Lately I have been thinking a lot about the technology that has entered and exited our lives over the past 10 years.  Over the ten-year lifespan of this blog and the mailing list that preceeded it much has changed in the technologies that permeate our daily lives — when we began this journey in 1999, desktops outsold notebooks by 4:1, Apple was a novelty computer maker for uber-geeks, and no one you knew had ever ‘googled’ themselves in public.  I thought I’d run down the most disappointing aspects of our jaunty shuffle into modernity.

What makes a technology disappointing?  Many products fail in obscurity because they try to solve something irrelevant.  What you need to do to make this list, friends, is aim high and fail wildly.   While most of the FAILs described herein are products, I did also find a couple of product categories which have really disappointed.. and one entire industry.  After all, disappointment is invariably the result of a combination of promise (our hopes & goals for the product or service) and the provider’s failure to achieve that promise.  Sometimes the predisposition for failure afflicts not just one company or product team, but an entire industry.  So here we go:

Motorola ROKR

In 2005, the fact that Apple was working on a mobile device to follow-up the iPod was a very poorly-kept secret, but the specifics were the source of much speculation.  And oh, how the fan boys wept when they thought that the sum-total of this effort was the ROKR, an epic piece of crap on which Apple collaborated with Motorola to produce a re-labelled Moto E398 with an iTunes client.  Although the ROKR had 512MB of memory on-board, the device was software-limited to 100 songs — and downloading them was a painful process as the device lacked USB 2.0.  Predictably the product was a #FAIL and Jobs and co. left Zander in the dust with the iPhone, but for those who actually believed that this was Apple’s solitary foray into mobile, there were a few sleepless months.

Satellite Radio

FM radio sucks.  There’s probably a JACK-FM station in your city, where the DeeJays “play what they want”.  Only, they don’t really.. they play exclusively Top 10 hits from the past 20 years regardless of musical genre, the result of which can easily result in a computer-controlled segue from Katrina and the Waves to a Beyonce track.  That the radio business considers this format to be innovative explains why we need alternatives, and satellite radio was supposed to be that alternative.  Sirius and XM radio both got off the ground in 2001, so to speak.  In 2003 I predicted a merger between the two, which was announced February 2007.  And while Satellite radio does permit greater diversity, and thus narrower focus, in channels there are many problems.  Foremost of these is the audio compression technology, called Lucent PAC, which according to studies has lower perceptual quality than even MP3 at the same bitrate; and the rumoured limitation of stream bandwidth to 64Kbps per channel… far worse than the MP3s on your hard drive and light years from the “CD Quality” that Sirius et al used to advertise.  This makes Satellite radio a no-go for audiophiles, but OK for talk radio and sports.  We continue to wait for decent music without wires.

Nokia N-Gage

It’s likely that the N-Gage failed simply because it failed to.. uh.. engage the game development community with much enthusiasm.  Launched in 2004, the device’s total failure was predicted by a string of awful reviews stemming from substantial usability problems, such as the fact that users had to essentially disassemble the device to swap games, or the fact that one couldn’t receive calls while playing a game, or that the device was weighty and uncomfortable and impractical for use as a phone, or the fact that the screen could not display horizontally, or its $299 price tag (substantially higher than the Game Boy Advance).  Developers probably saw the writing on the wall when evaluating early test units of the N-Gage.

The PDA

Remember the iPaq?  Or the early Palm devices?  Today, the notion of a mobile address book device that isn’t coupled to a telephone seems positively stupid.  In November 2000, I asked the market to build me a mobile handheld device that married my email to my phone and tied it together via my address book — all of which synced to my PC.  In my mind at the time, PDAs were gap fillers until we could field broadband wireless IP networks that provided persistent connectivity.  The smartphone — devices like the iPhone and Droid — killed the PDA and for most of us I suspect that is good riddance.  Nobody wants to walk around looking like Batman, their belt burdened by half-a-dozen devices beeping and squawking.  How many people bought these things or received them as gifts, only to abandon them within months?  Still, credit where it’s due — the PDA begat the SmartPhone, and we’re all better for it.

Modo.NET

I’m betting you never heard of Modo.NET because it was launched exclusively in San Francisco, LA and New York in the summer of  2000, but Scout Electromedia, the company that created it, collapsed within 3 months (in fact the device was available in SF for only 1 day before the business folded dramatically).  Like Dodgeball, which launched shortly after Modo’s collapse, Modo was all about the urban hipster lifestyle.  Built around yet another PDA-like device with a hugely innovative design, the Modo leveraged the paging network to update its users with happenings in and around the city… it was like the pager you carried with you when going out on the town on Friday nights.  Two major design compromises crippled the Modo, however… it had no keyboard; and was receive-only.  Also… like Dodgeball, the Modo was an idea ahead of its time: all of Scout’s business and consumer goals are now attainable on smartphones:  no stand-alone device or clunky SMSing necessary.  Today many of these goals are embodied in Foursquare and other services.

Motorola DVR Series

Hello again, Motorola!  Let me make this crystal clear for you, Mr. Zander:  Dude, I just want to be able to watch TV and record things for playback later with a minimum of interference.  In response, Motorola created an underpowered set-top device that frequently overheats, trashes its own hard drive, and has a user interface that is akin to debating Keynesian Economics with a three-year-old.  Perhaps it’s because you have an effective duopoly, along with your buddies from Scientific Atlanta, on the cable set-top-box market even despite the FCC’s insistence on the CableCard standard.  Perhaps you simply lack the kind of employees that have any affinity for user experience design.  What is evident is that you and your cable partners are under no specific motivation to improve this product, as it has now been in circulation for nearly 5 years with zero material improvement.  In fact, your products in this category, including the DCT-6412 with which I am famously saddled (this article is the number one most visited on ianbell.com) are so crappy that the FCC believes they are discouraging people from adopting Cable Television itself.  Be ashamed.  You suck.

The AppleTV

Like Afghanistan, the set top box seems to be a graveyard of empires — so much so that even Silicon Valley’s King Midas, Steve Jobs, has been laid humble before it.  The AppleTV is, like many other set top boxes, underpowered for the task at hand.  More like an iPod than a Mac Mini, the AppleTV fails to meet user expectations as an all-rounder, lacks CODECs for popular formats and wrappers like .MKV and .AVI, and only works effectively when you pay for and download all of your content from the iTunes walled garden.  Set top boxes that do satisfy tend to allow users to get their content from wherever and sync/stream it from a media server elsewhere in the house — this is true of the iPod lineup, and that is a lesson Apple should have carried forward into this product.  Moreover, the AppleTV doesn’t even have an OFF button.

Green Cars

In 2006, when I bought my Jetta GLI, I promised myself that it would be my last gas-guzzler.  I just bought another vanilla car last month, though, after seeking and failing to find a suitable practical alternative in the diesel, hybrid, pure electric, or hydrogen vehicle.  It’s important to understand that gasoline, hydrogen, and batteries are simply storage media for energy.  Where energy is derived from — whether it’s nuclear, solar, wind, coal, crude oil, or whatever else you can come up with — determines the sustainability, not what it burns or farts out the tailpipe.  Moreover for me, like most consumers, a next-generation car needs to fulfill my usual manly requirement for sportiness or (for others) accessibility or safety, with some added convenience — such as not needing to buy gas at stations or being able to drive long distances without a refuel.  The zero tailpipe emissions is a nice benefit, but not a buying feature for most.  As I pointed out last year, mainstream auto manufacturers have consistently failed to figure this out.  And if you live in a region where all of the energy on the grid is derived from coal or natural gas then you are not doing the environment any favours by purchasing a plug-in.

Pet Robots

Since Robbie the Robot did the rounds on TV sitcoms in the 1950s, Americans have fantasized about having a jetsons-style friend rendered in metal and silicon adorning their living room.  With the launch of Sony’s AIBO in late 1999, things were looking up for us.  At a price tag of $2500 though, there was still some room for improvement, and robots began to emerge all up and down the cost and capability matrix.  The most successful by far was iRobot’s Roomba, which fulfills the robot servant role quite nicely but falls flat on the personality index.  In the latter category resides the Pleo, and I will confess I have always wanted one.  Unlike the Aibo, though, the Pleo isn’t really autonomous.  It gets an hour at the most out of its batteries, and cannot return by itself to its charging station.  The Pleo is a great demonstration of how pre-programmed behaviour can trigger emotions — not in the robot itself, but in its owner — but sadly disappoints and is not viable as a “pet” robot.  Maybe next decade, Robbie.

Music Revolution

At the end of the last decade, with the massive growth of Napster, the writing was on the wall.  People clearly voted with their feet in showing how they wanted to use music.  While this had been the case for decades, with mix tapes and pirate radio, the internet as in other industries was a key enabler.  Yet rather than embrace and extend this revolution, as tech industry companies tend to do, the music industry went on the warpath via the RIAA.  Lawyers mobilized, suing 12-year-old kids, single moms, and other obvious villains.  The only accomplishment of the RIAA has been to effectively kill internet radio, which would serve to promote their artists, while music sharing has continued unabated.  Yet, at the end of the decade came one smattering of good news, and further proof of industry executives’ failure to appreciate irony:  a lawsuit revealed that the Canadian music industry has been stealing from artists for 25+ years, and faces a $6Bn liability.  Small justice, I suppose.  So while the technologies (that’s what this post is about after all) that came from the publishers has been an abject failure, the technologies, such as BitTorrent, WebJay, Pandora, et al created by users and lovers of music has flowered.  Imagine what would happen if the innovators actually had the support of that industry?

Thanks for reading, and we’ll see you through the teens.

Over at NewTeeVee there’s an interesting post by Jackson on the struggle that the MPAA et al have had coming up with a specification for allowing you to make “managed copies” of your purchased content. Of course, the fact that each successive specification is cracked within weeks of its drafting would deter the efforts of any organization compelled by logic and customer responsiveness, but this is the MPAA we’re talking about.

The problem is that the RIAA/MPAA cabal have effectively tied their own hands, by petitioning the supreme court in their fruitless pursuit of Peer-to-Peer networks for a judgment. They may have, way back in 2005, gotten more than they bargained for when Supreme Court Justice David H. Souter said:

“We hold that one who distributes a device with the object of promoting its use to infringe copyright, as shown by clear expression or other affirmative steps taken to foster infringement, is liable for the resulting acts of infringement by third parties.”

Oops. Now the MPAA and electronics manufacturers, under such a sweeping definition, could themselves become liable for the copying and redistribution of material. In fact, they can’t produce a standard which they know has been haxx0red and unleash it on the market.

And as EFF’s Susan Crawford has pointed out, they’re in league with even the network carriers to take us all backward in time. In draft language, the FCC is asserting that it:

(a) has authority to adopt such regulations governing digital audio broadcast transmissions and digital audio receiving devices that are appropriate to control the unauthorized copying and redistribution of digital audio content by or over digital reception devices, related equipment, and digital networks, including regulations governing permissible copying and redistribution of such audio content….

This means that they will be ceaselessly back to the drawing board perfecting easily-hacked technologies, and layering their media with difficult to use interfaces, handshakes, and protocols (as I found out when I had my my run-in with HDCP). The result is that media coming through official retail channels such as Best Buy or the iTunes Music Store that you try to watch on your PVR or HD-DVD player will be more difficult to view and manipulate than the DIVX-encoded material you download by fiddling with a BitTorrent client.

P2P has traditionally existed aside from the mainstream by nature of the fact that it’s a fairly high-friction model for obtaining and viewing digital content. You might not have the right CODEC libraries to view your favourite British TV show, or you might have trouble configuring your linksys router so that all the P2P traffic passes through to the right computer in your house optimally, as examples.

Traditional media (DVDs, Cable TV, etc.) have always dominated the mainstream because they’ve been easy to handle, easy to watch, and of course easy to get. For some of us, that convenience in itself is the primary value of such media, and why lots of us still buy stuff at Best Buy even when we can and do also use file sharing networks like eDonkey.

But imagine if the stuff you bought at Best Buy no longer worked together without Herculean effort. Imagine if the HD-DVD you brought home or the Streamed HD Movie you paid for on your PVR were hobbled by characteristics that made them hard to use. Furthermore, ask yourself why, after ten years of Pay-Per-View Movies, we still have video rental stores?

The answer is the consumer market’s innate resistance to difficulty, and our desire to not have the means in which we consume information dictated by the CEO of some sandbagged, heretofore unknown, media company.

When the media companies set the barriers higher and higher for consuming their material the old-fashioned way, they’re practically begging the mainstream, using the Internet, to route right around them. When they make us all experts in HDCP handshaking, HDMI systems integration, and the finer nuances of Dolby versus DTS Surround Sound, they lower the barriers to grabbing and viewing our entertainment and information on that most dreaded of all platforms: the computer, and the internet.

And despite 20 solid years of effort, media companies have been profoundly unsuccessful in combating what we do on our computers once we get their stuff in our hands. And even with a Bush government, the DMCA, and legions of lawyers they have had little concrete impact except to increase the friction and lower the value of the mainstream consumer media.

I can see this through to its logical conclusion. Computers, software, and the internet will increasingly transact our consumption of movies, music, and what we will one day say we used to call “TV shows”. The big media distribution companies will increasingly become unnecessary, and will have cut themselves out of the action.

And in my view, they’d deserve it.

-Ian.

WASHINGTON – Regulators adopted rules Wednesday to make cable television and new television sets more compatible, with the goal of promoting the rollout of digital and high-definition televisions.

The Federal Communications Commission ( news -web sites ) voted 5-0 to approve the new technical and labeling standards, which seek to allow digital cable signals to flow seamlessly into TV sets without the need for a set-top box. Companies want high-definition sets with this “plug-and-play” technology available next year.

To watch cable on a plug-and-play TV, consumers would insert into the set a security card provided by their cable service.

“This is a great result for consumers,” FCC ( news -web sites ) Chairman Michael Powell said at the commission’s monthly meeting. “Consumers who want digital television sets will have an easier time connecting them to their cable service and having them work with high-definition and other digital programming.”

The cable and electronics industries agreed in December to make their equipment work together. The plan needed federal approval.

“The FCC action could be an important tipping point in the U.S. transition to digital television,” the Consumer Electronics Association said in a statement.

Unlike traditional analog television, digital TV signals use the on-and-off language of computers, which allows for sharper pictures and potential features, including Internet access, video games and multiple programs on one channel. Digital signals can be sent with satellites, by cable or as over-the-air broadcasts.

High-definition television, or HDTV, is another feature made possible by digital TV. Sets designed for HDTV signals offer more lifelike pictures and sound. HDTV sets cost from about $800 to many thousands of dollars, but prices are dropping.

Cable providers now offer high-definition service to 60 million U.S. households, the National Cable and Telecommunications Association said.

Uncertainty over whether various digital devices would be compatible has made it confusing for consumers considering buying an HDTV set.

Under the rules approved Wednesday, consumers would still need set-top boxes to use two-way services such as video on demand, some pay-per-view programming and customized electronic programming guides. Cable and electronics companies are working on an agreement to simplify two-way services.

Digital tuners, either inside a TV or a set-top box, will be needed to receive broadcasts over the airwaves after the nation switches from analog to digital signals. Congress has set a goal of December 2006 for the switch over.

Separately, the FCC began reviews of policies governing wireless ( news -web sites ) services in rural areas and pricing rules involving the leasing of telephone networks.

___

-Ian.

—– http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&cid04&ncids8&e=6&u=/ washpost/20030724/tc_washpost/a32817_2003jul23 AOL Subscribers Down by 846,000 Thu Jul 24,12:23 AM ET

Add Technology – washingtonpost.com to My Yahoo!

By David A. Vise, Washington Post Staff Writer

America Online’s subscriber base plunged by 846,000 in the second quarter, as hundreds of thousands left for cheaper or faster Internet connections and a similar number were dropped because they had been mistakenly counted in the past, AOL Time Warner Inc. disclosed yesterday.

In addition, new disclosures about a federal investigation into improper accounting at Northern Virginia-based America Online Inc. showed that the division’s legal problems are hurting other parts of the AOL Time Warner media empire.

AOL Time Warner said yesterday that the Securities and Exchange Commission ( news -web sites ) would not allow it to spin off a portion of its cable television unit until it resolves a dispute over how to account for hundreds of millions of dollars in questionable revenue from a complex deal with German media firm Bertelsmann AG ( news -web sites ).

AOL Time Warner also said it may restate previously reported profits and sales linked to the Bertelsmann transaction. And the company indicated that it could not determine how long the SEC and Justice Department ( news -web sites ) investigations into its bookkeeping practices will last.

The company said its profit increased to $1.1 billion (23 cents per share) in the second quarter, from $396 million (9 cents) in the second quarter of 2002. Revenue increased about 6 percent, to $10.8 billion. The profit figure included a number of substantial one-time gains from the settlement of a lawsuit with Microsoft Corp. and the sale of various businesses.

Despite solid results in divisions other than America Online, AOL Time Warner shares fell yesterday by $1.14, or 6.8 percent, to $15.71, as analysts and major investors reacted to the continuing uncertainty caused by the SEC investigation, the threat of increasingly costly shareholder lawsuits, the deterioration in America Online’s performance, and disappointment that the strength of AOL Time Warner’s film, publishing and cable television operations did not prompt the company to substantially increase its financial projections.

“Our goal for the remainder of this year is to keep laying the foundation that will enable us to exit 2003 with more momentum than we had when we entered it, with an eye toward achieving, strong sustainable growth next year and beyond,” said Richard D. Parsons, chairman and chief executive of AOL Time Warner.

AOL, the nation’s biggest Internet service provider, has shed a total of 1.2 million subscribers over the past year and now has 25.3 million subscribers in the United States.

The company said the total includes 2.2 million high-speed subscribers, an increase of 300,000 over the past three months. During that period, AOL launched an enhanced high-speed offering and promoted it with an advertising campaign titled, “AOL for Broadband: Welcome to the World Wide Wow.”

In addition to losing dial-up subscribers faster than expected, AOL is predicting that its online advertising revenue will drop about 40 percent in 2003. The decline is occurring even though the total dollars spent on advertising online is growing nationally, a trend that can be seen in the financial results of some of America Online’s competitors, including search engines Yahoo and Google and many specialized Web sites.

AOL Time Warner had sought to persuade SEC investigators that they were mistakenly challenging the accounting for the two-part Bertelsmann deal. But the company said yesterday that the commission has refused to back down.

“The company and its auditors continue to believe the accounting for those transactions is appropriate, but it is possible that the company may learn additional information as a result of its own review, discussions with the SEC and/or the SEC’s ongoing investigation that would lead [AOL Time Warner] to reconsider its views,” the firm disclosed.

The Bertelsmann deal involved AOL’s sale of roughly $400 million in advertising to Bertelsmann in connection with the purchase of Bertelsmann’s stake in AOL Europe.

AOL Time Warner released its second-quarter results prior to the opening of stock trading yesterday morning. Although it cut its projections for America Online, the company beat Wall Street estimates as its cable television, motion picture and publishing businesses thrived.

“Our solid results in this quarter and the first half of the year give us confidence that we can deliver on all of our 2003 financial objectives,” Parsons said. He added that the company is continuing to reduce its hefty debt through the sale of businesses and the spending of billions of dollars of excess cash generated by operations.

The Warner Brothers and New Line Cinema movie units generated $572 million and $239 million, respectively, at the box office in the United States. “The Matrix Reloaded” led the way among new releases, while “Harry Potter ( news -web sites ) and the Chamber of Secrets” boosted DVD and CD sales.

“On balance,” said Deutsche Bank, “we think this report is good news.”

In a conference call with analysts, Parsons said he was no longer counting on the sale of stock in Time Warner Cable to generate cash for debt reduction this year. Instead, he said, the handling of any cable spinoff will be determined by broader issues, including the best way to help that subsidiary grow.

“The specific timetable for executing an IPO will depend on strategic considerations, not balance sheet imperatives, as well as the status of our SEC investigations,” Parsons said.

Wireless service sparks controversy   By Steven Hill Reporter

A consultant working with Whistler Cable to set up a new wireless Internet service is accusing the Resort Municipality of Whistler (RMOW) of unfair business practices.

Ian Bell, consulting program manager with Whistler Cable, said the RMOW is guilty of anti-competitive behaviour in relation to the establishment of its own wireless Internet service called Yodel.

Bell said he first became concerned with the municipality’s proposed wireless Internet service after reading about it in a press release in May.

“Apparently two similar projects are being developed in parallel in Whistler,” he said. “Whistler Cable has been working on this wireless project for quite some time now.

“I got a little curious about what the municipality was doing, because I read a press release on their Yodel project,” he said. “I went to talk to them, and my natural impulse was to tell them that it made no sense to be essentially building two railroads, so I said let’s consolidate and we will all benefit from a more expans ive wireless network in Whistler.”

But the municipality was already under contractual agreements with Florida-based V-Link, the company who is developing Yodel.

“During those discussions I realized what a threat the wireless service which the municipality is developing, is to Whistler Cable,” Bell said. “In the course of that conversation, I realized the municipality was attacking the hotel Internet service business which is one of the big opportunities that Whistler Cable has been developing for some time.”

Bell said his meetings with municipal staff prompted him to write a letter to Whistler Council concerning the two competing wireless services.

“Immediately I set forward trying to work with the municipality to kind of contain that threat and ensure Whistler Cable wasn’t left in the dust,” he said. “The letter we recently sent to Council tried to articulate that.

“We hope to bring the issue to light at the next Council meeting if we can get on the agenda,” he said. “One thing we are t rying to do is to stem some of the anti-competitive behaviour we are seeing out there.”

Bell accused the municipality of approaching landlords, property managers and strata councils and asking for exclusive arrangements for the positioning of antennae needed for the wireless Internet network.

“The other key thing which has us concerned is that I have personally had municipal staff say they can just pass an ordinance banning visually disruptive wireless antennae and then everybody is out of business,” he said, adding that he wasn’t sure if the statement was a credible threat.

“As we get pushed out of various properties by exclusive agreements with landlords, that will force us to be more creative in terms of where and how we place them,” he said. “That will cost money because creativity is expensive.

“Competition is fine, but let’s keep it on a level playing field,” he said. “One thing the Saperstein family (owners of Whistler Cable) has said to me is they don’t want their taxpayers’ dolla rs going to assist the municipality in competing with their business.”

Bill Barratt, general manager of community services for RMOW, said V-Link originally approached the municipality with the wireless proposal a long time before Whistler Cable thought of getting in on the action.

“V-Link approached us in July of 2002,” he said. “I took their proposal to Council in September and we started moving forward with a contractual agreement to use our facilities.

“We were approached in July, but Whistler Cable only began looking into this in January,” he said. “The first time I spoke to anyone from Whistler Cable about it was in June.”

Although Barratt could neither confirm or deny that V-Link was seeking exclusivity with rooftop antennae positioning, he said V-Link would pay back all public money used for the endeavour.

“Our perspective is that competition is good,” he said. “As for using public money to set this up, all the infrastructure is paid for by V-Link. We have assisted with some market ing, and when the business is up and running they will get 90 per cent of the profits and we will get 10 per cent until 50 per cent of those capital costs are paid off.

“To date the capital costs associated with this are about $140,000.”

Barratt said the intent has always been to take Yodel and sell the service to other resorts outside of Whistler.

He said municipal officials never intended to shun Whistler Cable, or prevent the firm from doing business in Whistler.

“We were approached, and never even considered Whistler Cable because we saw them as a cable television and hard-wired Internet provider,” he said. “I saw an opportunity to drive revenue into this municipality so

Wireless service sparks controversy   By Steven Hill Reporter

A consultant working with Whistler Cable to set up a new wireless Internet service is accusing the Resort Municipality of Whistler (RMOW) of unfair business practices.

Ian Bell, consulting program manager with Whistler Cable, said the RMOW is guilty of anti-competitive behaviour in relation to the establishment of its own wireless Internet service called Yodel.

Bell said he first became concerned with the municipality’s proposed wireless Internet service after reading about it in a press release in May.

“Apparently two similar projects are being developed in parallel in Whistler,” he said. “Whistler Cable has been working on this wireless project for quite some time now.

“I got a little curious about what the municipality was doing, because I read a press release on their Yodel project,” he said. “I went to talk to them, and my natural impulse was to tell them that it made no sense to be essentially building two railroads, so I said let’s consolidate and we will all benefit from a more expans ive wireless network in Whistler.”

But the municipality was already under contractual agreements with Florida-based V-Link, the company who is developing Yodel.

“During those discussions I realized what a threat the wireless service which the municipality is developing, is to Whistler Cable,” Bell said. “In the course of that conversation, I realized the municipality was attacking the hotel Internet service business which is one of the big opportunities that Whistler Cable has been developing for some time.”

Bell said his meetings with municipal staff prompted him to write a letter to Whistler Council concerning the two competing wireless services.

“Immediately I set forward trying to work with the municipality to kind of contain that threat and ensure Whistler Cable wasn’t left in the dust,” he said. “The letter we recently sent to Council tried to articulate that.

“We hope to bring the issue to light at the next Council meeting if we can get on the agenda,” he said. “One thing we are t rying to do is to stem some of the anti-competitive behaviour we are seeing out there.”

Bell accused the municipality of approaching landlords, property managers and strata councils and asking for exclusive arrangements for the positioning of antennae needed for the wireless Internet network.

“The other key thing which has us concerned is that I have personally had municipal staff say they can just pass an ordinance banning visually disruptive wireless antennae and then everybody is out of business,” he said, adding that he wasn’t sure if the statement was a credible threat.

“As we get pushed out of various properties by exclusive agreements with landlords, that will force us to be more creative in terms of where and how we place them,” he said. “That will cost money because creativity is expensive.

“Competition is fine, but let’s keep it on a level playing field,” he said. “One thing the Saperstein family (owners of Whistler Cable) has said to me is they don’t want their taxpayers’ dolla rs going to assist the municipality in competing with their business.”

Bill Barratt, general manager of community services for RMOW, said V-Link originally approached the municipality with the wireless proposal a long time before Whistler Cable thought of getting in on the action.

“V-Link approached us in July of 2002,” he said. “I took their proposal to Council in September and we started moving forward with a contractual agreement to use our facilities.

“We were approached in July, but Whistler Cable only began looking into this in January,” he said. “The first time I spoke to anyone from Whistler Cable about it was in June.”

Although Barratt could neither confirm or deny that V-Link was seeking exclusivity with rooftop antennae positioning, he said V-Link would pay back all public money used for the endeavour.

“Our perspective is that competition is good,” he said. “As for using public money to set this up, all the infrastructure is paid for by V-Link. We have assisted with some market ing, and when the business is up and running they will get 90 per cent of the profits and we will get 10 per cent until 50 per cent of those capital costs are paid off.

“To date the capital costs associated with this are about $140,000.”

Barratt said the intent has always been to take Yodel and sell the service to other resorts outside of Whistler.

He said municipal officials never intended to shun Whistler Cable, or prevent the firm from doing business in Whistler.

“We were approached, and never even considered Whistler Cable because we saw them as a cable television and hard-wired Internet provider,” he said. “I saw an opportunity to drive revenue into this municipality so

Question: Why does my monitor need to be on 802.11?

-Ian.

—— http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&ncidX2&e=8&cidX2&u=/nm/ 20030312/wr_nm/tech_intel_wifi_dc

Intel Wireless Computer Push Sparks Industry Rush Tue Mar 11, 9:22 PM ET Add Technology – Reuters Internet Report to My Yahoo!

By Elinor Mills Abreu and Eric Auchard

SAN FRANCISCO/HANOVER, Germany (Reuters) – Flexing its muscles as the world’s largest chipmaker, Intel Corp. (Nasdaq:INTC – news) on Wednesday will show how its industry arm-twisting could make connecting to the Internet via wireless networks a standard feature on mobile computers within a year.

At news conferences from Sydney to Beijing, from Tokyo to New York, Intel will finally unveil its much-ballyhooed set of chips known as Centrino that it hopes will become the wireless computer counterpart of its established Pentium chip line.

Analysts think Intel’s push could be one bright spot in an otherwise dismal market for new technology this year.

But by marshaling top notebook computer makers, retailers such as McDonald’s Corp. and U.S. bookseller Borders, and mobile telephone providers around the globe, Intel is giving the biggest boost yet to a technology sometimes seen as a spoiler for the emerging generation of mobile Internet phones.

Intel is lending support to a grass-roots technology that for years suffered from fragmented industry support and disparate names such as Wi-Fi, WLAN (wireless local area network) and 802.11, by transforming a patchwork of local and regional efforts into a worldwide grid for wireless computing.

NOTEBOOK MAKERS SIGN ON

Despite initial resistance to the idea, top-ranked notebook computer suppliers have signed on, including Hewlett-Packard Co. (NYSE:HWP – news), Dell Computer Corp. (Nasdaq:DELL – news), International Business Machines Corp. (NYSE:IBM – news), Toshiba Corp. (6502.T) and Sony Corp (news – web sites). (6758.T) Gateway Inc. (NYSE:GTW – news), the No. 3 U.S. PC maker, is also introducing Centrino-based laptops.

“Every notebook vendor is launching and announcing products with us on Wednesday,” Don Macdonald, Intel’s director of mobile product marketing, said of top computer makers in an interview with Reuters ahead of the product unveiling.

By putting the functions of wireless networks inside the brains of an off-the-shelf laptop, rather than computer users having to configure add-in cards, Intel could set off a veritable tsunami to help propel Wi-Fi into wide use, analysts are predicting. Widespread wireless computer connections could create a sea change in the way computers are used, they say.

Analyst Steve Kleynhans of META Group predicts that by the end of 2003 Centrino will be at the core of up to 80 percent of the new laptops bought by companies, allowing office workers to walk from desk to conference room untethered. Up to half of consumer laptops could be equipped with it this year.

“You’ll find that virtually all notebooks sold into the corporate markets, and by extension, most notebooks sold into the consumer markets, will end up wireless,” Kleynhans said.

PUSH COMES TO SHOVE

Intel’s technology marketing machine looks set to succeed where prior industry prodding has fallen short.

In the late 1990s Apple Computer Inc. jump-started consumer support for the technology by offering a home radio unit known as Airport, while in 2001 Microsoft’s XP operating system simplified the way Wi-Fi worked for Windows users.

Apple, analysts say, has been out in front in creating wireless networking technologies that are fairly easy to set up. The iconic computer maker’s chief executive and co-founder Steve Jobs (news – web sites) has dubbed 2003 the “year of the notebook.”

Wi-Fi provides high-speed Internet access from fixed-position phone or cable television network lines.

Users of properly equipped laptops can gain access to the Internet, or potentially their own corporate network, if they are within 100 meters (328 feet) of a Wi-Fi access point.

Already Wi-Fi is popular among home computer enthusiasts who can install a small antenna box in their house to create a local network linking PCs and other home electronics. The trend is catching on in offices, but security concerns are a snag.

Centrino is intended to be used only in laptops and notebooks, which will be priced competitively with Pentium models. “They’re priced for the mass market,” Macdonald said.

Intel said in a statement on Tuesday that laptops will cost as little as $1,399, comparable to today’s notebook computers.

The microprocessor portion of Centrino is available at clock speeds ranging from 1.30 gigahertz to 1.60 gigahertz, and the price of the chips includes the chipset and the network connection device, Intel said.

The 1.60 GHz Pentium M costs $720; the 1.50 GHz processor costs $506; the 1.40 GHz chip $377; and the 1.3 GHz costs $324, all in quantities of 1,000, Intel said. There are also two low-voltage processors available, running at 1.10 GHZ and 900 megahertz, costing $345 and $324, respectively.

Intel’s push into the wireless computing market is helping prod other major electronics makers to create built-in wireless connections in their own products.

Philips Electronics (PHG.AS) Chief Executive Gerard Kleisterlee said on Tuesday his company is planning to offer a full line-up of consumer electronics products with built-in wireless connections, including computer monitors, portable music and video players, sound speakers and televisions.

JOINING THE PARADE

Intel’s move encourages not just consumers and companies to install wireless networks, but also telecoms carriers and independent operators.

Public wireless computer locations are known as “hotspots.” They have the potential to create a Web of wireless connections in heavily traveled locations like hotels and airports serving business travelers, Starbucks cafes, and even public plazas.

Hilton Hotels said on Tuesday it plans to make Wi-Fi available in 50 of its North American hotels this month. By 2007, some 25,000 hotels globally will offer Wi-Fi, up from just 1,000 in 2002, according to a recent estimate published by market forecasters Pyramid Research. “Wi-Fi will become as free as the soap in the rooms,” the report predicts.

In Japan and South Korea (news – web sites) key operators have aggressively built Wi-Fi networks, even though they will eat into some of their other wireless services, such as mobile phone traffic.

Every Wi-Fi hotspot that sprouts up at the local coffee shop or airport represents one less potential revenue-earning area for cash-starved mobile operators that have invested billions building these new phone networks.

Nonetheless, mobile phone companies across Scandinavia, Germany, France and the United Kingdom are lining up to supply Wi-Fi services on the theory that if anyone is going to skim their revenues, it had best be themselves.

“I think that both technologies complement each other extremely well,” Rudolf Groeger, chief executive of O2 Germany (OOM.L), the country’s fourth largest wireless operator.

Consumers See Deals in Internet Calling Sat Sep 28, 3:44 PM ET By Eric Auchard

NEW YORK (Reuters) – Telephone calling via the Internet has come a long way from the days fives year ago of crackling walkie-talkie conversations, and U.S. consumers now have a range of choices that trade higher quality for cost.

A variety of battle-hardened start-ups have staked out lucrative niches in U.S. domestic and overseas calling markets, ranging from calling cards offered by Net2Phone to full-featured phone replacements from firms such as Vonage.

Such services run the gamut in terms of the technical sophistication required. They range from simple dialing-code calling cards to software programs that must be installed on computers to modem-computer hardware combinations that make up in cost and unique features for the pitfalls of installation.

Net2Phone , based in Newark, New Jersey, counts some 1 million U.S. consumers and another 1 million to 2 million overseas customers for its primary Internet-based calling card business, spokeswoman Sarah Hofstetter said.

The company, which was founded in 1995, offers its original computer-to-phone Internet calling software that allows ultra low-cost calling — at rates of two cents a minute — but at the mercy of dial-up Internet connections that can create a classic walkie-talkie-like sound quality.

DeltaThree , another PC-to-phone software maker, boasts calls as low as 1.2 cents a minute.

The bulk — some 60 percent — of its customers live overseas and rely on Net2Phone to make discount calls internationally, either to the United States or elsewhere. Calls within the United States and Canada are 3.9 cents per minute. U.S. callers pay 8 cents a minute to Australia, 10 cents to Poland and 13 cents to Colombia.

HIGH-SPEED INTERNET CALLING, THE NEXT BATTLEGROUND

Thousands of technically sophisticated users have signed up for a next-generation phone service offered by Vonage at http://www.vonage.com. Vonage, of Edison, N.J., introduced in April a service that allows consumers with high-speed Internet connections running over television cables or phone lines to make local and long-distance calls at flat-rate prices.

The company, which was founded by Wall Street entrepreneur Jeff Citron, offers monthly service plans ranging in price from $20 for 500 minutes of calling a month to $40 for unlimited local and long-distance calls within the United States. International calls can placed at substantial discounts also.

The Vonage DigitalVoice service has drawn rave reviews from some 3,000 customers who have signed for the service.

“Feature for feature, we have everything that WorldCom is offering — plus more,” Citron boasts.

Norm Bogen, an analyst at Cahners In-stat in Scottsdale, Arizona, agrees that the service offered by Vonage is highly competitive in both price and features with integrated local and long-distance packages offered by AT&T, WorldCom and Sprint.

“Vonage has a better offer than the other long-distance competitors,” Bogen said.

A novel feature Vonage offers is the means for consumers to choose from a range of phone numbers in alternate area codes.

Thus a small business operating in New Jersey can for as little as $5 extra receive calls to a fashionable 212 Manhattan phone number. A Delaware-based software company can set up a sales and marketing presence in Silicon Valley, for example.

A retiree in Florida can set up a 516 number in Long Island, New York to allow relatives in the region east of New York City to pay just the price of a local call to talk to Florida. Vonage claims users have signed up in all 50 states.

Later this week, a spokesman said Vonage plans to introduce a new twist on its service that allows customers to switch from traditional local phone service providers such as Verizon or SBC while keeping their existing phone number.

This eliminates another big hurdle that has prevented consumers from switching to competitive phone services such as Vonage and thereby loosing touch with friends and family.

But competitors say there is little keeping them from entering the market. Analysts say that major cable and telephone companies can offer these services themselves but are waiting for the market to mature before expending the sales and marketing costs to switch over new or existing customers.

Net2Phone, with backing from cable and programming giant Liberty Media, has begun testing with several hundred Liberty cable customers in Puerto Rico of a rival broadband phone calling service. DeltaThree’s Web site promises similar services.

It also offers an innovative version of Microsoft’s popular instant messaging ( news – web sites) software that allows online users to speak with each other.

“Our long-term goal is not to have the consumer be our customer, but to have the cable company be our customers,” Hofstetter said. Net2Phone is positioning itself as the ally of cable television operators in their battle to wrest phone customers from established local phone companies.

Meanwhile, AT&T and Comcast Corp. , two of the top three U.S. cable television operators, have pushed forward with stop-gap services that combine cable connections with traditional circuit-switched phone connections. Such services do not benefit from the lower costs of running purely Internet-based networks, but allow these operators to generate phone revenues from existing cable customers.

Perhaps the biggest challenge to Internet-based phone calling services is emergence of wireless phones as a potential replacement for both local and long-distance fixed-line plans.

“How many people that have a broadband connection also have a wireless phone?” industry analyst Bogen asks rhetorically. “Many people have switched to wireless for their all their communications needs. Vonage can’t get those customers.”

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Hit Charade The music industry’s self-inflicted wounds. By Mark Jenkins Posted Tuesday, August 20, 2002, at 8:19 AM PT

2001 may not be the year the music died, but the pop biz did develop a nagging headache, and it’s not going away. The recorded-music industry’s first slump in more than two decades continues this year; the number of discs sold is slipping and so is the appeal of last year’s stars. Britney Spears’ latest album has moved 4 million copies—a big number, but less than half what its predecessor did.

The Recording Industry Association of America, which represents the five major labels that dominate CD retailing, would like to blame much of the slide on Internet music-file swapping. Yet there are many other causes, including the fact that the big five are all units of troubled multinationals—AOL Time Warner, Vivendi Universal, BMG, EMI, and Sony—that are focused on short-term gain and have no particular interest in the music biz. There’s also been a recession, of course, and resistance to CD prices that have grown much faster than the inflation rate. Perhaps the most important factor, however, is the major labels’ very success in dominating the market, which has squelched musical innovation.

In 2001, U.S. CD sales declined 6.4 percent. Sales have continued downward this year, and a Forrester Research study released last week projects a 6 percent decline in 2003 as well. Yet the report disputes the RIAA’s assertion that the now-bankrupt Napster and its successors are responsible for the downturn. More than two-thirds of CDs bought in the United States sell to consumers who rarely or never download music files from the Web, Forrester concludes. Another market research company, Ipsos-Reid, reported in June that 81 percent of music downloaders buy as many or more CDs than they did before they started getting tunes from the Internet.

The RIAA, of course, has studies that say otherwise. But anyone who rewinds to the last major music-biz slump will find some interesting parallels. In 1978, record sales began to fall, and the major labels blamed a larcenous new technology: cassette tapes. The international industry even had an outraged official slogan: “Home taping is killing music.” The idea was that music fans—ingrates that they are—would rather pirate songs than pay for them, and that sharing favorite songs was a crime against hard-working musicians (rather than great word-of-mouth advertising). Cassettes were so anathema to the biz that Sex Pistols Svengali Malcolm McLaren could think of no more provocative way to launch his new band, Bow Wow Wow, than with a ode to home taping, “C30, C60, C90, Go!”

By the time Bow Wow Wow bowed in 1980, however, the crisis was almost over. It turned out that home taping had not killed music. Instead, the central problem was the collapsing popularity of dance-pop—lively, sexy, but personality-free music whose appeal was broad but thin. They called it disco back then, and the name has never recovered from the era’s backlash. Although usually termed teen-pop, the music of ‘N Sync and Britney Spears is not unlike disco: Both are intellectually underachieving, cookie-cutter styles that have made stars of performers not known primarily for their skills as singers, songwriters, or musicians.

In addition to cassettes, late-’70s industry apologists blamed video games for undercutting record sales. There may have been something to that, and the biz faces even more multimedia rivals today: cable TV, the Internet, and DVDs, as well as much more sophisticated video games. Perhaps more important, younger consumers live in a world where popular music is ubiquitous (and therefore less precious) than in the ’60s and ’70s, when rock was rationed, semi-subterranean, and generation-specific. Some older music fans may hate hip-hop, nu-metal, or techno, yet in general rock today defines parents as much as (or more than) their kids.

The major labels have snubbed older music fans in recent years, yet over-40s now constitute 44 percent of the CD market, up from 19.6 percent in 1992, according to the RIAA’s 2001 annual consumer profile. Unfortunately for the majors, the tastes of graying Beatles and Stones fans have fragmented, making them difficult to reach via mass-marketing. These consumers help support the many smaller labels that market alt-rock, world music, new age, reissues, jazz, folk, bluegrass, post-minimalism, and other niche genres.

Meanwhile, younger fans lose interest quickly and often don’t develop strong loyalties. They’re less likely to investigate a breakthrough act’s previous albums or buy its next one. The genres that appeal to under-25 music fans continue to sell, but individual performers fade quickly.

This is a huge problem for the big labels, who still base their marketing on long-term stars who release multimillion-copy blockbusters. One album that sells 10 million copies is more lucrative than 10 that sell 1 million, because once a CD takes off, the only fixed costs are manufacturing and shipping, which are trivial compared to production and marketing. And long-term careers make each album less of a risk, since the most loyal fans will buy everything an artist releases and profits are high on back catalogs that keep selling.

Yet maintaining superstars is hard and getting harder. They require large advances, high royalty rates, and massive production and marketing money. And they keep demanding such things even when their careers tank (notable recent examples: Michael Jackson and Mariah Carey). The risk that a contemporary superstar’s latest album will bomb is high, since attempts to reach the widest possible audience can easily lead to banality and overexposure.

In 1980, when the same sort of listener burnout bedeviled the biz and its superstars, salvation came from an unexpected source: MTV, an upstart cable channel that began broadcasting clips by a new generation of British bands simply because the established U.S. performers weren’t yet making video clips. Groups like Culture Club, Duran Duran, and the Clash—whose label didn’t even release the original version of its first album in the United States till 2000—broke through to a novelty-starved audience. Suddenly, home taping wasn’t an issue anymore.

This is just the sort of shock that the music industry needs—and labors so hard to prevent. Since 1980, the mainstream music industry has only consolidated: Five companies control CD sales, MTV owns a multi-channel music-TV franchise, and a single company, Clear Channel, dominates both the concert business and Top 40 and rock radio. Ironically, if unsurprisingly, the biz has suffered from its near-monopolistic control. Short-sighted labels and tightly programmed radio have bolstered the success of certain styles and performers but prevented anything fresh from breaking through.

In the past, there were many ways to crack the biz: local radio stations, strong indie labels, regional clubs and promoters. Today, there are only a variety of separate-but-unequal circuits (alt-rock being the biggest) whose performers rarely break into the big time. (Of course, many of them don’t want to, and some are major-label refugees with no intention of going back.) In erecting bulwarks around their domains, the major music businesses have left no entrance for the serendipity that kept the pop industry lively (and profitable) for decades. Yet the barbarians at those padlocked gates are the only people who can save the major labels’ dwindling empires.

Mark Jenkins reviews music and film for the Washington Post, Washington City Paper, NPR’s All Things Considered, and others.

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NEW YORK (AP) – AOL Time Warner Inc. is buying out AT&T Corp.’s stake in their cable television, moviemaking and programming partnership for an estimated $8.5 billion to $9 billion, and said it may sell a stake in its cable TV operations in an initial public offering as early as next year.

The deal announced Wednesday involves the decade-old Time Warner Entertainment partnership, which includes most of AOL Time Warner’s cable TV systems and its Warner Bros. film studio, its Home Box Office pay-TV service and other programming businesses.

The two sides have been in discussions for some time on unwinding the partnership known as TWE. AOL Time Warner owns about 72.4 percent of the partnership, and AT&T owns the rest.

The deal gives AT&T cash and readily saleable assets, while AOL Time Warner avoids having to buy its partner out for cash at a time when it is struggling under a heavy debt.

In morning trading on the New York Stock Exchange ( news – web sites), shares of AOL Time Warner rose 69 cents to $14.05, while AT&T gained 54 cents to $11.72.

Under the terms of the deal, AT&T gets $2.1 billion in cash and AOL Time Warner stock valued at $1.5 billion, as well as a 21 percent stake in the Time Warner Cable Inc. business in exchange for its stake in TWE.

While AOL Time Warner didn’t affix a value to the cable stake, The Wall Street Journal said it would boost the total value that AT&T is getting in the deal to between $8.5 billion to $9 billion.

For its part, AOL Time Warner gets full ownership of Warner Bros. and HBO and stakes in the TV channels Comedy Central, Court TV and The WB Network.

In addition, AT&T and Comcast have agreed to make America Online’s high-speed version of its Internet service available on Comcast’s cable systems. That type of arrangement could give AOL access to more customers.

The stake in the cable business should benefit Comcast Corp., which is buying AT&T’s cable TV businesses and would inherit AT&T’s stake in TWE. The former Time Warner created the TWE partnership in 1992.

The cash, AOL stock and Time Warner Cable shares will go to Comcast if that company completes its AT&T cable operation before year’s end, which is expected.

AT&T and Comcast will get an immediate influx of cash and will be able to sell its stakes in both AOL Time Warner and the new cable business in the future to generate more money.

AOL Time Warner chief executive Dick Parsons said the deal was “the best possible outcome for our investors” and will simplify its overall structure.

“AOL Time Warner will recapture total ownership and control of its content businesses, enabling us to manage this portfolio of assets for maximum value. And all of the company’s state-of-the-art cable assets will be combined for the first time into a well-capitalized, pure-play cable company,” he said.

AOL plans to conduct an initial public offering of part of its stake in the Time Warner cable business soon after the restructuring in completed in early 2003.

That would enable it to pay down the debt incurred in making the $2.1 billion cash payment to AT&T, AOL said.

“The fact is that AOL or Time Warner has had managerial control of all of the assets within TWE since 1999,” said Katherine Styponias, an analyst at Prudential Securities. “So it’s not as if being completely owned by AOL is going to mean things are going to change radically. Nevertheless, it’s one less thing to worry about when trying to put a value on the company.”

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