Google, which dominates the Internet ad space, and the Nielsen Company, the definitive voice in measuring TV audiences, have joined forces to give advertisers a more realistic and accurate measure of how many people are watching their TV commercials and who these people are.

It’s a long way off at the moment, but the teaming of Google and Nielsen and the information they produce could one day alter television advertising, disrupting the way ads are created, how they are sold, how they’re targeted, and ultimately what we as viewers see at home.

“We can make advertising more relevant to the viewer at home,” said Mike Steib, the director of the Google TV Ads program. (BusinessWeek.)

“We want to bring all the advantages that we see in online advertising — like more accountability, a better sense of audience, better tools to optimize a campaign — and bring them to television to make TV advertising more effective,” Steib said. (New York Times.)

“We see a future in which, when you sit down in front of your television set, you will see ads that are more relevant for you,” he said.

Continue reading “Google, Nielsen join forces, may someday change TV advertising” »

TiVo have announced a host of new features including multi-room viewing and the ability to transfer content to a PC for DVD burning — available as a software update for its Series 3 and HD line of DVRs.

Progressive downloads

With the introduction of progressive downloads, users of the TiVo version of Amazon’s television and movie download service UnBox, will no longer have to wait for the full video file to download before they can begin watching. Instead, UnBox content will start playing after a much shorter period of buffering, the length of which is dependent on broadband speeds.

As NewTeeVee notes, this puts UnBox on TiVo in much more direct competition with the newly launched set-top box movie service, Vudu (see our review), which differentiates itself from many of its competitors by enabling video rentals to be progressively downloaded for playback on a television.

Continue reading “TiVo update adds progressive downloads, multi-room viewing, and TiVoToGo” »

The potent combination of DRM-free music, low cost, and the fact that what you buy plays on your iPod has made Amazon MP3 (see our review) the No. 3 online music store in just one month.

Hypebot, a music, technology, and new music business blog, reports that a number of record labels are saying privately that they believe Amazon MP3 has climbed past Rhapsody, Wal-Mart, and Napster to become the No. 3 retailer in downloaded sales of their music.

Amazon trails market leader iTunes and eMusic, although Hypebot speculates that Amazon MP3 could slip past eMusic to finish the year as the No. 2 online music retailer for some labels. The measurement here is dollars paid, not the number of tracks downloaded.

Continue reading “In just 30 days, Amazon MP3 may be the No. 3 online music store” »

When details of the iPhone’s UK launch were unveiled at a special press event in London last month, Apple CEO Steve Jobs and O2 UK boss Matthew Key both had to field a question about the recently announced iPod Touch. Since the Touch has many of the iPhone’s key features — multi-touch interface, widescreen display, mobile browser, WiFi support — and would go on sale in the UK before the iPhone, would it not eat into iPhone sales?

“You always know Apple will be on the front foot”, replied Key to the amusement of reporters, since O2 wouldn’t have been privy to Apple’s plans for an iPod Touch before they decided to go into partnership. The Touch and iPhone are “a different segment of the market”, argued Key, and both will sell well.

“One is a phone, one isn’t. One has email, one doesn’t”, explained Jobs. Then, exercising his famous Reality Distortion Field, he went on to claim that the iPod Touch would actually help drive iPhone sales, as people who experience the cut-down functionality of the Touch will realize that with the iPhone “they can have it all.”

After months of iPhone-envy from across the pond, and in light of the iPod Touch’s UK release, I made the decision that I didn’t want or rather need it all. At least not yet, anyway.

Continue reading “Why I bought an iPod Touch and not an iPhone” »

With all the news recently about Sony’s Playstation 3 becoming a full-fledge media device, particularly overseas, I’ve wondered what Microsoft plans to do with its Xbox game platform.

David Richards at Smarthouse may have answered my question. He reports that Toshiba, owner of the HD-DVD patents, is working with Microsoft on an Entertainment Xbox, due out in late 2008 or early 2009. The device will feature, naturally, an HD-DVD player, a large hard drive, and new entertainment software that’s a spin off of Microsoft’s Media Center.

For Toshiba, an Entertainment Xbox with an HD-DVD player is critical for success if it is to defeat Sony’s (and others’) Blu-ray players in the format wars.

Of course, the Entertainment Xbox is being developed in response to Sony’s Playstation 3, which has started slowly but seems to be gaining momentum lately after price cuts, game availability improving, and the device being positioned as a powerful stand-alone home media hub (mostly in Europe and Asia), not just a game console or a PC-based media extender.

Continue reading “Is Microsoft working on new HD-DVD Xbox?” »

AT&T and Napster are banking on the spontaneous behavior of kids when it comes to today’s announcement that the entire Napster music catalog will be available for download to AT&T’s mobile phone customers.

AT&T already has a “sideloading” agreement with Napster that lets subscribers transfer their music from a personal computer to their cell phones via a cable or memory card. With the new agreement, AT&T customers can buy music directly from Napster on their cell phones, spending $7.49 for a bundle of five songs or $1.99 a la carte. The service begins in mid November.

Continue reading “AT&T, Napster hope kids will spend $$$ to download music to their phones” »

SanDisk has become the latest company to tackle the PC-to-TV problem.

Taking a much simpler approach compared to the many media extenders on the market, the Sansa TakeTV player forgoes the need for a home network. Instead, content is physically shuttled from a PC to a TV via a dedicated USB stick and docking station. “No confusing WiFi set-ups, no waiting to burn DVDs”, boasts the Sansa online store.

The TakeTV device supports popular video formats DivX and xVid, and is available in two versions: a four-gigabyte model priced at $99 and an eight-gigabyte model for $149.

To support its TakeTV device, SanDisk has also rolled out a Beta version of a new video download service called Fanfare, which will offer paid-for, and eventually, ad-supported content from various partners. Of note, CBS and independent film-store Jaman are among the first to have signed on.

Continue reading “SanDisk launches TV-friendly USB stick and video download service” »

Here’s a summary of the week’s digital lifestyle action on last100. Note that you can subscribe to the weekly wrapups, either via the special weekly wrapup RSS feed or by email.

Top digital lifestyle news

Lots of mobile news this week, the biggest of which was probably Apple’s decision to finally open the iPhone to third-party developers. At the Symbian Show in London, Nokia also showed off the new version of the mobile OS S60, which offers an optional iPhone-like touch interface — watch the mobile Internet space heat up.

In Internet TV-related news, the BBC has partnered with Adobe to add an iPlayer streaming option with Mac and Linux support; and Sony — which just launched a cheaper PS3 — talked up its forthcoming online video network for the PS3 / PSP.

Additionally, speculation surrounding a Netflix set-top box has resurfaced.

Continue reading “Weekly wrapup, 15 - 19 October 2007″ »

There’s one thing to this whole video identification business I don’t understand. If it’s so important that we stop people from uploading copyrighted content to video sharing sites like YouTube and Veoh, then why haven’t the best brains in multiple industries figured out a solution?

Is video fingerprinting not possible? Is it too complicated? Is it barking up the wrong tree? Trying to stop people before they upload copyrighted video seems nearly impossible to me — and many of us think it’s a complete waste of time and resources.

But we’re not Big Media.

Big Media is hellbent to stop people from uploading copyrighted video to the Web. So instead of getting together and working on a viable solution, what do Big Media and their Internet buddies do? They announce the formation of a copyright protection blood pact that promises to “foster online innovation while protecting copyrights.”

Continue reading “Copyright Protection Pact is a show of solidarity, not much else” »

Slowly but surely, methodically, Sony is lining up its Playstation 3 as an affordable gaming console and establishing it as the center of a home entertainment network.

Sony today announced it will launch a cheaper model of the Playstation 3 in the United States, hoping to attract more buyers and getting the console into more American homes. The newest version of the PS3 features a 40 GB hard drive and will cost $400, a heck of a deal considering it has a built-in Blu-ray drive for playing high-definition DVDs. The 40 GB PS3 will go on sale Nov. 2 in time for the Christmas buying frenzy.

To achieve its lower price point, Sony made a few hardware compromises. USB ports are down from 4 to 2, and there are no slots for different memory card types. In perhaps its most controversial decision, Sony has removed backward capability from the cheaper PS3, meaning it cannot play PS2 games.

“We’re choosing to focus on the Playstation 2 consumer with the Playstation 2, which remains incredibly relevant, and focus on the Playstation 3 consumer with the new 40-gigabyte model and the great software coming out,” said Jack Tretton, president of Sony Computer Entertainment America, who notes that 200 titles for the PS3 will be available by Christmas. (Reuters.)

“Backward compatibility is a nice secondary consideration, but it’s far from the number one priority,” he said.

Continue reading “Sony launches cheaper PS3 in U.S.; sights still set on making it into entertainment hub” »

Could Netflix be about to launch a set-top box?

Dave Zatz over at Zatz Not Funny thinks so, after the movie rental company that’s best known for putting DVDs in the post, updated its trademark filling to explicitly reference a set-top box that can download and deliver video content from the Internet directly to a television.

Zatz notes that this isn’t first time that talk of a Netflix set-top box has surfaced, which begin last April with the recruitment of Anthony Wood to the newly created position of VP of Internet TV. According to the press release issued at the time, Wood would be “responsible for all aspects of product development related to the company’s strategic intent to deliver movies directly to subscribers’ televisions via the Internet.” Prior to joining Neflix, Wood was CEO of Roku, the company behind the SoundBridge line of audio streaming devices, and before that he was founder of ReplayTV — no less — credited with being the creator of the digital video recorder (DVR). In other words, Wood has some serious hardware pedigree.

Continue reading “Netflix to steal Vudu’s set-top magic?” »

I had to rub my eyes when I saw this: Apple is opening up the iPhone to third party developers.

“Let me just say it: We want native third party applications on the iPhone, and we plan to have an SDK (software developers kit) in developers’ hands in February,” Apple CEO Steve Jobs wrote in a noted (signed “Steve”) on the Hot News page.

Really? Huh. Just two weeks ago, Apple announced the opening of an iPhone Web Apps Directory on its site. The directory move was seen as Apple reinforcing its commitment to the Web-based apps approach.

Those who hoped for third-party applications on the iPhone sighed, shook their collective heads, and wondered why. Why is it taking Apple so long to deliver third-party apps?

Jobs explained, “It will take until February to release an SDK because we’re trying to do two things diametrically opposed things at once — provide an advanced and open platform to developers while at the same time protect iPhone users from viruses, malware, privacy attacks, etc.

“This is no easy task. Some claim that viruses and malware are not a problem on mobile phones—this is simply not true. There have been serious viruses on other mobile phones already, including some that silently spread from phone to phone over the cell network. As our phones become more powerful, these malicious programs will become more dangerous. And since the iPhone is the most advanced phone ever, it will be a highly visible target.”

Continue reading “Apple to open iPhone to third-party developers. Why did it take so long?” »