Today, Pluto.tv was officially launched. I am proud to be an early advisor and investor in this company. Those of you that read my blog frequently will know that I have been following and in some cases participating in the restructuring of the medium we call TV. I am pretty excited and decided to give it a plug on my blog. Please think of this post as an infomercial because it kind of is.
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Category Archives: Thoughts about the Media Industry
How media industry is impacted by technology
10 Predictions for the Computer Industry for 2014
I decided that this year I would write up my own ten predictions. I should also say that as a technologist in my core, I often see things happening much earlier that they really happen. It is sort of the opposite of the sign on your cars side mirror which reads “objects may appear further away then they actually are”. Continue reading
The First Bank of Amazon or the End of Advertising as we Know it.
Twenty years ago, I proclaimed that Advertising would be the Killer App of the Internet. Now I am pronouncing the end of Advertising. What will replace it as a source of revenue for media companies. It will be the First Bank of Amazon. Read more! Continue reading
Time to Channel Steve
As a reader of this blog, you probably know that Apple stock has lost almost 40% of it value from a high of $705 to low of $409, as of this morning. In just seven short months Apple has gone from the “wonder company” which might have become the first company with a trillion dollar … Continue reading
Avram’s Congressional Testimony on HDTV 1998
The House Commerce Committee Subcommittee on Telecommunications, Trade and Consumer Protection convened a 2 1/2 hour meeting to discuss HDTV standards and deployment issues on April 24, 1998. I was invited to give testimony. The panel was made up of a large group of executives representing the consumer electronics, the television broadcast and the cable industries. In addition there were two representatives from the computer industry, Bob Stearns from Compaq and me, from Intel. The chair was Billy Tamzin, a republican who later went on to make a fortune as a lobbyist. The ranking member from the democrats was Ed Markey (now running for the Senate in MA). Stearns and I had a couple of objectives. While most of the panel saw a TV, we saw a Monitor. We understood that with that if we could achieve high resolution and progressive scan, the HDTV set of the future could serve as a monitor for computers. Just like the CD and DVD, the consumer industry do the R&D and and manufacturing of important and innovative products which the computer industry would “highjack” for its own use. Everyone one on the panel had their own agenda and often it was a secret agenda. Continue reading
Smart TV 1995: sponsored by the Software Publishers Association whose motto at the time was “Don’t copy that floppy”.
PBS had a television show called the Computer Chronicles which ran from 1981-2002.
There is a particularly interesting episode and one that relates to my recent post “When Technologies Collide”. The title of the episode is Smart TV 95 and it was recorded in 1995. It is a pretty amazing piece of history which was captured by the Internet Archieves. It is about 25 minutes long and is worthwhile watching especially for those interested in Interactive TV.
I comment about about this show in which I am interviewed as well as speculate about the future of Interactive Television.
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Facebook: Mixed feelings about Facebook and some views on the IPO.
Facebook is the latest in a line of mediocre technology companies that were at the right place at the right time. Continue reading
The American System of Greed: How the smart and greedy take advantage of the greedy who take advantage of the dumb and greedy
Here is the inside story on how Goldman Sachs Facebook deal will screw the people that screw the people Continue reading
The future of the Novel in the electronic age
Maybe a generation that has grown up with the Internet will not learn the disciple to read through a 300 page novel. Continue reading
iPad Day One
For sometime I have felt the iPad would become the black-hole of media and all media would be sucked into it. Continue reading