DIGITAL I Microsoft’s new Zune is a Christmas no-show

Peter Wilson
Sun

Microsoft’s highly hyped new Zune music and video player — complete with its own music download system — will soon be on the attack.

Also on the offensive are SanDisk’s just-announced Sansa e200, with yet another music download offering. Oh, and Samsung should soon be launching its own service for its own players.

And then there is the powerful Creative Zen W and even Disney’s new kiddie-oriented Mix Max.

Yes, it’s the annual — and so-far ineffective — attack on the hugely dominant Apple iPod. The player in its various forms had 64.2 per cent of the Canadian market in sales in the first six months of 2006 and also led in units sold at 44.5 per cent, according to NPD Group Canada. And, in case there was any doubt about the overall popularity of the digital player, the amount spent on them rose 40 per cent and the number of units were up 49 per cent.

Leading the latest digital charge in the MP3-video player wars is the Zune, which Microsoft hopes will reduce Apple’s sway over the lucrative market.

The Zune, made for Microsoft by Toshiba, will have 30 gigabytes of memory and a three-inch screen — which puts it ahead of the latest iPod’s 2.5-inch screen — and the ability to transfer songs wirelessly from one Zune to another.

Sounds interesting, except for one little niggling thing.

In Canada — where retailers are already getting inquiries from tune and video-hungry consumers — the Zune will be a no-show under the Christmas tree.

“The Zune will not be available in Canada for the holidays,” said Jason Osborne, Vancouver-based Best Buy Canada’s merchandising manager. “I can’t imagine us seeing anything before the second quarter of next year.”

The reason, said Osborne, who has had e-mail confirmation of this from Microsoft, is that the Zune is tied to its strategy of having its own download system, similar to Apple’s iTunes.

“There’s no Microsoft service provider in Canada for digital audio and video. And, honestly, we’ve been pushing them.”

Microsoft Canada representative Jason Anderson said in a statement issued to The Vancouver Sun: “The U.S. launch of Zune is scheduled for this holiday season. Microsoft is planning to introduce Zune to additional markets however we have no specific details around a Canadian launch to share at this time.”

And Samsung’s music service, through media provider MusicNet, will launch before Christmas, but only in the United Kingdom, Germany and France and then Asia.

But that doesn’t mean, said Osborne, that there’s not going to be a lot of excitement at Christmas with the arrival of other players, like the SanDisk Sansa

e200 — even if it can’t offer Canadians the planned pre-loading of 30 hours of music from the likes of Coldplay, Jay-Z and the Rolling Stones. (You only get those tunes for 30 days if you sign up with the Rhapsody music service from RealNetworks, which isn’t yet available in Canada.)

“Whether [the Sansa e200] comes with loaded content, it remains to be seen,” said Osborne, who said he didn’t expect the SanDisk player to arrive in Best Buy stores before late October or early November.

“And the price point they’re targeting in Canada, $329, is quite high for an eight-gigabyte video player, actually more than the new iPod 30 gig.”

SanDisk was fourth in the Canadian market with 4.9 per cent of dollar sales and 8.9 per cent of units sold.

But Apple’s iPod — that comes in several models including the Shuffle and the Nano — has stayed the dominant player here, even if it has a lower percentage of the market than in the U.S., where it took in a whopping 75.6 per cent of sales in the first three months of 2006.

And it intends to keep that place with its latest models, the flagship of which is the $399 80-gigabyte model capable of holding up to 20,000 songs, 25,000 photos or 100 hours of video, but not all at once. You’ll have to make your own selection.

As well, there’s a 30-gigabyte model for $299. The nano comes in two-, four- and eight-gigabyte models, starting at $169. Finally, there is the one-gigabyte shuffle at $89.

While some analysts have warned that the iPod might be slipping in terms of cachet, this has yet to show up in sales figures, as Apple always seems to have a new must-have model, just as the glamour of the old one wears out.

One of the advantages in the Canadian market for companies like Creative — which was in second place with 7.5 per cent of the dollars spent and 8.8 per cent of units sold — and its 30-gigabyte audio and video player the Zen W, is that there is a lot of downloading unconnected to services such as Canada’s own PureTracks and the iTunes Store.

“People get their music in other ways, whether it’s peer-to-peer or other non-traditional download sites,” said Osborne. “So the content is readily available for Canadian consumers without being forced to pay for it.”

The smaller digital player brands — among which are companies that are otherwise electronics giants like Sony, with six per cent of sales, and RCA, with 3.8 per cent of sales — always seem to struggle for market share.

“The challenge those companies have had, and I’ll be quite frank, is that they’re always reacting and not leading,” said Osborne. “And they’re spread so thin in terms of their product assortment that they’re often gun shy to put their focus on this category, because Apple has such a strong share.”

Osborne said that Canadian consumers have not yet been swept up in any kind of video mania when it comes to digital players.

“I think right now consumers are looking at video as a nice-to-have feature, as opposed to a necessity. Again, it comes back to the content and how readily available it is.

“If you’re going to do video, what type of video can you put on these players that’s viewable?”

Osborne said that based on his conversations with Best Buy workers, buyers are generally loading them with music videos and small clips rather than full-length movies. Still, there is a definite trend towards adding video capabilities, even on one-gigabyte flash players with screens that have one to 1.8-inch screens.

“By Christmas over half, if not 65 per cent, of the players will have video.”

Osborne said what Canadians look for in a digital player are style, capacity and then content.

And, he adds, there are two types of customers. Those who value the style of the player and only want to carry a small music collection with them. They buy flash memory based players. “And then you get into the audiophile who has this mass storage device that’s an ultimate media player that carries audio and video and photos with a 30 to 80 gigabyte capacity.”

Oh, and that Disney Mix Max we mentioned at the beginning. Well, it’s priced at $99 US, has a 2.2-inch colour screen and has the capacity of six hours of video or about 240 songs.

While you could download movies to it, Disney is hoping that, instead, you’ll use memory cards, at $19.99 each that will contain popular movies like High School Musical, Confessions of a Teenage Drama Queen and Lizzie McGuire.

© The Vancouver Sun 2006

With the advent of Internet phone service, customers have a huge and confusing choice — and it doesn’t yet include Telus

Peter Wilson
Sun

Getting a home phone used to be simple. You went with Telus and tried to get the best deal you could for the extras like voice mail and call forwarding.

Then you hoped you had its best deal for long-distance calling.

If you were more adventurous, you could sign up with a separate service for your long distance. Or you could try a separate phone company with lower rates — even though that service still worked over Telus lines.

Now, with the advent of Internet phone service you have a huge and confusing choice — which doesn’t yet include Telus, which is waiting for the digital dust to settle a bit.

According to Telus representative Jim Johannssen, the company is watching the consumer VoIP (Voice over Internet Protocol) market very carefully, and will launch its product when the company believes the time is right.

“We don’t need to be in that market right now,” he said.

In other words, Telus is likely waiting until the price wars have fizzled out and large numbers of the present combatants are history before it marches in with its product.

That decision leaves the field clear for the more than 90 companies in the market. These range from the mom and pop shop and specialty firms to eBay’s Skype offering to the likes of Vonage and Primus to cable providers like Shaw.

And they all promise something cheaper than you can get from Telus.

The biggest draws are free long distance in Canada and the United States, Shaw’s 1,000 free minutes of overseas calling to select markets in Europe and Asia, and, in some cases, extras like call waiting and call forwarding bundled in with low pricing.

Shaw’s president Peter Bissonnette — whose company brags it is adding a subscriber every 96 seconds (or about 900 a day) — said in an interview that one of the reasons Shaw is doing so well is that its 1,000 free minutes of overseas calling has resonated with Vancouver customers

“When we launched in downtown Vancouver, in the West End and that sort of thing, we were surprised that it wasn’t going as fast as we thought,” said Bissonnette. “The reason we added the 1,000 minutes of international calling was frankly because of the Vancouver market. People there tended to make more international calls than North American calls and so we’ve done that and now it’s really picked up.”

So enticing has been the lure of alternative phone technology that various pundits are predicting more than 20 per cent of the Canadian market will be using VoIP (but don’t tell Shaw it offers a VoIP service) by 2009.

So what’s a consumer to do when faced with all this confusion?

Well, the first thing would be to read everything you can find from any Voice over IP service you’re considering (down to the very last asterisk in the very last print or online promotion) and make sure you understand completely what you’re getting.

Subscribers can start with Skype, a free online software-based service for all of North America. There are umpteen bells and whistles — including phones — to go with this, so you’re not just sitting there at your PC with a headset on anymore.

Then come the most basic of modem-based services which offer nothing more than a local phone line hooked up to your high speed modem.

After you can go on to the more elaborate deals from the people at companies like those listed in our chart, which include extras. Some also offer wireless phone sets, so you’re not stuck with a single phone attached to your modem.

Then there are offerings like Shaw Digital Phone. Installers connect this service to your home phone wiring and jacks. It then uses a separate dedicated network (not the open Internet, although it still uses VoIP technology) to carry your calls until they reach the telephone lines.

One confusing element to begin with is that, in a marketing attempt to separate itself from its competitors, Shaw is saying in its advertising that its service is not VoIP (voice over Internet protocol).

“We don’t consider ours an Internet phone system,” said Bissonnette. “It’s on a separate network and so it doesn’t contend at all with any Internet traffic as opposed to a VoIP service which does.

“So there’s a distinct difference and that difference is important because it cost us a lot of money to build our own network.”

Rogers Home Phone in Vancouver, despite the fact that it seems to be in the same game as Shaw, is not actually a VoIP service at all. It leases Telus telephone lines and connects to the phone network in a local telephone office or wire centre.

In Ontario and New Brunswick, where Rogers is a cable provider, it operates like Shaw.

So, if your definition of VoIP is a phone system that goes over the open Internet and competes with all the traffic flowing there then, yep, Shaw is not VoIP.

However, Shaw does use VoIP technology, just as Telus does for parts of its telephone system.

Another area of debate is over 911 service.

Shaw, for example, says its 911 service is superior because calls to it are routed to the nearest emergency response centre and the call-back number and street address are also automatically provided to the emergency dispatcher.

Other services may have 911 calls routed to their own phone rooms before they get to an emergency service.

It would be best, if this worries you, to check with any of the VoIP services you’re considering as to exactly what their 911 service level is in your particular area.

Another major VoIP consideration is whether various services will work quickly with your home alarm system.

Shaw’s Bissonnette insists there’s no problem with alarm systems and Shaw even tells potential subscribers to its phone service that it will give them the name of an alarm company that will set it up if their alarm company balks.

“I have an alarm system and I’ve had our Shaw phone for a year and a half now and it works just fine,” said Bissonnette.

And Rogers said that where its calls flow over an IP network in Eastern Canada, its phones are “fully compatible with home alarm systems.”

On the other hand, there are those like Michael Jagger, president of Vancouver-based Provident Security, who say no one can provide a guarantee that current alarm technology will work with VoIP.

“I think people are confused a lot by Shaw’s marketing when they talk about it,” said Jagger. “They pretty much say directly that the service is not voice over IP. Well it is.”

Jagger said there is non-facilitated and facilitated VoIP and that facilitated VoIP, which Shaw has, is clearly superior.

Even so, Jagger, whose company guarantees an on-the-scene response time of five minutes, suggests anyone with a VoIP service go with a backup to their burglar and fire alarm system, such as wireless or radio.

“We’re not telling people not to get Shaw,” said Jagger. “Our biggest issue with the security that we’ve seen is that it’s just not consistent.

“The fact that you get a signal working once doesn’t mean that its going to work the second time.”

Jagger said his company has done a lot of research on the matter.

“And I’ve spoken with all the guys that are the forefront of the packet cable technology, which is what Shaw is using and just the bottom line is it’s just not there yet,” said Jagger.

“They would be love to be able to certify the equipment. People have got to know it’s still a risk and it’s not as simple as saying, ‘Well, it can work.'”

Jagger said that while the system manufacturers may, within a year or so, guarantee that their alarms will work consistently over VoIP, they don’t do so now.

“The technology will just mature.”

Jagger said the cost of a cellular backup system is $400 for installation and then $20 a month after that.

“That means you’re wiping out some of the cost savings of going with VoIP.”

[email protected]

– – –

THE FINE PRINT

Recently, Bell Canada estimated there were more than 90 companies offering Internet telephone service in Canada. Many are tiny and obscure, but there are a number with a large amount of public awareness. The following is an alphabetical listing of some of these and their rates.

Comwave:

Comwave’s iBasic phone service offers unlimited local calls with free iPhone to iPhone calling and caller ID block. $9.95 a month on a two-year deal or $14.95 on month-by-month.

iPhone Enhanced, which offeres enhanced 911 services, has eight extra services such as caller ID, call waiting, voice mail and Turbo speed dial: $14.95 a month on a two-year deal or $19.95 a month.

iPhone One Rate comes with same services as iPhone Enhanced plus unlimited Canada and U.S. calling. $29.95 a month.

Primus:

The Primus TalkBroadband Basic Service is local phone service over the Internet: $15.95 a month.

Talk Broadband Ultimate Bundle, including extra services such as call answer, caller ID block release, call display, visual call waiting, five-way calling, call forward, call hold: $19.95

Long distance plans are extra:

Five Anytime: five cents a minute to anywhere in Canada and the U.S., the U.K. and Hong Kong with other rates for other countries.

1000 Canada/US minutes. Call anywhere in Canada and the U.S. any time of day: $10 a month.

“I think people are confused a lot by Shaw’s marketing when they talk about it,” said Jagger. “They pretty much say directly that the service is not voice over IP. Well it is.”

Jagger said there is non-facilitated and facilitated VoIP and that facilitated VoIP, which Shaw has, is clearly superior.

Even so, Jagger, whose company guarantees an on-the-scene response time of five minutes, suggests anyone with a VoIP service go with a backup to their burglar and fire alarm system, such as wireless or radio.

“We’re not telling people not to get Shaw,” said Jagger. “Our biggest issue with the security that we’ve seen is that it’s just not consistent.

“The fact that you get a signal working once doesn’t mean that its going to work the second time.”

Jagger said his company has done a lot of research on the matter.

“And I’ve spoken with all the guys that are the forefront of the packet cable technology, which is what Shaw is using and just the bottom line is it’s just not there yet,” said Jagger.

“They would be love to be able to certify the equipment. People have got to know it’s still a risk and it’s not as simple as saying, ‘Well, it can work.'”

Jagger said that while the system manufacturers may, within a year or so, guarantee that their alarms will work consistently over VoIP, they don’t do so now.

“The technology will just mature.”

Jagger said the cost of a cellular backup system is $400 for installation and then $20 a month after that.

“That means you’re wiping out some of the cost savings of going with VoIP.”

THE FINE PRINT

Recently, Bell Canada estimated there were more than 90 companies offering Internet telephone service in Canada. Many are tiny and obscure, but there are a number with a large amount of public awareness. The following is an alphabetical listing of some of these and their rates.

Comwave:

Comwave’s iBasic phone service offers unlimited local calls with free iPhone to iPhone calling and caller ID block. $9.95 a month on a two-year deal or $14.95 on month-by-month.

iPhone Enhanced, which offeres enhanced 911 services, has eight extra services such as caller ID, call waiting, voice mail and Turbo speed dial: $14.95 a month on a two-year deal or $19.95 a month.

iPhone One Rate comes with same services as iPhone Enhanced plus unlimited Canada and U.S. calling. $29.95 a month.

Primus:

The Primus TalkBroadband Basic Service is local phone service over the Internet: $15.95 a month.

Talk Broadband Ultimate Bundle, including extra services such as call answer, caller ID block release, call display, visual call waiting, five-way calling, call forward, call hold: $19.95

Long distance plans are extra:

Five Anytime: five cents a minute to anywhere in Canada and the U.S., the U.K. and Hong Kong with other rates for other countries.

1000 Canada/US minutes. Call anywhere in Canada and the U.S. any time of day: $10 a month.

400 overseas minutes: Make long distance calls to 30 countries overseas: $10 a month.

Rogers Home Phone:

We’ve included Rogers in this list because there may be some confusion as to exactly what is being offered. In British Columbia, this service is not VoIP at all. It flows over telephone lines leased from Telus and then onto the telephone network.

It does, however, have similar offerings to Internet phones (likely because it does have such a service through its cable system in Eastern Canada).

Rogers’ service with one feature is $27.95 a month. This rises progressively until you have four to six features for $39.95. Unlimited North American calling is an additional $19.95 a month. Unlimited calling to Europe and Asia is another $34.95.

Shaw:

This uses VoIP technology, but within a private network that is connected to the telephone system. Never flows over the open Internet, according to Shaw, which has launched a major advertising campaign to distinguish itself from other services.

Attaches to your existing phone lines within your home.

Includes unlimited North American long distance and 1,000 free minutes of international calling to specified markets in Europe and Asia: $29.95 for first three months, after that $55 a month bundled with other Shaw services, $65 a month on its own.

Skype:

Canadian users of Skype, a software based service, get free calling — using a headset or a phone designed for the service — to anywhere in North America or to another Skype user around the world.

If you want to call outside North America to a landline, you pay the Skypeout rates, which can vary. For example, to Hong Kong, Russia and Britain you would pay 2.4 cents a minute. Calls to wireless phones are more.

You can also get a regular phone number from Skype through its SkypeIn service, which costs about $43 annually. With this, you get free voice mail.

Vonage:

Vonage’s Basic 500 plan offers 500 free minutes including free North American long distance and unlimited incoming calls. Calls outside North America are extra: $19.99 per month.

The Vonage Premium Unlimited package offers unlimited calling including free North American long distance: $39.99 per month, with calls outside the continent extra.

V-Phone service from your PC or laptop: Choice of the two accounts above with same pricing.

All services include voicemail plus, caller ID with name, call waiting, call forwarding, three-way calling.

Yak WorldCity:

YakForFree offers a free virtual phone that you place on your computer and, like Skype, allows you to make free calls with a headset to any other Yak member around the world. Users can upgrade to YaktoAnyone and talk to any phone in Canada and the U.S. for two cents a minute.

Yak Unlimited offers free calling up to 3,000 minutes a month to North America, a public telephone number and a secondary number as well as three-way calling, caller ID, caller ID blocking, call forwarding, call waiting, call hold and call transfer, unified voice mail and messaging. Video phone calling. Low international calling rates: $29.95.

Please note: These are just outlines of what is offered and do not include everything any individual service can do for you. Go online and read services’ information thoroughly and make sure you understand exactly what you’ll be getting.

© The Vancouver Sun 2006

Other

Download Document

Jefferson Graham
USA Today

Adobe is transforming its popular Acrobat Reader software into a multimedia tool.

The Reader sits on more than 500 million PCs and has become the industry standard for viewing digital documents.

It has been revamped thanks to Adobe’s acquisition of Macromedia in late 2005. The innovative software firm was best known for its Flash software, which also resides on most PCs to enable viewing of fast-loading video on websites.

Acrobat 8, the software that companies and small businesses use to create popular PDF digital documents, will be announced Monday. Expect the new Reader to load faster, offer a streamlined look and include Web-conferencing tools complete with video.

Joe Wilcox, an analyst at JupiterResearch, says most consumers use PDFs at least once a week. “Many instruction manuals are now in PDF, government forms, and schools use them to display their class schedules.”

Adobe, the $2 billion company that also makes industry-leading photo/video-editing tools Photoshop and Premiere, last updated Acrobat in January 2005. Acrobat represents 25% of Adobe’s annual revenue and sells for $299 to $499.

The new Acrobat 8 and Reader are expected to be available in mid-October.

“There’s still a lot of paper sold in the world, and the opportunity to digitize it all is massive,” says Tom Hale, senior vice president of Adobe’s Knowledge Worker unit. “We’re just scratching the surface.”

After Adobe acquired Macromedia, it turned to former Macromedia executive Hale to oversee the revamp. Hale ran Macromedia’s Dreamweaver Web publishing tool division. He says the new Acrobat was finished when he moved to Adobe but that the team was open to tweaking the interface.

“We said, ‘Let’s modernize it,’ and everybody got aboard,” says Hale. “We took Adobe’s expertise with engineering and Macromedia’s design, and we all worked together seamlessly.”

Issues tackled:

• The No. 1 complaint from consumers about PDFs is that they are slow to load, but Hale says those issues have been addressed with the new version.

• Macromedia’s Breeze software for Web conferencing is now built into Acrobat (and renamed Acrobat Connect). It lets companies use the Internet for meetings, sharing documents and commenting on them.

Adobe charges monthly fees starting at $39 for the Web-conference service.

Version 8 shows that Adobe is making the transition to “a new concept of what PDF is,” says Wilcox.

Adobe’s challenge is fighting off Microsoft, which says it will offer PDF creation for free in a new version of Microsoft Office scheduled for next year.

Adobe CEO Bruce Chizen says Adobe had been anticipating the move by Microsoft for some time and isn’t concerned. “That’s why we’ve been adding more capabilities, like collaboration features and digital signatures into Acrobat, so that it’s not just PDF creation.”

Gene Munster, an analyst at equity firm Piper Jaffray, says 80% of Adobe’s customers tend to upgrade with new versions. “Their workflow is dependent upon it,” he says. “They stay up-to-date because the software is such an important part of their business.”

Chizen says Reader, first introduced in 1993, didn’t take off until the advent of the Internet. The company lost “tens of millions of dollars” on Acrobat but refused to give up. The Web “made it obvious that there was no way to reliably distribute documents that were more than one page, and that accelerated the need for the PDF.”

Adobe dropped the price from $650 to $299 and began offering the Reader software free. Sales took off.

The company’s stock closed Friday at $37, up nearly 10% after it reported better-than-expected results late Thursday.

Michael Urlocker
Other

Inventors tackle big hairy problems. Successful innovators somehow keep it simple. Management consultant Michael Urlocker shows how Apple’s co-founder and CEO Steve Jobs keeps the balance.

Dozens of Web, telecom and broadcast companies have their eyes on the TV market. There is a sense of opportunity among Web startups and a feeling of escalating concern among broadcasters that something is about to change.

We can see the signs:

– YouTube, a Web startup that lets consumers load their favorite video clips onto the Net, is attracting more than 100 million free downloads daily;

– NBC Universal said it would make all its new Fall shows available free on the Net;

– Telephone companies including Telus are dabbling in new TV distribution systems as an alternative to cable-TV at a cost of hundreds of millions of dollars in new infrastructure;

– Cell-phone companies, including BlackBerry and Mobi-TV are offering short video clips in partnership with content suppliers.

It is not clear how the broadcast business will evolve or which, if any, of these initiatives will be sufficiently profitable to sustain itself.

But last week, Apple Computer Inc. showed a sneak preview of a new living-room device that, like many of Apple’s big hits, is surprisingly simple and may be the big winner. Apple’s iTV is a small box that sits beside and plugs directly into a TV, like a DVD player.

It allows consumers to watch on their large screen TV any video that they buy from Apple’s new iTunes movie service or hundreds of amateur video podcasts. No direct connection to a PC is required; that link can be wireless to a computer in another room. The $300-iTV is operated with a small remote control.

The iTV is not the first device to allow TVs to be wirelessly connected to a PC: Microsoft Corp., Cisco Systems Inc. and others have made so-called media extenders in recent years. Apple’s device has its limitations: iTV movies will be near-DVD quality, which may not be good enough for large-screen TVs.

Microsoft’s efforts in television are interesting because its two biggest projects have been duds: One was WebTV (Imagine watching 24, then clicking on screen to buy Jack Bauer’s suede jacket … Apparently only Microsoft engineers imagine such things) the other was the all-singing, all-dancing Media Center PC (introduce all the hassles of Windows into your living room).

What Apple does, and does well, is to streamline technical issues, making it painless for non-technical people to use technologies.

A lot of engineers and managers involved in new products want to emulate Apple for its “cool-factor” or its ability to wow consumers.

The idea that new services and products must be easy for consumers to use is well understood, but getting there is very difficult. In many cases engineers and executives get caught up larding-on multiple features or functions without accepting that each one pushes the goal of simplicity further away.

If we look at Apple’s new iTV device and the company’s earlier disruptive innovations, the iPod and the Macintosh computer, the following can be observed:

– Limited-functionality: not the swiss-army-knife approach;

– Apple integrated standard hardware and controlled the software;

– Apple innovated on the most important parts of the experience that were not good enough for users. In the case of iPod, it was simplifying and legitimizing what had been until then largely an illegal process of downloading. In the case of the Mac, Apple focused on simplifying the PC command system using a mouse and menus. For iTV, Apple is shielding consumers from all the hassles of PC (operating system, software, configuration, etc.) to allow them to do one thing: watch movies.

Is Apple’s iTV the right approach? We probably won’t know for two years, but we can observe that it fits the pattern of how people watch TV: People plug their DVD players in and they click the play button. More importantly, iTV fits with how people are using iPods and what they pay for: Apple has sold more than 1.5 billion downloaded songs and 60 million iPods. In less than a year, Apple has sold 45 million TV episodes.

Since co-founding Apple 30 years ago, Steven Jobs has shown himself to be a serial-disruptor. Apple, the company, has not fared as well, suffering severe volatility in its fortunes and a few near-death experiences. Not many companies can depend on a genius CEO to save them the way Apple has. But companies can follow Mr. Job’s strategy of:

– Focusing on what users actually do and pay for rather than what engineers think they might do;

– Zeroing in on only the part of the user experience that needs to be improved.

Radio stations are starting to blame a decline in audience and some station closings to the proliferation of iPods. Satellite radio broadcasters XM Satellite Radio Holdings Inc. and Sirius Satellite Radio Inc. are reporting slower growth and steep losses as consumers weigh the iPod as an alternative to radio in their cars, causing share prices for the two companies to crash more than 40% in the past year.

Apple boasted last week that 70% of U.S. 2007 car models will allow easy iPod connectivity, which will likely accelerate the harsh trend for radio broadcasters.

An important question arises for TV broadcasters and cable companies: How will they prepare for the iPod’s impact on TV?

Michael Urlocker is a chartered financial analyst and chief executive of Toronto-based OnDisruption, a management consulting firm. Innovators, check your Disruption Score at www.OnDisruption.com

© National Post 2006

Randy Boswell
Sun

Microsoft Corp. market researchers in Quebec found themselves in a potential linguistic pickle when they conducted consumer test-runs of the digital music player Zune, which the company says will be out by Christmas competing with the iPod.

A Microsoft spokeswoman in Montreal told CanWest News Service that “it was pointed out to us” during focus groups in the province that the proposed brand name sounded much like a French-Canadian term used as a euphemism for penis or vagina.

The French word “zoune” and the variant “bizoune” typically serve as a less jolting way of referring to male or female genitalia when addressing children.

“It’s very much slang,” said Nathalie Bergeron, noting that the words are not common parts of French-Canadian vocabulary.

“Microsoft did do extensive customer research in Quebec,” Bergeron added, and concluded that the name Zune was “very effective” and posed no risk of becoming known as an embarrassing double entendre.

“It’s quite a stretch,” she said.

But sounds of snickering over the apparent Zune branding predicament have been emanating for months from technology-obsessed corners of the Internet.

In July, during an earlier round of publicity about Microsoft’s plans to introduce Zune, the British-based business news site theinquirer.net revealed the potential “naming conundrum” in Quebec under the headline: “My Zune is bigger than yours.”

A Quebec resident posting to the website crazyapplerumors.com argued that “zoune” was so inoffensive it translated as “wee-wee.”

But he added: “All of Quebec has been giggling for the last couple of days at the thought of Mr. Gates swearing that there was an 80-per-cent chance that he’d whip out his little zoune before the holiday season . . .”

© The Vancouver Province 2006

 

CEO reveals deal to release Disney films through iTunes

Jim Jamieson
Province

Apple inched its way farther into your living room yesterday.

At a news conference in San Francisco, Apple CEO Steve Jobs unveiled a flurry of new products and services, including the launch of downloadable movies for sale at the iTunes Music Store, a revamped iPod line and a wireless router that streams media content from a computer to a TV set.

The iTunes Music Store will initially carry movies only from the Walt Disney Co. studios, where Jobs is a board member. By contrast, Amazon.com’s movie service launched last week with distribution deals with seven studios — but not Disney.

Jobs said more than 75 films — including Pirates of the Caribbean and Cars — will be available on iTunes from Walt Disney Pictures, Pixar, Touchstone Pictures and Miramax. New releases will be priced at $12.99 US when pre-ordered and during the first week of sale, or $14.99 afterward. Library titles will sell for $9.99. The movies will be available only in the U.S., with international sales expected in 2007.

Jobs also showed off a compact gadget, dubbed iTV, which will allow consumers to watch movies bought online — as well as other digital content stored on a computer — on a connected TV set. It will sell for $299 and be available early next year.

Other online movie services already exist but haven’t attracted many customers, but Apple is clearly expecting its success with music and TV content to continue with movies.

Bringing digital content stored on a computer and playing it back on a TV has been a challenge for online movie providers.

“We think [iTV] completes the picture here,” said Jobs. “Now I could download content from iTunes. I could enjoy it on my computer, my iPod and my big-screen television in the living room.”

Apple has increased the resolution on videos, from 320×240 to 640×480. It won’t be close to high-definition quality, but will play acceptably on a TV screen. But the expected download time (30 minutes at five megabits per second) will be tediously long for most high-speed Internet users.

Simon Fraser University professor of communication Richard Smith said he was disappointed with the announcements as there was nothing new on the long-awaited Apple-branded cellular phone.

“For a lot of people there is no experience of the Internet apart from the phone,” said Smith. “The phone is outside their realm, so they could be making sure they’ve done it right.”

Analysts have said they expect to see such a video/music phone in the next four to six months.

Smith said the wireless device would be a niche market initially and certainly in Canada, where the Music Store movies won’t be available at least until next year.

“It becomes a tool to get into that market early,” he said.

“It shows they are continuing to maintain their lead.”

SHINY NEW APPLES

– A 24-hour battery life on the iPod Nano. Models, ranging in capacity from two gigabytes to eight gigabytes, will come in five colours and sell for between $169 and $299.

– A larger-capacity, video-capable iPod that features an 80-gigabyte hard drive for storing digital music, video and other content. It will retail for $399.

– A smaller size for the iPod Shuffle, which also will sport a built-in clip. It will sell for $89.

© The Vancouver Province 2006

 

Province

Consumers may have become wise to e-mail scams designed to steal bank account numbers and other personal information, but fraudsters are now taking a new tack to get at their money over the phone, experts say.

“Our main concern there is these voice-phishing guys were spoofing a method that legitimate institutions use very often in terms of getting hold of their customers,” says John Kane, a spokesman for the Financial Consumer Agency of Canada, a federal watchdog for the financial services sector.

“Our concern there was that consumers wouldn’t really have a way of telling the real from the false.”

The technique known in web lingo as “phishing” involves a scam artist posing as a bank or other official to convince their targets to give up sensitive information.

Older e-mail phishing scams prompt potential victims to click on a link on an official looking e-mail to confirm account details.

Some refer to a security breach or an upgraded security system that requires verification, while others try to scare unsuspecting users with talk of recent repeated attempts to access their account from a foreign-based computer.

But while the newer scam may also come in an e-mail, a more sinister version dubbed as “vishing” or “voice phishing” comes as an official-sounding phone message asking the consumer to call the bank back at a given number to confirm account details.

The number is actually set up by the fraudster, who uses an automated service that prompts consumers to “log in” by providing account numbers and passwords using the phone keypad, then captures those numbers.

“We figured people were already sensitized somewhat to the e-mail sort and, even if it contained a phone number in it, people were somewhat sensitized to that avenue,” Kane said. “What these fraudsters were apparently doing was using machines to call people automatically and leave a voice message on their home phone saying there’s a problem, give us a call back at the bank and here’s the phone number.”

According to Phonebusters, the national anti-fraud call centre operated by the RCMP and the Ontario Provincial Police, there were 11,231 reported identity-theft complaints last year that swindled consumers out of a total of $8.6 million in Canada.

Maura Drew-Lytle, spokeswoman for the Canadian Bankers Association, said: “Some of the phishing people have pretended they are the government trying to get your social insurance number. It is any sort of personal information that they can get to use to commit some sort of fraud.”

Drew-Lytle said Canadian banks may call and leave a voice messaging saying they suspect fraudulent activity on your card, but they will never send an e-mail to a customer asking him or her to call them back at a specific phone number.

She suggested that someone concerned about a possible scam should call the bank back at the number listed on a recent statement or on the back of a bank card to confirm it is a legitimate inquiry.

“The other thing with phishing or vishing is that these are mass either e-mails or voicemails that are sent out to all kinds of people. They don’t know who you are,” said Drew-Lytle.

She said if the call is legitimate, it will address you by name, and that’s the same with e-mail, not: “Dear valued customer.”

SUSPICIOUS? WHAT TO DO AND WHAT NOT TO DO

Advice for consumers who receive a phone call, message or e-mail, purportedly from their financial institution, that they suspect may be fraudulent:

– Do not respond to an e-mail asking you to disclose personal information, such as an online password, your debit- or credit-card numbers or your personal identification number.

– Do not use the phone number provided in the e-mail or in the phone message without first verifying that it is valid.

– To confirm that a phone number provided is legitimate, contact your financial institution using a number you have looked up yourself.

– As part of a legitimate conversation, you will not be asked to verbally provide your personal identification number or password.

– Always be cautious about how and with whom you share personal and financial information.

Source: Financial Consumer Agency of Canada

© The Vancouver Province 2006

 

Sun

Online facts of life, Part 1:

1. Financial institutions never use e-mail to notify customers that there are problems with an account.

2. Legitimate businesses never ask for a user name and password unless the customer has initiated the communication.

3. There’s no one in Nigeria willing to share a fortune with you even if you facilitate its transfer out of the country.

These facts may seem obvious, but people who ignore them are swindled every day by an invisible army of increasingly sophisticated e-criminals who use the Internet to steal money and identities, and appear to do so with impunity.

The Nigerian letter scam has been around almost as long as the Internet itself and has now been extended to other countries. The typical ruse is that a relative of a dead or deposed dictator, exiled government official or some other member of privileged society has socked away an unimaginable amount of cash in a rainy day fund and needs to find a bank account in the free world in which to deposit it, for which the holder of that account will be richly rewarded. Your bank account was chosen because your e-mail address was among the millions lifted from a CD the Nigerians bought from an online Viagra dealer. All you have to do is send along your banking information to begin the process of being ripped off.

But online crime has advanced far beyond the crude techniques of the letter scam. Now, you’re likely to receive an e-mail from a supposed bank or broker, complete with logos, graphics and even security warnings, that looks and acts like the genuine article. Except that it’s not.

One of the most convincing fakes of late appears to be an RBC Financial site that instructs recipients to re-submit confidential information because the company is updating its servers to combat phoney e-mails. Who’d expect that an e-mail warning about fraud would itself be a fraud?

One security expert admitted that he was almost taken in when he received an e-mail advising him of a problem with an online bank account he had just opened. But he called the bank and learned it was a hoax.

Fraudulent e-mails often direct recipients to sites that collect personal and financial information for the purpose of identify theft. There’s even a term for this kind of criminal data mining — phishing.

A phishing assault poses the additional risk that the e-mail may contain malicious software, called a trojan, that can install itself on a PC where it lies in wait for an unsuspecting user to log on. Masquerading as a benign sofware application, for instance, it gathers account numbers, ID, passwords and transaction information and transmits it to persons unknown.

Online facts of life, Part II:

E-mail messages from financial institutions that request a reply in kind are likely bogus. Select and copy the message without clicking any hyperlinked text. Go to the official website of the institution from which the e-mail purportedly emanated. Click the “Contact Us” link and paste the entire message in an e-mail message or in the dialogue box provided. The institution will tell you if the message is legitimate.

While awaiting a reply, delete the original message and then delete the delete folder. If the e-mail really came from a honest dealer, it will send another. All suspect e-mail messages should be deleted. Don’t even click on links that invite you to unsubscribe.

Don’t use the same password for every site and change passwords frequently. Use a firewall and anti-virus software, but be warned that some phishing sites seem so authentic they may slip through the spam screen.

Financial institutions are discovering that security is an ongoing challenge; it doesn’t take cyber crooks long to crack the codes. Although companies, governments and other organizations are taking extraordinary measures to protect their sites, there is no guarantee that they haven’t been compromised. In a recent survey, all the participating institutions said their sites had been attacked.

That leaves it up to the individual to guard against the misappropriation of confidential information. Just as the homeowner secures the front door, the driver locks the car and the tourist avoids dodgy areas of town, the computer user must assume personal responsibility for keeping identity theft in check.

It’s a digital jungle out there; take care.

© The Vancouver Sun 2006

 

BROADBAND: Internet speeds will also more than double under plan to 30 mps

Province

Telus Corp. plans to spend $600 million over the next three years to beef up its broadband network in a move that will allow the major telecommunications company to offer high-definition television.

The Vancouver company said Friday it plans to install advanced Internet equipment in more than 7,000 sites and run fibre-optic cable closer to its customers’ homes.

“Telus TV is really just one example. This paves the way for emerging multimedia applications and other services that we can deliver in the not-too-distant future,” said Joe Grech, executive vice-president of Telus network operations.

The company said the new infrastructure will more than double Internet access speeds to 15 to 30 megabits a second, from up to seven megabits under ideal circumstances.

The investment is in addition to the $190 million Telus plans to spend this year to begin the upgrades in 38 communities in B.C., Alberta and eastern Quebec that will be completed by 2009.

Telus and cable TV company Shaw Communications Inc. are in a fierce battle in Western Canada over supplying telecom services to customers.

Despite strength in its mobile phone business, Telus lost 44,000 network access lines in its latest quarter as customers dropped their traditional home phones for mobile phones and moved to competitors like Shaw and Vonage.

The cable company has boasted a gain of 50,294 new digital phone lines in its most recent quarter, to bring its total to 168,963 lines at the end of May.

Looking to return the favour, Telus responded by rolling out its TV service in Alberta, with plans to expand the service to Vancouver in coming months.

“There’s two things that are converging for us. One is the availability of technology, which enables these types of speeds,” Grech said. “The other is, compression technologies are also being advanced at a very rapid pace so the ability to send content and develop applications over the access infrastructure is increasing at a very exciting pace.”

© The Vancouver Province 2006