bradhill
Latest
Editorial: Is Chromecast the little dongle that could change things?
It is sold out at Amazon. It is sold out at Best Buy online. It is sold out at the 16 Best Buy stores closest to my home in North Carolina. The nearest Best Buy availability is in Roanoke, Va. (Amazon and Best Buy are the retail outlets sanctioned by Google.) You can buy it directly from Google at the Play Store, but as of this writing, the wait time for shipping has been extended to three to four weeks. In a world where people line up for hours to buy a $500 tablet, selling out a $35 dongle isn't necessarily a milestone, or an indicator of anything significant. But I'll hammer a prediction stake into the ground: Chromecast will create change in media consumption habits disproportionate to its price. Its power will come partly from its tech-candy pricing, but only partly. This little invention hits a few other sweet spots.
An inside view of the WebTV revolution that didn't happen
You might think it should have happened sooner. This week, Microsoft announced it would decommission its MSN TV (formerly WebTV) service. Even I didn't think it would last this long, and I was WebTV's greatest advocate back in the day. In fact, I was its official evangelist, hired by founder Steve Perlman and his company's PR agency as WebTV's national media spokesperson for a period leading up to and including the product launch. In 1996, WebTV was tech's hottest startup, considered a blazing harbinger of the future, all for pretty good reasons. WebTV was primarily an internet popularization play during an era of widespread uncertainty about computers in the home and the value of being online. If tablets and smartphones represent a Steve Jobs-ordained post-PC era, WebTV can be seen in retrospect as a pre-PC computing category. In my view, it isn't modern web-connected TVs that finally killed WebTV (MSN TV) -- it's the mobile revolution that did it.
Editorial: High Fidelity Pure Audio starting a noble but losing battle
The announcement is wrapped in an aura of déjà vu: Universal Music Group is marketing an uncompressed, high-end digital audio format for Blu-ray called High Fidelity Pure Audio (HFPA). Where standard CD audio is 44.1KHz at 16 bits, HFPA's A2D sampling rate clocks in at a sky-high 96KHz at 24 bits. Analog elitists will maintain that even extremely refined sampling is inherently inferior to capturing unchopped waveforms, and while that argument is fun to test, it is academic in the context of wide consumer adoption. Can a new audiophile format gain traction in a technomusical world governed by convenience and mobility?
Editorial: As Google Reader dies, reading struggles to be reborn
When Google announced it was pulling Reader's plug (which will happen next week), the outcry was loud and viral. If I may speak for those who were most wounded by the knife in Reader's back, the announcement shock was mixed with betrayal, anger and loss. Those who built RSS reading into their lives generally placed it at the epicenter of their online activity. Anticipating life without Reader was a black-hole view -- the web with a void punched into the center. As the wailing turned practical, exporting and migrating recommendations proliferated. The commotion died down for a while, and has now resumed for Reader's final week. Major and minor brands are jumping into the feed-reading game, seeking to sway a vocal population looking for new homes. But is a loud community of users also a large community of users? Feed-based web consumption hasn't had this much publicity in years. Does all this product development and media attention signal a rebirth of RSS's geeky convenience? Or are money and effort being thrown at an ephemeral market?
Editorial: What internet radio needs to disrupt actual radio
"Internet radio" is usually a misnomer, as well as an indicator of its ambition. The term "radio" is misapplied to internet services like AOL Radio, Rhapsody Radio, the upcoming iTunes Radio and their ilk. All these mediums are unrelated to radio technology. But for most people, "radio" simply means something you turn on and listen to. As a marketing term, "radio" seeks to accustom users to new technology by connecting it with familiar technology. Pandora describes itself as "free, personalized radio." The business intent in all cases is more ambitious -- to wean people from the terrestrial radio habit and migrate them to online services. Will it work?
Editorial: The subtexts of Apple's WWDC keynote
Monday's much-anticipated WWDC keynote was Apple's most crucial presentation in years. AAPL stock has fallen 37 percent over nine months. Android has grown into a monstrous competing platform, differentiating along the lines of lower cost, variety of devices and appealing operating-system features. In this sharp-elbowed environment, Apple has been widely accused of losing its innovation mojo, and of over-reaching with premium product concepts and prices, in what is increasingly viewed as a commodity tech category. Facing an audience of developers whose businesses depend on Apple's continued success, especially in the mobile realm, the company's keynote mission was not only to excite buzz around new products, but to establish clarity around the company's mission, values and key competitive advantages. Did it succeed?
The outrage and sadness of Google Reader's demise
Pope Who? White smoke over the Vatican doesn't stand a chance as a trending topic next to the black cloud over one of Google's most beloved products. Google Reader has landed on the company's sunset list, and will wink out of existence on July 1. Problem is, Reader is not as widely beloved as its most fervid users assume. And speaking of trending topics, the extinction of Reader signifies the mainstream rejection of RSS as a hands-on tool for organizing a living library of real-time information flow. It has been eclipsed by social content discovery. As Brian Alvey, chief scientist of Ceros and creator of Blogsmith (Engadget's publishing platform) noted, "Dear RSS: @Twitter won." More broadly speaking, Reader's ultimate fail is the latest major rebalancing of the internet's legacy symmetry of "push" and "pull."
Editorial: Countering ID theft requires better awareness campaigns
Evernote's massive password reset last week was the most recent demonstration of leaky security around consumer locks and keys. Dropbox, LinkedIn, Twitter and others preceded the Evernote action. These anxiety-producing consumer annoyances occur over a backdrop of increased cyber-attack news. Chinese hackers are spotlighted in many recent disruptions, substantiated by Akamai's report of originating-attack countries for Q3 2012, which shows China's percentage of worldwide cyber exploits doubling from the previous quarter. Precautionary password resets, as in the Evernote case, are minor aggravations. But the larger danger of password insecurity and increased cyber-malice is the swift domino effect that can lead to identity theft of the Mat Honan variety. Absolute personal cyber-security is probably a mirage. But there is not enough public education from industry that might reduce millions of easy targets.
Editorial: BlackBerry slumps into history of Super Bowl tech ads
The comparison is obvious: BlackBerry's already-infamous "Can't Do" commercial in this year's Super Bowl vs. Apple's legendary "1984" spot in the 1984 game. Let's do the comparison anyway, and consider some other tech advertising over 35 years of Super Bowls.
Editorial: Legal torrent sites are innovators of media consumption
Torrent. In the context of consuming mainstream music and movies, the word reverberates with illegitimacy. The Bittorrent protocol, however, is neutral -- a disinterested technology specification. The same is true for all peer-to-peer platforms, and that essential neutrality has been a pillar argument in lawsuit defenses of P2P companies over the last decade.
Editorial: Betting on BlackBerry (or hoping)
Carrying a BlackBerry Storm requires a certain capacity to face scorn with pride. You have to have a thick skin for pity, too. Also condescension. And incredulity. BlackBerry's reputation is in the gutter, but that's better than being down the sewer, which it was before RIM started showing prototypes of the BlackBerry 10. On the strength of an undeniably cool interface, the BlackBerry brand has clambered back up to ground level, where it sits in delayed-launch limbo. RIM is smartly spending the extra time exposing BB10 prototypes to the smartphone-using audience (and, crucially, app developers). It is not only to escape scorn, pity, condescension and incredulity that I place an emotional bet on BlackBerry 10. More objectively, there appears to be clear and careful thought to identifying how current models fall short in today's smartphone landscape (admittedly obvious), assessing weaknesses in Android/iOS experiences, and targeting an imaginative feature set to both loyal and disenfranchised users. It starts with a newly holistic approach to the mobile work-life balance. And there is that amazing camera thing.
