Filed under: Feature, WIRELESS | Tags: Aircell, Alaska Airlines, American Airlines, BetaBlue, Continental, In Flight, JetBlue, LiveTV, Row44, Southwest Airlines, Virgin America, WIRELESS
IN FLIGHT WI-FI: YOU’RE FREE TO SURF THE FRIENDLY SKIES
According to a report from Forrester Research, 45 percent of travelers would pay $10 for access to the internet for a 4+ hour flight.
OK, so there’s interest. But who offers what, for how much, and when will we be able to get it? See the chart below. Click on the image below to enlarge.
Chart updated 7/17/08 via new data available on the time lines and number of planes testing.
Above, you see two types of in-flight broadband products: air-to-ground and satellite.
Air to Ground
A network of 92 existing cell towers located across the United States provide data access.
Pros:
- Each tower offers a coverage range of 250 miles because nothing blocks the signal.
Cons:
- Think early internet speeds. 3-Mbps throughput.
- More expensive than satellite-based.
Satellite
Geosynchronous satellites beam data signals to the planes.
Pros:
- 30-Mbps (comparable to low-end DSL)
- Cheaper than air to ground
Cons:
- Trouble connecting during difficult weather.
- More expensive for the carriers to install.
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Filed under: BROADCAST/CABLE | Tags: Academy Award, CBS, CW, HBO, New York, Radio City Music Hall, Univision, Whoopi Goldberg
While The CW has not announced anything, Variety reports the network is close to signing a deal with an unnamed media buying outfit, to sublet Sunday nights. The deal turns over the Sunday 7-10p block to an advertising entity who would then develop and produce the programming, and then sell the ad time. The move gives The CW latitude to focus all of its efforts on Monday-Friday, and effectively removes the headache of what has arguably been one of the networks toughest nights to program and sell. (Cynopsis 5/9)
Univision’s new novela Fuego en la Sangre delivered 2.97 million A18-49 viewers during its premiere week (4/28-5/2) and 5.1 million total viewers. (Cynopsis 5/9)
Whoopi Goldberg will host The 62nd Annual Tony Awards, airing live from Radio City Music Hall in New York on June 15 at 8p on CBS. (Cynopsis 5/9)
HBO has signed Oscar-winner Alexander Payne to direct and co-executive produce the potential pilot of a comedy titled “Hung,” about a man who discovers that size really does matter. The project, though not officially greenlighted for a pilot, is the first show to come through the pipeline since Sue Naegle became entertainment president. (The Hollywood Reporter 5/8)
“The Gong Show,” that peculiar mix of wacky celebrity judges and wackier contestants that ran in the late 1970s, is being resurrected by Comedy Central. The new version, which will debut July 17, will be hosted by comedian Dave Attell, who had an earlier Comedy Central series titled “Insomniac With Dave Attell.” (Variety 5/8)
Double-digit growth in ad revenue and strong international distribution helped Discovery Communications rake in $795 million in first-quarter revenue, a 12% increase over the comparable period a year earlier. And in related news, John Malone’s Discovery Holdings, which controls Discovery Communications, said in securities filings that it hoped to take the cable company public in the third quarter of 2008, not in the second quarter, as earlier filings had indicated. (The Wall Street Journal 5/9, Reuters 5/8)
Influential analyst Jessica Reif Cohen of Merrill Lynch said she was putting her money on cable networks to outperform their broadcast counterparts in the 2008-09 upfront advertising bazaar. Reif Cohen said cable nets would take in between $7.45 billion and $8.06 billion during the upfront. (Multichannel News 5/8)
The FCC announced the creation of an experimental test market - the Wilmington, N.C. DMA - for the full-power television station transition to all-digital broadcasting. In the FCC experiment, full-power stations in the Wilmington market will shut off their analog signals on September 8, 2008 - a full five months before the national transition to digital television (DTV) occurs on February 17, 2009. (Cynopsis 5/9)
Charter has introduced a new promotion to offer consumers gasoline gift cards in exchange for signing up for new services. People who sign up for a single service receive a $25 gift card, those who sign up for two services receive $50 and those who go for video, voice and broadband get $100. (TMC Internet Telephony 5/8)
Dish Network said that when Wilmington, N.C., goes all-digital Sept. 8, the company would be there to help. Dish announced that it would have its new DTV-to-analog converter box on store shelves before the first market in the country began its transition. (Broadcasting & Cable 5/8)
Filed under: ONLINE SERVICES/INTERACTIVE MEDIA | Tags: Facebook, Myspace, News Corp, Social network service, World Wide Web, Yahoo
ONLINE SERVICES/INTERACTIVE MEDIA
Microsoft is continuing to distance itself from Yahoo, telling the people it had lined up to nominate to the board as part of a prospective hostile takeover battle that their services are no longer needed. The software giant insists that its pullback is not a negotiating tactic. (Iwantmedia 5/9, http://www.latimes.com/business/la-fi-microsoft9-2008may09,0,5935072.story 5/9)
Google expects to launch new products for YouTube in the next few months and sees reason for closer cooperation with Yahoo, says CEO Eric Schmidt, speaking at the Internet giant’s annual shareholder meeting. Getting YouTube to make money is said to be a top priority. (Iwantmedia 5/9, http://www.reuters.com/article/internetNews/idUSN0841442520080508 5/8)
News Corp.’s MySpace plans to give users the option of sharing their profiles and other personal data with other Web sites, a move that could dramatically expand the reach of the Web’s most popular social network. The “data-availability initiative” will be open to rival Facebook. (Iwantmedia 5/9, http://www.informationweek.com/news/internet/social_network/showArticle.jhtml?articleID=207601084 5/8)
Facebook is announcing an agreement with 49 U.S. state attorneys general and the District of Columbia to take significant steps to protect children on the social networking site. The move comes after a similar agreement was reached with MySpace in January. (Iwantmedia 5/9, http://www.webpronews.com/topnews/2008/05/08/facebook-agrees-to-child-safety-plan 5/8)
Cablevision announced Thursday that it would spend about $300 million to build a wireless-broadband network that will cover its footprint in the New York City region. The company also announced that operating income jumped 44% in the first quarter on strong additions of video, broadband and phone subscribers, but that its deficit widened. (The Wall Street Journal 5/9, Light Reading 5/8, Google/Associated Press 5/8)
What’s this? A cable company thinking outside the box?!!? No. . .it couldn’t be. Dear Cablevision, thank you. Thank you for envisioning ways to bringing Wi-Fi for free to your broadband customers rather than solely thinking about ways to restrict access [cough, cough] Comcast [cough]
Twisney.com, created by a 34-year-old software developer and Disney fan, offers live updates from ordinary people walking around the Disney World recreational resort, using their cellphones to share their experiences via text and photos. Twisney allows users to share “real-time intelligence.” (Iwantmedia 5/9, http://blogs.wsj.com/buzzwatch/2008/05/08/citizen-journalism-live-from-disney-world 5/8)
Turner’s SuperDeluxe.com comedy site is being folded into AdultSwim.com with much of the SuperDeluxe staff being let go, reports paidcontent.org. (Cynopsis 5/9)
The price war over bandwidth, its patent fight with Akamai and the loss of Divx Stage6 as a customer took its toll on CDN Limelight Networks during Q1, as the company missed its revenue targets by $1 million. On the bright side Limelight signed up 183 new customers during the quarter and got major accounts such as MySpace and Viacom to renew. (Cynopsis 5/9)
(Below) Step 1: Upload application. Step 2: Send out press release. Please do not confuse step 1 with step 2.
NBC is launching an application on Facebook based on its “American Gladiators” series. “The Official American Gladiator Challenge” will present interactive games based on the show’s competitions. Users will be able to compete against their friends and the greater Facebook community. (Iwantmedia 5/9, http://www.hollywoodreporter.com/hr/content_display/news/e3if1d4beff617a2bbe837c6b395affd965 5/9)
Facebook will soon remove a limitation that restricts users to no more than 5,000 friend connections, someone close to the company told us this week. There are stories around why the limitation exists at all. The official reason is that Facebook wants to make sure that people only add “real” friends to their account, and the restriction is on the high end of the number of friends that any one person could reasonable have. The unofficial (and actual) reason: scaling problems made this necessary. I’ve heard this directly from Facebook employees, as have others. (http://www.techcrunch.com/2008/05/09/facebook-to-lift-5000-friends-limit 5/9)
The IAB issued revised Ad Unit and Rich Media Creative Guidelines yesterday, asking for input from ad agencies, advertisers, online publishers and technology vendors. The guidelines cover formatting standards for banner ads, buttons, floating ads and other rich media products. Companies have 30 days to comment via the IAB site. (Cynopsis 5/9)
The IAB’s Audience Measurement Working Group also expects to release guidelines soon that will finally define many of the metrics terms publishers throw around. If only standards could be set in time for the upfronts where web metrics are expected to play a major role. Experts say inconsistencies and confusion over web measurement issues have a more adverse affect on digital ad spending than practically any other issue. (Cynopsis 5/9)
Filed under: WIRELESS | Tags: 30 Rock, and Tutorials, FAQs, Handhelds, Help, iPhone, NBC, News and Media, Office, Smartphones
NBC is streaming full episodes of “The Office” and “30 Rock” to the Apple iPhone, without advertising, in unprotected Quicktime format. The presence of NBC content on the iPhone is seen as “counterintuitive.” Hulu streams NBC content in Flash, which is not supported by the iPhone. (Iwantmedia 5/9, http://www.alleyinsider.com/2008/5/nbc_free_full_episodes_of_the_office_and_30_rock_for_iphones 5/7)
LOVE THIS. But in my testing, I unfortunately couldn’t get the one episode offered to load in my phone. Grrrrr.
One of the more useful integration tools for the mobile phone is Shozu, a mobile social media service that connects users to social networks, blogs, photo storage sites and other destinations. The app offers one-click, full-resolution photo and video uploads and integration to a growing number of cool sites including new additions Twitter, Photobucket, Dailymotion and Seesmic. (Cynopsis 5/9)
The social networking revolution is going mobile, particularly in the U.S and UK, according to new findings from Nielsen Mobile. Over 4 million mobile subscribers accessed their social networking profiles during the month of Dec. (1.6%) while 812,000 checked them in the UK per month on average in the UK during Q1. (Cynopsis 5/9)
For $10 a month, drivers can access real-time traffic information in Verizon Wireless’ latest update to its VZ Navigator. The company has launched Version 4 of the service in 75 cities — with more to come in the next year — that will feature 3-D map views, movie and events listings, weather and local gasoline prices in addition to data on traffic accidents, detours and congestion. (Mobiledia 5/8)
Filed under: GAMING | Tags: Activision, Games, Guitar Hero III: Legends of Rock, Lazard Capital Markets, Nintendo Wii, Shopping, Video game, Wii
People like air guitar and pretending to be in modern warfare … a lot. That’s the message to be gleaned from news that Activision, the maker of the wildly popular “Guitar Hero 3″ and “Call of Duty 4″ video games, reported quarterly revenue of $602.5 million, a 93% bounce from the comparable period in 2007. “It’s the ongoing popularity of ‘Guitar Hero’ and ‘Call of Duty.’ It just shows what can happen in terms of performance when you have blockbuster hit titles”, said Colin Sebastian, a Lazard Capital Markets analyst. (Pocket-lint.co.uk 5/9, Reuters 5/8)
A patent filing suggests that Apple is researching development of a 3-D gaming controller for its Apple TV set-top box that would be designed to parrot the functions in the Nintendo Wii and add features related to its multitouch technology. The November 2006 filing was published this week for the first time. (AppleInsider 5/8)
RealNetworks plans to spin off its casual games division into a separate company, distributing shares to its shareholders and possibly moving forward with an IPO. Games have been a growth area for Real as of late with revenue up 33% Q1 ‘08 from the first quarter of 2007 to $31.8 million. The company reported overall Q1 earnings up 14%, despite slowly losing subscribers to its subscription-based Rhapsody music service. (Cynopsis 5/9)
Video games are being used for rehab and therapy to improve balance and mobility in Parkinson’s patients and even to increase the health and well being of children. Check out the Games for Health website for more on this trend, including video from this week’s Games for Health conference in Baltimore. (Cynopsis 5/9)
Filed under: MISC | Tags: Bob Berney, New Line, Picturehouse, Towelhead, Warner Bros., Warner Independent Pictures, Warners, Women
In a cost cutting measure, Warner Bros. is shutting down two of its film divisions - Warner Independent Pictures (distributor of March of the Penguins) and Picturehouse (Pan’s Labyrinth). Last year, these two specialty divisions launched a total of 12 films, compared to the total of more than 600 total released films. Both studios have movies set to premiere in the upcoming months - Picturehouse has The Women debuting in September, and Warner Independent Pictures has Towelhead, about a Lebanese teen growing up in Texas. (Cynopsis 5/9, http://online.wsj.com/public/article/SB121029119956779303.html 5/9)
