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HP Europe Selects ShowShifter for
Digital Media PC Neither HP nor anyone else can sell Microsoft's XP Media Center in Europe this year, so instead HP, one of Microsoft's US Media Center OEMs, is going to pre-install UK-based Home Media Net-works' ShowShifter software on all its European Pavilion PCs starting August 1. ShowShifter delivers XP Media Center functions on any PC equipped with a TV tuner card. HP is going so far as to install ATI Radeon 7500 TV tuner cards on certain PCs it will call Pavilion PVRs (Personal Video Recorders) that will give them XP Media Center functionality. HP Pavilions not equipped with the tuner cards will be able to play video, DVD and MP3 music files but not display or record TV programs. All the HP Pavilions sold in Europe will also come equipped with a so-called "TV out" connector or S video connector on the graphics card so they can display on a TV instead of a CRT. ShowShifter uses TVTV online Electronic Program Guide to provide TV listings for most European countries. HP's European marketing manager for consumer PCs said that including Show Shifter in its Pavilion PC reflects HP's intent to offer true PC entertainment systems. He said that Show Shifter optimizes the PC's TV out functionality including the TV tuner and the remote control. ShowShifter has been available for eight months as a download for $50 (£35). (TOR Numbers 288-02, TOR 275-04, TOR 301-02) It beat Microsoft's XP Media Center Edition to market and lets users watch, record and "time shift" live TV like a TiVo, play DVDs, CDs and MP3s and control the whole thing with only six buttons on the remote controls that now come with many TV tuner cards. Its newest 1.7 rev adds a jukebox module to make managing audio and video files easy and creates play lists. The remote control can also operate the jukebox functions. You can sit across the room and watch TV, browse, play a list of favorite songs, record and playback TV programs and movies, play CDs and DVDs without leaving your easy chair - in other words, it passes the couch potato test with flying colors. Home Media Network's CTO Colin Tinto told The Online Reporter that ShowShifter's download sales have been increasing rapidly. He estimates that 6 million to 8 million TV tuner cards are sold annually so the market potential is quite large. One major difference in ShowShifter and the software that comes with the TV tuner cards is that ShowShifter's user interface has large fonts and icons for distance viewing when the TV is across the room. Getting a jump on Microsoft, ShowShifter is now available worldwide, with native language support in France, Germany and Spain plus PAL and SECAM TV format support. Its support for most of the TV tuner cards means users won't be obliged to buy a Microsoft-specified PC for between $1000-$2000 to get Media Center's home entertainment functions. ShowShifter can be added to any PC running Windows 98, ME, 2000 and XP that has an ATI, Hauppauge or compatible TV tuner card. ShowShifter can reportedly play any video format that Windows Media Player can play. It says it records in its own 'ssf' format to increase efficiency. You can, however, use a different codec for compression, such as MPEG4 if your PC is fast enough. ShowShifter comes with PicVideo's MJPEG codec, which it uses as the default compressor. If you buy and register ShowShifter, you can play its ssf files in other software such as Windows Media Player, and you can convert and recompress the ssf files into wmv (Windows Media Video) and avi files. Video files can be large - one hour of TV can translate into a 4GB file in the MJPEG format - so ShowShifter automatically splits files into 640MB pieces but tracks their sequence so playback appears continuous. ShowShifter uses the 640MB size so files can be backed up to a CD. It can record in Windows Media's smaller format but MJPEG is the default format because it makes pausing possible. Tinto also told The Online Reporter that he thinks Microsoft will use a Philips-developed card with an added MPEG2 encoder in its XP Media Center PC reference design. Microsoft demonstrated an XP Media Center beta in April at WinHEC, its Windows Hardware conference, and Philips was there with a reference design for a TV tuner card. Microsoft confirmed to The Online Reporter that Philips had developed the remote control for the XP Media Center. The choice is plain: Want to
get a new PC with all the hardware and software already
installed and working so you can take it home and plug it in
and play, get a Windows XP Media Center Edition PC - total
cost probably $1,500. Want to add Media Center functions to
your existing PC, then add a TV tuner card, ShowShifter
software and tweak it - total cost probably $150. See http://www.showshifter.com
Back
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The Media vs The Pirates: The Third Front If Rodgers and Hart were writing a song about the digital media age, "Bewitched, Bothered and Bewildered:" would no doubt become "Spoofed, Denied and DMCA'd." That's the most fitting theme for the war pitting the pirates against the media companies, who have now opened a third front with a weapon from the pirates'own aresnal - technology. Peer-to-peer file swapping continues to terrify the music and movie industries. Until now, the record labels and movie studios have relied primarily on litigation to fight the free P2P services. Today they're employing an arsenal of new software weapons in the battle. In July of last year Napster Inc, the P2P music service that whetted the world's ravenous appetite for digital media, was finally crushed by litigation when the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) and its record label members won an injunction that took Napster permanently off the Internet and ultimately bankrupted it. Since then the RIAA has been fighting all the Napster wannabes in court. P2P services like Streamcast Net-works' Morpheus, Sharman Networks' Kazaa Media Desktop and Grokster all started when Napster stopped. The movie industry, represented by the Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA), has joined the legal battle against the P2P networks. What's at stake is not only the alleged loss of revenues from illicit downloads, but who controls future media distribution as well. All of the big five record labels and most of the major movie studios have a stake in online music services of their own. Record labels Warner, EMI and BMG each have 20% of MusicNet. Internet media house RealNetworks Inc owns the rest. The other two major labels, Sony and Universal, back the Pressplay digital music service. Movie studios Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer, Paramount Pictures, Sony Pictures Entertainment, Universal Studios and Warner Brothers all have a piece of online movie distribution service Movielink, which is scheduled its premiere for December. As the media industry seeks to find ways to disable P2P networks while promoting its own online efforts, new companies have popped up to provide them with online anti-piracy tools. One such company, MediaForce Inc offers online services designed to fight online piracy MediaForce president Gary Millin told The Online Reporter that the objective of most anti-P2P technology is to catch the pirate and enforce the copyright laws. However, some emerging technologies are trying to make P2P networks as unusable as possible. Spoofed... Reports of spoofed files have mounted in the past few months. MP3s are appearing on P2P services that look like songs by popular artists but turn out to be 30-second loops of a portion of a song or just random noise. Millin wouldn't say how many customers MediaForce has, although he did say that some major media companies are using MediaDecoy. The RIAA declined to confirm or deny if the labels were already using spoofing to corrupt P2P databases, but the association did claim the tactic is legal and said it will advise record companies to use it. The technique should work - for a while. P2P developers are bound to wise up and start offering software to filter search results that originate from the Internet addresses of known spoofers. Companies like MediaForce will be forced to respond by distributing the cluster on different Internet hosts, which will split up the spoofers' Internet addresses. MediaForce is already using the technique in a way. Its MediaDecoy service operates nodes in London, New York and San Francisco that dish out fake files. However, to stay ahead of the filters, the spoofing nodes will have to change Internet addresses from time to time. Spoofing exploits a P2P service's directory, which is really its core. Whenever a file is added or removed from a P2P network, the directory updates the change in real-time. Fake files degrade the directory's reliability by inserting noise into the records. If a P2P directory becomes unusable, then the P2P services itself becomes worthless. The distributed nature of P2P directories is their biggest strength and greatest weakness. A decentralized database is hard to take down - the RIAA would have to chase after millions of individual users to shut it off. However, because the database is decentralized, its integrity depends on the cooperation of all its users. Little can be done to prevent hostile parties from polluting it. ...Denied... "While P2P technology is free to innovate new and more efficient methods of distribution that further exacerbate the piracy problem, " Berman said when he introduced the bill, "copyright owners are not equally free to craft technological responses. This is not fair, and today my colleagues and I introduce legislation that allows copyright owners to use technology to deal with technological piracy." The proposed legislation would free copyright owners of any "criminal or civil action for disabling, interfering with, blocking, diverting or otherwise impairing" copyrighted material on a "publicly accessible P2P file-trading network." The RIAA loves the bill. RIAA CEO Hilary Rosen said the association applauds "Congressman Berman for introducing bipartisan legislation that takes an innovative approach to combating the serious problem of Internet piracy." She said that the "current landscape for online music is dangerously one-sided, with the peer-to-peer pirates enjoying an unfair advantage." Hackers responded to Rosen's remarks by launching a DOS attack of their own on the RIAA web site and it was forced offline for nearly a day. Congress only has a few weeks left before it adjourns, so the bill's backers have to move quickly. However, support is bipartisan, so it could get a warm welcome at a hearing scheduled for this fall. Besides DOS attacks, the bill would clarify the legitimacy of file spoofing, although the RIAA claims it's legal under existing law. ... and DMCA'd Millin told The Online Reporter that MediaForce relies on the DMCA to pack its punch. Section 512A of the act outlines the "limitations on liability relating to material online" and says that Internet services are not liable for copyright infringements that occur over their network unless they get written notice. Once an ISP has gotten a notice, it's obligated to shut down the infringer's account or face liability. Millin said ISPs respond quickly to the cease-and-desist letters. He maintains that MediaForce creates an environment where P2P activity becomes less and less convenient. MediaSentry generates digital fingerprints from copyrighted works provided by a customer. The scanning service uses those fingerprints to detect a copyrighted work. It runs day and night, scanning the Internet and churning out cease-and-desist letters. Millin won't say how much the service costs or how many clients it has. Price is based on each infringed work. "The service can't exceed the cost of piracy," Millin said. "Our job is to drive down the cost of copyright enforcement." So, the media and pirate war
continues on three fronts: the courts, the Congress and now
technology itself. Back
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Starbak Trumps RealNetworks
Thrice Starbak Communications launched a three-headed missile against Real-Networks: it's Microsoft-certified for Linux plus it's compatible with both Windows Media Series 9 and Helix. A week to the day after RealNetworks announced it had done a clean room implementation of Microsoft's current Windows Media Services 4.1 streaming software, Ohio-based Starbak claimed that it too has a Microsoft-authorized clean room implementation but that its implementation is Microsoft-licensed and -certified to run on Linux and Free BSD. On top of which it claims it's developed streaming server software that will be able to stream content in Microsoft's new, soon-to-be-released Windows Media Services 9 format, leapfrogging Real. The real surprise is Starbak's contention that its Media 8 product is licensed from and certified by Microsoft - which Real's is most definitely not - and that Microsoft licensed and certified the Starbak stuff even though it runs on the Microsoft-dreaded alternate operating system, Linux. Microsoft confirmed to The Online Reporter what Starbak claimed. The director of Microsoft's Digital Media Division Jonathan Usher said, "By licensing and receiving Microsoft certification Starbak has proven that it is interoperable with our complete family of current generation Windows Media technologies including our streaming server, protocols and player." Microsoft has also approved Starbak to sub-licenses its Microsoft compatible product to other appliance manufacturers for them to sell. Starbak president and CEO Garry Dreier told The Online Reporter, "Starbak currently has a license and distribution agreement in place with Microsoft authorizing Starbak to sublicense tested and certified Windows Media Technology running under non-Microsoft operating systems." Starbak pays Microsoft royalties on its sales and those of its sub-licensees. Microsoft's lead product manager for its Windows Digital Media Division Michael Aldridge said that Microsoft has licensed its media server technology to run on non-Microsoft operating systems for some time if the server hardware is an appliance. He specifically described the hardware Microsoft would approve as a "closed appliance" or "single-purpose" server that used an Intel or AMD microprocessor. He did not anticipate any short-term decision out of Microsoft that would license it for use on "open" servers like Sun's Sparc boxes or IBM's Power-based servers. Other licensees include Network Appliance and CacheFlow for their appliance-like media servers. See http://www.microsoft.com/windows/windowsmedia/service_provider/Hardware/default.asp Starbak also claims it's done a clean room implementation that's compatible with Real's week-old Helix architecture. That being so, it seems you'll be able either to buy streaming software that's a Windows Media-compatible knockoff or software whose Windows Media compatibility has been tested and blessed by Microsoft. That's potentially a little stick through Real's wheels. The magnet for wanting to be able to stream Windows Media format is the 450 million players that Microsoft says are installed worldwide. Microsoft calls Media Player "the universal player" and has licensed its use liberally on everything from Yahoo's own Yahoo-branded player to Panasonic's many DVD players. Microsoft's Aldridge said that Microsoft's Digital Media Division had blazed some licensing trails at Microsoft. He said, carefully, "We have an open approach to licensing but we do not offer an open license." Starbak's Dreier said that Microsoft has yet to sanction Starbak's Windows Series 9 compatibility. Starbak has excellent relations with Microsoft, he claimed, and is in discussions with Microsoft to get the Series 9 licensing and certification done. Over 500 tests are required for Microsoft to certify compliance and compatibility. Please note: Microsoft makes money when Starbak makes a sale or licenses its product but makes no money from its own streaming server technology, other than the sale of the operating system, because it's included in the price of the operating system. Starbak CTO John Jamail said that besides Windows Media and the RealOne Player, Starbak also supports Apple's QuickTime Player, MPEG-1, MPEG-2, MPEG-4 and MP3. He believes that Starbak may be the only Microsoft licensee for what he called an "origin" server as opposed to a cache server. Unlike RealNetworks, Starbak delivers a plug-and-play hardware appliance using an Intel-based 1U server. The box is called Torrent and sells in the $25,000 neighborhood depending on the number of ports and streams the customer requires. Starbak sells the Torrent through resellers. The privately funded company also has, with Microsoft's blessing, four sub-licensees - Cisco, Surgient Networks, The Fantastic Corporation and Storigen Systems - which take Starbak's so-called "enabling software" and package it with their own hardware. Cisco, for example, uses Starbak's software in its Content Engine family of products. See http://www.starbak.com and http://www. cisco.com/warp/public/cc/pd/cxsr/ces/index.shtml So, RealNetworks may have some
strong competition that's been flying under its radar. When
contacted about Starbak, RealNetworks declined to comment.
Back
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Some Naming And Formatting Clarification Microsoft Product Names: Microsoft's current Media Services - its streaming server - is at rev 4.1. It's included in the Windows 2000 Server at no additional cost. There are currently two main Windows Media Players (not including others like the one for Macintosh): Windows Media Player for Windows XP Windows Media Player 7.1 for Windows 98, ME and 2000 The next versions will be: Windows Media Player 9 Series for the PC includes the player, and the audio and video codecs. It will be available as a public beta September 4. Microsoft-Supported Formats: Next-generation media server technology (Windows Media Services 9 Series on Windows NET Server) will support RTSP, MMS and HTTP. Both the 4.1 and 9 Series servers can stream ASF file formats that can include both Windows Media Audio and Video as well as Microsoft's implementation of MPEG4 video. More information? charles@riderresearch.com
225-769-7130 - The Online Reporter Back
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BroadQ's QCast Tuner: Freedom from 'PC-Envy' Digital media software developer BroadQ LLC has emerged from stealth mode to trumpet its new QCast Tuner media management software, which turns a Sony PlayStation 2 game console into a digital media center. Consumers will be able to order QCast Tuner later this month from BroadQ's web site for $49. By Christmas the software is supposed be in retail stores that sell PlayStation 2 games. BroadQ supports MP3, MPEG-1, MPEG-2, MPEG-4 and DivX digital media formats. Besides the PlayStation 2 program, QCast Tuner ships with server software called the QCast Station, which streams content from a PC to the PlayStation. QCast Station runs on either Windows or Linux, with a Mac kit in the works. Mary Browning, BroadQ's VP of marketing, said the client software is written in Java so porting it to different platforms is fairly simple. The company is considering porting the QCast Tuner to Microsoft's Xbox game console as well, but worries that the Xbox market penetration is not deep enough to make the effort profitable. Game consoles are often a part of a home entertainment system, connected to a stereo and TV. Although PCs are making slight inroads into the living room, most home PCs are banished to the study or den, where consumers don't do most of their music listening. QCast Tuner relies on a home network to stream music and movie files from a PC to the game console. The software generates a menu that's displayed on the TV. Consumers use the console's joystick controls or Sony's DVD remote to select files and arrange play lists. The selected media file is then streamed over the home network to the game console, where it's decoded. The music or video plays through the home stereo or TV. The QCast technology relies on a broadband adapter that Sony will start selling for the PlayStation 2 later this month. BroadQ figures consumer electronics devices like TiVo's that combine storage with media services suffer from "PC-envy" by attempting to provide basic PC functions like storage in a non-PC product. PCs are great for capturing and storing digital media, but not so good at displaying it. BroadQ's solution is basically a software link between a PC and a client. Other companies are taking a thin-client approach toward digital media as well. Audio technology maker Turtle Beach has partnered with home networking provider TII Network Technologies. Under their deal, TII will offer customers Turtle's AudioTron digital media appliance. The AudioTron will play music streamed to it from a PC over a home network. Turtle Beach marketing director Seth Dotterer says home digital media appliances that ship with storage are outdated before they hit store shelves. He claims that since PCs can store large amounts of data at a low cost they're easier to upgrade and more economical for consumers to share digital media from a centralized PC over a home network than it is to scatter content across various specialized appliances. But BroadQ could be facing competition from the PC makers themselves. Microsoft plans to release a special digital media version of Windows XP called the Windows XP Media Center Edition by Christmas. The OS is based on Microsoft's Freestyle project, which integrates a remote control with the system. It will offer media management tools similar to BroadQ's. XP Media includes a standardized hardware platform and is only available on new OEM machines. BroadQ isn't worried. Browning said the place for a PC is anywhere but the living room, given that most PCs are loud and ugly. She said BroadQ has the upper hand because the QCast Tuner simply connects the existing technology found in most homes. It doesn't require users to buy a new PC. BroadQ has eight employees and
is headed by Stacy Cook, who formerly worked as chief
intellectual property counsel and associate general counsel at
Applied Science Fiction, a digital imaging company. Rob Lipman
is BroadQ's executive VP. Lipman also works as executive VP of
Summit Management Services, an international corporate meeting
planning and medical education services firm. BroadQ's CTO is
Eric Smith. Before joining the start-up, Smith was president
and CEO of Gocho Networks, another software start-up
developing delivery infrastructure for mobile computing
environments. Back
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Web Use Still Growing 100% a Year Internet use is growing at a rate of 100% a year. Unfortunately, telecom companies convinced themselves it was growing at the rate of 100% every three months and built capacity accordingly, which explains why they're in the mess they're in. So says Dr Andrew Odlyzko, the former head of AT&T Labs mathematics and cryptography research and now director of the University of Minnesota's Digital Technology Center. He contends that broadband to the home is growing at the same rate that cell phones use did. (See http://www.dtc.umn.edu/~odlyzko/) Dr Odlyzko reckons four myths of Internet usage pumped up the telecom bubble of the late '90s and made today's "mere" 100% annual growth rate seem anemic: 1. "Build it and they will come." They did. And they didn't. Actually they're really coming - just at a slower pace than the telecoms' PR machines had it. Odlyzko cites evidence that Internet usage will grow at 100% for another 10 years. That's "slow" growth only when compared to the super hype of a few years ago. Any industry growing at 100% a year is a high-growth sector. 2. "Insatiable demand for bandwidth." Internet traffic is now bigger than voice traffic. In capacity it's much larger and has passed total voice traffic. Traffic grew at a consistent, regular rate; capacity grew in giant steps 3. "Internet time." New technologies generally take about a decade to gain wide acceptance - cell phones, TVs, VCRs etc. The Internet was no exception - its use is spreading but not at the accelerated pace the telecom companies and dot.com start-ups were claiming in their PowerPoint slides and the press releases they were churning out. 4. "Internet traffic doubles every three months." The telecom companies started a rumor that Internet usage was doubling every 100 days and then began believing their own press releases, making decisions and borrowing billions based on their delusions. Dr Odlyzko says that every time he tried to trace the source of the rumor the trail led to WorldCom, specifically Bernie Ebbers, recently departed chairman of the largest US bankruptcy, or his successor John Sidgemore, who joined WorldCom when it acquired UUNet, the world's largest carrier of Internet traffic. At a conference in 1998, Sidgemore flashed a graph that appeared to show the Internet growing at 1,000% a year. What it really showed was that the telecom business was adding 1,000% capacity annually, not that Internet traffic was growing that fast. WorldCom and other Internet carriers confused capacity with usage - sort of like drinking their own Kool-Aid. They also convinced a lot of others to take a gulp. Business Week, for instance, said in its October 2, 2000 issue that "Internet traffic is doubling every three months." And Reed Hundt, the former chairman of the Federal Communications Commission, which regulates the US telecom companies, quoted the same false statistic claiming, "In 1999, data traffic was doubling every 90 days." But no one ever produced the facts to back up those statements. Dr Odlyzko, on the other hand, does have facts that show Internet usage has grown and continues to grow at a steady 100% a year except for brief spikes like when the browser was introduced and Napster surged in popularity. For instance, he says, Napster upped traffic growth rates from 100% to 150% at the University of Wisconsin until the school's network managers choked off the dormitories. Odlyzko also offers evidence that there's more Internet storage available than bandwidth so it's more logical to expect that movies will be downloaded to the home, like Napster did with the music files, rather than streamed. And he thinks that the best use of the 3G licenses intended to send music, video and ads to cell phones - on which the telecoms spent $90 billion (that's 100 billion euros) - is to provide reliable phone calls. Yes, a cell phone call that's clear, doesn't break-up or disconnect would be a good thing. Right on, Dr O!
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New Congressional Bill Seeks To Limit Webcast Royalties Congressmen Jay Inslee (D-Wa), Rick Boucher (D-Va) and George Nethercutt (R-Wa) introduced a bill in the US House of Representatives last week that would limit the number of webcasters that have to pay the controversial new royalty rates. Called the Internet Radio Fairness Act, the proposed legislation would exempt any webcaster with revenues of less than $6 million a year from paying the royalty "tax." Inslee figures that "small web radio stations are bearing an unfair burden." In June the US Copyright Office set off a backlash when it fixed the royalty rate at seven-tenths of a cent per listener per song, or 70 cents a song for each 1,000 listeners. In July some of the commercial radio stations that simulcast their terrestrial signal over the web took their complaints to a federal appeals court seeking to be relieved of paying the royalties. The broadcasters claim that the Copyright Office is misinterpreting the law when it says that broadcasters are liable for royalties when they simulcast over the Internet. The royalties are blamed for
putting at least one station out of the business. San
Francisco-based radio station KPIG, one of the first
terrestrial broadcasters to start simulcasting on the web,
pulled the plug on its Internet stream last week, blaming the
prohibitive new royalty rates. KPIG says the new royalties
would cost it $3,000 a month, more than what it brings in from
simulcasting the signal. Back
to Headlines
Internet movie provider MovieFlix.com has bought one of the first of Surgient Networks' eQ2500 servers to stream movies over the net to its 700,000 registered members. Surgient's hardware comes with Starbak Communications' streaming server software running on Linux and serves up both Microsoft Windows Media and RealNetworks Real Player media formats, the two great format rivals. The 2U box serves up a maximum 16,000 on-demand streams and 17,000 live streams. Surgient claims it can replace up to 20 Sun or HP UX servers and requires less management, cooling and cabling. It says stream set-up times take less than four seconds regardless of load and it yields the lowest cost-per-stream without compromising consistently high quality. Prices range from $30k to $50k. Surgient president Scott Johnson says the software's management capabilities will let MovieFlix create different classes of free and paid subscriber services that ensures paying customers get premium treatment. Surgient's 12 sales people are targeting their appliance-like dedicated streaming servers at financial (they want to put a face in front of big investors every day), education (for distance learning), government (for simulations) and the enterprise (for employee training and internal communications). The biggest market is supposed to be adult entertainment. Yes, that's, ahem, ADULT entertainment as in X-rated for the home market. In addition to 11 units out on evaluation, Surgient told The Online Reporter that it has sold one to surfline.com (not the kind of surfing we waste our time doing but surfing with waves and a big piece of wood), which streams 64 cameras located around the world to free and paid members. MovieFlix offers 1,500 free
movies to 700,000 registered members and another 1,000 movies
to its 6,000 paying members who ante up $5.95 a month.
Movieflix.com's communications director Robert Moskovits told
The Online Reporter that it expects to have one million free
members, 10,000 paying ones and over 3,000 titles by the first
quarter of next year. And it also thinks it'll have at least
one major studio for a partner by year's end. MovieFlix prez
Opher Mizrahi said the Surgient technology is key to improving
service and managing expenses and that its test of the box met
both objectives. See http://www.movieflix.com
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******************************* “Technology
is not kind. It does not wait. It does not say please. It
slams into existing systems. And often destroys them. While
creating a new system.” - Joseph Schumpeter in Juan
Enriquez’s book “As the Future Catches You” New
Tech And New Media Are Booming. Don’t
Get Left Behind In The Digital Media Market. Subscribe
Now to The Online Reporter. New Tech and New MediaIt’s new tech and new media fused together. It’s alive
and growing. It’s called the Digital Media industry. It’s movies, videos, music, books and publications in
digital format and delivered over the Internet into the home. It’ll be a multi-billion industry and result in the sale of
billions of dollars of music, movies, books, publications,
software, servers and storage. It’ll change the existing
media and computer landscape in ways that’ll astonish even
the futurists. It Exists NowThe demand for
Digital Media content is overwhelming and exists now. The kids
caused the first spike in market growth. Napster started it
and proved that market demand existed in a big way – 80
million users. Napster is dead so people are now paying. And
the potential payoff is enormous. - It’s causing
Internet usage to grow 100 % a year. - It’s already
resulting in the sales of millions of Internet-connected
devices like portable music players (MP3 players) and personal
video recorders (PVRs) like Tivo. The Big Boys Know About ItThe two big boys have already saddled their horses and are
heading to the roundup. These two are the ones that turned the
computer industry in its head and have put their products on
every desk and in every home. Microsoft
is revamping their products to go after this growth market and
will launch a new operating system specifically for the
Digital Media home market. Intel
has released engineering designs for a next generation of
portable video players – 12-ounce pocket-sized gizmos
selling for less than $400 that’ll hold 70 hours of your
favorite TV programs, movies, home videos, photos and music
for you to enjoy anywhere, anytime. Let’s Connect The DotsPeople do now and will pay for movies, videos, music, books
and publications. They’ll now be delivered to the home over
the Internet. And the plumbing - the computer gear - has to be
purchased to store, manage and serve up all that digital
media. The media and computer companies are engaged in a great war
for control. The battles are raging – all the way into the
halls of the US Congress. Don’t Get Left BehindThis is not a market that is going to be, like the dotcoms
were – it exists now. You may already be missing the biggest
opportunity of this decade to move a lot of content and gear. One publication covers Digital Media like no other – The
Online Reporter weekly newsletter. Find out what’s happening every Friday in the Digital Media
world by subscribing to The Online Reporter – only $595 per
year. VISA, MasterCard or American Express. G2
Computer Intelligence 225-769-7130 paperboy@riderresearch.com
323 Glen Cove Ave.; Sea Cliff, NY 11579
****************************** Peer-to-Peer vs Cash-to-Congress "If you or I asked Congress for permission to legally hack other people's computers, we'd be laughed off Capitol Hill. Then we'd be investigated by the FBI and every other agency concerned with criminal violations of privacy and security. Then again, you and I aren't part of the movie and music business. We aren't as powerful as an industry that knows no bounds in its paranoia and greed, a cartel that boasts enough money and public-relations talent to turn Congress into a marionette. That's why I don't doubt that the just-introduced bill, dubbed the 'Peer to Peer Piracy Prevention Act' and co-sponsored by the representative from Disney, will get a respectful hearing. Howard Berman, D-Mission Hills, California, whose campaign coffers are loaded with money from Disney and other entertainment companies, wants to confer on the entertainment cartel the legal right to hack PCs it believes are part of file-sharing networks. Berman, whose district includes
North Hollywood and Universal Studios, feasts at the
entertainment industry's cash trough. According to the Center
for Responsive Politics, he tops the list of Congress-folk
receiving campaign contributions, as this form of legal
bribery is known, from the movie and recorded-music industries
so far in the 2001-2002 election cycle." - Dan Gillmor,
San Jose Mercury News Technology Columnist
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TriStar Renews Macrovision's Copy Protection Contract Macrovision Corporation has
secured a multi-year extension to its contract with Columbia
TriStar Home Entertainment for its DVD copy-protection
technology. Unlike CDs, DVDs employ a copy-protection standard
that's supported by all DVD players. Back
to Headlines
One in Five Homes Has a Digital Camera More than 20% of American homes
now have a digital camera according to researcher MetaFacts.
That's double the number year-over-year as digital cameras
have moved beyond the "early adopter" phase and are
ensconced in 7.7 million homes. Now those are the growth rates
we used to see in the PC business. 57 million American homes
have one or more PCs so there's still room for digital camera
sales to grow. Makers of CD writers, inkjet printers,
high-resolution monitors and large hard drives know that
digital cameras will drag their products into the home behind
them. Back
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Acacia Gets Japanese Digital Media Transmission Patent Acacia Research (Nasdaq: ACRI) owns some of the pioneering streaming media patents for audio-on-demand and video-on-demand, the underpinning for distributing content over the Internet, cable TV, direct broadcast satellite and wireless. The Newport, California house licenses its V-chip technology to TV makers. A lot of its revenues currently come from settling patent infringement suits and then cutting deals with TV makers for its V-chip patents. Acacia has now gotten a
Japanese patent to go along with its five US and 17 other
foreign patents. The company has hired three of the
patent-licensing lawyers who helped Gemstar win millions for
its so-called TV Guide patents. http://www.acaciaresearch.com
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Do As I Say. Lehman Brothers on Watch Lehman Brothers, the Wall Street house, keeps tabs on the financials of lots of companies including many in media and technology. (See TOR No 307 Apple Macworld Outtakes for their close watch on Apple's cash) But, it might not be guarding its own customers' money so diligently. Some $125 million was looted
from Lehman customers by one of its brokers, Frank
Gruttadauria, before he was arrested earlier this year after
spending a month in hiding. Gruttadauria ran SG Cowen's
Cleveland office when Lehman Brothers acquired Cowen in late
2000 but Lehman didn't detect the fraud. In fact, Lehman paid
Gruttadauria a $5 million bonus to stay with the company.
Gruttadauria wrote the FBI in January and said, "I can
hardly believe that I could have done this without detection
for so long." Victimized Lehman clients have had to sue
to try to get repaid the money Lehman's employee stole from
them. Back
to Headlines
Listen.com Inks Deal with DirecTV Digital music service Listen.com has inked a partnership with satellite broadcaster Hughes Electronics Corporation's DirecTV broadband service. Listen says the two firms are working on a way to integrate the music bill with the customer's Internet bill. DirecTV is offering its DSL subscribers a re-branded version of Listen.com's music service, called Rhapsody, which costs $9.95 for unlimited streams. Listen also has an Internet radio service that features song skipping at a cost of $4.95 a month. A lower-fidelity version of the radio service with no skipping is free. Compared to rival services
MusicNet, Pressplay and FullAudio, Listen.com has the largest
music catalog, but it only offers CD transfers for songs from
the classical music label Naxos. Back
to Headlines
Intertainer Offers 'Sesame Street' over VOD Internet-based video-on-demand
(VOD) provider Intertainer Inc is offering the children's
educational series "Sesame Street" to kids on the
Internet through a deal with Sesame Workshop, the
not-for-profit educational organization that produces the
show. Intertainer offers consumers full-screen digital video
content over a broadband connection using Microsoft Windows
Media and digital rights management technology. The company
has signed licensing deals with Universal Pictures, Warner
Bros, DreamWorks SKG, MGM, A&E Networks, NBC and PBS.
Back
to Headlines
Pressplay Transforms its Music Service Digital music service Pressplay Inc doesn't have the biggest online music catalog compared to its rivals, but it is the only serevice that offers consumers CD burning capabilities for its entire library. Its latest version, Pressplay 2.0, can now transfer songs to portable devices and CD-Rs. The outfit sells individual "packs" of five, 10 and 20 transfers as well. Five transfers costs $5.95, 10 cost 9.95 and 20 cost $18.95. CD albums in retail stores can go for $20 each these days and usually have less than 20 songs. Pressplay no longer restricts the number of streams and downloads subscribers get each month. Its basic download- and streams-only service costs $9.95 a month. The new service can now transfer songs to a variety of portable devices. The players must support Microsoft's Windows Media Audio and Microsoft's digital rights management software. Pressplay lists Sonicblue's Rio line, Creative Labs' Nomad line and Compaq's iPAQ as supported devices. For $17.95 a month, consumers get unlimited streams and downloads plus 10 transfers a month. The service sells a discounted one-year membership for $179.40 for unlimited downloads and streams plus 120 transfers. The yearly fee is paid upfront but all 120 transfers are available to the subscriber immediately. Pressplay is the only online
music service that offers CD transfers for its entire catalog.
Rival service MusicNet has no CD support and FullAudio and
Listen.com only offer CD transfers from certain music labels.
Back
to Headlines
IMG Entertainment Gobbles Up Songspy.com Internet music provider
Songspy.com had barely pecked its way out of the egg when
along came IMG Entertainment which bought it for an
undisclosed amount. Songspy.com's spiel is that they would
permit the user to download music for free but pay royalties
to the record labels from money it got by selling CDs,
T-shirts and other merchandise plus concert tickets. IMG CEO
Sherman Shultz said, "We will provide royalties back to
the music companies. Isn't that what all the fuss was
about?" Yes, Mr. Shultz, it's about money but more than
you'll get by selling a few T-shirts and tickets. Both Songspy
and IMG were formed a year ago. Back
to Headlines
Covad Sprints To Sell DSL. More Digital Media Plumbing to the Home DSL wholesaler and retailer
Covad has signed Sprint to sell its DSL service in selected US
markets. Covad, which teetered into bankruptcy and re-emerged,
expects to get volume revenue from Sprint's sales efforts in
this quarter. Covad provides wholesale and retail DSL service
in 94 metropolitan areas to 40 million homes and businesses.
Sprint also has a local phone operation in 18 states where it
already sells its own DSL service. Back
to Headlines
AOL's customers predominantly use last generation narrowband dial-up modems. The digital media future, where AOL can deliver all those Time Warner movies, music and magazines, won't work on narrowband connections into the home. The future will be delivered over broadband where AOL's efforts have produced only an estimated 4 % market share. Covad has its own technicians who have already installed Covad's own broadband hardware in hundreds, perhaps thousands, of telephone company switching offices. AOL Online should consider a
deal with Covad like Sprint has to make their broadband
efforts visible on a market share chart. Or perhaps they'd
consider buying Covad and get both feet in the broadband
business. Then they could increase revenue and profits by
selling and delivering all that Time Warner content that made
them dance merrily to that "Synergy" tune they were
playing a year and a half ago. Back
to Headlines
Law firm Kaplan Fox has filed a class action suit against AOL Time Warner, certain of its officers and directors and Ernest & Young, AOL's auditors, alleging they materially misrepresented or omitted material facts relating to AOL's online advertising revenues and attempted to artificially inflate revenues from online advertising. As a result, it claims, AOL's share price dropped and shareholders lost money. See http://www. kaplanfox.com/files/cases/173.pdf Kaplan Fox previously extracted $15.5 million from AOL for alleged customer difficulties with AOL software version 5.0. See http://www.kaplan fox.com/press/news.php?id=26 Kaplan Fox is also
"investigating" the sale and distribution of corrupt
and/or copy-protected music CDs by the major US music
recording and distribution companies for potentially violating
numerous state consumer protection statutes. See http://www.kaplanfox.com/press/news.php
?id=24 Back
to Headlines
Broadband Home Subscribers To Reach 46m This Year Research house In-Stat/MDR says that homes with broadband will grow from 30 million last year to 46 million by year-end worldwide. Worldwide DSL outnumbers cable modem but In-Stat also said that at the end of 2001, cable modems outnumbered DSL in the US by 7.12 million to 4.6 million. E-mail, instant messaging and
browsing won't fill up those pipes - music, movies, photos and
publications will. Back
to Headlines
IBM Beefs Up its Digital Media Offering with Ancept and RightsLine Products IBM's Content Manager offering got stronger when digital asset management house Ancept teamed with rights management software provider RightsLine to sell their combined technology on top of IBM's Content Manager infrastructure technology. Ancept's product enables companies to acquire, index, search, view, organize and send so-called rich media files like audio, video, images, Quark, Acrobat and Word files, animation and photographs. Typical uses might be an ad agency managing and retrieving its print, radio and TV ads, a greetings card company managing its creative work, a printing company managing Quark pages and graphics, or a cell phone company managing the MP3 files that its customers can listen to. RightsLine adds rights management and licensing software to automate the sale and royalty payments for intellectual property. IBM digital media marketing director Scott Burnett said that IBM's Content Manager, when combined with the Ancept and RightLine software, reduced risk and increased revenue opportunities for its customers. Besides Content Manager, IBM's digital media offerings include the Digital Media Factory, Electronic Media Management System (EMMS), Media Production Suite (MPS) and third-party products from firms like Ancept, RightsLine and Telestream. Forrester Research says that
content companies foresee 20% of their revenues coming from
online sales by 2003. Back
to Headlines
The Third Man Theme & Napster's Death Throes Bertelsmann chairman and CEO Thomas Middelhoff became the third highly visible executive of a media/internet company to get canned recently. AOL Time Warner COO Bob Pittman and Vivendi Universal's Jean-Marie Messier preceded Middelhoff in meeting the axe. Speculation that AOL chairman Steve Case will go next was offset by the belief that Case is already so isolated from the company's day-to-day activities that the loss of AOL's last high-profile executive was not worth the cost of the PR shellacking it would take or the morale loss it would engender at the AOL Online unit. At least at this point. Middelhoff's departure almost
certainly sealed the death of Napster, the company that proved
there was a demand for digital media. When last heard from, a
California bankruptcy judge was flogging Napster's assets.
Want to buy a great brand name? Back
to Headlines
IBM & Kodak To Digitalize Film Houses IBM will provide Kodak with the hardware and storage so theaters can use Kodak's Digital Cinema Operating System as a backbone and do the scheduling and playback for pre-show ads. Ultimately the system will handle the complete movie in digitized format. IBM will kick in eServer
xSeries servers running Linux and other unspecified digital
products for the widgetry and services Kodak plans to launch
this year. Kodak general manager and VP of digital systems Bob
Mayson said, " The Kodak Digital Operating System will be
built on open standards." Back
to Headlines Liberate Technologies Buys Sigma Systems Liberate Technologies has
signed an agreement to buy Sigma Systems for $62 million in
cash but Sigma's $20 million in cash will actually reduce its
actual cost to approximately $42 million. Sigma provides
service management solutions to the cable industry.
Back
to Headlines Microsoft is known for its speed in dispatching a press release whenever one of its products moves up a notch or two in market share in heavily competitive markets that it is entering. So here it is: Xbox sales increased 131% in
the US in the first two months according to researcher NPD
Group after Microsoft cut the price by $100. Microsoft was
losing money on each Xbox sold even before it cut the price
and will for some time. Back
to Headlines Sonicblue Scores 80% Revenue Increase Sonicblue, makers of digital media products like MP3 players and personal video recorders, had an 80% increase in revenue in its most recent quarter to $61.7 million and reduced its actual net loss from $312.5 million to $23.5 million. Notably in the quarter it
launched a Coca-Cola branded CD/MP3 player and its new
well-reviewed ReplayTV 4500 series. See the New York Times
review at http://www.nytimes.com/
2002/08/01/technology/circuits/01STAT.html Back
to Headlines "Wire management is one of
the biggest dilemmas of the 21st century," said Stephen
Earle, the style director of Martha Stewart Living magazine.
Truer words were never spoken, Mr. Earle. (Where are all those
supposed computer innovators when you really need them to do
something useful?) Back
to Headlines
Medea Makes Fail-Safe Storage for Digital Media Storage maker Medea Corporation
is shipping supposedly fail-safe storage for digital content
and streaming media that it claims is the lowest priced
fail-safe storage for video editing, 2D/3D animation,
compositioning and game development. Medea claims that when a
hard disk fails, the unit continues to operate with no data
loss and no degradation in the data transfer rate. Prices
start at $2,799 for the five-drive unit available in 160GB,
320GB and 480GB capacities with sustained data transfer rates
up to 100 MB/s. Back
to Headlines Pioneer's DVD Recorder Holds 6 Hours on One Disc Pioneer Electronics will use
Zoran Corporation's new multimedia processor in a new DVD-R/RW
recorder that will be available initially only in Japan.
Called the model DRV-300D, recorder stores high-quality
camcorder footage of up to six hours on a single DVD disc.
Connection between the camcorder and DVD recorder is via
Firewire (1394DV). Zoran's chip includes industry-standard
Content Protection for Recordable Media (CPRM). The recorder
creates DVD-Video format on DVD-R/RW media as well as DVD-VR
format on DVD-RW media. Audio files stored in the DVD-Video
format will play back on most DVD players. (Folks, we need to
get all these different DVD formats sorted out - you're just
confusing the buyers now.) Back
to Headlines Wait For the RCA MP3 CD Player The Wall Street Journal's indomitable PC columnist Walter Mossberg recommends waiting until September and getting the $99 RCA RP-2458 CD player for playing MP3 files. CDs can hold about 150 music files in the smaller MP3 format compared to 12-15 tunes using the conventional CD file format. Mossberg also tested the $179 iRiver SlimX iMP-350 and the $99.95 Sonicblue Rio Volt SP90 both of which are available now. The differences among them are in size, weight and their facility for displaying track information. All three also handle store-bought and home-duplicated CDs that use the conventional CD file format. PCs with a CDR/W can copy both MP3 and conventional CD file formats to CDs. Might as well get one. The
digital media revolution isn't going away. Oh, and one for the
kids or grandkids, too! Back
to Headlines IDC Thinks DVDs Will Save the PC Industry Consumer electronics and DVD maker Pioneer Electronics paid IDC to do research that purports to show that DVD technology, properly implemented, can pull PC sales out of their current trip to the dump. Encapsulated in an IDC white paper, the report says consumer demand for home video creating and editing functions on their PCs will drive people to buy faster PCs with larger storage and multimedia capabilities. Pioneer Electronics senior VP Andy Parsons said the DVD has been accepted faster than any previous technology like TVs, cell phones or VCRs. Research shows that 40% of US homes have a DVD player and people are ready to accept DVD as the standard for creating home movies and personalized videos. DVD sales surpassed VHS sales for the first time in 2001 and totaled 16.7 million units in North America. IDC's research found two barriers to DVD technology potentially boosting PC sales: Most PC makers still push DVD as a storage device rather than a movie and home video technology. And consumers are confused by the alphabet soup of the three incompatible DVD formats - DVD-R/RW, DVD-RAM and +R/RW. Parsons said, "It's really difficult for us to comprehend why the +RW camp decided to enter the market late with formats that are confusing with similarly named but incompatible formats." (Really!) HP and Dell sell the +R/RW drives with Ricoh as the sole "brand name" maker. Apple, Sony, Compaq, Gateway, NEC and Micron sell DVD-R/RW drives supplied mainly by Pioneer, Hitachi, Panasonic and Toshiba. Usually both drive types will play a DVD made on the other type but the physical media is different, Pioneer spokesman Amy Friend told The Online Reporter. DVD-R/RW drives are expected to outsell +R/+RW drives by 3.284 million to 1.490 million in the fourth quarter. For a free copy of the IDC
white paper, write charles@riderresearch.com or call 225-769-7130.
Back
to Headlines 22-Hour CD Player for Less than $50; 18m To Be Sold in 2006 CD players capable of playing 22 hours of music on a single CD will be on the market soon. So says chipmaker Cirrus Logic, which promises that its new CS7410 microprocessor will bring the cost of portable CD players able to play MP3 and WMA audio files below $50. The CS7410 chip plays conventional CD-DA files - those are the ones on the CDs you buy in stores - MP3 files - the ones you download from the Internet - and Microsoft's Windows Media Audio (WMA) format which stores the most music or audio in the smallest file. Standard portable CD players go for as little as $25. Devices equipped with the Cirrus chip can play digital media files burned onto a CD-R using a home computer. CD-Rs can hold 74 minutes of standard CD audio, but CDs with MP3 or Windows Media Audio files can hold up to 22 hours of music on a single disk. Research shop IDC forecasts that US shipments of such CD-based music players will surpass those of every other portable player category in 2002 and grow from 1 million units in 2001 to 18 million units in 2006. Cirrus Logic executive Terry Leeder said the new CS7410 chip makes it inexpensive and simple for manufacturers to add MP3 and WMA capability to portable CD players, boom boxes and home mini systems. Back to Headlines
Simultaneous Users In Top 4 P2P Networks
08/05/02 P2P networks allow users to anonymously trade music, videos and software. This chart tracks the average number of simultaneous users logged into the leading P2P networks for the current week. See http://www.g2news.com/chart.html for the latest chart. Back to Headlines
US federal and state law
enforcement folks say they have recently taken legal action
against 19 Internet-based scams that cost consumers millions
according to an MSNBC report. A key tool for identifying the
perpetrators was a database of 15 million junk
"spam" e-mails that consumers had sent to the
Federal Trade Commission. FTC director of Midwest operations C
Steven Baker said, "We're the only place in the world
that wants spam. To assist in similar law enforcement actions
already underway, send spam to uce@ftc.gov.
Back
to Headlines The Man Who Launched a Thousand
Rips Shawn Fanning started Napster,
which at one time had 80 million registered users, and upset
the media companies' apple cart. The New York Times asked him
about the fact that the big-5 record labels have finally
signed with Rhapsody to have some of their music streamed over
the net: "It's just another step in the process; they're
taking another conservative approach to get their catalogs out
there to see if it has any impact on their ability to sell
CDs. But consumers are not going to accept services that offer
only limited content. And there has to be some way for people
to learn about new material. That's what drove Napster. When
Napster was at its peak, it was easier to find a lot of truly
obscure music. None of the other services have offered
this." Back
to Headlines Elvis Is in the (Digital) House A remixed video of Elvis' song
"A Little Less Conversation," number one on the
charts in the US, UK and most of the rest of the world, was
made available exclusively on AOL Music from July 11-16 prior
to its release September 24. "Elvis Presley - recognized
the world over as one of the most important figures in 20th
century music and pop culture" is what the AOL press
release said. (Must have been written by the same person who
was reporting sales and revenue at AOL in the days leading up
to its Time Warner acquisition.) Back
to Headlines TV broadcasting network ABC
said it will offer its "World News Tonight",
"Nightline", "Nightline UpClose",
"Good Morning, America" and segments from other news
programs as streaming video to people's PCs. The ABC News
content will go for $4.95 a month and be part of RealNetwork's
broader offerings of news, sports and entertainment for $9.95
a month. ABC claims "more people get their news from ABC
than from any other source." The Disney-owned ABC
competes with the General Electric-owned NBC network, which
has a joint venture with Microsoft for the cable news channel
MSNBC. Reckon ABC will be using RealNetworks' new Helix
streaming server software? Back
to Headlines That Hurts. A Third of All Job Cuts Are in High Tech Of the 735,527 jobs lost in the
US in the first half 243,200 of them were in high tech,
according to executive search firm Challenger, Gray &
Christmas. Back
to Headlines 3m Households with Video-on-Demand. 1m with Personal Video Recorders. And the beat goes on. Forrester
Research says that at the end of 2001 video-on-demand had
reached three million homes and that one million already had
personal video recorders. Forrester expects both numbers to
double by year-end. It warns that as consumers watch more TV
on their own schedule, commercials become less viable as a
business model. That's probably why they call this stuff
disruptive technology. And just think, next year we'll get
pocket-sized personal video players.
Back
to Headlines Where Do You Want to Be Dot NETted Today? Practically everything at
Microsoft has been declared to be .NET. Giga Information Group
analyst Rob Enderle quipped that he expected to go the
Microsoft offices and see Men.NET and Women.NET on the
restroom doors. Back
to Headlines 52% Want Networked Kitchen Appliances To Deliver a Complete Meal on Time. Puh-lese! Internet Home Alliance say that
52% of the people it surveyed want their kitchen appliance
networked to produce a complete meal at a specified time and
that 42% (25.1 million) of US households want a
"connected" home to enhance their quality of life.
The complete report is available for $500 from the Alliance
whose members make for an interesting lineup and include Best
Buy, Cisco, General Motors, HP, Invensys, Panasonic, Sears
& Roebuck, Sun and Whirlpool but not Microsoft or IBM. The
report defines a connected home as one where computers, TVs,
lighting, heating, air-conditioning, home security and
appliances are linked to a centrally controlled network. There
was no mention of connecting the watchdog. See http://internethomealliance.com.
Back
to Headlines New York To Host Digital Media Summit The 4th Kagan Digital Household
Summit will be at the Park Lane Hotel in New York August 6-7
exploring why digital media and communications devices are
literally pouring into homes worldwide. Speakers included are
from Com-cast, AOL Time Warner, Mitsubishi, IBM, DirecTV,
Microsoft, Mobius, Motorola Broad-band and Planetweb.The fee
is $1,595. See http://www.kagan.com/kmarket/conferences/2002_conferences/dhs02f.shtml.
Back
to Headlines Koreans Saturate Internet - 60% Use It Sixty percent of South Korea's
48 million people use the Internet one or more times a month
says to Korea's Ministry of Information and Communications,
saying "It is reaching a saturation point," South
Koreans spend more time surfing at the expense of watching
television according to the survey. It leads the world in
broadband access with one in five having a high-speed
connection . Back
to Headlines AOL sell about $2 billion worth of online advertising a year. -------------------------------------------------------------THE online REPORTER focuses on:
If ever that overused phrase "paradigm shift" was apt, it's now, about the Digital Media industry. There's not a company in the industry that's not worried about where it'll still be standing after the deluge - and that goes for leaders like AOL Time Warner as well as that feared monolith Microsoft. Its format is concise and pointed, its style a touch brash and, with any luck, a bit controversial. Its object is to break the stories that give its readers the real inside track. It is pledged to fact and fair comment. THE online REPORTER - Intelligence for decision makers.
North
American Subscriptions: sales@riderresearch.com;
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