Beginning this fall, Microsoft plans to offer a new wireless information and messaging service that will run on evolving smart watch devices. The software company’s MSN Direct division says the service, which costs $9.95 a month, is geared to deliver customized information to a new category of watches. MSN Direct said the service would provide consumers with information including news, weather, sports scores, stock quotes, movies, dining, and games. Microsoft is expected to leverage some of its original content and existing media licensing arrangements in order to provide the data for the wireless watch information service. [InternetNews.com]
Author Archives: Steve Mays
Mary Quass on radio and the Internet
Mary Quass is a really smart, really nice lady that’s been very successful in the radio business. I haven’t seen the full interview yet but today’s issue of RAIN pulled some excerpts from the May 26, 2003 issue of Radio Ink Magazine:
“This (Internet) is the first technology to mean that anybody can have a radio station as good as, if not better, than what’s out there today — and it has nothing to do with a license. I want to be in and out of the business by then… “
“When I go to the gym to work out, you know what I do? I listen to MP3s on my Rio. If I grew up with radio and I’m listening to MP3s, why should we expect young people to listen to radio when their lives are so packed with other things? That’s why, when the Internet becomes wireless, I want to be there.’.. “
“Radio has taken for granted that we will always have 96 percent of the adult population listening to this medium in a week. But we know that response rates and that kind of stuff are declining — not so much because Arbitron’s methodology necessarily is flawed or archaic, as much as it is that people want what they want when they want it.”
“It’s all about the product. If you have a great product and it’s in demand, people will use that product. If we don’t differentiate our product when the Internet becomes wireless, it will be a whole new ball game for all of us. We had better be ready, or the frustration we feel will only grow.”
You think?
Random thoughts
Tonight I backed up three of the (how many?) websites I’ve created. I find the very idea of “backing up” very… satisfying. The thing I liked least about what I used to do and most about what I do now is that at the end of the day (literally, not figuratively), something exists that didn’t before. Now, you might argue that web pages are a bit intangible by their very nature. But you can look at them and show them to others and…once you’ve burned them to a CD…hold them in your hand. A few hundred megabites that represents *hundreds* of hours of work and thought (and whatever creativity I could muster). My best efforts. Tomorrow I’ll stop by the bank and slide the CD’s into a safe deposit box. And if the servers at MyHosting.com or Learfield go up in smoke… I’ll upload my files to a new server and all those hours live on. KBOA: The Early Years, The Basement Diaries, Amberjack Landing, *this* blog… one day they didn’t exist, the next day they did. They do. They will.
My previous job was to persuade other people to do things they usually didn’t want to do. To talk them into it. To check to see if they did the things they were “supposed to do.” And agreed to do. Nothing new was created unless I was able to convince someone else that it should be. That’s why “managers” make more money than the people they manage. It’s a nearly impossible job that isn’t very satisfying, even if you do it really well. And –here’s the best part– the people you’re paid to manage resent you for trying to do it (as they should) and long for they day they get to be in charge and manage others. Talk about punishment fitting the crime. But I’ve escaped, like Tim Robbins in Shawshank Redemption. If there were a book, we might call it “Life After Management: Clawing My Way Back Down the Corporate Ladder.” A little long, maybe.
Tom Jones Syndrome
Barb warns you must be of a certain age to appreciate this. And we are. Halley has more.
“Doc, I can’t stop singing ‘The Green, Green Grass of Home.'”
“That sounds like Tom Jones syndrome.”
“Is it common?”
“It’s not unusual.”
Stock market prediction
Douglas Rushkoff’s “official and not-to-be-wagered-upon stock market prediction is a 10-15% rise in the S&P by the end of February, and then freefall down to 6500 before the war starts. Then, a blip up with that sense of certainty that always accompanies a good ariel bombardment, and a blip back down when we realize that in a globally networked economy, war is bad for business, too.”