoto Albums), Backup, iCards, Anti-Virus, and Support. All of this is tightly integrated with the Mac OS and I want to mimic this level of integration.

Here’s what I see as potential online services offered by Dot Mob (and I’ll explain their technical underpinnings after), many are almost identical, others are more specific for mobile phones. All will be available via both the Web (HTML) and your phone (WAP/XHTML):

[Russell Beattie Notebook]

Russ is one smart dude – I hope this starts to happen. It could make a major market for mobile services, by simplifying how it all comes together…something obviously missing from today’s market.

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Sony’s Idei – Part 2

At this year’s World Economic Forum, held recently in Davos, Switzerland, Tony Perkins sat down with Mr. Idei—with Sir Howard Stringer, Chairman and Chief Executive Officer, Sony Corporation of America, at his side—to discuss their take on technology trends. In this second part, Mr. Idei and Tony debate the virtues of Linux versus Windows. Part 1 was posted on Tuesday.

Perkins: Because of Sony’s size, and number of customers, you can obviously have a huge impact on which standards… [AlwaysOn Network]