There Are Traders And There Are Cyber Traders Hosted on ZooomrArchive for February, 2007
There Are Traders And There Are Cyber Traders Hosted on ZooomrForrester recently did a survey where they asked consumers an open ended question about how they felt towards their DVR and 20% of the respondents used the word love to describe their relationship with the gadget.
When a consumer electronic device can generate this type of an emotional response, it’s safe to assume that for better or worse, the technology is going to have an impact. On a positive note, Forrester’s study revelated that this passion translates into DVR owners churning less and being more likely to pay for premium services.
“less than 2% of people who owned DVRs have stopped using them. While today’s DVR owners are demographically mainstream, they are off the charts in their adoption of premium TV services and home electronics. Nearly half of them have a home network, which is four times the penetration of a typical online household.”
When DirecTV first partnered with TiVo, not only were they able to use the DVR to attract cable subscribers to satellite, but they also saw a significant reduction in churn from subscribers who were using the box. Unfortunately for TiVo, when technology can have this signficant of an impact on a partner’s core business, companies will naturally want to bring it in house.
As long as DVRs work properly, consumers are in love, but when things start going wrong, this very passion can swing the other way and creates some real problems. In the case of DirecTV, by cutting TiVo out of their DVR equation, they’ve alienated a significant portion of their subscriber base, have subjected their customers to public beta tests and now they risk dramatically increasing the number of people who churn from their service, just so that Rupert Murdoch can make a few measly extra bucks.
As more and more cable companies have begun deploying their own DVR solutions, they’ve quickly found that the middleware has been more challenging then what they expected. While any product introduction is likely to have it’s fair share of glitches, because of the passion that consumers feel over the DVR, it’s creating some real headaches for telco execs.
Case in point is Time Warner cable. Considering that Time Warner owns 4.5% of TiVo’s stock, I’ve never understood why they haven’t been more willing to partner with TiVo, but the company has consistently choosen to cut them out and apparently their DVR is so bad, that it’s inspired Government officials in Lincoln City Nebraska to actually holding a public hearing to address whether or not Time Warner should be forced to give up some of their exclusive franchise rights over the bugs.
While a public hearing in Nebraska isn’t likely to force Time Warner to change their minds about supporting a more elegant DVR solution, it does speak volumes about how frustrated consumers are getting from being locked into a single brand. Once they try DVR technology, the know that they love it, but with cable companies allowed to lock up their systems from outside competition, it’s created an environment where bugs and glitches are considered acceptable as long as they don’t cost too much.
Considering that the cable companies have been locked in a battle with the FCC to extend a decade old requirement to open up their set top boxes to competition, this kind of consumer backlash doesn’t speak well for their chances of getting another stay on implementing cablecard technology into their own boxes. Someday I hope that consumers will be able to choose between one of many different operating systems for their DVR needs, but for the time being, the cable and satellite companies need to be more mindful of the lengths that their customers will go to, if you break something that they love.
Subterranean Homesick Blues
Feb 27
Normally, I’m a pretty big fan of Microsoft. Sure the company takes a lot of heat for being such a massive software behemoth, but despite all the complaints about their operating system, I’ve had remarkably few problems with Windows.
I won’t always choose Microsoft over another company, but for the most part, I tend to gravitate towards their products because I know that they’ll work with my existing consumer electronic universe and because it’s more likely that a vendor will support Microsoft than other solutions.
The one exception to this though, is when it comes to their Internet Explorer browser. I’m not exactly sure how Microsoft lost their edge on the browser market, but at this point IE has failed pretty miserably and I expect that they’ll continue to lose market share to Firefox until they can improve the experience associated with using their browser. Not only does the IE browser open up your computer to security exploits, but even after their upgrade, it’s user interface is still bulky and cumbersome.
If it was up to me, I’d uninstall the browser from my computer and ban it permanentely, but there are still too many sites out there that exclusively support IE, for me to be able to get rid of it entirely.
Yesterday, I needed to upgrade my browser to IE7, in order to get a piece of software to work. I didn’t think it’d be a big deal, but after the upgrade it reminded me why I hate this browser as much as I do.
Before allowing me to upgrade, Microsoft required that I first prove that I owned the license to my operating system. While I understand Microsoft’s goal of trying to reduce piracy, as a consumer, it still doesn’t sit well with me that I have to prove I’m not a criminal before being allowed to use a piece of software that is free to begin with.
The entire upgrade took me almost 30 minutes to complete. After downloading and installing the new browser, Microsoft then made me sit through two computer restarts, several hard sell attempts at getting me to change my default search engine to MSN search (not going to happen) and to add icing on the cake, after completing the upgrade I had to screw around for another 20 minutes trying to uninstall an internet STD, that decided that IE7 was a good place to install a smiley face toolbar. 
While normally, using IE isn’t as painful as upgrading it, I still hate having to switch back and forth between browsers. Most of the sites I use tend to let me use Firefox anyway, but ever since Netflix launched their WatchNow feature, I’ve found myself needing to use IE more and more. It’s not a huge deal, but it is pretty annoying having to remember to log into Netflix using IE whenever I visit the site.
Fortunately, Smashed Life has come up with a pretty good solution for how to use the Firefox browser to play WatchNow movies. It involves installing the IE tab for Firefox and then setting up Netflix’s site, so that it always opens in an IE tab instead.
This isn’t an “official” solution by Netflix, but I tested it last night and can confirm that it works pretty cleanly on my system. I had trouble getting Netflix to automatically load in the IE tab at first, but after fooling around with the Firefox plugin a bit, I was able to figure it out. When all was said and done, it probably took me less than five minutes (and no computer restarts) to set up the plugin, compared to the 30 minutes I spent messing around trying to do a complete IE upgrade.
Most people probably won’t care enough to download a plugin, just so that they can avoid using IE in a separate browser, but I’ve found this to be a pretty neat solution. By customizing the plugin, I now no longer have to worry about remembering to open a new browser when using Netflix’s Watch Now feature. Hopefully, we’ll still see Netflix come out with an official Firefox support for WatchNow in the future, but at least in the near term, this is a good fix for those who’d rather forget about IE, even if you still need to use it sometimes.
Guitars Hosted on ZooomrAs a music fan, I always enjoy checking out new bands and learning more about the bands I already follow. For years, I’ve pretty much exclusively used All Music Guide for my music information needs, but last year I came across this week’s winner of the site of the week contest and have found it to be even more helpful then AMG.
Like AMG, MusicPortl is a site that tracks information about bands, but unlike AMG, they rely on the fans to help populate their data. By pulling in information from Wikipedia, photos from Flickr and music videos from YouTube, MusicPortl has become a one stop shop for learning about your favorite bands. One of the features I like best is their similar artists browse field that helps me to find new bands that may be of interest. MusicPortl also pulls in feeds from Technorati and LastFM to compliment the information they already have.
The overall site design is very clean and contains limited advertisements. Because the site relies on Javascript and Ajax for most of their content, it loads very quickly and creates a dynamic environment where the information is constantly changing.
MusicPortl also offers a Firefox and IE plugin that allows you to add their site to the search bar in your browser. This is especially helpful if you tend to look up a lot of bands on the fly.
While MusicPortl has come a long way considering it was launched less then a year ago, there are still a few more features I’d like to see added. Right now the site doesn’t scrape the web for lyrics to songs, which would be a great service to offer. It also doesn’t incorporate photos from sites like Zooomr or videos from sites other then YouTube. It would be great to see an even more diversied pool of resources for them to draw upon. As the site continues to develop, I’m sure that we will see more features added, but even without this support, MusicPortl is still a pretty slick site. Congratulations to MusicPortl on winning this week’s site of the week award.
The nominations for next week’s site of the week are listed below. You can vote in the sidebar. If you’d like to nominate you own site for the site of the week, feel free to send me an email at Davis (@) DavisFreeberg Dot Com and it will be considered for nomination.
TiVo Speaks Mandarin Too
Feb 21
Shortly after I purchased my first TiVo, a friend of mine wanted to know my thoughts on whether or not he should get a DVR. Like any rabid obsessed TiVotee, I immedietely started gushing over, all of TiVo’s innovative features and about how much of a transformative effect, time shifting has played on my life.
After trying to hard sell him on a TiVo unit for over three weeks, I finally succeeded in convincing my friend to buy a DVR, but instead of going with the TiVo unit I recommended, he went with the ReplayTV 5000. I tried to talk him out of it, but no matter what I said he wouldn’t budge. I showed him the superior interface, I let him test drive my own unit, I tried pointing out that suggestions and wishlists were exclusive to TiVo, I even tried to scare him into believing that Replay would possible stop working, if the company went bankrupt. No matter how hard I tried though, I couldn’t convince him to choose TiVo over that ReplayTV 5000 unit because it had a feature no one could touch. Automatic commercial skipping.
When TiVo first launched, the movie studios completely freaked out over DVR technology. They understood early on, the impact time shifting would play on their revenues and went to great lengths to put a stop to it. Initially, TiVo wanted to partner with the studios, but instead the studios threatened to sue the company, if they even launched their product. Hollywood’s huffing and puffing turned out to be little more than hot air when it came to TiVo, but when ReplayTV had the nerve to introduce automatic commercial skipping, the studios knew they had to draw a line in the sand.
Immedietely they lashed out and sued Replay, in order to make them stop. Replay did their best to fend off their legal attack, but eventually their parent company collapsed and rather then let the courts decide the legality of the technology, Hollywood quickly settled the case and resigned themselves to having at least contained the DVR threat.
After Replay found out about automatic skipping the hard way, other companies have been understandably reluctant to provide the technology to their customers. For years, the only way to gain access to this skip technology was to buy old ReplayTV boxes off of Ebay, but thanks to the open source community, there now appears to be a way to unlock automatic commercial skip on any Media Center PC.
Turning on commercial skip isn’t for the mainstream consumer yet, but for those who do spend the time figuring it out, it can add a powerful component to the Media Center experience.
The program itself is customizable and pretty robust. If you are feeling guilty about “stealing” your television, it allows you to adjust the maximum number of minutes it cuts out of each program. You can also program it to strip out commercials and then tranfer those files to a media extender or Xbox.
As it becomes more popular, it will be interesting to see how the studios will react. Suing Replay or TiVo is one thing, but taking on a legal team that has already been up against the Justice department is another matter entirely. The studio’s could always forego the legal route and try to convince Microsoft to shut the leak with more juicy IPTV contracts, but sooner or later it will become an issue that they will want to address.
Hopefully, the studios will end up ignoring it as a fringe threat and let media center fans have their fun, but given how hard they fought round 1, I’m skeptical that we’ll always see skip technology around. For now though, with the help of the open source community, Microsoft has quietely gained a key differentiator in the crowded DVR market and consumers have one more way to enhance their television experience.
This week’s winner of the site of the week contest was the game Wone. With such a crazy name, I’m not exactly sure how to phonetically pronounce the name of the site, but I do know that the game is a lot of fun. The game is actually pretty simple, you control a tire in a bizzarre world made up of ramps, walls and platforms. You can roll the tire left or right, but must collect a series of barrels in order to pass each level. At each stage the game gets harder and harder and while I played the game quite a bit over the last week, I still couldn’t make it past level 4.
What I like about the game is that it is simple and yet it is still highly entertaining. There are no nuclear bomb buttons, no super power moves, no vertical jumping, just the ability to roll back and forth like an old tire. Trying to figure out the optimum speed to jump off the ramps could be tough, but once you hit it just right there is a great feeling of satisfaction from making your way through this virtual garage. Congratulations to Wone for winning this week’s site of the week contest.
You can see the nominations for next week’s site of the week listed below and can vote in the sidebar. If you’d like to nominate your own site for site of the week, feel free to send me an email at davis [at] davisfreeberg dot com and I’ll be happy to add your site to the pool of nominations.
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Music Portl
Frankly after all of the noise surrounding the original I Love You virus, I’m surprised that we haven’t seen more of this con, but it looks like someone has decided to take advantage of the Valentine’s day spirit, in order to release a nasty worm onto the internet. The subject lines in the email looks innocent enough, but when you open it blammo!, it installs a backdoor program that will turn your computer into a lean mean zombie spamming machine.
While I think it’s pretty terrible that someone would release something that is going to cause so much trouble, I will say that the social engineering on the these holiday viruses is a lot smarter then many of the threats we see. Here you are minding your own business when all of a sudden you get an email from an old flame 
or someone already in your existing social network. Of course you’re going to be curious as to what it says, but by looking at it, you’ve now just sent it to all of the people in your address book and they are the next to be tempted by the bait. Given the number of email addresses that most people store in their address book, even if they got a minimal response rate, this thing was destined to take off pretty fast. Hopefully, the experts will have this contained pretty quickly, but in the meantime it’s much better to stick with physical Valentines anyway, they mean a lot more and don’t send emails to your ex-girlfriends.