Posts tagged Secret
Why the iPad is Big Cable’s Secret Weapon Against Its Own Irrelevance
Jan 12th
We’ve been hearing it for a few years now. With the proliferation of Web video and the continued improvement of its quality, the cable business is totally screwed. Many of the most popular shows are streamed on Hulu or the network’s website the next day and if you never get around to checking out a buzzed-about series, it’s okay. The entire thing will be on Netflix before you know it. There’s a small but growing contingent of cord-cutters, as well as a new generation of those who just won’t ever subscribe to cable in the first place.
They may not like to publicly admit it, but cable company executives realize that this looming threat is real, even if it’s not overwhelming just yet. That’s why they’ve taken a series of defensive measures to ensure they they don’t get left in the dust. Lately, it’s the iPad and tablets in general that are serving as big cable’s next battleground for the attention of consumers.
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As much television content as people can manage to find online, one thing they can’t easily get their hands on without pirating it is new episodes of HBO shows, many of which are wildly popular. Thanks to HBO’s established relationship with cable companies, that’s not likely to change anytime soon. Even the premium channel’s beloved iPad requires a cable subscription to access. No, you can’t sign up for an HBO Go account and pay $20 per month to watch “Game of Thrones” and “Boardwalk Empire.” You have to have cable.
This week, Showtime joined its premium cable channel competitor in this space by launching its Showtime Anytime app for the iPad. The application offers access to the channel’s library of original content but, again, you need to be signed up for Verizon FiOS or AT&T’s U-Verse to access it.
Cable behemoth Comcast has wasted no time expanding its online and mobile offerings under its XFinity brand (formerly Fancast). Most recently, the company launched a pilot program for something called AnyPlay, which will let subscribers stream live TV to their iPad or Motorola Xoom tablet. This enables people to tune in from anywhere in their home, even if somebody else in the household is currently watching a different program on the bigger screen. This is something the company started testing out last year in an effort to one-up online streaming sites like Hulu and Netflix.
Offerings like this make a cable subscription much more convenient and worthwhile to certain consumers, despite its rising prices and the existence of a host of Web-only content alternatives. For now cable companies retain the upper hand, with millions of subscribers and increasingly aggressive innovation designed to help it avoid the fate of other pre-Web media industries. Whether these efforts succeed in the long run remains to be seen. If not, there’s always money to be made in selling access to the Internet itself.
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Seo In Young’s Secret to Preventing Puffy Face After Late Night Ramen? – Soompi
Dec 20th
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Seo In Young's Secret to Preventing Puffy Face After Late Night Ramen?
Soompi If so, you may want to take Seo In Young's advice—Drink lots of milk with it. On the December 19 episode of KBS “Star Life Theater,” Seo In Young showed off her hotel room full of late night snacks, particularly cup noodles. … |
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Geeky Secret Santa Suggestions for Your Office
Dec 7th
For work or play, and sometimes both, here’s a collection of uncanny gifts perfect for the tech-savvy guy or gal in your life!
1. Smartphone Touchscreen Gloves
$19.99 on Amazon.com
Don’t freeze your hand or fingertips just because you hav…
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Searching for a Secret Millionaire – MarketWatch (press release)
Nov 28th
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Searching for a Secret Millionaire
MarketWatch (press release) Search Laboratory provided the charity with free Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) recommendations, to help improve its online position. After taking these recommendations on board and implementing them, Simon on the Streets' website leapt up the search … |
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The Big Secret About Cats On The Internet
Nov 23rd
New research from Bit.ly shows that people share more links about dogs than cats. Using their internal search engine, Bit.ly data scientists looked for the number of pages with content containing the term “cat” and “dog.” They included the plural and any variations. While it’s clear that dogs are the most popular animal on the Internet, the data shows that the majority of people want to cuddle multiple dogs at one time, whereas people would rather cuddle with one cat at a time. What makes people want to share links about dogs more than links about cats?
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This data counters the fact that viral videos like “I love every cat” and the horrendously addictive “Welcome to Kitty City” proliferate on the Internet.
Why Do Dogs Rule The Internet?
Sam Gosling, a psychologist at the University of Texas in Austin and his graduate student, Carson Sandy, conducted a study to determine the differences between cat people and dog people. They surveyed 4,565 individuals via the Web, asking them whether they were dog people, cat people, neither or both. The results may shed further insight into why links about dogs are shared more often than links about cats.
Just on the basis of the nature of dogs being more sociable than cats, one might expect that the personalities of dog lovers would also reflect higher sociability. The results showed that dog people were generally about 15 percent more extroverted and 13 percent more agreeable, both of which dimensions are associated with social orientation. In addition, dog people were 11 percent more conscientious than cat people. “Conscientiousness” is a tendency to show self-discipline, to complete tasks, and aim for achievement. The trait shows a preference for planned rather than spontaneous behavior.
Could it be that more people share links about dogs because dogs, like their owners, are just friendlier?
Image via LOLCats.
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Google X: A Secret Lab Where Google Plays With Crazy Ideas & Robots
Nov 14th
Light bulbs that connect to the internet? Elevators that reach into space? Robots that show up for work in your place? These are a few of about 100 ideas that Google is reportedly toying with inside Google X, the name of a “top-secret lab” somewhere in the Bay Area. The New York Times…
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Know The Secret: Productive SEO Is Cheap – Eva-News
Oct 24th
 PR Web |
Know The Secret: Productive SEO Is Cheap
Eva-News Search engine optimization or SEO will be the hottest approach to drive specific targeted visitors for your website. Maximizing the advantages of your very well optimized website can you yield a number of earnings to the marketer. On the other hand, … The Rhoads Group, An Award Winning Advertising Agency Launches Tampa Florida … |
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Is Simplicity the Secret of Amazon Web Services Success?
Oct 17th
According to Randy Bias of Cloudscaling, Amazon is closing in on $1 billion a year in revenue for AWS, and he predicts that it’s on track to be the biggest infrastructure and hosting company in the world. There’s little in its way, says Bias, because its competitors don’t understand its formula. Actually, it’s worse than that – Bias says that the reason most people don’t understand why Amazon is succeeding is because they don’t want to.
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It sounds counter-intuitive to say that Amazon’s competitors don’t want to understand its secrets for success. What Bias is actually saying is that Amazon’s competitors don’t want to admit that its simplicity would be the reason it’s successful. Complexity is far too profitable.
Putting Control in the Hands of Developers
So why is AWS succeeding? Bias says that the secret to success for Amazon is not what it lets you do, it’s what they don’t let you do. More accurately, Bias says Amazon’s secret is “simplicity and reduction of choice.” Amazon reduced customer choice, simplified the network model, and forced constraints on the developers that “effectively changed the game for the next generation of applications.”
To some, it looks like Amazon was screwing up by not proving a replica of the enterprise network in the cloud. Bias says that actually works to Amazon’s advantage. And its customers’. “AWS’ success is because they ignored the prevailing pattern in enterprise data centers.”
Bias says that Amazon has actually empowered developers by forcing constraints. “Amazon EC2 is a fabulous service that empowers developers by reducing and systematically removing choice. Fit the app to the infrastructure, not the infrastructure to the app, says AWS. But why? It may not seem apparent, but the reason Amazon has simplified and reduced choice is to keep their own costs down.”
Simpler is Better
I’m not sure I agree entirely with Bias’ post, but I think there’s some truth to it. I also wonder whether Amazon actually sees it this way. My take on AWS was that Amazon decided to try to make unused infrastructure work for it, then realized what an opportunity cloud services offer. AWS started with EC2 as a stripped down service because that was what they could launch – just as they did with Amazon.com in the early days. It don’t think the AWS team started with the idea that the constraints would be what made AWS successful.
I’d be interested to hear from AWS users and developers on this one. Do you agree that AWS’ “secret sauce” is simplicity?
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