Study:
55 percent of web surfers use b-band
A new survey shows that more than half of U.S. web surfers
use high-speed connections and don’t mind paying for them. The Pew
Internet and American Life foundation survey found that Americans are
increasingly willing to pay $10 to $30 more per month to save time when
downloading web pages. The survey states that 55 percent of internet
users, or one-third of all adult Americans, have broadband connections at
home or at work. Broadband offers users the luxury of downloading music,
video clips and other bandwidth-intensive content that congests a
traditional dial-up line. This trend is being supported in political
realms too. Both President Bush and presidential candidate John F. Kerry
have called for wider broadband availability in the past several weeks.
The Pew group survey was taken by 2,204 Americans in February.
Apple
to RealNetworks: No alliance, please
Apple Computer is rejecting alliance attempts by
RealNetworks. Seattle-based RealNetworks said Thursday that Apple chairman
Steve Jobs refused an offer by RealNetworks chief executive Rob Glaser to
negotiate a possible online music partnership involving Apple’s popular
iPod portable players. Earlier this week Jobs told The Wall Street Journal
that Apple has little interest in opening its best-selling player to
others. Glaser invited Jobs to collaborate in an email last week that
implied that they could join forces against a mutual enemy, Microsoft
Corp. RealNetworks seeks a way to support all media formats, which is
difficult now because the online music store employs the Advanced Audio
Coding format. This encoding competes against Microsoft’s Windows Media
Audio format, which is widely used by other legal music sites. Apple uses
copy-protection stand Fairplay, which prevents RealPlayer and Rhapsody
tunes from being played on iPods.
For
the indecent-wary, a new DVD player
People who find certain words or scenes objectionable in
movies such as “Seabiscuit” or “Daredevil” now have a method of
screening offensive material. A DVD player from RCA filters questionable
content. Thomson, the owner of the RCA brand, will make the players
available for sale this month in some Wal-Mart and Kmart stores as well as
on the Wal-Mart web site. However, the filtering software the DVD player
employs is facing opposition from Hollywood. An RCA spokesman said there
might be a market for a product that offers more parental control in a way
that doesn’t change the original presentation. The software is from
ClearPlay, which had previously made it available for viewing DVDs on
computers and began negotiations for a standalone player last year. There
is a pending lawsuit that was filed by The Directors Guild of America
against ClearPlay due to the alteration of the originals.
Headless
cat email = big headache for Ford
An internet ad has Ford all revved up. The car
company is upset by the release of an email ad for Sportka, a hatchback
sold in Europe, which shows a realistic-looking orange cat climbing on top
of the car and placing its head through the open moon
roof. The hatch is
then shut, and the cat struggles momentarily before its headless body
drops to the ground. The computer-animated decapitation of the feline was
reportedly conceived without Ford’s approval by advertising agency
Ogilvy & Mather as part of a “viral marketing” campaign for the
Sportka. Now Ford is issuing public statements distancing itself from the
concept. Seems no one really wants to be associated with it -- Ogilvy
& Mather Worldwide issued a statement saying it was not to blame for
the commercial, which leaked onto the web April 1.
|
