Last100 editor Steve O’Hear asked me today why, in a post about Sony’s movie/TV download service for the PlayStation yesterday, did I use the phrase “may launch” in the headline.

I thought about it, and I guess it was an oversight. I should have been more concrete: Sony is launching a movie/TV download service for the PlayStation.

But I explained that there is something deeper in my psyche that probably chose “may launch”: I don’t trust Sony these days. This movie/TV download service isn’t the first one the company has tried, and it’s not the only one that’s been on the drawing board.

Today comes along the news that Sony is delaying the debut of Home, its Second Life-like 3D virtual online community service for the PlayStation 3. See what I mean? Home has now been delayed twice and is now at least a year behind schedule.

Sony now expects a test version of Home to be available this summer for a limited number of users in Japan, the U.S., and Europe. After getting user feedback and making tweaks, Sony will release a beta of Home for all PS3 owner to try this fall.

Continue reading “Sony delays Home a second time; it’s now a year behind schedule” »

It’s hard to fault Peter Gabriel’s logic: We are overwhelmed by the amount of information and choice we have on the Web. But is his solution — a recommendation engine called The Filter — really the answer?

Of course Gabriel, the genius behind the British rock band Genesis and the solo artist who gave us such tunes as “Solsbury Hill,” “Exposure,” and “Games Without Frontiers,” thinks so as he and England’s Eden Ventures have invested $8 million in The Filter. They believe people are overwhelmed by the Web and can’t find good content because it’s buried out of sight.

“When you drown people in an ocean of information, you’ve got to give them navigation tools,” Gabriel told News.com. “I know that there is better stuff out there than what I generally am exposed to . . . So if I have a sort of intelligent ally working with me 24 hours a day, I think I have a much better chance of getting stuff that will entertain, excite, and inspire me.”

The Filter, originally launched as a music recommendation service about a year ago in Europe, re-launched today in private beta as a more complete solution. It will be available to the public sometime in May.

But there’s something about The Filter that bugs me. What separates The Filter from any of the other algorithm-based recommendation engines out there, whether a human is a part of the process or not — Amazon, iTunes, lastFM, Netflix, Imeem, Digg, Pandora, and many more?

Continue reading “Where do you get your recommendations on the Web? From a service like The Filter? Or from friends?” »

It seems like a straight forward proposition, but there’s FUD — fear, uncertainty, and doubt — swirling around when it comes to the upcoming U.S. digital TV conversion.

By Feb. 18, 2009, all broadcasters in the U.S. will be required to unplug their analog signal to broadcast solely on the digital spectrum. Considering the government just auctioned off freed-up spectrum, there’s no turning back.

This far into the 2000s, this far into the digital age, you’d think the Big Switch would be a minor inconvenience for most people — that their primary TV sets are new enough to handle a digital signal, that whatever analog sets are in use are connected to a TV delivery service like cable, satellite, or fiber, and what analog sets connected to an antenna are located in spare bedrooms or the garage.

But the digital TV conversion is surprisingly controversial with government bodies, industry and consumer advocacy groups, trade organizations, manufacturers, marketing researchers, and consumers pointing fingers and forecasting doom and gloom.

In February, at the one-year-to-go mark, politicians and a Federal Communications Commissioner were putting the heat on the government to get its act together before it’s too late. Jonathan Adelstein, the commissioner, warned there would be a “state of mass confusion” if various Federal agencies don’t coordinate their efforts to inform the public sufficiently that Feb. 17, 2009, is the last day of analog broadcasting.

The next day, an estimated 21 million households with TV sets that receive only over-the-air signals will go dark.

FUD, indeed.

Continue reading “FUD permeates analog-to-digital TV conversion in the U.S.” »

This post is syndicated from ReadWriteWeb.

Chumby Industries, makers of the Wi-Fi video and widget displaying device, the Chumby, have just announced $12.5 million in Series B funding today. The company notes that this new financing is going to be used to “accelerate growth of the company, and expand and broaden the Chumby Network to other screen-based Internet connected devices.” How did this little gadget get so popular? And why would you want one? Read on to find out.

Continue reading “Chumby gets $12.5M… here’s why it’s taking off” »

What fascinates me about comedian Steve Hofstetter — other than being a funny, wickedly intelligent comic — is that he’s doing the same thing as Radiohead, Trent Reznor, and Nine Inch Nails. And yet Hofstetter is not a household name.

Like Radiohead and Nine Inch Nails, Hofstetter has released his latest CD, “The Dark Side of the Room,” on his Website and has asked fans to pay whatever they want — 1 cent (I wish it were free!) to $4.95 (a bargain!) to $8.95 (save a buck!) to $29.95 (big tipper!), and everything in between.

Ever since I first posted on Hofstetter for last100 in December, I’ve noticed that artists are more often releasing their work on the Internet for free or with various payment schemes. This side-stepping-the-record-label approach is all the rage — and clearly a new business model.

We know Radiohead’s story. And Reznor’s work with Saul Williams. And the recent release from Nine Inch Nails, Reznor’s band.

But there’s also singer-songwriter Jill Sobule, who asked fans to help raise $75,000 for “Jill’s Next Album” — a goal she surpassed in 53 days. Instead of asking fans to donate whatever they wanted, Sobule set up levels from $10 (unpolished rock) to $10,000 (weapons-grade plutonium). More than 500 people in 44 states and 11 countries contributed.

There’s classical violinist Tasmin Little, who released her most recent project, “The Naked Violin”, for free on her Website with a three-step challenge: listen to the music, tell her what you thought of it, and go to a concert or buy one of her other CDs. Since the music’s release in January, Little’s site has recorded more than 250,000 hits and 3 terabytes of content has been downloaded.

The list goes on.

Radiohead, Reznor, and Nine Inch Nails are star performers with household names. Sobule and Little are established artists in their own right who have released several CDs each, have had recording contracts, and who’ve built a fan base over the years.

But what about Steve Hofstetter? Can this model work for him?

Continue reading “Interview: Steve Hofstetter, an up-and-coming comic, successfully plays same game as Radiohead, NIN” »

In an effort to spur its movie rental business, Apple is now offering “Weekend Movie Picks” on iTunes. For now, Apple will offer one film per week at a discounted price of 99 cents, $3 off the normal rental fee.

A new movie will become available at the special price every Thursday, good until the following Monday. Once rented, you will have the standard 30 days to watch it in a 24-hour time period.

This week’s film: “The Hours”, starring Meryl Streep, Julianne Moore, Nicole Kidman, Ed Harris, and a bunch of other A-list actors.

While “The Hours” is a major studio release, it’s no power draw like “Michael Clayton”, “Superbad”, or “3:10 to Yuma.” It will be interesting to see how Apple develops “Weekend Movie Picks.” Will it offer the best new releases, movies like “Live Free or Die Hard” that have been out for a while, or ones from the vault like “Dances With Wolves”?

Continue reading “Apple promotes movie rental business with 99-cent “Weekend Movie Picks”” »

Microsoft’s announcement today that it is starting a new online service for the Xbox 360 to showcase games made by independent developers was met with three cheers for the developers, ho-hum for everybody else.

I’m not so sure about that.

The so-called experts believe that Microsoft opening up the Xbox 360 to more casual gaming will have a greater impact on game development and distribution than to mass-market consumers, who are not inclined to buy expensive, powerful consoles like the Xbox 360 or Sony’s PlayStation 3 just to play Taxi Gone Wild, Dress Shop Hop, and Speed Racer.

“This would appeal to the more independent developers, people who want to break into the market, and get them started on the Xbox,” Colin Sebastian, an analyst for Lazard Capital Markets, told the Associated Press. “It makes the development and distribution of video games more accessible.”

Sebastian doesn’t think the Xbox download service, announced at the Game Developers Conference in San Francisco, will appeal to mass-market consumers.

Why is that?

Continue reading “Microsoft opens up Xbox 360 to casual gaming even more with new online service” »

DVD Jon and his company, doubleTwist, released beta software today that’s designed to allow users to share digital media files — music, video, pictures — across devices regardless of type or copy protection.

In other words, if you have a copy-protected song in your iTunes library and want to play it on a PlayStation Portable or Nokia phone instead of an iPod — or you want to send it to friends to play on the devices they own — you can do it with the doubleTwist desktop application.

The software automatically plays song files, regardless of copy protection, in the background. doubleTwist re-records the songs as MP3 files, which can then be sync’d to any device attached to a Windows computer using the doubleTwist application. (It’s not available for Apple computers yet, although a Mac version is in the works.)

doubleTwist is essentially doing the same process as when a user “rips” a CD onto a computer. doubleTwist allows only music already purchased and authorized (like iTunes) to be processed. It says 100 songs can be converted in about half an hour, with about a 5 percent degradation in sound quality.

Says doubleTwist’s Jon Lech Johansen, aka DVD Jon, “We’ve built a format agnostic solution that handles the complexity of file and device compatibility so consumers don’t have to.” (Reuters.)

Continue reading “DoubleTwist liberates your media, makes it easier to share iTunes content” »

I expected more from TiVo chief exec Thomas S. Rogers, who recently answered a few questions from the Los Angeles Times at CES. Instead of vision, passion, direction, and confidence we’d expect from an innovator like TiVo, we got lukewarm, the obvious, and uninspiring.

TiVo has been doing some interesting things lately, evolving from what it’s known for (time-shifted digital video recording) into a company offering a wide range (and still growing) list of “television services.” In the last year or so, TiVo’s signed deals with Comcast and DirecTV, Amazon (downloadable content), RealNetworks (music), Jaman (indie content), and has begun offering video podcasts, among other services.

Continue reading “Forget the usual PR schtick — what is TiVo really doing?” »

Apple-NBC is so high school. He loves me. He loves me not. He loves me. This time, it’s like NBC top exec Jeff Zucker is passing a note through a friend, suggesting that NBC might really like Apple again.

In the role of “friend”, the Financial Times published a story Sunday that said Zucker “eyes TV shake-up.” At the end of the report, the FT’s Joshua Chaffin includes a seemingly innocuous paragraph:

Mr. Zucker appears to have patched up relations with Apple after a pricing dispute last year led NBC to pull its shows from the iTunes digital media store. ‘We’ve said all along that we admire Apple, that we want to be in business with Apple,’ he said. ‘We’re great fans of Steve Jobs.’”

Continue reading “It’s time to kiss and make up: Put NBC content back on iTunes” »

Back at the end of July we reported that CBS, home of The Masters and March Madness, and Nielsen Media Research were betting on gaming’s future. Now ESPN is getting into the game mix.

Gaming coverage on television isn’t new, but it’s interesting to see big names like CBS and ESPN dipping their big toes into the gaming pool. ESPN, the grand daddy of all sports television, has entered into a multiyear agreement with Major League Gaming (MLG) to provide exclusive online coverage of upcoming video game competitions.

The agreement includes streamed matches, player interviews, scores, and stats. ESPN will be onsite for each 2008 MLG Pro Circuit competition and will include content from the games in short segments on existing TV programs.

The temptation is to say that ESPN’s MLG gaming coverage is only online and that the cable network is not committing much valuable air time to MLG events on one of its cable channels. But think of this as a precursor of what’s to come.

Continue reading “ESPN to cover Major League Gaming; it’s a sign of what’s to come” »

The NFL and MLB stayed home. The NBA is stepping out. We’ll see who innovates the best.

The NBA and Turner Broadcasting System will jointly manage the league’s domestic 24-hour digital business (announcement), including programming, marketing, technical operations of NBA TV, hosting and operating the NBA.com network (NBA.com, WNBA.com, NBADLeague.com), and broadband and wireless offerings.

When faced with similar decisions, the NFL and MLB opted to manage their digital business in house, and the innovation jury is still out as to whether it’s better to keep everything inside or partner with someone on the outside. The NBA decided to buck the trend and step out, choosing to go with with Turner, its broadcasting partner of 24 years and the longest league/network partnership in professional sports.

Why?

Continue reading “NBA decides not to go it alone, partners with Turner to expand its digital offerings” »