A blogger who is new to me, Simeon Simeonov of HighContrast, has this item that offers a lot of specifics on what is called the “Google Phone,” a device that is supposedly under development by the search giant.
Simeon says that Google has 100 people working on the Google Phone, which has the following features and characteristics:
—Blackberry-like, slick device
—C++ core w/ OS bootstrap (some version of Linux?)
—Optimized Java running on the C++ core (similar to what Andy did at Danger)
—Vector-based presentation courtesy of Skia’s technology
—Many services, including VoIP
Note that voice is almost an afterthought in this rumored device. It is the last thing listed (“including VoIP). So why, exactly, is it called the Google “Phone,” albeit a name being applied to a rumor by bloggers.
In reality it seems to be a major hand-held Internet device that also happens to have a voice feature. Just like the Apple iPhone.
Which brings me to my point: why are all these cool devices called “phones?” My phone stinks and can’t do much that’s interesting, while these gadgets support everything from video viewing to Internet access to word processing to easy information sharing.
Google CEO Eric Schmidt underscored this point today when asked at an investor conference what he thought about Apple’s iPhone. Schmidt said “the iPhone is certainly going to be an incredible product. Part of the reason it’s going to be an incredible product is that it is the first full-featured phone with a real user interface designed to do Internet browsing. So as Apple talks about the iPhone they talk about it as both a musical device, a communications device, as well as a browsing device.”
The exciting thing about the iPhone, then, is not the “phone” part but everything else, particularly the free and unfettered Internet browsing aspect of the device. Maybe Apple fought so hard for the iPhone name in order to target the millions of mobile phone owners in an effort to persuade them to switch out their clunky handsets in favor of the sleek all-in-one media and Internet unit.
That makes sense, but really, the iPhone, the Google Phone, and all other pocket information and entertainment platforms that are headed our way really deserve a moniker that goes beyond “phone.”
Posted by Cynthia Brumfield at 7:23 PM | Print | Comments (2)For so long, Internet radio stations have populated the Internet with all kinds of interesting and niche formats. The biggest challenge for most Internet-only radio stations: making money.
Now, along comes a purported decision by the Copyright Royalty Board, an arm of the U.S. Copyright Office, which could thin, if not decimate, the ranks of Internet radio. It seems that the CRB has adopted a proposal put forth by Soundexchange, an arm of the RIAA used for collecting royalties for music in the “digital world.”
This new payment scheme, which applies for 2006 to 2010 and is retroactive for 2006, imposes a pay per performance royalty mechanism, instead of one that is based on revenues. The new system could make the cost of providing Internet radio prohibitive to the point of forcing small Internet radio station to shut down.
Regular over-the-air radio stations typically pay nothing for their Internet feeds (if what they put on the web is simply a simulcast) because it is assumed that they have already covered the requisite copyright costs via the on-air performance royalty payments the stations make to ASCAP/BMI and other royalty collection groups.
The upshot: the new payment scheme could force out the little guys but let the big guys keep streaming the same old boring radio stations that we get on our car radios. At a time when the record industry is fighting off obsolescence, it’d kind of sad that small Internet radio stations, which could actually bring new audiences to new music (and we know that the traditional over-the-air radio stations won’t play anything new), have to fight off the record industry.
Mike at TechDirt points out how the record business may have yet again shot itself in the foot.
Of course, this is utterly backwards and damaging to the industry itself. A webcaster (especially the smaller, independent ones) is a great means of promotion for artists. It tends to attract more loyal and well-targeted audiences, who are more likely to want to later go out and buy a CD, a t-shirt or attend a concert. It lets the industry better promote material from a wider range of artists.Posted by Cynthia Brumfield at 6:32 PM | Print | Comments (1)
On the heels of Microsoft’s big MP3 patent lawsuit loss, The New York Times’ Douglas Heingartner has this piece today that tries to puzzle through who owns MP3 technology. The answer isn’t easy because MP3 has many “fathers,” including Thomson, Royal Philips Electronics, AT&T, via Bell Labs, now part of Alcatel-Lucent, Germany’s the Fraunhofer Institute for Integrated Circuits, Sisvel, an Italian company whose American subsidiary is called Audio MPEG, and possibly a small Texas company called Texas MP3 Technologies.
Is it any surprise that Leonardo Chiariglione, Chairman of the MPEG Group, “thinks the patent situation in general not positive for the wide adoption of the standard?” Perhaps if a Patent and Trademark Office pilot project, designed to solicit via the web more feedback on patent application approvals, had been in place sooner, the situation with MP3 patents would be a whole lot more clear.
Posted by Cynthia Brumfield at 10:23 AM | Print | Comments (1)
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