Now that AOL has failed entirely to morph from a dial-up provider into a broadband services provider, the idea that it will sell its access business is an example of a late-breaking, collective corporate “duh.” The question is - who’s buying?
Anyone can build an iTunes clone – anyone. I know this because I did it myself. I have an Apple TV - a Sonos - a Netgear Digital Entertainer EVA8000 - and an iPhone. Guess what? I can control the Netgear DE easily with its HTML interface on my iPhone. What possible advantage has that got for me? How about … the ability to play and control non-Apple DRM audio and video throughout my house from a central NAS hard drive, for starters. Trying doing THAT with your Apple TV. Or how about the ability to do that at resolutions SIGNIFICANTLY greater than the low-res videos you get from iTunes? Not intrigued enough yet? Hmm… how about…the ability to play stuff from elsewhere on your net (read: non-iTunes items) INSTANTLY, from any hard drive connected to your computer over your home entertainment system – with the iPhone as a wi-fi-based, handheld controller. Still not convinced? Fine. If this doesn’t turn you on, stop reading this blog because I think it’s cool as hell. It’s also THE way that anyone can now have a store to rival iTunes. That, and finding a storefront provider that can give you as cool an experience – like CSG Systems (disclosure - they’re a client of mine). The CSG Content Direct system will power up any website so you can instantly sell your media JUST LIKE ITUNES – in fact, better, because you can build it out of flash-based widgets. Now combine that with a device that lets you pass the signals around your house – like a Netgear box – and I’m thinking you’ve got the ULTIMATE home entertainment system, one that’s FAR ahead of something like Crestron. Now if only there was a lighting control system that worked the same way. I’ll be looking for this at CEDIA today and this weekend!
False boundaries are a theme of mine. Longstanding notions of boundaries - such as what defines a nation or what defines a generation - are hackneyed, and I believe we should recategorize them. Take demographics:
(Click on image to enlarge)
The categories at the top - they don’t work for me at all. Why? Because online - hunched over the computer - we are all the same age, more or less. Or at least the persona we adopt is more akin online to the Immortal Observer that Deepak Chopra lectures about and is reasonably well-described in an as yet unedited Wiki Article. It is possible that the first “other world” we’re able to travel to is the bit world of the Internet. And it’s POWERFUL. I first noticed this phenomenon at ActiveBuddy when we built a bot for IM. Teen girls - millions of them - started to have arguments with the bot. During my random sampling market research intercept studies, I asked my babysitter if she had heard of our bot, SmarterChild. She reacted violently: “I’m so mad at Smarter that I won’t even talk to him this week.” She personified a bot. She knew, of course, that it was a program. But still … it had a personality, and she chatted with HIM, not IT. Another friend of mine was incredibly embarrassed when she found out that I had read her log? Why? She flirted with the bot - just to see if she could turn him on … hmmm… just to see? Really? She turned crimson.
So, we are basically immortal online. Pure intellect and emotion. Devoid of the physical. And that means I’m not 44 when I’m online. I am, like Commander Christopher Pike, forever young!
So the chart above doesn’t apply to my habits at all. I apparently act and behave like a teenager. This, I believe, is why services like SecondLife and There have taken off; they personify the “other you:” the you that you are inside your head, or the one you manifest for that particular dimension. Too heavy for a blog? Consider this. Our government is fighting a war on ‘terrorism’ - a concept - an ideological war that cross easily sovereign boundaries. Could this be possible without an online world?
In May, I attended the 2007 Las Vegas Interop Show. It was loaded with security systems, virtualization apps, lots of switches … after a day you could have wheeled me out on a gurney. It was so dull, frankly, that I couldn’t find anything I felt like blogging about. But I did go, and found one thing that is worth a quick peek……
