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Entertainment Wars
April 11, 2007
Movie review site Fandango was snapped up today by cable company Comcast with the ultimate goal for Comcast being increased web traffic and support for a new site Fancast.com devoted to allowing consumers to watch on demand content on a variety of devices.
Comcast is the nation’s largest cable company and Fandango is one of the largest movie sites around. There is a natural synergy between Fandango’s base of movie enthusiasts and Comcast’s goals to allow users to watch on demand content across a variety of devices.
The question worth asking is what other acquisition ideas have been created as a result of this one. Will other cable companies, AT&T and Verizon be looking for movie content sites as well? Does everyone who distributes content now need a TV Guide like audience to market to?
Fandango has a community of interest and Comcast will now be able to tap into this community to sell things – beyond its geographic boundary if it so chooses.
It seems companies are waking up to the concept of online communities and their inherent value. Moreover, cable companies are now looking beyond their own territories for customers… Will this upset the other cablecos?
Lately, with all the talk of social networking communities many may have forgotten how many community sites already exist on the internet and could add value to service providers looking to build larger audiences of perspective customers.
This acquisition makes sense but one wonders why it didn’t happen sooner. More importantly is the possibility this acquisition could cause countless others over the coming months and years and result in a wave of entertainment wars.
See also:
Houston Chronicle: Comcast Buying Fandango
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Scala-700
April 11, 2007
Testing the Scala-700 Skype Bluetooth Headset
Behind my desk sits a mountain of boxes containing videophones, wireless headsets and unimaginable gadgets for me to look at, evaluate and consider writing about. My day job is running the largest communications & technology media company in the world with four print magazines with over 600,000 readers a month, three trade shows with over 15,000 attendees in total a year and a website – TMCnet, attracting about two million people a month. My night job is to share my thoughts on the industry… Where things stand today and where they are headed.
As TMC has grown I miss the days when I had more time to devote to sharing my thoughts. So yesterday I decided to delve into the pile and start a review of the Cardo Scala-700 headset which the company bills as the world’s only voice-controlled wireless headset for Skype and high quality cell phone communication.
About a year ago I mentioned seeing an earlier Cardo System’s bluetooth, Skype-enabled headset for the first time. Since then I was looking forward to reviewing one of these devices and I am glad I finally did. The Scala-700 is a great little device allowing you to connect to Skype and a cell phone and switch between the two with just a flick of switch button.The headset is lightweight and very secure as it uses an over the ear loop which keeps it from moving.
The speech recognition works well allowing me to call people from my contacts list. It should be noted I first trained the Microsoft speech recognition system for 10 minutes or so.
If you are a feature addict the headset does not disappoint as it has a battery indicator, 10 hours of talk time (I did not do an exhaustive battery test) and thoughtful additions allowing for the headset to be used easily on either ear as the volume controls can be reversed.
There is also a USB charger, wall charger and detailed instructions on how to set the headset up with your computer. A bluetooth dongle is included and I decided to use the included dongle instead of the laptops’ own internal bluetooth to test.
At first I thought the included ear loop was plastic as it pinched my ear a bit. After further investigation the loop is flexible and in a moment I was able to achieve the perfect blend of comfort and secure-fit.
This headset is a perfect complement for the person who has a cell phone and also wants to use Skype. It does both well.
I suppose the biggest drawback to hoarding these gadgets is the different connectors needed to charge each. I truly wish headsets used the Mini-USB standard many cell phones use allowing us to travel with myriad devices and few chargers.
It should be noted the Skype ecosystem of partners seems to be growing quickly and Cardo Systems was one of the earlier companies to develop products which integrate with Skype. Next month at TMC’s Communications Developer Conference the director of Skype’s Developer Program will be speaking and will further illuminate how companies can leverage the growing VoIP-software company’s user base.
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Skype for Mac Improved
April 11, 2007
Skype for Mac has a new beta version 2.6 available here and it’s brimming with new features. In addition you can expect improved sound quality and software stability according to the company. There is a nifty new call transfer feature allowing you to send a call to someone else. This is something you had to use an office PBX for and this is an unexpected bonus for Mac users.The concept of having software come out for the Mac first used to be something we saw in the desktop publishing world all the time in the late eighties and early nineties. Companies like Aldus who made PageMaker and Quark with their Express publishing platforms routinely developed for a Mac and then the PC.
The PC was always months if not years behind in the desktop publishing world.
This changed in the mid nineties as PCs gained tremendously in price/performance over their Apple branded competitors.
I suppose Apple should be proud to see a mainstream software company like Skype developing for them first once again.
Here are some of the features that are now available on Mac that were previously only available on Windows:
- Joining public chats
- A chat typing indicator - see when others are writing a message
- The ability to call any Skype Prime premium services provider and pay with Skype credit
- Automatic Updates – get new features and updates without having to go to Skype’s website to download
- DTMF tones for automatic answering services available also during Skype-to-Skype calls
Here are the Current system requirements
- Mac computer with G4 800 Mhz processor or faster.
- Mac OS X v10.3.9 Panther or later.
- 512 MB RAM.
- 40 MB free disk space on your hard drive.
- Microphone.
- Webcam: suggested webcams include Apple iSight, Philips SPC900NC, or Logitech QuickCam Pro 4000. Drivers for the Philips and Logitech webcams can be downloaded here.
- Internet connection (broadband is best, GPRS is not supported for voice calls, and results may vary on a satellite connection).
So with this release, Mac users once again have some bragging rights over the PC. The question is how long will PC fans have to wait to get this new and exciting office-like call-transfer feature?
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Vanu
April 11, 2007
Software defined radio (SDR) systems are somewhat of a holy grail in technology as they use software to shift frequencies and modulation schemes while utilizing multipurpose underlying hardware. In a perfect world you could use software defined radio technology to receive cellular calls, WiFi, bluetooth, GPS, AM/FM, Sirius, XM, HDTV, etc.
Imagine if your smartphone used all the communications modes above with need for just a single processor – wouldn’t that just be amazing? Of course this will likely be possible some day but for now there are hardware components which handle each of the above functions. In many cases multiple functions can be combined on a single integrated processor module or chipset.
If SDR was ubiquitous today we wouldn’t worry much about the various new flavors of 802.11 such as A, G, N, etc… Why? Because our devices would all be software-upgradeable allowing us to take advantage of the latest wireless standard without the need to forklift our existing access points and devices.
For wireless service providers the problem is even bigger as base stations are very expensive and forklifting a base station is a daunting prospect. But with newer and more efficient wireless technologies continuing to be developed how do you combat the ever-growing cost of throwing out the old ands supporting the new?
One way is to consider SDR for you base station via the technology being developed by Vanu Inc. The company was founded in 1998 by Dr. Vanu Bose the son of Dr. Amar Bose who made a name for himself in high-end audiophile products ranging from headphones to home theatre and commercial systems.
Vanu develops software-defined radio solutions for wireless service providers and similar to the world of HMP you use the CPU as your DSP. For those of you who are familiar with the DSP resource board market you know companies like Dialogic and Aculab make HMP solutions today that once required proprietary boards.
These boards were once required for speech recognition, automated attendants, IVR systems and even voicemail. Now many of these applications can run on the host processor and proprietary boards are needed only when you are scaling to levels the core processor(s) cannot handle.
The evolution to HMP is one of the reasons Intel purchased Dialogic about seven years back. For more information on what these enabling technology companies are up to see Dialogic Does Video and Aculab’s ApplianX.
But leaving HMP and heading back to the world of SDR, Vanu’s Anywave Radio Access Network software runs on Linux boxes with Intel processors.
I find a similarity between what Vanu and Amar Bose have done with their respective companies. One of the most innovative products to come out of Bose about twenty years ago was the Acoustic Wave portable stereo system which packed the punch of a much larger stereo system in a space smaller than a 17 inch computer monitor.
The story goes that Amar was listening to a flute fill a concert hall and had an epiphany. Flutes utilize resonant frequencies and can project a large amount of sound over a narrow frequency range. If you have ever blown air into a Coke bottle at a certain angle and heard that distinctive sound, you know what I am talking about.
Amar realized it would be revolutionary to take the concept of resonant frequencies and apply it to a stereo system and subsequently his company developed Acoustic Waveguide technology allowing a single enclosure to produce multiple resonant frequencies. The result was a compact system which was responsible for developing rich, deep base once limited to larger speakers and more amplifier power.
Prior to this accomplishment some speaker manufacturers used a tuned port within the speaker enclosure which resonated at one specific frequency.
Bose Sr. was able to for the first time use a single underlying speaker architecture to generate multiple resonant frequencies. Vanu’s company uses a single underlying software architecture to generate a variety of wireless communications modes.
Another benefit to a software approach based on off the shelf hardware is the dramatic decrease in cost achieved when compared to fixed function, proprietary systems. As a software house Vanu can instantaneously take advantage of Moore’s law without having to do additional development work.
This cost savings is passed along to the carrier and in addition the provider now knows they are able to upgrade the base station when needed to support yet another standard. So far Vanu has shown they can operate a combined GSM, CDMA and iDEN base station through SDR technology.
The benefits of working with Vanu Inc. seem to be endless from lower power consumption to lower cost to future-proofing your investment. Still a major service provider may not feel like they should bet the farm on a small company as they need to make sure their suppliers are around for the long haul.
But then again when you consider Vanu is a software company you begin to realize the company has much less at risk compared to typical hardware manufacturers.
Where SDRs are especially attractive is at a company like Sprint where they need multi-mode radio base stations. In addition the femtocell market could be another place where SDR makes a great deal of sense allowing an enterprise or home to support a number of different wireless standards.
The rural telco market is a further area where SDR can help providers deploy low-cost wireless networks. To that end, the Massachusetts-based SDR company announced recently it will partner with Globecomm Systems to provide turn key-based base station solutions while allowing the latter to focus on the hosted switching service.
One wonders why there just aren’t more companies in the SDR space. I would expect about 20 players to be pumping out products by now. Is the technology too new for others to take the plunge? The concept has been around for fifteen years but perhaps CPUs have just recently become powerful enough to do a good job.
Could this be a technology that languished for a few years like VoIP and one vendor is needed to shake up the whole market. I don’t hear too much about SDR from the major telecom equipment providers so I wonder if there is a downside I haven’t considered.
Vanu seems to be acquiring customers in niche markets and one would imagine they are talks with the major players. I believe a single tier one service provider announcement is all that is needed to really make SDR a more popular term like FMC or IMS. Until then, we will have to focus on Vanu and the handful of other players in the space and wait for one of them to shake things up.
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