Lately I have been thinking a lot about the technology that has entered and exited our lives over the past 10 years.  Over the ten-year lifespan of this blog and the mailing list that preceeded it much has changed in the technologies that permeate our daily lives — when we began this journey in 1999, desktops outsold notebooks by 4:1, Apple was a novelty computer maker for uber-geeks, and no one you knew had ever ‘googled’ themselves in public.  I thought I’d run down the most disappointing aspects of our jaunty shuffle into modernity.

What makes a technology disappointing?  Many products fail in obscurity because they try to solve something irrelevant.  What you need to do to make this list, friends, is aim high and fail wildly.   While most of the FAILs described herein are products, I did also find a couple of product categories which have really disappointed.. and one entire industry.  After all, disappointment is invariably the result of a combination of promise (our hopes & goals for the product or service) and the provider’s failure to achieve that promise.  Sometimes the predisposition for failure afflicts not just one company or product team, but an entire industry.  So here we go:

Motorola ROKR

In 2005, the fact that Apple was working on a mobile device to follow-up the iPod was a very poorly-kept secret, but the specifics were the source of much speculation.  And oh, how the fan boys wept when they thought that the sum-total of this effort was the ROKR, an epic piece of crap on which Apple collaborated with Motorola to produce a re-labelled Moto E398 with an iTunes client.  Although the ROKR had 512MB of memory on-board, the device was software-limited to 100 songs — and downloading them was a painful process as the device lacked USB 2.0.  Predictably the product was a #FAIL and Jobs and co. left Zander in the dust with the iPhone, but for those who actually believed that this was Apple’s solitary foray into mobile, there were a few sleepless months.

Satellite Radio

FM radio sucks.  There’s probably a JACK-FM station in your city, where the DeeJays “play what they want”.  Only, they don’t really.. they play exclusively Top 10 hits from the past 20 years regardless of musical genre, the result of which can easily result in a computer-controlled segue from Katrina and the Waves to a Beyonce track.  That the radio business considers this format to be innovative explains why we need alternatives, and satellite radio was supposed to be that alternative.  Sirius and XM radio both got off the ground in 2001, so to speak.  In 2003 I predicted a merger between the two, which was announced February 2007.  And while Satellite radio does permit greater diversity, and thus narrower focus, in channels there are many problems.  Foremost of these is the audio compression technology, called Lucent PAC, which according to studies has lower perceptual quality than even MP3 at the same bitrate; and the rumoured limitation of stream bandwidth to 64Kbps per channel… far worse than the MP3s on your hard drive and light years from the “CD Quality” that Sirius et al used to advertise.  This makes Satellite radio a no-go for audiophiles, but OK for talk radio and sports.  We continue to wait for decent music without wires.

Nokia N-Gage

It’s likely that the N-Gage failed simply because it failed to.. uh.. engage the game development community with much enthusiasm.  Launched in 2004, the device’s total failure was predicted by a string of awful reviews stemming from substantial usability problems, such as the fact that users had to essentially disassemble the device to swap games, or the fact that one couldn’t receive calls while playing a game, or that the device was weighty and uncomfortable and impractical for use as a phone, or the fact that the screen could not display horizontally, or its $299 price tag (substantially higher than the Game Boy Advance).  Developers probably saw the writing on the wall when evaluating early test units of the N-Gage.

The PDA

Remember the iPaq?  Or the early Palm devices?  Today, the notion of a mobile address book device that isn’t coupled to a telephone seems positively stupid.  In November 2000, I asked the market to build me a mobile handheld device that married my email to my phone and tied it together via my address book — all of which synced to my PC.  In my mind at the time, PDAs were gap fillers until we could field broadband wireless IP networks that provided persistent connectivity.  The smartphone — devices like the iPhone and Droid — killed the PDA and for most of us I suspect that is good riddance.  Nobody wants to walk around looking like Batman, their belt burdened by half-a-dozen devices beeping and squawking.  How many people bought these things or received them as gifts, only to abandon them within months?  Still, credit where it’s due — the PDA begat the SmartPhone, and we’re all better for it.

Modo.NET

I’m betting you never heard of Modo.NET because it was launched exclusively in San Francisco, LA and New York in the summer of  2000, but Scout Electromedia, the company that created it, collapsed within 3 months (in fact the device was available in SF for only 1 day before the business folded dramatically).  Like Dodgeball, which launched shortly after Modo’s collapse, Modo was all about the urban hipster lifestyle.  Built around yet another PDA-like device with a hugely innovative design, the Modo leveraged the paging network to update its users with happenings in and around the city… it was like the pager you carried with you when going out on the town on Friday nights.  Two major design compromises crippled the Modo, however… it had no keyboard; and was receive-only.  Also… like Dodgeball, the Modo was an idea ahead of its time: all of Scout’s business and consumer goals are now attainable on smartphones:  no stand-alone device or clunky SMSing necessary.  Today many of these goals are embodied in Foursquare and other services.

Motorola DVR Series

Hello again, Motorola!  Let me make this crystal clear for you, Mr. Zander:  Dude, I just want to be able to watch TV and record things for playback later with a minimum of interference.  In response, Motorola created an underpowered set-top device that frequently overheats, trashes its own hard drive, and has a user interface that is akin to debating Keynesian Economics with a three-year-old.  Perhaps it’s because you have an effective duopoly, along with your buddies from Scientific Atlanta, on the cable set-top-box market even despite the FCC’s insistence on the CableCard standard.  Perhaps you simply lack the kind of employees that have any affinity for user experience design.  What is evident is that you and your cable partners are under no specific motivation to improve this product, as it has now been in circulation for nearly 5 years with zero material improvement.  In fact, your products in this category, including the DCT-6412 with which I am famously saddled (this article is the number one most visited on ianbell.com) are so crappy that the FCC believes they are discouraging people from adopting Cable Television itself.  Be ashamed.  You suck.

The AppleTV

Like Afghanistan, the set top box seems to be a graveyard of empires — so much so that even Silicon Valley’s King Midas, Steve Jobs, has been laid humble before it.  The AppleTV is, like many other set top boxes, underpowered for the task at hand.  More like an iPod than a Mac Mini, the AppleTV fails to meet user expectations as an all-rounder, lacks CODECs for popular formats and wrappers like .MKV and .AVI, and only works effectively when you pay for and download all of your content from the iTunes walled garden.  Set top boxes that do satisfy tend to allow users to get their content from wherever and sync/stream it from a media server elsewhere in the house — this is true of the iPod lineup, and that is a lesson Apple should have carried forward into this product.  Moreover, the AppleTV doesn’t even have an OFF button.

Green Cars

In 2006, when I bought my Jetta GLI, I promised myself that it would be my last gas-guzzler.  I just bought another vanilla car last month, though, after seeking and failing to find a suitable practical alternative in the diesel, hybrid, pure electric, or hydrogen vehicle.  It’s important to understand that gasoline, hydrogen, and batteries are simply storage media for energy.  Where energy is derived from — whether it’s nuclear, solar, wind, coal, crude oil, or whatever else you can come up with — determines the sustainability, not what it burns or farts out the tailpipe.  Moreover for me, like most consumers, a next-generation car needs to fulfill my usual manly requirement for sportiness or (for others) accessibility or safety, with some added convenience — such as not needing to buy gas at stations or being able to drive long distances without a refuel.  The zero tailpipe emissions is a nice benefit, but not a buying feature for most.  As I pointed out last year, mainstream auto manufacturers have consistently failed to figure this out.  And if you live in a region where all of the energy on the grid is derived from coal or natural gas then you are not doing the environment any favours by purchasing a plug-in.

Pet Robots

Since Robbie the Robot did the rounds on TV sitcoms in the 1950s, Americans have fantasized about having a jetsons-style friend rendered in metal and silicon adorning their living room.  With the launch of Sony’s AIBO in late 1999, things were looking up for us.  At a price tag of $2500 though, there was still some room for improvement, and robots began to emerge all up and down the cost and capability matrix.  The most successful by far was iRobot’s Roomba, which fulfills the robot servant role quite nicely but falls flat on the personality index.  In the latter category resides the Pleo, and I will confess I have always wanted one.  Unlike the Aibo, though, the Pleo isn’t really autonomous.  It gets an hour at the most out of its batteries, and cannot return by itself to its charging station.  The Pleo is a great demonstration of how pre-programmed behaviour can trigger emotions — not in the robot itself, but in its owner — but sadly disappoints and is not viable as a “pet” robot.  Maybe next decade, Robbie.

Music Revolution

At the end of the last decade, with the massive growth of Napster, the writing was on the wall.  People clearly voted with their feet in showing how they wanted to use music.  While this had been the case for decades, with mix tapes and pirate radio, the internet as in other industries was a key enabler.  Yet rather than embrace and extend this revolution, as tech industry companies tend to do, the music industry went on the warpath via the RIAA.  Lawyers mobilized, suing 12-year-old kids, single moms, and other obvious villains.  The only accomplishment of the RIAA has been to effectively kill internet radio, which would serve to promote their artists, while music sharing has continued unabated.  Yet, at the end of the decade came one smattering of good news, and further proof of industry executives’ failure to appreciate irony:  a lawsuit revealed that the Canadian music industry has been stealing from artists for 25+ years, and faces a $6Bn liability.  Small justice, I suppose.  So while the technologies (that’s what this post is about after all) that came from the publishers has been an abject failure, the technologies, such as BitTorrent, WebJay, Pandora, et al created by users and lovers of music has flowered.  Imagine what would happen if the innovators actually had the support of that industry?

Thanks for reading, and we’ll see you through the teens.

Now, because I have all this crap.. er.. stuff hooked up to my Panasonic TH37PWD8UK TV I needed to buy a receiver not too long ago that would switch between all of the devices. Enter the SONY STR-DG800 which switches but doesn’t upconvert HDMI and Component inputs. I had set it all up with the old DCT6412 without much difficulty, and utilized the glorious HDMI output from the DCT6412 to the Plasma via the Sony Receiver. Worked great. Right?

So, after the 6412 kicked, I went to SHAW and got a 6416. I should note at this point that the 6412 I had was first-generation, and probably did not include the dreaded HDCP, one of the worst consumer technologies ever invented. HDCP’s sole purpose in life is render the benefits of HDMI (simple cabling, easy connections, maximum quality) completely ineffectual. HDCP has a Handshaking protocol which includes whitelists and blacklists of devices which it should and should not send a signal to. Read the WikiPedia entry to see how it works, and to derive the opinion as I did that, like other DMCA-inspired technologies, it is complete bullshit.

Anyway, now that I’ve adequately foreshadowed, when I hooked up the devices I was greeted by a text display saying:

“The HD Content Protection of your display has been compromised. Please use the YPbPr outlets for your HD content.”

… and then a green screen where I would otherwise have expected to see Rescue Me.

Because I was talking to Shaw Support anyway to activate the new box, my customer support representative and I worked through a number of options for the next hour, including upgrading the firmware, resetting the box from the network and locally, and connecting the 6416 directly to the television using HDMI. None of these worked… all resulted only in a brief TV video signal accompanied by the dreaded GREEN SCREEN. We knew the box was working, because the audio was fine. We new the connection was good, because every time we restarted it I got the TV signal briefly followed by green.

So, we gave up… I disconnected the HDMI cable and tried Component which, of course, worked because it’s analog. I had to unplug another device but I figured it was short-term. I then did what any self-respecting geek would do… I GoOgled.

My search revealed a discussion where it was evident that for a time, Motorola’s implementation of HDCP was incomplete, and made no accommodation for intermediating devices like A/V receivers (including my SONY). To make a long story short, only a firmware upgrade to version 12.35 (released in mid-2006) resolves the problem. I checked my firmware version on the DCT6416 and it’s an older version. No problem, right?

I called Shaw Cable Customer Support, asked whether they could update the firmware on my DCT6416, and got the following response: “The HDMI connection on the DCT6416 is unsupported.” Shaw has forked the Firmware from Motorola by adding a number of customizations, and has fallen a number of months behind updating for key code. The Rep even admitted that he was aware that many customers have had the problem and a number of problems related to HDCP handshaking.

While it’s tempting to blame Shaw for this, the real culprits are Motorola, who failed to exercise proper diligence in testing their implementation, Intel and their subsidiary Digital Content Protection, who obviously have little interest in ensuring the quality of HDCP, and of course US Lawmakers who enacted the DMCA in the first place and subsequently approved HDCP.

So, here’s the upshot: HDCP is so riddled with versioning issues that it’s made it difficult for hardware manufacturers to integrate into their components properly and impossible for cable companies to support their customers who try to use HDMI, resulting in so many usability and connectivity problems that it’s made HDMI completely useless to all but the most basic users who, by the way, probably don’t care about the differences between and benefits of HDMI vs. Component Video.

Congratulations… yet another example of the DMCA screwing up progress in the consumer electronics industry. In the meantime, fix your firmware, Shaw!

Give people choice and freedom and they’ll pay. Try to sue your own frickin’ customers into oblivion and we’ll see you in bankruptcy.

-Ian.

—— http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story2&u=/washpost/20030909/ tc_washpost/a47297_2003sep9&e=1 RIAA vs. the People Tue Sep 9,11:06 AM ET

By Cynthia L. Webb, washingtonpost.com Staff Writer

The Recording Industry Association of America ( news -web sites )made good on its promise to prosecute Americans who engage in the illegal downloading and trading of pirated music, filing 261 copyright violation suits yesterday.

“Legal actions have been taken on a sporadic basis against operators of pirate servers or sites, but ordinary computer users have never before been at serious risk of liability for widespread behavior. The RIAA said that’s the point it’s underlining with the unprecedented legal action,” CNET’s News.com reported.

But in an editorial today, the San Jose Mercury News said the RIAA’s legal campaign is bad policy: “Suing your customers, as a long-term strategy, is dumb — even if they bring misfortune upon themselves. … The suits are the unfortunate, but predictable response of an industry that failed to see the Internet until it stared it in the face. Since Napster ( news -web sites ) first appeared four years ago and declared the death of the compact disc, music CD sales have fallen more than 25 percent. A generation of music fans don’t think twice about copyrights, which they associate with overpriced CDs and parasitic studio execs.”

According to the Mercury News editorial board, the music labels “won’t win back many of those customers until they make their full catalog of tunes easily accessible over the Internet, in formats that people want, at prices they’re willing to pay. That’s starting to happen — Apple Computer ‘s iTunes Music Store and BuyMusic.com are offering songs from 49 cents to $1 — but the offerings are limited. The music studios are still dragging their feet. For now, the big labels hope to scare people straight, particularly parents, since copyright owners can sue children for theft.”

The New York Times pointed out an even larger implication of the RIAA suits: “With the club of lawsuits and the olive branch of an amnesty program, the music industry is waging a campaign against online piracy that relies on both public relations and economics to attack the idea that everything in cyberspace can be free,” the article said. “That will not be easy. The Internet sprang from a research culture where information of all kinds was freely shared. That mentality still resonates with the millions of Internet users who routinely download music onto their computers. But the emphatic message of the music industry’s two-step program announced yesterday is that the days of plucking copyrighted songs off the Internet without paying for them are numbered.”

An Escalating Fight Against Ordinary People

Thousands more lawsuits against fileswappers are expected in the coming months as the RIAA looks to make examples of the worst digital pirates: People accused of downloading and sharing on average more than 1,000 illegally downloaded songs, thanks to Gnutella ( news -web sites ),Kazaa ,Grokster and other popular file-trading services.

The Washington Post said the “legal offensive aims to stem the tide of online song sharing launched by Napster in the late 1990s, and it is likely to strike fear into the hearts of parents who have not closely monitored their teenagers’ computer habits. That’s because the lawsuits were filed against the holders of Internet service accounts, regardless of who in the household was responsible for swapping the songs.”

The Los Angeles Times said the “cases — the first of thousands the labels expect to file in federal courts — mark a turning point in the music industry’s four-year battle against rampant piracy on the Internet. For the first time, the recording industry is training its considerable legal firepower on individuals, not the companies profiting from the public’s hunger for free music,” The Los Angeles Times said. “One quirk in the process, though, is that the defendants named aren’t necessarily the people using file-sharing networks. That’s because the Recording Industry Assn. of America’s investigation identified only the people whose Internet access accounts were being used to share files. They might be the parents, roommates or spouses of the alleged pirates.”

The RIAA suits hit the young and old and stretched across economic lines too. Among those sued is the Bassett family from Northern California. ” Scott Bassett said neither he nor his wife used the family PC in Redwood City, Calif., for music, but their teenagers and dozens of their friends do. Had he known what was going on, he said, ‘I would have pulled the plug,'” The Los Angeles Times reported, quoting the former junkyard operator who, like other targets of the suits, was confused about what to do. “Do I really need to hire a lawyer? Can I just call them up and say I’m sorry and give them back all the music that was downloaded? I’m just a little guy,” Bassett told the paper.

The Bassetts were darlings of the media yesterday, appearing in a number of articles, perhaps since they illustrated so nicely the ironic twist of the suits, which can target people who own the ISP accounts, not necessarily the file-swappers themselves. “I can’t believe this,” Vonnie Bassett , mother of a 17-year-old file-swapper, told The San Jose Mercury News. “To think I might actually have to pay money to these people. I think it’s the stupidest thing that the recording industry would do this.”

Lisa Schamis , a 26-year-old New Yorker, “said her Internet provider warned her two months ago that record industry lawyers had asked for her name and address, but she said she had no idea she might be sued. She acknowledged downloading ‘lots’ of music over file-sharing networks,” the Atlanta Journal-Constitution reported. “This is ridiculous,” Schamis said. “People like me who did this, I didn’t understand it was illegal.” Neither did Nancy Davis , a Sanol, Calif. schoolbus driver. “From what I understood — and I’m not the most computer-savvy person in the world — I thought it was becoming legal,” Davis told The San Francisco Chronicle. “I’m completely shocked by the whole thing,” Heather McGough , a single mom of two children from Santa Clarita, Calif., told The Los Angeles Times. She “figured that the music-sharing services that survived after Napster was shut down must be legal. She said she let a friend install a program for the Kazaa file-sharing network on her computer so that she could listen to music — songs she already owned on CDs — while she worked.”

Paying the Piper

So what’s in store for those snared in the RIAA lawsuits? “The RIAA suits seek an injunction to stop the defendants’ file sharing, as well as damages and court costs. Copyright law allows for damages of up to $150,000 per infringement — in other words, per swapped song,” The Washington Post noted. More from The Boston Globe: “Accusing the defendants of copyright infringement, the music association is requesting statutory damages of $750 to $150,000 for each song, bringing the potential liability of some file-sharers into the millions of dollars.”

“Individuals, I’m sure no matter who they are, simply don’t have that kind of money,” Atlanta attorney Doug Isenberg , who specializes in Internet law, told The Atlanta Journal-Constitution. “And there’s no way possible the RIAA can sue even a meaningful number of people, because there are tens of millions of potential defendants.”

Perhaps some good news for those being sued: The Philadelphia Inquirer reported that the “RIAA has been settling for less: Yesterday, it announced $3,000 agreements with fewer than 10 people whose Internet service providers had received subpoenas.”

RIAA President Cary Sherman told The Los Angeles Times “he would welcome cases going to trial because it would help establish for the public that file sharing is illegal. The proceeds from any trials or settlements will be kept by the RIAA to cover the cost of its anti-piracy campaigns, he said, rather than being used to compensate labels and artists. Several lawyers warned that the RIAA’s amnesty offer may be a bad deal. Those who apply for amnesty from the RIAA must confess their past transgressions, but that won’t protect them from being pursued by music publishers, independent labels or even federal prosecutors.” The RIAA is offering amnesty to those who admitted to file-swapping, erase their digital libraries of songs and sign a notarized promise not to do it again.

Criticism From the Usual Suspects

Critics of the RIAA’s move were vocal in their objections to yesterday’s developments. The Electronic Frontier Foundation clearly hates the idea of the lawsuits. “Does anyone think that suing 60 million American file-sharers is going to motivate them to buy more CDs?,” EFF Staff Attorney Wendy Seltzer asked in a statement . “File sharing networks represent the greatest library of music in history, and music fans would be happy to pay for access to it, if only the recording industry would let them.”

Bill Evans , founder of Boycott-RIAA.com , told The Baltimore Sun that the lawsuits amount to a witch hunt. “They are trying to intimidate people and to stop file-sharing because they can’t control it,” Evans said. “If that’s the case, we believe they should take over a portion of the market and make it more affordable to people.”

Elan Oren , chief executive of file-sharing site iMesh , told The New York Times that “rather than filing huge lawsuits, record labels should work with file-sharing services to devise a method of compensation in exchange for legally distributing their music over the peer-to-peer networks. But record companies say creating a compensation system for file sharing — for instance, imposing a tax that could be redistributed to copyright holders — would be extremely difficult.”

“Michael McGuire , research director at the GartnerG2 research firm, said the threat of legal action needs to be just one part of a more widespread effort by the recording industry to deal with illegal Internet music swapping,” The Chicago Tribune said. “Are hard-core traders going to see the light and see the error of their ways?” McGuire told the paper. “I don’t think so.”

RIAA Strategy Paying Off

The music industry’s tactics, while controversial, have made a dent to some file-swapping. “Still, there is little agreement about whether the industry’s tactics are having much impact on music piracy. The recording industry has cited data from research firm NPD Group that estimated the number of households downloading music from the Internet declined 28% to 10.4 million in June from 14.5 million in April, around the time music companies began publicizing a campaign to target individual file sharers. Music companies have also been trying to wean music fans off file-sharing programs by licensing their songs to commercial music sites like Apple Computer Inc.’s Music Store,” The Wall Street Journal reported. “But services like Morpheus, LimeWire and Grokster all report that usage of their services has grown, especially as students have returned from vacation.”

But the music industry has a long way to go before it stamps out piracy. “From the rise of Napster until today, tens of millions of people have started trading songs, movies and software online through services such as Kazaa with little thought for the legality of their actions,” News.com noted. “Even as the threat of Monday’s lawsuits loomed, more than 2.8 million copies of the Kazaa software were downloaded last week, according to Download.com , a software aggregation site operated by CNET News.com publisher CNET Networks . Indeed, a recent study by the Pew Internet and American Life Project found that 67 percent of people downloading music said they did not care whether the music was copyrighted or not.”

The Future of E-Music?

Apple’s iTunes is being held up as a successful, legal alternative to secret file-swapping. The pay-for-play service has been a hit with music fans and everyone from Sony to Microsoft is looking for a comparable match to compete with the service. Apple’s service has sold 10 million songs since its launch in May. “Legally selling 10 million songs online in just four months is a historic milestone for the music industry, musicians and music lovers everywhere,” Apple head Steve Jobs ( news -web sites )said, according to BBC News Online, which noted (how ironic, in light of the complications of the RIAA’s legal suits) that the 10 millionth song sold on the service was “Complicated,” by Avril Lavigne .

APPLE Songs in the Key of Steve Steve Jobs may have just created the first great legal online music service. That’s got the record biz singing his praises. FORTUNE Monday, April 28, 2003 By Devin Leonard

Steve Jobs loves music. But as with a lot of geeks in Silicon Valley, his musical tastes are a little retro. He worships Bob Dylan and is the kind of obsessive Beatles fan who can talk your ear off about why Ringo is an underappreciated drummer.

So Dr. Dre, the rap-music Midas whose proteges include Snoop Dogg and Eminem, is the last person you’d expect to see huddled with Jobs, for hours on end, at Apple headquarters in Cupertino, Calif. No, they weren’t discussing whether John or Paul was the more talented Beatle. Rather, Steve had invited Dr. Dre up from Los Angeles for a private demonstration of Apple’s latest product. After checking it out, Dre had this to say: “Man, somebody finally got it right.”

The product that wowed him was the iTunes Music Store, a new digital service for Mac users offering songs from all five major music companies–Universal, Warner, EMI, Sony, and BMG. Though Apple had yet to sell a single song by the time FORTUNE went to press, Jobs is already causing a stir in the record business. Forget about rumors that Apple is bidding for Vivendi’s Universal Music Group, the world’s largest record company. Jobs says he has absolutely no interest in buying a record company.

The real buzz in the music trade is that Steve has just created what is easily the most promising legal digital music service on the market. “I think it’s going to be amazing,” says Roger Ames, CEO of the Warner Music Group. Jobs, not surprisingly, is even more effusive. He claims his digital store will forever change not only how music is sold and distributed but also the way artists release and market songs and how they are bought and used by fans.

One thing’s for sure: If ever there was an industry in need of transformation, it’s the music business. U.S. music sales plunged 8.2% last year, largely because songs are being distributed free on the Internet through illicit file-sharing destinations like KaZaA. Unlike Napster, KaZaA and its brethren have no central servers, making them tougher for the industry to shut down. The majors have tried to come up with legal alternatives. But none of those ventures have taken off because they are too pricey and user-hostile.

The iTunes Music Store, by contrast, is as simple and straightforward as anything Jobs has ever produced. Apple users get to the store by clicking a button on the iTunes 4 jukebox, available for download when the service made its debut on April 28. You can listen to a 30-second preview of any song and then, with one click, buy a high-quality audio copy for 99 cents. There’s no monthly subscription fee, and consumers have virtually unfettered ownership of the music they download. Jobs is rolling out the iTunes store with previously unreleased material by artists including Bob Dylan, U2, Missy Elliott, and Sheryl Crow. There will be music from bands like the Eagles, who have never before allowed their songs to be sold by a legal digital music service. And Jobs is personally lobbying other big-name holdouts, like the Rolling Stones and the Beatles, to come aboard.

The iTunes Music Store may be just the thing to get Apple rocking again too. As everyone knows, it’s been a tough couple of years for the computer industry as well. Apple swung back into the black in the first quarter of 2003 after two quarterly losses, but its profits were only $14 million, compared with $40 million a year ago. And as popular as Apple’s iPod portable MP3 player may be, it contributed less than $25 million of Apple’s $1.48 billion in revenues last quarter. So Jobs is betting that by offering customers “Hotel California” for 99 cents, he can sell not just more iPods but more Macs too.

Apple’s competitors dismiss the iTunes Music Store as a niche product. How, they ask, can Apple have any impact on the music industry when its share of the global computer market is a minuscule 3%? “It’s a very positive thing for their community,” says Kevin Brangan, a marketing director at SonicBlue, which makes Rio MP3 players. “But their community is a very small percentage of the overall market.”

Jobs, however, isn’t targeting just Mac users. He plans to roll out a Windows version of iTunes by the end of the year. (Apple already sells a Windows-compatible version of the iPod, which accounts for about half of all units sold.) It is a dramatic departure for Steve, who has deliberately kept the Mac’s best features off the screens of the much larger Microsoft-dominated world.

Steve isn’t suggesting that his new service will lift the computer industry out of its funk. But he is 100% convinced that the Music Store will rejuvenate the ailing music business. “This will go down in history as a turning point for the music industry,” Jobs told FORTUNE. “This is landmark stuff. I can’t overestimate it!”

The idea that anybody from Silicon Valley can swoop in and save the music industry seems laughable at first. But by nearly every account, this is not just some Steve Jobs sales job. In fact, the Music Store is being copied by rivals even before it hits the market. The reason, as Dr. Dre noted, is that nobody has come up with a better plan to sell music online. So iTunes or something like it had better work. Otherwise, the music industry as we know it could soon disappear.

It’s a sunny afternoon in early April, and Jobs is rhapsodizing about his new music service at Apple headquarters. He is clad in the same outfit he dons nearly every morning so he doesn’t have to waste time choosing clothes: a black mock-turtleneck shirt, jeans, and New Balance sneakers. There’s been a slight change in his uniform, though. The 48-year-old Apple CEO now rolls up the cuffs of his jeans. (What would Dr. Dre think of that fashion statement?)

But Steve isn’t interested in talking about his new look on this day. (He later allowed that he just bought pants that were the wrong size.) He’s here to talk music. “It pained us to see the music companies and the technology companies basically threatening to take each other to court and all this other crazy stuff,” he explains. “So we thought that rather than sit around and throw stones, we’d actually do something about this.”

He was equally appalled by the music industry’s reluctance to satisfy the demand for Internet downloading that Napster had unleashed. Who could blame him? After bludgeoning Napster to death in court, record companies promised to launch paid services with the same limitless selection and ease of use.

They did just the opposite. Universal and Sony rolled out a joint venture called Pressplay. AOL Time Warner (the parent of both Warner and FORTUNE’s publisher), Bertelsmann (BMG’s owner), EMI, and RealNetworks launched MusicNet. But instead of trying to cooperate to attract customers, the two ventures competed to dominate the digital market. Pressplay wouldn’t license its songs to MusicNet, and MusicNet withheld its tunes from Pressplay.

The result: Neither service had enough songs to attract paying customers, who couldn’t care less which record company a particular song comes from. “It was strictly the greed and arrogance of the majors that screwed things up,” says Irving Azoff, who manages the Eagles and Christina Aguilera. “They wanted to control every step of the [Internet] distribution process.”

The record companies were also fearful about doing anything that might cannibalize CD sales. So they decided to “rent” people music through the Internet. You paid a monthly subscription fee for songs from MusicNet and Pressplay. But you could download MusicNet tunes onto only one computer, and they disappeared if you didn’t pay your bill. That may have protected the record companies from piracy, but it didn’t do much for consumers. Why fork over $10 a month for a subscription when you can’t do anything with your music but listen to it on your PC? Pressplay launched with CD burning but only for a limited number of songs.

At the end of last year, Pressplay and MusicNet licensed their catalogues to each other, ending their standoff. MusicNet also now permits subscribers to burn certain songs onto CDs. But MusicNet users still can’t download songs onto portable players. “These devices haven’t caught on yet,” insists MusicNet CEO Alan McGlade. Never mind that U.S. sales of portable MP3 players soared from 724,000 in 2001 to 1.6 million last year. Pressplay, for its part, lets subscribers download some songs onto devices, but only those that use Microsoft’s Windows Media software. That means no iPods.

Pressplay and MusicNet say it’s too early for anybody to dismiss them as failures, but it’s difficult to see them as anything else. The music industry has little to show for its investment–Sony and Universal are believed to have spent as much as $60 million so far on Pressplay. The two services don’t release their subscriber numbers, but Phil Leigh, an analyst at Raymond James, believes that together they have signed up only about 225,000 customers. “It was clear to me in my first 30 days on the job that Pressplay was a first effort and a work-in-progress,” says Andrew Lack, who took over as CEO of Sony Music Entertainment in February. “No one was saying, ‘This is it. We can’t sign up people fast enough.'”

Consequently, the five major record companies have had to slash costs in the face of declining sales. BMG laid off 1,400 people, EMI shed 1,800, and Sony Music recently announced it was reducing headcount by 1,000. Even with those cuts, average profit margins for the five majors have slipped to 5%, compared with 15% to 20% in the late 1980s when the CD came into vogue. “All the chickens are coming home to roost at the same time,” says media analyst Claire Enders. “This industry has never been faced with such cataclysmic conditions before. It has no roadmap on how to cope with them.”

The irony is that the music industry has always survived by introducing new formats–from the 78-rpm single to the 33-rpm vinyl LP album in the 1950s, to the cassette tape in the 1970s, to the compact disc, which sparked a rebirth of the industry in the 1980s. Now nearly everyone in the business admits that the only clear path to the future is to come up with a legal, online alternative to KaZaA and other illegal file-sharing services. This could be the mother of all format shifts, because it would largely eliminate manufacturing and distribution costs. But nobody in the music industry has been able to get there. “This new technology has swept by us,” laments Doug Morris, chairman of the Universal Music Group.

As long as people can get free music online, the music industry’s chances of recovery are dim. But stealing songs on the Internet isn’t as much fun as it used to be. For one thing, file-sharing services are teeming with viruses. The Recording Industry Association of America has also upped the ante with a new suit accusing four college students of operating piracy networks. That’s likely to put a damper on illicit computer activities in many dormitories. In addition, the record companies are planning to introduce new CDs with two sets of the same songs–one that can be played on your CD player and another that you can listen to on your computer but that can’t be uploaded onto KaZaA.

In a world where CDs can’t be shared on the Internet and music pirates are hauled into court, there may be huge demand for a legitimate digital music service. But it’s going to have to be one that’s a lot better than what the music industry has offered so far. Apple’s timing, in other words, could hardly have been better.

Jobs didn’t set out to be the music industry’s savior. He was such a latecomer to the digital music world that some observers wondered if he’d lost his knack for spotting trends long before his competitors. Heck, Apple didn’t even include CD burners as standard equipment on its computers until two years ago. But once Jobs focused on music, he was consumed by it. He saw people ripping CD tracks and loading them onto their hard drives. So in 2001 Apple introduced the iTunes jukebox software, which lets users make their own playlists or have the computer select songs randomly.

What else might Mac users wish to do with their MP3 files? Apple engineers were certain they’d want to load them into a pocket-sized portable player with a voluminous hard drive. So they created the iPod, a device that works seamlessly with iTunes. Apple has sold almost a million iPods, even though the least expensive one costs $300.

Then Steve had an epiphany: Wouldn’t it be awesome if people could buy high-quality audio tracks via the Internet and load them directly into iTunes instead of going to the store to buy CDs to rip? It dawned on him that Apple had all the pieces in place to start such a business. For one thing, the company already had the Apple Store, an online operation selling more than $1 billion a year in computers and software, most of which can be purchased with a single mouse-click. It also runs the Internet’s largest movie-trailer downloading site.

The only thing missing was music. Until recently it would have been impossible for a major tech company like Apple to license tunes from Warner, EMI, Universal, Sony, and BMG. Executives at those companies simply didn’t trust their peers in the technology world. Many felt–not without some justification–that PC makers promoted piracy because it helped sell computers.

Apple, however, straddles the worlds of technology and entertainment like no other software or hardware maker. Along with running Apple, Jobs is CEO of Pixar, the digital-animation studio whose movies include Toy Story and Monsters, Inc. He also has plenty of admirers in the music world. Some of Apple’s most zealous fans are rock stars who use Macs, both at home and in the recording studio. “Musicians have always adopted Macs,” says Trent Reznor of Nine Inch Nails fame. Jobs is enough of a rock star himself–is anybody in the technology world as cool?–that he’s been able to get U2’s Bono on the phone to discuss the iTunes Music Store. He’s personally demonstrated it to Mick Jagger.

The iPod, too, has become a fetish item among musicians and notoriously technophobic music company executives. “I’m addicted to mine,” says Interscope Geffen A&M records chairman Jimmy Iovine. It made sense to Iovine and a lot of other record-company big shots that if Apple could transform a geeky device like the portable MP3 player into a sexy product with mass-market appeal, it might be able to work similar wonders with online digital music sales. It’s probably no coincidence that the most vocal boosters of the Apple store are Universal and Warner, whose debt-ridden parents–Vivendi and AOL Time Warner, respectively–are under pressure from investors to get out of the music business entirely.

The record companies were still leery enough of Apple that they would agree only to one-year deals with Jobs. Nevertheless, he was able to persuade Universal, EMI, Sony, BMG, and Warner to stop fixating on their subscription models and take a radically different approach to selling digital music. People want to own music, not rent it, Jobs says. “Nobody ever went out and asked users, ‘Would you like to keep paying us every month for music that you thought you already bought?'” he scoffs. “The record companies got this crazy idea from some finance person looking at AOL, and then rubbing his hands together and saying, ‘I’d sure like to get some of that recurring subscription revenue.’ ” He adds: “Just watch. We’ll have more people using the iTunes Music Store in the first day than Pressplay or MusicNet have even signed up as subscribers–probably in the first hour.” We’ll let you know in a future issue if that bold prediction proves accurate.

Record-company executives aren’t ready to dump the subscription model–yet. “I’m not sure subscriptions are going to work,” says David Munns, CEO of North American Recorded Music for EMI. “A mixed model where you can rent some music and download what you really like could work. Let’s keep an open mind.” But what really grabs music executives about iTunes is its sheer simplicity. “It’s a lot easier to get people to migrate from physical CDs to buying individual songs online than it is to jump-start a subscription service,” says Warner’s Ames.

Apple is trying to make that transition as easy as possible. With the iTunes Music Store, you can browse titles by artist, song title, or genre. Songs will be encoded in a new format called AAC, which offers sound quality superior to MP3s–even those “ripped” at a very high data rate. That means each AAC file takes up a lot less disc space, so you’ll be able to squeeze better-quality music, and more of it, onto your computer and iPod. Moreover, each song will have a digital image of the album artwork from the CD on which the track was originally sold. Says Sony’s Lack: “I don’t think it was more than a 15-second decision in my mind [to license music to Apple] once Steve started talking.”

Apple has also come up with a copy-protection scheme that satisfies the music industry but won’t alienate paying customers. You can burn individual songs onto an unlimited number of CDs. You can download them onto as many iPods as you might own. In other words, the music is pretty much yours to do with as you please. Casual music pirates, however, won’t like it. The iTunes jukebox software will allow a specific playlist of songs or an album to be burned onto a CD ten times. You can burn more than that only if you manually change the order of the songs in the playlist.

And anybody who tries to upload iTunes Music Store songs onto KaZaA will be shocked. Each song is encrypted with a digital key so that it can be played only on three authorized computers, and that prevents songs from being transferred online. Even if you burn the AAC songs onto a CD that a conventional CD player can read and then re-rip them back into standard MP3 files, the sound quality is awful.

The iTunes Music Store will initially offer 200,000 tunes, paying the record companies an average of 65 cents for each track it sells. Ultimately Jobs hopes to offer millions of songs, including older music that hasn’t yet made it to CD. “This industry has been in such a funk,” sighs singer Sheryl Crow. “It really needs something like this to get it going again.”

If the iTunes Music Store or something like it takes off, that could change how new music is released, marketed, and promoted. Until recently the chief fear in the music industry about letting people buy individual songs via the Internet was that it would kill the album by enabling consumers to cherry-pick their favorite tracks. Music company executives now bravely say that a singles-based business might actually revive sales.

Steve is doing everything he can to stoke their optimism. “Nobody thinks of albums anymore, anyway,” he argues, perhaps a little too blithely. “People think of playlists and mixes. We’ll still sell albums as artists put them out, but for most consumers of popular music, we think they’ll more likely buy single tracks that they like. And then they’ll organize them into customized playlists in their computers and on their iPods.”

The reality is that initially, at least, the record companies will probably sell less music if they shift to an Internet-based singles business model. For years they have been able to get away with releasing albums with two or three potential hits bundled with ho-hum filler cuts. That has been wonderful for the industry, but it has made a generation of consumers who pay $18.99 for CDs very cynical. “People are sick and tired of that,” says singer-songwriter Seal. “That’s why people are stealing music.”

For some artists, the idea of a singles-driven business is anathema. “There’s a flow to a good album,” says Nine Inch Nails’ Reznor. “The songs support each other. That’s the way I like to make music.” But Crow says it would be a relief to put out singles instead of producing an entire album every time she wants to reach fans. “It would be nice to have a mechanism to release a song or two or three or four on their own,” she says.

A renewed emphasis on individual songs could well improve the quality of music and lead to a reordering of the entire industry. It won’t happen overnight, but the record companies had better get used to this new model. Now that Apple has gotten the music industry to support its pay-per-download store, nearly all of its Wintel PC-based rivals say they will augment their subscription businesses with similar offerings. “Steve’s pushing the ball forward here,” concedes Rob Glaser, CEO of RealNetworks, which owns nearly 40% of MusicNet and plans to purchase Listen.com’s well-regarded Rhapsody subscription service.

But Glaser insists that Apple is ignoring a significant part of the digital music market by offering just downloading. He says Rhapsody users spend 72% of their time listening to streaming music. Only 13% pay $1 to burn cuts onto CDs. “If you make a really cool playlist of 200 songs on Rhapsody, you pay only $9.95 a month,” he says. “If you use Apple, it’s $200. Maybe guys like Steve and me can afford that, but I’m trying to run a service for everyone else too.”

No matter what happens, Jobs will likely sell more Macs. But that’s not all he’s after with music. The Music Store is his latest effort to diversify Apple’s sources of revenue beyond Macs. With Apple’s share of the desktop computer market stuck at less than 5% in the U.S. and less than 3% worldwide for several years, the iPod is the most obvious new line of business, steering Apple onto the home turf of consumer-electronics giants like Sony and Matsushita. Now Apple makes almost as much operating profit on each iPod it sells as it does on each iMac, even though the iPod costs a fraction as much to manufacture. So it should come as no surprise that Jobs is releasing three new versions of the iPod in conjunction with the Music Store (for more on that, see Gifts for the Grad: Apple iPod.)

Jobs has been very shrewd about the way he moved the iPod into the PC universe. Anyone who has tried the iPod with both systems will tell you it’s a lot more fun to use if you plug it into a Mac running Apple’s OS X than into a Dell with Windows XP. “The Windows iPod sucks” is Seal’s appraisal. “But what they are really doing is trying to get people to wonder, ‘Hmm, should I switch over?'” Jobs is betting that the iTunes Music Store, like the iPod, could be just such a Trojan horse.

It’s not as easy as it sounds. How many Windows iPod owners know what they’re missing by not using OS X? Do any of them really care? Perhaps that’s why Jobs is rolling out iTunes for Windows too. In fact, Warner’s Roger Ames is trying to broker a deal in which AOL would adopt iTunes as its music-manage-ment software. “Steve was resistant at first,” Ames says. “But now I understand that he’s decided to go that way.” AOL has been trying to develop its own music store to go along with its subscription service but hasn’t figured out a billing system for individual tracks as Apple has. A deal with AOL would land the iTunes Music Store on the desktops of AOL’s 26 million subscribers. That could quickly make Apple the dominant seller of digital music on the Internet. AOL would neither confirm nor deny a possible deal.

A big play for Windows users would be a huge shift for a man who has largely created a product–the Mac–that exists in a walled garden cut off from the much vaster PC world. Clearly, Apple will benefit enormously if it boosts its share of the computer market by even 1%–such a gain would lift its revenues by nearly a third and increase profits even more. In the meantime, if the iTunes Music Store takes off–and computer users of all stripes start buying millions of songs online each month–that will translate into tens of millions of dollars in new revenues per month for Apple.

His adventures in the music business have led to other changes in Jobs’ thinking. During the photo shoot with Sheryl Crow for this article, he acknowledged to the singer that he had never really understood what rap music was all about. But while playing with a prototype of the iTunes Music Store on his Mac at home in recent weeks, he had started downloading some of Eminem’s tracks.

“You know, he really is a great poet,” Crow said.

To which Steve replied, “Yeah, he’s starting to kind of grow on me.”

Feedback: dleonard [at] fortunemail [dot] com

-Ian.

—– http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/business/2955231.stm

US firm cashes in on ‘Comical Ali’

In the latest attempt to cash in on the war, a US toy company has produced dolls based on Mohammed Saeed al-Sahhaf, Iraq’s now-famous former information minister.

Mr al-Sahhaf gained notoriety – and even a cult following – during the war for his refusal to admit that Iraq was being beaten.

Now, in a sarcastic tribute to what it calls Mr al-Sahhaf’s “one-man battle against the observable facts”, US-based Hero Builders has produced 12-inch-tall action figures in his image.

The “Iraqi Dis-Information Minister” doll can be had for $24.95, or for an extra $11, there is a talking version that parrots phrases such as “There are no American infidels in Baghdad. Never!” and “Our initial assessment is that they will all die.”

Toys go to war

The doll is the latest in a long line of war-related dolls from Hero Builders, which boasts that its figures are all hand-made in America.

Among other patriotic offerings, the company also produces the “Saddam Insane”, the “Babbling Osama” and the “Dirty Terrorist”.

It also sells pink dresses and bondage outfits, which it says can be used to demean its villainous dolls.

Since the outbreak of war, a host of companies have rushed out patriotic or topical products, many of which have been accused of poor taste.

This week, for example, electronics giant Sony admitted a lapse of judgement, after attempting to trademark the phrase “shock and awe” – a reference to US bombing tactics – for its computer games.

War Coverage Spurs ‘Backpack’ Reporters Tue Mar 25, 1:42 AM ET Add Technology – AP to My Yahoo!

By RACHEL KONRAD, Associated Press Writer

Armed with $15,000 in satellite phones and computers, Preston Mendenhall calls himself a “one-man band” who writes stories, snaps photographs and shoots video in combat zones.

The international editor for MSNBC.com spent most of February traveling alone in Syria, then joined other reporters in northern Iraq (news – web sites) to record Kurdish reactions to the American-led bombing.

His latest multimedia report — video, still images and words — described the collapse of the U.N.-backed oil-for-food program, which blocked fresh food supplies to 60 percent of Iraq’s 25 million people.

“You get a connection, set up the camera, point it at yourself and just do it — you’re live,” Mendenhall said from a satellite phone. “But if there’s any weapons of mass destruction, I’m outta here.”

Mendenhall, who sends pixelated video through a pair of special satellite telephones, is one of a growing number of journalists relying on lightweight laptops, satellite phones, inexpensive editing software and digital cameras.

The technology has resulted in streaming video from the most remote places on earth. It has also enabled a new breed of reporter, known as a “backpack journalist,” who often has greater mobility and flexibility than a camera crew.

They file real-time reports with equipment that is a fraction of the cost and size of conventional, shoulder-mounted cameras and other gear. They file primarily for the Web, with images they’ve edited themselves at the scene, and occasionally contribute to television.

“The people who can shoot video, write stories, do radio on the side, basically do it all — these are the journalists of the future,” said John Schidlovsky, director of the Washington-based Pew Fellowship in International Journalism. “The technology has made journalism much more immediate and instantaneous.”

Although they’re a tiny minority of the hundreds of foreign journalists in and around Iraq, backpackers could eventually change the complexion of news gathering.

But backpackers — also called solo journalists, or “sojos” — won’t eclipse mainstream media soon. Fear, fatigue and confusion often vanquish their sophisticated, lightweight equipment, which larger television operations use only when higher-quality video is unavailable.

Some experts also worry that less-seasoned sojos, particularly those who post directly to Web sites and don’t file through editors back home, will produce reports that lack context or analysis.

“Backpack journalists have to know the difference between when you’re a lone wolf and when you’re part of a greater whole — and they have to file with that in mind,” said Jane Ellen Stevens, a pioneer backpack journalist who teaches at University of California, Berkeley. Stevens specializes in science and technology and has been reporting backpack-style since 1997 from such locales as a research icebreaker in Antarctica and a space camp in Russia.

Travis Fox, a video journalist for WashingtonPost.com, filed footage on Saturday of coalition troops in Umm Qasr, Iraq building a POW camp.

For most of his stories, Fox uses a Sony PD150, a roughly $7,000, 12-pound digital video camera with a 5-hour battery. The gear is less than half the weight and one-tenth the cost of equipment used by crews for large networks.

But Fox, one of hundreds of U.S. journalists “embedded” with U.S. troops, knows that no medium can mask the limits of human endurance.

“We’re going to make a run for the border tomorrow, early,” Fox said wearily from a Kuwaiti hotel before the war started. “There are roadblocks. It’s a long shot. I’m not so much nervous or excited as I’m tired.”

Although Fox usually travels with other reporters, many backpackers work alone.

They worry about battery life, power outages and technical hiccups — without backup from co-workers.

CNN correspondent Kevin Sites is a pioneer backpack war journalist who mixes solo with team coverage and has, at times, been frustrated with the technical hurdles of his vocation. In one recent entry on his Web Site, he complained that “Iraq tech hell.”

Sites stopped posting journal entrys and photos on his own site last week when CNN asked him to concentrate on working for the network exclusively.

Other media organizations have shied away from backpacker technology because the quality of the images remains grainy.

London-based Associated Press Television News relies primarily on Sony’s broadcast quality electronic news gathering equipment — a $70,000 package that includes a shoulder-mounted camera, tripod, lens, batteries, lights and microphones. APTN usually dispatches a camera person, who hauls the 30-pound camera, as well as an on-camera journalist, who totes gear as well.

APTN has purchased smaller cameras but editorial manager David Modrowski said the company has no plans to migrate fully to backpack-style equipment.

“In proper, full sunlight, it’s pretty tough for the untrained eye to tell the difference,” Modrowski said of the lighter equipment. “But when you notice it is when you get to low-light conditions, and certainly now we’re seeing a lot of nighttime activity in Iraq.”

November 28, 2002 Postcards From Planet Google By JENNIFER 8. LEE

MOUNTAIN VIEW, Calif.

AT Google’s squat headquarters off Route 101, visitors sit in the lobby, transfixed by the words scrolling by on the wall behind the receptionist’s desk: animación japonese Harry Potter pensées et poèmes associação brasileira de normas técnicas.

The projected display, called Live Query, shows updated samples of what people around the world are typing into Google’s search engine. The terms scroll by in English, Chinese, Spanish, Swedish, Japanese, Korean, French, Dutch, Italian – any of the 86 languages that Google tracks.

people who shouldn’t marry “she smoked a cigar” mr. potatoheads in long island pickup lines to get women auto theft fraud how to.

Stare at Live Query long enough, and you feel that you are watching the collective consciousness of the world stream by.

Each line represents a thought from someone, somewhere with an Internet connection. Google collects these queries – 150 million a day from more than 100 countries – in its databases, updating and storing the computer logs millisecond by millisecond.

Google is taking snapshots of its users’ minds and aggregating them. Like a flipbook that emerges when successive images are strung together, the logged data tell a story.

So what is the world thinking about?

Sex, for one thing.

“You can learn to say ‘sex’ in a lot of different languages by looking at the logs,” said Craig Silverstein, director of technology at Google. (To keep Live Query G-rated, Google filters out sex-related searches, though less successfully with foreign languages.)

Despite its geographic and ethnic diversity, the world is spending much of its time thinking about the same things. Country to country, region to region, day to day and even minute to minute, the same topic areas bubble to the top: celebrities, current events, products and computer downloads.

“It’s amazing how similar people are all over the world based on what they are searching for,” said Greg Rae, one of three members of Google’s logs team, which is responsible for building, storing and protecting the data record.

Google’s following – it is the most widely used search engine — has given Mr. Rae a worldview from his cubicle. Since October 2001, he has been able to reel off “anthrax” in several languages: milzbrand (German), carbonchio (Italian), miltvuur (Dutch), antrax (Spanish). He says he can also tell which countries took their recent elections seriously (Brazil and Germany), because of the frenzy of searches. He notes that the globalization of consumer culture means that the most popular brands are far-flung in origin: Nokia, Sony, BMW, Ferrari, Ikea and Microsoft.

Judging from Google’s data, some sports events stir interest almost everywhere: the Tour de France, Wimbledon, the Melbourne Cup horse race and the World Series were all among the top 10 sports-related searches last year. It also becomes obvious just how familiar American movies, music and celebrities are to searchers across the globe. Two years ago, a Google engineer named Lucas Pereira noticed that searches for Britney Spears had declined, indicating what he thought must be a decline in her popularity. From that observation grew Google Zeitgeist, a listing of the top gaining and declining queries of each week and month.

Glancing over Google Zeitgeist is like taking a trivia test in cultural literacy: Ulrika Jonsson (a Swedish-born British television host), made the list recently, as did Irish Travelers (a nomadic ethnic group, one of whose members was videotaped beating her young daughter in Indiana) and fentanyl (the narcotic gas used in the Moscow raid to rescue hostages taken by Chechen rebels in late October).

The long-lasting volume of searches involving her name has made Ms. Spears something of a benchmark for the logs team. It has helped them understand how news can cause spikes in searches, as it did when she broke up with Justin Timberlake.

Google can feel the reverberations of such events, and others of a more serious nature, immediately.

On Feb. 28, 2001, for example, an earthquake began near Seattle at 10:54 a.m. local time. Within two minutes, earthquake-related searches jumped to 250 a minute from almost none, with a concentration in the Pacific Northwest. On Sept. 11, searches for the World Trade Center, Pentagon and CNN shot up immediately after the attacks. Over the next few days, Nostradamus became the top search query, fueled by a rumor that Nostradamus had predicted the trade center’s destruction.

But the most trivial events may also register on Google’s sensitive cultural seismic meter.

The logs team came to work one morning to find that “carol brady maiden name” had surged to the top of the charts.

Curious, they mapped the searches by time of day and found that they were neatly grouped in five spikes: biggest, small, small, big and finally, after a long wait, another small blip. Each spike started at 48 minutes after the hour.

As the logs were passed through the office, employees were perplexed. Why would there be a surge in interest in a character from the 1970’s sitcom “The Brady Bunch”? But the data could only reflect patterns, not explain them.

That is a paradox of a Google log: it does not capture social phenomena per se, but merely the shadows they cast across the Internet.

“The most interesting part is why,” said Amit Patel, who has been a member of the logs team. “You can’t interpret it unless you know what else is going on in the world.”

So what had gone on on April 22, 2001?

That night the million-dollar question on the game show “Who Wants to Be a Millionaire” had been, “What was Carol Brady’s maiden name?” Seconds after the show’s host, Regis Philbin, posed the question, thousands flocked to Google to search for the answer (Tyler), producing four spikes as the show was broadcast successively in each time zone.

And that last little blip?

“Hawaii,” Mr. Patel said.

The precision of the Carol Brady data was eye-opening for some.

“It was like trying an electron microscope for the first time,” said Sergey Brin, who as a graduate student in computer science at Stanford helped found Google in 1998 and is now its president for technology. “It was like a moment-by-moment barometer.”

Predictably, Google’s query data respond to television, movies and radio. But the mass media also feed off the demands of their audiences. One of Google’s strengths is its predictive power, flagging trends before they hit the radar of other media.

As such it could be of tremendous value to entertainment companies or retailers. Google is quiet about what if any plans it has for commercializing its vast store of query information. “There is tremendous opportunity with this data,” Mr. Silverstein said. “The challenge is defining what we want to do.”

The search engine Lycos, which produces a top 50 list of its most popular searches, is already exploring potential commercial opportunities. “There is a lot of interest from marketing people,” said Aaron Schatz, who writes a daily column on trends for Lycos. “They want to see if their product is appearing. What is the next big thing?”

Google currently does not allow outsiders to gain access to raw data because of privacy concerns. Searches are logged by time of day, originating I.P. address (information that can be used to link searches to a specific computer), and the sites on which the user clicked. People tell things to search engines that they would never talk about publicly – Viagra, pregnancy scares, fraud, face lifts. What is interesting in the aggregate can be seem an invasiion of privacy if narrowed to an individual.

So, does Google ever get subpoenas for its information?

“Google does not comment on the details of legal matters involving Google,” Mr. Brin responded.

In aggregate form, Google’s data can make a stunning presentation. Next to Mr. Rae’s cubicle is the GeoDisplay, a 40-inch screen that gives a three-dimensional geographical representation of where Google is being used around the globe. The searches are represented by colored dots shooting into the atmosphere. The colors – red, yellow, orange – convey the impression of a globe whose major cities are on fire. The tallest flames are in New York, Tokyo and the San Francisco Bay Area.

Pinned up next to the GeoDisplay are two charts depicting Google usage in the United States throughout the day. For searches as a whole, there is a single peak at 5 p.m. For sex-related searches, there is a second peak at 11 p.m.

Each country has a distinctive usage pattern. Spain, France and Italy have a midday lull in Google searches, presumably reflecting leisurely lunches and relaxation. In Japan, the peak usage is after midnight – an indication that phone rates for dial-up modems drop at that time.

Google’s worldwide scope means that the company can track ideas and phenomena as they hop from country to country.

Take Las Ketchup, a trio of singing sisters who became a sensation in Spain last spring with a gibberish song and accompanying knee-knocking dance similar to the Macarena.

Like a series of waves, Google searches for Las Ketchup undulated through Europe over the summer and fall, first peaking in Spain, then Italy, then Germany and France.

“The Ketchup Song (Hey Hah)” has already topped the charts in 18 countries. A ring tone is available for mobile phones. A parody of the song that mocks Chancellor Gerhard Schröder for raising taxes has raced to the top of the charts in Germany.

In late summer, Google’s logs show, Las Ketchup searches began a strong upward climb in the United States, Britain and the Netherlands.

Haven’t heard of Las Ketchup?

If you haven’t, Google predicts you soon will.

———–

UPDATE: No stopping us

The Buy Bush a PlayStation 2 Campaign is an overwhelming success. In a matter of hours, we’ve managed to meet our goal thanks to a link from fark.com and the generosity of concerned citizens from around the world. However, I’ve received a lot of messages from people unhappy that the campaign was over so quickly, and that they missed their chance to be a part of it. I’ve also received numerous e-mails telling me that the proper game to send Bush is Conflict: Desert Storm, a tactical shooter in which the goal is to kill Saddam Hussein. Of course, this game is a perfect fit for the campaign. I also got several messages asking that we buy an extra controller so Cheney can play, and a few people even insisted that we buy the president a memory card.

So we’re gonna keep going.

At the $320 mark, Bush gets a copy of Conflict: Desert Storm (MSRP $49.99). If donations hit $345, Cheney gets a Dual Shock 2 controller (MSRP $24.99), and if we can collect $370, we’ll throw in a memory card so that the commander-in-chief won’t have to leave his PS2 on for long periods of time.

Again, keep watching this space, as I’ll be posting follow-up info over the next week or so. Stuff like photos, receipt scans, tracking numbers and a donor list.

Thanks again to the donors and supporters who have made this campaign such a smashing success.

Mikel Reparaz Buy Bush a PlayStation 2 Campaign

We now return you to your regularly scheduled Web site.

My fellow Americans and concerned members of the international community:

In the last few months, it has become increasingly apparent that the Bush administration is locked on course for a full-scale military invasion of Iraq. Nothing, it appears, will deter our President and his advisors from such an action. Saddam’s acceptance of U.N. weapons inspectors has been played down by the administration, and the general disapproval of other countries, as well as their refusal to participate, has led only to arrogant posturing from our leader. The President’s speeches have reflected this determination in the past months, as references to America’s flagging economy have been phased out gradually in favor of fiery rhetoric about Saddam Hussein and his alleged weapons of mass destruction.

My friends, the possible consequences of war with Iraq at this juncture have been discussed ad infinitum in the mass media. The U.S. singlehandedly deposing Saddam may very well destabilize the entire region and lead to increased terrorist attacks on the U.S. and its interests abroad. It will lead to ill will with our allies and endanger the progress of the war on terrorism. It will also be disastrous, if not for the U.S. and its military men and women, then for the civilians of Iraq, who already live under crushing poverty and constant fear of invasion. Saddam has proclaimed that he will take a war with the U.S. to the streets of Baghdad. How many innocents would be killed in such a fight?

Whether or not you agree with these assertions, you must at least admit they are valid concerns. And yet, the President and his cabinet have dismissed them, if not simply ignored them altogether.

At first, I was not sure about the reasons for Bush’s one-track mind on this issue. Perhaps the leaders of our great nation are under the impression that war will boost our nation’s economy, or at least distract us from it. Perhaps Bush is trying to avenge his father’s mistakes in the war-torn region. Perhaps their claims about Saddam Hussein’s status as an international threat are genuine, although this is doubtful.

These two simple items may help save thousands of lives. As I sat pondering the President’s motives one day, it suddenly dawned on me that it is entirely likely our Commander in Chief has never played a single video game in his life. “Of course!” I exclaimed, startling my girlfriend, who was driving at the time. “Without the catharsis that video games provide, Bush has no way of fulfilling his militaristic fantasies other than actually fighting wars.”

Our course of action is clear, my friends: We must help this man, and in so doing, help those whose lives will be affected by a full-scale invasion.

We of course cannot trust that Bush will eventually discover video games himself. They are not of his generation, and he is an extremely busy man besides. It is up to us, America, and so I propose the following: We must pool our funds and buy Bush a PlayStation 2.

To this end, the Buy Bush a PlayStation 2 campaign asks for your donations. Any amount is appreciated. With your help, we plan to raise the sum of $270, which will be applied to the purchase of:

One (1) Sony PlayStation 2 game console, MSRP $199.99, and One (1) copy of SOCOM: U.S. Navy SEALs, MSRP $59.99, a military-themed title suited to the President’s apparent tastes.

The remaining $10.02 will be used to cover shipping to the White House at 1600 Pennsylvania Ave., Washington D.C. Any amount contributed over the $270 mark will be refunded to the donor.

The following letter will be included with the gifts:

Dear Mr. President:

I represent a small consortium of voters who are deeply concerned over your proposed {or, if appropriate, ongoing} military action in Iraq. Given the amount of public speech and political rhetoric you have devoted to this issue in past months, it seems to us as though you are more interested in playing commando than in fighting an actual war with actual human casualties.

Enclosed with this letter, we have sent you some small gifts: one PlayStation 2 game console, one copy each of SOCOM: U.S. Navy SEALs and Conflict: Desert Storm, a memory card and an extra controller for Mr. Cheney’s use. We ask that you accept these gifts and use them, rather than the lives of Iraqi civilians and our U.S. servicemen, to fulfill any militaristic fantasies.

Respectfully,

Mikel Reparaz Chairman Buy Bush a PlayStation 2 Campaign

The names of the donors will also be attached, unless they request otherwise. Obviously, it would be ideal to get signatures on the letter, but the logistics of sending the thing from donor to donor would be a nightmare of pyramid-scheme proportions. Not to mention that any war would likely be over by the time the letter got back to me.

If you are interested in supporting the Buy Bush a PlayStation 2 Campaign, please click the PayPal button below to donate.

If you would like to help spread the word about the campaign, we have a button you can post on your Web site. Please copy and paste the following HTML into your page of choice: http://www.evilninja.net/buybush.htm”> SRC=”“>http://www.evilninja.net/graphics/bushbutton.gif”>

Thank you, and God bless.

———–

by Ben Fritz

Intertainer, the dominant player in the Internet video-on-demand (VOD) space, has shut its doors, most likely for good.

The L.A.-based company raised approximately $125 million in VC money, about twice as much as the infamous DEN. Only a small amount of that is believed to be left.

CEO Jonathan Taplin says Intertainer is no longer able to operate due to alleged price fixing and unfair competition by the major studios that provide its content. Last month, Intertainer filed a lawsuit against AOL Time Warner, Sony, Vivendi Universal, and MovieLink, the online VOD joint venture the three are planning to launch along with MGM and Paramount.

“We came to the conclusion that it would be better to get the business model straight in court so we no longer are faced with negative gross margins,” Taplin told DCR. “Studio demands have gotten much worse over the past year to the point where they’re no longer reasonable. At one point, we had around 1000 movies from every studio except Paramount. Now we have only 50, and with the exception of Dreamworks and MGM, which have been straight up with us, those are provided only due to advances we paid.”

Taplin accused the studios of engaging in unfair practices to undermine Intertainer as soon as they decided to band together to form MovieLink. He singled out Sony, an Intertainer shareholder, accusing the studio of suddenly refusing to provide Intertainer with its content and of using its position on Intertainer’s board to share proprietary information with MovieLink.

None of the studios would comment on the suit, although a Warner Bros. spokeswoman called it “ludicrous.”

Since launching a broadly available VOD service last year, Intertainer has signed 147,000 subscribers, although it’s unknown how many of those signed up for just one month or were regular customers.

The company has said its site will only be down until its lawsuit against the studios is resolved. Even if Intertainer wins, however, the only likely result is that it will recoup some cash for its investors. The chances of studios providing content to a company that has sued them is virtually nil.

With MovieLink still facing an anti-trust investigation by the Department of Justice (DOJ) and waiting to launch, the remaining players in the VOD space are CinemaNow, which offers a small selection of content from major studios along with independent films, and MovieFlix, which has mostly public domain films and an increasing number of independent movies.

Both companies said they are in negotiations with major studios to add their content and, whether out of a desire to stay on Hollywood’s good side or a genuinely different experience than Intertainer claims to have had, said their dealings with the studios have been slow, but fair.

“A year ago, I think the studios were very wary of Internet distribution, but that seems to have slowly changed,” said Curt Marvis, CEO of L.A.-based CinemaNow, which has short-term distribution deals with MGM, Universal and Warner Bros. “All the studios are currently in business with us or are in negotiations and we haven’t seen anything that leads us to feel we can’t run a successful business with them.”

Robert Moskovits, COO of L.A.-headquartered MovieFlix, was harsh in his analysis of Intertainer’s downfall, accusing it of being another dot-com that failed due to too much VC money and optimism about the space’s growth.

“They were shooting for the stars, but this space is just a primordial soup now and there are no stars to be had,” he stated. “Going through over $100 million in this business is just criminal. We’ve done this for half a million of our own money and while we’re much smaller than Intertainer, we’re still around.”

Both CinemaNow and MovieFlix offer monthly subscriptions to view their premium content, priced at $9.95 and $5.95 respectively. CinemaNow also charges $2.99 for downloads of its major studio films, such as “Erin Brockovich” and “Harry Potter.”

Marvis declined to release the number of CinemaNow subscribers, but said there was a “major up tick” in the past two months since CinemaNow began signing major studios. Moskovits said MovieFlix currently has 6300 and projects it will have 10,000 by the end of Q1 2003. MovieFlix, which is run by Moskovits and a partner, is currently cash flow positive, while CinemaNow, which has major investors such as Microsoft and is majority owned by independent studio Lions Gate, is shooting for profitability in the first quarter of 2004.

Both companies expressed optimism that the launch of MovieLink will bring increased attention to the VOD space, increasing their own opportunities as purveyors of more niche content. CinemaNow is also looking to profit from its deals abroad, as MovieLink will only be available in the U.S.

MovieLink has said it will launch by the end of the year, but the DOJ investigation is ongoing and launch dates have been repeatedly delayed over the past two years. Some industry insiders have told DCR they believe MovieLink may never launch due to DOJ anti-trust concerns.

If it does, though, MovieLink will no longer have to face the one competitor that was in a position to be a direct rival. It now remains to the courts and the fate of MovieLink to prove whether Intertainer’s failure was due to illegal behavior by studios, or a space that’s not yet ready for prime time.

———–

SONY/Ericsson support Bluetooth in their current round of phones, Apple has already demonstrated interoperability with them in shipping product, and Apple has mysteriously incorporated robust Bluetooth support into OSX Jaguar.

-Ian.

On Thursday, September 26, 2002, at 04:23 PM, Anson Lee wrote:

> And while we’re on the topic of the phone/pda
>
> An article that claims to have stumbled across the Apple hiPhone.
>
> Nice rendering, but what’s with that Apple logo?
>
> -Anson
>
> http://www.eprairie.com/news/viewnews.asp?newsletterIDA48
>
> Apple, Motorola Avert Confirmation of Unannounced Cell Phone
> 9/26/2002
>
> ePrairie has obtained these three photographs (dated September 2002)
> of an
> unannounced Apple cell phone called the Applele hiPhone R4 CHICAGO
> (Exclusive) – A picture can tell a thousand words. Leaked to the right
> place
> at the right time, some pictures of some products can even tell a
> story of a
> new venture by an unsuspecting company that has decided to silence the
> word.
> Well, at least for now.
>
> Such is the case with Apple Computer – known usually for making
> computers
> and MP3 players and software – regarding pictures of a new Apple cell
> phone
> that have been disclosed to ePrairie. As seen on the right, they sport
> the
> grace and colorful styling you’re used to from Apple’s computers but
> in a
> decidely more mobile fashion.
>
> Upon confronting Apple with the discovery, Nathalie Welch, a
> spokeswoman for
> the company, wasn’t interested in revealing any details. In fact, she
> wasn’t
> even interested in confirming its existence.
>
> “I can neither confirm nor deny the rumors that Apple is developing a
> cell
> phone or discuss unannounced products,” Welch said in an e-mail to
> ePrairie.
>
> Representatives from Motorola – a local company that has been known for
> working closely with Apple – also declined to confirm or deny whether
> or not
> the Schaumburg, Ill.-based powerhouse was or will be involved in
> developing
> the phone’s chipset. But several analysts, who say Motorola would be a
> logical partner, also say the release of a cell phone would make sense
> for
> Apple.
>
> “It would fit with Apple’s whole digital universe strategy in which
> the PC
> is the hub of your digital universe and the iPod (Apple’s mobile MP3
> player)
> is a peripheral,” said Kevin Hunt, a research analyst at Thomas Weisel
> Partners who covers Apple but hadn’t heard of a cell phone in the
> works.
>
> He added: “Apple has been very vehement that they wouldn’t get into
> handhelds because they think handhelds will go away and blend into a
> cell
> phone, so it would make more sense to come out with a cell phone.” The
> phones look much like Apple’s older iMacs in terms of the vibrant
> colors,
> prompting Hunt to say: “They do have some of the coolest-looking
> products.”
>
> Other analysts, though, are less convinced: “I’ve talked to some
> component
> manufacturers that say Apple’s going to do this and some that say they
> won’t,” said Dan Niles, an analyst that covers Apple at Lehman
> Brothers who
> has heard conversation of an Apple cell phone.
>
> He added: “I’m not sure how this fits in Apple’s current business
> strategy.
> I don’t view it as synergistic as the iPod. Yes, you can transfer your
> contact list [from your computer] with a cell phone, but it hasn’t
> necessarily been proven that people are using the data capabilities of
> their
> phones anyway.”
>
> Hunt says that Motorola and IBM have banded together to develop chips
> for
> Apple’s power PCs (the G4), and because Apple wouldn’t make its own
> cell
> phone chips, Motorola would be a likely vendor. He adds that the cell
> phone
> would probably be a combination device that has much of the same
> functionality as a handheld.
>
>> From Motorola’s vantage point, the sense is similar to what Apple is
>> saying
> but with the added notion of a sensible synergy.
>
> “I can’t comment on rumors,” said Amy Halm, director of communications
> for
> Motorola’s networking and computing group, “but I can say that Apple
> is one
> of Motorola’s most valued customers and has been for a very long time.
> Apple’s customers are some of the most passionate customers in the
> world.
> Every time Apple introduces a new product, they have the most loyal
> following of any company I’ve ever seen.”
>
> In terms of the chances for success in the marketplace, Hunt says this
> would
> be a very new market for Apple that would complement its own product
> line
> rather than try to compete with the big cell phone makers.
>
> He says Apple – one of the most “tightlipped” companies he’s ever
> covered in
> terms of speaking about products before they’re ready to ship – would
> likely
> begin talking about the phones in the middle of 2003 in anticipation
> for the
> next Macworld trade show. Hunt says the price point for the combination
> device might be between $300 and $500, or that of a higher-end phone.
>
> The pictures obtained by ePrairie named the phone the Applele hiPhone
> R4 and
> were dated with a September 2002 time stamp.
>
> By ADAM FENDELMAN
> Editor-in-Chief
> Reporter’s Beat: Telecom
> adam [at] eprairie [dot] com