Register for free to join our community of investors and share your ideas. You will also get access to streaming quotes, interactive charts, trades, portfolio, live options flow and more tools.
Register for free to join our community of investors and share your ideas. You will also get access to streaming quotes, interactive charts, trades, portfolio, live options flow and more tools.
Taton...Did anyone actually read and respond to this post? I've been following this board since the day after it was started. Your reference to this article is sobering and frightening if you read far enough into it. Have you contacted CYGX to get their response to the apparently very serious competition that Alynlam (the only thing stupid about them is their name)appears to pose? If not, I will e-mail them and ask myself. Again, excellent find.
SO WE CLOSED AT .19. ANY GUESSES AS TO WHERE WE'LL BE ONE YEAR FROM NOW? JUST FOR FUN, OF COURSE.
HAPPY NEW YEAR TO ALL.
B-dog, I agree fully with you. I had a one-on-one meeting with Fred for an hour several years ago, and I found him to be clear-thinking and he certainly gave an impression of honesty.
Everyone on the BOD brings a particular talent to the company, an I too hope JC continues to contribute.
FWIW, VOICE NAV ONLY ADDS $5 TO THE COST OF BUILDING THE O-1000, SO IF IT DOESN'T WORK FOR EVERYONE, NOT A BIG DEAL. I HAVEN'T TRIED IT MYSELF.
FOR THOSE AT THE SHM, CAN ANYONE RECALL ROBERT'S ANSWER TO THE AUDIENCE QUESTION ABOUT DISCUSSIONS/INVOLVEMENT WITH GATEWAY?
I REMEMBER A SOMEWHAT GARBLED RESPONSE ABOUT THERE BEING NUMEROUS CONTACTS...DOES ANYONE ELSE HAVE A CLEARER RECOLLECTION?
A BUNDLING AGREEMENT WITH THEM WOULD GO A LONG WAY TO SAVING OUR ASSES. BTW, I SAW THE B&O DEVICE WE WERE IN ON ON A COMMERCIAL FOR WESTIN ON LARRY KING LAST NIGHT.
LL, The run to $5 back in '99, and to 24.50 in early 2000, was relatively easy in the market mania of the time. This time we're goint to have to EARN every penny we advance in pps. I would love it if we made it back to $5 in a year, but I don't think it will happen. A R/S would only work for us if we couple it with a positive revenue announcement. I owned another BB stock back in the '80's that did well after one.
LL, knee-jerk response, which is what I expected from some. Did you take a minute to look at FIBRD? Probably not. Taking the share price up to a NASD-listing pps does not sound dumb to me. I would rather own 5K shares of a stock that's going up than my current 100K that's tanking. There are a lot of very big companies that are currently planning reverse splits;
it's not just for death-spiral companies anymore.
I've been watching the price action of Sorrento Networks (FIBRD), also a San Diego company, over the past week, and unfortunately I don't own any of it. They announced a 1 for 20 reverse split on Oct 25, taking their float down to under a million shares. Their latest numbers are lousy, but they did announce higher orders from Europe. The share price is up over 300% on a split-adjusted basis since their announcement. I'm begining to think the same action would benefit EDIG,particularly if they could pair it with a strong earnings announcement. It would get us listed much faster, take us down to about 7 mil shares, and bring in some institutional buying.
? comments.
From WirelessArena.com
3G Headlines
PacketVideo Licenses Its MPEG-4-Based Software to Power QUALCOMM's Qtv Multimedia Player for CDMA MSM6xxx Wireless Devices
By Staff
Oct 28, 2002, 6:55pm
PacketVideo and QUALCOMM announced an agreement to license portions of PacketVideo's pvPlayer software for inclusion in QUALCOMM's streaming video solution for the MSM6xxx Mobile Station Modem family of ninth-generation CDMA chipsets.
By combining customized modules of PacketVideo pvPlayer embedded software with QUALCOMM's internally developed MPEG-4 codec software, the companies will create the new generation of Qtv multimedia player, a standards-compliant MPEG-4 streaming video player for mobile devices. Qtv software is being designed and optimized by QUALCOMM and PacketVideo for the MSM6xxx family of chipsets to combine maximum performance with lowest cost.
The Qtv player is a fully integrated software solution for adding high-quality multimedia streaming and playback capabilities to mobile devices. CDMA wireless handset manufacturers can now quickly and affordably add exciting video and visual-messaging capabilities to their products. Qtv software, powered by QUALCOMM and PacketVideo technology, provides advanced multimedia and messaging capabilities to the MSM6xxx family, including support for:
-Streaming, download and playback
-MPEG-4 simple profile file video codec format
-QCELP, AMR and EVRC audio codec format
-Temporal scalability
QUALCOMM's Qtv player also offers proven interoperability with PacketVideo's pvServer, a leading 3GPP, 3GPP2 and MPEG-4 mobilemedia distribution system, as well as other wireless multimedia video servers.
"In today's intensely competitive telecommunications market, the pressure is on every company to get products to market as quickly as possible," said Dr. James Brailean, PacketVideo CEO and co-founder. "PacketVideo's licensing agreement with QUALCOMM demonstrates that our pvPlayer-based solution provides a significant advantage by enabling manufacturers to enhance the capability, power and value of their chipsets and handsets while accelerating time-to-market."
"The market for mobile handsets is increasingly being driven by high-performance multimedia applications," said Don Schrock, president of QUALCOMM CDMA Technologies. "Our collaboration with PacketVideo on the Qtv solution has enabled QUALCOMM to accelerate the development and deployment of attractive new multimedia features on our MSM6xxx family of chipsets. We're already seeing enthusiastic adoption of advanced multimedia capabilities by CDMA network operators and handset manufacturers around the world."
© Copyright 2002 by the Wireless Arena Network
DOES ANYONE KNOW IF DATA PLAY OWES US ANY MONEY?
It looks to me that this legislation would not apply to wedigmusic.com, since it is not a radio station. Music streamed is a continuous loop and certainly has been provided with prior permission. Failure to pass the bill might actually eliminate a lot of competition. JMO.
emit, what's the "write-back" supposed to do?
Also, how about Gateway as a possible behind the scenes partner? They're just a few miles away from edig in Poway,
and they might like the bundling concept to help their boxes sell.
bluesman, thanks for the moral tonguelashing. I did have my own use for the burner...scanning and copying to disc about
five thousand slides I took in India and Nepal back in the late '60's, hence the name "hanuman". I think the legality of what my kids did was addressed by the courts several decades ago...copying for personal use and not redistributing was found to be perfectly legal. Thanks.
cksla, I don't trust this Forrester report at all. From previous posts I've read, all they did was to survey the 18 to 26 age group and ask them if they reduced their CD purchases while they were downloading all that free music. These aren't dumb people. Who in their right mind would answer yes to such a question when they're in the midst of a feeding frenzy of free music? A yes answer gives the RIAA legal ammo to go to court to put a halt to the party. I have 2 daughters who downloaded hundreds of songs and I know they were way down on their spending in the music stores. They made me get a CD burner so they could play the stuff in their cars. Common sense tells you that if you can get it for free, you're not going to pay for it.
Wong...
Blackdog had it right. If you've been around for a while, anyone can remember scads of consumer products that never caught on with the public, stuff that boardroom execs thought would be a big hit.
We Dig DoDo
webb page for the Bush family
We Dig Pig
webb page for Moslems and Jews
We Dig Dog
webb page for...well, lets forget that one...
We Dig Dumb
webb page for the challenged
We Dig Dung
For those over on RB
So many possibilities!
The overall tone of the story is more openminded than what I remember from Mossberg. At least the word is getting into the mass media.
Seen in the current Business Week
Register
Subscribe
Search
Advanced Search
U.S. EDITION
Full Table of Contents
Cover Story
Up Front
Readers Report
Corrections & Clarifications
Books
Technology & You
Economic Viewpoint
Economic Trends
Industry Insider
Business Outlook
News: Analysis & Commentary
In Business This Week
Washington Outlook
International Outlook
The Corporation
Media
Sports Business
Government
Marketing
Finance
Developments to Watch
Science & Technology
Industrial Management
Management
The Workplace
Information Technology
BusinessWeek Investor
BusinessWeek Lifestyle
The Barker Portfolio
Inside Wall Street
Figures of the Week
Editorials
INTERNATIONAL EDITIONS
International -- Int'l Cover Story
International -- Readers Report
International -- Asian Business
International -- European Business
International -- Finance
International -- Int'l Figures of the Week
International -- Editorials
Customer Service
Contact Us
Advertising
Media Kit
Special Ad Sections
Conferences
Permissions & Reprints
Marketplace
JUNE 3, 2002
TECHNOLOGY & YOU
Hang On to Your CD Player for Now
DataPlay disks aim to replace audio CDs, but they face daunting copy-protection hurdles
Stephen H. Wildstrom
Printer-Friendly Version
E-Mail This Story
Technology & You Archive
• Find More Stories Like This
When the compact disk burst onto the consumer-electronics scene in the mid-1980s, it drove vinyl records and prerecorded cassette tapes off the market. A format like that normally takes a decade or more to become dominant, but the perceived superiority of the CD and the fact that the new equipment quickly became affordable resulted in rapid acceptance. Technologically, the audio CD has become a bit of a fossil itself, but don't toss your Discman just yet. My guess is that the CD will be with us for quite a while.
That's not for want of challengers. There are audio DVDs, which can hold many hours of music. And there are two entries from Sony (SNE ), Super Audio CD and MiniDisc, which the company has pushed to little effect--except in Japan--for a decade.
I have just spent some time playing with the newest contender to the CD throne, DataPlay, from a company of the same name. DataPlay is potentially an attractive product. Each double-sided disk, which comes in a plastic cartridge not a lot bigger than a postage stamp, holds 500 megabytes. That's about 20% less capacity than an audio CD, but modern compression technology lets it store five hours of CD-quality music on a disk. Currently, the only way to listen to DataPlay disks is with a dedicated player, such as the $370 unit co-branded by Evolution Technologies and MTV Networks. I found the controls on both the player and DataPlay's FuturePlay Windows software awkward, but such first-generation efforts will undoubtedly improve.
The most interesting thing about DataPlay is that it is the first medium that can be produced as cheaply as a conventional CD and also written to repeatedly, like a CD-RW. This raises some interesting possibilities. A record company could sell a prerecorded DataPlay disk containing the 74 minutes or less of a CD and leave the rest blank for buyers to add their own music. The publisher could add a game or a video--or fill the space with more songs that the buyer can access for an additional charge. The disk even lets you hear a preview of each song before you decide whether to buy it.
So what's not to like? Copy protection. The music industry has made it clear that it will never again allow any digital medium that, like the standard audio CD, can be copied freely. To win the support of record companies, DataPlay had to adopt a rights-management scheme that restricts how players and media can be used.
You can play a DataPlay disk on your computer from a player attached by a USB cable, but you cannot copy the music to your hard drive. If you had a DataPlay drive built into your computer--something that will happen if the format succeeds--you would not be able to download music to a portable player unless it used the same rights-management plan. Once you save any music, however obtained, to a DataPlay disk, you cannot copy it back to a computer. So while DataPlay disks--about $10 initially for blank media--can actually be used to store Windows programs or data files, copy protection drastically reduces their utility for storing music.
Consumer acceptance of copy protection is just one of the hurdles DataPlay faces in its race to succeed the audio CD. The industry politics of recording formats is extremely complex, and it has as much to do with who gets royalties from what media as it does with technical merit. DataPlay has deals with all the major record companies except Warner Music and Sony, and it promises releases from such artists as *NSYNC and Britney Spears to Sarah McLachlan and R. Kelly. But until players begin shipping in quantity, it will be hard to tell how extensive the DataPlay catalog will be. While Warner will probably come aboard, Sony, which favors its own media, looks like a holdout that will create a gaping hole in the DataPlay lineup.
It's going to take a lot of work for the industry to develop a format and copy-protection scheme that all the consumer-electronics makers can agree on and that both record companies and consumers will accept. The audio CD could be replaced by something offering more capacity and better sound quality, but I don't think it will happen soon.
By Stephen H. Wildstrom
Click to buy an e-print or reprint of a BusinessWeek or BusinessWeek Online story.
To subscribe online to BusinessWeek magazine, please click here.
JUNE
DJIA 10104.26 +0.00
Nasdaq 1661.49 -36.14
S&P 500 1083.82 -13.26
Create / Check Portfolio
Launch Popup Ticker
Stock Lookup
Enter name or ticker
Copyright 2002 , by The McGraw-Hill Companies Inc. All rights reserved.
Terms of Use / Privacy Policy
TIN...WHY ON EARTH?...
GETTING OUT OF THE RESTRICTIONS OF THE LOAN AGREEMENT WOULD SEEM LIKE A VERY STRONG REASON TO ME. THEN THEY CAN SELL THEIR NEWLY MINTED 20 MIL SHARES ON THE OPEN MARKET AS THEY NEED TO.
I WOULD LOVE TO SEE A MERGER OR ACQUISITION WITH A GOOD COMPANY, EVEN WITH ATCO, WHERE THERE WOULD BE SYNERGIES NOT ONLY OF PRODUCT LINE ( ATCO PLANAR SPEAKERS WITH AN EDIG TELEMATIC UNIT ), BUT IN STAFFING AND EVEN R&D SPACE. I'M
NOT SO THRILLED WITH AN OUTSIDE GIANT TAKING AN EQUITY POSITION IN EDIG, EVEN THOUGH IT MAY BE ONLY 10 TO 15%. EDIG'S
STRENGTH RIGHT NOW IS THAT ITS FREE TO STRIKE DEALS WITH COMPETING ENTITIES. IF IBM WERE TO HAVE EVEN A 10% STAKE IN EDIG, I THINK THERE WOULD BE PRESSURE TO TERMINATE RELATIONSHIPS WITH THE LIKES OF TI, FOR EXAMPLE.
IMO, EDIG WILL JUST PAY OFF THE LOAN EARLY WITH THE PREPAYMENT
PENALTY. I DON'T THINK THEY'D HAVE ANY PROBLEM DOING THIS BY
APRIL.