Filed under: Feature | Tags: Boston, Bus, Business, Google Maps, New York, New York City, Recreation, Transportation and Logistics, Wi-Fi
GOT WI-FI?: YOUR BUS DOES
This morning, I got an e-mail from a friend laying out the details of her enjoyable free wi-fi experience in transport. She’s on her way out of the city for some July 4th vacation fun and sent me this e-mail for inclusion in our next edition of Got Wi-Fi?
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Dear Marauder,
I am thinking of you as I break free from the city and journey up to Boston this 4th of July weekend. Why am I thinking of you/ flaunting my vacation getaway, you ask? Well, I’ve discovered the best little way to travel in (sorta) style AND on the cheap.
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While planning my escape from New York a friend recommended Bolt Bus.
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Much like the Chinatown buses that many NYC-ers are familiar with, Bolt Bus is a standard 49-seater coach with luggage storage below and a WC on board.
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BUT the kicker is that Bolt Bus offers free Wi-Fi and has power outlets at all of the seats.
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So as we lumber up I-95, I can see my co-passengers working (eek), updating their
iTunes libraries, emailing or most importantly, keeping up with the celeb gossip blogs. This is a bus ride truly Marauder-stamp-of-approval-worthy.
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While the bus itself is what most buses are, the service is a certain point of differentiation. Jackie, our driver is welcoming and funny, the bathroom is clean(!) and the prices are insanely low…$20 from NYC to Boston.
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You can tell from their website that they cater to a different demographic.
Check out www.boltbus.com and tell me you don’t get a strong Virgin Atlantic vibe- v. hip, v. modern. Just like yours truly.
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Kiss, kiss,
Miss Mary Joan
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Wi-Fi Action
Mary says that her computer deemed her connection ‘Excellent’and she had no problem logging onto her company’s secure website. For some reason, she had difficulty logging onto other basic sites including Google and Yahoo which took a couple times refreshing to get through.
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Cost to Ride
$20: NYC to Boston
$20: NYC to Washington D.C.
$7 – $13: NYC to Philadelphia
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Final Call
Free wi-fi, super low price and a friendly bus driver. What’s not to love? If you don’t feel like making the drive, give your hands something better to do and take the wi-fi bus.
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Contributing Writer: Mary Joan Cunningham
Filed under: BROADCAST/CABLE | Tags: Arts, Bain Capital, Beverly Hills 90210, Landmark Communications, NBC Universal, Television, The CW Television Network, Weather Channel
ABC Family‘s debut of The Secret Life of the American Teenager Tuesday night (8p) delivered the best-ever original series telecast in the network’s history with W18-34 (620,000); W18-49 (891,000) and F12-34 (1.4 million). (Cynopsis 7/3)
Shannen Doherty may join her former castmates of Beverly Hills, 90210 and reprise her role as Brenda Walsh on The CW’s new spinoff series 90210, reports Variety. Shannen would be reuniting with Tori Spelling and Jennie Garth who are in place reprising their former characters. (Cynopsis 7/3)
The Weather Channel could be sold in the next day or so, according to this report, which speculates that is how long it will be before Landmark Communications announces that it will sell the cable net to a group composed of NBC Universal, Blackstone Group and Bain Capital for between $3 billion and $3.5 billion. NBC Universal declined to discuss the report. (The Boston Globe/Reuters 7/2)
Time Warner Cable, which is in the process of being spun off from Time Warner, will pursue its core businesses after going independent and will look to bring the company within a debt target by the end of 2009, according to Robert Marcus, chief financial officer of the country’s second-largest cable provider. But, Marcus added, Time Warner Cable isn’t likely to act on continued speculation that it wants to own Cablevision anytime soon: “I think it’s a long-shot deal,” he said. “When and if it ever comes on the market, will we look at it? Absolutely.” (Bloomberg 7/2, Broadcasting & Cable 7/2)
Cablevision Systems said it would add 15 free high-definition channels to its offerings, a move that will bring the Bethpage, N.Y., company’s HD roster to 60. The new channels include Discovery, Nickelodeon, The Weather Channel, FX, AMC and Fox News. (Yahoo!/Reuters 7/2)
Filed under: ONLINE SERVICES/INTERACTIVE MEDIA | Tags: AOL, Google, Microsoft, News Corp, Time Warner, Wall Street Journal, Yahoo, Yahoo and Google
ONLINE SERVICES/INTERACTIVE MEDIA
Microsoft has been talking to some major media players this week including Time Warner and News Corp. as it prepares to take another pass at Yahoo, reports the Wall Street Journal. This time Microsoft would be bidding only for its search business and partners would buy the rest, effectively breaking up Yahoo into pieces. Yahoo has also circled back to Time Warner regarding a potential merger with AOL. (Cynopsis 7/3)
The Justice Department’s antitrust division has begun issuing subpoenas as it probes further into whether a planned Google-Yahoo partnership in search advertising is anticompetitive. (http://bits.blogs.nytimes.com/2008/07/02/google-yahoo-partnership-justice-is-looking-closer/index.html?ref=technology 7/2)
The ongoing Google/YouTube-Viacom litigation has now officially spilled over to users with a court order requiring Google to turn over massive amounts of user data to Viacom. If the data is actually released, the consequences could be far more serious than the 2006 AOL Search debacle. (http://www.techcrunch.com/2008/07/03/judge-protects-youtubes-source-code-throws-users-to-the-wolves 7/3)
A document in the settled Facebook ConnectU litigation reveals that Facebook’s common shares are worth a quarter of the value of the stock Microsoft purchased when it invested in the social network. (http://bits.blogs.nytimes.com/2008/07/03/what-is-facebook-worth-part-37/index.html?ref=technology 7/3)
The warning came as part of Apple’s transition from .Mac to the new MobileMe online service, which was announced at last month’s Worldwide Developers Conference. (http://www.nytimes.com/idg/IDG_852573C4006938800025747A00801C71.html?ref=technology 7/2)
Ten-year-old open source initiative Mozilla officially broke its own download record, according to the Guinness World Records, registering 8,002,530 downloads of Firefox 3 on June 18. Congrats! That’s a lot of bits. Since that time over 28 million users have downloaded the browser. (Cynopsis 7/3)
Hitwise performed an analysis of top search terms that drove traffic to both Barack Obama and John McCain’s websites and found some common denominators including Health Care, Global Warming, Education and Immigration. Traffic to Barackobama.com received 79% of U.S. online visits in a custom category of both candidate websites. But traffic to John McCain’s site has been rising in recent weeks. McCain’s traffic increased 42% in June 2008 compared to May 2008 and 24% compared to June 2007. (Cynopsis 7/3)
Market Share of U.S. Visits among Custom Category of Presidential Candidate Websites
Rank Name Domain June-08 May-08 Apr-08
1 Barack Obama barackobama.com 79.25% 85.38% 84.07%
2 John McCain johnmccain.com 20.75% 14.62% 15.93%
Source: Custom report from Hitwise
Filed under: WIRELESS | Tags: Apple Inc, Google, Google Talk, iPhone, Motorola
The marketing prowess of Apple Inc. is legendary, a reputation that was bolstered again Tuesday by a slick 30-minute online video that offers a guided tour of the iPhone 3G coming July 11. (http://www.nytimes.com/idg/IDG_852573C4006938800025747A006B0B7B.html?ref=technology 7/2)
If you have an iPhone, this video is overly simplistic and painful to watch. I wonder if Bob here uses these same hand gestures in regular conversation. Must be Italian.
Google has announced an iPhone version of Google Talk which is simply an iPhone-ized browser-formatted version of the Google’s text chat application. This means you can’t talk over the Interwebs but you can tap out halting messages to your friends on the iPhone’s screen and, thanks to Safari’s tendency to clear pages randomly, you probably won’t enjoy a sustained conversation. (http://www.techcrunch.com/2008/07/03/google-talk-for-the-iphone-not-what-you-think 7/3)
Filed under: GAMING | Tags: Activision, Aerosmith, AOL, Guitar Hero Aerosmith, MTV, Sony, Video game, Xbox 360
The breakout success of Activision’s “Guitar Hero” and MTV’s “Rockband” video games is providing a major boost to the recording industry as well as the bank accounts of some rock ‘n’rollers from the old days. Case in point: Aerosmith, which recently signed off on “Guitar Hero: Aerosmith,” sold 2,041 digital copies of its 1974 song “Same Old Song and Dance” last December and Alice Cooper has sold more than 12,000 digital copies of his 1972 anthem, “School’s Out.” (Advertising Age 7/2)
Sony acknowledged Wednesday that it had taken back its firmware 2.40 update for PlayStation 3 after customers began complaining about bugs shortly after its release Tuesday. A company spokesman, who said a “limited number of consumers” saw problems, said Sony would “identify a solution before we put the firmware back up.” (InformationWeek 7/2)
AOL has launched BigDownload.com, which will offer more than 400 free game downloads, trailers and demos in an effort to reach serious players who are searching for more niche titles beyond the top 25 or so available at AOL’s GameDaily.com site. The move is consistent with AOL’s strategy of attracting more ad revenue by building specialized sites to reach the increasingly fragmented online community. (MediaPost Communications 7/2)
Filed under: TECHNOLOGY | Tags: Google Docs, Microsoft, Microsoft Office, Monopolies and Oligopolies, Office Live Workspace, Office suite, Pentium Dual-Core, Windows Live OneCare
TECHNOLOGY
California-based Roku is best known for SoundBridge, a networked music player. Now the company is making noise with a set-top box that streams Netflix movies. (Forbes 7/2)
On Wednesday, Microsoft announced Equipt, one of their first consumer subscription offerings. Equipt combines Windows Live OneCare, Microsoft Office Home and Student Edition (HSE), and several other already-free services such as Office Live Workspace. The price? An affordable $70 a year. (http://www.informationweek.com/blog/main/archives/2008/07/microsoft_equip.html 7/3)
PC maker eMachines is bringing three new desktop PCs to market, one of which includes a PC-LCD package that features a 17-inch monitor for $498. The lower-priced stand-alone PC, the T3656, retails for $299 without a monitor and has an Intel Celeron processor; the T5274, at $399, features a Pentium Dual-Core processor, more memory and double the storage capacity. (TWICE 7/2)
By 2013, half of cable subscribers will have access to tru2way technology, according to a study by ABI Research. The report goes on to say that the advancements of tru2way will lead to long-term success for the technology despite any short-term setbacks. (TheRetailBRIDGE.com 7/3)
What economic slump, Sony is asking, as a top regional executive insisted Tuesday that the company has seen little or no falloff in demand for its consumer-electronics products in the U.S. The news is not all upbeat, however, as the official conceded that skyrocketing energy and raw-material prices as well as the weak dollar have put added pressure on its margins. (The New York Times/Reuters 7/2)
Blockbuster officially withdrew its offer to buy ailing Circuit City for $1-$1.3 billion. The video chain had talked about using Circuit City stores as a distribution point for both digital content and devices. (Cynopsis 7/3)
