07:00 AM by Alexander Turcic in Miscellaneous | Week in Review

Previously at MobileRead:

Current E-Books Trends
Piracy and the future of e-books
Toppan introduces bendy e-paper technology

E-Book Readers
iRex iLiad preorder in Germany - pricing still confusing
Sony Portable Reader to be sold at Borders bookstores

General Chat
Google deletes its own official blog by mistake
IDPF Conference gathers industry leaders to discuss mobile content
Nokia 770 among worst gadgets of 2006 says CNET
Open DRM - DReaM or Nightmare?
Streamed media to force higher Verizon rate tiers

New Links
New York Times, Wired and other new mobile links

Other Gadgets
BlackBerry stock falls on weak forecast
Proposed mobile phone RSS feed reader interface

Palm
News from Palm Addicts you won't want to miss
Treo 700w DST time change workaround

Pocket PC
Learn what drains the battery on your Windows Mobile device

09:31 AM by Bob Russell in Miscellaneous | Lounge

In a surprising turn of events, Verizon says they are being forced to raise rates for EV-DO broadband access. Yes, of course, I say that with tongue firmly planted in cheek. It's not a bit surprising to hear them looking for a way to raise revenue levels. The interesting thing here is the particular argument being used.

According to PC World, "Verizon currently charges $60 per month for the service with a two-year contract and a qualifying voice plan. The service provides unlimited home airtime usage "when browsing the Internet, accessing the Intranet, or reading e-mails" according to Verizon's Web site." But they are careful to make it off-limits for use even with handheld products like Palm's Avvenu for remote file access, or Pocket Tunes for streaming audio, or video streaming with Slingbox or Orb.

The idea that they want the public to accept is that these users are extreme and should have to pay more above and beyond the unlimited access plans as heavy users of the network. On the surface of it, one might think it's completely fair, logical and reasonable. What else can they do? They have to protect the network, after all.

So let's take a closer look, and see how well this stands up. First of all, one has to look at the history of Verizon and other carriers. When you look at their pricing schemes, it is clear that they are primarily focused on maximinzing revenue from their customers, and that they are not too worried about matching costs directly to usage.

In fact they can't really match costs to revenues very well for a single new customer because in their industry they have huge outlays on the network infrastructure, while the marginal costs of adding a single customer are very small. Carriers have also managed to keep pricing plans and fees confusing, while locking customers into long term plans so a customer can't leave easily if pricing turns out to be undesireable in areas such as broadband. How many average smartphone buyers know exactly what data access will cost them when they buy the smartphone and sign up for the service? Not many!

As a result of this unusual pricing environment cultivated by the carriers, they generally have lost touch with typical pricing models, and it almost seems that they have lost touch with principles of reasonableness. If you are selling toasters or VCRs, you generally have to price at a small margin over the cost of producing, plus other costs for things like distributing and supporting that one unit. And consumers are able to price shop every time they buy.

Not so with data access plans, and the carriers have worked hard to keep it that way so they can squeeze out some extra dollars from the consumer. In fact, for that very reason, they were the strongest voice against some of the most important consumer protection laws. Laws that are responsible for giving you the choice to use your own phone equipment in your home, and the option to keep your phone number if you switch phone carriers.

If you remember, it wasn't all that long ago that you had to rent your wired phones from the phone company at a pretty steep price. The argument was the same thing we hear now. They have to protect the network. It seems to be the battle cry every time they want to charge you for something you could do themselves. It's all about control.

Now, there may be some basic level of truth to network protection concerns, but obviously they use that argument far past the facts, because it's the key to gaining higher pricing for services. What were the charges we used to pay for our required home phone rentals, other than price gouging supported by the policy of not letting you use your own phone because they have to "protect the network" from damage. How many of us have our own phone equipment now? And does the phone network still work? Of course it does. And in the other example, if they control your phone number, then they can raise prices and have less defectors because customers are locked in.

Now, as Yogi Bera said, it seems to be "Deja Vu all over again!" When the carriers control how we use broadband services, then they can charge more. For example, if Verizon was to allow streaming media on a regular data plan, then how can they expect to charge for a streaming video service in the future? The answer is that they can't! The only way they can expect to keep getting (other than by providing true value in desireable content) is to prevent you from doing it yourself with products like Orb or Slingbox, and many more to come soon.

But, if streaming media really does use more network bandwidth, is there really any choice but to single out those customers and make them pay? Sure there is. First of all, these are the same arguments that were used before with cable internet. But have you noticed that cable tv services are now sending their video over the same line as cable internet? And cable internet providers are even advertising and encouraging broadband for streaming media.

Comcast offers things like a home page portal that shows a library of streaming video news clips. They provide free live NHL hockey events. And they even provide free internet radio service with Rhapsody. Not only do they provide these things, but they advertise and encourage them. They are focused on winning the customer with added value, not throttling them. Granted, cable internet providers are in the same boat, with some customer lock-in, and huge infrastructure costs that breaks the natural ties between pricing and marginal cost. But the point is that they can do it. Admittedly, they probably have to address certain users that do heavy enough video file sharing or other extreme activities. Until the bandwidth can be easily adjusted, it will always be the case that there may be a handful of users that need to be managed to protect the network.

But to imply that it has to be a general pricing scheme is, in my opinion, not based on network protection. It's based on revenue enhancement motives. I'm not saying that they don't have the right to try to do that. But I am saying that we should not be naive about what's happening, and they should pay a huge public relations price and even eventually maybe face consumer protection laws as they try to shape the market and pricing structures heavily in their favor. The closer we get to a competitive market, the better the chance that another carrier will force them to be more responsive to customer needs, even including reasonably priced data access for streaming content.

Is this a pipe dream to put such faith in competitive pressures in a market with limited competition? Maybe. But look at Sprint. They seem to be planning for the future in a quite different manner than Verizon. Verizon wants to control all content delivery over the network other than email and web browsing. Sprint is looking forward with a longer term view into the future and wants to serve customers. They are encouraging customers to use the network for streaming content, and have not (so far) restricted it. Instead, they are focusing on building the network to handle it. And they will still have their own content services to build revenue, but they are going to offer content that earns revenue because the customer wants it, and because the services are convenient and work well. Not because the network can't be used for streaming content by the customer.

There is a new broadband Palm 700p rumored to be coming out in May 2006. When it is released, we will also learn something about Sprint's market approach by looking at how they price the data service, and how they position it relative to streaming media. Among US carriers so far, they have distinguished themselves in this area, and many Treo 650 customers have gone to Sprint for that very reason. I'm eagerly looking to see how the data services are handled by Sprint to get an idea of their future direction. Let's hope they choose to have a long term view of customer satisfaction and meeting needs, rather than a strong handed control that limits everything the customer wants to Sprint-controlled services.

Via arstechnica.com

06:08 PM by Alexander Turcic in E-Book General | News

Don't miss our on-going discussion on the impact of piracy, in particular the illegal scanning and OCR'ing of copyright-protected content, on the future success of e-books. Many people have zero tolerance approaches towards piracy, yet others argue that piracy can be just as constructive as it can be destructive. The argument goes that piracy places firms in a highly competitive environment and pushes them to innovate, ultimately resulting in better and more consumer-friendly products (this from the autobiography of the Apple iPod). We are interested to hear your opinion on this delicate topic.

Related: Harry Potter 6 e-book already being pirated

04:55 PM by Alexander Turcic in Archive | Handhelds and Smartphones

BlackBerry maker Research in Motion reported its fourth-quarter earnings today after the bell. Earnings per share were $0.65, falling slightly short of the consensus estimate of $0.67. Looking forward, the company said results for the first quarter of fiscal 2007 are likely to be below analysts' expectations.

"We have seen a recovery in subscriber additions and business momentum since RIM settled the patent litigation," said Dennis Kavelman, Chief Financial Officer at RIM. "We have been very encouraged by the increasingly positive indications from customers and partners over the past several weeks, but we also believe it is important to remain prudent in our outlook as we continue to monitor and foster the post-settlement momentum throughout Q1 and Q2."

Shares of RIM are currently trading at $78.08 in the after-hours session, down 7.5 percent, from today's closing price of $84.38 on Nasdaq.

PS: You can listen to the conference call live via the webcast today at 5:00pm ET.

06:23 PM by Bob Russell in Archive | Handhelds and Smartphones

Russell Beattie has thrown together a sample mobile application called "Grazr" that is a really slick interface to news. It is "a free web page widget for browsing RSS and OPML files. The Grazr web panel is just the start of the Grazr.com project."

This looks like something I'd really like to see on a mobile phone. You can find his demo Javascript application shown in a picture of a mobile phone shell here.

He's also offering a free copy for your web pages, if you want to provide this interface to users. He says there are some bugs, but encourages people to give it a test drive.

It will be interesting to see where this leads. There is clearly a lot of competition in the area of content interfaces on devices. But I'm sure we are all quite happy to see a multitude of new and improved interfaces for mobile devices, especially those who are using devices with smaller screens. Whether successful on their own or not, a wide variety of early solutions will certainly help to make the our future solutions better.

06:05 PM by Bob Russell in E-Book General | News

Sun has announced a project called the "Open Media Commons initiative" to create an open source DRM technology that does not require royalties. They also released their early work from Project DReaM (DRM everywhere available).

Is open source DRM worthy of the "DReaM" name? On the one hand, it could bring universal compatibility across all devices, allowing you to have the appropriate rights to all your content regardless of what device it's on. On the other hand it could be a way for content providers to invade and control your use of their content more than ever.

As DRM technology, it will never approach the compatibility we have now with mp3, no matter how successful. Because regardless of how compatible devices and software becomes, "your" content will still depend on the format. And it's a big challenge for it to become universally accessible on all devices, because that's not something that happens automatically because it's open source or because it comes from Sun. It must be wildly successful to be adopted and supported across the board.

And even if wildly successful, there may be incentive for content owners to push device makers to use alternate DRM technologies anyway, because less compatibility may allow them to sell and re-sell content every time you get a new device, which would not happen with device independent DRM solutions.

On the other hand, even if it's not perfect, industry-wide popularity of DReaM might sure beat the proprietary and device-specific solutions that we may otherwise end up with as the alternative.

It's a tough topic, and we certainly don't have many good answers yet. Trust me, there are a lot of sharp minds working on it. Unfortunately, there's big money at stake, so they might not all have the consumer's best interests at heart.

So we fall back on the position that is so inevitable on many future technology issues - "Time will tell."

Related Links...
* Sun Announces Open-Source DRM Project
* Do we need an open source DRM?
* Reasons to Love Open-Source DRM
* DRM - a hot topic around the web

06:45 PM by Bob Russell in Archive | Handhelds and Smartphones

If you have a Pocket PC device, then everything you want to find out about your device's battery drain is available to you now. There is a new application called acbPowerMeter that lets you measure the load put on your device by various functions like CPU, display, wireless radio, speaker, etc.

And in a blog entry, Werner Ruotsalainen takes a look at battery life in some Pocket PC devices, and tells us all about it with some very detailed information. You'll have to wade through a lot of that detail, but it might be especially interesting to look at some of his results if you have a Dell x51v.

One of the interesting observations is evidence of how well that device makes use of its dedicated video processing chip to reduce consumption with tasks like showing video with the TCPMP player.

Battery drain has always been somewhat of a mystery, and more tools like this may not only help us to understand how to get better life out of a charge, but also keep manufacturers of hardware on their toes to minimize power consumption once consumers can see it for themselves.

06:25 PM by Bob Russell in Archive | Handhelds and Smartphones

Here are some of the recent stories that have caught my eye from Palm Addicts that you may be interested in.

* Fujitsu shows UMPC with fold-out keyboard
This is the sort of form factor that I would like to see available next time I'm in the market for a small tablet or laptop PC.

* Access Linux Platform Shown at LinuxWorld
Every little glimpse of what PalmSource is doing with their next generation Linux platform is a real treat.

* Canada's First Mobile Film Festival
This also seems to be called Palm Mobifest, and has categories like "Best Caught on Treo." If you want to see some films, check out their collection here.

* Review of QuickNews and how I use it on my Treo 650
This is a very interesting look at how Sammy McLoughlin uses QuickNews on his Treo 650 to keep up with RSS feeds.

All stories were found via Palm Addicts, a great source of Palm-related information.