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Pondering Digital Music's Future
Fri Mar 5, 4:00 AM ET Add Technology - PC World to My Yahoo!
Jonny Evans, Macworld U.K.
Apple Computer's iTunes Music Store was under discussion at New York's Digital Music Forum this week, even though the company did not officially attend the event.
RealNetworks Vice President of Music Services Sean Ryan offered the keynote at the show. He said, "2004 will be a great year for digital music", and said that successful services need to supply a "mix of offerings, multiple services (a la carte and subscription), control of the media player, and the ability to efficiently acquire customers and to get music off the computer."
With the industry ready to reach critical mass, Ryan shared his belief that the industry is now closed to new start-ups. "The time is over for start-ups in this sector," he said.
Ryan observed that a roughly 50/50 split exists between subscription and a la carte services, and warned that format incompatibility "will be the bane" of the year, predicting this would ease in 2005.
Format Wars
The latter remarks look at the emerging digital music format war. Real offers its own formats, which also support Apple's basic format of choice, AAC. Real's offering does not support the extended proprietary version of AAC (which integrates an Apple-developed digital rights management system called FairPlay). In the other corner sits software giant Microsoft, which parades a concept of "consumer choice" to promote its Windows Media Audio standard that it would like to see emerge as the industry standard in the sector.
Apple's outgoing Chief Financial Officer Fred Anderson touched on the format war on Monday, saying: "With the HP deal we are going to get tremendous momentum behind establishing our digital music standard AAC as the digital music standard."
Anderson also confirmed that Apple is "hard at work" on bringing iTunes Music Store to other geographies, and agreed the company expects that doing so will "impact more on iPod sales."
He added that iPods are "doing really well in Europe", adding: "I hear in the U.K. it has generated the same sort of cultural change as you see in New York."
The format war highlighted by Ryan may be a tough campaign. Apple will fight to keep its leading position in the new industry. Anderson said, "We are not going to let anyone else take our leadership position."
World on a (Digital) Plate
A conference panel on selling music online alleged: "consumers want everything, everywhere and they want it now." Speakers from Napster (news - web sites), MusicNet, America Online, AOL Music, MusicNow, The Orchard Enterprises, and Payment One made a several key points on the topic.
They agreed that consumers want a lot from their digital music stores and operators that deliver what they want will "define the space." They also stressed the need to "sort out" format incompatibilities, and agreed that individual track downloads are easier for consumers to understand, and will therefore remain attractive to them.
Steven Marks, senior vice president of legal and business affairs at the Recording Industry Association of America (news - web sites), discussed the music industry's strategy to create a legitimate online music business.
He believes that educating consumers doesn't work without the litigation the RIAA is currently employing against 2,500 file sharers. He agreed that peer-to-peer services could emerge as part of the digital music industry mix, but existing groups would need to "legitimize" their services. He also said that current laws regarding copyright are good enough. "We have no plans to overhaul copyright law," he added.
P2P Levels the Field
Peer-to-peer champions at the show observed that peer-to-peer services are seeing massive growth, and claimed independent labels and artists have seen sales increases through such services, as they gain access to consumers--this reflects the major labels dominance of existing ways to reach consumers, TV, radio and retail.
"Peer-to-peer provides an entry point for smaller players" they said. Approximately 12 billion tracks are downloaded using such services, they said.
Jonathan Potter, who leads the Digital Music Association, warned that Apple may face unexpected resistance to its success: He described the "antiquated" rights system that exists in the US that hindered development of legitimate services, and limits the number of tracks services can offer today.
He warned that some music industry dinosaurs regard Apple's success as an indication that usage restrictions are too lax, and "should be tightened." He admitted to a sea change in the industry's treatment of the new services, noting "labels care about our success."
Metallica Launches Music Download Site
March 3, 2004
Metallica was not shy about voicing their opposition to Napster and other file sharing services, but the band has now decided to join the digital age, albeit legally. On Tuesday, Metallica launched the Web site LiveMetallica.com, which will make each show on the North American leg of the Madly in Anger With the World tour available for download. The tour kicked off yesterday in Phoenix and a soundboard recording of each concert will be available within four days of the show. The cost is $9.95 per show for MP3 files or $12.95 for higher quality FLAC files.
"This is the next logical step in a process that began back in 1991 when we first implemented the ‘taper section’ at our shows, where the fans were encouraged to bring their own gear to record the show, and then take home their very own bootleg of the concert they had just seen," said drummer Lars Ulrich. "This technology will enable our fans to get the best possible recording of the show, without having to hold a microphone in the air for the entire night!"
Metallica promises to play a greater variety of songs from their catalog than they have in the past, switching up the set list for each show. They just started announcing dates for the third leg of the tour, which will begin in August. The dates so far are: 8/16, St. Paul, MN; 8/19, Indianapolis; 8/20, Milwaukee; 8/22, Moline, IL; 8/24, Peoria, IL; 8/25, Ft. Wayne; 8/27, Chicago; 8/30, Ames, IA; 9/24, Columbus. Check out metallica.com for updates.
File-swap 'killer' grabs attention
Last modified: March 3, 2004, 4:00 AM PST
By John Borland
Staff Writer, CNET News.com
A new political battle is brewing over Net music swapping, focusing on a company that claims to be able to automatically identify copyrighted songs on networks like Kazaa and to block illegal downloads.
Los Gatos, Calif.-based Audible Magic has been making the rounds of Washington, D.C., legislative and regulatory offices for the last month, showing off technology it says can sit inside peer-to-peer software and automatically stop swaps of copyrighted music from artists such as Britney Spears or Outkast.
News.context
What's new:
Legislators are hearing a pitch from the record industry about new technology that could squelch music file swapping.
Bottom line:
Audible Magic says it can identify copyrighted songs and block illegal downloads. Its technology is still being tested and could yet prove unworkable, but limited demos are turning heads in legislative offices.
More stories on this topic
The company's technology is still being tested and could yet prove unworkable. But limited demonstrations have already turned some heads in legislative offices.
"It is definitely something that is interesting to people on (Capitol) Hill," said one senior congressional staffer who had seen the demonstration and requested anonymity. "We are open to all kinds of different solutions at this point. Having the technological ability to do this certainly opens up some opportunities."
Audible Magic has predictably become a protege of the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA), which has helped the company gain entree to official Washington circles. The group says Audible Magic's technology, or something like it, should be adopted by file-swapping companies if they are serious about not supporting widespread copyright infringement.
The RIAA's backing, and the month-long press tour, has given the technology new credibility in legislative, regulatory and university circles. After watching a demonstration at RIAA headquarters in late January, University of Rochester Provost Chuck Phelps said he instructed his technology staff to evaluate the technology for use on his campus.
The RIAA isn't pressing for legislation or enforced usage of Audible Magic's software, at least not yet. Indeed, in an election year, any serious congressional attention to the issue is unlikely. But peer-to-peer companies are keenly aware of the potential for political strong arming--and of the threat it poses to the world of file swapping.
Privacy advocates and file-swapping backers have been deeply critical of any technology that would enforce monitoring or blocking of file swapping or any other Internet service. They argue that filters could infringe on free speech and block technological innovation, all to serve the entertainment industry's relatively narrow interests.
Nevertheless, the vast popularity of file-swapping networks like Kazaa remains largely based on trades of copyrighted songs, videos and software, according to many Net analysts. Being forced to install song-stopping filters inside software such as Kazaa--much as a court required of Napster in its heyday--could severely disrupt the ability of file swappers to freely trade songs.
In past months, peer-to-peer executives including Sharman Networks' Nikki Hemming have repeatedly told legislators that it was technically impossible or infeasible to install adequate filtering systems on their networks. Now some are switching focus, saying that even if filtering is technically possible, mandating it would be a disastrous mistake.
Requiring filters "would amount to the anointment of a specific technology as the winner in what the (recording) industry has made a file-sharing war," said Adam Eisgrau, executive director of P2P United, a file-swapping company trade association. "It is time that (the entertainment industry) be politely told that theirs is not the only social and economic interest at stake."
P2P United members have not seen Audible Magic's technology, Eisgrau noted. His group sent letters to RIAA Chief Executive Officer Mitch Bainwol and Audible Magic earlier in the week asking for a demonstration.
In an interview with CNET News.com, Bainwol said he would be delighted to do so: "The peer-to-peer community has said they are serious about filtering. But they've said they can't filter. We're saying, well, the good news is that you can."
From Napster's death to Audible Magic
The idea of filtering file-swapping networks got its first test run in Napster's last days, when courts mandated that the company block trades of copyrighted songs with near-perfect accuracy. The company first tried to block key works, but that failed when users simply renamed their songs.
Later, it began blocking using audio "fingerprinting" technology supplied by partner Relatable, and the amount of material available through the service dropped from tens of millions of files to just a handful almost overnight. Napster closed its doors to the public not long afterwards.
Audible Magic's song-identifying technology is the product of a group of former Yamaha sound engineers, who originally created the software to help movie post-production studios search massive databases of sound effects such as footsteps or door slams. In the late 1990s, they joined forces with former Hewlett-Packard marketer Vance Ikezoye and his newly formed Audible Magic startup, and turned their attention to identifying digital media files such as songs.
The company's technology works by identifying "psycho-acoustical" properties--essentially the computer equivalent of listening to the song itself. That means that the identification procedure is flexible. A song might be compressed into a lower quality recording, or have a few seconds of silence taken out at the beginning or end, or be otherwise transformed, and the technology will still recognize it as the same song, the company says.
The identification technology has already won credibility, used by songwriters' and publishers' trade association SESAC to identify when songs are played on broadcast radio in order to collect royalties. Several CD pressing plants also use the technology to track what they're manufacturing and ensure that their customers aren't trying to create counterfeit discs.
But it has been the company's peer-to-peer-focused efforts that have now brought it squarely to the forefront of the copyright debates.
Audible Magic is offering two different versions of its technology, one focused on networks and one on file-swapping software itself.
For several years it has tested a network-based "appliance," which would sit inside an Internet service provider (ISP) or business network and monitor data traffic as it goes by. If it identifies a copyrighted song, the technology would stop the transfer in progress.
A test of that technology was held at the University of Wyoming last year, but was ended after students complained about privacy invasions. In response, Ikezoye offered a university-focused version that simply blocks the copyrighted songs, and does not link specific trades to specific computer users.
That's helped spur new interest in the technology, such as from the University of Rochester's Phelps, although announced customers are still few and far between.
Inside your software?
The company's main demonstration for the last several weeks has been a version built into a piece of open-source Gnutella software. Similarly, it could be built into any other popular file-swapping package, company CEO Ikezoye said.
In that software-based version, the technology watches what songs are being downloaded, and when it has enough data to make a match--usually about a third to half of the file--it uses the Net connection to call Audible Magic's database. If it finds a match with a copyrighted song, it stops the download midstream.
Similarly, when files are put into a shared folder, the demonstration software calls up the Audible Magic database. If it finds a match, it prevents the song from being shared with other people on the network.
That second version of the software has not been tested on a large scale. While it appeared to function well in a single-user demonstration, implementing it on a widespread basis, particularly in software such as Kazaa or Morpheus where tens of millions of search requests a day are made, could have unforeseen consequences.
Moreover, for the filtering to work on a large scale, Ikezoye said that pressure--probably through legislation--would have to be put on file-swapping companies, which would be unlikely to voluntarily adopt his technology universally.
"This implementation clearly requires the cooperation one way or another of the peer-to-peer vendors," Ikezoye said.
Audible Magic's technology is far from perfect, even if it works as demonstrated. It's most critical weakness is likely to be encrypted files and encrypted networks, which its audio recognition software can't break through. Nor is it difficult to imagine hackers creating "cracked" versions of file-swapping software that have the song-recognition technology broken or stripped out, if legislators were to mandate its use.
Audible Magic is not the only company seeking to build filters for file swapping. Napster creator Shawn Fanning's new company Snocap is working on similar technology, with an aim toward giving record companies and music studios a way to make money from peer-to-peer networks.
But the file-swapping controversies are today as much rhetoric and politics as they are technology, and the last few weeks may have quietly seen a change in the file-swapping debates.
"I've achieved my objective, which is to say our technology works," Ikezoye said. "It is interesting that the question has shifted from 'Is this possible?' to 'How should this be deployed?'"
Dig deeper:
OT Troops in Iraq get high-tech noisemaker to keep enemies away
Posted 3/3/2004 11:49 AM
By Michael P. Regan, Associated Press
NEW YORK -- U.S. soldiers in Iraq have new gear for dispersing hostile crowds and warding off potential enemy combatants. It blasts earsplitting noise in a directed beam.
The equipment, called a Long Range Acoustic Device, or LRAD, is a so-called "non-lethal weapon" developed after the 2000 attack on the USS Cole off Yemen as a way to keep operators of small boats from approaching U.S. warships.
The devices have been used on some U.S. ships since last summer as part of a suite of protection devices.
Now, the Army and Marines have added this auditory barrage dispenser to their arms ensembles. Troops in Fallujah, a center of insurgency west of Baghdad, and other areas of central Iraq in particular often deal with crowds in which lethal foes intermingle with non-hostile civilians.
The developer of the LRAD, American Technology Corp. of San Diego, recently got a $1.1 million contract from the U.S. Marine Corps to buy the gadgets for units deployed to Iraq. The Army also sent LRADs to Iraq to test on vehicles.
Some of the Iraq-bound devices will be used by members of the 1st Marine Expeditionary Force and the 3rd Marine Aircraft Wing, both recently deployed to the western province of Al Anbar, a largely barren, predominantly Sunni Muslim area.
Though not officially part of the military's Joint Non-Lethal Weapons Directorate, the 45-pound, dish-shaped device belongs to a developing arsenal of technologies intended not to kill but to deter.
Another such weapon, expected to be tested in the field soon, is the Active Denial System. It seeks to repel enemies with a painful energy beam.
Carl Gruenler, vice president of military and government operations for American Technology Corp., said LRADs are "in the beginnings of being used in Baghdad," though he said he lacked "initial feedback" on how they are working.
Dubbed "The Sound of Force Protection" in a company brochure, the devices can broadcast sound files containing warning messages. Or they can be used with electronic translating devices for what amounts to "narrowcasting."
If crowds or potential foes don't respond to the verbal messages, the sonic weapon, which measures 33 inches in diameter, can direct a high-pitched, piercing tone with a tight beam. Neither the LRAD's operators or others in the immediate area are affected.
The devices "place distance between the Marine and their threat, giving him/her more time to sort out a measured and appropriate response," Lt. Col. Susan Noel, force protection officer for the 1st Marine Expeditionary Force, said in an ATC statement announcing the contract.
Gruenler compares the LRAD's shrill tone to that of smoke detectors, only much louder. It can be as loud as about 150 decibels; smoke detectors are in the 80 to 90 decibel range.
"Inside 100 yards, you definitely don't want to be there," said Gruenler, adding that the device is recommended for a range of 300 yards or less.
Hearing experts say sound that loud and of that high a frequency -- about 2,100 to 3,100 hertz -- could be dangerous if someone were exposed to it long enough.
"That's a sensitive region for developing hearing loss," said Richard Salvi, director of the Center for Hearing and Deafness at the University at Buffalo. "The longer the duration, the more serious it is."
Gruenler concedes that permanent hearing damage is possible if someone were exposed to the sound for lengthy periods.
But he said the high-pitched tone is intended to only be used for a few seconds at a time.
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HP announces moves in digital rights management
Monday March 1, 11:58 pm ET
SAN FRANCISCO, March 1 (Reuters) - Hewlett-Packard Co. (NYSE:HPQ - News) said on Monday it had licensed digital content protection technology from chipmaker Intel Corp. (NasdaqNM:INTC - News) and developed copy protection technology with Philips PHG.AS PHG.N as the printer and computer maker seeks to stake out a strong position in the nascent arena of digital copyright protection.
Palo Alto, California-based HP said that it had licensed Intel's high-bandwidth digital content protection technology, which is designed to ensure that video cannot be intercepted and recorded as its travels between devices, such as between a personal computer and a TV display screen.
Felice Swapp, who heads up much of HP's digital rights management work, said that the Intel technology is invisible to consumers, and that it made more sense for HP to license that technology from Intel rather than to develop it itself and possibly create a competing standard.
In January at the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas, HP Chairman and Chief Executive Carly Fiorina's keynote focused on digital piracy, a hot-button issue.
Fiorina said at the time that this year all HP digital entertainment products would use software that honors the copyrights of various digital content.
"This is probably the first announcement that's come since CES that's trying to say what we're really doing here is to build on the vision that Carly laid out," Swapp said.
Fiorina wasn't the first high-tech executive to lay out such a vision, however.
As Napster turned the recording industry on its head, Apple Computer Inc. (NasdaqNM:AAPL - News) Chief Executive Steve Jobs ultimately persuaded all five major record labels to sign on to Apple's online music store, which is integrated with its popular iTunes digital music jukebox software.
Consumers can buy single songs on Apple's online music store for 99 cents each, and can legally download them onto up to three personal computers and onto as many of Apple's iPod digital music players as they like.
HP also said that the technology it and Philips developed will enable protected digital recordings of digital broadcast and cable television according to the rules adopted by the Federal Communications Commission (News - Websites) in November.
The FCC agreed to allow programmers to attach a code to digital broadcasts that would specify whether, if at all, a particular show could be copied or broadcast over the Internet.
HP and Philips said they had submitted their technology in the first round of filings to the FCC. The two companies said that their technology can be used with the DVD+R and +RW formats, which are among the most popular, and with other recording formats.
TI, M-Systems Team Up On Mobile Device
March 1, 2004 (4:40 p.m. EST)
TechWeb News
Texas Instruments has included support for M-Systems Mobile DiskOnChip flash disk in its OMAP 1710 application processor, the firms have announced.
Mobile DiskOnChip software drivers are integrated in the ROM code of the TI processor, paying the way for integration of NAND-based mobile storage in mobile devices that utilize the product.
“For the end users of feature phones and mobile multimedia applications, the combination of secure, high-performance, energy-efficient OMAP processors and Mobile DiskOnChip further enables the smooth performance of multimedia messaging service, video, email and MP3 playback.” Paul Werp, worldwide marketing for TI's OMAP platform, said in a statement.
The integrated support enables secure boot up and secured applications, the firms said last Thursday. The secure boot feature permits the authentication of OS before execution.
Portable music cuts the cord
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By Eliot Van Buskirk
Author of Burning Down the House
Senior editor, CNET Reviews
(February 25, 2004)
At CES last month, one of the biggest "aha" moments for me came when Rio showed me an update to its current Karma, with an MMC/SD slot that'll accept a Bluetooth or Wi-Fi card.
If this Rio Karma could talk, would it ask for Wi-Fi?
The first use for a wireless MP3 player is fairly obvious: transferring music without physically connecting the player to your computer. This change is certainly convenient, but the disappearance of a single wire is hardly revolutionary. If wireless connections become common on MP3 players, the sky is (literally) the limit in terms of where your music can come from.
Identification fixation
Since August 2003, British cell phone users have been identifying songs playing in any location by ringing up a service called Shazam and holding their mobiles toward the speakers for 30 seconds. According to reports I've heard, the service utilizes an acoustic recognition engine that compares the signal picked up by the cell phone's microphone to Shazam's (now) 1.7-million-song database, then spits out the correct artist and song title with remarkable accuracy in an SMS message sent seconds later to your cell phone.
If MP3 players sprout cellular connections, they'll be able to mimic this trick perfectly--but there's a way it could work now using today's technology. You could hear a song you want to identify, then record a 30-second sample through the internal mike usually reserved for voice recording. When you get home, you'd sync the player to your computer, which would upload the samples to an online acoustic identification database. Instead of an SMS message with the artist and title, you get the option to purchase the song you heard earlier and download it straight to your MP3 player.
Not into waving a portable around in public to record audio samples? Perhaps you'd prefer to sample the listening station, browse the racks of any record store, and scan the bar code of desired albums into your MP3 player (via an attachment similar to the device that Symbol Technologies used to sell for handhelds. Bypassing the cash register, you'd leave empty-handed but connect your player to your computer once you're home. After your software identified the song from the bar code, you'd download the sought-after albums or search for the lowest prices online.
Wireless fulfillment
If we add Wi-Fi to this whole scenario, things get even more interesting. Rather than waiting until you got home, imagine walking or driving within 300 feet (the range of Wi-Fi) of any record store and automatically purchasing the song you heard earlier that day. For that matter, skip the record store--a Wi-Fi hot spot could deliver the song just as easily, for less.
Following this trend to its logical conclusion, imagine setting up a wish list on your MP3 player, just as you would with P2P networks such as Soulseek. You'd be able to add songs to the wish list by entering them on your home computer, identifying songs using acoustic identification à la Shazam, or scanning bar codes à la Symbol.
"Say, do you like Yanni?"
Imagine that you've created a wish list and are walking down the street, when suddenly you feel your MP3 player vibrate an alert. Sure enough, one of the songs you were looking for just downloaded to your player because someone walking next to you was sharing the song through their MP3 player's Wi-Fi connection. Who knows? Maybe this could lead to some sort of real-world musical Friendster network, where compatible people would be automatically introduced if their music collections share similar artists.
If the RIAA thinks it's a tough gig monitoring every file-sharing network in the world now, just wait until millions of MP3 player users can trade songs just by ambling down the street or driving down the highway. After contemplating that scenario, perhaps the RIAA would be more likely to license content to services that are willing to cut the industry a slice of the pie before it crumbles under the weight of failed consumer expectation. I'm talking about centralized hot spots, Shazam-like services, musical Friendsters, and whatever other businesses surface around the inevitable convergence of portable music players and wireless technology. For instance, wouldn't it be nice to be able to send a message to that guy in the SUV who just cut you off and suggest that he listen to your copy of Jimi Hendrix's "Crosstown Traffic"?
Eliot Van Buskirk is a senior editor for CNET Reviews and the author of a new book called Burning Down the House: Ripping, Recording, Remixing, and More!
Can you two rocket scientists name any companies taking off in this stellar economy? I see a lot of repositioning of deck chairs but not a great deal of forward momentum. And if I'm not mistaken, the Chinese economy seems to be on quite a tear of late and has most of the Pacific Rim and much of the West sitting up and taking notice....
Subject: What a Day!!!
From Mediator
PostID 316643 On Saturday, February 21, 2004 (EST) at 5:02:44 AM
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Thank goodness the war is over. I am pleased to report that there is no fatal or serious casualties, only a handful of self-inflicted wounds. I hope all the warriors have a good night's rest.
Today, I happened to look at the history record of my EDIG portfolio and discovered that in my former post entitled SHAREHOLDERS MEETINGS, I had misstated the year of my initial purchase as 1999. Actually, I placed my purchase order in January 1998, against my stock broker's advice--that 'penny stocks' were too risky. I said that I would take full responsibility of the investment and recommeded for her to take a look at the company's product--a stamp-sized tape recorder. My common sense overcame the risk issue because I could clearly envision the future innovations and developments of that tiny item, by the company's engineers.
To date, 6 years has passed by, with many 'potential deals' come and go in the interim, creating many a roller-coaster-rides of excitements and disappointments, to say the least. In February 2004, e.Digital has not only more products in the consumers' market, but also earned certain degree of name recognition (FF said that they did not have to make cold calls any more--potential clients called them). This little company has come a long way and the shareholders should be proud of the management's enduring accomplishment.
In one of the responses to my SHAREHOLDERS MEETINGS post, some one wrote 'the Tao of investing' and it made sense. The word 'tao/dao' means Nature's Principle (let it run its eternal cyclical course). The main emphasis of the Dao philosophy is 'wu-wei', literally meaning 'non-action'. During the Spring-Autumn Period (770-476 BC) of the Chinese history, the land of China was divided and occupied by many feudal lords/states and wars were fought constantly amongst the lords. Watching how the ordinary people suffer, the author of Dao-Dejing advocated that whenever situations-kingdoms-whatever was placed in order, the kings/leaders ought not to take UNNECESSARY ACTIONS (wu-wei) to disturb the kingdom's balance and harmony. A loving leader ought not to over regulate, over tax or over punish his subjects, but rather, ought to leave his subjects alone, let them lead their own lives, do what they were best at--so that the common people could enjoy peace and life, and the kingdom could prosper and last.
Let's look at our situation here. Undeniably, e.Digital is a corporation set in order and motion. We, the stockholders are the 'king' because we are collectively the owner of e.Digital and the management is our 'kingdom'. If we want to see our 'kingdom' propser, we should apply wu-wei and let the kingdom rise to longevity. If we keep on disturbing (pressing unnecessary actions on to)the management's daily operation, according to Daoism, the company would not succumb. Here is your choice, Shareholders, what do you want?
I admit that I only have a very superficial understanding of Daism. For those who are interested in learning more, you can get the full text online by typing in Dao Dejing on the browser. The text is not long, containing only about 5,000 Chinese word counts (more in English).
Judge Bans Copying Software for DVDs
321 Studios is prohibited from making the products that bypass disc encryption.
By Jon Healey, Times Staff Writer
A federal judge has banned a popular line of computer programs used to copy DVD movies, ruling that they violated a controversial 1998 law against tools that pick the electronic locks on copyrighted works.
At the request of the major Hollywood studios, U.S. District Judge Susan Illston on Thursday ordered 321 Studios of St. Charles, Mo., to stop manufacturing or distributing products that circumvent the anti-piracy protections on DVDs.
The ban is scheduled to take effect late next week, but 321 President Robert H. Moore said the company hoped to continue selling its products pending an appeal.
"I really believe in the end this is a decision for the Supreme Court or Congress," Moore said.
The case was closely watched by entertainment and software companies, many of which increasingly depend on electronic locks to protect the goods they deliver on disc and online.
321 Studios has sold about 1 million copies in the U.S. of its DVD-copying programs, which retail for $50 to $120, Moore said. Although 321 promotes the programs as a way for people to make backup copies of the movies they own, they also can be used to make pirate copies of movies rented from a video store or borrowed from a library.
"The whole copyright industry has a stake in this," said attorney Evan R. Cox, a copyright law expert at Covington & Burling in San Francisco. He added that "the only way the judge could have found for 321 was to throw out" critical portions of the 1998 Digital Millennium Copyright Act.
The Hollywood studios argued that 321's products were illegal under the 1998 act because they circumvented the encryption on DVD movies. In particular, the software defeats the Contents Scramble System, or CSS, that the major studios use to deter DVD copying.
Attorneys for 321 and three technology advocacy groups contended that the software was legal because people who buy DVDs have a right to make backup copies. During arguments last year in San Francisco, the company's lawyers urged Illston to find that the law encroached on 321's free-speech rights and its customers' ability to make fair use of copyrighted movies.
Relying heavily on two earlier cases involving the Digital Millennium Copyright Act, Illston declared that the CSS-circumventing feature in many of 321's products was illegal and that the law did not unduly burden the company or its customers.
The judge sidestepped the question of whether people have a right to make backup copies of movies.
Cindy Cohn of the Electronic Frontier Foundation, a technology and civil liberties advocacy group that backed 321, said Congress did not intend to roll back consumers' rights to make copies when it passed the 1998 law.
"As the copyright holders get new technologies and produce things in new formats, consumers' fair-use rights should not be left behind," Cohn said. "Effectively, what the court has said is, consumers have less rights in technologically protected media than they had in other media. And now I think the question is properly put to Congress, 'Is that what you meant to do?' "
Jack Valenti, chief executive of the Motion Picture Assn. of America, said, "Companies have a responsibility to develop products that operate within the letter of the law and that do not expose their customers to illegal activities." Illston's ruling, he said, "reaffirmed … that those who seek to profit from the violation of the DMCA and copyright laws will not prevail."
Ittiam Media Technology to be Showcased at 3GSM World Congress in Cannes, France
High quality media capture, storage, playback and streaming seamlessly integrated on Texas Instruments' OMAP™-DM270 platform
Bangalore. February 19, 2004
Ittiam Systems today announced that the company's advanced media processing technology will be showcased in the 3GSM World Congress 04 being held in Cannes, France, from 23rd to 26th February. On display will be Ittiam's Media Album - a complete reference design offering high-quality media recording, storage, playback and streaming. It is a platform that can be customized for multiple end applications - handheld and mobile.
The Media Album is built on the programmable multi-media processor platform (OMAP™-DM270) from Texas Instruments Inc (TI). It can play MPEG4 movies at 30 frames per second at VGA resolution with MP3 or AAC audio in stereo. It can capture video at 30 frames per second at VGA resolution with ADPCM audio in stereo. The Media Album also has a photo-viewer and MP3 music player seamlessly integrated. The content music, video or image can either be stored in a built-in 20 Gb hard disk drive or removable compact flash cards. Beyond stored media, one of the differentiating features of the Media Album is its ability to play digital media that is streamed over LAN - Ethernet of Wireless -- making it one of the most advanced and versatile media machines available today. It is a complete reference design with Ethernet, Wireless LAN and USB 1.1 interface, multi function infrared remote control and even an infrared keyboard.
Ittiam's media portfolio with TI's OMAP-DM270 is well suited for integration into end solutions including mobile applications. Technology embedded in the reference design has been licensed to multiple device manufacturers and ODM companies in the U.S, Asia and Europe and end products are already in the market.
The Media Album will be showcased in the exhibit stall of Texas Instruments Inc. in 3GSM World Congress 04, Hall 2, Booth E-19.
About Ittiam
Ittiam Systems Private Limited, headquartered in Bangalore, is a technology product company singularly focussed on digital signal processing systems in media and communication. The company operates through its network of offices and representatives around the world. Ittiam's customers include Fortune 100 companies and are distributed across U.S., Europe, Japan and Asia. For more details, visit www.ittiam.com.
For further details, please contact:
Poornima Chikkananjaiah
20 : 20 MEDIA
Tel: +91-80-22998892/3
Email: poornima@2020india.com
The Death of Bluetooth: Intel Moves to Ultrawideband
Thu Feb 19, 1:18 PM ET Add Technology - Ziff Davis to My Yahoo!
Rob Enderle - eWEEK
At the Intel Developer Forum on Wednesday Intel announced the company was giving up on the deadlocked Ultrawideband IEEE task group and going it alone with a derivative offering they are calling Wireless USB. This initiative, for them, does everything that Bluetooth does and, effectively means that for PCs Bluetooth is all but dead.
Intel's history with Bluetooth, up until now, was solid. It was one of the major backers but the technology took years longer then expected to come to market. It's really never been accepted as a PC standard. Even Microsoft was slow to adopt it due to concerns about the standard. The company's Bluetooth keyboard and mouse were a disaster.
Bluetooth, which has been expanding in the cell phone market strongly, has been appearing on an increasing number of headsets, aftermarket automotive solutions, and recently became a dealer installed cradle option for some cars. Unfortunately, for the PC market, it may have simply taken too long to come to market. And now, based on this new product direction from Intel, it's all but dead.
Ultrawideband provides a substantial performance benefit over Bluetooth, and approaches the speeds of USB 2.0 and 1394. These faster connections are increasingly required by peripherals like the Apple iPod, digital cameras, and removable hard drives. This throughput, or the lack of it, is what apparently ended the Intel/Bluetooth honeymoon.
Click here to read more about ultrawideband news from IDF.
Another problem with Bluetooth is how difficult it is to use. Consumers often found it impossible to get two Bluetooth devices to talk to each other.
Intel's specification addresses the performance and usability shortcomings of Bluetooth. Intel expects ultrawideband will eliminate virtually all of the wires on the desktop.
Part of this design allows the solutions to look like USB 2.0 ports to the system. This commonality to an existing, accepted, specification creates a faster time to market for the related devices. By using the USB 2.0 specification Intel can also sidestep many of the software compatibility issues that other emerging connectivity solutions--like Bluetooth--experienced.
Read more here about Intel's new spec and its partner agreements.
Unfortunately Intel had to step away from the IEEE Ultrawideband working group to do this. I think this will be an increasing trend.
Microsoft and Intel are becoming increasingly frustrated with a number of standards-setting working groups that never seem to get anything done. When you get competitors to the table in these types of groups, they tend to fight rather than cooperate. As reported in November, the ultrawideband standards group remains deadlocked, with no hope in sight. Check out eWEEK.com's Wireless Topic Center at http://wireless.eweek.com for the latest news, views and analysis on wireless communication.
In the end, consumers could care less how difficult it is to get people to agree, they just want something that works. Going it alone was the right move for Intel to make.
If these working groups can't their act together, even more of the will be abandoned by their backers. No matter how well intended, you can't make money unless you can actually build and sell a product.
Another problem--we don't have wireless power yet. Some of these devices pull power off of a USB cable, which is easier to carry than the power brick. But until someone figures out how to do broadcast power, a truly wireless solution may never be possible. Powering them from a tether is ironic, considering that these devices are called "wireless."
Rob Enderle is the principal analyst for the Enderle Group, a company specializing in emerging personal technology.
Cornice lands $51M from VC, considers IPOBy Tom Locke
The Business Journals
Updated: 7:00 p.m. ET Feb. 15, 2004Longmont-based storage device maker Cornice Inc. is looking at roughly doubling its employment and is eyeing the possibility of an initial public offering within a year or two after raising $51 million in venture capital last month.
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Cornice already may have drawn the most venture capital any Colorado company will attract during 2004, if 2003 deals are any indication.
Cornice had 71 employees at the end of 2003 and plans to raise that number to 146 by the end of 2004, with most of the additions coming in Longmont, Cornice CFO Jeff Elberson said. Most of the new employees will be engineers and salespeople, including some sales additions in Asia, where offices are planned for Hong Kong and Taiwan.
Cornice was founded in August 2000. In June 2003, it started shipping its 1-inch, 1.5-gigabyte rotating magnetic storage device, which is embedded in consumer electronics devices such as MP3 music players. It has advantages in terms of shock resistance, battery usage, storage capacity and price, according to Elberson.
Despite its youth, Cornice has attracted some big-name customers and investors.
Its customers include Thomson, for its RCA Lyra Micro Jukebox; Digitalway, for its USB storage product; iRiver, for its MP3 player; and Rio Digital Audio, for its Rio Nitrus Urban and Rio Eigen Executive MP3 players.
The Rio Nitrus has been named one of the top three selling MP3 players, and "it's a testament to both Rio and Cornice," said Hector Marinez, a spokesman for Santa Clara, Calif.-based Rio.
"They've been a very good partner so far," Marinez said. He said the Cornice device fits a niche in the market, providing the right price and the right amount of storage -- up to 600 songs on the 1.5-gigabyte device.
He also said Cornice's latest round of financing raises its strength as a supplier. "Any time you're doing business with a supplier, you want to make sure they're healthy," he said.
Cornice's product has generated a resonance with well-known customers, and that's been a key factor in its ability to raise so much money and raise it so fast, Elberson said. Seasoned management at Cornice also helped win the confidence of venture capitalists, he said.
Cornice started working on the latest financing round last fall, he said, and it closed it in January. That's quite fast in a venture environment still known to be challenging, he said. "We were told by lots of folks that raising venture money in this market would be very tough."
Melissa Crane Guzy, managing director of San Bruno, Calif.-based VantagePoint Venture Partners and a Cornice board member, cited several reasons for investing in Cornice, including rising demand for the type of storage Cornice provides, its excellent management and engineers, and a product that provides lots of capacity at a reasonable price.
Guzy said an increase in production has been in planning for six to nine months, and some of the money from the $51 million round will be used for capital equipment at the SAE plant in Dong Guan, China, where Cornice outsources its manufacturing.
Thanks to the new financing, "we could add multiple lines faster," Guzy said. "There's a plan in place for the rest of this year."
VantagePoint was the largest single investor in this round, as well as the previous venture round, Guzy said, but she and Elberson declined to divulge the percentage of any investor's holdings. Elberson did say venture companies own a majority of the Cornice stock.
In the previous financing round, which had a second stage that closed in August 2002, Cornice raised $23 million in venture money and $3 million in money from other investors, including some individual angel investors, Elberson said. Prior to that, Cornice had raised more than $4 million at the end of 2001 and beginning of 2002 from strategic partners, angel investors and others, he said.
The total raised by Cornice is now $81.7 million, he said.
Among the investors in the latest round were previous investors CIBC Capital Partners, Nokia Venture Partners and VantagePoint, while new investors were BA Venture Partners, which is the venture arm of Bank of America, and GIC Special Investments Private Ltd.
While wireless phone giant Nokia is an investor in Nokia Venture Partners, the venture capital investment is a stand-alone decision and is not tied to whether Nokia itself is interested in Cornice for strategic reasons, Elberson said.
Right now the management at Cornice is focused on building its business, he said, but the next major financial move probably would be an initial public offering.
"That would be within the next 24 months," Elberson said. "It could be as soon as within the next 12 months."
Guzy said there are basically two exit possibilities for the venture investors: an IPO or a sale of Cornice.
Investment banking firms already have contacted the company about the possibility of an IPO, she said, but Cornice will look at both alternatives and consider market conditions in deciding which to choose.
"There's no pressure for us to do anything," she said.
© 2004 The Business Journals
For IPod, 6 Flavors of Flattery
By DAVID POGUE
Published: February 12, 2004
Stuart Goldenberg
EVEN this early in the campaign, the battle for the popular vote is really heating up; the incumbent is being challenged by lesser-known candidates from all over the country. The winner will be the candidate with the best balance of new ideas and appealing looks - and battery life.
I am referring, of course, to the battle for supremacy among portable music players.
So far, Apple's iPod is by far the best seller among high-capacity players. You can't stand in a public place without seeing a pair of those telltale white earbud cords pass by; for once in its life, Apple gets to find out what it's like to be Microsoft. The iPod's success has spawned an entire industry of iPod cases, iPod accessories, iPod software - and now, inevitably, iPod imitators.
The rivals come from electronics makers (Samsung) and from fellow computer makers (Dell, Gateway), as well as from veteran music-player makers (Rio, Creative Labs, iRiver).
Most have the familiar iPod ingredients: a screen, a tiny hard drive and a rechargeable battery, all packed into a rectangular case and accompanied by earbuds. Most come with jukebox software that loads your collection of music files - which you've either downloaded or "ripped" from music CD's - onto the player over a U.S.B. 2.0 cable.
The other notable feature of these competitors is a marketing message that's either "just like the iPod, only cheaper" or "just like the iPod, only better."
Now, you're a busy person, so here's the gist: most of these rivals are cheaper - usually $100 less. But "better" is another story. The iPod is still smaller, more attractive and more thoughtfully designed than any of the upstarts.
It's also much more than just a music player. The iPod can also display your calendar and address book, serve as a text reader and alarm clock, help you pass the time with a suite of games, and so on. And that's before you tap into the universe of add-on shareware programs. (One intriguing example is iSpeak It for the Mac, which converts any text file, Web page or Microsoft Word document into a spoken-word soundtrack, using synthesized voices.)
Even so, certain audiences will prefer the iPod alternatives. For many people these days, "cheaper" is better than "better." Maybe you crave this bell or that whistle that the iPod lacks - a built-in FM radio, say, or a built-in microphone. Or maybe your Windows PC doesn't have Windows 2000 or XP - a requirement for iTunes, the iPod's companion software. (The iPod works with both Mac and Windows; most of the rivals are Windows-only.)
Furthermore, if you want to shop at one of those $1-a-song music Web sites, buying an iPod pretty much limits you to Apple's iTunes music store. (The Apple store's AAC files play only on the iPod. The other stores, like Napster and Musicmatch, deliver WMA files that work on any player except the iPod.) Of course, that's like being "forced" to drive a Lexus or "limited" to staying at the Beverly Hills Four Seasons, but you get the point.
Finally, most of the iPods-in-training can run 13 to 16 hours per charge (manufacturers' estimates), compared with the iPod's eight. That may be important if you routinely commute from, say, New York to Tokyo, although bigger batteries add bulk.
If cost is your main concern, you'll find that the standout feature of Dell's cleanly designed, very easy-to-use DJ 15 player is its price: $250 for the 15-gigabyte model, $300 for the 20. For now, Dell is even offering an additional 10 percent off at dell.com. (The corresponding iPods cost $300 and $400.)
Unfortunately, the Dell feels half-baked, especially in comparison with the highly polished iPod. For example, it's the only player that falls silent when you try to fast-forward or rewind through a song. Incredibly, you can't make it play your entire music collection, beginning to end. And although it has a microphone for low-quality voice notes, the Dell offers no way to copy such recordings back to your PC for transcription or sending to friends. It's a feature in search of a purpose. (Dell says it will fix the latter two glitches later in a revamped player this March.)
Like the Dell, Gateway's 20-gigabyte DMP X20 ($300) is bigger and heavier than the iPod. It features the industry's biggest screen (2.5 inches diagonally); a microphone like the Dell's; and an FM radio, which is a logical and welcome enhancement to a music player. ("Yes, yes, I know 5,000 songs fit on here - but what am I supposed to listen to after that?")
The Gateway and the iPod are also the only players in this derby that can play digital "books on tape" from Audible.com.
But here again, some of these improvements over the iPod seem to have been designed more for the brochure than for the customer. Why on earth, for example, can't you record songs off the radio? (You can on the Samsung YP-910 GS player, and it's a great way to expand your music collection legally.) And to load up the Gateway, it's too bad you have to use plain old Windows Media Player, a clunky program not particularly suited to the task - and one with no integrated online music store.
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The Samsung ($300), by contrast, was designed to sync with the Napster 2.0 $1-a-song service. Unfortunately, the Napster jukebox software is no iTunes; it offers, for example, no way to "rip" your CD's into audio files for loading onto your player.
When it comes to bonus features, the Samsung gets an A for effort. It can memorize 44 FM stations as presets; record from the radio; and, when you attach the included antenna stick, it can even "broadcast'' its music to an unused FM frequency on your home or car stereo. (Alas, interference prevents this kind of transmitter from working very well, regardless of the player.)
Ultimately, though, the Samsung is just too eccentric. Its button layout is random and illogical, its plastic case feels cheap, and the large neon-blue lights that surround its control pad are just as tacky as those light-up frames people install on their license plates.
Speaking of vehicles, the Creative Labs Nomad Jukebox Zen Xtra is the sport-utility truck of MP3 players. At this moment, it's the only player available in a 60-gigabyte model ($400). That's enough to hold 900 hours of WMA-encoded music - an important point if you're selected for the first manned mission to Mars. (To make that prospect even more realistic, Creative Labs blessed this model with a removable battery, so you can pack a bunch of spares in your astro-luggage.)
Unfortunately, the Zen Xtra is truck-like in a bad way, too. At 4.4 by 3.0 by 0.9 inches and nearly half a pound, it fits in your hand like a romance novel dipped in lead. Yet for all that mass, it has no microphone, radio or Record button. And there's no Hold switch; to prevent the player from getting powered on accidentally in your purse or pocket, you have to burrow into a menu command.
Now, most of these machines fall short because their designers have tried to mimic the iPod without fully understanding its appeal. Two of the players, however, exhibit personalities and fresh approaches all their own.
One is the black metal-clad iPod-size iRiver iHP-i20. The price is the same as the iPod's ($400 for 20 gigabytes; a 40-gigabyte model costs $500). But you also get an FM radio, a superb built-in voice recorder (with a choice of recording quality and format), an external tie-clip-style mike and two line inputs for recording directly from, say, a CD player or tape deck. Like Apple, Dell, Gateway and Samsung, iRiver provides a wired remote that controls the player in your purse or pocket - but iRiver's remote has a little backlighted screen of its own that identifies the current song.
Any hard-drive-based player can double as an external hard drive for carrying everyday computer data around with you (photos, movies, e-mail, and so on), which gives it a huge advantage over other kinds of music players. The beauty of the iRiver (and the models from Apple, Samsung and Gateway) is that it shows up as a disk icon immediately when plugged into any PC. The other players require you to install special driver software first. Too bad if you've just arrived at the boardroom PC expecting to plug and play, say, your PowerPoint presentation.
The iRiver's crushing disappointment is that it was evidently designed by engineers, for engineers; its menus make the cockpit of a 767 look spartan. More alarming still, it comes with no jukebox software at all; you're expected to drag your music files onto it manually, in Windows Explorer. Techies will love this thing; mere mortals will be aghast.
Although the Rio Karma ($300 for 20 gigabytes) looks nothing like the iPod - it's a thick, brownie-like square - it comes the closest to recreating the iPod's magic. For example, Rio and Creative Labs are the only companies that bothered to duplicate what may be the single most defining and important feature of the iPod: auto-synching. When you connect the player to your PC, it updates itself to mirror the playlists and songs on your PC. That Dell, Gateway, Samsung and iRiver expect you to manage your music collection manually shows just how little they grasp the larger iPod concept.
To charge and load the Karma, you place it in an included docking station; like the iPod's dock, this one can also hook up to your home stereo when you're not on the go. The dock's Ethernet jack even lets you manage the Karma's contents from anywhere on your home or office network. There's no radio, microphone or other gadgetry-not even a remote. But as a dedicated music player, it's pure good Karma.
Apple could have been some character from Greek mythology: blessed with ingenious, culture-changing innovation yet cursed with seeing its ideas co-opted by rivals who wind up making all the money. In the iPod's case, though, none of the companies who lust for some of Apple's pie can deliver the elegance and convenience of Apple's music trinity: iPod, the iTunes software and the iTunes music store.
But if an iPod isn't for you, you could do worse than buying the Dell for its simplicity and economy, the iRiver for its super-geeky feature list or the Rio Karma for its excellent design and compact dimensions. In this election, at least, there can be more than one victor.
E-mail: Pogue@nytimes.com
Philips Unveils Hi-Speed USB On-the-Go
Dated: Tuesday, February 10 2004 @ 01:09 PM PST
Author: ByteEnable
SAN JOSE, Calif -- Royal Philips Electronics (NYSE:PHG)(AEX:PHI) has announced the industry's first available Hi-Speed Universal Serial Bus (USB) host controllers for embedded systems. The two new devices are the ISP1760 controller, a Hi-Speed USB host controller, and the ISP1761 controller, which is a single-chip Hi-Speed USB Host and Peripheral controller with USB On-the-Go (OTG) support.
They feature high throughput and low power consumption, enabling the best bandwidth offered in the USB 2.0 specification at 480 Megabits per second (Mbps). These new Hi-Speed USB controllers will change how people connect to information, entertainment and services more quickly and conveniently.
The new Philips ISP1760 host controller chip is designed for set-top boxes (STBs), digital televisions (DTVs), DVD recorders and other consumer products to create a high-speed USB connection to PC peripherals such as printers, hard disk drives, memory cards or scanners. This makes it convenient to quickly store and review digital content.
The single-chip ISP1761 controller includes Hi-Speed capability for both the device and host function. It is OTG-capable and provides for point-to-point communication between portable devices such as mobile handsets, personal digital assistants (PDAs), digital still cameras (DSCs), digital video cameras (DVCs) and MP3 players. For example, this makes it easy to transfer a digital camera image directly to a printer. In addition, the ISP1761 can establish itself as a USB host. This means information from a PC in the office could be downloaded onto an OTG-equipped PDA, then the PDA could be taken on the road and serve as the host to support printing, or music download to another device. This OTG capability revolutionizes mobile applications.
"Philips is the first to deliver high performance, Hi-Speed USB and Hi-Speed USB OTG solutions that will change the way people transfer information and digital content," said Dave Sroka, director of marketing at Philips Semiconductors. "Given the boom of connected consumer devices, with Philips' ISP176x family of USB solutions, we can transform PDAs, digital cameras or smartphones to be the center of connectivity."
Power consumption is especially important for portable devices. The ISP1761 family features a power-optimized architecture for low power consumption in both operating and suspend modes. A hybrid power-down mode allows the USB devices to be powered from both the USB cable and the system power supply. When this power reallocation is utilized, the power consumption of the ISP1761 or ISP1760 from the board supply is reduced by over 40 percent.
Pricing and Availability
The ISP1760 Hi-Speed host controller is priced at US $4.90 at quantities of 100,000 units, while the ISP1761 host/peripheral controller is priced at US $5.90 in quantities of 100,000 units. Both semiconductor solutions will be sampling in February 2004. The ISP176x Intel(R) XScale(R)/Linux reference kit will be available in Q1 2004 and the ISP176x PCI reference kit will be available in Q2 2004.
http://www.semiconductors.philips.com
Downloads: The Next Generation
FEBRUARY 16, 2004
Music merchants are trying new ways to make an honest buck off the Internet
After years of struggling with digital piracy, the music biz made big strides in coping with the Net in 2003. The major labels began licensing music to a bevy of legal download services, starting with the iTunes site Apple Computer Inc. (AAPL ) rolled out in April. Wide online availability, along with the threat of legal action against pirates, convinced music fans to buy over 30 million downloads last year. Advertisement
Yet innovation around music services is just getting started. From Microsoft Corp. (MSFT ) to a startup founded by Napster creator Shawn Fanning, companies are experimenting with ways of distributing and selling music that, over time, are headed for the mainstream. Some involve sophisticated technologies that could have a sweeping impact on how music is marketed and sold, while others are as simple as lower prices. Right now, the pricing at the nearly dozen major services, from Apple to Dell (DEL ), is identical at 99 cents a song and $9.99 an album. But Wal-Mart Stores Inc. (WMT ) is testing 88 cents downloads, which may pressure rivals to trim their prices, and upstart Shared Media Licensing Inc.'s Weed service is selling independent-label tunes for as low as 50 cents.
PLAY NOW, PAY LATER. Profound changes lie ahead. File sharing, the technology the old Napster used, is going legit. In December, Universal Music Group (V ) and Microsoft unveiled a joint effort, the Content Reference Forum, to develop technology to enable swapping of digital content. With CRF, people will trade music links, not files. When they click on a link, the system will determine what kind of PC or MP3 player the requester has, doing away with the hassle of incompatible copy-protection technologies. Then a fan could check out a song for free, say for a day or two, before deciding to buy it. "Innovative business models are going to be experimented with on the fly," says CRF Chairman Albhy Galuten, a former Universal executive. Fanning's startup, Snocap Inc., also is developing software that will let people swap music and pay for what they like.
A LONGER LISTEN. File sharing may also become a key way that Web users discover music. Universal and Microsoft are designing CRF to be used by other companies, and they may find strong demand. EMI Music is thinking about using file sharing in the next few years to promote its artists, including Lenny Kravitz and Radiohead. Ted Cohen, senior vice-president of digital distribution and development at EMI, says one option is to let fans who swap songs hear them a few times before making them pay up. "We aren't going to know what sticks unless we kick the tires on these models," he says.
The Net is opening up plenty of ways to reach a wider swath of audiences. By advertising that it gives musicians 50% of the purchase price of each album instead of the usual 6% to 12%, indie label Magnatune appeals to aficionados who think major labels rip off artists. And rather than dishing up the typical half-minute samples found at the more mainstream services, music e-tailer CD Baby and the acoustic specialist Signature Sounds Recordings give away long clips or even whole songs. While industry sales dropped last year, both upstarts are prospering.
Other startups are harnessing technology to help music lovers discover up-and-coming artists. Music e-tailer GarageBand.com uses listener ratings to pinpoint appealing bands from among the 200,000 independent musicians who post songs on its site. It's working with local radio stations and advertisers to market its musicians -- and 13 bands have signed with labels. "We're developing a new model that takes advantage of technology to do a better job of discovering and promoting music," says GarageBand.com CEO Ali Partovi.
Think today's services are hot? They soon may seem as tired as eight-tracks.
By Heather Green in New York
Yahoo composing music download plan
Last modified: February 3, 2004, 1:37 PM PST
By Jim Hu and John Borland
Staff Writer, CNET News.com
Yahoo, rethinking earlier plans, is quietly exploring ways to develop a music download service as archrivals Microsoft and America Online place bigger bets on digital song sales.
According to knowledgeable sources, Yahoo bought music software developer Mediacode in December to help create a digital jukebox and media player--the key components in many music download services. The Mediacode team includes two founding members of Nullsoft, which created the popular Winamp music player and is now owned by AOL.
What's new:
Yahoo is quietly exploring ways to develop a music download service to compete with Microsoft and America Online.
Bottom line:
Jumping into music downloads would be a switch from Yahoo's past music strategy, which has focused on streaming audio and video through Launch, a subsidiary that it bought for $12 million in 2001.
More stories on this topic
In addition, Yahoo also has begun kicking the tires of online music services as it rethinks its strategy, which hinges on streaming media, not downloads. For example, Yahoo has held discussions with Musicmatch, one of the largest Internet music services, in what could be a prelude to acquisition talks, according to sources familiar with the meetings.
Sources characterized the discussions as preliminary and said Yahoo has not yet made any offer. They added that Yahoo meets with companies often to discuss possible deals and has received inquiries in recent months from a handful of Web music services, including BuyMusic.com and Napster owner Roxio.
Yahoo declined to comment on any of these talks. "We do not seek to comment or speculate on market rumors," Yahoo spokeswoman Charlene English said.
Napster and BuyMusic also declined to comment. Musicmatch spokeswoman Jennifer Roberts would only say, "We talk to lots of companies, but we're just focused on running our business."
Jumping into music downloads would be a switch from Yahoo's past music strategy, which has focused on streaming audio and video through Launch, a subsidiary that it bought for $12 million in 2001. Yahoo also distributes Roxio's Napster music service, which lets customers buy music downloads and sign up for subscriptions.
Singing for their supper?
Launch depends on advertising to support a free version of its service, as well as subscription fees for a premium version. Yahoo does not report financial results for Launch, but sources familiar with the figures said the site is about break even.
Yahoo executives, including music division head and Launch co-founder Dave Goldberg, previously have disparaged music downloads as a money-losing business. Music-store companies have conceded that margins are slim to nonexistent, with sales consumed by licensing fees for record companies, delivery costs and credit card fees.
Few analysts expect music downloads to make money anytime soon. Apple Computer, whose iTunes Music Store dominates the market, makes its money on the sale of companion iPod music players and concedes the service is not yet profitable.
Still, many large companies, including Microsoft and Coca-Cola, now have plans to offer music downloads. America Online has also joined the game, taking a shortcut by bundling Apple's iTunes store with its online service. Even RealNetworks, which has bet on subscriptions through its Rhapsody product, recently launched a retail song store.
All of these companies argue they can't afford to stand still in a rapidly changing market where consumer demand is still being formed. If demand takes off, they are confident the services will become profitable. In the meantime, they can rely on music downloads as a "loss leader" to help sell related products, such as concert tickets, posters, T-shirts and even soft drinks.
Yahoo's management also is starting to see the value of a more comprehensive strategy, if only to defend against its own users defecting to rival offerings, sources said. "Theoretically, if you don't have it, they will go elsewhere," said a source familiar with Yahoo's plans.
Special report
Digital remix
The debut of Apple Computer's iTunes
music service adds to the crescendo
of an online revolution.
For months, music insiders have been expecting Yahoo to up the ante in its music bet, a move they say would change the dynamics of the industry. As one the most highly trafficked sites on the Web, Yahoo is better positioned than most to sell music services. In addition, Yahoo could sell music through partnerships with high-speed Internet access providers such as SBC Communications.
"Yahoo seems to be a real obvious major player in the space," said Jeff Cavins, chief executive of Loudeye, which builds music stores for other companies. "Digital music for Yahoo is a natural way to create incremental revenue and profit."
Yahoo has made several stabs in that direction. Last year the company explored ways for Gracenote, a music database provider, to build software that would let Yahoo customers buy and play back digital songs, sources said. But the partnership never bore fruit, so Yahoo turned to Mediacode.
Mediacode, led by former Nullsoft engineers Ian Rogers and Rob Lord, has created software that lets people access their media libraries from multiple PCs. For example, songs stored on a PC at home can be played at work.
Finding the right match
Although Yahoo acquired Mediacode's engineers to build its own player, the company could hedge its bets by acquiring existing technology.
Musicmatch has attracted more than 160,000 paying subscribers, and it already has secured licenses to hundreds of thousands of tracks owned by the major record labels.
Musicmatch traditionally has guarded its independence, and said it doesn't require a partnership to grow. Still, it has suffered some recent setbacks.
In October, Apple dropped Musicmatch as its software provider for Windows iPod owners, opting to create its own application instead. Since then, Hewlett-Packard also dropped Musicmatch and decided to bundle iTunes with its computers.
Musicmatch said HP provided a much smaller customer base than Dell, its main distributor. It also has partnered with Coca-Cola in the United Kingdom.
"We've demonstrated our ability to be successful as an independent," Chris Allen, Musicmatch's senior vice president of marketing and strategic planning, said in an interview last week. "Our intent is to march forward along those same lines."
Why 802.11 is underhyped
February 4, 2004, 10:30 AM PT
By J. William Gurley
"To the lights and towns below,
Faster than the speed of sound,
Faster than we thought we'd go..."
--Smashing Pumpkins, 1979
During the Internet bubble, John Doerr of Kleiner, Perkins, Caufield & Byers frequently declared that the Internet was in fact "underhyped."
He argued that despite the wild speculation and runaway stock prices, people generally failed to appreciate the significance of the first globally interconnected communications network. I am now prepared to make the same bold proclamation regarding the rise of the 802.11 communications standard, also known as Wi-Fi.
Despite all the press and the hype, I believe that 802.11 is remarkably underhyped, relative to the massive impact this seemingly simple standard will eventually have on the entire wireless communications sector.
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One clear lesson in the history of technology and business is that once an open standard gains critical mass, it is extremely hard to derail. The x86 computing architecture and the Ethernet networking standard are two salient examples of this truism. Once a single interoperable standard gains the acceptance of multiple vendors in a marketplace, a consumer bias toward compatibility and scale economics create an increasing-returns phenomenon that is nearly unassailable.
Open standards obtain a high "stickiness" factor with customers as a result of compatibility. Once customers invest in a standard, they are likely to purchase more and more supporting infrastructure. As their supporting infrastructure grows, their switching costs rise dramatically, with respect to competitive alternate architectures. Customers are no longer tied simply to the core technology but also to the numerous peripherals and applications on which they are now dependent. All these things make challenging an accepted open standard a very difficult exercise.
Favorable scale economics result from two key characteristics of open-standard architectures. First, when several companies support the same standard, the architecture benefits directly from the collective research and development efforts of all players in the marketplace. This applies to direct innovation with the standard as well as to an ever-growing community that builds peripherals and applications that reinforce the standard. The second reason open standards have a powerful economic advantage: High volumes lead to lower prices. Lower prices then increase the market for a technology, which in turn drives even higher volumes. The cycle then repeats, driving prices even lower and increasing usage.
These dynamics were unquestionably present in the last quarter-century evolution of the computing industry. When IBM introduced the x86-based personal computer in 1981, most analysts didn't know much about the usefulness of such an expensive and seemingly limited personal computer. Moreover, no one could have ever estimated that the processor inside that device would become a near universal standard throughout the entire computing industry.
And while many technologists would tell you that the x86 architecture is anything but elegant and certainly far from optimal, Intel recently shipped its billionth x86 processor. One clear lesson in the history of technology and business is that once an open standard gains critical mass, it is extremely hard to derail.
Along the way, many proprietary computing architectures have, as a result, faced obsolescence. There have also been many well-funded attempts to unseat the standard (remember PowerPC?)--all to date unsuccessful.
Founded in 1980 by Intel, DEC and Xerox, Ethernet has enjoyed a similar success story in the networking industry. Prior to the 1980s, most computer makers followed a vertically integrated strategy, and as a result, each had their own networking standard. However, as more and more vendors jumped on board the Ethernet bandwagon, each of those networking architectures slowly faded away.
While it started as a local-area network technology, today, Ethernet is being used in wide-area networks and even metro-area networks. What's more, it is now being used for voice and video, two applications never envisioned when the standard was introduced.
Simply put, 802.11 is to wireless communications what the x86 is to computing and what Ethernet is to networking. This "open-standard radio" is today supported by more than 115 vendors with more than 900 certified products. The collective R&D of Intel, Broadcom, Cisco Systems and Motorola, as well the entire venture capital community, will move this technology further and further along the price performance curve.
In five short years, a backwardly compatible 802.11g chip began to offer about 25 times the performance at about one-twentieth the price of the first-generation radios in this market. As before, these low price points are leading to increased market opportunities and lower and lower prices. Currently, 802.11 radios are a 50-million-unit-per-year market, but history suggests that this is merely the beginning.
With some 802.11 radio chips approaching $5 price points, Wi-Fi will likely be embedded in every electronic product under the sun. Simply put, 802.11 is to wireless communications what the x86 is to computing and what Ethernet is to networking.
This pervasiveness will impact the communications market in two remarkable ways. First, vendors that build supporting infrastructure and applications will come to assume that Wi-Fi is onboard, further entrenching the standard. Perhaps more importantly, as a client technology, 802.11 will increasingly be considered "free."
In the wireless communications world, the cost of client technology (sometimes referred to as CPE, for consumer premises equipment) typically has a huge impact on overall system economics and therefore adoption. With "free" CPE, 802.11 will have a distinct competitive economic advantage.
Three patterns emerged in previous open-standard architectures that are likely to play out in the open-standard radio market as well. First, numerous vendors underestimated the importance of backward compatibility. Second, vendors were amazed at the performance evolution of the key interoperable standard. Lastly, and as a result of the first two patterns, everyone underestimated the scope and pervasiveness the standard eventually encompassed.
Let's start with compatibility. It is quite clear today that one of the key advantages of the "Wintel" architecture is the huge investment customers have made in terms of software applications--and training to use them. Switching costs are massive. Therefore, projects such as OS/2 and PowerPC failed to gain real traction, despite arguable technical superiority. The same is true of competing networking standards such as Token Ring and FDDI.
These technologies, while also potentially technically superior, are simply too expensive to implement when you consider total cost of ownership. 802.11b is already being used in more than 50 million devices, and by next year, 50 million more will use it. That is a massive installed base of "free" clients that will represent a significant hurdle for any challenger. Ironically, this hurdle can even be an impediment for other open standards that lack customer momentum. Vendors pushing 802.11a and 802.16 will find this to be a significant challenge.
While 802.11b already enjoys quite impressive performance at 11Mbps, many companies building competitive offerings are quick to highlight the relative shortcomings of the technology. Cellular equipment providers will tell you that 802.11 cannot support mobility or voice. Ultrawideband, or UWB, chip manufacturers will tell you that 802.11 has "too much" range and not enough channels. 802.16, or WiMax, chip vendors will tell you that 802.11's range is too small. All these vendors are hazardously ignoring the potent impact on innovation of collective R&D investment.
802.11 will not sit still. Before you know it, the performance gap--especially on a value per dollar basis--will quickly narrow. The x86 processor has doubled its MIPS (million instructions per second) performance every 18 months. Ethernet performance has increased tenfold every three years. The same will happen with open-standard radio, and those that promote the weaknesses of the standard are merely writing the feature list for future innovation on top of the standard.
As a result of compatibility and superior price for performance, experts will continually be surprised by the increasing scope and application of open-standard radio. Many suggested that Bluetooth would occupy many of the sockets now owned by 802.11. Likewise, many vendors now believe that a new standard, UWB, is needed for wireless communications in consumer electronics.
However, system companies such as Linksys and chip companies such as Vixs are showing that these same applications can be tackled without abandoning the open-standard radio that already has momentum. Likewise, while some vendors will argue that 802.11 doesn't do enough to support roaming, mobility, voice or range, engineers across the globe are hard at work improving the standard to do just those things. Vocera, TeleSym and Meru have all added value to open-standard radio and are now deploying compelling voice solutions.
Make no mistake about it: 802.11, or one of its backwardly compatible descendants, will dominate the wireless communications sector over the next 10 years the same way the x86 architecture dominates computing and that Ethernet dominates networking. There will be numerous doubters and numerous challengers, but they will all succumb to the inescapable power of the first true open-standard radio. Resistance is futile. Moreover, 802.11 is indeed underhyped.
biography
J. William Gurley is a general partner at Benchmark Capital, a venture capital firm in Menlo Park, Calif.
Requiem for the Record Store
Sat Feb 7,10:08 AM ET Add Technology - washingtonpost.com to My Yahoo!
By David Segal, Washington Post Staff Writer
With a total stock of more than 85,000 albums, Manifest Discs & Tapes was a music lover's mecca in the North and South Carolina towns where it operated. And despite an industry-wide downturn in CD sales in recent years, all five Manifest stores were turning a decent profit right up until the end of 2003.
So there was shock all around when chain owner Carl Singmaster announced in late December that Manifest would close all locations and lay off all 100 of its employees. There were still plenty of consumers eager to browse the bins, Singmaster explained, but his company's prospects looked bleak and were getting bleaker.
"I felt like I needed to take this opportunity to exit," Singmaster said in a telephone interview. "Indies in the smaller markets face a very risky environment."
It's not just the indies, and it's not just the smaller markets. On Thursday the parent company of Tower Records, which has four stores in the Washington area and a few dozen more in major cities nationwide, was on the verge of filing for Chapter 11 bankruptcy, according to news reports, having failed to find a suitable buyer. In September, the bankrupt Wherehouse Entertainment chain was acquired by a company that promptly said it would close 35 under-performing stores. Mall chains such as Sam Goody are hurting, too.
As pop's superstars strut down the red carpet in Los Angeles tomorrow night for the Grammy Awards, there's something close to panic in the retail trenches of the music business. The record store is in serious trouble. Sales have been hammered by Internet piracy as well as competition from big-box retailers, such as Best Buy and Wal-Mart, which are two of the nation's leading music vendors. Online CD stores, such as Amazon.com, are gaining momentum, too -- 3 percent of the market in the most recent survey by the Recording Industry Association of America (news - web sites), up from zero eight years ago.
Now a new threat looms. The market for legally downloadable music is tiny today, but the success of Apple's iTunes online music store and the rush of rival services to the marketplace is expected to gobble up an ever-larger share of the pop music pie. A recent study by Forrester Research, which examines technology trends, predicts that in five years fully one-third of all music will be delivered through modems, and the CD itself will be passe, if not obsolete, in the years after. This isn't necessarily bad news for the record labels, but it could be lethal for brick-and-mortar stores.
"I tell retailers they need to get out of the plastic business," said Josh Bernoff, the Forrester analyst who wrote the report, titled "From Discs to Downloads." "Two-thirds of the people who currently download say that when it comes to music, it isn't important to them to hold a physical object. They're done with the CD. They just care about the songs."
If that's true, the album is doomed and the industry is headed back to its roots in the '40s and '50s, when the single was the most popular format. It's already moving that way. Last week, the punk trio Green Day released a cover of the rock classic "I Fought the Law" through a promotion advertised on the Super Bowl and available exclusively on iTunes. That's a peek at the future: Hear the song one minute, own it the next.
That's a transaction that doesn't require a record store, of course. As a precedent, consider the airline ticket. Thanks to online travel sites and the advent of ticketless travel, millions of flyers no longer think of tickets as physical objects that must be printed and brought to the airport. And that's been brutal for travel agencies: in the past three years, 30 percent of them have closed, according to Airlines Reporting Corp., which keeps tabs on the industry.
Plenty of stores like Manifest have surrendered, while others believe the end is inevitable, if not yet near.
"The fat lady is warming up, but she's not exactly singing," says Mike Dreese, who runs Newbury Comics, a music chain in Massachusetts. "We're five to seven years from a complete meltdown. The only question is whether our death is in seven years or eight. Everybody's lights are out in 10."
This isn't the first time the death knell has been sounded for a segment of the real-world retail market. Bookstores were supposedly doomed by Amazon a few years ago, and by e-books after that, and yet there are still plenty of Borders stores and Barnes & Nobles -- in part because they started selling CDs -- and even independent bookshops around. People like getting out of their homes, touching the merchandise and mingling more than a lot of tech-enamored Web experts predicted.
Furthermore, most record retailers, Dreese included, aren't going quietly. Many are going loudly, by inviting bands for in-store performances that draw customers. Others are diversifying into other product categories, stocking comic books, posters and clothing lines. Others are getting into DVDs of every kind, including music, television shows and movies.
"The music store of the future will have to be an arcade," says Roy Trakin, editor of Hits magazine, a music industry tip sheet. "A place where you can try out things, grab legal downloads, see performances."
Retailers are also scrambling for a seat at the digital download table. A consortium of the biggest players -- including Virgin, Tower and FYE -- will launch their own downloadable music stores through a technology company they jointly invested in, called Echo. The idea is that Echo will allow the stores to split the cost of building a downloadable sales infrastructure, then handle transactions and downloads on separately branded Web sites.
"Our members do $5 billion worth of business now," says Echo's president, Dan Hart. "The question is, how do you leverage those assets?"
Virgin is now taking its first tentative steps into the downloadable market. Over the Christmas holiday, the company revamped its San Francisco store by adding something it calls Mega Play, a system that allows customers to listen to any album in the store. By June, says company CEO Glen Ward, the system will offer song-at-a-time downloads for portable MP3 players, and eventually there will be frequent-buyer cards that allow repeat customers to build up credits for free downloads.
"There will remain a place for the physical product," Ward predicts. "A good retailer can help people figure out what is new and what is recommended. But we'll offer the chance to buy anywhere people want to buy -- from the home, the office or in a store."
The trouble is that record stores are up against companies that can consistently beat them on price. Best Buy and Wal-Mart often sell new CDs a dollar or two below wholesale prices, using the lure of the new Sheryl Crow album, for instance, to bring customers to the stores and sell them something else, like a high-margin computer or a washing machine. Likewise, at 99 cents per song, Apple is actually losing money on each track it sells. It earns the money back, and then some, by selling iPods, which start at $249.
It's hard to beat rivals who consider music a loss leader, especially given recent trends. CD sales were down more than 8 percent, year over year, in 2002 and dropped another 2 percent in 2003. The most encouraging sign of relief arrived last month, when Nielsen SoundScan reported that sales figures for January were up 10 percent over the same month last year. The uptick might reflect a rebound in the economy, store owners say, or it could be the fruits of the Recording Industry Association of America's high-profile lawsuits against online pirates, which might have scared many people straight. Or it might be an aberration.
Regardless, many in the business blame not just the fans of file-swapping services such as Kazaa for their current woes -- they blame the labels, too.
The rise and fall of Manifest tells the story. Singmaster opened his first store 19 years ago, and since then has often been confounded by the labels' addiction to the album format. It requires fans to pay around $15.99 for, say, a 12-song disc that might have only a couple of tunes they'd like to hear. The single, once the mainstay of the record business, was getting scant attention from the labels. Eventually, as the public demand for a la carte, downloadable music became clearer, owners like Singmaster had a hard time getting in on the action.
"We said, 'Just give us access to anything that is available online,' " Singmaster says. "We'll give you 69 cents a song, just like Apple does. Just let us burn a physical CD, and we'll sell it."
Manifest finally signed a deal for a $3,000 computer system called a Starbox, which allowed customers to burn songs onto a CD, but, under the terms of a licensing agreement, prohibited staff from burning discs or creating compilations on their own. It was as though Manifest employees were teaching every customer how to make a doughnut but couldn't bake any themselves.
"Can you imagine if there was tremendous consumer demand for an 18-ounce Pepsi and we told Pepsi about this demand?" Singmaster says. "How long do you think it'd be before Pepsi started selling an 18-ounce Pepsi to anyone, anywhere? The record industry has created all these barriers, and those barriers have alienated consumers."
The downloadable music system is erecting new barriers, he says. He couldn't offer all the tracks his customers were requesting: four songs that John Mayer released exclusively through iTunes, four Johnny Cash tunes released through the same service. Then there are the deals that labels are cutting with big-box retailers, such as a Rolling Stones DVD released last year that was sold only through Best Buy. That so infuriated some store owners that they pulled all Stones albums from their inventory.
Manifest's sales sank 30 percent in the past three years, causing Singmaster to close two of the seven stores he then owned. Business at one of those, in Clemson, S.C., dried up almost overnight when the university there installed broadband Internet connections in dorms, Singmaster says.
"You can tell me all that online business went to Amazon, but I'd like to see the receipts," he says.
The five stores remaining were getting weaker but still turning a profit when, in December, Singmaster's leases were up for renewal. He decided to jump before he was pushed. He eventually found buyers for all but one of the stores, thanks in part to local newspaper coverage of the closing. Once he closes those deals, he'll be looking for a new line of work.
"I have no idea what I'll do next," he says. "I really don't have another plan."
Ad Opposing Online Music Piracy to Debut
24 minutes ago
By ALEX VEIGA, AP Business Writer
LOS ANGELES - The organization best known for bestowing accolades on the music industry at its Grammy Awards will begin airing ads discouraging online music piracy with the awards show's Sunday broadcast.
The Recording Academy hopes the TV and radio spots will drive viewers to a Web site that features artists discussing the impact they say online piracy has on their business.
The downloading and sharing of songs via the Internet is blamed for declines in music sales that have reduced profits for record companies and royalties for artists.
"People still do not realize why it's illegal," Recording Academy President Neil Portnow said.
The television ad, to debut during Sunday night's Grammy broadcast, depicts a teenager downloading a song from the Internet while a crowd dances inside a nightclub.
When the teen completes transferring the song file to her computer, the music and the lights at the club suddenly turn off, leaving clubgoers confused over who pulled the plug on their fun.
The ad closes on the Web address for the organization's information site.
The radio spot asks the listener, "Wouldn't it be great if everything were free? Music's free? Or is it?"
The Recording Academy's campaign comes almost a year after the Recording Industry Association of America (news - web sites), the industry's trade group, announced it would take legal action against people suspected of swapping music online. The RIAA has sued hundreds of people since September.
Portnow declined to say how much the Recording Academy spent on the campaign, which is scheduled to run through the end of the year. He said broadcast stations will run the ads as public service announcements.
_____
On the Net:
What's The Download?: http://www.whatsthedownload.com
Sensors bring inertia to cell phones, PDAs
By Charles J. Murray
EE Times
September 23, 2003 (1:32 p.m. ET)
Just as consumers begin to grow accustomed to the idea of cell phone-cameras, engineers from STMicroelectronics say they've spotted another new handheld trend on the horizon.
Inexpensive inertial sensors based on micro-electromechanical systems (MEMS) technology could soon surface in handheld devices, such as cellular phones, personal digital assistants and electronic games. There, they'd serve as a human-machine interface of sorts.
"Instead of using a button, you could scroll north-south or east-west simply by inclining or rotating your handheld device," said Bruno Murari, research and development director for the Telecommunications, Peripherals, and Automotive Groups at STMicroelectronics.
Desirable inertia
The inertial sensors, which are essentially three-axis accelerometers, are believed to possess the proper size, cost-effectiveness and power drain to make them desirable for such applications.
STMicroelectronics engineers say the sensors could be used in conjunction with microprocessors for more complex applications, or could be employed as simple output devices for applications where required costs are low.
"We believe that motion could become for handheld devices what the mouse and icon are for personal computers," Murari said.
"If that's the case," he added, "these sensors could take off in very high volume."
Digital rights go mobile
By Junko Yoshida
EE Times
Feb 06, 2004
PARIS — Venturing onto a landscape already scarred by failed efforts, a mobile-industry organization last week introduced revised technical specifications and a business and legal framework for a digital-rights management and copy-protection scheme.
Unlike previous DRM solutions, the Open Mobile Alliance's version 2.0 specification is an open standard that OMA said can be applied to a range of devices and services. Systems implementing the scheme could appear by the end of the year.
OMA said that it expects its DRM spec to have broader appeal than proprietary solutions and to be applied to the audio, video and wireless application categories, none of which has a dominant DRM scheme today.
By defining a single DRM for multiple devices, providers and markets, OMA is walking a trail blazed by the Secure Digital Music Initiative but will have to hack back the overgrowth that has closed in since the retreat of SDMI, which remains on official hiatus. OMA hopes to succeed where earlier efforts have failed by untangling the conflicting interests that have stalled DRM's adoption and enabling the more open exchange of digital content.
Although some greeted OMA's approach with skepticism, others said it is offering a legitimate platform to which additional technical layers can be added to support applications beyond wireless. In conjunction with OMA's release of DRM version 2.0 last week, the mobile industry announced a separate entity called the Content Management License Administrator, formed to implement and build a business framework for the OMA spec. Participating in the CMLA announcement last week were Intel, mmO2, Nokia, Panasonic, RealNetworks, Samsung and Warner Bros.
OMA's digital-rights management scheme, combined with CMLA's efforts to enforce compliance and robustness rules for DRM implementations, will let consumers download music or video clips. The user could pay once for certain content and then play the content back on any registered device. The initiative makes the DRM applicable to various device categories: "There is nothing in the spec that ties [it exclusively] to the mobile environment," said Gary Mittelstaedt, business development manager for the corporate technology group at Intel Corp.
Seppo Aaltonen, director of wireless-technology marketing at Nokia Technology, said the version 2.0 DRM scheme can be used by online media service companies, PC software vendors and mobile operators on such gear as cell phones, PDAs, PCs, MP3 players, jukeboxes and Wi-Fi devices.
Handsets' multimedia capabilities and the bandwidth of today's cellular networks are still so limited as to make the mobile industry an unlikely candidate for breaking the digital-media logjam. But the industry's motivation is clear.
Nokia, for example, doesn't want its handsets stuck with a proprietary DRM tied to a specific service, which is the business model common to many MP3 players today.
Juha-Pekka Sipponen, the director of media player applications at Nokia Mobile, said the mobile-industry culture historically has promoted open standards. But while industry standards exist for music compression, video compression and file formats, "DRM has been a missing link," Sipponen said.
Unlike previous industry efforts, the mobile industry's DRM initiative separates the development of the DRM spec (OMA's task) from the construction of the business and legal framework (CMLA's domain). Intel's Mittelstaedt said CMLA is responsible for providing compliance and robustness rules for the implementation of an open DRM standard. With CMLA certification of OMA DRM-enabled devices, content and rights holders can rest assured that devices are adequately implemented before releasing premium content.
The CMLA will also manage and distribute keys, thus offering a secure and renewable system for devices, services and content rights in the market.
Further, CMLA will create legal agreements that will "stipulate obligations" for device manufacturers, service providers and content providers, said Mittelstaedt. That will eliminate the need to draft "costly multilateral legal agreements" from the ground up, he said.
According to Mittelstaedt, both OMA and CMLA are advancing their work rapidly. CMLA intends to release standard legal agreements for various industries in the second quarter; the key-delivery mechanism is expected to be operational by year's end. If that timetable sticks, vendors should be able to launch compliant devices by Christmas.
Content owners and device manufacturers have said in the past that they have been loath to release digital content not because of a lack of security technologies, but because of the absence of a viable business model or legal framework to enforce copy-protection schemes. Given the model that combines OMA's version 2.0 spec with CMLA's efforts, "we can now focus on delivering valuable content to users, rather than fighting battles over technology layers," Nokia's Aaltonen said.
He said the version 2.0 spec features several evolutionary improvements over OMA's version 1.0, released in November 2002, including "stronger encryption for future mobile business, support for users to register multiple devices and a DRM that works in cross-domains, including the mobile environment and fixed Internet connection on a PC."
The revised spec contains a client component to provide a piracy-control mechanism via the mobile network or via local connections. Basic features include "forward lock," a simple mechanism that prevents content from leaving the phone, and "combined delivery," which adds further usage rights or restrictions to the content — allowing consumers to use it only once or only for a week, for example. The spec also allows "separate delivery," under which content is delivered as encrypted files, separately from the usage rights. That could allow a superdistribution model in which DRM-protected content could be sent from phone to phone. The receiver of the content could then acquire a "license" to preview or buy the content. Not everybody is convinced that the mobile industry can succeed in breaking the digital-media impasse.
Michael Paxton, senior industry analyst at In-Stat/ MDR, described OMA's DRM scheme as "an extremely small piece that is targeted at a market that really is still under development." Pointing out that "the real challenges and controversies for DRM revolve around the music and motion-picture industries, not the wireless-handset industry," Paxton said, "I guess you can call that either great foresight or astute sidestepping."
OMA's and CMLA's "biggest challenge will still be signing deals with the content owners about compensation for access to their proprietary content," Paxton said. "It's nice to see the tech industry forming these groups that are focusing on DRM issues, but what does the content development community — Disney, Viacom, etc. — really think about OMA? Unknown."
In contrast, Richard Doherty, director of The Envisioneering Group research and consulting firm, called the mobile industry's DRM efforts "much more focused than SDMI.
"It's open," Doherty said. "It's multivendor DRM. It's hard to beat."
Not even OMA promoters are claiming a one-size-fits-all scenario for DRM. "There is nothing exclusive about this," said Intel's Mittelstaedt. "Other potential applications may need another DRM." 'Clear, standard-based model'
Only in time will the success of the mobile industry's crusade be known, but Mittelstaedt asserted that the industry is "making efforts to create one clear, standard- based DRM model that can be substantially useful to a broad set of application needs."
Although applications such as video time shifting for DVD recorders and hard drives may not initially fall within the scope of OMA's DRM initiative, consultant Doherty said that "conditional and time-sensitive DRMs will nicely layer with this effort." He called the OMA's DRM spec a "follow me" effort: Although applicable to handheld devices, "it would also apply to room-to-room and to watching content halfway around the world from my own server or others' servers," he said.
Some observers suggested that by moving fast to develop an open solution, the mobile industry dodged a scenario under which "Microsoft could jam the Windows Media DRM down their throats," as Paxton of In-Stat/MDR put it. Microsoft is an OMA member but is not a part of CMLA.
Polaroid's Audio Focus
LAS VEGAS— Digital Media Group of Boston expanded its Polaroid line of MP3 music portables at CES to include models incorporating 1-inch and 1.8-inch hard disk drives (HDDs). An existing 2.5-inch HDD model in 20GB, 30GB and 40GB versions includes built-in MP3 encoder and decoder, playback of WMA files protected by WMA's digital-rights-management (DRM) technology, FM tuner and voice recorder. Additional details were unavailable.
I ask you...can Westinghouse be far behind???
FISH Swims Into Flash Format Wars
By Greg Scoblete
TWICE
2/5/2004 10:24:00 AM
Broomfield, Colo. — The Universal Transportable Memory Association (UTMA) announced the creation of the latest in a long line of flash media formats designed for use in an array of consumer electronics devices.
The format, called FISH memory (Flash Internal Semiconductor Hard drive) is essentially a miniature USB flash drive designed to fit inside electronic devices. According to UTMA, the card is smaller than an SD card and narrower than an xD-Picture Card. It will plug directly into any USB host port like a typical USB flash drive, and uses USB 2.0 connectivity for fast downloads.
To date the format’s backers, and UTMA members, are shrouded in contractual secrecy. According to a UTMA spokesman, at least two flash memory manufacturers are onboard to produce the card – which should be available 'soon' in capacities up to 2GB. UTMA members include 'camera suppliers, PC suppliers, PDA suppliers, car and home audio suppliers, personal audio player suppliers and photo kiosk suppliers,' among others, according to the group.
Products incorporating FISH memory are expected to be on store shelves by Christmas, the spokesman said.
The goal behind FISH is to make a single flash memory card standard, replacing the multiplicity of formats currently clogging the market, the spokesman said. Thanks to its USB connectivity, the card doesn’t need a reader or cables to transfer data to a PC.
Wherever JetBlue goes, goodies follow
Big airlines fight back with free flights, bonus miles
By Chris McGinnis
CNN Headline News
Tuesday, January 27, 2004 Posted: 10:29 AM EST (1529 GMT)
While the big airlines are engaged in a brutal fight with JetBlue, travelers end up winning -- with lower fares and a slew of extra benefits.
(CNN) -- By now everyone knows that JetBlue is the darling of the travel business. People love to fly JetBlue and tell all their friends they should do the same; travel writers love to write about JetBlue because it is such a great story.
But other airlines don't feel the same way about JetBlue because it is forcing them to change -- or die.
Free worldwide ticket
When JetBlue enters a market, fares plummet and entrenched airlines panic. For example, JetBlue entered the Boston market this month with a bang, offering introductory fares as low as $69-$79 each way to cities in Florida and California. JetBlue has also announced that it is looking to add flights from New York's popular LaGuardia airport (in addition to its hub at Kennedy.)
You can bet that the big guys are not sitting idly by.
In addition to matching JetBlue's $79 fares, Delta and American are making a stunning offer to keep their New York and Boston customers away from JetBlue. Their bait? Buy just two round trips between Boston and New York to a handful of Florida or California cities, and you get a free roundtrip anywhere they fly -- in the world!
That means that two weekend trips on Delta or American between New York and Florida this winter could net you a free round trip from New York or Boston to Athens, or Buenos Aires or Tokyo. Not bad!
But keep in mind that Delta and American are going to make it difficult to actually use those award tickets. They are capacity controlled, which means that there will be few opportunities to use them to fly to desirable destinations. Plus, travel is forbidden on or around most major holidays.
Triple miles
Something similar happened when JetBlue announced that it would offer just three daily non-stop flights between Atlanta and Long Beach, California last summer. Delta fought back mightily.
What's interesting is that Delta didn't even serve Long Beach from its Atlanta hub. Nonetheless, it matched JetBlue's introductory one-way fares of just $99 from Atlanta to airports throughout the LA basin -- LAX, Ontario and Orange County. Not only that, but it offered triple miles to members of its SkyMiles program flying the routes -- that's almost 20,000 miles per round trip! (Keep in mind that it only takes 25,000 miles to earn a free round trip on Delta.)
In the end, Delta won its fight with JetBlue, which exited the market in December. But Delta had to give away the store to do so.
Wannabes
As a result of the enormous success of JetBlue, we now have Delta's SONG, which attempts to offer a similar mix of low fares and high hip factor on flights from northeastern cities to Florida. Soon, United will launch TED, a wannabe hip low-fare airline-within-an-airline in Denver.
Even low-fare giant Southwest Airlines has had to sit up and pay attention. For example, the ever-frugal carrier has never offered any in-flight entertainment other than the antics of its flight attendants. But now that it's competing with JetBlue, Southwest says that it is studying its entertainment options. AirTran, a similarly frugal low-fare carrier, just announced it would add XM satellite radio with over 100 channels of programming to seatbacks this summer.
None of this would have happened were it not for JetBlue.
Travelers benefit
So, while the big airlines are engaged in a brutal fight with JetBlue, travelers end up winning -- with lower fares and a slew of extra benefits. Stay tuned. JetBlue has a lot of growing to do.
To keep Opportunity on track, engineers have begun actively managing the files stored in its flash memory, said Jim Erickson, a mission manager.
Spirit was crippled after its random-access memory proved inadequate to manage the rover's flash memory, packed with unnecessary files that had piled up since the spacecraft's launch.
Tricky computer virus causes global epidemic
14:10 27 January 04
NewScientist.com news service
A computer virus disguised as a text file attached to a technical email has spread to thousands of computer systems worldwide since appearing on Monday.
The speed of its spread makes the virus - variously dubbed MyDoom, Novarg and MiMail.R - one of the fastest moving ever seen. UK-based email filtering firm MessageLabs says it saw 1.2 million copies pass through its systems between 1300 GMT Monday and 0900 GMT on Tuesday.
The deluge of extra email created by the virus caused disruption to some parts of the internet on Monday evening, according to US internet monitoring firm Keynote Systems.
MyDoom arrives in the guise of a text file attached to an email alert. The mail contains one of a number of messages encouraging the user to open the attachment. One says: "The message cannot be represented in 7-bit ASCII encoding and has been sent as a binary attachment." Another warns: "Mail transaction failed. Partial message is available."
Experts say even computer users who are wary of opening suspicious attachments may have been duped by the technical packaging of the virus.
"MyDoom is unlike many other mass-mailing worms we have seen in the past," says Graham Cluley, at UK anti-virus company Sophos. "It does not try to seduce users into opening the attachment by offering sexy pictures of celebrities or private messages."
Arsenal of tricks
Opening the attachment runs the viral program, unleashing its arsenal of tricks. First it emails itself to all the addresses in the victim's address book, either as the fake text file or a compressed zip file. The latter may be an effort to evade corporate email filters that block executable files.
It also attempts to spread via the popular file-sharing network Kazaa, if this installed on the victim's machine. The virus copies itself to the Kazaa directory disguised as a copy of a popular computer application, such as Microsoft's Office. Any computer user downloading the file and running it would become infected.
Aside from attempts to spread itself, the virus places a hidden program on infected machines that would allow a malicious hacker to control the computer remotely. The hidden program is also set to launch an attack against the web site belonging to US computer company SCO on 1 February. Thousands of infected computers working in unison could overload the site and make it inaccessible to web browsers.
SCO has incurred the anger of computer enthusiasts who support the free operating system Linux by alleging that important Linux system code is covered by its copyrights. SCO has demanded royalties from both companies and individuals using the community-developed operating system.
The final trick deployed by the virus is a key-logging program. This records a user's keyboard strokes and could be used to harvest passwords and credit card information.
Subscribe to New Scientist for more news and features
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For more related stories
search the print edition Archive
Weblinks
MyDoom, Symantec
MessageLabs
Sophos
SCO
Response time
Keynote Systems, which monitors the performance of the internet, reported that the surge of email churned out by MyDoom caused response times for numerous high profile web sites to rise from two to four seconds on Monday evening.
As the clean-up continues, anti-virus companies have also begun trying to trace the outbreak. MessageLabs says the first infected mail to come through its network originated from Russia.
MyDoom was not the only virus to harass computer users on Monday. Another one, called Dumaru, was seen spreading with more limited success. This virus also installs a covert program, which searches for PayPal or e-Gold account information and transmits this information back to its creator.
Will Knight
I thought she drove his car off the bridge and he was at a party all night.
You don't know Ted?
Published: Monday, January 26, 2004
Come Feb. 12 you will, as United Airlines' low-fare subsidiary takes to the air, thanks in large part to the efforts of Everett-based Northwest Aerospace Technologies.
By Bryan Corliss
Herald Writer
The work done by a small Everett company will have a lot to do with whether the world's largest airline succeeds in emerging from bankruptcy.
When United Airlines' new low-fare unit launches next month, it will do so with planes modified to designs created by the engineers at Northwest Aerospace Technologies.
The parts kits that mechanics will use when they convert the planes for the new airline -- called Ted -- will come from NAT's warehouse on Hewitt Avenue.
The new Ted planes even will sport a paint scheme developed by a designer working for the Everett company.
President Paul Sobotta jokes that the work that his company does is like packing up all the pieces for a barbecue kit. "If you're one screw short, you can't put the barbecue together."
But in this case, the kit involves 48 different sub-kits, each containing anywhere from a couple to a couple dozen parts. Each is packed with a set of drawings and detailed instructions on how to install the parts, and they're packed in a way so that when the United Airlines mechanics open the shipping crates, the first things they see are the first parts they'll need to install.
The goal is to simplify things for the installers "so the actual time spent modifying the aircraft is kept to a minimum," said Sobotta, standing next to crates partly filled with air hoses, window panels, new luggage bins and stick-on "fasten seat belt" placards. "We don't just stuff things in a box."
The airline will start the service from its hub in Denver on Feb. 12. It plans to have a fleet of 40 converted Airbus A320s to use on Ted routes in June.
United mechanics were expected to finish converting the first Ted jet last week. Northwest Aerospace Technologies today will ship the kits needed to overhaul the next three.
Ted (the logo on the side of the jet notes it's "a part of United") is intended to make mainline United Airlines more competitive with low-cost carriers that have been gaining market share in the wake of the post-Sept. 11, 2001, downturn.
United's not the only airline attempting to create a low-fare "airline within an airline," said Bob Toomey, an aerospace analyst with RBC Dain Rauscher in Seattle. Other airlines are launching or studying the idea, including Delta Air Lines, which launched Song in the Southeast last year.
It's more of a long-term play than a way to short-term profits, Toomey said. The airlines are spending money to convert planes, and also slashing fares. The combination "might hurt yields over the next two or three years," he said.
But long term "what it does is create a new market opportunity, which could mean growth," Toomey said. "It creates a new way of looking at how they can run a businesses.
"It's an experiment," he said.
United officials said Ted's goal is to attract more leisure travelers with lower fares. Tickets on Ted from Denver to New Orleans will be about $330, according to information on the airline's Web site. Right now, the same tickets on United cost about $410.
To compete, United has come up with a new business plan for Ted which uses "higher aircraft utilization, a simplified schedule and fare structure, and more seats per aircraft," United's vice president overseeing the division, Sean Donohue, said when the new service was announced in November.
Part of that means ripping out the first-class sections on each plane and replacing them with more economy-class seats. That's where Northwest Aerospace Technologies comes in.
Along with the first-class seats, the galley and closet in the front of each plane also is being removed. All that means that the air conditioning and lighting has to be reworked and extended into the areas where there weren't any seats before. There also have to be new luggage bins and in-flight entertainment systems installed.
Northwest Aerospace engineers designed the new systems, picked out the necessary parts and wrote the installation instructions. The company's staff then ordered those parts from suppliers around the world -- and built some of them themselves -- then had them shipped to their Everett warehouse where the kits were put together.
It's been a rush job that has taken up most of the company's time in recent weeks, Sobotta said. "When United senior management decided they wanted it, they wanted it done tomorrow," he said. "It's a very, very tight program."
But United over the years has been the company's biggest airline customer. This is the ninth major contract the Everett company has won from United, since Northwest Aerospace Technologies was formed in 1997.
Northwest Aerospace has continued to grow the past two years, hitting $15 million in sales despite the industrywide slump. That's largely thanks to subcontracting work the company did for Boeing and Airbus, providing some of the electronic assemblies involved in both manufacturers' barricaded cockpit door projects.
But orders for things such as Ted's kits suggest that airline business is picking up, Sobotta said.
"It's coming back," he said. "Hopefully there's some momentum behind it."
Reporter Bryan Corliss:
425-339-3454 or
corliss@heraldnet.com.
New institutional holder in for $20K...
Be interesting to see if they just traded the CES...
Oh where is cassie when we need her....I can wait LOL.
Address
BLAIR WILLIAM & CO/IL
222 WEST ADAMS ST
CHICAGO, IL 60606-5312
(312) 236-1600
Position Statistics
Report Date: 12/31/2003
Total Positions: 866
New Positions: 95
Increased Positions: 380
Decreased Positions: 392
Positions With Activity: 772
Sold Out Positions: 66
Total Market Value (in $ millions): 11,875
Sector Weighting Percent
Services 29.4%
Technology 20.3%
Healthcare 16.7%
Financial 13.2%
Transportation 3.7%
Energy 3.5%
Basic Materials 3.3%
Consumer/Non-Cyclical 3%
Capital Goods 2.8%
Consumer Cyclical 2.1%
Conglomerates 1.5%
Utilities 0.3%
Unknown 0.3%
DSPs expand front in consumer media
By Junko Yoshida and Patrick Mannion
EE Times
January 26, 2004 (12:10 p.m. ET)
NEW YORK — Analog Devices Inc.'s rollout Monday (Jan.26) of its latest Blackfin processors reinforces a growing industry consensus that consumer media devices could mark the next great opportunity for digital signal processors.
Math-friendly and readily reprogrammable, DSPs are seen by many as a necessary response to the ever-escalating demands for flexibility and high performance in today's compute-intensive audio and video consumer applications.
Newly architected chips like Blackfin, some authorities suggest, provide a compact way to save space and power over traditional solutions that team a DSP with a microcontroller in a configuration that one observer dismisses as "just the DSP chip next to some other chip."
Traditionally, consumer systems have used a combination of DSPs for compute-intensive video and graphics processing, and a RISC-based processor for user-interface and control functions. Texas Instruments Inc., for example, couples a C55x or C64x DSP with an ARM. In the case of Blackfin, ADI is counting on the processor's blend of high-end, code-efficient DSP processing with impressive RISC performance to obviate a dual-processor DSP/ARM approach in all but the most demanding applications.
While the Blackfins also target automotive and industrial applications and mobile handsets, the company is clearly emphasizing consumer media. As John Croteau, general manager of ADI's media platforms and services group, said, "We see the end game [for Blackfin] in digital entertainment."
Many in the industry seem to support the direction taken by ADI (Norwood, Mass.).
Jeff Bier, general manager of independent research firm Berkeley Design Technology Inc. (Berkeley, Calif.), said today's extensive new product development — video on handsets, portable video jukeboxes, Internet Protocol set-top boxes, DVRs and HDTV — requires the flexibility DSPs provide. "There's huge flux in algorithms and standards and the consensus in features just isn't there," he said. "You can't do it in hardware as you need the programmability — with good performance — to meet the needs of the applications."
Will Strauss, president of market research firm Forward Concepts (Tempe, Ariz.), said in a recent report that the electronics industry is making a fundamental shift, "moving from the personal computer era to a new era driven by connectivity and multimedia." DSPs, he said, will be at the heart of that migration.
Clearly, programmability is becoming the holy grail. With more devices being networked, they need to be interoperable. Sometimes, simple competition points to programmable solutions. In Japan, for example, consumer electronics manufacturers are under heavy pressure to differentiate their products from far less expensive offerings coming out of China, ADI's Croteau said.
As Jim Turley, a microprocessor analyst and editor of Silicon-Insider, summed it up: "The 'ASIC boom' of the late 1990s is over — for good — in my opinion. It's simply too expensive and too time-consuming to develop your own chip, even if you do have the talent and the budget. Processors, DSPs, controllers, and even FPGAs offer a more attractive alternative in many cases."
The degree to which ADI meets, as Bier put it, "the needs of the applications" will determine how well it fares against digital entertainment and multimedia incumbents like Texas Instruments Inc. TI can counter with its entrenched DM64x, which is based on the company's high-end C64x line, and the C55x DSP lineup for portable and client devices.
But, Turley said, "ADI does pretty well here, holding its own against the 500-pound gorilla — TI — in consumer electronics." He said much of the attraction is Blackfin's "microcontroller-like features, which make the chips suitable as the only chip in a product, rather than just the DSP chip next to some other chip [such as an ARM microcontroller]."
Jerry McGuire, an ADI general manager in the media products and services group, cited additional advantages embedded within Blackfin. "From the start, we enhanced video performance with a special instruction set," he said. "Also, for data movement, we have sophisticated DMA [direct memory access] including 2-D DMA — which drives video performance."
But Rod Trautman, TI's general manager of worldwide catalog DSP and end equipment, contrasted ADI's relatively brief experience with supporting consumer multimedia applications to TI's years of success in fulfilling third-party tasks for the C55. Analyst Bier agreed, noting how swiftly the bar for software and development support is rising as applications become more complex. Still, he said, "ADI is off to a good start and I think the support system is building around Blackfin. But it takes years and will require significant sustained investment."
ADI is fast gathering momentum in its new territory. Blackfin DSPs are already designed into a host of emerging consumer products, including Microsoft Corp.'s Windows Media Center Extender, Roku's Network Music Player and embedded lock systems running AuthenTec's fingerprint sensor technology.
In many embedded consumer systems, Blackfin is at the heart of audio and video decoding while also functioning as a processor controlling a system. Blackfin can decode a variety of digital media formats including MP3, Windows Media Audio 9, WAV, AIFF and AAC files, MPEG-2, MPEG-4 and Windows Media Video 9.
A few competing DSP or media processor companies have ostensibly beaten ADI by being the first to decode advanced video-compression formats like Windows Media 9 Video in software. "But we are the first to enable it at the capacity, price level and power consumption consumer OEMs want in their volume shippable consumer products," said Scot Robertson, ADI's director of marketing for Blackfin eMedia Platforms.
ADI lists eight new members of the Blackfin Processor line in its 2004 road map, differentiating them through peripherals that range from integrated 10/100 Ethernet MAC, PCI or USB2.0 On-the-Go to LCD controllers.
Identifying the right peripherals for integration on each of those products could be critical to ADI's success in the consumer IC market. Said Turley: "CE customers are fanatical about not paying for features they don't need or don't use. If a chip has significantly more features than the customer needs, it's a nonstarter. . . . There's a delicate balancing act between providing too much and too little integration."
For all of ADI's consumer product thrust, Forward Concepts' Strauss believes it may take "a couple of years to wean most of ADI's fixed-point customer base from the old to the newer and more attractive platform."
"ADI's principal problem is that Blackfin is not code-compatible with its earlier ADSP-21XX fixed-point families," he said.
But Bier disagreed. "It's now clear that ADI is making a commitment to Blackfin," he said. "They're now focusing on the Tigersharc, the Sharc and the Blackfin — the fixed-point 218x [and] 219x are being pushed to the background. They've removed the uncertainty over which architecture would go."
ADI's Croteau confirmed the shift in focus. "We will continue to support 218 and 219x, but the apps are gravitating to the Blackfin."
Well maybe they should have used mOS...
Engineers now believe the problem arose with software that manages the file system within the rover's flash memory, project manager Pete Theisinger said. Other possible culprits include broken hardware or solar radiation.
Should they have used mOS?...
As they prepared for the landing, scientists also said they were closing in on the root of the problem that led the Spirit rover to begin spewing gibberish and beeps instead of science and engineering data earlier this week.
They brought stability to the six-wheeled vehicle by disabling its flash memory, which is similar to the memory digital cameras use to store pictures, said Orlando Figueroa, director of NASA's Mars exploration program.
"We made good progress overnight," project manager Pete Theisinger said during a news conference at JPL. "The rover has been upgraded from critical to serious."
CDs Will Die But Net Music May Be a Business Bubble
2 hours, 16 minutes ago Add Technology - Reuters to My Yahoo!
By Bernhard Warner, European Internet Correspondent
CANNES, France (Reuters) - Music downloads will render the ubiquitous compact disc all but obsolete in the next five years, yet half of all companies that begin selling digital songs online will fail by year-end, a researcher warned on Saturday.
By 2008, one third of music sales in the United States and nearly 20 percent in Europe will come in the form of downloads and streaming music over the Internet, building a multi-billion dollar business for the battered music industry, according to a new study by consultancy Forrester Research.
"The industry is going through a complete change in the way people consume music," Josh Bernoff, a Forrester Research analyst told a gathering of music and technology executives at the annual MidemNet conference.
He said the U.S. market alone for downloads and subscriptions to online music stores will top $300 million this year from a virtual standing start a year ago.
"By 2007 or 2008, CDs will be something only old people have," Bernoff said.
Introduced 20 years ago, the CD revolutionized the music industry, pushing cassette tapes and vinyl to the scrap heap.
Digital downloads offer virtually no improvement in sound quality over the CD, but they can be easily transported and stored on a host of devices.
Anticipating the single biggest consumer shift in a generation, scores of companies are rushing to sell tracks that can be played on computers, mobile phones or a plethora of digital gadgets.
Many of them, such as Coca-Cola which introduced an online download service in the UK last week, are new to the business.
One industry official has estimated the number of new entrants in the online music market would top 50 this year -- from telecoms firms such as Cable & Wireless to retail giant Wal-Mart.
"By the end of 2004, half of the businesses that started will be out of business," Bernoff predicted, likening it to the late 1990s when the world caught the e-commerce bug.
"I haven't seen this level of irrational exuberance since the height of the bubble," he added.
The greater availability of music online appears to be winning some fans over from free file-sharing sites, recent studies show.
But piracy is still costly. Forrester estimated that in the U.S., the largest music market in the world, file-sharing cost the industry $700 million in sales in 2003 among the 12-22 year-old demographic.
Report: IFPI Predicts Legit Music Services Will Flourish Worldwide in 2004
Geneva -- Legitimate online music services are poised to take a larger share of the market from peer-to-peer services like Kazaa during 2004, according to an annual online music report from the International Federation of the Phonographic Industry. The trade group points to the impending launch of iTunes, Napster, Rhapsody and other services in Europe, as well as the 30 existing legal sites operating there now. Industry data shows that Americans bought 30 million downloads in 2003, while Europeans purchased 3 million. The number of available songs on European services has risen 30% in the last three months to 300,000, and is expected to increase further this year. The group also credits increased awareness worldwide that most forms of file-sharing are illegal, due to the legal campaign against file-swappers, and the fact that the number of music files available on the Internet has fallen by 20% to 800 million over the last year, after peaking at one billion at the start of 2003. "For everyone working to create a successful legitimate online music business, this report reflects a new sense of optimism and evidence of real change," said IFPI chairman and CEO Jay Berman, IFPI. "We believe the music industry's Internet strategy is now turning the corner, and that in 2004 there will be, for the first time, a substantial migration of consumers from unauthorized free services to the legitimate alternatives that our industry is providing internationally." Record industry groups in both Canada and the U.K. have said they soon plan to start suing individual file-swappers in their respective countries.
http://www.ifpi.org/site-content/press/20040122.html
AMR trims losses
Big improvement seen over last year, but more cost-cutting expected
11:20 PM CST on Wednesday, January 21, 2004
By ERIC TORBENSON / The Dallas Morning News
AMR Corp. said Wednesday that it narrowed its fourth-quarter and year-end losses with vigorous cost reductions, but warned again that it needs more cuts if it wants to sustain profits down the road.
The Fort Worth-based parent of American Airlines Inc. lost $111 million in the quarter, a hefty improvement from the loss of $529 million in the same period in 2002.
Removing one-time charges and gains, AMR lost $95 million, or 59 cents per diluted share. That easily topped Wall Street's average earnings expectation of a per share loss of $1.01.
AMR shares rose 83 cents to $14.55 on the news.
The performance marked a stunning improvement from the fourth quarter of 2002, when AMR lost $828 million on a pre-tax basis. That's the comparison American deems most telling.
"We're building great momentum, but we've still got a lot of work to do," said Gerard Arpey, AMR's chief executive, in a conference call.
AMR's labor costs fell 22.3 percent in the fourth quarter as the full effect of $1.8 billion in annual concessions took hold.
"Behold the power of near-bankruptcy," said Jamie Baker, an analyst at J.P. Morgan Chase, in a note to investors. The carrier nearly filed for Chapter 11 protection last year before winning concessions.
Based on the latest results, American's costs are now lower than rival Continental Airlines Inc.'s for the first time in a decade or more. Continental hasn't asked its employees for wage concessions, however. Airline costs are usually measured in how much it pays to fly one seat one mile.
Those unit costs dropped 9 percent last year compared with 2002; they will drop another 9 percent this year, said James Beer, AMR's chief financial officer.
Recovery plans
The results set a framework for AMR's recovery. Though average airfares are still flat or dropping, American sees its costs dipping even further this year to help it improve profitability.
"I know our employees have sacrificed a lot, but the revenue environment remains very tough," Mr. Arpey said on the call. The company's focus will remain on continuous cost improvement, using suggestions and help from employees, he said.
The carrier announced more steps to either trim costs or boost revenue:
• American will restructure its Miami hub in the same way it has changed schedules at Dallas/Fort Worth International Airport and O'Hare International Airport. Instead of seven intense periods of flights arriving and leaving during the day, the airline will use 13 "banks" of flights. That will smooth out the schedule, improve reliability and keep its planes in the air more of the day.
• The airline has a new alliance partnership with Mexicana Airlines. The deal lets each carrier sell seats on the other's flights, and will add 21 new cities to American's network. Frequent fliers for both carriers will enjoy benefits on both airlines.
Mr. Arpey also announced an employee incentive program that's similar to a successful formula used at Continental.
American will pay each employee between $25 and $100 each month. The bonus is based on either on-time performance or how the carrier fares in a survey of customer satisfaction.
American will measure itself against competitors in those areas and pick the category where it finishes higher to see if it will pay the bonus. If the carrier finishes first, employees get $100. The bonuses are progressively lower if the rank drops. Employees will receive something even if the carrier finishes as low as No. 6 in the group.
Mr. Beer estimates the program would have cost American about $40 million in 2002 had it been in place. It could cost the airline up to $100 million if American finishes first in either category each month.
Remaining worries
Although the carrier is enthusiastic enough about its finances to start paying bonuses, there are concerns ahead for the world's largest carrier.
The biggest one is jet fuel, which cost 6.5 percent more year over year in the fourth quarter of last year and has become more expensive this year.
American has fuel hedges in place for just 21 percent of the fuel it needs this quarter, and has virtually no such protections in place for the rest of the year, though it's trying to find ways to get fuel cheaper, Mr. Beer said.
And although American's revenue rose 3.9 percent in the fourth quarter compared with 2002, airfares are still lagging way behind historic levels. Low-cost carriers such as JetBlue Airways Corp. are putting pressure on American's best routes; JetBlue filed Wednesday to start flying from New York's LaGuardia Airport, another potential blow to American's network.
American will add 6 percent more capacity to its schedule this year, most of it internationally, where discount rivals don't fly.
Executives said they're still studying improving in-flight entertainment to compete with JetBlue and others that feature television screens in every seat, but they're wary of spending the money required to upgrade American's more than 700 planes. The cost could exceed hundreds of millions of dollars.
American's impressive performance on costs had some analysts predicting fierce competition for JetBlue and other discounters.
"For anyone doubting the competitive voracity of AMR, look no further than today's earnings release," said Mr. Baker, the J.P. Morgan analyst.
Although many analysts predict AMR will be slightly profitable this year, Mr. Arpey declined to guide investors about the carrier's ability to turn its first profit since 2000.
FBI Makes Arrest in Oscar Screener Piracy
FBI Traces Bootlegging, Illegal Internet Distribution of Films to Academy Award Member
The Associated Press
LOS ANGELES Jan. 22 — FBI agents said Thursday they have traced the bootlegging and illegal Internet distribution of films such as "The Last Samurai" to an Academy Award member, and arrested a second man in connection with the case.
Carmine Caridi admitted in an affidavit released Thursday that he sent every so-called "screener" videotape he's received for the past three years to an acquaintance in the Chicago area, Russell W. Sprague.
Sprague, 51, was arrested at his home in Homewood, Ill., on Thursday after a search of his home turned up hundreds of films, many of which had been converted to DVD format and had the Academy's encryption code erased, along with an array of duplicating equipment, authorities said.
Sprague is charged with criminal copyright infringement and is to appear in a federal court in Chicago on Friday, officials said.
Caridi, 69, said he sent VHS copies of about 60 movies he received each year to Sprague via Federal Express. Once Sprague made a copy, he'd send them back to Caridi, the FBI said.
Caridi, who also has appeared in movies such as "The Godfather: Part II" and "The Godfather: Part III," said he received no money for the films.
Attempts to contact Caridi, who has not been charged, were not immediately successful.
The Motion Picture Association of America, which represents studios, last year banned the distribution of screener DVDs and videotapes over concerns about bootlegging, but partly lifted the ban after complaints from filmmakers, producers and independent production companies.
The studios changed the policy in October to allow the shipment of encoded videocassettes to Academy Award voters only. A federal judge in December, however, granted a temporary injunction lifting the screener ban in a lawsuit brought by independent production companies, which argued the policy put them at a disadvantage for awards. The studios then sent screener tapes to thousands of other awards voters.
The academy required its 5,803 eligible Oscar voters to sign forms promising to protect their screener tapes. About 80 percent of voters signed and returned the forms, which include a stipulation that a violation is grounds for expulsion from the academy.
CD lock loosened for freer copying
Last modified: January 22, 2004, 4:37 PM PST
By John Borland
Staff Writer, CNET News.com
Macrovision released a new generation of its antipiracy technology on Thursday that it hopes will make copy-protected music CDs more attractive to consumers and record labels.
The update attempts to simulate most of what people are doing with CDs on their computers. Content owners such as record labels would be able to set the "usage rules" on the Microsoft Windows Media files included on a Macrovision-protected CD, allowing a specified numbers of CD burns and transfers to portable devices, for example.
Macrovision hopes that its new technology, called CDS-300, will make CD copy protection more palatable to consumers who have grown used to the restrictions on music purchased from online song stores.
"Before, you had the 'second session' that was bolted to the disc," said Adam Sexton, Macrovision's vice president of marketing. "We're pleased we can now deliver the same functions and can go 'mano a mano' with the online services."
The copy-protection company's previous software blocked people from making copies of CDs by rendering the music files invisible to most computers. However, the protected CDs also held additional versions of the songs in the Microsoft Windows Media format, which could be played on PCs. This separate set of music files, called a "second session," could not be transferred off the CD or put on portable devices, however.
That restriction stood in poor contrast to songs purchased from Apple Computer's iTunes, Napster or other services, which can be burned to a CD, used on several computers, or transferred to a portable device. They also include some anticopying restrictions, however.
Loosening the restrictions on copy-protected CDs may represent a step forward for digital rights management, but the company's technology is likely to remain controversial with consumers.
Macrovision's software and rival products from companies, such as SunnComm Technologies, are intended to curb unregulated CD copying and the practice of "ripping" unprotected MP3s, which can be distributed through file-swapping services or by other digital means.
Record labels are eager to bring both activities under control. But they're also leery of a backlash from consumers, who are used to copying and ripping CDs and who might view the new CD protections as an unfair constraint. Several lawsuits have already been filed in the United States and the United Kingdom over CD copy-protection techniques.
To date, CD copy protection has not been widely distributed in the United States. Record labels there are looking for even greater protections, such as preventing burned CDs from being copied additional times, according to Sexton.
The new Macrovision technology is being tested in production plants in Europe, and it is not likely to find its way to a commercial release for at least another quarter. It will be available for record labels to use around the world.
Uh..not that I'm aware of/