if connected

The FT reports that Ebay sees Google, Yahoo, Amazon becoming less competitive with them :

The four dominant internet groups – Google, Yahoo, eBay and Amazon – will increasingly focus on their core activities rather than compete with each other head-on, according to Meg Whitman, eBay’s chief executive.
“I think we will end up specialising,” she told the FT in an interview on Tuesday. “We have specialised in e-commerce, payment and voice communication. Google stands for search, Yahoo largely stands for content – so I think we may on the fringe compete, but I suspect that over time the businesses will become more specialised.”

Who’s going to break the news to Google!
End up? Has the FT misunderstood? Is Meg Whitman speculating about an end game that is years into the future?
Or, is Ebay already preparing the financial community for a re-positioning of their expensive VoIP acquisition, Skype, out from the headlights of ‘the dominant Internet groups’?
Certainly for now, on VoIP, this is highly wishful thinking. All of these companies have VoIP products competitive with Ebay’s Skype. They’re all adding new features and improving their ease of use too. Plus, the article fails to mention MSN / Microsoft at all ,and so completely ignores Windows Live Messenger and its impacts.
In the wider perspective it’s even odder. These companies cover enormous ground including commerce, content, communication, advertising, search etc. with numerous Jupiter analysts researching each area. However, my understanding, to put words in everyone else’s mouth here is that there is serious competitive overlap in numerous other areas, such as Yahoo! being a major auction player in Japan; Google’s Froogle and classifieds stepping on Ebay’s toes; all of them targeting the youthful demographics that Skype’s latest avatars and ringtones appeal to.
For the next few years, Ebay will be competing with these companies whether they like it or not.
Clients – send us inquiries and we’ll set up calls with a selection of analysts to cover off whichever aspects of this are of interest. Those interested in VoIP or Skype, read this Skype case study.

Among the Apple news is this gem: iTunes and Airport Express can now stream music to multiple sets of speakers in the home all at once. See the bottom of this page.
For Apple, this is another major step towards creating a fully digital home. Apple appear to be going one step at a time, for now. For me, I no longer have to listen to the radio if I want background music while moving around different rooms doing chores. I suspect sales of Airport Express will take off if Apple markets this feature a little more prominently; perhaps the multi-purpose Express needs a new name?
Consumers with iPods now have several different ways to play back digital music in the home:

1. Stream music wirelessly, from one PC/Mac, to one or more speakers that are each connected to a small Airport Express adapter.
2. Plug an iPod into the universal dock, and then connect speakers to the dock. The dock enables usage of the Apple infrared remote. This may lead to purchases of more than one iPod per person, or more likely, act as a retirement home for older iPods as consumers upgrade to nanos or video iPods.
3. Use a custom “dock+speaker” combo — like those from Altec Lansing or Bose — to attach to an iPod. Again this could boost the number of “iPod owned per person” ratios in time. Incidentally, Bose currently have a largescale poster campaign on the London underground which suggests thay are hoping to move into the higher mainstream with their iPod speaker/dock set.
4. Play music via speakers hooked up to a PC or Mac. Now, if the Mac has Frontrow, then again a consumer can use the Apple infrared remote.

Next problem for Apple to fix to make multi room speaker playback a great experience: help a consumer to control iTunes from different rooms in the house. Solutions? WiFi Apple remote? WiFi iPod? Web-browser iTunes control?
Either way, make no mistake, despite the dry “running to stand still” Mac-focused announcements of the last week, Apple is serious about entertainment in the home.

Some rethinking needs to happen at the UK’s sunday paper, The Business. Last week they published a story, an “exclusive”, that Microsoft had developed a cheap play once ‘disposable’ DVD disk. A week later, and their front page follow-up story criticises bloggers for rubbishing the original.
Both pieces ignore the simple facts that disposable DVDs are nothing remotely new.
However, there’s another twist here. The Business shifts the goalposts in the follow-up by saying this ‘new’ development is different to the Flexplay/Disney trials as it uses the software DRM embedded in the new High definition DVD format(s); yet this is at odds with their original description of: “a cheap, disposable pre-recorded DVD disc that consumers can play only once.”
Whatever HD DVD will be, it’s not likely to be even as cheap as current DVDs to manufacture anytime soon — let alone cheaper — due to low volumes and new manufacturing processes. Plus, it’s not a revelation to anyone in the industry that new content protection is being included with high definition discs that offer publishers new business models.
Worse, with DVD movie prices falling, who needs disposable disks? In the last two weeks I’ve seen a variety of new movies for sale at ukp2.99 — for example Donnie Darko and The Third Man — the same price cited by The Business as a good price point for disposables. Even worse, one of their competitors bundled a free DVD of The Madness of King George with their paper a few weeks ago.
The real questions for business are, how much will consumer adoption of high definition discs be slowed because of the launch of two competing, incompatible, high definition DVD formats? And, how should publishers use these new DRM options?
Clients please ask us at Jupiter about consumer behaviours, interests and attitudes and how to position your new products. Journalists: please feel free to bounce story ideas off us prior to publication.

In the latest twist on the scripture, the Bible Society in Australia is offering all 31,171 verses in the abbreviated text style.

VC’s – large mobile youth audience, innovative product, go for it. Just don’t think ‘the new bubble’.
Read the article in The Guardian

During the time that my colleague Michael Gartenberg has been suffering with DRM issues I have also had DRM problems. For me, the legitimate solution arrived quickly enough (* see below) that I did not feel any need to search online for a (more dubious) workaround.

However, it is a terrible indictment of customer service quality when a legal purchaser of DRM-protected content is able to solve his own problem through unofficial means significantly more quickly than by waiting for the official solution.

This is clearly DRM that is not working on multiple levels. It is not protecting the content fully. It is irritating paying customers. It must be increasing customer support costs.

So, why bother with DRM?

That’s what Baen books thinks. They’re a small publisher, pointed out to me by a friend, that have an interesting business model:
(caveat: I’m not one of Jupiter’s media analysts, so this is very much a personal view)

1. They publish older books from current series for free download, in their entirety, to hook new readers.
2. Baen do not use DRM to protect the books, but offer them in a variety of standard formats (e.g. html, rtf, Mobipocket, Palm, MS Reader)
3. Baen offer “advance readers copy” (ARC) versions of forthcoming books for electronic sale. These claim to be: “unproofed and may change before final publication”. They control costs by only offering these advance titles in html format.
4. They offer a web subscription, that enables access to all books published that month, for $15 a month.
5. They link to online book stores for sales of published titles that are available in print.
For Baen, such DRM tactics, must keep their customer support costs to a minimum. Additionally, they tempt new customers to try out ebooks, and with #3 — the ARC versions — they clearly hope to sell the same title more than once to hard core fans.

Wouldn’t it be interesting if the music industry offered pre-release “studio mixes” of albums for sale?

* My good DRM experience was with Apple iTunes. They replied after one working day with a simple solution to my problem.

While Watergate was all over the news wires overnight, the Avant Go feed on my phone revealed a different story.
I sync’ed at 7.34am UK time today (2.34am East Coast) but neither the Washington Post nor the New York Times had the story (even though the NY pages have a section headed “Latest news”), presumably they are both based on the previous day’s paper. However, both Reuters US and the BBC feeds had it.
Bring on mobile phone coverage for the tube! With that I’ll be able to read the real news, in real time.
For companies looking to offer ‘download and sync’ audio or video news, learn the lesson: news content has to be as up to date as possible to have value.

Reading David Card’s blog on the use of message board posts and IM as sources for newspaper articles, I was reminded of a wonderful example of interesting journalism practice in yesterday’s Standard, London’s evening newspaper.
The article is solely about photos of Saddam taken at the moment of his capture. The online version lacks the low resolution photo included in the print edition, but fortunately retains this memorable sentence:

“The origin of the pictures, which appeared on a website today, is not known.”

Which website? I want to know.