Thanks blogger community for solving my mysterious error. I'll hang on to What the #$*! Do We (K)now!?
I've always found it a little surprising that as soon as the holidays (and shopping days) are over, there are big electronics conferences. Examples of three that are already over are the Consumer Electronics Show, Mac (Apple) Expo, and the Adult Entertainment Expo 2007. What do we need to know? I've asked my new media students to check things out, and post them here as comments.
posted by Dr. K @ 2:51 PM
13 comments
13 Comments:
Alec Wooden
Caitlin Campbell
January 16, 2007
iPHONE
“YOUR LIFE IN YOUR POCKET: THE ULTIMATE DIGITAL DEVICE”
• PRODUCT: a revolutionary mobile phone, a widescreen iPod with touch controls, and a breakthrough Internet communications device with desktop-class email, web browsing, maps, and searching into one small lightweight handheld device.
• DIMENSIONS: 4.5 Inches long from top to bottom and 11.6mm thick.
• VISUALS: 3.5inch 480x320 touch screen
• STORAGE: available in 4 and 8 gigabyte chips
• PRICE: 4GB: $499 w/ 2 year contract and $599 for 8GB w/ 2 year contract
• EXCLUSIVITY: only available to CINGULAR/AT&T wireless customers
• AVAILABLE: June 2008
• FEATURES:
o multi-touch interface technology
o 2 mega pixal camera
o blue tooth 2.0 technology
o wi-fi that automatically engages when in range
o quad-brand gsm radio with EDGE
o runs OS X with widgets, google maps, safari, and itunes supported
o 5 hour battery life for talk and video, and 16 hour use for phone and music
-Introduced by Apple Inc. CEO Steve Jobs at the MACWORLD 2007 Conference and Expo during the Keynote speech.
-Currently no other competitors, instead, the iphone enhances previous technologies found with the Motorola Handheld, Blackberry, Palm Treo, and Nokia E62.
***Pending lawsuit filed by CISCO technologies to prevent apple from infringing upon and deliberately copying the registered iPHONE trademark, which CISCO claims they registered in 2000. CISCO claims they have been shipping the LINKSYS technology since last year.
Check it out at http://www.apple.com/iphone/
Or watch the introduction of the device at the keynote speech at http://www.apple.com/quicktime/qtv/keynote/
Way to go! What prize do you guys want?
Outline by:
Brandi Kilgore
The Adult Industry and Emerging New Media as of 2007
The Adult Industry will play an important role in settling the dispute between the HD DVD and Blu-Ray formats.
According to this article:
http://www.pcworld.idg.com.au/index.php/id;1606722077
*The Adult Industry is currently backing HD DVD:
--The first HD DVD adult film was released at this year’s Adult Entertainment Expo (AEE) by Wicked Pictures
--Digital Playground will release their first HD DVD film on January 18, 2007
--Club Jenna will be using HD DVD because they believe that Blu-Ray targets a younger demographic than they would like
--At first, neither Blu-Ray or HD DVD were enthusiastic about assisting the adult industry in producing discs of their films
--Finally, HD DVD gave assistance to Wicked Pictures, but Wicked Pictures has not ruled out using Blu-Ray
--HD DVD is cheaper and easier to produce than Blu-Ray
--HD DVD will also likely defeat Blu-Ray because it is easy for the consumer to make an association between HD TV and the HD DVD player—Ex. The consumer will buy a HD DVD Player to go with their HD TV
According to this article:
http://www.stereophile.com/news/011507pron/
At the Consumer Electronics Show (CES) Sony claimed that Blu-Ray was in the lead over HD DVD
--But at the Adult Entertainment Expo (AEE) the industry appeared to be backing HD DVD instead
--Digital Playground claims that Sony (creator of Blu-Ray) will not allow Blu-Ray discs to be used for adult films
--In 2006, Digital Playground said that they would go with Blu-Ray, but they are now using HD DVD instead
--Marty Gordon, Vice Chair of the BDA (Blu-Ray Disc Association) US Promotions Committee and vice president of the Phillips Electronics Hollywood Office, denies that Sony has prohibited the use of Blu-Ray for adult films
Other Interesting Adult Industry News
http://apcstart.com/4985/tech_toys_turn_sexy_literally
*Elements found in consumer electronic devices are starting to cross over into the world of sex toys:
--a former marketing executive for Apple has created the “OhMiBod,” a sex toy that connects to an iPod
Blu-Ray v. HD-DVD
Sam Griffiths
David Hill
Like the VHS and Betamax scuffle of the 1970’s, there is a new war of the formats in the high definition video market. HD-DVD and Blu-Ray are the two challengers in the running for consumers’ money, but the winner won’t be easy to predict. One of the first format wars occurred in the 1910’s. Thomas Edison produced sounds cylinders that were superior in sound quality to its rival, the sound disk. Disks saved space and were cheaper to produce, however, and ultimately became the preferred format. In the 1970’s, Sony’s Betamax tape could produce a higher quality picture than its rival VHS, but VHS ultimately won the video war because it was easier to use, held more footage, and cost less. It was also the only one of the formats to allow pornographic material to be released. . Past technology battles have shown that the better technology doesn’t necessarily guarantee the better sales.
Today, with support from some of the largest electronics manufacturers (Sony, Apple Inc., Microsoft, Toshiba, Samsung) Blu-Ray and HD-DVD battle for their place in the changing electronics world. Blu-Ray, backed by Sony, Samsung, and Apple Inc. would have been thought by many to prevail with their software sales surpassing HD-DVD according to a press release in 2007. Blu-Ray has definitely taken the lead for present sales, but will they sustain their growth into the future? Microsoft, Toshiba, and the NEC Corporation probably think not. Sony has made a very poor move, financially, disallowing the use of Blu-Ray for pornographic material, which happens to be one of the largest media industries in the world. Due to restrictions set forth by Disney, this erotic industry has turned their heads towards HD-DVDs and the quality as well as profitability that it has to offer. For instance, Blu-Ray requires a $3 million startup fee versus HD-DVD’s $100,000 startup fee for its replication line. HD-DVD and Blu-Ray both offer a true 1080p High-Definition signal, which customers care about the most according to surveys. Within those same surveys with a sample of 3000 people, HD-DVD had more potential to be bought due to its name that links to DVDs, a known and trusted technology. Whereas, the fact that Blu-Ray has been deemed “unique” by many poses a problem for the skeptics willing to fork out $800 for an unproven piece of machinery. I believe that the future of this format war will not linger on the dominant sales; rather, we may all be sneaking a peak at the porn industry for our answer.
Research Topic: What has TiVo been up to?
http://www.TiVo.com
*(1/9/07) TiVo wins National Television Academy, Emmy Award . TiVo has successfully created a way for advertisers to reach viewers in an opt-in environment with interactive advertising features. Examples: Product Watch, Interactive Tags, and Program Placement.
*(1/8/07) Comcast the nation's leading provider of cable, entertainment and communications products and services, and TiVo Inc. the creator of and leader in television services for digital video recorders, are demonstrating a new TiVo service for Comcast DVRs at the 2007 International Consumer Electronics Show.
* (1/8/07) TiVo announced that it has signed Music Choice, the country's leader in music-related content, to deliver its wide-ranging catalog of music videos and its original programming via broadband to the television through the TiVoCast service.
*(1/8/07) RealNetworks and TiVo Inc. announced a first-of-its-kind integration of the Rhapsody digital music service with the TiVo service giving TiVo subscribers access to over 3 million songs on demand right from the TiVo remote. This groundbreaking collaboration is intended to give broadband connected TiVo subscribers access to the Rhapsody digital music experience via their television sets starting later this year.
*(1/8/07) TiVo Inc. in partnership with Roxio, a division of Sonic Solutions, announced today the availability of TiVoToGo for the Macintosh platform. Through Toast8 Titanium, disc burning software, TiVo subscribers with broadband connected TiVo Series2 DVRs will now be able to transfer their recorded shows to watch on their Mac, burn to a DVD, and enjoy on portable devices such as iPod or PSP.
*(11/30/06) Service and technology revenues for the quarter increased 22% to $52.6 million, compared with$43.2 million for the same period last year. TiVo reported a net loss of ($11.1) million and net loss per share of ($0.12), compared to a net loss of ($14.2) million, or ($0.17) per share, for the third quarter of last year.
*(11/29/06) CABLEVISION, Mexico's largest digital cable operator, and TiVo Inc. announced that they have entered into an agreement to distribute the TiVo DVRs and TiVo Service to CABLEVISION's subscribers throughout Mexico City.
http://www.pvrwire.com/2007/01/15/tivo-getting-sued-along-with-netflix-and-blockbuster/
*(1/3/07) The lawsuit was filed on January 3rd and Lycos is claiming that TiVo, NetFlix and Blockbuster is infringing a patent which covers "information filtering technology,"and basically relates to how TiVo, Netflix and Blockbuster provide recommendations to customers for movies or television shows.
http://www.betanews.com/article/TiVo_Fast_Forward_Popup_Ads_Return/1168964730
* (1/16/07) Customers of the DVR service TiVo began reporting over the weekend that the fast forward ads which appear during commercial breaks have reappeared. The ads appeared last in March 2005, when the company was testing new ways to generate money from the service. However, TiVo has made changes in response to the initial customer backlash. The ads only appear when a user fast-forwards through a commercial that matches the pop-up ad's content.
Jan. 21, 2007 – New York, NY
More on the format war.
- Sony declares no porn for Blu-ray.
- Sony will prosecute, and the studio will lose license.
- Due to the high cost of Blu-ray technology ($3 mil compared to $100,000) only larger studios can afford Blu-ray.
- A spokesperson for porn studio Bangbros, "but HD DVD is easier to produce, cheaper to produce and there are more HD DVD players in homes than there are Blu-ray players, for example in the Xbox 360."
- Jesse Joone is scheduled to release 4 titles this year, Island Fever 3, Pirates, Jack’s Teen America 3 and Island Fever 4.
- Joone hopes that the revenues gained from the HD switch will make up for the hit the industry has received from free downloading. After his success has set a precedent, he predicts the rest will follow.
According to Arron McKenna, HD-DVD has already won the war,” at least in the porn industry.”
I'm in NYC visiting my cousin who works in advertising. I was telling her about the Emerging Media class that I am taking, and how I am doing an assignment on the porn industry. She told me about a famous campaign done by Crispin called the "Subservient Chicken." Basically, you could type in any command and the chicken would do it. Basically, the advertisers borrowed the technology used in the live chats on pornography sites. Just thought I would share.
Consumer Electronics Show
- Sharp's 108-inch LCD behemoth: “We take Frame A and Frame B and we create a Frame A-plus-B in between," said Toshiba vice president of marketing Scott Ramirez. "That eliminates that negative that LCD might have had." 103-inch plasma TV by Panasonic retails for $70,000. LG's 71-inch plasma costs about $15,000 — an 80 percent price reduction from a year ago. "I'm sure we'll find people who will want to buy a 108-inch TV," said Sharp's senior vice president of marketing, Bob Scaglione. "Believe it or not, a lot of questions came out when we released a 65-inch LCD, and now I wouldn't call it a mainstream product, but it's available at retail at $10,999."
- new portable music player from SanDisk Corp. (SNDK) The player, which SanDisk say will hold 33 video hours or 2,000 songs, boasts a 4-inch screen similar in size to Apple's video iPod and comes with 8 megabytes of flash memory. The device, which would compete with Apple's video iPod, also has a flash memory expansion slot so a user can slide in a memory card holding additional music or videos. Retailing for about $300, the 8 gigabyte Sansa View is expected to be available at retailers in the United States in the first quarter, with Canada and Europe to follow in the second quarter.
- sleek, double-sided, combination cell phone-music player from Samsung Electronics Co
- Netgear Inc. (NTGR), for instance, unveiled its Digital Entertainer HD, a $349 media receiver that accesses high-definition videos, photos, TV shows and music stored across multiple computers on a home network and streams the content to televisions in the home. A "Follow Me" function, using separate wireless stations, allows users to pause video in one room and resume it in another.
- Sony Corp. (SNE) showed a module that will hook onto its upcoming line of televisions to grab video and photos from its Internet-content partners for playback on the TV. (The partners so far include Yahoo Inc. and Time Warner Inc.'s (TWX) AOL.)
- A growing number of gadgets meant to deliver entertainment anywhere, anytime were also on display.
- LG Electronics Co. showcased the LG9400, a cell phone that will let users watch TV simulcasts from a variety of networks including NBC, CBS and Fox, ESPN and Comedy Central. The LG phone, as well as another by Samsung Electronics Co., will be the first to support Verizon Wireless' V Cast Mobile TV service, powered by Qualcomm Inc.'s (QCOM) MediaFlo technology. The Verizon TV service will be available in March.
- SanDisk, the world's largest supplier of flash data storage products, pushed further into the media player space with its Sansa Connect, a Wi-Fi enabled MP3 player that does not require connecting to a computer to download music or stream Internet radio. It begins sales in the U.S. for $249.99 in March.
- Every major manufacturer improved its LCDs by doubling frames per second to 120, thereby cutting down on blurring during fast-motion scenes. Technologies to make plasma TVs display even deeper blacks and richer colors were also demonstrated.
- Warner Bros. announced a high definition DVD disc that can hold films and TV shows in both Blu-ray and HD DVD formats. The new disc is called Total HD.
http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,243361,00.html
Kate Nichols
Social Networking
After typing in the term “social networking” on Google.com, I was astonished to see how many results came up – 86,900,000 to be exact! While I have yet to find an accurate, all-encompassing definition of social networking, my research has concluded that social networking has an infinite number of applications and applicants who seek to create a “virtual community” on the web. Seems everyone from the pre-teen to the corporate sponsor wants in on this computer-mediated community (CMC) craze. New technology experts, in a number of articles, will be the first to say they did not see this coming. There prove to be many pros and cons to this situation; while many may try to predict the future of this widespread epidemic, only time will tell if the good will outweigh the bad.
As of 2005, there were over 300 known social networking sites one could find on a Google search. Now, that number is in the thousands. Social networking can be tracked by Friend of a Friend software, or FOAF. CMCs, another name for social networking sites, use FOAF to regulate the activities of its participants and seek to weed out the “bad apples” in the community. These networking sites are based on open source software, also know as development community. This is to say the site is developed in a public, collaborative manner. Features include searches for others, groups, video uploads, discussions, blogs, forums, music, and classifieds, just to name a few. Without public participation, there would be no need for the basic site; interactivity between the participants is the basis for social networking, as its name might foretell.
While all of this might seem harmless at first glance, there have been serious implication for the actions of some. Privacy issue continue to be a problem, as children under the age of 14 illegally create profiles, sexual predators take advantage of those bearing too much personal identification, personal identities are counterfeited, patent and copyright infringement occurs, phishing scams have been known to surface, and inappropriate videos and pictures are uploaded. Recently, incriminating videos (which can be found on MySpace, Photobucket and YouTube, among others) have made headlines as a group of 13 and 14 year-old girls beat up another, and a group of cheerleaders partook in activities that led to their principle’s firing and the girls’ dismissal from the squad. Also, the phenomena of “friend collecting”, collecting as many people under your “friends” list as possible, has caused numerous users to add people they do not actually know (into the thousands), which is understandably dangerous.
Major sites such as MySpace, owned by News Corp, and Facebook have taken precautions to avoid these crimes, such as allowing people to decline friendship invitations, limit viewing of their profile by making it private and report activities explicitly deemed inappropriate in the Terms and Conditions. MySpace is scheduled to launch new parental notification software, Zephyr, which will allow parents to track their teen’s activities on social networking sites. It has also considered raising the site age limit from 14 to 16. Large services have enlisted the help of law enforcement in serious situations.
With the above being said, the issues that have bee raised have been minor setbacks in the world of social networking. Popular demand seems to insist the positives far surpass the negatives. From a corporate standpoint, there are numerous advantaged to be had: companies receive free advertising in the form of blogs and can also maximize advertising in the new media by placing text ads and banners; employees can stay better connected; employees and companies can search for and be better connected with other professionals; businesses can be connected by groups, based on characteristics such as industry, function, geography, and other areas of interest; companies can use networks as a customer relationship management tool; a global market can be accessed.
In spite of the fact that Generation Y-ers have previously been the target for social networking sites, many companies are now realizing the importance of enlisting a different demographic – the Baby Boomers. On January 15, 2007, a Newsweek article reported that while statistics show up to 90 percent of teenagers have experimented with social networking,the fastest growing demographic of networkers are middle-aged. This is exciting to advertisers who realize this group is looking forward to a retirement unlike that of pervious generations; with a longer life-expectancy, better health and more disposable income, the Baby Boomers have become advertisers prime objective.
Although Europe and Asia have produced many of there own social networking sites, ComScore World Metrix had dubbed top American site MySpace the biggest ever. It is increasingly infiltrating these parts of the world, seeking domination on a global scale. The popular Facebook still comes in second, although research shows it’s very distant.
Many cell phone companies are jumping on the band wagon of social networking. In the future, it will be possible to for members to search for each others’ phone numbers and email addresses, as well as and update their photos and blogs on social networking sites via cell phones. Companies first to head up this technology include Verizon Wierless, Cingular Wireless, Sprint Nextel and Helio (a joint venture between SK Telecom and Earthlink). What will become of social networking in the future and how will it affect our day to day lives? Only time will tell!
sorry -- got a little carried away! Amelia Johnson
PS3 sales are currently sucking according to this story! http://www.betanews.com/article/PS3_Sales_Dropping_in_Japan/1169225070
Since there won't be as many new PS3's in peoples homes as were expected, I'm sure this could ultimately play into the H-DVD battle, and work toward HD-DVD's advantage.
This is something else I thought was interesting from the Consumer Electronics Show since we were just talking about how no one really accesses their computer in the living room even though we have the technology.....maybe this will catch on...
SONY VAIO TP1 Living Room PD Digital Living System
Maria Danello
Computer with a wireless keyboard – allows you to do everything a computer would allow and more:
Also connect to HDTV
Record CD's and DVD's
Watch and record TV like DVR
As we all know, Apple Inc. has taken over the MP3 player market. On the UGA campus, you see dozens of people everyday plugged into their Ipod while walking to class, riding the bus, or some, unfortunately, during class. With the various colored Ipods, video Ipods, and now the iPhone, Apple Inc. is constantly finding ways to stay with consumer demands to prevent competition. Since not many other companies have developed MP3 products that are so easy to use and have such a reliable reputation, Apple Inc. has almost monopolized this industry. Europe has recognized this dilemma and has decided to take action. Itunes is a convenient resource to purchase music that is easily transferred to your Ipod. Apple Inc. has cleverly developed iTunes so it can only be played on Apple MP3 players. Norway, France, Germany, and other Scandinavian countries have filed antitrust complaints to investigate this situation. They believe that iTunes should be compatible with other MP3 players, not just iPods. The European Union is getting involved and hopes to make iTunes available to all MP3 owners. Other digital media companies, such as RealNetworks, are catching on to this and pressuring record labels to to allow them to sell their music without any anti-piracy software. If this happens, then music can be played on iPods and any other devices. Many people are skeptical on whether Apple Inc. will adhere to these complaints. If they do not, it will be interesting to see if other digital media companies will start developing services that will compare to Apple Inc. products. If this happens, then maybe Apple Inc. will actually lower prices and iPods will finally be a reasonable purchase.
Kate Nichols
This is the article I read about this issue...
http://www.ajc.com/business/content/printedition/2007/02/04/sbizitunes0204a.html
Kate Nichols (the little old lady in the small, beautiful house)
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