Chaperone foils stupid kidnappers

It looks like Verizon Wireless will take the high road and not market Chaperone to paranoid parents as protection for children and instead focus more on monitoring and communication. Indeed, much of the child-location service focuses on even more high-minded purposes, such as increasing a comfort level so that kids get more exercise. However, while services like Chaperone have the edge over pioneers such as Whereify in reaching the mass market and the phone is clearly a device that is starting to become more popular among the "tween" set, Whereify service offers more protection, such as automatically sounding an alarm when its watch-like device's band is broken.

Ideally, it would be great to see something as small as the shoe receiver used in the Nike+iPod system be tied to a locator, but then again the last thing we want to encourage in those who prey upon kids is strip searches.

Video: it’s not just for cable anymore

Moving video — particularly high-quality video — around remains a difficult problem complicated by large file sizes, incompatible file formats, diverse sources and rights management issues. Last week at the DigitalLife Press Preview and other events, I met with several companies that see a bright future for more fluid exchange of this emotionally powerful content type.

• Seagate sees video as a key medium to drive storage, from the big racks of hard drives used to store it on Internet servers to microdrives inside portable video players and the relatively untapped area of mobile digital video. Rights management issues will need to be worked out for this dream to become a reality.
• Vongo. One of the favored competitors in the PC space, it offers a Netflix-like subscription without the queue as well as pay-per-view movies. Movies can be played on up to three PCs and the service is working on compatibility with Portable Media Center.
• ITVN. This company offers set-top boxes somewhat similar to Akimbo and offers a number of packages, including adult content. It's still putting the pieces together in terms of how different video packages might work. It offers the Starz feed as Vongo does, but displays it on a television without any Media Center machinations.

So, there are signs of progress, but it's still early. While ITVN and Vongo charge for their content, Apple faces a tougher battle here that it has with music because it's carrying a lot of content that people really do expect to be free.

Less jive in AMD Live

AMD may have been late to RSVP to Microsoft's Media Center party, but its AMD Live initiative is easy to pronounce and easy to understand. Like Intel's VIIV, AMD Live! specifies requirements for processor horsepower and power consumption. It also focuses on personal content, an underutilized asset by PC manufacturers. PCMag,com lays out the software suite, which includes several excellent free Web services from Orb Networks and Streamload, but also some that, while useful, have little to do with multimedia or entertainment, such as Pure Networks' Network Magic and LogMeIn, a competitor to the better-known GoToMyPC from Citrix Online.

Speaking of Orb, Avvenu announced that it can now stream music files from your PC (like Orb) and mirror your files on its servers (like Google Desktop). The latter service will have a $30/year subscription fee. I've been a fan of Avvenu's simplicity, but I'll be interested to see how it handles MP3 files as its organization scheme is not the best.

Maybe it's playing a bit of catch-up, but AMD seems to be keeping pace with Intel on power consumption, the golden criterion cited by Apple in embracing Intel exclusivity. The Mac product line isn't broad enough to leave a lot of room for multiple chip suppliers, but switches aren't unprecedented. Ask IBM.

Pulling photos out of a hat

It will be interesting to see where pricing for the Presto photo printing service comes in. I think annual subscriptions are easier to swallow than monthly ones, particularly if a device is going to need consumables like the inkjet "photo mailbox" that Presto is planning. Presto is reminiscent of several previous attempts to entertain the lightly connected elderly or technophobes — WebTV, Cidco's MailStation and Ceiva, which still seems to be kicking around. Presto, though, seems like a product that is more attuned to its target demographic than Ceiva.

Presto's solution doesn't use the Internet, though, which leads me to believe that's using some kind of wireless network, which would be challenging to implement cost-effectively.

eMusic is still a tough sell

With all the focus on the Napster glasnost and Urge as part of the revamped Wndows Media troika, there's been a lot of discussion on the "closed" nature of iTunes Music Store and how it is the only online iPod-compatible store for music. This has never been the case. Long before the iTunes Music Store and even the iPod were launched, eMusic.com was selling DRM-free music in the nearly universally supported MP3 format. The downside has been that it hasn't been able to attract content from major — or even, it seems, many independent — labels.

I checked out the site for the first time in a while tonight. The layout is clean and easy to navigate, but I had a hard time finding much music I like and the site isn't helping itself posting AMG reviews that say things like this regarding Todd Rundgren And His Friends:

As well-intentioned as this was meant to be, it really doesn't add much to his catalog and essentially just gives session players like Steve Lukather and Kulick's brother, Bruce, a showcase for their talents. But they have already proven their worth on their own recordings, making this a non-essential item for all but dedicated Rundgren collectors.

Editorial integrity is one thing, but you'd never see such a damning review on Amazon.com. Worse, eMusic combines some of the worst of both worlds in charging a subscription fee for a limited number of downloads! In eMusic's defense, those downloads can be used practically anywhere digital music can be played, with no limits on the number of machines on which they can be used. Furthermore, unlike with services such as Napster, the songs won't expire if you cancel your subscription. Still, there's no way I could find enough content on the service to justify a subscription (although I admit I'm not a big fan of live music which is featured heavily), and that would certainly be true for more discriminating consumers.

As usual, some of the gems seem to be among unsigned artists but, if that's your bag, you're better off surfing garageband.com or cdbaby.com.

The new wearables

Depicting cell phones and digital cameras small enough to be worn like overgrown pendants have long been a marketing ploy by technology vendors even though consumers rarely carry them that way. Perhaps they have all striven to escape the "pocket prison" — that valuable real estate that can accommodate only one or two mobile devices. As exercise accessories, we've certainly seen many armbands that can accommodate bantam devices like the lightweight iPod Shuffle or iPod nano (or even their less bantam CD and portable tape playing forebears), but again it is pretty rare to see people wearing these devices outside of a gym or running track.

However, two new technology advances showcased this week show that we are indeed on the precipice of infiltrating technology into the everday. The Nike+Apple Sport Kit is an inexpensive accessory for athletic shoes that sell for as little as $85 while the Abacus 2006 watch appears to be the first one with Microsoft's SPOT technology that isn't conspicuously thick. MSN Direct has other obstacles, such as competing with increasingly savvy cell phones and building a subscription business, but both products represent fresh approaches to data-enabling formerly dumb devices.

Urge’s media is the message

Now that MTV Networks' Urge service is available, consumers will decide whether all of MTV's programming and context will drive them to a subscription model. Because of the editorial intelligence embedded into the service, Urge does an excellent job of enabling music exploration, an area where the iTunes Music Store continues to lag badly. One thing is certain: Windows Media Player 11 is a huge improvement over the previous version and presents music more graphically than iTunes. However, the iRiver clix, while one of the better digital media players from the WMA camp, is no iPod nano killer.

If you're among those who believe that Apple's success in the digital music space has bee due to aggressive advertising and promotion, Urge should certainly give Apple cause for concern as MTV Networks can promote its service around the clock on television for practically nothing.

Now you can spell it “Napstr”

Napster today announced a free tier of service that enables consumers to listen to a song five times before asking them to pony up for the subscription service. This will go a long way to boosting Napster's mindshare. Indeed, while much attention has been focused on which company will be the Flickr of video, Napster now has an opportunity to become a sort of Flickr for music, that is, a blog-friendly (if not yet tag-friendly) resource that enables consumers to share music in a legal way that embraces the spirit of its original namesake; this has groundbreaking promotional value.

Its new free service not only steals much of the thunder from Yahoo! Music as a source for sampling, but one-ups that service with easy Web accessibility and even Mac support. Alas, though, Napster needs to close the gap between its limited free service and its full service. Creating even one middle tier of service that lacked downloads to portable devices — useless to most of the market at this point anyway – would help reinforce the psychological groundwork that Napster is now laying with its advertising and free access, that you can enjoy access to on-demand music without having to own it.

Yahoo!’s fourth screen is Google’s radar

Earlier this week, Yahoo! acquired most of the assets of Meedio, one of a handful of Windows Media Center-like software products that had its roots in open-source. The other major Windows-based products are from SageTV and Media Center predecessor SnapStream, with Linux offerings MythTV and Freevo still options for the open source crowd. Whereas Medio had become a commercial product, Yahoo! will give away its rebranded version Yahoo Go!.

Following last year's acquisition of Konfabulator technology — now called Yahoo! Widgets, Yahoo! now has platforms in place for each of the major "three screens" of TV, PC and mobile phone. However, even though Yahoo!'s acquisition strategy has created a predictably disjointed family of products, the diversity of the products demonstrates the tremendous differences in context that media companies will face developing a three-screen strategy.

In these times when Google has been aggressively adding many sites that rival Yahoo!'s, Meedio's acquisition provides fresh fuel for the old rumor that Google would acquire TiVo. Unlike Meedio, which is still simply Windows software, TiVo has actual eyeballs in front of the glass it commands, and Google could afford the kind of generosity that would eliminate its odious monthly fee, boosting TiVo's popularity. EPIC may not be far away.