HellaFrank

When we used to write emails (and now that I think about it, when we currently write emails) we generally do not embed the URL of links that we want to share.

What I mean by embed is this, as opposed to this http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hyperlink

And I think it’s time that this becomes a part of the fabric of Twitter. With so few characters and concise posts that may want to link multiple places, sometimes even a bit.ly or two is way too much.

Maybe I’m missing something though, are there link-spam issues? Is there a compatibility problem with third-party apps?

Either way, I’m sure it can and will be done.

Today, in the first meeting of my Entertainment & Media Industries course, my professor asked, who are the new media moguls?

As we know, the old media moguls are on their way out.

I say it’s no longer the guys who run publications or have the money to buy them, it’s the people that develop and create the hardware and software that will change media. They know the future, they have the vision, they will shape the industry.

Steve Jobs, Mark Zuckerberg, Eric Schmidt, etc…

But this time, they speak with their products and actions, not necessarily their words. Talk is cheap and people are starting to get that now, more than ever.

The idea of the convergence of the Internet and TV is not a new one. In fact, it’s old – really old. Even though we have had high-speed Internet for years, nice, big, shiny flat screens mounted on our walls, and a massive amount of online video sites with high-resolution content, very little has been done to get that video onto your home TV. That’s disappointing.

Yes, there are expensive set top boxes and add-ons to televisions that can get some of that content onto your TV, but that’s not the solution. Why has this convergence not happened? I don’t know, but in a week filled with inaugural hope and progress, let’s forget about the past and look into the future – because something happened in the beginning of 2009 that hopefully signified change …

At this year’s CES, LG unveiled televisions that allowed an Internet connection to be plugged directly into the TV. This was coupled with a partnership announcement with Netflix that lets people to watch streaming movies via that connection. A great first step, and proof-of-concept, with a widely adopted service like Netflix.

What’s next? Yahoo also announced their “Widget Channel” with Intel, which makes it easier for people to get Internet content through their TV. They are going to be announcing consumer electronics partners soon. Maybe this will be the service that takes off, maybe it won’t, but it’s getting us closer to an iPhone-like approach to television.

Imagine your TV is like an iPhone and you can download applications, using your remote, from YouTube, Hulu, broadcast networks and even publishers like The New York Times. A simple click on each one brings up their online video content in an easy-to-use user-interface, and it can all be watched on demand. Sounds simple doesn’t it? This seems like the most logical and lucrative approach to Internet and TV convergence. The content is already there, it’s just a matter of building a simple application to search and access it.

The difficulty would most likely come in getting TV manufacturers to build affordable Internet-ready TVs and enabling a platform that can host these applications. But if big media companies make a push in this direction, you would think the manufacturers would be quick to follow.

Internet and TV convergence seems like a lofty goal, but is it? The pieces of the puzzle are there and we’re not talking about anything too complex from a technology perspective. The number of people who watch television shows on their computers has tripled over the past few years according to Genevieve Bell at Intel (see this WSJ story), but I’d have to imagine that these viewers would abandon their small laptop screen in a hurry if they could watch the same content on a TV. I know I would.

Yesterday at PRWeek’s NEXT Conference, Steve Rubel talked about how the mobile phone will be the new computer. This is not a groundbreaking statement, in Japan for example it is very common for a businessperson to take only their mobile phone into a meeting for note-taking and other purposes. But Steve said something else that made me look at the mobile phone in a new way — we’re not just going to use it as a computer when we’re away from our laptop or desktop, it may very well replace what we know as a computer today.

In the near future, processor speeds in phones will undoubtedly improve dramatically, hard-disk space is already skyrocketing, and as more and more of our data lives online (Gmail, Facebook, Picasa, etc…) we won’t even need to store it on a computer anymore, we’ll just need internet to access it.

Wherever you go, the phone can be hooked up to a monitor and you will be able to do work, listen to music, watch YouTube — pretty much anything you can do today on a computer. Want to leave work and finish up at home? Just put the phone in your pocket and you’re all set.

And I’m now trying to figure out why I’m calling it a phone. It’s not.

I remember when I was younger and we would learn in school about the first computers — they were the “size of a house” and people put punch cards through them to make them work. We would laugh and try to imagine what kind of mouse went with a computer that big. A few years from now, kids will be doing the same thing, but they’ll be laughing at those 2 or 3 foot tall towers we hooked up to monitors as they plug their playing-card-deck-sized computer into the flatscreen to watch some TV.

A funny thing happened in Buffalo today — the power to Ralph Wilson Stadium, home of the Buffalo Bills, went out at gametime because some  balloons got caught in the power lines. During the first quarter, the AP says: “the game, which had been delayed for 15 minutes in the first quarter, resumed with on-field officials keeping time while shouting out the time left on the play clock.”

This reminded me of the Argentina vs. Paraguay soccer game I attended in Argentina a few weeks ago. While there were screens and a Jumbotron in the River Plate stadium,  none were turned on, and nowhere in the stadium was there any indication of time elapsed during the game, let alone replays or that game where you have to follow the hat with the ball under it.

No clock or replays was hard to get used to, but as the game went on, it was obvious that this lack of technology restored a purity to the game — the experience was all about the game and the players on the field, and this focus showed among the spectators.

There’s a certain charm in stripping a sporting event down to its core elements. The NHL has had several very successful outdoor hockey games, the next occurring at Wrigley Field, that likely reminds people of their youth, playing hockey on a frozen pond.

While technology undoubtedly enhances certain aspects of sports, sometimes it’s refreshing to see superhuman, high-paid, over-hyped athletes in a setting reminiscent of elementary school recess football, or summers playing baseball the neighbors in the street.

HellaFrank readers! I am now back from my travels abroad to Argentina, and so much has happened… Just before I left, Major League Baseball implemented instant replay, a sorely needed addition to umpiring and I was very eager to see it in action.

So far things seems to be running smoothly — not being used too much, confirming the right call, and even reversing a call on Friday. Whether instant replay is a success is up for debate. Overall I think the long term success of instant replay will come down to how “instant” the replay actually is.

One of the main knocks on instant replay in football and baseball is that it stalls the game and takes way too long to get a final answer. It’s hard to tell if it will always take 4 minutes, as it did in the recent reversal, or if that’s just growing pains of MLB instant replay, but one would think that in the off-season, the process would be streamlined a bit (why they implemented it mid-season doesn’t make a ton of sense.) The Bleacher Report says it’s taking way too long and is being used for insignificant calls, but is any call in baseball insignificant? That’s the beauty of the game — there’s no clock, no mercy rule… Anything can happen.

The value of instant replay may be debated for a while, and getting it to be instant is key to its success, but once a double off the wall is changed to a walk off home-run in a big game, I think everyone will be believers.

David Pogue wrote yesterday about the iPhone and points out that the hardware has not changed that much since the first go-round. The actual form of the phone is now a little more manageable, and the voice quality has increased dramatically, but other than that and a very simple GPS feature, the hardware is pretty much the same iPhone as before.

But it’s the software and the iPhone App Store that’s now really making the iPhone special. Any developer can now offer applications, after an approval process, for iPhone users to add to their phones. The actual iPhone itself and its large, beautiful touchscreen serve as the vehicle to deliver the app functionality to the user.

While making the internet connection speed faster with 3G helps, the software is what’s really empowering the iPhone now. Most handset makers are creating new ways to hide keyboards and slide different parts of the phone various ways to make them more usable and fun, but it’s software that can have the most impact on usability.

Think of something you wish your phone did that it currently doesn’t. Hardware issue or software? Software right? If the answer is hardware for some reason, I’d like to hear what the issue is in the comments.

With software essentially defining the  functionality of the iPhone, and all phones for that matter, I guess you could say that developers are the artists, with the iPhone as their canvas. Umm, a really really nice canvas… With a monthly fee……

Also posted on LaunchSquad’s Exclamation Blog

A teacher in high school once told me that often times I’ll see things come in threes. I’m not sure how much I’ve noticed this phenomenon since then, but last week it was in full effect.

The topic that came up each time was a green startup called Project Better Place. First I had dinner with a friend who was interning there this summer and told me all about it. The next day a ringer on LaunchSquad’s softball team brought up the company over dinner at the lovely Frankie’s Bohemian Cafe. Third, the next day I stumbled upon and article about Project Better Place on Earth2Tech.

Project Better Place has a very grand vision: “We see an oil-free future and a healthier, safer planet.” They want to accomplish this by bringing electric vehicles to the public and building the infrastructure to make it  easy and sustainable. While the vision is a big one, it also seems to have a good chance for success.

The CEO, Shai Agassi, was once up for CEO of SAP, the fifth largest software company in the world. He left to start Project Better Place. The company has also gotten some serious funding ($200 million to start, for their work in Israel) and buy-in from auto manufacturers including Nissan, Renault and potentially Daimler.

This is definitely one of the most intriguing green companies to watch. It will be a long road, but so far the company seems to be well on the right track. Gavin Newsom wants the San Francisco Bay Area to be the first U.S. region to participate in Project Better Place, which seems appropriate.

The prospect of electric cars has always seemed ideal, but ultimately, not realistic. But technology and companies like Project Better Place and Tesla Motors are finally working to making widespread electric car use possible. Definitely rooting for these guys, and looking forward to following how things progress. Sounds like Denmark is next…

Also posted on LaunchSquad’s Exclamation Blog

At one point, the idea of free municipal wireless Internet across the country seemed like the new frontier for Internet access. Everyone would have access and people would no longer be tied down to accessing from certain locations. Philadelphia was one of the first to blanket their city with Internet, but that project, just like those of San Francisco and many other cities and towns ended when Earthlink unexpectedly shut down it’s municipal wireless organization. Big and powerful telecoms like Verizon weren’t happy about these plans either and undoubtedly affected the success of them as well. From a really great article in Slate:

Verizon spent more than $3 million to lobby the [Pennsylvania] state government to pass a bill preventing cities and townships in Pennsylvania from offering broadband or wireless services unless the phone company has refused to do so. More than a dozen states have similar statutes on the books that make it difficult for government to get into the wireless broadband business. Florida Gov. Jeb Bush signed a law in June that prevents municipalities from offering broadband if there are competing private services. Nevada bans most cities and counties from offering telecommunications services. Texas flatly prohibits it.

Fast forward a couple of years and a company called Meraki is now breathing life back into municipal wireless. How? By taking an open-source, community powered approach that bypasses telecoms and the government. Meraki sells and gives away their tiny piece of hardware, called a repeater, that allows anyone within a one-block radius to receive a 1-megabit wireless signal — three times faster than anything Earthlink promised. Eventually these repeaters will be networked across all of San Francisco, creating a seamless and open wireless network. The best part? It’s individuals powering the network with hardware provided by an independent company — the government and big telecoms can do nothing about it, though San Francisco mayor Gavin Newsom and the board of supervisors fully support it anyway (and seem to be taking credit for it too).

It’s a great example of how the power of the masses is far stronger than any telecom or government agency. Meraki has created a simple piece of technology, yet with widespread usage, it becomes so much more than that. For example, the company is starting by offering free repeaters for low-income housing developments in San Francisco so people who struggle to afford Internet can have it in their homes.

And don’t feel bad for Meraki, while they are probably not making much money right now, providing such a core service, much like Google does with search, opens up endless possibilities for business development in the future.

Open-source, community and the power of the crowd is not just the future of the Internet, it’s the future of Internet access.

Steve Jobs is kind of a modern day Pablo Escobar for technology. Employing a huge workforce to work undercover on secretive projects, then smuggle the product to be sold to serious addicts at high prices. Everyone knows he’s doing it but no one can infiltrate or take him down.

But, despite all of this secrecy, these days we pretty much know the big announcements we’re going to hear at Steve Jobs’ keynotes before they hapen. It’s always nice to hear the confirmations, but it’s the little things, the unexpected news, that gets me excited.

This time around, for me, it wasn’t even a product from Apple, but from MLB.com who historically likes to tempt baseball fans with awesome sounding products that end up sucking because of poor technology (i.e. Windows Media Player) or lack of ridiculous amounts of bandwidth.

But at the Apple keynote, they announced MLB At Bat, an iPhone application that not only lets you track baseball games live with detailed updates, but delivers video to your iPhone of the game’s highlights minutes after they happen.

What did you say? Derrek Lee just went yard in the bottom of the ninth to beat the Cardinals? Let’s have a look-see.

And even though MLB.com does not have a great history with providing good video, this year’s overhaul of Gameday (see my earlier post) gives me hope that this will actually work. Dan Frommer at Silicon Alley Insider is right-on when he says that video on mobile phones needs to be delivers in “snacks” not huge meals. Let’s be honest, not many people want to watch full feature programming on a tiny screen, especially something as slow as baseball. So MLB At Bat is definitely taking the right approach.

So yes, thank you Steve for the new and improved iPhone, I’ll be purchasing one soon, but thank you even more MLB.com for ensuring I will never miss a Cubs highlight on this year’s epic road to the World Series.