The arms race to lure music-loving clients is heating up at the moment: First Google gets a music service, and now MSN does too. MSN's download service launches tomorrow, and Microsoft's schmoozed all four big record labels to help it get off the ground.
Deals with EMI, Warner Music, Universal and Sony BMG mean that MSN Music will go live with over a million tracks--a tenth of what iTunes offers, but still nothing to be sniffed at. The number is likely to go up over the months as smaller and independent labels are signed up. It'll sit in the Music segment of MSN's new homepage, and runs on exactly the same tech as Microsoft uses to power Zune's store (though the two systems are definitely separate). The tracks are 192kbps encoded in MP3 or WMA format, and are DRM-free.
Microsoft's being a little tricky with the pricing--at its U.K. launch you can only buy credits in groups of ten for £7.99, with a credit being good for one track--but it seems like pretty much any other music download service that's already out there, like iTunes or Amazon's. There is one clever twist though--you can actually stream most of the track catalog to your PC for free, which Microsoft is making work by having embedded graphic ads in the custom player app you have to use to access the streams.
That's actually quite clever, since it lets Microsoft cover two different markets at once--downloadable tracks like in iTunes, and streaming music like Spotify or Pandora. But how is MSN trying to differentiate its offerings from all the other ways you can access digital music online? The answer is it probably isn't going to. Microsoft can't really hope to make serious inroads into a business that's absolutely dominated by Apple--instead it's probably trying to make a reasonable profit from habitual MSN users who will occasionally buy or stream some music while they're at the site.
MSN's executive producer Peter Bale pretty much confirms this with his description of the new service: "We think reading about music and listening to music are two halves of the same thing and we wanted to offer MSN users access to a competitive download to own service." The main thrust being why leave MSN and login to iTunes to buy a track when you can do it all in one place?
Will this work? It's impossible to tell--the marketplace is becoming increasingly crowded, and MSN Music store isn't doing anything particularly revolutionary. Its name is a draw, of course, and it'll likely see a fair amount of traffic just because of this. But it'll have to innovate some time soon if its to keep relevant, as there're only going to be more competition joining the battle for music fans as time goes by. And there's one last thing--quite where the rumored MSN/MySpace partnership fits into this is anyone's guess.
Say what you like about virtual world Second Life--it just keeps spinning on. And now it's getting an official enterprise offshoot, which companies can run on their own server for virtual, corporate, uh, fun. There's even going to be an app store.
Second Life Enterprise went live as an open beta version yesterday, after over a year of work and planning that involved IBM's help in creating a secure, firewalled instance of the virtual world. If you're a company with $50,000 to spare, you can buy it on a dedicated server--a sizable sum that indicates how seriously creators Linden Labs and its prospective buyers will be taking this system.
But what on earth would you use that $50,000 purchase for? On its Web site, Linden explains that 2009 is "a breakout year for virtual collaboration," and we can't argue with that--even Microsoft is taking Office into the cloud and Google's Wave is seen as a collaborative tool. Second Life has the advantages of being a simulated reality; graphics add a degree of realism to communications that systems like Wave just can't match. Linden suggests that, "Virtual worlds are the best alternative to face-to-face interaction," which is really the biggest selling point. One imagines a globally distributed company calling virtual world meetings, presentations or even mass townhall-like congregations to deliver big news to its employees.
To that end, the corporate Second Life comes with seven pre-built environments, including an auditorium and conference centers. Early in 2010, there'll also be an app store, the Second Life Work Marketplace, where you'll be able to buy additional virtual constructs and tools.
If you're skeptical about the benefits of a corporate virtual world, then you should know that many companies already have a SL presence in the open version. Northrop Grumman and the U.S. Navy are interested in the new one--they are pretty serious players. With more and more corporate tools in the cloud, collaborative working through systems like virtual Office or Campfire, and the environmental and cost benefits from a virtual working telecommuting environment becoming more important, it's just possible your future job may involve strolling the corridors of a virtual office building. Let's hope a virtual water cooler and coffee machine come standard.
What do you give to a troop deployed in the field who already has everything? A bible on a stick, of course. At least, that's what the organization Faith Comes by Hearing thinks, as it's sent over 20,000 digital audio bibles to U.S. troops currently in action.
The BibleSticks are digital audio bibles, carrying the Audio Drama version of the new testament, designed to be small, easy to carry, and to appeal to the (yes, you guessed it) "iPod generation." So says Faith Comes by Hearing's national director Troy Carl, anyway. Carl notes that the devices have received a "tremendous response" and that more than 200 chaplains across the different military services are using the BibleSticks as part of their ministrations.
The idea makes pretty good sense--reading is now much less of a habit than it used to be, and religious troops may be pleased at a digital audio version of the bible which is more modern (reminding us of the multimedia bible we mentioned recently) easy to carry, and can be flicked on in the dark during off-duty sleep periods without disturbing anyone else. It's even designed to be low-visibility so, you know, your bible doesn't get you shot (unlike that bright white iRosary).
Combat is one of those unique situations that really makes a person focus on theological issues, it goes without saying, and there's the old adage that there're no atheists in a foxhole (even though it's not actually true). But with so many thousands of troops currently deployed, the percentage who are using the BibleSticks is actually quite small. And maybe we should be grateful for that: One Army chaplain, referring to the BibleSticks, noted how fabulous it was that the soldiers are now "able to listen to the Word of God while doing missions." An audio bible giving succor to a scared and lonely Christian far from home is an admirable thing, but the image of a disturbed troop, all crazied-up in battle, marching along with a gun and the story of the bible ringing in his ears and wreaking biblical vengeance is a pretty uncomfortable one.
Remember how the Ansari X-Prize resulted in the nascent commercial space trip business, with Virgin Galactic in the lead? Now there's a similar push to innovate space technology, but of a different sort: Space elevators, making the ride into orbit amazingly cheap and easy.
The Space Elevator Games are just kicking off in the Mojave desert, partly funded by NASA's Centennial Challenges program via the Spaceward Foundation, and with a $2 million prize up for grabs. The idea, much like the X-Prize, is to spur the development of a new technology--three teams are taking part this year, with the goal of getting their vehicles to climb a cable 1,000 meters into the sky at an average speed of 5 meters per second.
If you haven't heard about space elevator technology, its name pretty much explains how it works. A cable is strung between a launch point and a geostationary satellite in orbit, dangling all the way up from the ground through the atmosphere into space. Elevator cars will then ride up and down the cable, powered by ground-fired laser beams, and ferrying equipment and personnel into space without all the expense, fuss and risk of a rocket launch. When they become technically feasible, they'll make access to space about as simple and easy a task as driving a car, and they'll drop the costs of launching satellites by an extraordinary amount--completely transforming how we think about space travel.
Hence the Space Elevator Games existence, since the task of actually building an elevator is extremely challenging--the technology to build the cables themselves is only being realized. And there's a significant barrier to actually getting them safely set-up: Space junk, from all the thousands of rocket launches we've already made. British space scientists have just studied the problem anew, and are pushing for action before it becomes too serious and increases the expense and risk of future space missions. But space junk would be an even more serious threat to a space elevator than a rocket or space station, since its cables stretch through many different layers of the space junk cloud--a single collision with a small piece of junk at tens of kilometers a second could easily sever the cable. Maybe NASA should, in parallel with the space elevator effort, be funding Space Junk Games too.
After a single airliner went ever so slightly astray because its flight crew were using laptops in the cockpit, lawmakers are poised to bring regulations crashing down that forbid almost any kind of gadget being used by pilots. That's just dumb.
All this fuss is about Northwest Flight 188 a few weeks ago. During a regular, unsurprising and otherwise uneventful flight to Minneapolis the plane, which was carrying 144 passengers, dropped out of contact with air traffic controllers. As a result it ignored flight direction instructions and repeated calls to respond to radio commands, and kept flying. In fact it was out of touch for 91 minutes, and flew past its destination and on over Wisconsin--only turning around and contacting ground crew when alerted by a flight attendant.
What caused all this to happen--a terrorist attack? A mechanical failure? A mysterious alien abduction or Fringe-like parascientific event? Nope. The two pilots were busy fussing with their own laptops to work out an argument about a new piece of crew scheduling software, and basically forgot what they were supposed to be doing. This isn't, in fact, against any FAA regulations--by using their machines the crew weren't violating any rules, as they weren't in landing approach or below 10,000 feet.
That's about to change, thanks to Sen. Byron Dorgan--chair of the aviation subcommittee--who's tackling the problem with doberman-like fierceness. Within a week he's planning on introducing a new law that would forbid the use of personal laptops or, indeed, any kind of personal gizmo like an MP3 player in the cockpit.
It's daft. It ignores the whole slew of valuable airline pilot Apps for the iPhone, for example. What will our pilots do during those long boring hours while the autopilot is busy flying the aircraft? Without PSPs or iPods and to amuse them, surely they're in danger of falling asleep from boredom--and doesn't that sound more dangerous than a teeny, tiny overshoot? If anything we should demand more gadgets in the cockpit to keep the crew alert, keep them ahead of the technological edge, and keep their fingers nimble and exercised from all that game playing to be ready to push the myriad of little buttons on the flight computers. And possibly to cause more distracted overshoots which would, like Flight 188's case, result in senior-level White House terrorist alerts. After enough of those, perhaps the lawmakers would realize what a stupidly hypersensitive social situation they're inflicting on the world.
The iPhone may or may not be a success in China, but some analysis just out suggests it's actually doing pretty well in the enterprise environment. It may even more than triple its market share compared to last year.
When you think of corporate smartphones, you tend to think almost automatically of RIM's BlackBerrys--they're solid, reliable, iconic, successful and have sewn up something like 40% of that market. The iPhone, with its glossy looks, high-tech allure, reputation as a gaming and entertainment platform and relatively high unit costs isn't something you'd necessarilyassociate with a corporate environment. Apple itself has gone on record to state that the tens of thousands of apps that are helping to make the phone a success (thousands of which seem business-oriented) are most definitely not business tools, implying the phone itself isn't.
Which is why Deutsche Bank's analysis is pretty surprising. It suggests that by the end of this year Apple will have sold two million iPhones to corporate users, through a mix of employee reimbursements and direct IT department purchases. That'll give Apple a 7% share of the enterprise smartphone market, versus the 2% it had in 2008--a massive growth.
Why the sudden interest? Deutsche Bank thinks its because the phone gets high user satisfaction ratings, that it's innovative, it has plenty of enterprise applications and the virtual keyboard may actually be a draw for some users. The application count is unsurprising, and with over 100,000 apps on sale now, it seems reasonable that the sheer number, utility and diversity of business apps are tempting people towards the phone. The touchscreen suggestion is more interesting though. BlackBerrys were attractive at first because they included a full QWERTY keypad when every other phone had a standard one, and the iPhone's virtual touch-sensitive keypad was seen as a distraction, and not suited for business environments.
That argument never made much sense, and doesn't seem to hold true either--if the iPhone is tripling its market share, business users must like it. But Deutsche Bank's data doesn't mention what may actually be the key driver behind business-use adoption for the phone: Jealousy. The iPhone's been in the limelight for over two years now, with more press attention than almost any other device, and with a booming ecosystem of apps and entertainment. Business users feature phones and BlackBerrys look dinosaurish in comparison--yes, even the touchscreen BlackBerry Storm--and lack the opportunities offered by the App Store. Many business users will have looked at this evolving situation and thought something along the lines of, "If the company's paying for it, then why don't I get some of that iPhone goodness?"
One in five kids have their own cell phone by the time they are 8 years
old, according to Nielsen's latest survey, "A Pocket Guide to Social
Media and Kids." And guess what? The kids love using their phones to
socialize.
Among the 10-year-olds surveyed, 50% have their own cell phone, and that jumps to over three-quarters by the time they are 12. The average age that kids get their own cell phone has also pushed downwards--it was 9.7 years in 2009, and 10.1 years in the second quarter of 2008, but there's obviously a yearning to own them much before this age as the average age of borrowing one is now 8 years old--but I think Nielsen should re-check those numbers, because my toddler wants to borrow my iPhone all the time.
To a generation of parents who were raised on brick phones, these figures may seem surprising. They really shouldn't be though--the mobile phone is such a fantastically useful tool that it is bound to be used by everyone, no matter what their age. In fact, you can argue it's changing how our society works.
But what on earth are kids using these devices for? The answers to that are actually slightly more predictable. The average 13 to 17 year old, for example, sends over 2,000 SMS messages per month, and for anyone who's either got a child or has watched how they interact with cell phones and friends, this is absolutely no surprise at all. The same goes for how they use the mobile Internet:
While you're busy checking the weather and your tanking stock portfolio, your kids are looking for the latest movies and music releases, playing games, and using social networks. The cell phone, in other words, is way more of a communications and entertainment hub for younger people than older people. Which makes sense--kids spend more time socializing, even when all they have is a rotary dial phone with a curly cord.
Parents are wary of the new technology, of course, and particularly afraid of how much their kids cell phone habits may end up costing them. Nearly 60% of parents of cell phone-owing kids have forbidden downloads of games, ringtones videos and so on--the extra items that often incur a charge. And parents, it's only going to get worse. The children in this survey are most likely owners of dumphones, the cheapest handsets on the market. But the trend in cell phone design is clearly toward smartphones, which will inevitably mean that kids end up using them too. And the greater capability of these phones means that they'll be even more central to kid's lives than phones already are. But don't panic about the inevitable, just accept it.
Best Buy and Roxio CinemaNow announced a partnership today that will result in a whole new movie downloading service. It'll apparently be integrated into pretty much every Web-enabled device Best Buy sells too, which is a good way of ensuring success.
The way Best Buy sees it, digital distribution is the way of the future--by 2012 the company's predicting it will be a "double digit percentage" of the money generated by home movie-watching. And while that figure covers anywhere from 10% to 99%--which is, shall we say, quite a width--it at least allows Best Buy to be confident in its predictions.
The service has not been named yet, but Best Buy is planning on installing compatible software on the devices it sells. Samsung and Sony have been mentioned as hardware providers. Pursuing a multiple-platform route to making the service work seems like an immediately sensible idea, since it frees Best Buy from having ties to just one provider. But one very big name is missing from the list of providers, and it might be a significant one: Apple. With rumors that Apple's interested in getting TV networks on board for a subscription model for TV shows through iTunes, iTunes' existing movie sales, and the relatively closed-platform status of the iPhone, it's hard to see Apple as anything other than a competitor to Best Buy's plans.
Best Buy does have one big advantage though: All those bricks and mortar stores. With big advertising in front of millions of consumers every week, it'll be able to launch the download service with a massive fanfare, getting it into the public consciousness very effectively. Sonic Solutions is also a sensible partner to work with, since it already runs Blockbuster's movie download system--which is obviously a competitor to Best Buy's plans.
And maybe, with declining DVD sales beginning to become ominous, this is the right time to start the enterprise off--or perhaps even a few years too late. Let's hope that Best Buy has more success in downloadable movies than Wal-Mart and Hewlett-Packard did with their online movie service, now dead for nearly two years.
Apple rumors swirl practically every week, but there's rarely one that's as potentially game-changing as this one: According to insiders, the company's aiming to cut out the cable TV middle man, and serve up network TV to as many as 65 million users via iTunes.
The news has surfaced over at AllThingsD. According to the site's sources, Apple's been courting the TV networks directly, mentioning a $30 iTunes TV subscription service. As if that weren't intriguing enough, Apple's aiming to have the service live next year some time, which is seriously soon.
This does tally with long-standing rumors we've heard about Apple's subscription plans for iTunes--though these are usually connected to music tracks--as well as numerous rumors about Apple's televisual intentions. It also parallels the current trend towards television over the Internet, via services like Hulu (or ISPs, like Portugal's Meo and Zon suppliers). In fact, it's the logical extension of moves Apple's been making with the Apple TV hardware and iTunes.
But there's going to be one big roadblock in Apple's way: The cable companies. They're fiercely defending their current role as the channel for delivering TV to your home, because there're billions of dollars of revenue involved. Looking at the vile way Time Warner Cable is maneuvering to squeeze out a local ISP in North Carolina to protect its income, factoring in the complications of advertising revenues, and rumors that Apple's not signed up any particular network yet, this might look like an impossible task.
Or is it? Apple's turned the music business inside out and upside down and currently enjoys the position of number one music retailer in the U.S.--an odd situation for a computer company, if you think about it. And Apple's choice to use iTunes as the vehicle for the TV content is likely to be very important--it means the videos aren't tied to a particular product, and could be delivered by any Mac, by Apple TV and possibly even through the iPhone. If Apple's tablet surfaces next year, then it might actually turn into the ultimate device for TV-watching around the home--and maybe even while roaming over a wireless network. There're also some cold, hard statistics that tend to support Apple: It has 65 million iTunes users. Whereas Hulu, arguably the most successful existing Internet TV system, has 40 million, and Netflix has about 11 million. Comcast has 24 million users.
All of these facts will be a significant draw for the networks, and if just one of them signed up with Apple, the rest could follow suit. As noted at AllThingsD, that first one could well be Disney--it's got close ties with Apple, it's bought in to Apple's iPhone plans, and it has sold programs via iTunes already.
L-3 Communications (one of our Fast Company 50 this year) has just announced it's partnering with Textron to bid for a big future military vehicle contract. By big, we mean biiig: a 73-ton hovercraft that'll ferry troops and hardware from ship to shore.
Yup--you read that right: a hovercraft that weighs 73 tons. It's the U.S. Navy's Ship-to-Shore Connector (SSC) program, worth $4 billion, and it's due to be in service around 2019--it will replace the existing Landing Craft Air Cushion hovercraft that currently does the job. Think of a monster like this floating on nothing more than air, moving at high speed over sea and shore, laden with guns and people to shoot them (or bags foodstuffs when deployed in humanitarian roles). Here's a picture of a similar but larger prototype design from Textron to help boggle your imagination.
But actually, it's not all that big when you compare it to other military hardware, which gives us an excuse to talk about some of this stuff.
Challenger II Main Battle Tank
To give you some sense of perspective, 73 tons is pretty close to the basic weight of Britain's primary piece of battlefield armor--the Challenger II tank. This fearsome beast is actually advertised by its makers as the world's most reliable main battle tank--it costs about $8 million per unit, carries a crew of four, can fire its high-explosive rounds over five miles, and manages speeds of 25mph off-road. It weighs nearly 70 tons empty--so watch this video and then try and imagine something this big zipping over the sea towards you.
Of course, the SSC is actually designed to carry tanks like this to beachhead positions from ships, but you get the picture.
C-5 Galaxy
The Challenger ii weighs nearly as much as the SSC but it doesn't actually take to the air--unless it's making a jump. So here's something heavy and flying for comparison: the C-5 Galaxy. In service with the U.S.A.F. as a heavy lift vehicle, it's actually one of the largest aircraft in the World. Introduced in 1970, each C-5 is worth around $170 million; it can carry 73 passengers and has 28 wheels and a loading bay that measures 120 feet long and 19 feet high. It's huge. It flies. And it weighs over 250 tons--three SSCs all at once.
Caspian Sea Monster
Okay, we have the Challenger ii tank that weighs as much as the SSC but which doesn't fly or float, and the C-5 Galaxy that weighs three times as much but which is actually a genuine plane that you wouldn't want anywhere near the sea. What about something that combines the two? That's where you get the Ekranoplan. It's actually a ground-effect vehicle much like the SSC, but it generates its cushion of air because it's shaped like an airplane and actually flies very, very close to the water's surface.
The Soviet Union experimented with many different Ekranoplan designs, but the biggest was so astonishing it was dubbed the Caspian Sea Monster by foreign intelligence agencies. They were designed to move fast--very fast (up to several hundred miles an hour), and to be able to act as attack vehicles as well as cargo freighters. The Caspian Sea Monster weighed over 500 tons.
That vehicle weighs nearly seven times as much as the SSC will, but the Monster never really made it past the prototype phase, whereas the SSC will be roaring over the oceans soon.
When you think of corporate smartphones, you tend to think almost automatically of RIM's BlackBerrys--they're solid, reliable, iconic, successful and have sewn up something like 40% of that market. The iPhone, with its glossy looks, high-tech allure, reputation as a gaming and entertainment platform and relatively high unit costs isn't something you'd 
