February 2010

Don't Like Product Placement? Here's Why It's Your Fault

At the Association of National Advertisers' annual TV & Everything Video Forum, speaker after speaker lined up example after example of shockingly intrusive pacts that placed -- nay, shoved -- commercial messages deep into programming.

Taken individually, these moves from commercial break to in-program content seem fun, novel, even entertaining. Placed together in this fashion, however, the parade of in-show appearances by paying advertisers took on the form of something more pernicious. Never has it been more clear that commercials and content are fast becoming one and the same, wholly indistinguishable from each other.

What's going on?

1) Media outlets, roiled by the recession and changes in the TV business, have bent, even broken, many of their own rules.

2) Advertisers have had it with trying to game ad breaks.

3) We have no one to blame but ourselves -- We say we hate ads. We say we love "American Idol," "24" or "The Closer." Yet we ignore the fact that the ads are the main reason we get to watch those shows for a relatively minimal cost.

The lost souls of telecommunications history

From the dawn of telecommunications history through the present, the dustbin is where most innovations actually wind up.

Visionaries often don't notice the enormous and obvious impediments to realizing their technological dreams, road blocks obvious to more practical people. So let's hear it for the lost souls of telecommunications history. We don't read about them as often as we learn about Edison or Marconi or Bill Gates. And if we do, it's usually the tidied-up version. But they deserve as much credit for our present as the winners, if not more. So far into the technological past is their gaze ahead that their intuition appears almost Nostradamus-like in retrospect. They see resources, possibilities, and opportunities of which the rest of us aren't even vaguely aware. And from whence comes their energy and courage? That's simple. They're willing to take enormous risks and gambles because of that one part of the future that they don't see. Their own.

CBS v. FCC On Indecency Enforcement

CBS and the Federal Communications Commission took aim at each other's arguments in filings to the Third Circuit Court of Appeals in advance of new oral argument this month in the Janet Jackson/Justin Timberlake Super Bowl reveal case.

In its filing, CBS had a few choice words for the FCC, saying it was attempting to "rewrite history" with a "revisionist spin" on its fleeting indecency policy in arguments CBS said included "false claims" and "incomplete and misleading" discussion. The FCC called CBS' arguments "untenable" and accused it of "leaps of illogic." Nothing in the Supreme Court's decision upholding the FCC's defense of its fleeting profanity policy changes the Third Circuit's decision in the Super Bowl case that the commission had abandoned a three-decades-old policy on fleeting words and images. That was CBS's advice to the Third Circuit, which is preparing to re-hear the Jackson case Feb. 23. CBS was fined $550,000 for the 2004 Super Bowl halftime show incident. The Third Circuit last month asked both CBS and the FCC to weigh in on what affect the Supreme Court decision in Fox vs. FCC (swearing by Cher and Nicole Richie on the Billboard Awards) should have on its rethinking of the Jackson decision.

Social Media Tackles Controversial Issues

Social media took on a host of controversial issues last week, from abortion to gay rights to health care reform.

The online community gave the hot-button topics not only more attention than the mainstream press, but also much more opinionated intensity. The most discussed subject on blogs was an anti-abortion television commercial featuring college football star Tim Tebow. Specifically, bloggers linked to the February 2 Washington Post column by sportswriter Sally Jenkins, who is admittedly pro-choice, but who voiced support for Tebow and opposition to a number of women's groups who had been critical of his political stance. From February 1-5, fully 28% of the news links on blogs were about Jenkins' article, according to the New Media Index produced by the Pew Research Center's Project for Excellence in Journalism. Almost all of the bloggers who linked to the story supported her view. The same topic did not generate much interest in the mainstream press last week. While a few sportswriters and political pundits touched on the issue, it was not among the top ten subjects covered in the traditional press according to PEJ's News Coverage Index.

5 Reasons Why Developing Countries Need Smart Grids, Too

While much of the attention in the smart grid industry has been focused on the U.S. market developing countries like India, China and Brazil are also looking to make their power grids smarter. For these countries, some of which are experiencing rapid economic growth (translates to more homes and buildings getting connected to the grid) there are some similar, and some very different, reasons to make the grid smarter compared to the developed world.

According to research from the Bangalore-based nonprofit Center for Study of Science, Technology and Policy (CSTEP), there are five reasons why developing countries need, and want, smart grids.

1) Stopping Power Theft.

2) Higher Quality/Reliability of Power, Fewer Blackouts.

3) Leapfrog to Smart Grid.

4) Growth Justifies the Cost.

5) Renewable Power Needs Smart Grid.

Mobile Broadband Spending Continues To Rise

The world may be in the midst of a global recession, but it isn't impacting the rollout of wireless broadband technologies.

The GSM Association reported Wednesday that global carriers are expected to spend about half of the $72 billion they have earmarked for mobile infrastructure capital expenditures on mobile broadband. North America will spend the largest percentage -- 80% -- of the $19 billion it has slated for mobile broadband, the GSMA said. The Asia Pacific region will spend up to $34 billion and Europe, up to $14 billion. All global regions combined will spend about 52% of operator investment in mobile infrastructure.

Haiti Donations: A Turning Point in Mobile Commerce?

[Commentary] Consumers have been slowly warming to the idea of zapping money through the air for years, from mobile banking to online shopping to purchasing mobile apps themselves.

In fact, some analysts say that this year will be the year of the start of a mobile commerce tidal wave. Gartner predicts mobile app revenue will hit $6.7 billion this year, up from $4.2 billion last year, and the trend will continue to almost $30 billion in 2013. Gartner's top 10 mobile consumer app areas for 2012 are: money transfer, location-based services, mobile search, mobile browsing, mobile health monitoring, mobile payment, near-field communication services, mobile advertising, mobile instant messaging, and mobile music. Two of these top ten app areas-money transfer and mobile payment-directly relate to mobile commerce.

State Department: No action 'needed' to counter Iran's alleged censorship of Google, other social media

The State Department signaled Thursday it did not feel it "needed to take any particular action" to counter the Iranian government's decision to block its citizens' access to e-mail or social media.

While State Department spokesman P.J. Crowley criticized each of those transgressions, he stressed during his press briefing Friday that it was up to those companies to decide how to next proceed. He ultimately repeated the White House's line that Google had not contact federal officials about the incident, preferring to handle it internally. And Crowley would not say whether other technology companies had experienced similar difficulties in Iran, much less whether those firms too had spoke with federal officials, only noting the department has an "ongoing relationship" with social media providers.

Texas Gubernatorial Hopefuls Sue PBS Affiliate

Four Democratic candidates for the Texas governorship are suing a public TV station they say excluded them from a debate.

Dr. Alma Ludivina Aguado, Star Locke, Felix Alvarado, and Clement Glen filed a $400 million lawsuit in U.S. Federal Court in Travis County, Texas, against KERA-TV and its owner, The North Texas Public Broadcasting, "for being excluded from the statewide Democratic debate on television on Feb. 8, 2010," the group said in a joint release. All four candidates were excluded by the Television Station from joining in the statewide debate as they, did not meet a vague, subjective and flexible criteria. All Candidates are legal candidates, but yet were excluded from a chance to air their views in a public debate. "Globalization has increased the gap between the poor and the wealthy in Texas creating an arcane culture of non competition," Dr. Aguado said. "This non-Democratic favoritism shown on behalf of wealthy candidates shown on public television discourages minorities, the poor, underprivileged and the politically underrepresented from voting."

In a statement released to local news outlets, KERA said, "We are disappointed that these candidates have chosen to ignore years of judicial precedents upholding our right to use viewpoint neutral criteria in selecting candidates to participate in the Texas Debates. We are confident in our debate policy, and we will seek the speedy dismissal of this complaint as we have successfully with others in the past." Candidates must be actively campaigning and register 6 percentage points in an "established, nonpartisan poll" to be included, San Antonio CBS affiliate, KENS-TV said.

YouTube Dashboard Compares Your Experience to Others'

Ever wonder how your Internet service provider, home network, processor speed, and other factors affect the speed and quality with which you can watch videos on YouTube? Google announced a personalized speed dashboard on Thursday for YouTube that tells anyone, in under a second, how fast their connection is to YouTube's servers, and how fast it has been historically, over time. The dashboard also graphs a comparison between one's speed and that of users in other regions, or users in the same region who use competing Internet service providers.

Benton

Search