Not sure what to write a blog about? How about a blog about people who have blogs. Well that is just what these guys did. I reckon the smart money is in blogs about blogs that write about blogs. I might just register theblogaboutblogsaboutblogs.com now.

Think you have seen everything? Take a look at this blog dedicated to cats that look like Hitler.

JumpTheShark.com has just been purchased by TV Guide parent Gemstar, which is 41 percent owned by Rupert Murdoch’s News Corp. For those of you who don’t understand the reference (I didn’t, not being old enough to really remember Happy Days that well), Jump The Shark is when your favourite TV show turns a corner and starts an irreversible tailspin towards cancellation. In “Happy Days” there was one episode where Fonzie jumped a shark on water skis. This was apparently the beginning of the end for the show and hence the phrase.

What I find interesting, is that the site is entirely unsophisticated, it looks terrible and is difficult to navigate. Jon Hein, the founder of Jump The Shark, must be laughing all the way to the bank.

Technorati Tags: jump the shark

The PricewaterhouseCoopers “Global Entertainment and Media Outlook: 2006-2010″ report is forecasting an 18.1 percent CAGR, reaching $51.6 billion in 2010.

“We expect that Asia Pacific will remain the fastest-growing region for the industry, reflecting both the underlying economic growth and local developments and initiatives. The growth will be led by double-digit increases in internet, TV distribution, casino and other regulated gaming and videogames. Significantly, we also expect that the People’s Republic of China will pass Japan in 2009 to become the largest market in Asia Pacific.” Marcel Fenez, Asia Pacific leader of PricewaterhouseCoopers’ Entertainment & Media Practice.

Full article.

Microsoft have unveiled their new instant messenger application with built in VoIP (both computer-to-computer ability to call phones) and video-conferencing. Wow, an impressive list of features. If only there had been some software that could do this before now. Better late than never Microsoft.

Mark has just shown me this little plug-in for Mail (on Mac OS X), that allows you to have your preview pane on the right instead of horizontally underneath. This is a feature in Outlook 2003, which I really like and makes life a lot easier.

You can get Letterbox from aaron.harnley.net.

According to my friend, who works in the industry and has just returned from visiting various companies in Europe and the US, this is a summary of what is happening around the world and an indication of how TV will look in the future.

Consumer Generated Media for TV
Companies like Siren TV refer to this as participation media. This refers to TV shows where the audience interact via SMS (and other mobile protocols such as MMS), web, email. Nothing new here, but this trend will continue upwards and as set top boxes, mobile devices and other technology became more pervasive the ways in which consumers will interact with TV will become more varied.

Mobile TV - TV to Go
Vodafone New Zealand currently over the ability to download pre-recorded shows and clips to your 3G mobile phone, however, the future is in real time broadcast to your phone or other handheld device, such as the PSP (PlayStation Portable). This service is available in Ireland in a joint venture between Vodafone and Sky, and also in the UK. Sport is proving to be the most popular of the categories and also news. This makes sense, as watching a full movie would be a bit tedious, but catching the highlights of a rugby or football game that you missed whilst you are sitting on a train or bus is very appealing. I know that broadcast TV has been available in South Korea for a while and no doubt in Japan.

SlingBox
SlingMedia produce a device called the SlingBox. This is sort of like a TiVO or PVR (Personal Video Recorder such as mySKY) however, it will record from any video or audio input, so you can load recorded shows, DVD’s, MP3s etc onto it. So what!, you say The cool thing is that the SlingBox connects up to the Internet via a broadband connection and then you can access any of the content on the device from any computer anywhere in the world via their media player software. I assume that they backup all your media to their servers so you can stream it to you where ever you are. I think this model is amazing. Imagine being at work, and wanting to watch a World Cup Game that was currently being recorded onto your SlingBox via Sky at home, you could just watch it on your laptop. Want to watch a movie from your personal DVD collection when you are on holiday or stuck in a hotel room on business? No problem, just connect to the Net and start playing the movie. Presumably they will provide other versions of their media player application that can run on your mobile phone or the next generation iPod (which is rumoured to include WiFi). Of all the home entertainment/media centre solutions out there at the moment, I think this is by far the most attractive. Plus, just check out how the SlingBox looks on their website, who wouldn’t want one of these in your lounge.

Video on Demand (VOD)
Video on Demand is now readily available in the US and Europe. Channel4 in the UK has readily adopted the web download model and many of their shows are available on their website (for UK consumers only) including Lost and Desperate Housewives. They are also producing their own content that is only available online. SkyByBroadband offers access to a range of downloadable movies and sports games. Consumers clearly want this type of service, and the technology exists to deliver it quickly and affordably. The main barrier is a legal one around licensing and intellectual property. Apparently some of the studios don’t actually know who they would need to ask for permission to make a particular movie available for download because they just don’t have accurate records on who owns the IP. The added complication is that TV shows and movies are often sold into syndication for different overseas markets. This means that another third party owns all the rights in a particular country, hence the reason why iTunes had to be rolled out country by country, to give the lawyers enough time to sort out all these issues in each market. There is unfortunately no easy answer to this. Hollywood is not going to take any chances for fear of being on the receiving end of a whole load of lawsuits from people coming out of the woodwork requesting a share of the profits. Looking forward, all new contracts will include specific provisions for ownership of online distribution rights, but this just wasn’t foreseen as an issue until recently.

Triple Play and Convergence
Telcos, ISP’s and broadcasters are all looking like they are going to be in the same business in a few years. Everyone is wanting to increase their ARPU (Average Revenue Per User) so everyone wants to offer additional services to their subscribers. Triple play is the concept that you will buy TV, phone/voice, and broadband Internet from one provider. This provider could be someone like BT, Sky or one of the new players starting to emerge in the marketplace. The other main business model being considered is a transactional one rather than the usual subscription deal. This means you could have your broadband and voice with BT, but just pay for each movie/tv show you download rather than having to commit to a monthly subscription fee. Presumably they are looking closely at the MP3 sites in the US. iTunes charge per song/video downloaded, whereas good old Napster has been resurrected as a monthly subscription MP3 download site.

IPTV
Internet Protocol Television (IPTV) is the concept where your TV becomes just another device on the Internet. At the moment content is delivered to a TV via broadcast signal, satellite or cable. IPTV would just give your TV and IP address and you would get everything via this medium. This opens up some interesting possibilities such as instant messaging your friends about a TV show you are all watching, having real time consumer reviews of a show or movie, and being able to look at consumer based recommendations and ratings. For example, I love 24 and Sopranos and give them a high rating, so my TV tells me that people who like these shows also like Prison Break, and so I decide to start watching this show. The appeal of IPTV is obvious, as it would just help bring everything together in an increasingly IP-centric world. This is undoubtedly where we’ll end up with all devices being connected to the Internet but the big barrier is that we just don’t have the infrastructure. The Internet just doesn’t have the bandwidth for more traffic and devices that require IP addresses, especially IPTVs that would consume a huge amount of data traffic. The broadcasters are not prepared to make the investment in this and neither are the telcos, so we’re in a bit of a stalemate. My opinion is that compression technologies will get better and better and the price of fibre optic cable and gigabit ethernet will continue to decline making this more affordable. I also hope that governments will step in and offer huge incentives to encourage investment in this critical infrastructure.

The other obvious advantage of this platform is that everyone you watch become far easier to track and measure so TV advertising can then become far more targeted and more like Google AdWords, rather than the rather archaic methodology used right now, i.e. Nielson ratings based on a handful of households who know their activity is being monitored.

Whilst all this is happening, traditional broadcast television is fighting a losing battle with free illegal downloads of content. The answer is clear, provide a reasonably priced, legal alternative to consumers even though this conflicts with traditional business models, and reap the rewards. Just ask Apple. Their iTunes Store business has been incredibly successful and profitable.

Technorati Tags: apple, itunes, mobile tv, napster, slingbox

I got my new Apple MacBook Pro this week and loaded up Parallels and Windows XP on it. Running XP simultaneously with OS X is by far the fastest computing experience I have ever had. This is the the best notebook computer in the world without a doubt. I couldn’t install Boot Camp for some reason but Parallels is a much better solution anyway. My only problem is that it crashes every 5 minutes when I turn on WiFi. Having looked on the Apple support forums this looks like a bad batch of Airport cards, so hopefully can be easily fixed. I had to go away on business for a week so have got a workaround with a little D-Link WiFi router/ap/client device that lets me still connect to WiFi networks, but this is a little annoying. Oh well, I’ll live with this until I get home in return for the unbelievable computing speed and convenience of having both platforms on a single device.

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Currently sitting in Premier Economy on a refitted Air New Zealand Boeing 747-400. I was sceptical but this is pretty good, although they did have to reboot the Windows CE based in-flight entertainment system a few times to get it going! I took a photo of the boot screen.

I’ve got a power outlet for my laptop though, so I’m happy. There is an ethernet port in my seat as well but I don’t think it works yet. Once they have broadband Internet on their aircraft I’ll be even happier.

Technorati Tags: air travel

Answer: Yes, without a doubt. *

*NB: Author currently en route to London via Los Angeles and has just spent an hour standing in a queue for US Border Control & Customs, whilst in transit!