Google to compete with iTunes, Netflix, and Amazon?

http://hothardware.com/News/Google-Rumored-To-Have-YouTubeBased-Movie-Streaming-Service-On-Deck/

Unfortunately, the link doesn't contain any sourced material... so this is all speculation at this point. I thought, with our recent discussion about the pros and cons of a Google monopoly, that this article would be particularly relevant. Apparently, the brains at Google have been trying to devise an application that would rival the music player iTunes. Along with a music application, Google has been "in talks" with some of the movie studios about streaming new releases online for a subscription price.

This shouldn't be hard to believe, as Google is dominating annual profits. We discussed why Google found need to have things like Docs, Gmail, and other add-ons that do not profit the company directly -- these rumored services would finally address that. What I think Google is trying to do is become more vertically integrated. Starting with just a search engine, the company is trying to almost mirror Apple, which went from simply computers sales to a range of different things like iTunes, Apple TV, iPads, and iPhones. Google, with this setup of different services, is trying to attract more consumers with the attraction being: search engine, e-mail, music playing, and film streaming all from one centered service. This connectivity and synergy is probably designed to give users a higher sense of security and cohesiveness.

Your thoughts?

1984 re-revisited

I admit to taking part in the fetishizing about each year's super bowl commercials. While on the whole, I found them less entertaining than in past years, I did find the Motorola Zoom commercial interesting.
First off it (re)invokes George Orwell's 1984; a novel now used as a catch-all phrase for a kind of dystopian Big Brother-controlled and oppressive society. Second off, it is essentially the same as Apple's 1984 Super Bowl ad. Hmm.

http://superbowlads.fanhouse.com/2011/motorola-xoom/
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HhsWzJo2sN4

I thought that these two ads fit perfectly into this week's discussion about the changing nature of Apple's commercial image and the broader issue of open vs. closed frameworks.

As Tim Wu points out in his chapter "Father and Son" from The Master Switch, Apple originally fancied itself a hip, rebellious and individualist company in the face of IBM's dominance over the computing market. Now apparently Motorola is using the same rhetoric of the countercultural individualist to sell itself in the face of Apple's increasing dominance. Who is the real techno-hipster today? Has Apple's move towards a more restricted and controlled product experience completely severed ties from its original philosophy and image? If nothing else, this is an interesting illustration of how Apple has evolved over the past two decades into a much different beast.

My 2 cents:

Once everyone buys your stuff, you can no longer fashion yourself the countercultural force of the market. Taken a step further, it becomes a little silly to complain about Apple's dominance in the market when you're sporting their devices.
I think that Apple's smooth and seamless devices are tasty pacifiers for the many would-be out cries against their (unsettling?) dominance.

Note: Apple has below 5% of the world market share of moblie-phones but over 50% of the market's total profits. Hmm.
Source: The Economist (Feb.12th-18th pg. 70)

Maybe as Wu proposes, we could sacrifice a little polish for increased choice, freedom and openness?

GirlTalk It's Not: Remixing Charles Barkley

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PyySYIKgn3c&feature=related

NBA All Star Weekend provides such a wide variety of entertainment that it's hard to predict where the next gem might come from. Yes, Blake Griffin's 360 dunk, and his competition-winning over-the-Kia dunk were magical moments that made for one of the best Slam Dunk competitions I have seen in a long time.

However, as much fun as that was, the new T-Mobile ad featuring Charles Barkley and Dwyane Wade really struck me. The thing that got me was the way the ad embodied all of the principles of Web 2.0.

Barkley says something catchy on TV, which is seen by many people through different platforms, such as TV, Smartphone and Youtube. Two young, creative types remix the footage with some 'heavy beats', essentially making it into a dance track. This new creation is then 'sent' through to everyone through the T-Mobile network. The exposure it gets through this type of distribution makes the song an instant hit, much to the chagrin of Barkley.

Capture, remix, edit, distribute. Barkley's Song is just a generic example of any form of DIY media that becomes an instant viral hit. Sure, the presence of star power will ultimately help the cause, but the truth is that anyone can create and distribute. This is the power of the infrastructure and the people who participate in it.

Made to promote T-Mobile's superior network capabilities across all of their mobile devices, the ad highlights the importance of network connections and how these wires and satellites have become an essential part of the way members of society interact.

The Amnesiac Remembers Kid A

For a mere $14, I purchased a digital download of Radiohead's new album, The King Of Limbs. Sticking with their online distribution model that proved so successful for In Rainbows, the band have gone back to the Internet for distribution of their new material. Unlike the first release, however, the prices are fixed. $14 got you a CD-quality sound file that played well on any sound system. For $9, an MP3 version with a 320kb play rate, or something technical like that.

This decision would indeed seem to be driven by the success of In Rainbows, with multiple business analysts agreeing that Radiohead made more money with this independent model of distribution compared to if they would have committed to the traditional business model of the music industry. File-sharing platforms like Napster have already shown how vulnerable and stubborn traditional businesses are in terms of adapting to new technologies, and current trends in music downloads, especially through iTunes, suggest that the online download is here to stay. The only thing left for the record labels to do is come up with a new strategy to monetize their digital assets. The suits and corporate types will be happy, and they're less likely to make a fuss if a Napster-like platform resurfaces. Highly unlikely, but one can only hope.

Enough about business models, let's go back to Radiohead. One of the most innovative bands of all time, this album reminds me of the band's 'experimental period' post Ok Computer. Kid A and Amnesiac were all about soundscapes. The band virtually abandoned the traditional verse and chorus composition that were the hallmarks of their great hits like High And Dry and Creep, swapping guitar chords for synth-heavy effects. The King Of Limbs is characteristically Radiohead in the way it creates soundscapes, through the use of synthesisers and classic instrumentation, and lead singer Thom Yorke's haunting vocals. This is a rare find, but so is every Radiohead album released in the current music environment. I've waited four years for this, and it was worth every minute.

The album is due for a CD release in May, in a special 'newspaper' edition at $48. I will be forking out for that too.

http://www.thekingoflimbs.com/

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cfOa1a8hYP8&feature=aso

First Egypt... Now Algeria

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/africaandindianocean/algeria/8320772/Algeria-shuts-down-internet-and-Facebook-as-protest-mounts.html

A couple of weeks ago, I posted the link about Egypt shutting down their own internet. Hopefully, everyone has become aware of all the protesting that led to Hosni Mubarak stepping down as Egypt's President. Well, the protesting hasn't stopped in that region of the world, as similar consequences were the result of thousands of Algerians protesting. As of yesterday, Algeria shut down it's own Internet and had all of its country's Facebook accounts deleted. Members of the government feared that the Internet (and apparently Facebook) posed enough of a problem: "The government doesn't want us forming crowds through the internet," said Rachid Salem, of Co-ordination for Democratic Change in Algeria.

So if countries where many have been living in poverty, like Egypt, Algeria, and Tunisia, have been shutting down their internet, what does that say about the US? With more people having access to the Internet than almost anywhere else, would the US shut down the internet during a similar situation? What effect would it have on communications and the "global village"?

Think before you share – Fourtrace

Location based social networks like “Foursquare” or “Facebook Places” are growing rapidly. Thousands of people share thousands of updates every hour. Yet, some people still fail to understand that not every old thing should be shared on sites like these, for the mere reason that it might be spread much further then they first thought.

Fourtrace, a research project in “Advanced topics in computer networking” at University of California, Santa Barbara highlights this fact perfectly and may give you second thoughts if you’re in the habit of tweeting your Foursquare check-ins on a regular basis. The application uses location updates that users from Foursquare have made publicly available through Twitter and presents them on a Google Map with a nice interface that let you trace users in an intuitive way. In clicking on the map markers you can even read the Tweet made from that location. The only thing you have to do is to type in the username of any Foursquare or Twitter user you want to trace. At no point are you required to supply personally identifiable information of any kind. If the user name is rejected, then the person you searched for probably hasn’t connected their Foursquare account with Twitter.
The site only uses the public Foursquare check-ins found on Twitter, so it is limited to what Foursquare users choose to share. However, even those who limit their public sharing have the potential to display predictable patterns of behavior. Over a long enough period of time, even small amounts of sharing begin to add up, and then Fourtrace can create very accurate maps of the places you’ve been to. How could this information be used? Time will tell…

By letting people know about these things that are being made public on something as widespread as Twitter when they are checking in and out of places, Fourtrace has the power to make people aware of the risky side of social sites. And this is exactly the goal that their developers had in mind:

“The purpose of Fourtrace is not to exploit people’s fears, but to inform them about what they are sharing. Location-based social networks can be very useful and super cool if they are used with care, but sometimes it's smart to think twice before you share your updates publicly on twitter.”

Fourtrace: http://fourtrace.com/

Getting rid of the Middle Man (including Netflix?)

This article discusses how the internet has given companies the ability to reach their customers without the use of a middleman. Krippendroff’s example is that airlines used to need travel agencies to sell their flights, but now they can sell them directly from their websites. He seems to think that the trends (as led by the industries and not the consumers) are away from consolidation and for-profit meta sites like Travelocity, and towards direct sales from individual companies because it is more profitable for them: they dont need to pay the middleman, they can get ad revenue from their websites, and they can sell extra perks.
Then he applies this trend to Netflix, who is also a middleman. With the film and television companies able to stream their content directly to the customer online, they no longer need to give it to Netflix (who would also be their competitor), thus unraveling Netflix’s business model.
Though I agree this is a real possibility, it is only one possiblility. Unless something drastic happens, advertising alone will not sustain video streaming and the alternative that looks the best right now is subscriptions. However, the problem with individual companies selling subscriptions is that no one is going to want to pay multiple subscriptions. This would be the music industries' PressPlay and MucisNet (from the Patry reading) all over again. If all the content is consolidated on Netflix, then consumers will probably be more willing to pay the one subscription that goes to all the companies and everyone will benefit from cooperation.