Sprint Might Get LightSquared Spectrum in Case of LightSquared Default

LightSquared has won approval from its lenders to give Sprint Nextel Corp. a second lien on its spectrum, part of a deal under which the wireless start-up will rent space on Sprint's network, the Wall Street Journal reports. See LightSquared Gets OK on Sprint Spectrum Lien

The concession gives Sprint additional security if a deal with LightSquared is finalized, but might also provide a path for Sprint to acquire the LightSquared spectrum in the event LightSquared fails. The issue, some might say, is whether Sprint would want to do so.

It isn't yet clear whether the Federal Communications Commission will allow LightSquared to use the upper part of its L-band spectrum, to avoid GPS interference problems which seem to be caused by signals in the upper part of the band. In that case, Sprint might be paying for about 20 MHz of LTE-capable spectrum.

If you have followed various mobile satellite ventures over the last two decades, you will remember that there has been more failure than success in the field, which is one reason why the satellite spectrum is available in the first place. If it turns out that LightSquared can use only about 20 MHz of its 40 MHz worth of spectrum, you would think there will additional repercussions.

At a rough level, wouldn't you say the venture is "worth" only about half of whatever valuation you thought it had before it lost half its spectrum?

And as far as Sprint's plans for additional spectrum, there is some growing speculation that Clearwire is getting ready to sell itself in any case. Sprint owns about 54 percent of Clearwire already, and if it were sold, Sprint would have all the spectrum it needs to build a new Long Term Evolution network, which clearly is coming. http://blogs.forbes.com/joanlappin/2011/06/09/clearwire-clearing-the-decks-for-sale/.

Wouldn't it be odd if LightSquared, which wanted to build a network, ultimately finds itself a tenant on Sprint's LTE network instead, with Clearwire history? What that would do to LightSquared's wholesale business plan is unclear. LightSquared might find itself using its satellite links mostly for backhaul, and using Sprint's LTE network (formerly Clearwire) for the actual terrestrial connections.

Even then, some analysts would have trouble coming up with a plausible, self-sustaining business model for LightSquared. The wholesale-only model hasn't worked all that well in the U.S. market, in any segment of the business, on a long-term basis.

Netflix And Hulu On Cable Set Tops?

Cable operators already deliver Netflix and Hulu over broadband. Could both services, now perceived as competitors, wind up as part of the cable package? Time Warner Cable Chief Programming Officer Melinda Witmer thinks it is a possibility.

“Consumers are getting it on every device that’s coming on an IP basis today but not the set top. They look like a programmer to me and it makes me sense that we’d be doing business with them in the home on our equipment too.”

“We’ve reached out and I think probably virtually every operator has had some discussions," she said. "It’s unclear what their rights are to be able to come to a set-top box."

"But we’re interested in offering our customers what they want and if 23 million people or 25 million subscribe to Netflix, there might be something we can do with them that makes sense," said Witmer.

@ Cable Show: Netflix And Hulu On Cable Set Tops?

Google to Expand Wallet to Europe in 2012; Sees One Wallet Per Phone

Google plans to launch its Google Wallet in at least one major European city during the first half of 2012, said Osama Bedier, Google’s vice president of payments, who politely, if disingenuously, discounted talk of a coming wallet war in either the United States or Europe.

Bedier suggested that any given near field communications capable phone would have only one mobile wallet, and if that wallet is Google's, the company would need to either control the secure chip that holds the wallet applications or be able to manage those applications.

That means a Google Wallet is unlikely to share space on the same phone with, say, a wallet from the Isis mobile operator joint venture or one from card network Visa Inc. No wallet war? Really?

Google to Expand Wallet to Europe in 2012; Sees One Wallet Per Phone

3 Ways to Prepare Your Business for Social Search

It is quite easy to become overwhelmed with all the things "you should be doing" as part of your content marketing initiatives. There's your blog or blogs, your videos, your social media, your white papers, studies, search engine optimization, commenting on other blogs and industry forums. In most cases, no organization has the time or resources to do all of this, as well as experts say it should be done.

But there is one practical bit of advice that concerns only your blogging and your social media efforts, and it relates to Google, and the way Google is starting to alter its ranking algorithms to incorporate "social content."

"You may have already noticed that socially shared content is rising to the top of your Google search results," says Jeff Korhan. What that means, in part, is that Google is giving more weight to original content that social network users think is interesting enough to "retweet," "like" or otherwise share.

So, if you want to earn higher rankings with Google, you not only need to be creating high-quality content, but also actively encouraging its sharing on the social networks. To be sure, you can only "encourage," you cannot compel. So you need to write about things interesting enough, or provocative enough, or important enough, that other social network users will share it.

You will hear lots of people offer you lots of advice about how to create that sort of content. Personally, I don't think there is any "silver bullet." People share things that make them laugh, or think, that make them mad or happy, that are "news" items of interest or things that seem really "dumb." People share items of beauty or inspiration, and in almost all cases items that have some shared meaning.

Lots of people will share videos of cats doing funny, cat-like things. None of that is especially easy for brands selling consumer or business products to incorporate.

There is no one rule about how to create such copy. But the important bit of advice is that Google now believes items people share deserve a higher ranking than items people do not share. That means a bigger emphasis than ever not just on original content, but original content that is worth sharing.

3 Ways to Prepare Your Business for Social Search | Social Media Examiner

Mobile TV Advertising $1.4 Billion in 2015

Tablets are poised to help U.S. newspapers increase paid digital circulation to 4.6 million in 2015, for example, with most of the growth coming at general interest newspapers, from 1.5 million last year, primarily at the Wall Street Journal, according to annual Global Entertainment and Media Outlook from PricewaterhouseCoopers.

Mobile-TV ad spending in the U.S. will grow to $1.4 billion in 2015 from $370 million last year. Traditional TV ad revenue in the United States, meanwhile, will grow to $89.8 billion in 2015 from $70.7 billion last year, according to the report. And online TV, excluding mobile, will see U.S. advertising grow to $4.1 billion in 2015 from $1.6 billion last year.

The number of people viewing mobile TV in the U.S. will grow to 52.5 million in 2015 from 17.6 million in 2010.

AdAge

Airline to Speed Check-ins with Stickers; NFC App Likely to Follow

Scandinavian Airlines will issue contactless stickers to its top frequent fliers, enabling them to check in faster at the airlines self-service kiosks, lounges and gates.

SAS plans to issue the passive contactless stickers to 50,000 of its "EuroBonus Gold members" starting in September 2011. They could attach the stickers to the back of their phone and tap them on readers at the kiosks, lounges and boarding gates or other check-in points to automatically transmit their membership numbers. The system would be able to identify the customers and call up their flight details more quickly.

Airline to Speed Check-ins with Stickers; NFC App Likely to Follow

LightSquared may seek FCC deadline extension

LightSquared appears to be looking for a two-week extension to file its report with the Federal Communications Commission on interference issues. The company appears to think it needs until July 1, 2011 to file the report, because all the information required for the report had not yet been submitted.

'There's a lot of work to be done today," said LightSquared spokesman Chris Stern. "We don't have all the data." Apparently, eight different working groups are involved in putting the report together.

LightSquared may seek FCC deadline extension | Reuters

SoLoMo (social, location, and mobile) is About Annotation of the Real World

"Location," like "social," is one of those buzzwords whose implications often are missed. Location isn't just a point of interest on a Google map. The next generation of mobile will be capable of interacting with every aspect of a consumer's experience in store, factory, or business process. In other words, the location information will be used to correlate online resources to real people as they move about, outside or inside a retail location, some believe.

The same sort of thing will happen as software becomes more social. Lots of people think "social" means "social networking." Sometimes it does, but the larger point is that collaboration and history are the key elements of a "social" application. Rankings, ratings, reviews, visits, "likes," bookmarks and retweets are some of the ways people indicate that something is valuable, useful or interesting. It is annotation of the real world.

And that's the important thing about location and social. Mobile happens to be important because the mobile device is both a sensor and a display that always is with a person, allowing the annotation to be activated.

A survival guide to SoLoMo

How to Encourage Mobile App Discovery

Mobile apps are used as marketing tools by many brands, but they need to be marketed themselves in order for app users to find and then download them.

Mobile app users depend heavily on word-of-mouth and social media. May 2011 research from MTV Networks found that recommendations from people they know and user reviews or recommendations were nearly tied as the top factor in discovering a new entertainment app for purchase or free download.

How to Encourage Mobile App Discovery and Usage - eMarketer

Gary Vaynerchuk: “99.5 Percent Of Social Media Experts Are Clowns”

Most of us would not go this far, but entrepreneur Gary Vaynerchuk believes "99.5 percent of the people that walk around and say they are a social media expert or guru are clowns.” That's a logical consequence of his belief that we are i the early stages of a social media bubble.

Gary Vaynerchuk: “99.5 Percent Of Social Media Experts Are Clowns”

Americans Watching More TV, Mobile and Web Video

Americans are spending more time watching video content on traditional TVs, mobile devices and the Internet than ever before, Nielsen reports. (Click twice on the image for a larger view).

Overall TV viewership increased 22 minutes per month per person over last year, remaining the dominant source of video content for all demographics. In addition, Nielsen data shows that consumers are willing to pay for high-quality TV content, with broadcast-only homes less than a tenth of U.S. TV households.

Though still accounting for just a handful of hours per month, mobile video viewing continues to see marked gains, increasing 41 percent over last year and more than 100 percent since 2009.

Timeshifted TV continues to grow, both in the penetration of DVR devices in the home and the time spent.

Internet video streaming also saw increases in time spent; this behavior is the highest among a younger and diverse subset of the population.

Cross Platform Report: Americans Watching More TV, Mobile and Web Video | Nielsen Wire

Search is Increasingly Social

SEOmoz has released their 2011 search engine ranking factors and while some facets of ranking well remain consistent, social seems to be emerging as an increasingly crucial part of the search rank formula. That's one argument for increasing use of social features and networks as part of an overall effort to improve search rankings.

The Future of Search is Increasingly Social

Some Insight on Google's Search Ranking Approach

Ranking Factors Data 2011: SMX Elite Sydney

View more presentations from Rand Fishkin

Why You Should Buy A Chromebook

Chromebooks now are on sale online at Best Buy and Amazon.com. Samsung and Acer are the first suppliers to build them.

The launch will be greeted by some skepticism, given the rise of tablets and the decline of netbooks. See Read more: http://www.businessinsider.com/google-chromebook-launch-2011-6#ixzz1PLw7vKDo.

Despite negative media attention, the Chromebooks show a lot of potential for some users, some would argue. Why You Should Buy A Chromebook.

FCC Report on LightSquared Might Not Settle Much

A report by engineers studying interference issues betweeen LightSquared and GPS and other interests is due to be released June 15, 2011. But the study might only point out the need for further tests, as observers say LightSquared and other companies cannot agree on whether the problem actually can be fixed by using new filters or other methods of preventing interference.

'Where government and private GPS Users and LightSquared will disagree is on the potential for a technical solution,' said Jim Kirkland, vice president and general counsel of Trimble Navigation Limited, a GPS technology company.

The Federal Communications Commission will have to referee the growing disagreement between LightSquared and GPS makers and users, including the Defense Department and Federal Aviation Administration, which is planning to upgrade the U.S.'s existing air traffic control system to one that relies on GPS technologies.

Report to FCC Will Find LightSquared Interferes with GPS - WSJ.com (subscription required)

DOJ Clears Google's Bid for Nortel Patents

U.S. antitrust enforcers have given Google clearance to pursue its $900 million opening bid for some 6,000 patents being sold next week by defunct Canadian telecommunications-equipment maker Nortel Networks Corp., the Wall Street Journal reports.

After an antitrust review, the Justice Department concluded that Google's potential ownership of the patents wouldn't raise any major competitive concerns, these people said.

The clearance could give Google a leg-up against rivals in its bid for the patents, part of its effort to acquire an arsenal of patents that could help it ward off lawsuits by competitors.

Difference Between Apple and Google Cloud Approaches

For many of us, who are just end users, it probably doesn't matter that Google and Apple take arguably different approaches to how applications execute in the cloud and on the device. Developers, architects and geeks think it is more important.

At a high level, some might summarize the difference as Google viewing matters as "cloud and web." For Apple, cloud computing means "cloud and software."

All of the cloud computing services Google offers to consumers, like email, word processing and spreadsheets, happen within the browser. To Google, the point of cloud computing is to replace desktop software with the web. Apple is said to prefer execution within an app.

And of course, many will argue that there are many nuances. Some might say that Google tends to work with the browser are the frame, while Apple tends to work with the screen as the frame, for example. We dumb end users might have our own preferences. But I suspect most end users will appreciate elements of both approaches.

Daring Fireball: It's All Software

After Google Instant, Now Instant Pages

After Google Instant, which guesses at what a user is going to type next when conducting a search, Google now is adding "Instant Pages" that do the same thing for whole web pages. Instant Pages fetches the top search result and keeps it ready in the background while a user is choosing which link to click, saving perhaps two to five seconds on typical searches.

Let’s say you’re searching for information about the Smithsonian Folklife Festival, so you search for "dc folklife festival." As a user scans the results, deciding which one to choose, Google is already prerendering the top search result. That way when the user clicks, the page loads instantly.

Instant Pages will prerender results when we’re confident you’re going to click them.

Official Google Blog: Knocking down barriers to knowledge

Google Introduces Speech Search for Images

Searching with speech recognition started first on mobile, and so did searching with computer vision, Google says. Google Goggles has enabled you to search by snapping a photo on your mobile phone since 2009 and now Google is introducing "Search by Image" on the desktop.

Next to the microphone on images.google.com, you’ll also see a little camera for the new "Search by Image" feature. If you click the camera, you can upload any picture or plug in an image URL from the web and ask Google to figure out what it is.

Official Google Blog: Knocking down barriers to knowledge

Google Adds Speech Driven Search for PCs and Chrome Browsers

Google has been supporting voice search on Android devices for a year or so. Now Google has added speech recognition into search on desktop for Chrome users. If you’re using Chrome, you’ll start to see a little microphone in every Google search box.

Simply click the microphone, and you can speak your search. This can be particularly useful for hard-to-spell searches like "bolognese sauce" or complex searches like "translate to spanish 'where can I buy a hamburger'".

Voice Search on desktop is rolling out now on google.com in English.

Official Google Blog: Knocking down barriers to knowledge