agentfresco.com

LOS ANGELES–News of DRM’s death has been greatly exaggerated, according to an executive with the Recording Industry Association of America.

Last January, when Sony BMG became the last major recording company to sell DRM-free tracks at Amazon, plenty of observers considered the technology buried. Since then, a growing number of online stores have begun offering at least some open MP3s, including Walmart.com, Zune’s Marketplace, Amazon, as well as iTunes.

Hughes also said that DRM must change so that the public sees it less as a sort of policeman that locks music a way. He would prefer a mode where consumers don’t notice DRM at all. “People just want music when they want it,” he said. “It’s about access. If they get that then they don’t care about DRM.”

At a time when the top recording companies appear to be phasing out digital rights management (DRM), the RIAA is predicting that the highly controversial software will make a comeback.

Fritz Attaway, executive vice president at the Motion Picture Association of America said: “We need DRM to show our customers the limits of the license they have entered into with us.”

Hughes just stated the obvious. DRM still exists; one can find it at iTunes, RealNetworks’ Rhapsody, and at free-music service SpiralFrog just to name a few. But his statement was startling because the top four music labels have seemingly been warming up to unprotected music files.

“I think it’s time to throw in the towel,” Samtani said. “These kids have too many ways to get around DRM.”

Not so fast, said Hughes, who predicted that DRM would reemerge in a big way. “I think there is going to be a shift,” he told the audience. “I think there will be a movement towards subscription services, and (that) will eventually mean the return of DRM.”

The RIAA's David Hughes sits next to former IFPI CEO Nic Garnett. To Garnett’s right is the MPAA's Fritz Attaway

Not everybody on the panel agreed. Rajan Samtani, director of business development at Digimarc Corp., a company that provides watermarking technology, said he worked for ContentGuard, a company that tries to help find less obtrusive ways to implement DRM.

(Credit:
Greg Sandoval/CNET News.com)

“(Recently) I made a list of the 22 ways to sell music, and 20 of them still require DRM,” said David Hughes, who heads up the RIAA’s technology unit, during a panel discussion at the Digital Hollywood conference. “Any form of subscription service or limited play-per-view or advertising offer still requires DRM. So DRM is not dead.”

For the full lineup of TechCrunch50 presenters for day one of the conference, go here.

Shyrk is making a platform for building demographically targeted online banking systems. Why I like it: Handling OPM (other people’s money) is always a good business, if you can find the code. This arms merchant to other OPM businesses is a level above that. LiveHit is a “social discovery platform” that promises to help users pull in information they should like from social networks they participate in–Friendfeed with more proactivity, perhaps. Good idea, hope it works. Yammer is Twitter for workgoups, based on the “What are you working on?” question. It’s like Socialcast, which I recently covered, but even simpler. Imindi says that it will learn to understand what you like and will suggest other people to you based on that. Lofty pitch. Can’t wait to see it. Me-trics plans to aggregate highly personal data, like financial and health care information, and feed it back to users with recommendations for smarter or healthier living. Fascinating. Terrifying. Fitbit needs to talk to Me-trics. It’s making a wireless, wearable sensor to monitor your physical activity all day. Postbox is a new desktop e-mail client that’s supposed to automatically categorize and tag your messages based on content and attachments. Likelihood for success in this business is low, but I would sure like to see a truly better e-mail client emerge. Note: Last year at TechCrunch40, another clever e-mail product, Xobni, was introduced. Fotonauts is a digital photography solution for consumers. It handles uploading, sharing, and social commentary around photos. Best way to grok it: It’s Wikipedia for your photo libraries. Clever and attractive. Tough market, though. Playce is building 3D virtual worlds for gaming based on mapping the real world, giving users what they call a “mirror world” for their playtime. Should make immersive gaming more casual, since users will already be familiar with the playground surroundings. Bad Spock not included. Birdpost is a social network and mapping service built for birders. Why I like it: The birding community is large, rich, and could really use better technology platforms to support the hobby. Only potential downside is that the demographic skews older, which could limit uptake.

Rafe’s 10 to watch from TechCrunch50

Bonus: the Jargon Award goes to DotSpots. First sentence of the blurb in the pitch book: “DotSpots brings the power of Wikipedia–the wisdom of the crowds–to every mem on the Web, and leverages automatic semantic match to distribute each contribution to every instance of that mem across the Web.”

There are 12 sessions for the TechCrunch50 pitches spread over three days. Here are my top picks for the ones to watch for this conference, based solely on the write-ups in the conference program. Hopefully the pitches will live up to, or surpass, the blurbs.

Bonus No. 2: Redundant Award goes to Otherinbox. It’s a tool for setting up extra in-boxes for when you sign up to Web sites or for commerce. Gmail already has this feature, and it’s free.

Although not every session gets a pick from me at this early stage, TechCrunch50 looks like it will be a very good launch conference. There are some creative ideas being presented here.

What do you think: should the next iPhone be called the “2G iPhone” or the “3G iPhone?” Or should Apple start using more descriptive model names and numbers for its products?

The better question might be, “Why is the name of the keystone product from the company with the world’s best branding even subject to debate?” And we wish we had an answer. The real problem here is that Apple products are effectively named by the community. Apple generally sticks with the most generic name possible–iPod, MacBook, iMac–and leaves it to the collective wisdom of the Internet to delineate the new ones from the old. For instance, the bulbous original iMac–with a built-in CRT monitor–is commonly referred to as the “bondi blue iMac,” while today’s sleek flat-panel version is generally known by its processor and screen size (”Core 2 Duo 24-inch iMac”). But to Apple, both the 1998 and 2008 iMacs are simply known as “the Apple iMac.” Not very SEO-friendly, as we’d say–especially if you’re looking for support or repair info online.

There’s near universal agreement that Steve Jobs is going to unveil the next iPhone at next week’s Worldwide Developers’ Conference keynote in San Francisco. Whether it’s next week, next month, or next year, however, it raises a thorny semantic question: what will it be called? Most wags are dubbing it “the 3G iPhone,” as it’s certain to include the high-speed 3G (third-generation) wireless capabilities missing on the original model. But it’s still going to be the second-generation iteration of the product–thus, “the 2G
iPhone.” Which one’s correct?

(Credit:
Apple)

Back to the iPhone–the new model will effectively be “the 2G iPhone with 3G wireless.” It will also undoubtedly be running the 2.0 software that Apple previewed earlier this year. But to really confuse matters, that 2.0 software upgrade will certainly be available to first-gen iPhones–so we’ll likely have millions of 1G iPhones with 2.5G wireless (EDGE) running the 2.0 software, as well as a new crop of 2G/3G/2.0 iPhones as well. In other words: read the fine print on those eBay listings very carefully when you see a good deal on an “iPhone 2.0.”

The sequel is imminent–but what will it be called?

To be sure, the
iPod line is broken into specific model types–the Shuffle, the Nano, the Classic, and so forth–but within those lines, the confusion persists. As a result, we have the generational (”G”) designation. If you’re iPod Nano has a plastic enclosure, it’s a 1G model; the 2G iPod Nano has a metal casing, but the same basic design; and the 3G “fat Nano”–the current generation–was the first one with video playback support. It can get pretty confusing–especially when compared to Apple’s software, which is blessed with triple decimal specificity (iTunes 7.6.2.9).

So, what will we call this thing? I think “3G iPhone” will probably be the most common terminology–it’s the term people are searching on Google. But it won’t really matter–for most people, the fact that it’s “the new iPhone” will be all the description that’s needed. Of course, things could get confusing once the third-generation iPhone eventually hits…but that’s a Wikipedia fight for another day.

Overall retail sales year over year (excluding gasoline, which doesn’t make a great holiday gift anyway) were down 2 percent in November and down 4 percent from December 1 to 24.

One of the first reports to surface doesn’t sound incredibly painful until specific categories–like electronics–are broken out. And then the hurt becomes obvious.

So-called luxury sales, including jewelry, were down more than 34 percent year over year. Clothing sales were down about 20 percent.

MasterCard Advisors, a unit of the credit card giant, released on Friday its SpendingPulse analysis of national retail and service sales for the holiday-shopping season.

Overall, e-commerce fared relatively well from November 1 to December 24. It was down just 2.3 percent, reflecting the overall national trend. That seems to be in line with Amazon.com’s positive report of its own sales.

Michael McNamara, a SpendingPulse vice president, didn’t mince words. “A difficult economic environment combined with unfavorable weather during the last week of shopping made 2008 one of the most challenging holiday shopping seasons in decades,” he said in a statement.

The electronics and appliance category, however, showed a 26 percent decline over 2007. This category will become more interesting when sales figures for specific types of electronics become available.

Over the next few days, a picture of holiday sales will begin to materialize.

Microsoft withdrew its offer to acquire Yahoo after increasing its $31-per-share cash-and-stock bid to $33. Yahoo evidently thought that too low–Microsoft Chief Executive Steve Ballmer said Yahoo wouldn’t go below $37.

Update 8:10 p.m. PDT: I added some detail about Yahoo’s financial performance and its claims of progress. Update 7:35 p.m. PDT: I added more detail about Microsoft’s maximum bid and Yahoo’s minimum requirement.

News.com Poll Microhoo fallout
What’s most likely to happen, now that Microsoft has abandoned its bid for Yahoo?

Microsoft just wasn’t willing to pay enough for Yahoo to make the deal worthwhile, the company said Saturday.

“From the beginning of this process, our independent board and our management have been steadfast in our belief that Microsoft’s offer undervalued the company and we are pleased that so many of our shareholders joined us in expressing that view,” Yahoo Chairman Roy Bostock said in a statement.

Yahoo, though, was unspecific about its plans.

Google gets stronger
Yahoo’s stock plummets
Microsoft tries to buy another company, like Facebook
Microsoft waits a while, then bids again for Yahoo
All of the above
None of the above

Bostock said Yahoo remains focused on pursuing unstated “strategic opportunities.” That covers a wide range of possibilities. No doubt shareholders will be interested to compare details with what Microsoft had to offer.

“With the distraction of Microsoft’s unsolicited proposal now behind us, we will be able to focus all of our energies on executing the most important transition in our history so that we can maximize our potential to the benefit of our shareholders, employees, partners, and users,” Yang said in a statement.

Yahoo claimed some successes, saying the company is working to improve ad volume and yield from those ads; reorganized to focus on its most promising areas; invested in the display-ad business and in catching up to Google in search-based text ads; and improved expense controls to improve profitability.

So what’s next? Yahoo has a number of options, all inevitably to be seen through the lens of the company’s stock price on Monday. Microsoft’s offer more than three months ago sent Yahoo’s stock up dramatically from $19.18 beforehand to $28.67 on Friday.

View results

It’s quite possible Microsoft will return again for another bid–particularly if Yahoo’s share price plunges and the purportedly loyal shareholders agitate for fast change. But Yahoo Chief Executive Jerry Yang was willing to call the Microhoo saga at an end.

Bostock also indicated that Yahoo thinks it can grow just fine on its own, even if he didn’t declare Yahoo restored to financial vigor. However, he didn’t share specifics about what’s next for the company.

“Yahoo is profitable, growing, and executing well on its strategic plan to capture the large opportunities in the relatively young online advertising market. Our solid results for the first quarter of 2008 and increased full year 2008 operating cash flow outlook reflect the progress the company is making,” he said.

Yahoo’s first quarter, though, certainly didn’t knock the ball out of the park, in stark contrast to Google’s results the week earlier. Yahoo reported net income of $542 million, but excluding a $401 million non-cash gain related to its stake in Alibaba Group, that was flat from a year earlier. The fundamentals of the Microsoft situation remained unchanged, and the stock didn’t budge.

The complete list

Want to download a Brad Pitt screen saver? What about images of Beyonce? If you’re using a site you’re not familiar with, you may want to reconsider.

Topping the list for male celebrities are Pitt and Justin Timberlake, while Beyonc? and Heidi Montag lead the women celebrities used.

According to McAfee’s new “riskiest celebrities in cyberspace” list, when searching for “Brad Pitt,” “Brad Pitt downloads,” or Brad Pitt wallpaper, screen savers, and pictures, Internet users experience an 18 percent chance of stumbling upon sites containing malicious code. This includes drive-by malware that can infect your PC without asking you to download anything. Such social engineering, once reserved for e-mail, is now being used to populate search results with fake sites for these personalities.

One site advertising Angelina Jolie downloads, for example, contained 978 hidden malware-infected wallpaper and photo downloads, said McAfee. A site dedicated to Jessica Alba linked to other bad sites, contained misleading offers to gather information and produced a high number of spam e-mails when an e-mail address was provided.

Brad Pitt
Beyonc?
Justin Timberlake
Heidi Montag
Mariah Carey
Jessica Alba
Lindsay Lohan
Cameron Diaz
George Clooney
Rihanna
Angelina Jolie
Fergie
David Beckham
Katie Holmes
Katherine Heigl

After reading McAfee's list, we were careful to download this shot of Brad Pitt from Warner Bros.' official Ocean's 12 movie site.

This is the second year McAfee has compiled the list. The information comes from its Site Advisor technology, which analyzes Web sites and ranks them as either safe for viewing or suspected of containing malicious content.

(Credit:
Warner Bros.)

Chu called the significant investment “very farsighted.”

The department will also be working with outside industries to find good projects to finance.

“It’ll be interesting to see what the market brings forward,” Rogers said Thursday.

(Credit:
Stanford University)

With these changes in place, the department should be able to begin offering loan guarantees under its previous loan guarantee program by late April or early May, Chu said, though some recipients may have to secure their own share of the financing or meet other conditions before their applications are approved. With the same financing conditions, the department should be offering loan guarantees under the stimulus legislation by early summer, Chu said.

WASHINGTON–Energy Secretary Steven Chu announced on Thursday a number of ways he will streamline the process by which the Energy Department distributes funding, with the goal of dispersing 70 percent of its funds from the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act by the end of 2010.

“Right now, to the best of my knowledge, it is not a slam dunk which technology is the right one,” he said.

“The goal is to begin making these investments in months, not years,” Chu said.

Steven Chu, now secretary of the Department of Energy, at his former lab at Stanford University.

Chu said he could not parse out specifically how much of that energy will come from which sources, but he said there are a few mature renewable sources that could help the country reach that goal, such as wind and photovoltaic energy.

To get the money out more quickly, Chu announced Thursday he is naming Matt Rogers as a senior adviser to implement the new department reforms. Rogers formerly served as a senior partner at McKinsey and worked with the energy industry for more than 20 years. He also served on the Obama transition team.

The changes Rogers will implement include rolling out appraisals of applications for loan guarantees, rather than waiting for the application deadline to evaluate them. Loan application forms will be simplified and the department will speed up loan underwriting by using outside partners.

The energy investments in the stimulus package intimately tie the reshaping of the energy sector to the country’s economic recovery.

“If you look at some of the wealth creation in the United States–the Internet, biotech–a lot of that was driven by companies that deeply believed in research like Bell Laboratory, IBM Labs,” he said. “In the energy sector, you don’t have that. What I see is the Department of Energy filling that vacuum.”

“We have undergone a detailed scrubbing of the process,” he said. “What we’ve found is that the old process required too much paperwork and simply took too long. These are sweeping reforms in the way the Department of Energy does business.”

When President Obama signed the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act on Tuesday, he said the bill should allow the country to double its use of renewable energy within three years.

“There are numerous wind projects that can go forward,” he said. “The Bonneville Power Administration has (transmission) lines sited and those lines will connect to wind farms. This is something that can be done within this two-year period.”

As the department works to develop the renewable energy sector, Chu said it is imperative it also fund basic science research.

Chu said as the government tries to accelerate the use of renewable energies, it will also be exploring different methods of carbon capture and sequestration.

Among other things, the department also intends to establish a Web site to provide more assistance to applicants and add transparency to the process.

He also said he meets with White House climate czar Carol Browner and Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Lisa Jackson about once a week to make sure the Energy Department’s interests do not conflict with the White House’s climate change goals.

The desire to share the experience led to more organized communications as well. Inauguration-watchers from Oregon to Massachusetts sent anonymous comments to Januarythe20th.com, describing the scene around them as the swearing-in took place. Participants of the “mass observation” sent comments to Januarythe20th either via e-mail or Twitter.

The inaugural balls this year have a new emphasis on interactivity as well.

The Presidential Inaugural Committee’s Web site will host a live blog of the Neighborhood Inaugural Ball Tuesday night, which is open to Washington residents. The committee is encouraging people to host their own inaugural balls across the country and text in photos or video of their events, some of which will be aired on ABC’s broadcast coverage of the Washington inaugural balls.

(Credit:
Stephanie Condon/ CNET News)

Andrea Williams takes a picture of herself in Washington on Tuesday to send to her family.

Regular citizens will also be able to contribute to the Official Barack Obama Inaugural Book by uploading their pictures to Photobucket.

Most people who watched the inauguration did it through traditional television broadcasts, a medium that hasn’t changed significantly in half a century. But it was also possible to tune in online; our sister site CBSNews.com, for instance, streamed the inauguration live over the Internet. And people learned about the inaugural action from pictures uploaded by friends, comments on Twitter and other social media, and direct text messages from event organizers.

As millions of people in Washington and around the globe watched a weekend of festivities, culminating with Tuesday’s ceremony, they gave their instant feedback online and through text messages and other means to family, friends, and anyone else listening. At the same time, event organizers were able to give spectators live updates about the state of affairs in the nation’s chilly, crowded capital.

New media received top billing at the pre-inaugural ball held Monday night by the news aggregation and commentary site Huffington Post. Even as stars like Ben Affleck, Dustin Hoffman, and Michael J. Fox milled around the lowly lit, sleekly designed Newseum in downtown Washington, they were overshadowed by a giant computer displaying text messages sent in from lesser-known guests at the party.

(Credit:
Stephanie Condon/ CNET News)

WASHINGTON–Barack Obama was sworn in as president Tuesday in what many spectators viewed as the nation’s most interactive inauguration ceremony so far.

The Huffington Post pre-inaugural ball Monday night featured text messages from guests displayed on a giant computer.

The committee made use of more practical interactive features as well, offering text alerts for event scheduling updates, public transportation news, weather reports, and more.

“I think we’re more connected with the experience, the overall process from the primaries to today,” because of technology, said Ghajiibah Campbell, who came from Baltimore with her family to watch the inauguration. “It made you not only more connected, but willing to be connected–it wasn’t an inconvenience.”

“It allows us to share the experience with everybody live, as opposed to getting home and saying, ‘Guys, you should’ve been there, you should’ve seen it,’” she said.

Countless others also used their handheld devices to share the historical moment with loved ones.

Campbell used her cell phone to send pictures and text messages to her sister in Florida, her brother-in-law in New Jersey, and her brother in Virginia.

Dawn Chandler from New York said she was sending text messages to her relatives throughout the ceremonies describing “how cold it was, how long we were waiting–it was worth the wait–and the speech.”

“CNN airs,” says one post from a deli in Washington. “A small sitting room is packed with diners eating out of Styrofoam containers. Three limo drivers beside a salad bar talk rapidly in an eastern language.”

But it’s clear that AT&T is nervous about the new Clearwire’s plans. AT&T is currently still deploying 3G technology throughout its territory and is busy upgrading its existing network. But it is years away from taking the next big leap toward building a 4G network, which will use a competing technology known as Long Term Evolution, or LTE. By contrast, WiMax technology is available and working today. And regardless of the outcome of the merger, Sprint expects to launch its first WiMax deployments in September. What’s more, devices supporting WiMax have already been developed and will hit the market by year’s end.

AT&T is looking to put a kibosh on the proposed merger of Sprint Nextel’s nationwide WiMax assets with those of Clearwire.

It’s funny that AT&T is putting up any kind of stink to the merger, considering that the company exists in its current state only because of several massive mergers in the past few years, including the multibillion dollar merger between AT&T and BellSouth, which put full ownership of the wireless operator under one owner, and the purchase of wireless assets from rural operator Dobson Communications last year.

While analysts still aren’t sure whether WiMax will survive in the long run as a mobile technology here in the U.S., it appears from AT&T’s latest moves that it’s at least a little bit scared that the new Clearwire network, with backing from heavyweights like Intel and Google, could get enough traction to threaten its current and future wireless business.

In its filing, AT&T argues that the proposed merger, “openly state[s] that they (Sprint Nextel and Clearwire) intend to compete with other national wireless providers–including AT&T–yet they fail to make the required showings necessary for the commission’s review.”

The FCC, which is currently reviewing the merger, must give its blessing for the deal to be completed.

On Thursday, the nation’s largest phone company filed a petition with the Federal Communications Commission, asking it to deny approval of the merger.

Sprint Nextel announced in May that it was teaming up with Clearwire to form a new joint venture that would combine both companies’ WiMax assets to create a nationwide broadband wireless network. The deal, which has been valued at about $14.5 billion, is being backed by cable operators Comcast and Time Warner, as well as Intel and Google.

In the past, I’ve received some pretty sweet bags of stuff from conferences like Demo (although this year, as Center Networks reports, it was mostly air). Of the conferences I attend, though, the only one where the swag is still memorable is the Walt and Kara show, D. See my reports from D5 and from D6.

Still, there’s nothing wrong with a good tchotchke, and this stuff is kind of fun to give out to kids, and useful if you need clothes for changing the oil or painting a room.

No matter how loaded the VC, over-funded the entrepreneur, or jaded the journalist, you won’t see many leaving a tech conference without the $15 of tchotchkes in the swag bag that comes with the show’s $3,000 admission.

At TechCrunch50, the swag was mostly branded and useless junk straight from the catalogs of useless junk that marketing interns receive on their first days at work.

The best conference swag I know of comes from the Office 2.0 conference (2008 preview story), where paid attendees get some cool piece of hardware that becomes part of an experiment in collaboration. At the 2006 show, it was an
iPod Nano. In 2007, an
iPhone. This year, attendees got an HP mini-notebook. As for the Office 2.0 bag of branded marketing props: there isn’t one. That show has the greenest non-giveaway of all, and I don’t think anyone minds.