NYT: 14 Media & Technology Convergence Trends

securitas writes "The New York Times Business/Media section looks at 14 media and technology industry convergence trends and ideas to watch in 2004 (Google link). Trends range from the stampede to flat-screen TV/display business, Japan's 3G mobile phone experiment, biometrics as a global ID system for security, identification and authentication, the impact of PVRs (personal video recorders), Internet advertising and paid search engine listings, the Google IPO and venture capital technology investment, what the movie studios call piracy but what is really copyright infringement, and many other trends and ideas. It will take you a while to read through all 14 pages, but it's definitely good food for thought. Which 2004 technology and media trends and ideas did the New York Times staff miss? Discuss."

Comments

Worldwide media releases....

[commo1]

DVD region codes. This will be a huge issue this year, as discussed a few days ago in /. . The world market for digital content distribution will become just that: a world market. I for one am looking forward to getting the latest Coldplay album & singles at the same time as our friends in the UK, almost as much as they are looking forward to simultaneous releases of movies & TV shows. I think that real-time, same-day releases will become more and more prevalent (a la Matrix Revolutions release). THis will be the year that this becomes a big contested issue. It's also one of the best points for the p2p model.

Re:Worldwide media releases....

[janbjurstrom]

I do agree, and hopefully the flow of these forms of information will improve, but...

One must remember that mature sectors like these hate risks. Most of what they do now - lawsuits, technological barriers, lobbying, cartels, hyper advertising/marketing, etc. - are 'simply' means to remove uncertainty and avoid risk. The goal being to ensure a predictable, stable-or-increasing, revenue stream.

Consider the situation if most of the obstacles - artificial scarcity, et al., that we lament over today - were removed.

This would essentially mean for them to give up a large amount of control, and put a lot of trust in consumers. Which in turn would translate roughly into competing with quality (possibly also by meeting - rather than creating - customer demand).

Media corps would have to go through radical, nay, fundamental changes to be able to handle these things. Are they willing? Are they even able?

And of course, trust and creating quality 'anything' is unpredictable and risky.

I believe media corps of today show much determination to avoid that scenario at considerable "cost" (consumer dissatisfaction).

new tech

[brysnot]

IP Technology

Barratry as a business model

[southpolesammy]

The growing trend of organizations such as the RIAA, MPAA, and SCO to attempt to bring in revenues via lawsuits instead of fixing their broken business models is the most significant trend of 2003.

However, I don't see it as a long-term trend, since nature abhors a vacuum and as long as there is a want/need, there will be people trying to fulfill that need and legalities be damned.

Not THAT huge of an issue

[AtariAmarok]

The DVD region system is one of my pet peeves. However, I don't think it will ever be a big deal in the U.S. Just about everyone here is happy as long as they can get their "Bad Boys II" and Hillary Duff movies.

One they didn't, but forgot to name.

[Anonymous Coward]

I remember, when I was a kid, news was news. It wasn't bullshit wrapped in hype distilled into a soundbite. Now that's just the "news" as it were.

Unbelievably, after watching TV stations lower the bar, the newspapers instead of leading, have decided to follow into the darkage. The NYT, appearently being no exception. "I've got a fantastic idea, instead of researhing a story, which is hard, or just making shit up, which is almost as hard, why don't we just mention a lot of trends together and fill up the space with nothing! Brilliant! Now I've got time enough to drink Guiness from the bottle, at work! Brilliant!"

BBC, they all suffer from it. I fear that if I ever saw real news again, I'd be startled and confused.

15th media and technology convergence trend

[Anonymous Coward]

Weblogs making it impossible for old media giants to bury scandals involving reporters who fabricate stories.

How the hell did the NY Times miss that?

too many links

[Guano_Jim]

Is it just me or was that article way over-linked?

In keeping with submitters' tendencies to link to every single page on the web in the hopes of making the front page, I propose that all slashdot articles have links on every character of every word. For example:

S l a s h d o t.

Wouldn't want to miss any trivial pieces of information, after all.

Re:See previous story...

[Obyron]

And it looks like you've been sucked into the growing trend of not 'R'ing the 'FA'.