F.C.C. Weighs Treating Video Sites Like Cable Companies - Brian Stelter via NYTimes.com

The FCC is likely to let the genii out of th bottle, and redefine who is a Multichannel Video Programming Distributor, or MVPDs, now effectively limited to the linear TV players like Comcast and DirecTV. If the rules are changed to include streaming video services like Hulu and YouTube, the landscape of TV will never be the same:

Brian Stelter via NYTimes.com

Major distributors like Comcast and Time Warner Cable want the definition of M.V.P.D. to remain rather narrow, to include only those who provide the transmission path for programming, like themselves.

Some broadcasters, however, want the definition to be broadened to include online video sites, because then the sites would be subject to the same rules as cable operators, called retransmission consent, and would have to pay fees for their station signals. A number of online TV start-ups, including the Barry Diller-backed Aereo, are trying to sidestep these rules.

Jack Perry of Syncbak, which helps stations simulcast their signals on the Web, said his company would be able to grow more rapidly if the F.C.C. adopted a “21st-century definition of M.V.P.D.’s.”

“The impact could be huge,” he said. Still other stakeholders, including trade groups that represent giants like Google, Microsoft, Amazon and Netflix, have said that the F.C.C. should take more time before deciding.

Yeah, some large players want to avoid paying fees for rebroadcasting, and to possibly limit the entrance of new start-ups.

And the cable and satellite operators want to freeze time, and delay the inevitable, which will turn those companies’ product into a single commodity: basically bringing the Internet to our homes, through which we will be able to access whatever streaming content we want from whatever sources we want: ‘over the top’ TV. Comcast and Time Warner Cable do not want to be competing directly with Apple, Amazon, and Google, but it is in the best interest of the average person is the FCC allows this change to happen.

Just In The Nook Of Time?

Microsoft settles some patent disputes with Barnes & Noble’s Nook division by investing $300M into the company. The market cheers. Am I missing something?

Microsoft’s Nook Deal, Aiming at Amazon, Sets Up Battle in E-Books - Michael De La Merced and Julie Bosman via NYTimes.com

Microsoft agreed to invest hundreds of millions of dollars in Barnes & Noble’s Nook division on Monday, giving the bookstore chain stronger footing in the hotly contested electronic book market and creating an alliance that could intensify the fight over the future of digital reading.

The deal, which gives Microsoft a 17.6 percent stake, values the Nook unit at $1.7 billion — roughly double Barnes & Noble’s entire market value as of last Friday — and bolsters the bookseller’s efforts to make its digital business the linchpin of its future growth.

The announcement was the latest surprise in an unpredictable and rapidly shifting e-book market, which is crowded with technology giants trying to chip away at Amazon.com’s dominance. Amazon once had close to 90 percent of the e-book market, but since then, a handful of players, including Apple, Google and now Microsoft, have edged in.

So, B & N is a bookseller, with hundreds of stores. Remember when Borders went bankrupt? And Tower Records? The days of blazing a new trail in retail by undifferentiated sales are done.

Stowe Boyd via stoweboyd.com

Successful retail in the US is falling into two categories: companies selling their own products, like Apple, and focused specialty providers, like Trader Joe’s and Uniqlo. Otherwise: a wasteland. And soon we will be dismantling all the big box stores.

So, this is a bail out. B & N needs big cash to compete against Kindle, because Amazon is underpricing the device to hold onto the market in the face of growing market penetration of iPad and iPhone as better mobile reading devices. Microsoft, who completely missed the ereader market and who is fighting Apple and Google in the smart device marketplace, hope that a strategic partnership with B & N around the Nook can help, but how?

Unmentioned is the idea that some soon-to-market version of the Nook will be a Windows 8 device, instead of running Nook’s proprietary OS. And a spin-out of the Nook division into a new company, called Nook, with even more cash from Microsoft. Otherwise the whole thing makes no sense.

Google Close To Launching "Drive"

parislemon:

Amir Efrati reports that Google is close to launching a new product called “Drive”, a would-be Dropbox/Box/iCloud/etc competitor.

Before I left TechCrunch full time, I was hot on the trail of this project. Yes, Google had a Google Drive project that will killed off years ago, but a new one emerged last year and was being extensively used internally once again. 

Last I heard, this new Google Drive was said to be much better than the one that was killed off (which was killed off because many thought it “sucked”). It included a web component as well as Dropbox-like software piece that runs on your desktop. Mobile will be key as well, obviously. 

The most recent thing I heard supports what Efrati is reporting: that the prices are going to be more competitive than Dropbox.

It’s a commodity, so ultimately it should be built in to the operating system (on the device side) and approaching zero per month (on the server side). What is odd is that Amazon hasn’t launched a competitor.

There was a time, not long ago, when you could sum up each company quite neatly: Apple made consumer electronics, Google ran a search engine, Amazon was a web store, and Facebook was a social network. How quaint that assessment seems today.

- Farhad Manjoo, The Great Tech War Of 2012

Manjoo says all four giants — Apple, Google, Facebook, and Amazon — will all ‘win’, which is just another way of saying that 2012 is just a battlefield, not the entire war.

Facebook's iPad App Works Kind of Like an Operating System - Technology - The Atlantic Wire

Adam Clark Estes

It took months of waiting, a couple of false starts and a whole lot of speculation, but Facebook has finally launched an iPad app. However, the upgrade is much more than a tablet-friendly version of the website. Facebook is also carrying over its developer platform to mobile. This means that all of the slick new class of Facebook apps that Mark Zuckerberg announced a couple of weeks ago at the f8 developers conference will be more integrated into the mobile experience. The specific details are a little bit confusing at first as Facebook is spoon-feeding the functionality to users, but we can already tell: Facebook is starting to function like an independent mobile operating system.

[…]

As [Facebook’s Luke] Shepard explains [here], Facebook apps will now be fully integrated into the mobile experience as their own apps within the Facebook app. If you receive a notification or request from a friend in a compatible app, tapping the update will switch to the mobile app if you have it on your phone or take you to Apple’s app store to download it. Shepard uses Words with Friends as an example. Let’s say your pal plays the word “quixotic”—a high scorer, by the way—you’ll receive a notification and tapping it will take your straight to the app to make your move. Facebook is also extending Credits to the mobile apps so you can also buy things within their framework. Again, it’s like its own little operating system within Apple’s iOS.

Facebook is headed toward a direct confrontation with Apple and Google (and Amazon and Microsoft) for the future of computing: the social operating system.

Apple certainly shouldn’t let Facebook create an independent app store.

When is Facebook going to develop its own tablet?

Amazon appears, if anything, to be following Apple’s lead, not Google’s. The company’s statements following the Fire’s release indicate the device will only accept apps from Amazon’s own Appstore for Android, not directly from software makers or Google’s Marketplace.

Digital ecosystems: Open fire | The Economist (via mediafuturist)

A Potential Suitor for Hewlett-Packard - NYTimes.com

The case for Oracle buying HP: “Analysts reckon H.P. will pull in $13 billion of operating profit in the 2012 fiscal year. Add in a fraction more from Autonomy, and that would bring Oracle a 16 percent annual return on its total investment off the bat. Oracle might be able to squeeze out some costs. If it cut 10 percent of H.P.’s selling, general and administrative expenses and its research and development costs, that would bring $1.6 billion in annual savings. Throw those in, and pro forma for the 2012 fiscal year Oracle’s return on investment would be 18 percent.

Along the way, it is possible that H.P. could slightly ease the burden for an acquirer by selling businesses it bought last year in its $1.2 billion purchase of Palm. The mobile operating system may be in limbo, but the related patents are a hot commodity.”

Yesterday I read that Amazon is angling to buy Palm, so that cash is looking solid.

How Can Paiche Be ‘New’ And ‘Prehistoric’ At The Same Time?

A ‘new’ freshwater fish is getting a buzz in South Florida, the Paiche, or arapaima, is popping up in hip restaurants and being toured as a sustainable alternative to sea bass and other fish.

Paiche is an air breathing fish, which makes it susceptible to harpooning, because they tend to remain near the water’s surface, where they hunt and emerge often to breathe with a distinctive coughing noise. I am hoping that the claims of sustainable farming are true:

Ina Paive Cordle, Seafood Sensation

A new freshwater fish has landed at select South Florida restaurants, offering diners a rewarding taste sensation and chefs a delectable and sustainable alternative to rival the popular Chilean sea bass.

The Amazone paiche (pronounced pie-ché) gives the health and environmentally conscious a farm-raised option for an endangered wild, prehistoric Peruvian fish, considered one of the largest river fish in the world.

[…]

Artisanfish is the exclusive importer for the Americas of the Amazone brand of paiche. Amazone, which is part of a privately held Peruvian business group, is the only company aqua farming the fish, free of chemicals, hormones or contaminants, and with an aim to restore the species, Burstein said.

[…]

While paiche is just making its debut on plates locally, it is already a hit in France, the biggest market so far for Amazon paiche, he said.

Restoring the species because people have been hunting it to extinction, and it has been protected by International law for 20 years. I worry that the fish becoming the new hot thing will lead to a new wave of overhunting.

(Source: foodte-ch)