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The liquid crystal display (LCD) industry probably doesn’t have much to worry about yet. OLED panels are incredibly expensive to produce right now, and, yes, they’re awfully pretty. (Sony’s 11-inch display achieves a 1 million-to-1 contrast ratio, which is by far the best available for a TV.) But even as production increases from one manufacturer, it doesn’t necessarily mean the prices will drop down to where flat panels have sunk. The 11-inch OLED TV from Sony costs $2,500. For that price you could also get a 50-inch Pioneer Kuro, generally regarded as the best plasma TV on the market.

(Credit:
Michael Kanellos/CNET News.com)

Sony’s teased us for a bit with its impossibly thin, 11-inch organic light-emitting diode (OLED) TV, and finally brought it to the U.S. this year. Now it looks like there will be more to choose from in OLED TVs next year. Samsung SDI says that by 2009, not only will it have OLED panels for larger TVs, but also for monitors and notebook displays, according to a report in Digitimes.

The report quotes Samsung SDI’s VP of mobile display marketing, Woo-Jong Lee, who says that Samsung SDI will be able to produce 3 million panels in 2009, which is double what they can crank out now. Lee said the company anticipates doubling its capacity again by the close of 2010.

Though Samsung has previously discussed making OLED TVs, the company still has yet to release one. A year ago Toshiba also said it’s planning on investing in OLED panels. Sony is betting on OLED’s eventual domination of the display market, but it’s also heavily invested in LCD.

However, Panasonic, which owns the plasma TV market, doesn’t anticipate LCD or plasma TVs fading out anytime soon.

OLED TVs on display at CES

(Credit:
Sonybmg.com)

Comes With Music customers will have total access to the music of Alicia Keys as well as every other Sony BMG artist free for a full year.

“We think this business model will encourage users to sample a wide range of material, expand their musical tastes, and listen to more music than ever before,” said Thomas Hesse, Sony BMG’s President of Global Digital Business.

Should the concept of supplying year-long all-you-can-eat music catch on, other device makers wishing to gain access to music may be forced to adopt similar services.

Sony BMG, one of the four top recording companies, announced Tuesday that it has partnered with Nokia to make its music catalog available on select Nokia devices. After buying one of the devices, users will get unlimited free access to the music of Alicia Keys, the Foo Fighters or any Sony BMG artist for a full year.

The concept behind Nokia’s new music service “Comes with Music” is starting to catch on with the major music labels.

Sources told CNET News.com last month that Apple has discussed a similar offer with the music labels, adding that the concept behind Comes With Music is not exclusive to Nokia.

This is believed to be the labels’ deepest foray into free music, and is reflective of the industry’s attempt to find new business models that can compete with piracy, shrinking CD sales, and iTunes.

What is groundbreaking about these deals–Universal Music Group was first among the labels to join the service–is that Nokia users can download any song from Sony BMG and keep the music for the rest of their lives. There is no ceiling on the number of songs and the music doesn’t disappear at the end of the year.

Nokia is expected to launch the Comes With Music service in the second half of the year.

During the 12 months of the offer, users will be able to transfer their Comes With Music library to a PC as well as to a new Nokia handheld, but they won’t be able to transfer it to iPods or other non-compatible devices. At the end of the year, Nokia users will have the choice of acquiring new music by either purchasing downloads from the Nokia Music store or joining its subscription service.

“We don’t have the Microsoft patent promise that Novell provides. We can’t provide that with rPath Linux,” Marshall told this ZDNet blogger. “It takes a long time for people to overcome their historical biases. ”

I have to think that Novell or Microsoft are going to make an investment or acquisition of rPath in the near future. Otherwise rPath sold out way too easily.

While I am not shocked that rPath is working with Novell instead of continuing with their own Linux flavor, I am completely shocked that Billy Marshall, rPath CEO and former Red Hat bigshot sales guy is citing the Microsoft patent protection as the reason why. Nothing is said about Suse being better in any way. Instead its about this unproven patent protection.

rPath’s Appliance Builder has been running its own Linux since the company’s inception but it doesn’t come with the legal peace-of-mind guarantee offered by Novell, he said.
Despite Linux’s widespread acceptance, potential legal issues still keep customers up at night, the former Red Hat sales exec said.

Paula Rooney at ZDnet reported on today’s announcement that rPath has entered a pact with Novell that makes creating a virtual appliance easier for developers.

Citing three unnamed sources, TechCrunch reported that Yahoo has paid about $150 million for the start-up and will announce the deal Thursday or Friday.

Yahoo will announce that it has acquired Maven Networks, a video-hosting startup, according to a report in the blog TechCrunch.

Cambridge, Mass.-based Maven Neworks helps media companies present video content on their Web sites. Among the company’s customers are Fox News, CBS Sports and CNET Networks, parent company of News.com.

A Yahoo spokesperson declined to comment on “rumor and speculation.” Representatives from Maven could not be reached for comment.

HD DVD players fared even worse–player unit sales dropped 13 percent from January to February, and 65 percent from February to March–which was expected. Toshiba stopped production of HD DVD units in February, and the format’s promotional group disbanded in March.

Looks like it wasn’t the HD DVD/Blu-ray battle that was keeping potential customers away from high-definition video players after all.

Standalone Blu-ray player unit sales in the U.S. decreased 40 percent from January to February and saw a very slight increase (2 percent) between February and March, according to NPD.

To that point, sales of significantly less expensive upconverting DVD players have actually increased 5 percent over the first quarter of 2008, compared with the same quarter a year ago. Standard DVD player sales dropped 39 percent over the same period.

So what does this mean for Blu-ray player vendors? Why haven’t sales experienced any sort of substantial uptick without a competitor? Prices offer one clue. Blu-ray player prices were at their peak for the year in mid-March, around $400. During the holiday shopping season the average price had been closer to $300.

The NPD Group released some of its retail sales tracking data Wednesday that showed sales of Blu-ray standalone players (not a
PlayStation 3, combo player, or PC with Blu-ray drive) had mostly decreased since the beginning of the year.

Blu-ray player prices are going to have to drop dramatically, to around $200 probably, to make themselves more attractive to consumers outside of the early adopter/home theater enthusiast crowd. Sony, one of the largest producers of Blu-ray players, says $200 players aren’t likely until next year at the earliest.

But more likely is what NPD’s high-def video analysts have been harping on for a while: that DVD is “good enough” for most consumers. And that the picture offered by a Blu-ray Disc and accompanying player doesn’t appear so overwhelmingly better than a standard DVD and an upconverting player that many consumers can’t justify the dramatically increased cost.

LG Chocolate 3

(Credit:
Verizon Wireless)

It turns out that we were slightly off when we said the LG Chocolate 3 would be out on July 14. Verizon just announced today that the Chocolate flip phone will actually hit the retail shelves a full day early on July 13 (In Verizon retail stores, Circuit City, as well as the online store). The LG Chocolate 3 will also be the marquee music phone for Verizon’s new V Cast Music with Rhapsody deal. Indeed, with a 3.5mm headset jack, stereo Bluetooth, stereo speakers, and a built-in FM transmitter, Verizon hopes for the Chocolate 3 to be a full-blown music handset. Other features include a microSD card slot, a 1GB of internal memory, a 2-megapixel camera, VZ Navigator support, V Cast Video support, plus it’s the first Verizon phone to feature “Dashboard”, a Flash-based portal that delivers multimedia information to the phone. The LG Chocolate 3 will be available for $129.99 after a $50 mail-in rebate and a two-year service agreement.

As announced last week, Digg relaunched its DiggBar feature late Tuesday, making it something that only appears for registered users, who are now able to turn it off completely. That new option shows up in Digg’s user settings panel which means users can choose whether they feel like using it.

The new DiggBar is slightly smaller than the old one.

Registered Digg users who want to remove, or add back in, the DiggBar can now do so from the settings menu.

(Credit:
CNET)

Along with the change, the company has also adjusted the DiggBar’s behavior once you leave the site to go read a story. For one it’s smaller, in an attempt to take up less space on sites you’re visiting. Digg has also “temporarily” removed the view count, which showed users how many times the story had been read by Digg users.

(Credit:
CNET Networks)

John Quinn, Digg’s vice president of engineering, says the removal of the view count was done simply because the actual tracking for that was being done on the DiggBar itself, and without counting clicks from unregistered Digg users (who will no longer be seeing the DiggBar) the number was no longer accurate. The company has undoubtedly been tracking the number of outgoing clicks a story gets for years (albeit internally), but did not design the view count to feed from that metric. I, for one found it one of the most useful features, since you could see how many views a story had received, regardless of the number of Diggs it had.

The technology, based on something called Probabilistic Latent Semantic Indexing (PDF), scours an organization’s e-mail traffic and constructs a graph of social network interactions illustrating employee activity. If a worker suddenly stops socializing online, abruptly shifts alliances within the organization, or starts developing an unhealthy interest in “sensitive topics,” the system detects it and alerts investigators.

Most corporate security efforts focus on electronic threats from the outside, even through insiders with access to sensitive information can pose a greater threat to an organization, according to researchers at the Air Force Institute of Technology at Wright Patterson Air Force Base in Ohio. Alienated individuals who display a secret interest in suspicious topics but never let on by communicating with others are the most likely to be an insider threat, the researchers say. The program could prevent security breaches, sabotage, and even terrorist activity at multinational corporations and military organizations alike, according to the article.

Here’s another reason to get off that antisocial kick and get with the networking.

And don’t think that just because you’re the boss you’re off the hook.
The team tested Enron’s e-mail archive and uncovered several individuals who represented potential insider threats. Granted, none of them were the bosses who had done all the damage, but the researchers were confident that with full access and by turning a “domain on its ear” the software would ferret out potential malefactors and whistleblowers alike.

The Air Force is developing a data-mining technology meant to root out disaffected insiders based on their e-mail activity–or lack thereof, according to an article in this month’s International Journal of Security and Networks.

(Credit:
AFIT)

Realizing this, DoubleClick, which used to be a public company, but was then acquired by a private equity firm, was estimated to incur roughly $30 million to $60 million in profits each year.

Why, you ask? As it stands, DoubleClick’s latest revenue figures for 2007 were estimated at $365 million and it has been operating at an approximate profit margin of 10 percent to 20 percent over the past decade.

Now that the Google-DoubleClick deal has been approved by European lawmakers, the online giant has finally taken control over one of the most important display advertising firms in the world. And while some are calling this a great day for Google, I’m not so quick to agree.

If you ask me, Google made a mistake.

I simply don’t know how anyone can say the Google-DoubleClick deal was good for Sergey, Larry, and Eric. And if you look at the numbers and what Google is actually adding in this deal, it looks even worse.

Assuming those figures, I think it would be fair to say that we can take an average of both companies’ revenue growth and project that forward, creating a 50 percent (for ease of math) growth in revenue each year in DoubleClick’s revenue.

Let’s consult the numbers:

Sounds better, right? If so, consider the fact that even at that point, the company wouldn’t see a profitable return on its investment for about 15 years. Still not too great.

Sure, that may sound counterintuitive considering almost every Wall Street analyst and tech pundit is doing all they can to pump up this deal and make it look better than it is, but I think that’s not only ridiculous, but extremely foolhardy.

The Google-DoubleClick deal was a mistake from a financial perspective. It’s as simple as that.

Assuming that, the profitable return on investment could be reduced by about 7 years, making it possible for Google to recoup its money by 2016 or slightly later.

But amid all of this number crunching, you also need to consider the fact that Google should be able to increase DoubleClick’s revenue by a good amount. From 2004 to 2007, DoubleClick’s revenue grew by about $75 million, representing a 25 percent growth over that period. That said, Google has enjoyed extraordinary growth over the past few years and actually witnessed a 67 percent growth in ad revenue in 2006 and slightly less in 2007.

Google decided it would pay DoubleClick $3.1 billion for the rights to the DoubleClick name and all of its accounts. In essence, it was a full acquisition. On paper, $3.1 billion certainly doesn’t look like a major amount of cash, especially when you’re Google, but consider the fact that that figure is the most the company ever paid for another firm and the chances of it recouping it anytime soon are slim to none.

What, exactly, makes this such a great day for Google? Is it because it can solidify its position as the world’s premier online ad firm? If so, I thought it already was: Google’s total share of online advertising revenue before the DoubleClick deal was over 60 percent and no company was even close. If it wasn’t that, was it because Google finally had a leg up in the display ad business where it has floundered for years? Possibly. But considering that DoubleClick only generated about $365 million in revenue last year, I just don’t think this is a major step forward for the company.

Taking all of those numbers together, who can possibly say Google made a good deal with DoubleClick? Sure, the possibilities of controlling online advertising are enormous, but the company most certainly made a mistake in its valuation.

Assuming outstanding corporate synergy and proper management of the details, there’s no reason to suggest Google can’t reduce operating expenses by about 50 percent to 75 percent (an average figure for many combined efforts) and thus increase its profit margin on the new division by the same factor. If it can do just that, the profit margin could increase to well over 60 percent, thus allowing Google to enjoy an annual profit of about $200 million.

And it’s for that reason that Google will not only rue the day it acquired DoubleClick for that price, but will need to find a way to turn the tide and somehow increase its business by an astounding level to make shareholders happy.

The person behind the video describes the process: “This is a prototype of a FM modulated plasma arc speaker/tweeter. Have since built this circuit on a custom PCB & made an improved vertical discharge setup, using tungsten-tipped electrodes (see my other videos). This stops the plasma hopping about and causing the distortion you can hear…”

Neat!

Cruising around YouTube, I found “Plasma Speaker/Singing Arc,” an intriguing little video of a homemade “speaker” that makes sound by directly ionizing air.

It’s not exactly high-fidelity, but it shows there are still a few tinkerers out there thinking about something other than the
iPod.

Back in the early 1980s, there was a high-end speaker using this technology, the Hill Plasmatronic. (It sold for something like $8,000 a pair.) The plasma tweeter was mated with conventional midrange and woofer drivers; the treble from 700Hz up was produced by a ball of ionized gas. The massless tweeter was hailed as state of the art and has never been surpassed. I listened to a pair of them back in the day and mostly remember loving the tweeter and hating the speaker. You can find used Plasmatronics every now and then on the Web. Definitely a cult item.