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Some major telcos have started lobbying our elected officials for the right to create a two-tiered Internet, “regular” and “premium.”  You guessed it, not only would the telcos get to charge everyone more for the faster service, they’d also get to deny the faster service to competitors.  Ouch! As you can imagine, the prospect of Continue Reading →

Outlook didn’t just crash, it crashed and burned.  Nobody I know had ever seen this kind of a problem before.  I called my IT guru and described the problem–dead silence on the other end of the phone.  This was bad, and I knew it was going to get worse. The nuclear option: a low-level hard Continue Reading →

Cable and Congress are at it again. During a hearing that was supposed to be about indecency, Federal Communications Commission Chairman Kevin Martin brought up a study which “concludes that purchasing cable programming in a more a la carte manner in fact could be economically feasible and in consumers’ best interest.” The idea of a Continue Reading →

As many of you know, I am a composer/producer by trade.  One of my personal heroes is Michael Brecker.  He “set the bar” for an entire generation of saxophone players (myself included).  Attempting to copy his improvisational style is a “rite of passage” for aspiring musicians young and old. You are not unfamiliar with his Continue Reading →

Mae West once said, “When choosing between two evils, I always like to try the one I’ve never tried before.” So here’s something you can do over the weekend just for fun. Create a blog page with one of those inexpensive blogging services like blogger or typepad. Subscribe to a bunch of relevant RSS (Really Continue Reading →

We hear the content industry and rights holders complaining about piracy everyday: file sharing, physical piracy, theft-of-services, derivative works, etc. But has anyone stopped to think about how many times consumers are asked to pay for the same content? Computer files may be the final form factor, but that is not stopping media companies from Continue Reading →

Last week we lived in a 1,000-channel universe. Since the mid-1980s we have been channel surfing to our hearts’ content, searching for just the right program at just the right time.  We’ve heard critics (old and new) say stuff like: “I’ve got 500 channels, but nothing to watch.”  Hell, even Andy Warhol weighed in on Continue Reading →

“If a man can write a better book, preach a better sermon, or make a better mousetrap than his neighbor, though he build his house in the woods, the world will make a beaten path to his door.” This quote is attributed to Ralph Waldo Emerson, an author, philosopher, thinker and Unitarian minister. He was Continue Reading →

Did Steve Jobs finally screw up?  After all, if there was such a thing as the portable video business wouldn’t everyone would have been walking around with a Sony Watchman for the last 20 years?  No and no. Apple’s new video iPod probably won’t capture the imagination of consumers quite the way its audio predecessor Continue Reading →

… and my predictions are always right! Actually, predictions are always wrong–so does that mean that this one is right? This paradox may be fun for wordplay. But it is really maddening when smart people start making predictions that are absolute nonsense to people schooled-in-the-art. There was a headline in Sunday’s New York Post that Continue Reading →