Google Can Index Test in Images and Video

A patent application lodged by Google in July 2007 but recently made public seeks to patent a method where by robots (computers) can read and understand text in images and video, notes Duncan Riley at TechCrunch. That would be a big step forward in indexing visual media, since there would be no need to manually attach tags to such visual media.

Basically, the patent covers a method whereby any visible text in an image--a street sign, for example--can be automatically indexed. Obviously, as with any of the developing Web-based technologies, there are privacy issues. As someone who has to work with lots of images, and spends lots of time wading through images that a search suggests are appropriate, and aren't, this is really helpful.

Does Music Industry "Get It"?

as someone who arrogantly and wrongly has accused whole industries of "not getting it" at points in the past, I never like to presume I understand executive thinking better than they themselves do.

What sometimes appears as "cluelessness" often has more to do with deliberate timing. and rational calculations about how long to let one revenue model atrophy before heating up a replacement revenue model that will cannibalize the older model.

So let me be charitable. Perhaps U.S. music executives do have a plan for changing their business model and packaging. Perhaps they are executing on that plan even now.

Album sales declined 9.5 percent last year, while digital song sales grew 45 percent, according to Nielsen SoundScan. Physical product sales were down 15 percent, including sales of "singles."

So maybe the issue is simply figuring out better ways to handle digital rights that aren't unfriendly to consumers who have paid for their music, nor damaging to copyright holders. It's a tough problem, to be sure.

And the problems extend far beyond copyright issues. As someone who has made a transition to iPod as my primary music playback system, and as someone whose PC-embedded hard drives need to be replaced once a year or so, the issue of storing and managing the music collection is a serious problem.

The reason, of course, is that each iPod syncs with just one hard drive. Lose that hard drive and one has two options: completely erase the contents of the iPod, or never change the data already on the iPod.

So now I have to take two paths to make sure the music isn't lost: store the copies on an external hard drive that hopefully "never" dies; and then keep the compact disk as well, since the external hard drive will ultimately fail, forcing me to restore or simply forget about the music stored on it.

As a simple music customer, this is a problem. Unless I have physical media backup, the music always is at risk of loss, for mechanical reasons. But keeping those CDs is not ideal, either. And the process of restoring lost music is time-consuming. So music storage "in the cloud" seems promising, at least to me.

OS Shift?

Amazon's top-10 "Most Wished For in Computers & PC Hardware" list includes, in order or popularity:
1. Asus Eee PC 8G
2. Asus Eee 4G
3. Asus EEE 4G
4. HP Pavilion DV6662SE
5. Nokia N810 Portable Internet Tablet
6. Nokia N800 Internet Tablet PC
7. Apple MacBook
8. Apple MacBook Pro
9. HP Pavilion DV6626US
10. Apple MacBook MB062LL

A couple of things strike one about this list. First, the prevalence of Linux-powered machines at the top three spots. Second, the prevalence of smaller form factor, highly portable devices among the top 10. Third, the prevalence of operating systems other than Windows in the top 10. Fourth, the prevalence of devices optimized for Web and Internet use.

On Amazon's "Bestsellers in Computers & PC Hardware" list, five of the top 10 devices use operating systems other than Windows. On Amazon's "Most Gifted" list, six of the top 10 devices use operating systems other than Windows.

Here's the other angle: some people carry smart phones with them when traveling, and leave their PCs behind. Top management and sales personnel are more likely to do so than people who have greater needs for text entry and Web app access. The point is that at least for shorter trips, the smart phone goes, the PC stays.

Almost everybody who owns a smartphone takes it, not a PC, when traveling locally, because email and text communications that otherwise would require a PC still are available.

To the extent that this trend continues, and more-mobile PC style devices also get traction, as the Amazon data tends to indicate, what does it mean? Web. Remote computing and storage. Need for better interfaces.

Small devices almost have to lean more heavily on applications in the cloud rather than local processing and storage. And several of the new devices plow new ground in the form factor/power/price equation, banking on Web apps to reduce price footprint, for example.

Navigation on a small device also is more problematic, so devices get an even-bigger push for new input options. Speech and touch, for example. Finally, taking all notebook PCs and smart phones together, and looking at them as a single market, not separate markets, one can observer that there already is more diversity in operating systems than has been the case in the desktop PC market.

Open Source Trend for 2008

Without proclaiming 2008 the "year of" anything, open source seems to be getting traction in the enterprise computing environment in server farms and on desktops and mobiles. Open source is preparing for additional traction in the consumer mobile markets. Linux has grown its presence in the consumer mobile area, and Google's Android initiative will start to bear fruit sometime after 2008.

Motorola Unveils WiMAX Endpoint

Motorola has announced the latest addition to its portfolio of WiMAX customer premises equipment, the CPEi 100, a single data port, 2.5 GHz “plug-and-play” WiMAX solution designed to sit on a desktop and serve as the interface between a computer and the WiMAX network.

It is expected to be available in 2008 for WiMAX operators who have systems in the 2.5 GHz band.

Motorola’s family of wi4 WiMAX solutions support15 WiMAX contracts and more than 57 WiMAX engagements in 38 countries worldwide, including 44 active trials, the company says.

Eee, gOS Rocket, Linux, Computing in the Cloud

Things are looking up for Linux PCs (even though its share in the OS market still is small) and "computing in the cloud." Good OS, the open source startup that introduced gOS, a Linux operating system with Google and Web applications, on a $199 Wal-Mart PC last November, now says announced that gOS Rocket will be introduced January 7. Think of gOS Rocket as a low-cost Linux-powered notebook that is optimized as a Web device.

Note also that the Asustek Eee PC--also a Linux machine-- was among the top-ten notebook PCs sold by Amazon over the Christmas season, and was ranked at the top of wish lists compiled by Web site CNet. Asustek executives say demand was so strong forthis Christmas season that virtually all available units were bought just about as soon as they were put on the shelves.

“In the two weeks since its launch in the US, the Eee PC has already sold ten thousand sets,” says Sunny Han, ASUS director. Asustek fully expected to finish 2007 by meeting its sales goal of 350,000 units, and is planning for sales in 2008 of three to five million.

Rocket comes with Google Gears, the online-offline synchronization technology from Google that enables offline use of web apps.

gOS Rocket also features gBooth, a browser-based web cam application with special effects, integration with Facebook and other Web services; shortcuts to launch Google Reader, Talk, and Finance on the desktop; an online storage drive powered by Box.net; and Virtual Desktops, an intuitive feature to easily group and move applications across multiple desktop spaces.

At the center of Rocket's new desktop is a gorgeous Google search box, enabling users to perform Google searches directly from the desktop. This new feature launches Google search results in Firefox, the leading, open source web browser. Surrounding the Google search box is an attractive desktop environment comprised of new wallpaper, icons, digital clock, and other new desktop elements.

"Like most of our customers, we absolutely love the gorgeous design and simplified navigation that gOS provides," says Paul Kim, director of marketing for Everex. "With the release of Rocket, the gOS team has once again shown the industry how to make a great looking operating system intuitive and easy to use."

Rocket includes Google Gears to enable offline use of web apps. Google Reader, which allows you to read all your news and blogs in one place, is the only Google application to currently work offline with Google Gears and has been added to the gOS desktop. Launching Firefox will reveal a new custom gOS homepage that prominently features a continually updated list of web apps that work with Google Gears to allow offline access.

Separately, researchers at Informa predict that, by 2012, Linux will ship annually in 128 million mobile phones, or about 8.8 percent of all handsets sold. The report also forecasts a bright outlook for other open source mobile technologies, including Java, WebKit, and others.

According to the report, Linux in 2006 was the second most popular OS for smartphones sold worldwide. During that year it shipped in about 11.7 million handsets, the "vast majority" of which went to customers in Asia. Uptake in Europe and North America during 2007 is forecast to drive overall shipments close to 20 million, or about 17.3 percent of the smartphone market. From there, shipments are expected to nearly quadruple by 2010, reaching 27 percent of all smartphones by 2012.

Blu-ray for Macs?

Apple Inc. is expected soon to announce concrete support for Sony Corp's Blu-ray DVD format as opposed to Toshiba's HD-DVD, according to AppleInsider.

American Technology Research analyst Shaw Wu says his sources say Apple will start shipping Blu-ray-equipped Macintosh computers. At some point, every PC manufacturer shipping DVD drives will have to make similar choices.

Disney, for which Apple chief executive Steve Jobs is a Director, is a firm supporter of Blu-ray, while rival Microsoft Corp. has placed most of its eggs in the HD-DVD basket.

Still, there is "a smaller chance Apple may use a combo Blu-ray/HD-DVD drive to ensure full compatibility and not get involved in the format wars, AppleInsider notes.

U.K. Mobile Market Consolidation

The U.K. mobile market is saturated, analuysts at Ovum essentially have concluded. A bruising retention and acquisition war seems no longer to be producing adequate results, as mobile penetration has reached 118 percent.

Ovum researchers predict a shift to longer contract terms of 18 months as operators try to stabilize customer revenues, replacing the 12-month contracts that have been more typical.

Mobile operators also will shift attention to postpaid rather than prepaid additions, as two quarters of flat or negative prepaid connection growth suggest that market also is saturated.

Mobile operators also will shift focus to revenues (including value-added services) and average revenue per user (ARPU) rather than customer growth, Ovum believes.

And though the U.K. market now is dominated by top-tier operators O2 and Vodafone, more mobile virtual network operator contestants are expected.

Despite being saturated and highly competitive, the U.K. mobile market has avoided the fate of the German, Danish, Dutch and Belgium markets as ARPU and revenue still are relatively high, Ovum says. That's quite a trick!

Search Advertising: Big Growth in 2008

JPMorgan analysts now forecast 31.9 percent growth in search advertising revenues for 2008. Analysts at JPMorgan initially had thought growth would come in at about a 19-percent clip. So they sense acceleration. Me too.

Theater Attendance Also Flat

Lots of legacy businesses are flat to shrinking these days. Theater attendance seems to be one of the "flat" sorts of legacy video businesses.

"Ticket sales at North American movie theaters totaled $9.7 billion, a four percent increase over the previous year, according to Media by Numbers, which tracks box office receipts. More important: attendance was flat, after a narrow increase in 2006 and three previous years of sharp declines.

Some of that sluggishness historically has been attributed to the rise of alternate formats: cable, satellite TV, widescreen TVs, DVD rentals and VCR tape rentals. Add HDTV, larger screen sizes, PC viewing, download-to-TV services and user-generated content and one has a recipe for continued sluggishness at the box office.

No business based on communications, information or entertainment now is immune from the rise of new electronic alternatives.

Terabyte PC Coming

It's just a data point, but note that Asus, the Taiwanese computer maker, is planning on bringing to market a notebook PC with two 500 GByte hard drives from Hitachi Global Storage Technologies.

That's a terabyte. Those of you familiar with enterprise storage, think about it: a terabyte per user. Those of you who have to do your own backups, think about it: losing a significant portion of 1 Tbyte of data if your hard disks crash.

The upside is that such a user can 1,000 hours of video, or more than 350 feature length movies, or 250,000 four-minute songs. The downside? If those files are not backed up someplace, huge collections of audio or video can vanish.

The point is that storage continues to emerge as a function that is becoming harder to manage. It is harder to backup, harder to restore, harder to secure, index and retrieve. Part of the reason is that simply is so much more information to store. This graphic from searchstorage.com simply makes the point that storage and backup requirements grow steadily.

Which makes the argument for storage in the cloud ever more compelling. If one's authorized copies of music, video or other material are stored in the cloud, local hard drives can crash with little threat of losing the content. Not to mention that the files can be used on any number of endpoints (I didn't say downloaded to those endpoints).

4G: It Isn't Really a Technology Issue

As service providers start placing their bets on WiMAX or High Speed Downlink Packet Access (HSDPA) technologies, it is easy to fall into the trap of "technological determinism," the notion that the technology determines adoption or commercial success. Nothing could be further from the truth.

Commercial decisions, not the technology, will be the decisive factor. Business decisions almost always are. One can make a technology either way for WiMAX or HSDPA. But that won't be key. Operational issues, backwards compatibility, installed base, manufacturing volumes and even voice compatibility will turn out to be hugely important.

Some might argue that building a new broadband mobile network with a view to voice performance is nuts. The countervailing argument is that no matter what other "data things" users frequently do, talking will be one of them. And poor voice performance is objectionable in a way that OS instability and Web page unavailability are not. People routinely tolerate lower quality of service for their Web browsers, Internet connections and PC operating systems than they will their voice or video services.

Don't believe that? Watch what happens when movie download services become more prevalent. Every degradation of isochronous service disturbs users more than any non-real-time service. Users are unforgiving of voice or video service hiccups that would not faze them when the hiccups affect a non-real-time data service.

In fact, that's the point: user experience is not degraded by packet loss or some amount of jitter or latency when the application is not real time. User experience is visually or aurally affected in a highly visible way when the application requires predictable, sequenced delivery of the packets. Voice and video, to be specific.

Netflix Download -to-TV Service Coming

Netflix is working with LG Electronics to market a set-top-box=based movie download service for TVs, Business Week reports. The move is not unexpected, but is significant in terms of its timing. Netflix has over the last few years modified its statements about the DVD rental business, moving from a "consumers don't want to mess with downloading" to "we'll do it when it's the right time" stance.

The move now means it is "time." The transition from physical distribution of movie content to electronic download to TVs is underway, Netflix is signaling. The service, which extends the Netflix download service beyond "movies to your PC," is expected to begin service in the fall of 2008.

And though Apple TV has not gotten much traction, Business Week expects Apple to unveil its own download-to-TV service as well.

Netflix has been offerings downloads to PCs for about a year. But just about everybody who thinks about the matter agrees that downloads directly to TV screens is what is needed to really jumpstart the business.

Amazon.com, TiVo and Blockbuster also have decided they no longer can wait to enter the nascent business.

Again, what is important about the Netflix move is the timing, not the move itself. Netflix has concluded that even if revenues from online-to-TV downloading will not eclipse DVD rentals for some time, one tipping point has been reached. Netflix has to get into position now if it wants to maintain leadership in the movie rental business of the future.

By some reckoning, that business already is entering its 3.0 phase, having started with retail store rentals, followed by mail delivery and now starting the download phase.

And it is worth noting that if cable TV "pay per view" or "on demand" efforts had been quite a bit more than a niche, the video rental business and Netflix would not have developed. Cablers will note that studio licensing rules and release windows account for the rise of the independent video and DVD rental business.

That is true. What also is true is that studio profit margins and gross revenues control the availability of product. Once studios decide they can make as much, or more money, by switching to online distribution, they will do it.

In that regard, a recent slowdown in growth rates for DVD sales in retail outlets is another important market indicator. Consumer fascination with DVD purchases might be waning, overall. Legally or illegally, online-delivered content might be a contributing factor.

So legal alternatives such as Netflix will provide should have a shot at success. What remains to be seen is how widespread adoption will be. Consumers are quite fickle about special-purpose electronics devices. If the value is high enough Netflix will not find there is a problem. "No late fees" and "no drive to the store" have proven to have high consumer value.

But Netflix also seems to be pursuing the integration of the decoder circuits into other Internet-connected devices. The decoding software might reside into a TV, a game player or media reader, for example. That would alleviate the "one more box" barrier, as some consumers just don't want another device, with cords and cables, around their entertainment center.

On the other hand, Netflix then encounters the "only available on one model or one brand" problem. Consumers generally don't want to bother with "this flavor of access on this device" issue.

And though on-demand video should in principle provide even more convenience, the problem has been the content release windows, which essentially dictate that by the time an on-demand movie is available, consumers have had lots of other opportunities to view the content.

For the moment, at least, Netflix should continue to have an advantage over cable, satellite or telco on-demand content. The studios aren't going to disrupt the profitable DVD window just because online delivery now is possible.

Providers of broadband access services face a more complex business challenge. Demand for download speeds should get a boost if the download services take off. The issue is how much actual profit might exist. The problem with video is that it offers scant returns on a cents-per-bit basis compared to voice.

Put another way, video necessarily "commoditizes bandwidth." For those of you who are Bellheads, think of it this way. A two-hour movie delivered in widescreen format essentially requires bandqwidth equivalent to a DS-3 with a holding time of two hours(45 Mbps). True, we compress and pre-process now so only 4 Mbps to 6 Mbps is needed.

But the point is that the value of a 4 Mbps to 6 Mbps circuit used continuously for two hours or so is "worth" what a consumer deems a fair price for watching a two-hour video event. Call it $3 to $7, depending on what the content is and when it can be viewed.

All bits are not valued equally. On a cents-per-bit basis, text messages represent the highest return, with voice someplace in the middle and video at the very low end of the revenue continuum.

It might not matter so much whether "streaming" or "downloading" is the delivery technique, though analysts at the Yankee Group so far think streaming will get more volume. Most consumers won't care. But downloading offers more opportunity for managing bandwidth.

$588 Billion in Information Overload Costs?

Interruptions from phone calls, e-mails and instant messages eat up 28 percent of a knowledge worker's work day, resulting in 28 billion hours of lost productivity a year, say analysts at Basex. That might be considered a $588 billion cost, assuming a salary of $21 per hour for knowledge workers. Basex argues that information overload has become a significant problem for companies of all sizes, with some large organizations losing billions of dollars each year in lower productivity and hampered innovation.

That's the sort of argument providers of unified communications and presence solutions will point to as arguments for such solutions. Others, such as Stowe Boyd, disagree with that thesis. Stowe argues people are not drowning in information, but ignoring most of the information, and reacting only when the information flow suggests something actually is important.

It is true that there is a lot more "information" streaming past any person these days. But people are smart. They don't actually pay close attention to most of it. In fact, people just selectively tune out most of it, like they tune out advertising that isn't relevant. Only some information gets a close level of attention. In fact, most of the "overload" is simply ignored.

So how can busy people safely ignore most information, most of the time? The environment, the people one works with and various information sources will signal what is relevant.

Multitasking is an example of this. People in meeting pay partial attention to what is going on while they check email on their mobiles. People remain connected while listening to conference panelists. Mobiles are set on vibrate while in both of those settings. TVs can be on, CDs can be playing while people are responding to instant or text messages and doing their homework.

That isn't to say people are not bombarded by a richness of information. It's just that they adapt by ignoring most of it, pay partial attention to some of it, and focus on just some of it.

Some of the multitasking, such as things people do in cars, is not entirely safe, though!

Newspaper, Long Distance: Same Story

The market value of the American newspaper publishers entering 2008 as independent, publicly traded companies has fallen by $23 billion, or 42 percent, since the end 2004, the year before the wheels started coming off the industry, says Allen Mutter, managing partner at Tapit Partners.

The change is akin to similar changes happening in the global telecom business. Some legacy products are in irreversible decline, be that newspapers, wired access lines used for voice, dial-up Internet access or expensive, high-margin stand-alone long distance.

That doesn't mean people aren't "calling," or "reading" or "communicating." But products built on those activities are assuming new form. Newspapers won't disappear tomorrow.

As long distance prices have been in continual descent for decades, so newspaper readership and revenues will simply drift lower. The issue that must be faced is a transition of the assets to new formats and services.

Newspapers are both media--content creators--and a distribution format. Distribution clearly is changing more than the value of content creation. Voice is both an application and a driver of "access lines" or distribution. In both the newspaper and voice cases, the applications remain important. The distribution is becoming less relevant.

The issue is when a tipping point is reached, and decline becomes a problem executives no longer can manage. Something might be happening in the newspaper area, in that regard. One can fairly safely say the voice tipping point already has been reached, in many respects.

Nearly half the slide in the market capitalization of newspaper stocks came in 2007, when the shares lost a collective $11 billion, or 26 percent, of their value, Mutter notes. Newspapers lost nearly as much value last year as they did in the two prior years put together.