Internet traffic measurement firm ComScore has just released the results of its March WorldMetrix survey, which found that 25%, or 168.1 million, of the total 694 million global Internet users (age 15+) can be found in four countries — China, Japan, Korea and India. But the U.S. still tops the charts for any single country, with 152 million total users, representing 22% of the global audience.
In terms of individual countries, China is second largest with 74.7 million users followed by Japan (52.1 million), Germany (31.8 million) and Britain (30.2 million).
Google and Yahoo are neck and neck in terms of worldwide reach, with Google coming in second with 495.8 million users and Yahoo coming in third with 480.2 million. Although the comparision doesn’t seem fair, Microsoft ranked first with its “collection” of web sites, which include not only MSN but also the Redmond giant’s software and Hotmail sites.
The remaining top sites (all U.S. centric) are Ebay, Time Warner (including AOL perhaps?), Amazon, Wikipedia (surprise!) and Ask (formerly Ask Jeeves).
Posted by Cynthia Brumfield at 11:09 PM | Print | Comments (0)Apple is going to offer voice service sooner or later. Even if the writing weren’t on the wall, it would almost be derelict of the mobile device king to not enter the voice business.
It seems that Apple agrees, even if the computer and mobile media giant won’t say so publicly. This item from the San Jose Mercury News just adds to the pile of clues that Apple will enter the mobile phone business. It describes Apple’s patent filing for a mobile wireless device.
The patent filing goes into great detail describing a hypothetical mobile device. It could have an Internet browser that connects with a cellular or wireless Internet network, such as WiFi; it could contain speakers, a microphone, headphone jack, USB port, flash memory or Bluetooth, according to the filing.
One caution however: Apple could develop a wireless mobile device that doesn’t do voice service. The patent application seems to focus on functionality that allows users to mark media content for later downloads, not exactly a voice-related application.
Posted by Cynthia Brumfield at 3:42 PM | Print | Comments (0)
Guest writer Randall Stross has this piece in today’s New York Times that deconstructs the patent application made by Philips which would bar a viewer from fast-forwarding through commercials absent a fee.
Stross points out that TV networks are grappling with the issue of lost ad viewers as DVRs and similar technologies permit viewers to skip these pitches altogether, and points to past statements by programmers that skipping commercials is tantamount to theft because someone has to pay for the programming and advertisers are paying for ad-supported programming.
This, of course, is hogwash. Advertisers merely buy the chance to have viewers watch their ads.
James Boyle, a law professor at Duke University, said that broadcasters offer a program knowing that only a fraction of the audience watches the commercials. Advertisers, he added, buy nothing more than “an option on a probability,” and the viewer is no more obligated to watch every commercial than a driver is obligated to read every billboard.
All this is mildly interesting, but Stross touches on something else that strikes at the heart of home video recording: whether the Supreme Court, given the advances in DVR technology, would arrive at its landmark Betamax decision today. Stross wonders whether the Court would permit home video recording today given how much the Court’s earlier decision hinged on evidence that content creators weren’t harmed by the clunky-non-ad-skipping VCRs.
The courts uphold “fair use” only when it doesn’t harm the commercial value of the copyrighted work. At the time the suit was brought, skipping ads during playback on a clunky tape machine was hardly worth the considerable trouble. At the trial, survey data showed that only about 25 percent of recorded ads were skipped. In the face of testimony by Fred Rogers of “Mister Rogers’ Neighborhood” on PBS, who welcomed home copying of his program, the movie studios that brought the lawsuit failed to convince the judge that VCR copying of televised movies was hurting their business.
No one has challenged the legality of DVRs, and I would submit that it’s too late to do so. I suspect that if such a legal challenge were to every wend its way to the Supreme Court, there’s no way the Court would ban a practice, a technology that has become such a fixed feature of the television marketplace for such a long time.
Posted by Cynthia Brumfield at 11:08 AM | Print | Comments (0)
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