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- Measuring the Impact of the iTunes-Fox Movie Deal
Apple is set to unveil at MacWorld San Francisco a groundbreaking deal with News Corp.'s Fox movie studio to rent movies through Apple's iTunes store, news reports revealed Thursday. If true, the news could impact the landscape for on-demand movie rentals dramatically.The announcement will include not only Fox but also at least one other major studio, the New York Times reported. The new service would mark a reversal both by Apple CEO Steve Jobs and by the Hollywood studios.
"Fox and potentially other studios are coming around to the idea that there is nobody out there to challenge iTunes," Jonathan Weitz, a principal with IBB Consulting, told the Financial Times. "This deal is a sign that media mobility is coming to the mainstream."
Thus far, Apple has failed to get Hollywood on board with using iTunes to sell movies. Only Disney, which owns Apple CEO Steve Jobs' Pixar, offers new releases for sale on iTunes.
FairPlay License Part of the Deal
The deal with Fox reportedly includes an agreement to license Apple's FairPlay digital rights management software, marking a reversal for Apple, which has resisted licensing the software. According to the Financial Times, future Fox DVD releases will include a FairPlay file that will allow content to be copied from DVD to computer for loading onto iPods.
Other online rental programs have failed to gain much traction thus far. Wal-Mart announced Thursday that it is discontinuing its digital download online store. A streaming online offering by Netflix suffers from a lack of recent releases and the need for a fast Internet connection. Movielink, an online service created by the movie studios, was sold off to Blockbuster in a fire sale. And Amazon's recently released service, Unbox, has yet to catch on with consumers.
Apple has what all those other services lack: the iPod and...
- Wireless Hitches a Ride on the Subway
Some cell-phone users were bemused a few years back when an episode of the Fox TV series 24 aired in which Jack Bower and his intrepid antiterrorist team used GPS technology to track the movements of a biological weapon riding on an underground train in Los Angeles.Given that terrestrial cellular calls are unable to penetrate the wide expanse of concrete and earth that lies between trains underground and the sky above, viewers reasoned, then how could any space-based satellite be expected to succeed at the task?
These days, however, metropolitan subway systems are joining forces with technology providers to come up with a reliable method for delivering wireless services to their customers. Boston commuters, for example, now have the ability to use cellular phones and other wireless devices as they travel through some of Boston's busiest subway stations.
"This is a major customer service enhancement for our ridership," said Daniel Grabauskas, the general manager of the Metropolitan Boston Transit Authority. "Not only can customers make calls, send text messages, and receive T-Alerts while using the subway, they can also access the Internet and check e-mails."
Seamless Wireless Coverage
Boston's MBTA wireless system was constructed by InSite Wireless, which specializes in the deployment of distributed antenna system (DAS) technology in public facilities, such as San Francisco's Moscone Center.
DAS technology expands the wireless coverage of cellular networks in much the same way as access points extend the reach of today's Wi-Fi systems. The DAS signal, which is received by small antennas scattered throughout a facility, is balanced among the antennas and then forwarded over fiber optic cables to the carrier networks.
The DAS providers make money by charging access fees to cellular providers, such as AT&T, T-Mobile, and Verizon Wireless. And the subway system operators benefit by getting a slice of...
- Google Responds to Reader Brouhaha
With Google users growing more irate over a sharing feature on its Google Reader service, the search giant is making moves to appease the masses.The drama began on December 14 when Google announced that Reader, its RSS feed service, would connect with Google Talk and Gmail contacts. In other words, when users tagged a feed to "Share" in Reader the users' Gmail and Google Talk contacts would see it.
The uproar arose almost immediately, as industry analysts and consumers alike expressed their displeasure. In fact, the Google Reader forum offers 277 comments on the Share feature since it launched. Not all of them were negative, but most of them ranged from mildly annoyed to extremely angered.
Comments and Questions
"Don't you think there might be a method of being selective with what you share that might be slightly more fine grained than, you know, deleting our shared items en masse? This is the worst 'feature' you have ever introduced," wrote a Google Reader Help poster named "Modulo Noh."
Many had the same question: How do I turn this off? "Do I need to unsubscribe from all my feeds? I do *NOT* want colleagues seeing my personal feeds. Unless I'm misunderstanding something here, I have to stop using Google Reader," wrote a user by the name of LeeWNYC.
Chrix Finne, the Google spokesperson who blogs about the Reader, fielded the questions in one overarching blog post. He first acknowledged the "helpful feedback" about the new sharing feature. Then he admitted that the company had hoped making it easier to share feeds with people they chat with frequently would be useful and interesting.
"We underestimated the number of users who were using the Share button to send stories to a limited number of people. We're looking at ways to make sharing more granular and flexible, but...
- China Promises To Push Clean Energy
China promised Wednesday to develop renewable energy for its fast-growing economy but warned that coal consumption will grow dramatically and avoided embracing binding limits on its greenhouse gas emissions.In a report on its energy plans, the government announced no new initiatives but said it wants to curb reliance on oil and gas to drive an economy that is the world's second-biggest energy consumer after the United States.
"China gives top priority to developing renewable energy," said the 44-page report released by the Cabinet's press office.
The report said Beijing will promote hydroelectric, nuclear, solar and wind energy, as well natural gas extracted from garbage dumps and coal mines.
China's economic boom has sharply increased its need for imported oil and gas. That has prompted complaints that Chinese demand is driving record-high world crude prices and led to diplomatic strains as Beijing builds closer ties with oil-rich pariah states such as Sudan and Iran.
Communist leaders worry about the mounting damage to China's battered environment from fossil fuel use and see mounting reliance on imported energy as a strategic weakness.
The share of renewable sources and nuclear power in China's energy consumption rose from 4 percent in 1980 to 7.2 percent last year, the report said.
"China will pay more attention to the clean utilization of energy resources, especially coal, and make it a focus of environmental protection," the report said.
It said China takes greenhouse gases seriously and some of its measures would reduce its emissions. But there was no mention of whether Beijing might agree to demands by Washington to sign up to binding limits.
Beijing has rejected such limits, arguing that developing countries such as China are not to blame for current pollution levels and need to increase energy production to fight poverty.
The report said China will expand measures to exploit its abundant coal reserves --...
- Child Malnutrition on Rise in Darfur
Malnutrition has increased among children in Darfur over the past year despite a massive humanitarian aid effort in the war-torn Sudanese region, according to a U.N. report obtained Thursday.Four years since the conflict began, escalating violence against local people and aid workers alike have made it difficult to get food and other aid to the 4.2 million Darfurians affected, U.N. officials said.
The study, obtained by The Associated Press, found that 16.1 percent of children affected by the conflict suffer from acute malnutrition, compared to 12.9 percent a year earlier.
It was the first time that the rate has been above the World Health Organization's 15 percent "emergency threshold" for malnutrition since 2004, a year after the conflict in Darfur began, when it ran at 21.8 percent.
"We in the U.N. have been warning for some time that the nutritional situation in Darfur has been deteriorating," said Stephanie Bunker. "It is worrying. We are concerned because insecurity has compromised our ability to reach people in need. We've had violence against the people of Darfur and against aid workers."
She said 290,000 Darfurians were driven from their homes by violence in 2007.
The United Nations has been leading a $1 billion-a-year aid effort in Darfur, with some 13,000 aid workers from the U.N. and other humanitarian agenci
