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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."
They missed the Beagle 2 lander apparently converging with the Martian surface at high velocity, apparently.
This is /.! I couldn't be bothered with the end of that sentence :)
Brocklesby Park Cricket Club
Maybe the Google IPO will lead to a new dot com boom. This time I'm old enough to get in on it.
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.
IP Technology
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.
Rule #1 -- Politics always trumps technology.
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.
Don't blame Durga. I voted for Centauri.
'cyberdildonics' - yes, really. I caught a clip about this on some late night Channel 5 show, and it didn't look like it'd take off. As for the consequences, isn't that what Antivirus software's for?
Two comments:
1. I think projection TV's are going to be an interesting race between OLED and new generation "slimline" rear-projection TV's that use DLP, LCD or LCOS technologies. Plasma displays (in my humble opinion) will become a passing fad due to the fact that plasma TV's tend to lose picture quality after a few years of use.
2. PVR's will become much more common in the next few years, especially with the lowering of hardware costs and the increasing capacity of hard disk drives (TiVo PVR's with 400 GB hard drives could arrive within 24 months). Also, what we may see PVR's do fairly soon is updating programming information using data piggybacked on a broadcast signal instead of having to "call back" using a telephone line or an Ethernet connection.
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.
How the hell did the NY Times miss that?
...of mandatory website registration and me no longer reading the articles.
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.
3D Printing Tips and Tricks at Zheng3.com
And it looks like you've been sucked into the growing trend of not 'R'ing the 'FA'.
--Obyron
Too many commercials on television and before movies. (At least here in the US.)
For the past few years TV has been almost completely unwatchable for me. Four minutes of programming to five minutes of advertising is insulting to me.
But I have several friends who watch many hours of TV a day and have the latest plot advancements of several sitcom, drama, and unscripted (nee "reality") shows committed to memory. The last half of 2003 I began hearing comments from even them, my friends the TV junkies, that they are getting tired of so much advertising. It seems the straw that broke the camel's back was the corner adverts that come on when a program comes back on after a commercial break. They keep watching of course because they are addicted, but they are at least complaining out loud now.
Movies are almost as bad. Crowds at my local theater have taken to booing and shouting to the effect of "turn off the #$@!ing tv commercials" when non-movie-trailer ads come on. I also hear much grumbling about the excessive trailers. Six or seven five-minute plot synopses that give away the movies that they are supposed to be promoting while tacking 20 to 30 minutes onto the feature's play time are not popular. They almost ruined LotR: RotK for me by turning a 3:30 butt-number into a 4:00+ marathon endurance test.
I know there are work-arounds to these bugs in the system. But Tivo and other prepackaged DVRs are expensive and home-brew DVRs have all the same problems as desktop linux. Also, DVRs do nothing about the corner-screen adverts nor product placement. Not watching TV is like not smoking cigarettes: it's better for your long-term health but to an addict the separation is a difficult and painful thing.
Sure you can arrive late to movies, but with general admission theater seating you are gambling where you end up sitting, or even if you get a seat in the case of blockbusters. If I'd arrived late to any showing of LotR: RotK since it opened at my theater the odds are I would be stuck in a nasty corner or front row or next to an unwashed freak, or not getting a ticket at all because it sold out.
obviously no deficiencies vs. no obvious deficiencies
With the increasing number of protocols based on UDP or IPSEC, and the resulting management problems (ranging from unmanaged congestion due to poor ad-hoc flow control to overly broad firewall rules due to poor protocol designs) I'm praying 2004 will see a resurgence of TCP over IP.
Only half-smiley on this one.