The news last week that Microsoft plans to turn off its verification servers for its now-defunct MSN Music store, is a stark reminder of the potential pitfalls customers face whenever they purchase content crippled by Digital Rights Management (DRM) software. Any digital store that sells or loans you content in a copy-protected format makes you a hostage to that store or format’s commercial success. The Microsoft example, however, is just one of many. Here are five cases where companies have sold their customers down the DRM-filled river.
Posts Tagged ‘Microsoft’
Five companies that sold customers down the DRM-filled river
April 27th, 2008 | Posted in Audio, Net TV, Other | 
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Microsoft’s “Mesh” wants to be your digital hub
April 23rd, 2008 | Posted in Mobile, Other | Comments Off
Yesterday, Microsoft unveiled its much rumored “Mesh” platform, a service designed to be the hub of our digital lifestyles: “Imagine all your devices—PCs, and soon Macs and mobile phones—working together to give you anywhere access to the information you care about”.
Mesh – currently in limited Beta – “synchronizes data across multiple devices (currently just Windows computers, but theoretically it will extend to mobile and other devices in the future) as well as to a web desktop that exists in the cloud”, writes Josh Catone over at our sister blog ReadWriteWeb. The service also has a social aspect too, enabling collaboration and sharing. “It can sync data across devices used by a single user, as well as create shared spaces for multiple users”.
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Let’s hope Sony gets it right this time: may launch movie/TV download service for PlayStation
April 21st, 2008 | Posted in Net TV | Comments Off
Word that Sony may be again launching a movie and TV download service was met today with interest and a bit of much-deserved scoffing.
It’s not like Sony hasn’t tried this before. Remember Movielink? Thought so. (It was sold to Blockbuster, by the way.) Remember Sony Connect? It shut down in March.
Heck, since the monumental success of the Walkman ages ago — in an analog world far, far away — Sony has pretty much failed at every digital offering, minus the early PlayStations and some home theater equipment. The whole digital music thing passed Sony by as Apple took over the Walkman mantle with the iPod, iTunes, and the rest of its digital lifestyle ecosystem.
The Los Angeles Times today reported that Sony is again in talks with Hollywood muckety-mucks regarding a download service that would beam movies and television shows from the Internet to the PlayStation 3.
But because said muckety-mucks are hush-hush over the negotiations, not much else is known — no pricing or if the movies and TV shows are for rent or purchase. One tantalizing tidbit, however, is being floated about.
The mobile web isn’t dead. It’s just starting.
April 14th, 2008 | Posted in Mobile | View Comments
The mobile Web is dead! The mobile Web is dead! The mobile Web is dead!
Or says Chicken Little, aka Russell Beattie, the founder of Mowser, a Menlo Park, Calif., startup focused on mobile Web browsing. Beattie delivered the news Monday that Mowser “is at the end of its life in its current form.”
For that, I am truly sorry. Beattie, who has invested everything he has in Mowser for the past year, is a gutsy entrepreneur who knows a little something about mobile. From November 2004 to September 2006, Beattie worked at Yahoo! creating mobile products and content.
Beattie left to launch Mowser, a Web site focused on content adaption for mobile phones. You can read about his experiences on his blog, but what it all comes down to after a year of intense work is that “I don’t actually believe in the ‘Mobile Web’ anymore” and the market “is limited at best, and dying at worst.”
