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Gizmo Glut: How
Multi-Purpose Platform Proliferation Creates Content
Opportunities |
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12 January 2004 |
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This year's
International
Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas offered a stunning
galaxy of devices large and small for consuming a wide
array of content sources in multiple formats. Whither
standards in all of this? For many the push to get into the
hottest devices possible has left standards hanging in the
breeze, while others such as Real Networks and IBM opt to
open rights-protected content delivery to the widest
audiences possible. Much as it may chagrin gizmo producers
who want to gain advantages over their competition, it's in
the content industry's interest to create an environment
where they can deliver content objects to the widest range
of devices possible. |
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This was the year of the
multi-purpose device at the
International
Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas. From watches giving
weather and news to game consoles that serve as browsers
to flat-panel television monitors that also provide access to
broadband Internet content, new generations of electronics are
vying for the attention of content audiences that are beginning
to grow beyond the strictures of the multi-purpose PC platform
and its portable affiliates. Some of these consumers are your
basic gizmo gluttons, eager to flash around the latest in
electronic status-wear, regardless of its ultimate utility. But
much of the electronic convergence is aimed at a broad swath of
the public that never took PCs and other advanced electronics very seriously and who are
unlikely to do so anytime soon. With more computing power in
the average automobile than was found in an Apollo moon rocket
and browsable refrigerators becoming a reality,
virtually any object that has a source of electrical power
today has become a potential outlet for a wide array of
multimedia content.
It is such device proliferation that
brought forth the very concept of content as a distinct entity
that was valuable and powerful. When technology was hidden
comfortably inside the bowels of a printing plant, content was
hardly a concept at all. Then first with the ticker tape, then
phonographs, then radio, then television and finally
silicon-based computing, the technology for creating the
information and experiences that people valued made its way
into the hands of the user. From the beginning of this trend,
innovation has been seen as an opportunity for technologists
and manufacturers to gain control over content distribution.
But with content delivery platforms expected to do multiple
duties for a multitude of sources, such device-specific content
dominance is becoming harder and harder to effect, a goal that
oftentimes winds up slowing down content market penetration
rather than accelerating it. While content technology is only
going to become more intertwined with both personal and
professional lifestyles, its inclusion into more appliance-like
devices only increases the necessity for content technology to
become more transparent to the user - and more likely to
require ubiquitous standards for distribution and use.
With this in mind, I'd have to rate the
teaming of Real Networks and IBM for standards-driven
multimedia distribution as the most significant
announcement at the CES from a content perspective. While
others are monkeying with a myriad of gizmos for the home, road
and office to capture captive niches, IBM and Real are
developing a relatively open framework that will allow
businesses to take advantage of virtually any multimedia format
on any Real-compatible user platform and apply rights
management, ecommerce and billing capabilities in a highly
scalable environment. While the collaboration offers
opportunities for consumer content, much of its strength is
oriented towards bridging the gap between the consumer arena
and the institutional space, where the proliferation of
multimedia for use in online conferencing and training is
beginning to push the need to integrate these internal
sources with external content more readily in personally
convenient venues. With Real's high visibility in the consumer
segment and IBM's strong presence in high-powered corporate
infrastructure, this promises to be a strong combination for
success across the consumer and corporate segments.
Publishers of all kinds would be wise to
look carefully at the Real/IBM initiative to examine it as a
potential model of success for content distribution and
enablement. Just as the original Napster and its descendants
seized readily available content format standards very
aggressively to forge incredibly powerful content distribution
networks, the power in today's content distribution is likely
to fall to those who can exploit the converging of multimedia
sources and standards in a way that can take advantage of as
many platforms as possible in as little time as possible.
Real's setup is clever in this respect in that it's Real10
player is able to navigate a number of conflicting content
format and digital rights management standards in a relatively
transparent method. In other words, if you're someone who's
trying to play the captive standard game, there are reasonable
workarounds to render that strategy moot without degrading
product quality. Vendors in both publishing and technology try
hard to invent new gadgets that are hard to resist: their
inherent capabilities do not really require new standards to
ensure technical quality, but the hope is that clever features
will delay the likelihood of truly universal standards. Yet
when standards are adopted, it's generally easier to deliver
clever features that are valuable to the widest audience
possible.
With this in mind it's somewhat of a
mystery as to why some content producers and media outlets
still struggle so mightily for proprietary advantages through
specific content distribution platforms and outlets. In the
post-Napster environment it should be clear to publishers that
effective standards are the airwaves of the 21st century,
providing the universal, objective and predictable delivery
medium that allows them to concentrate their investments on the
content products themselves instead of on the distribution
mechanisms. There are always new technological niches
where proprietary approaches are necessary to exploit new
opportunities without standards, but most of today's content
rides on standards-driven infrastructure where proprietary
approaches will only hinder market penetration across a myriad
of devices. The need for this focus will become only more
apparent as the delivery of standards-driven digital objects
that combine both information and functionality as content
becomes more prevalent, reducing publishers' reliance on
specific platform providers. These objects will become in
effect the digital "paper" of the publishing industry, allowing
publishers to create persistent, portable, storable and
resalable items consumed through ever-more-clever devices.
Over time, publishers of all kinds will
have a great opportunity through content object distribution to
recapture the essence of publishing's strength if they become
the most aggressive inventors, developers and propagators of
universal content delivery standards for high-powered content
objects. Whenever publishers fail to do so, they allow others
to invent new "airwaves" that are beyond their control, and in
the process dilute their potential market penetration.
Opportunities for short-term gains outside of standards will
always beckon, but focusing on these opportunities will risk
being left on yesterday's technology scrap heap far faster than
ever before.
-
John Blossom
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