DISH has increased prices across the board. They will lose AT&T as a distribution arm in February of 2009. Will AT&T take its 1M subs to DirecTV? DISH has been  losing subscribers. (Are they the Sprint of TV?) And Echostar lost the patent suit against TIVO. They also have the DTV conversion coming. All this and they add DRM? Do they *want* to chase away subscribers?

Sure, adding MPEG-4 and 1080p content is great. (I just got an HDTV), but I don’t want them messing with my DVR. I paid for the movie, what do they care about my time shifting it?  It’s time to look at Bright House digital TV packages and save some money.

Tags: dbs, dish, dvr. drm

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Copyright On Rad’s Radar?

I’m a geek groupie when it comes to technology. I can’t actually produce any of these life-changing products, but I can recognize something cool when I see it. And the 100-Gigabit data transfer demo that Ciena was showing off at SC 08 in Austin, Texas, today was very cool. Unlike previous demonstrations, Ciena’s was a 100-Gigabit data transfer over a single channel, rather than one aggregated over multiple channels.

The product isn’t available for commercial use yet (and there’s no date set for when it will be), but when it is, customers will be able to upgrade their existing fiber equipment with the Ciena kit to 100G. Other players, from Infinera to Alcatel-Lucent, are also trying to deliver 100G networks. Those speeds will help the core network handle the anticipated growth of Internet traffic, and lower the per-bit cost of delivering that traffic. In the video below, Dimple Amin, vice president of R&D and special projects at Ciena, talks about the demonstration, what it does and how far such traffic can travel. He also says there’s no technical reason why these speeds couldn’t be delivered at the edge of  the network to consumers’ homes. That would be the day.

After hitting the online e-mail scene at a time when Yahoo and Hotmail were well established, GMail has become one of the leading services, and led the way in pushing forward the envelope. Most notably was the decision right out of the gate to offer far more storage space than Yahoo or Hotmail.

GMail rolled out piece of goodness today with the introduction of themes and colors so you can “pimp” your account in a wide variety of ways. In the scheme of things, themes are a relatively minor feature but it’s just another example of how Google has done such a nice job at making GMail better. The new themes come in the wake of GMail unveiling voice and video chat earlier this month.

What’s interesting is that Google’s nurturing of GMail stands in contrasts with how some of its other products have been treated. Perhaps the most “abused” service is Blogger, which gathered dust for years after it was acquired from Pyra Labs in 2003. Meanwhile, new players such as TypePad and Wordpress stormed into the market that Google could have dominated.

It does make you wonder why GMail has received so much love and attention. Perhaps it had a bigger champion within the GooglePlex.

More: Zoli Erdos has some thoughts on GMail’s new themes. He likes them because it’s a way for people with multiple GMail accounts to give each one a different color - a small but valuable feature. Mike Arrington also seems to like the new themes, judging by the headline: “Gmail Themes. That’s Totally Ninja”.

Technorati Tags: gmail, google

After a very successful debut last year, The Crunchies are returning to once again celebrate the best of entrepreneurship and new startups. With the economy being what it is, 2009 is going to be a tough year for everyone and I see events like The Crunchies as a big morale booster for those of us working in the trenches. The Crunchies are a joint effort by us, VentureBeat, Silicon Alley Insider and TechCrunch. More details will emerge in the coming days but for now, here are the rules and some facts.

• Nominations will be accepted from now through Dec. 10 at midnight PT.
• There are 15 award categories to recognize various types of technology innovation.
• Companies will be nominated based on their accomplishments in 2008.
• For each award category, each person is invited to nominate one company.
• The voting will start on Dec. 15-Jan. 5 midnight PT.
• The Crunchies committee will select five finalists per award category based on popular nominations and company accomplishments made in 2008.
• One ballot per IP address per day will be counted in the final vote for the winners.
• The Awards Ceremony will be held on Jan. 9, 2009, 7:30 pm at the Herbst Theater across the street from City Hall in San Francisco. The reception will follow and tickets will be released in December.

To build what it claimed is the largest library of HD content available to consumers, Vudu added on average of 150 HD titles per week in October.

The service requires a minimum 4-Mbps connection for instant playback of HD titles.

Vudu is attempting to sell its $300 set-top to home-theater buffs by emphasizing the service’s broad content selection and navigation features. Movies on the service are available for 24-hour rental for between 99 cents and $3.99, and $9.99 to $19.99 for download-to-own.

As part of its strategy to target high-end consumers, Vudu last month began offering 65 feature movie titles for rental in 1080p high-definition video format, the highest HD format currently defined. 

More at Multichannel News.

Tags: video on demand, vod, vudu

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The folks in charge of the SC 08 conference being held in Austin, Texas, this week have trumpeted the phenomenal growth of the supercomputing show, with attendance up by almost 10 percent from the previous year, but I’m beginning to doubt that high-performance computing is driving this growth as much as the broad changes in the data center world. As Ori Aruj, CEO of switch chipmaker Dune Networks, told me when I asked why he was at the show, “This is no longer about high-performance computing and research. This is now a data center conference.”

I’m inclined to agree with him, as there are a lot of networking and storage vendors here with really large and visible booths that seem outsized compared with the HPC market opportunity. There are also attendees here from companies that have little or no business in supercomputing, such as Dune Networks, Isilon or Rackable Systems. Some of the 219 industry exhibitors (as opposed to the 118 research exhibitors) can’t possibly make enough in the HPC market to justify such a large presence at the show, although a product manager at Ciena, which makes networking gear,  pointed out that HPC installations can act as an effective advertisement for other business.

So here among the 10,764 attendees at the show one might be forgiven for occasionally forgetting that Microsoft, Intel, Nvidia and a host of other consumer brands aren’t here to talk about basic computing — but supercomputing.

That hasn’t happened yet. But now Hewlett-Packard has beaten Apple to the punch, announcing the first multitouch-enabled notebook PC, the tx2.

We are all wondering — aren’t we — why Apple couldn’t get this out to market first?

The tx2 is a convertible notebook, meaning its screen can pivot 180 degrees to show someone else what’s on it or lie flat and act like a tablet PC.

The first convertible notebook aimed directly at consumers, the tx2 sports HP’s version of multitouch technology, which lets you use two fingers at once to manipulate images on the screen or make on-screen gestures that signify specific commands.

A pinch motion works just like it does on an iPhone or MacBook, for example, letting you rotate pictures or press and drag files around.

Pricing? $1,150 or only $151 more than the starter MacBook.

More at BusinessWeek.

Tags: apple, convertible notebook, hewlett-packard, hp, iphone, mac, macbook, steve jobs, tx2

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Meraki, the Google and Sequoia-backed startup that focuses on citywide Wi-Fi networks, hasn’t let the demise of municipal Wi-Fi halt its efforts to make money or make the wireless network technology available in more places. It has scaled back considerably on its visions of open source, low-cost Wi-Fi for municipalities, instead focusing on Wi-Fi for apartment buildings, city squares and environments where someone is willing to pay to provide the service. Instead of connecting the world, Meraki wants to connect with paying customers. And that’s a good thing.

Today the company announced a Wi-Fi access point that plugs into a wall, and on Dec. 4 will release a lighter solar-powered access point to go places where power doesn’t. In a briefing about the products, it’s clear that Meraki still holds onto its altruistic views, with CEO Sanjit Biswas trumpeting the growth of Wi-Fi networks in Africa and small Chilean fishing villages. However, he’s quick to point out that hotels and apartment buildings can use the new Meraki products to rapidly install Wi-Fi networks that will cover a complex all the way from the pool to inside bedrooms.

In the last year, the startup has changed its business model several times, from trumpeting cheap hardware and charging a fee to access a dashboard, to tripling the price of its hardware and pushing ads. Such shifting hasn’t sat well with some citywide Wi-Fi network proponents, but the bottom line for many cities and customers is that Meraki’s Wi-Fi networks are still cheaper than those from vendors such as Cisco or Juniper. As Wi-Fi becomes more important, Meraki’s capitalizing on its cheaper gear with new packages that offer to unwire a city street for $10,000, or today’s launch of a residential package designed for apartments and hotels that costs less than $5,000.

Wi-Fi is of growing interest for both consumers and ISPs. Earlier this year, Quentanna, a Wi-Fi chipmaker hoping to build a plug-in home access point to boost wireless signals, launched with a few ISP customers on board. A few weeks ago AT&T purchased hot-spot provider, Wayport for $275 million. If Meraki can figure out a way to spread Wi-Fi and make money, it could be in a good position as ubiquitous access to the Internet becomes more important for gadget-toting consumers. Wi-Fi is one of the most common gateways to the web, and even in a down economy Meraki thinks it can make money on the tools to build those gateways rather than by managing them. Meraki has realized that instead of saving the world, it needed to save its business.

Did it have to be this way?

Just a few months ago we had mainly a severe problem with mortgages that should never have been written. The people who shouldn’t have had the mortgages were losing their homes (or speculative investments); the people who shouldn’t have bought the mortgages, including the companies that shouldn’t have written the mortgages and the companies that shouldn’t have securitized the mortgages, were in a lot of trouble.

But, other than housing prices which were arguably too high anyway, the real economy seemed to be doing pretty well. This being an election year there was a healthy dose of "stimulus" from Washington. Many more dollars than were in the stimulus program were saved by drivers who went on partial strike and helped drive the prices of gasoline and oil back to less than they were a year ago. Most of these were dollars that otherwise would have left the US economy so that was pretty much all gain.

So why are we having a recession? At least partially because we were talked into it. But who would want to do that? Who would want to spread so much fear that the mighty US consumer put his or her credit card under the mattress?

• Bankers who wanted a bailout (and got it)
• An administration that needed to justify bailing out the bankers
• A Treasury Secretary with a bankerish POV
• A Fed chief whose academic specialty was the Great Depression
• The Democratic Party which wanted to show how bad things had gotten on the Republican watch
• The McCain campaign which wanted to show it wasn’t four more years of W
• Those who would like to regulate everything in sight (forgetting that regulated Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac were among the worst offenders)
• Those in Congress who didn’t want the blame for pushing Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae to make worse and worse mortgages
• Everybody else who wants a bailout and has seen that the threat of bankruptcy is the best way to get one
• A press which is largely economically illiterate but can tell scary and sad stories well

Turns out there as almost a perfect storm of fear mongering and we got scared. Now there is a recession. They happen when money stops moving (more on that here).

The consumer price index has fallen by a record amount month over month led by fuel and housing but other stuff is getting cheaper as well. The post-Christmas sales have started before Thanksgiving this year. Consumption has gone out of style – bad timing that.

If you’re in debt, it IS a good time to cut back. Cash is king and we are at least partly in a deflationary time. But, if you have some money, it’s not a bad time to go shopping both because you’ll get good prices and because the economy needs you not to hoard. Want to be socially responsible, buy your family a fuel efficient car, furnace, or solar something or other. Good time to hire some people to do some work around the house you’ve been putting off. Good time to give to your favorite charity which is probably hurting.

Scary as it is, it’s a good time to invest as well. We’re somewhere between the end of the last bubble and the beginning of the next one. More fortunes’ll be made by investing now and waiting patiently for returns than waiting for a safe time to invest.

Some ideas on how companies should invest are here.

It’s also a good time for leadership – away from fear. Here’s hoping we’ll get that.

Technorati Tags:
bailouts, deflation, fear mongering, recession

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Now that Yahoo co-founder and CEO Jerry Yang has finally stepped aside, removing what many saw as one of the main barriers to bringing the two companies together, Microsoft should re-ignite acquisition talks with the company. But that’s not the only reason. There are plenty of other good ones why it should do so — and why Yahoo should accept. (full story below)

After his last effort to strike some kind of a deal with Yahoo ended in failure, Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer said categorically that the software behemoth had no interest in making another acquisition bid for the troubled web company. Was he just bluffing? That should become obvious relatively soon, now that co-founder and CEO Jerry Yang has finally stepped aside, removing what many (including Ballmer himself) saw as one of the main barriers to bringing the two companies together. But that’s not the only reason Microsoft should re-ignite acquisition talks with the company. There are plenty of other good ones why it should do so — and why Yahoo should accept.

One of the biggest reasons Microsoft should take another kick at the Yahoo can is obvious: Relatively speaking, it would cost them far less. Even if Microsoft offers a hefty premium (last time the original offering price of $31 a share was a 62-percent premium, and the software maker later boosted that to $33 a share), it should be able to acquire Yahoo for somewhere in the $18-$20 range. That’s a savings of more than 35 percent. If Yahoo was worth $45 billion in February, surely it’s worth $25 billion to Microsoft now. That’s barely more than a year’s worth of cash flow for the company.

The second major reason Microsoft should reconsider a deal is that the Redmond giant is still a distant third in the search game, and the longer it spends trying to solve that problem on its own, the worse it gets. Yahoo’s revamped search and advertising platform has its flaws, but it’s light years ahead of anything Microsoft has, or will have anytime soon. That’s worth paying for. The same rationale applies to Microsoft’s web content strategy, such as it is. Yahoo has tons of content and services, and plenty of paying customers, two things Microsoft badly needs.

And why should Yahoo accept such a bid? At this point, it really has no choice. In fact, not accepting a reasonable bid if one were to emerge would arguably be a dereliction of duty on the part of the company’s board of directors, and they are already skating on thin ice. What other options does Yahoo have right now? A merger of some kind with AOL? That would be a massive waste of shareholders’ money and time. Roping together two struggling companies is no way to create a winner. And while hooking up with Microsoft isn’t a sure bet either, such a move would offer a far better chance at success than a Yahoo-AOL tie-up. At this point, anything would be better than Yahoo on its own. The company has lost the confidence of both investors and a growing number of users, and it needs to do something — fast.

A report prepared for The Broadband Forum by research firm Point Topic and released today says that there are now 400 million broadband subscribers worldwide. In 1998, there were only 57,200 subscribers — that’s growth of nearly 600,000 percent. I was there — chronicling the emergence of now-forgotten names such as Northpoint Communications and @Home Networks. There was a time when the U.S. led the broadband race. Today we merely follow.

DSL is still the most widely used technology, but fiber is rapidly catching on. In 2002, there were 18,000 fiber broadband subscribers — now there are 45 million. Whichever way you look at it, this is a massive achievement and the numbers show that broadband is the platform. Had it not been for broadband, we wouldn’t have seen the emergence of Skype, YouTube, and countless other such innovations. But it’s all coming under threat, thanks to the backward-looking policies of companies like Time Warner Cable, Comcast and AT&T, all of which want to put a meter on bandwidth — and with it, innovation.

We will worry about that another day. For now, remember: 400 million broadband subscribers.

Katie over on Earth2Tech just tipped me off on President Elect Barack Obama’s CTO website. They are using Digg-like social voting to figure out what are the top priorities for this new job. There are some interesting ideas there and hopefully some of them will actually make it to Washington. I like this idea — now lets hope that people actually listen and not just use these as cute tricks. (Related link: How Obama can use the net to improve the government.)

When you think about it - and here’s the technology angle - the toilet really hasn’t changed that much over the past 250 years since Alexander Cummings invented a sliding valve within a toilet bowl called the Strap. Today’s toilets are a little more sophisticated but they are still based on the same technology created in the 18th century. (Here’s a history of the flush-able toilet)

The question is whether technology can be used to create a better toilet - and one that can be rolled out to people who don’t have access to a toilet today. You’d think with composting toilets becoming more popular that they could be a good candidate to take the outhouse into the 21st century.

What’s interesting about toilet technology is how much resistance there seems to change. For example, a popular toilet in Japan is the Washlet, which cleans and dries your backside without the use of paper. Even though 20 million people use them in Japan, the Washlet has made no inroads in Europe or North America.

More: For more information on World Toilet Day, check out this story in the Toronto Star. And for techies interested in the latest and great in toilet technology, Damn Interesting has some insight into what’s happening.

Technorati Tags: world toilet day

Quantance chip

Quantance, a San Mateo, Calif.-based chip firm, has raised a $12 million second round of funding to build a component part that will improve cell phone data reception by boosting the signal the phone sends to the base station. The funding, led by the TD Fund, with DoCoMO Capital, Granite Ventures and InterWest Partners also participating, supports Quantance’s efforts to manufacture and market its analog chip. The involvement of DOCOMO Capital, the venture arm of the Japanese cell phone giant, could help boost Quantance’s acceptance in the handset market if NTT DOCOMO pushes the chip for its own handsets.