Last week Steve Jobs, in that special way he has of tossing out little random nuggets of chaos into the industry, basically said that Apple already had a netbook out there called the iPhone. As a rabid iPhone and netbook user, I called Shenanigans.

Then a series of articles at What's On iPhone made me stop and give it some more thought. The lines between smartphones, iPhone, netbooks, and all the rest grow increasingly fuzzy, so maybe I jumped the gun on my assessment. I spent some time really thinking about how I used each, and decided that the three features of my netbooks that I value the most are:

Portable: I can grab my netbook as I head out the door and don't need a backpack or messenger bag. Sometimes I'll even take it "just in case" I may need it, where I'll only grab my Macbook if I know for a fact I will need it along the way. Here the iPhone meets the criteria just fine. Even better, since I can't fit my Eee PC in my pant's pocket. Passed.

Powerful: I used to have a Windows Mobile phone and used it for basic phone calls, email, and in a pinch maybe getting some information off the internet (which is NOT the same as just web surfing). As I've noted before, I barely use my iPhone for the "phone" part of it at all. I use it for email, games, notes, information, and nearly normal web surfing on occasion. It's a very powerful little device. Passed.

Functional: Here's where the wheels come off. For all the power in my iPhone, I just can't get at like I need to for many things. For example, I type more on my iPhone than I did on my smartphone, but I'm still not writing a big blog post. Nor am I preparing a presentation, reviewing lots of data, or building anything complex. It's both an input (no keyboard) and output (screen size) issue. It's not a bad thing by itself, but it just limits the use cases for which the iPhone is a solution. I can't put typed data in at a reasonable speed, and the zoom and pan of the iPhone just isn't enough for even mildly complicated work I do on a netbook. Significant Fail.

So I stand by my calling of Shenanigans. The iPhone has a lot going for it, but it is not and never will satisfy the needs of netbook users. Personally, I'm hoping Mr. Jobs was just stalling because judging by the number of people out there attempting to get OSX running on existing netbooks, if Apple ever came out with their own netbook (Macbooklette? Macnetbook? Netmac?) I wouldn't be standing in line to buy one all by myself.

Tags: iphone  netbook  need  netbooks  even

The popularity of the Eee PC netbook has reached even those industries which you wouldn't think would be impacted by such a nifty piece of hardware. Latest industry player to join the netbook craze is toy specialist store - Toys R' Us. But wait, we're not saying that the store would be releasing its own branded netbook, but rather starting Nov. 16, the toy specialist would soon be carrying the Eee PC under its Consumer Electronics assortment of products.

News had it that Toys R' Us will be selling four models of the Eee PC 900, with the store hoping to capture the younger market. Toys R believe that the Eee PC is a kid-friendly product, hence the decision to sell the said netbooks to its consumers who are predominantly toy-loving younger consumers.

To kick-off the introduction of the Eee PC to their product offerings, Toys R' Us will be conducting a comprehensive campaign that would include print and active in-store displays.

Via Twice.com

A post from the Asus Eee PC blog.

Toys R' Us to Sell Four Models of the Eee PC

Tags: pc  eee  toys  r  store

HP is mulling the idea of offering their latest netbooks, the Mini 1000 bundled with various mobile data plans in the hope of sparking more interests and eventually sales to their netbooks. According to are report by the Wall Street Journal, HP is sort of overwhelmed by the growing popularity of the netbooks that they are looking into the possibility of selling off their Mini Note netbooks together with various data plans. This fits well with the idea of internet mobility in the true sense of the word.

The plan is hot on the heels of the just announced new models of the HP netbook - the HP Mini 1000, HP Mini 1000 Vivienne Tam Edition and the Mini 700.

If you're not in the loop, some countries in Europe and Asia are fond of doing this kind of marketing strategy to gain market leverage for their netbook. And with the rising cost of prices, it is but natural for consumers to look into great buys and deals before they proceed with the transaction.

So, HP's plans of bundling up their HP Mini Note netbook with mobile carriers' data plans seem to be a logical strategy.

Via WSJ

A post from the Asus Eee PC blog.

HP Plans to Offer its Netbook via US Mobile Data Plan Bundle

	Tags: hp  plans  mini  data  netbook
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Actually, we're not really surprise with the findings of LaptopMag as to how well Windows 7 runs smoothly on the Eee PC 1000H. The fact that Microsoft recently demoed their upcoming OS using a netbook only goes to show the direction that Windows 7 will be going to once it is released next year. When Microsoft decided to demo Windows 7 using a netbook, it only means that the OS will be lightweight and less complex that Windows Vista. Although a bit powerful than Windows XP.

Anyway, going back to the test run done by Laptopmag using a demo copy of Windows 7 handed out during the recently concluded Microsoft PDC event, Joanna Stern has the following observations:

• it took the Eee PC 1000H 58 seconds to booth Windows 7
• Windows feels and looks like Windows Vista
• improved network manager, ideal for netbooks
• smooth video playback
• does not eat up to many system resources when running

Overall it was a pretty successful testing of the Eee PC running on Windows 7. And suffice it to say that it was just a pre-beta version. Hopefully Microsoft programmers would be able to iron out some kinks before Windows 7 is released next year. By then, we might be seeing new netbooks again, with most of them definitely offering the Windows 7 as an OS.

A post from the Asus Eee PC blog.

Surprise! Surprise! Windows 7 Runs Well on the Eee PC

Tags: windows  pc  eee  surprise  microsoft

There has been lots of attention around this end of the blogosphere lately about a site launched by Intel and Asus. The site is called WePC, and it hopes to collectively gather the best ideas for a laptop. Users can submit just an idea, or a complete idea of their dream computer. Submissions can be voted on by the community, and the site says that Asus will build the best computer (based on community votes), and Intel will power it.

The idea seems pretty cool and I'm very excited to see what ends up happening with this project. I'm impressed by the site itself and the time that Asus and Intel put into it. The submission form includes a few fields to enter a name and description for your idea or computer, and even a widget to let you draw your computer.

Have an idea? I encourage you all to submit it to the site; this is a great opportunity to give one of the biggest netbook manufacturers some feedback and suggestions, even if you idea doesn't come to fruition. Be sure to check out some of the ideas that have already been submitted.

Tags: idea  computer  site  intel  asus

Remember my in-tent Samsung Q1 Ultra test? 9hrs battery life on the Samsung Q1 with 25% backlight? An average drain of 6.9 watts. It was impressive and since I blew up the Q1 Ultra doing some solar-charging tests, I've been missing those 5, 6 and 7hr figures. I was just getting over the trauma until I read this article about another Samsung Mobile product with great battery life.

Notebook Magazine have just done a full set of battery life tests on the NC10 Netbook and it looks like Samsung have once again worked their magic. The tests included continuous Wifi-on web browsing in battery saving mode which is a very reasonable test to be doing. Far better than the misleading 2001 Jeita test and much more real-life' than the Battery Eater Pro turn everything and and run it at full-steam' approach. The NC10 returned

• 12% screen brightness: 7hrs 34mins representing an average drain of about 7.6w which is just a little bit more than what I saw on the Q1 Ultra.
• 50% screen brightness, the duration dropped to 6hrs 30mins which is an average 8.7W.
• 100% screen brightness, the test result reduced to 4hrs 38 minutes which is 12.3 watts drain.

More after the break

What it highlights is something I've been saying for years. The CPU power drain is not the most important element in determining a devices overall efficiency. In these 10" screens, even the latest LED technology backlight can take a lot of drain. In this case, nearly 5W at full power which is nearly 50% of the total power drain of the whole PC! Obviously, as screens get smaller, the LED power required drops and when you get to a 4.8" screen, you'll see 1-1.5W average drain. If you were to attache that Samsung battery to the Aigo MID, you would see close to 20 hours battery life under similar conditions as the Wifi-on drain is about 3W.

As we move to lower and lower power processors, screens and other components need to follow and the OEM that has access to the best components and the best engineers is always going to have an advantage. Samsung keep proving that.

So how's the rest of the NC10? I was watching a live session at EeePCnews.de a few evenings ago and it was clear that people are really interested in this one. 3000 people watched Sascha, the lead guy there, do live testing and as the session went on you could almost sense people hitting the buy button as Sascha reported positive comment after positive comment! LaptopMag calls it their netbook of choice' right now. From what I've seen, I have no reason to doubt it.

Samsung NC10 links and info in the product database.

Tags: drain  samsung  battery  life  nc

The new Asus Eee Top All-in-One Touchscreen Desktop PC already appeared on a UK retailer for pre-order two weeks ago. Now Asus has published product pages with all details about these very interesting computers on their site. The Asus Eee Top comes in ...

Tags: asus  top  eee  details  et

Editor & Publisher is reporting that CNN is preparing to pitch a new wire service to a variety of newspapers and newspaper groups, large and small, which would presumably compete with the Associated Press.

Tags: wire  newspapers  service  cnn  small

Kevin Maney writes: Who knew a stinkin' cloud could get get so crowded. But here comes Microsoft stomping into cloud computing, instantly taking up space like a 300-pound guy in a middle seat.

Tags: cloud  microsoft  ibm  blue  computing

Sam Gustin writes: After a year of skirmishes with major broadband providers, Free Press, the D.C.-based advocacy group, has asked the Federal Communications Commission to institute new rules requiring greater transparency on the part of internet service providers.

Free Press wants the agency to ensure that broadband providers disclose their network management practices, as well as the minimum speeds offered on their networks. The group says the new rules are needed in the wake of two controversial cases in which broadband companies failed to disclose their practices to consumers.

The first case, in which cable giant Comcast was found by the F.C.C. to have blocked peer-to-peer internet traffic, generated widespread criticism of the company, and became a cause celebre for advocates of network neutrality, the principle that all internet traffic should be treated equally. The second case involved a company called NebuAd, which secretly partnered with several broadband providers to monitor users' traffic as part a new data-mining technique called behavioral targeting.

Free Press wants the F.C.C. to require broadband companies to be more forthcoming with their customers about such practices.

"The pervasive lack of transparency in the broadband industry has opened the door to rampant abuse," said Ben Scott, Free Press policy director. "After recent episodes of secret spying and secret blocking, consumers have good reason to question whether cable and phone companies will respect their privacy and their right to free speech."

"Moving forward," Scott said, "we propose that any service provider that wants to manipulate the connection between Internet users and Internet content has an obligation to disclose what it is doing. Without industry-wide transparency, Internet users are likely to blame service disruptions on their computers or themselves rather than where it belongs -- on their ISP."

These rules are a good idea. As GigaOm's Stacey Higginbotham writes, "When it comes to traffic shaping and network speeds, there's no such thing as too much information."

Customers should have the right to know how broadband companies manage their networks, and what data they are collecting about them. And if the broadband companies have nothing to hide, surely they won't object to greater transparency.

Tags: broadband  free  internet  transparency  press

Andrea Chalupa writes: As I said last week, online video may be recession proof. Today, a bunch of online video execs (Mike Hudack the CEO and Co-Founder of Blip.tv, Andrew Heyward former President of CBS News and now Senior Advisor of Marketspace LLC/Monitor Group, to Victoria M. Brown co-founder of Big Think) sat around a table at Rockefeller Center for Beet.TV's Online Video Summit and discussed ways to make sure that's true. The full three-hour conversation can be heard here. But if you don't want to listen to the whole thing, here are a few of the highlights:

* Embed, and they will come. Fred McIntyre from AOL talked about embedding as a critical component to video discovery -- that the biggest problem in online video is simply finding it. Adam Berrey, senior VP at Brightcove, echoed this sentiment, adding that most people consume online video like it's a Choose Your Own Adventure book. Berrey advocates keeping audiences' eyeballs by providing context for a video; so, embed.

* The dog and the skateboard, or that's industry speak for user-generated-content. For all of the industry buzzwords and attempts at understanding monetization today, the funnier moments came down to what makes good content. As Mike Hudack of Blip.tv pointed out, videos showing "how-to's" build dedicated, but small, audiences willing to sit through TV-length episodes.

* And now, monetization. Despite a supposed clamoring of video inventory by advertisers, Next New Networks is taking a sponsorship approach to its thirteen online "TV networks" targeted at specific audiences. For ThreadBanger, a "network" for people who make their own clothes, signed just one sponsor, Janome Sewing Machines. Tim Shey, co-founder, claims his company makes a couple hundred thousand dollars a month with this approach.

Tags: video  tv  online  audiences  embed

Samsung's recent entry into the US market coincided with their release of their first netbook, the NC10. The NC10 is a 10-inch netbook with a big keyboard and looks to be a nice entry into the market for Samsung. Laptop Magazine has published a review of the NC10 and it looks like they have a new favorite:

Samsung's NC10 is the only product that provides comparableand even improvedfeatures for a lower price. Its comfortable, well-positioned keyboard, speedy and spacious hard drive, and more than 7 hours of endurance make the $499 Samsung NC10 the most well-rounded 10-inch netbook on the market.

Have a look at the review and see if you think the NC10 is the netbook of your dreams.

Tags: nc  samsung  netbook  market  keyboard

D-Day has arrived at Time Inc. The Time Warner-owned publisher is set to announce the elimination of 600 jobs -- around 6 percent of its workforce -- and a major reorientation in the way it does business, reports The New York Times.

Shuffling the deck is nothing new at Time Inc., of course; indeed, it seems to be management's answer for everything from sagging ad revenues to the common cold. But this reorganization sounds like a pretty big one, involving a "more centralized management structure" and plans to share resources between titles.

Writes Tim Arango, "Power within Time Inc., which through many mergers over the decades became the modern Time Warner, has long been diffuse, with individual publishers and editors essentially running their own shows. That distinct culture is coming to an end."

Tags: inc  warner  publishers  management  report

For all of the millions of blogs on the web, only an incredibly small fraction generate enough revenue to serve as full time jobs. Most people are happy enough with just sharing their thoughts with the public, even if they only see a few hundred hits a months with the very occasional comment. But what if there was a way for even these small-timers to generate enough money to put food on the table?

Larry Genkin, the founder and editor of Blogger and Podcaster Magazine, is looking to help the long tail of bloggers turn their hobby into a lucrative job. He has started the Blogger and Podcaster Media Network, a consortium of bloggers and related companies looking to help bloggers of all sizes effectively monetize their sites without having to worry about having a relatively small audience. The site is currently open for signups, but won't go live until early next year.

At launch the BPMN is a rollup of companies including Genkin's magazine, Fuel My Blog (A bloggers' social network based in the UK), Podcast Pickle (a podcasters' social network), and SocialRank, a company similar to Sphere that monitors blogs for related and popular content.

Each of these companies will help promote the new network, and will also offer technology to help bloggers build out their site (for example, they'll be able to use SocialRank's technology). The BPMN will also try to partner with large media companies to help give blogs more exposure. To help each blog get started, the company has partnered with PR NewsWire, which will offer each blogger a promotion package Genkin says is worth $2000.

The BPMN will also have a dedicated sales team for advertising. Genkin says that large ad networks like Federated Media cater to large blogs, leaving most of the long tail bloggers to fend for themselves. Because BPMN will be representing a large number of blogs at once, Genkin says it will be able to secure more favorable deals. The network will have a rev-share agreement with bloggers, giving 70% of ad revenues to members.

Beyond advertising, The BPMN is also employing an affiliate scheme to help bloggers generate revenue. Genkin says that for every blogger a member brings into the network, they'll earn around $500-1000 a year. It sounds like this is the primary way the BPMN expects to help small time bloggers earn full-time salaries (just recruit 50 bloggers and you're set!), but recruiting bloggers is more difficult than it sounds, which is where I think the BPMN might fall short. To further entice bloggers, The BPMN is offering a (presumably small) equity stake in the company to early adopters on the network who sign up by the end of the year. And the last selling point: bloggers will have healthcare coverage, though the details for this have yet to be worked out.

The Blogger and Podcast Media Network is going to have a long struggle ahead. Even if advertisers are enticed by the ability to make large ad buys across the network that are more favorable than AdSense, most individual bloggers still won't be seeing much income from their ads. And the affiliate scheme sounds too good to be true - I doubt many people will be able to recruit enough bloggers to earn a sizable income. If Genkin can pull off some partnerships with large media corporations (his magazine already scored a deal with USA Today), these bloggers may be able to increase their traffic and generate some revenue, but I have a hard time picturing small time bloggers earning full time wages.

Crunch Network: CrunchBase the free database of technology companies, people, and investors

Tags: bloggers  network  bpmn  genkin  small

This morning we announced at the Beet.TV roundtable event in New York City that we are now capable of using DoubleClick's DART platform to dynamically serve and track advertisements in downloaded video within iTunes. The advertisements also travel seamlessly to iPods, iPhones and AppleTVs although third-party tracking doesn't work on these devices yet.

This is a first for video podcasts. We've been running advertisements in iTunes since last year but this is the first time we're able to serve them dynamically and offer third-party tracking.

The importance of third-party tracking cannot be overstated. Until now there's been no reliable way for advertisers to measure the success of their advertisements in podcasts. The best metric available has been downloads. The problem is that not everyone who downloads a video podcast watches it, and not everyone who watches it sticks around long enough to see the advertisements. This has meant that advertisers have been leery of spending money on podcasts. Advertisers need a way to measure the effectiveness and efficiency of their buys.

I should mention that Volomedia has a system that can do semi-dynamic insertion (insertion is done at download time) of advertisements in downloaded QuickTime. Volomedia's system can also track impressions and clicks, but only when viewers have installed their Volocast plug-in. Kiptronic can also do semi-dynamic insertion but only offers tracking of downloads, not impressions. Our implementation does not require the viewer to install any software other than iTunes or QuickTime Player, and even works in non-iTunes podcatchers like the excellent Miro.

Our system is already in production running a Puma sponsorship on Golf Girl TV (link goes to iTunes so you can see the ad in action!) and a Skype campaign on Back on Topps. The system supports prerolls, postrolls, midrolls and overlays. All ads can be clicked and clicks are tracked using DoubleClick within iTunes or QuickTime Player. Clickability is not (yet) available on devices like the iPhone because of limitations of those platforms.

We're not running any third-party ad networks in QuickTime because they don't support the environment yet, so the ads we're running in QuickTime are limited to those that we sell ourselves or that content creators sell. If you opt into run of network advertising on blip (click on Advertising from your Dashboard) we'll serve ads into your QuickTime videos as they're available. If you have your own sales force and would like to traffic your own campaigns in your QuickTime downloads you can e-mail support AT blip DOT teevee and let us know. We'd be more than happy to traffic your campaign for you (a self-service interface is coming soon!).

I can imagine that you may have some questions about this announcement. John Furrier (the former CEO of PodTech) did too. He wrote up a blog post on the subject. He seemed a little confused about what exactly we were announcing and why it was innovative. I figure that you may have many of the same questions as John, so here are some excerpts from my discussion with John in the comments on his post:

John Furrier:

thanks for commenting. are you turning on ads for all your videos or just select groups? what kind of metrics are you reporting? Views, clicks, and plays? do you guys do dynamic insertion?

Mike Hudack:

Absolutely. Any show on blip can opt into advertising from their Dashboard (http://blip.tv/prefs/). Shows that opt in receive a blend of ads from our direct sales force plus various ad networks (Google, ScanScout, YuMe, Adap.TV, VideoEgg, et cetera) for views in Flash. We have some daisy chaining and yield optimization technology that chooses the highest paying ad for any individual play.

In QuickTime we're limited to ads that we sell and ads that our content creators sell. This is because none of the ad networks that we work with can serve into QT right now. So shows that opt in will receive some ads in their QuickTime views, but we're not yet filling 100% of the inventory. Any of our 37,000 show creators can sell into their QuickTime inventory, though, and we'll traffic their ads for them.

In Flash we're reporting video views, advertisement impressions, advertisement clicks and engagement. The engagement is shown on a timeline it shows how many people viewed each second of video. This is particularly useful for brand integration and product placement (we can see exactly how many people saw the brand integration or product placement and how many times).

In QuickTime we're reporting video downloads, advertisement impressions and advertisement clicks.

In both Flash and QuickTime the metrics come from third parties (DoubleClick for ad impressions and clicks, Illumenix for engagement).

I think that the most important thing here is that, with both QuickTime and Flash, we're measuring impressions according to the IAB standard the client requests the ad, and the impression is recorded only at that time. We need no software on the client to do this. Just regular iTunes or regular QuickTime. There's no need to download anything, and the viewer doesn't have to be incented to allow measurement to take place it just works.

John Furrier:

Mike thanks for replying this is great content and thanks for basically agreeing to do an asynchronous interview Q&A here on my blog.

A few questions:
1. An you sent me a pointer or particular publisher video playing in iTunes that you can measure

2. Can you measure while iTunes is in a disconnected state? If not, then is this just streaming iTunes, and who watches video this way? Perhaps you means QT player and not iTunes?

3. Can you deal with .m4v and .mp4 files?

4. you mentioned above we're measuring impressions according to the IAB standard the client requests the ad, and the impression is recorded only at that time. - are you saying that you record an ad impression even it they don't watch it if it sits in the library of the users itunes. I'm asking to be specific between requested download, partial download, fully download, and actually watched

Mike Hudack:

You can find links to particular campaigns running in iTunes on the NewTeeVee story that you already linked to. Both are verified using DART.

We've found that between 50 and 75% (I know it's a wide delta, it varies from show to show) of iTunes views happen in iTunes while connected. Apparently *lots* of people watch video this way. For what it's worth, I do too. I subscribe to podcasts in iTunes and then watch them fullscreen on both my laptop at home and on my Mac desktop in the office. I find it to be a generally better experience for watching shows I like, rather than happening upon embeds on the Web.

Our implementation is also compatible with the standalone QuickTime player and with any software that uses the QuickTime player software (Democracy Player for example).

In terms of what file formats we work with, we deliver the videos and advertisements in a QuickTime container that's fully compatible with the entire range of Apple portable devices and with the AppleTV. We have about 37,000 active shows using blip today (they release about three new episodes a month each) and so as you can imagine we have to deal with a very wide variety of incoming video formats. Before we deliver videos we're trafficking against to iTunes we transcode them to the universally compatible QuickTime format and then modify the container to insert the pointers to DART.

In terms of recording impressions, I'm actually saying exactly the opposite. Current iTunes advertising implementations (Kiptronic, Volomedia unless you download their iTunes plugins) record impressions as soon as the video is downloaded. This is a flawed practice because not everyone who downloads the video watches it (at least not while the campaign's running and the ad is still relevant!), and not everyone who views a video actually sees all the ads. What we do is measure an impression *only when the ad is actually viewed*. This is what the IAB standards require. As far as we know no other implementation that doesn't require a download by the viewer (and I'd be curious to know what the install base is for these measurement plug-ins is) does this none of them comply with the IAB standards, and as a result they (unfortunately) overcount impressions.

It's important to note, again, that for the purposes of advertisements we're *not* counting downloads. And certainly not partial downloads. We do record those metrics, but for content creators, not to give to advertisers to measure the success of their campaigns. We are counting *impressions* - people actually seeing the advertisement. I can't stress this enough.

	Tags: itunes  quicktime  video  impressions  ad
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