It is still on its early stages, but they are showing signs of potentials most especially when they are getting fueled by venture capitalists of Silicon Valley. As the market are battling out as to who will own the future of cable television, here are the top-ten alternatives to it:
Sezmi
Sezmi is a subscription video service. It provides a DVR which records free over-the-air broadcasts, plus brings in video from Internet sources. For an additional fee, Sezmi makes available additional channels which are delivered via encrypted subchannels on existing channels such as KRCA.
Netflix
Netflix is a service offering online flat rate DVD and Blu-ray disc rental-by-mail and video streaming in the United States. It has amassed a collection of 100,000 titles and approximately 10 million subscribers.
Hulu
Hulu is a website offering commercial-supported streaming video of TV shows and movies from NBC, Fox, ABC, and many other networks and studios. Hulu videos are currently offered only to users in the United States. In order to ensure that no international users outside the US have access to the videos, Hulu blocks many anonymous proxies and virtual private networks.
Boxee
Boxee is a cross-platform freeware home theater PC (HTPC) program with a 10-foot user interface and social networking features designed for the living-room TV. Boxee is initially a fork of the free and open source XBMC media center software which Boxee uses as an application framework for its GUI and media player core platform, together with some custom and proprietary additions.
Slingbox
The Slingbox is a TV streaming device that enables users to remotely view their home’s cable, satellite, or personal video recorder (PVR) programming from an Internet-enabled computer with a broadband Internet connection.
If anyone of these interest you, you may Google the term and go to their respective websites.
Posted in: Information Technology, Technology.
Tagged: Cable TV Alternative · Online TV
Nokia Corporation is one of the giants in cellular manufacturing industry. They are a Finnish multinational communications corporation that is headquartered in Keilaniemi, Espoo, in Finland’s capital city Helsinki.
With over 123,000 employees in 120 countries, the company has global revenue of 41 billion Euro with and operating profit of approximately 1.2 billion Euro. The year 2009 was a big year for Nokia where they initially announced 38% market share globally.
But contrary to what has been announced by the company, Nokia revised the earlier announcement to just 34% market share. The company said the drop was blamed due to the flood of Chinese and fake phones, which happens to be devices often marketed under a brand close to Nokia but manufactured by others.
The revision indicated the rising occurrence of gray-market products, which are typically made by small Chinese start-up that are sold throughout Latin America and Asia at half the price. This is something that manufacturers must be very worried about, as a lot of big companies declined due to these gray products.
In the market, gray products comprise nearly 15% of the global phone supply or equivalent to 145 million units last year. These are one of the major threats in the industry and must be fought for before it goes out of control.
Posted in: Business Regulations, Information Technology.
Tagged: News · Nokia
During the boxing fight dubbed as “The Event”, where Manny Pacquiao clearly beat Joshua Clottey, I purportedly did not pay for a pay per view viewing subscription. Like Pacquiao’s previous fights, I was thinking I could watch it online for free.
First, second, third, fourth, fifth, and sixth undercard bouts, I thought that I could literally see it for free. But sooner, during the final two undercards, I could no longer see the fight live. I did have a hard time finding another free live streaming of the sport. It reached to a point where I would be redirected to the main free live streaming site where they would ask you to pay a certain fee.
Truly, if you think online TV will be free forever, think again. The cable companies have a plan to keep control and stick you with your bill. Once upon a time, a bunch of small companies in Silicon Valley thought the future of television was theirs. Soon the thinking went, TV would be everywhere by just browsing through your laptops and smart phones you can easily watch your favorite stations.
Although the network suits well, the cable guys just didn’t have the detail chops to make it happen. But today, fueled with venture money tech companies with names like Boxee, Roku, and Sezmi pursued their dream of untethering viewers from their TV sets—and owning a piece of the advertising revenue.
As the big picture comes into focus though, it looks like the cable guys are playing the lead roles, using the $32 billion they pay content providers each year as leverage. The alphabet soup of newbies is still waiting in the wings for a moment that might never come. But still, viewers can watch shows for free, but only if they’re cable subscribers first.
Posted in: Technology.
Tagged: Cable · Joshua Clottey · Manny Pacquiao · Online TV · The Event
Honestly, I am a victim of this like many other people – the one thing that we have in common is high cholesterol. There are two types of cholesterol – the bad and the good. And in most cases, people do suffer heart attach when the bad cholesterol goes high or at the very least, are candidates of any heart ailmenst.
But Cleveland Clinic’s Steven Nissen is again pursuing a drug that will attack plaque by raising number of HDL, the technical name of good cholesterol. Nissen has build a prominent career as chief cardiologist at the medical institution and run trials that helped some lifesaving drugs win approval from the Food and Drug Administration.
However, on several occasions, it wasn’t always successful for Nissen. Twice, he tested new drugs designed to keep heart diseases away by boosting good cholesterol with huge investments coming from giant Pfizer. But the strategy has yet to bear fruit and neither of these two drugs made it into the market leaving Pfizer with no heart medicine to replace its current blockbuster medication, Lipitor.
Currently, Nissen is running again clinical trials on a third treatment. This one from Resverlogix, a small Canadian company with no commercial products. If it succeeds, the medicine would help reverse the massive buidup of harmful plaque in blood vessels that causes some of the major heart ailments among age groups.
Nissen said, “I am cautious but optimistic about RVX-208. I hope it springs eternal. We need to keep trying to find an HDL-raising strategy that works.”
According to a study, people with naturally elevated HDL are less likely to suffer heart attacks or die from cardiovascular diseases. Nissen and Resverlogix are hoping that artificially raising HDL will have the same effect. Although it is not yet a sure bet, but it sure is worth the study. People who take the B vitamin niacin, for example, often show higher HDL levels, but it’s not clear this cuts heart-attack risk, one research says.
Posted in: Health Care.
Tagged: Good Cholesterol · HDL · Health · Heart
Several years had passed by and Britain’s manufacturing industry continued to decline. And today, this downturn has sparked renewed British interest in reviving manufacturing. Yes, China has gained so much attention with their cheap labor and cheap products offerings but don’t look down on Britain as they will probably give a good run by producing a far more better quality products.
Manufacturing has long been the poor relations of the British economy. It is often characterized by inexorable decline, overshadowed by the booming modernity of high finance among many other aspects. But when the recession came such as the collapse in the banking industry, manufacturing is just perhaps one word that is needed to turn the rhetoric into reality.
Although manufacturing output was falling in the past twelve months, which is perhaps the fastest drop since records began in 1948, there is one positive side. The industry still comprises 13.5 percent of the economy compared to the less than ten percent from the much vaunted financial services sector. They carry out 74 percent of business funded research and development and still has the highest employment rate of 2.6 million people. Moreover, it generated 53 percent of the country’s export earnings.
But the problem really is that there is not enough of it in the country. Britain is just 0.5 percent of big UK Manufacturing companies, they are only 1 percent of Europe and only 1.4 percent in the United States. So how is the situation to be solved?
Well, that is to revive to industry putting in more focus on large-scale manufacturing.
Obviously, it is easier said than done, as it is too late to resurrect mass market, world-leading industries of the past such as machine tools, etc. However, to take advantage of the revival is to realize the strong pull of genuine demand nowadays. The energy sector is a case in point. People now consume more and more gas and electricity.
Posted in: Management, Production.
Tagged: Britain · Demand · Energy · Manufacturing
It was once said that video and search may work effectively when separated. You know, nowadays, the two will always be separate and just cannot be mixed because there are two different niches. For one, search engines are perhaps for people looking for a document for a school project or report evidence while the video, might just be for people who wants hands-on experience. Different, isn’t it?
Not so long ago, Google sealed the deal on video search capabilities for its YouTube portal, saying it would provide auto-captions for all of its uploaded videos using a proprietary Google’s Speech Recognition Technology.
The plan actually began last November with a handful partner channels including PBS, Stanford University and National Geographic. As a matter of fact, it would be compatible in several worldwide languages in a few months from now.
The news establishes Google as the frontrunner in the internet programming arena. As a company who prides itself with effective search engine with accuracy hits of nearly 90 percent, they are now able to capitalize on its investment in speech to text technology to index videos, target ads, and create actual profit for YouTube.
But the most important news has yet to be told, the process is just simply deaf and hearing impaired friendly. They will be able to understand dialogue on uploaded videos, as this group of people had to constantly rely on the goodwill of YouTube users to manually add captions to their videos, which eats too much time.
Further, Google has now been removed from any ill will associated with Internet programming issues. This is truly one of the milestones of their company. And we do hope more innovations would come along the way.
Posted in: Information Technology, Technology.
Tagged: Google · SEO · Technology · Video
When nothing else happens, and everything else seems desperate, many companies try to resort in some innovative activities such as creating sexy and saucy ads thinking it would sell their product. Truly, the same thing happened with Chrysler, where they are heating up Dodges advertising campaign like that of Fiats with Gallic sizzle.
However, the sad story is that sex appeal had virtually disappeared from American car marketing. This is practically perhaps of their liberated culture where everything seems to be natural for them. It doesn’t create a head turn. Unlike in Asia, it does create a head turn because sex appeal isn’t natural in their conservative culture.
Moreover, Chrysler is turning European car again from time. However it is no longer the Germans who are calling the shots. It is now the Italians from Fiat and their French marketing chief are in charge. The next generation of Chryslers and Dodges will resemble the quirky little cars at that zip around Rome.
And they are doing a branding makeover with the goal of attracting younger, hipper, and wealthier customers. But they were too much known for creating controversy. For one, Fiat apologized to China after a European Lancia ad starring Richard Gere obliquely backed and independent Tibet. In US, they featured Mikhail Gorbachev, Poland’s Lech Walesa, and Mohammed Yunus, who founded microlender Grameen Bank. Each man climbs out of a 300 sedan, and a fourth car arrives empty. An announcer dedicates the ad to jailed Burmese democracy activist Aung San Suu Kyi.
Whatever their plans may be – their planned sexy and saucy advertisements must take into consideration the cultural differences among nations. Because obviously, no on wants their past mistakes to recur again and again.
Posted in: Advertising.
Tagged: Advertisement · Chrysler · Dodge
According to a research, online film demand is cooling down, thus causing a massive decline. Now Hollywood’s dream to built around movies in digital downloads has been in danger. The film industry has been banking so much on digital distribution, where they hope it would replace the income it generates from sales of DVD’s.
But it just didn’t happen as the past two years saw a massive decline.
This is perhaps due to the culture of movie watchers I believe. They want to spend movie time with families, which apparently watching it on your personal computers could not give. Watching the digital format means lesser fun and lesser of those happy moments munching some popcorns in between. The market seems to be just cooling off, which practically wasn’t caused by any other economic factors. The level of interest just isn’t there any more.
While sales in digital films rose sharply in 2007 and 2008, growth stuttered in 2009 according to a report sent by Screen Digest. The media research company forecasted total online movie sales in US for 2009 at 360 million dollars, based on the sharp growth from the previous two years.
Moreover, the media research company believes consumers have been deterred by an array of competing online platforms that prevented viewers from watching digitally downloaded films comfortably at their own place too. Say for example, a consumer buying a film from Apple’s iTune Store is unable to watch it on their MS Xbox Console.
There are so many restrictions, which is all about viewers cannot do, rather that what they can possibly do. This stirred a problem in Hollywood, which is obviously making ways on how to address the digital distribution issue.
The sad story though is there is no immediate solution to the issue, which would obviously make Hollywood concerned about the issue.
Posted in: Information Technology, Technology.
Tagged: Digital Download · Film · Hollywood · Online Film
