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Over the past couple of days, we’ve seen the next wave of video and audio content delivery pick up steam. Wireless on-demand services for portable devices such as mobile phones and portable gaming devices like the PSP are now becoming a reality. Yesterday, Sony Computer Entertainment of Europe and SKY teamed up to create a joint venture that will allow more than 2.3 million PSP owners to download video and movie film content, on-demand. Stay tuned to the Leipzig Game Conference for more news on this development.

Today, C|Net News reported that AT&T and eMusic, the nations second largest online music seller after iTunes, have joined forces to allow users the ability to complete wireless downloads of independent music through cell phones. Here are some of the details:

‘Tracks will cost more than they do over the Internet–$7.49 for five songs, as opposed to $9.99 for 30 at the online site–because of the expense of sending them over a mobile network to a user’s phone. For that price, however, users can also get another copy of the song, which they can download from the Internet as an MP3.’

Did we mention this service won’t be available on the iPhone.

It’s clear that the convergence of on-demand and wireless are upon us. Of course there are still issues with regard to file sizes and load times. However, in the States, as the big players determine who will own the airwaves, it leaves us thinking, will home-based computing systems become ‘the third screen’.

A Google lawyer announced on Friday that they will apply video fingerprinting technology to YouTube by September.

This comes as great news to countless of video content producers, that are now seeing their copyright videos on YouTube without their permission.

The video screening technology will consist of a computer system which will automatically scan all videos uploaded to YouTube and compare them to a collection of digital fingerprints built by Google. According, to Google the process will only take a few minutes to scan and determine its acceptance onto YouTube.

This is definitely a large step forward for YouTube and one that will hopefully help to spend less time in the courtroom and more time revolutionizing the Internet.

A quick post from something interesting I spotted in Pete Cashmore’s Mashable blog (and then a few other places). The post is about uTorrent, a BitTorrent client that is designed to work on your mobile phone. To date, there have been apps that let you access your P2P activity remotely (i.e. so you can set up a torrent at work to start downloading at home), but uTorrent Mobile is a simple browser-based application designed to let you do this on your phone.

What does this mean? There is still a lot of work to be done and connection speeds to become faster, but obviously the ultimate goal is to be able to fully access peer-to-peer networks and their content on your mobile phone and eventually to quickly download content to your mobile device. Translation - information and files moving back and forth even faster and into your pocket. Think about it, your law-breaking friend (because you don’t do that sort of thing) could download that Family Guy episode from a P2P network straight to his iPhone without having to wait for that darn single stream to finish (and without paying Fox because he is soulless). As phone connection speeds get faster, they get more storage capacity and they become better at playing media, this will surely begin to happen. Then, of course, not only could you pull from people’s computers on P2P networks around the world, but you could be file-sharing with everyone who had a phone. Yikes. No doubt Hollywood and music labels shudder at this thought - it’s tough enough as it is to regulate content sharing… Well, it’s not here yet, but on its way.

uTorrent officially launched on July 25th.

Also see - Slyck News and NewTeeVee.com for reviews and info.

Blogging as we know it today is a relatively new idea and one that has taken the internet by storm. Simply put… Blogs are the newest and best ways for getting any and all news. And for good reason; blogs give anyone with a computer and the internet the opportunity to express thoughts and spread news as they happen from almost anywhere in the world.

So it’s no wonder that some bloggers are now making big money!

While surfing the internet I came across a very interesting Business Week article about just how much some bloggers are making, so check it out:

“How Top Bloggers Earn Money“

Think you’re pretty good at checkers? Well, if you played Chinook, a computer opponent developed by Canadian researchers, the best you can do is force a draw.

Not exactly world-changing, as even the researchers themselves note, but still pretty cool. See the whole article HERE on CNN.com. I found this line particularly interesting -

“Every combination of 10 checkers offers 39 trillion positions for the endgame, [Schaeffer] said. Chinook can calculate them all. It does not matter how the players make it to 10 checkers left because from that point on, the computer cannot lose, [he] said. For two players who never make a mistake, every game would be a draw, he said.”

As it turns out, while it seems like Chess has been solved by computers already, it really has not. Chess programs still use rules of thumb to play, not figuring out every possible position. Why? Because according to the researchers “Checkers has roughly the square root of the number of positions in chess,” the researchers said. “Given the effort required to solve checkers, chess will remain unsolved for a long time, barring the invention of new technology.” Scary.

Next up - poker. The researchers who created the checkers program will pit their poker playing program “Polaris” against two professionals for $50,000 in Vancouver. Stay tuned…

The thing this makes me think about it how despite the fact that we’re constantly surrounded by new and amazing technology, there is still so much to be found. If checkers is this complicated, think about how far we have to go with search, for example. I look forward to writing a more detailed post on this in the future, but just take a moment to think about search and how nascent it is. Think about how often you can really just type in what you want and get directed to where it is…not that often. We’ve all had to develop our own “search speak” to type into those engines because we know they’re not intuitive enough to understand what we’re asking for. And that’s the entire world of words and websites, not just a few squares and pieces that can only move one square at a time.

Here’s your chance to vent some stress and be in one of the most popular video game franchises ever!

Rockstar Games is currently giving anyone who calls their “WKTT Radio Hotline” a chance to express their feelings about whats wrong with their health, the world, America, or themselves.

This is such a great idea… It gives fans the opportunity to be part of the game, it gives Rockstar free content, and it creates a chance to sell more games. In fact, here is a perfect chance to harness the power of social media. For instance, they could produce and provide HTML badges to the lucky chosen “talent” that announce their “guest appearance” in the new GTA, so they would be able to post it on the web for others to see.

As well, I hope other video game developers get inspired by this and start implementing similar ideas in their game development.

Just imagine being able to to send in your photo and having a chance to be chosen as a character the next Tom Clancy game or sending in your own drawings/paintings and having them appear as scenery items in the next Resident Evil. In fact, the possibilities are endless, so it will be cool to see what is to come of all this.

Nevertheless, if your interested in the chance to brag to your friend about being in the new Grand Theft Auto. Just follow the link below…

WKTTradio.com

There have been some recent revelations (see article) on Whole Foods CEO John Mackey (aka “rahodeb”) who, from 1999 to 2006, made several anonymous postings on financial forums and sites putting down his company’s rival competitor Wild Oats. Among other postings, Mackey wrote that Wild Oates’ management “clearly doesn’t know what it is doing” and that the company “has no value and no future.” Oddly enough, Whole Foods announced this past February that they were buying Wild Oates for $565 million - perhaps the tofu-organic equivalent of “no value.”

According to the article, Whole Foods is saying 1) that many of Mackey’s comment, in that they were written over the course of many years across the web, are being taken out of context and 2) that the comments were Mackey’s personal comments and not those of the company. Uhhh, sure. Semantically, that may be true. But if this is the person who runs said company, might there be some cross over? I think maybe.

To be realistic here, I highly doubt that any of Mackey’s anonymous comments had any effect on stock price or investors’ handling of their Wild Oats stocks. Nonetheless, it’s still bad PR and it reflects poorly on the company and its leader.

Recently Mackey has been blasting the FTC on the Whole Foods’ blog about their desire to block his company’s purchase of Wild Oats because of anti-trust concerns. While this may be raising eyebrows in some corners of the business world, from a social media standpoint this is certainly more proper behavior. We know who you are, we know who you work for and you can say whatever you want.

There have certainly been several examples of companies misbehaving in the social media space, often pretending NOT to be who they are to be more credible. (The irony being, of course, that once they are discovered the company’s credibility is shot.) This will likely continue until the end of time. In the same way that person to person interaction requires some feeling out before you start taking stock tips or buying a new sneaker brand, people in online spheres are pretty savvy and know not to believe every post in every forum. But not everyone knows…Ask me if my mom would know how to spot something online that might be a solicitation from an anonymous marketer and I’d say no. To her, and to many, the internet is where the information is…and it’s all right.

Surely people will continue to get fooled (not just my mom, mind you - me, you and everyone else…and multiple times). For small companies or individuals with no reputation at stake, aside from integrity there’s just not much stopping them from lying to people online. It really will be incumbent upon all of us online, just as in person, to pay attention to what information we’re taking in. But for large companies, it’s just not smart business to handle social media in this way. Don’t know about you, but I wouldn’t want my company’s CEO pretending to be someone else online and talking stock tips about my company and its competitors. Mackey and Whole Foods lose credibility online instantly.

…on the bright side, however, if no respect from the investor community he did score himself some more female fans with comment like this - “I like Mackey’s haircut,” “Rahodeb” said. “I think he looks cute!” (See full WSJ Article)

As of right now mobile web is not very popular, but as more and more attractive phones start to populate our cell phone selection and data plan prices start to drop, things will surely change.

Therefore, I must ask: why wait any longer to properly secure your site a home in future mobile search results?  

So, what are some things you can do so you don’t get left behind?

1. Do not forget to submit your site to mobile search engines such as MSN Mobile, Yahoo Mobile, and Google Mobile.
     
2. Make sure you familiarize yourself with all the different platforms your users might have; this is to ensure that you will be accessible to more people.
     
3. Follow normal SEO techniques such as using proper tags, keyword techniques, and so on.

Remember, this is just a small list of techniques designed to make you aware of mobile SEO. So, make sure to do your research and apply all learned techniques ASAP!

In the dawn of the new, more lean E3, comes the news of Sony’s new, more lean PSP. Actually, Sony has developed a thin PSP system with a variety of colors to match customer personalities (as seen below).

These new PSPs will be 33% lighter, 19% slimmer and have a more efficient battery. The most amazing part of this new PSP is the video output capabilities to TV (480 x 272). This means you can watch movies and play games on the big screen as well during your ride on mass transit. There will also be bundle opportunities for software developers (limited editions) like a ‘ceramic white’ color with a Darth Vader silk screen that includes a 1 GB memory stick along with Star Wars: Battlefront Renegade Squadron for $199.99 (due out later this fall).

It appears Sony is gaining momentum coming out of E3, and with these types of innovations, they may be able make up some ground on the Nintendo DS. We wonder how this will go over in Japan, where the DS is the clear market leader.

Since Facebook officially launched the “Facebook Platform” in May, it has become more popular than ever. In fact, InsideFacebook.com has reported 65 million apps added by users in the first month alone.

The added functionality has no doubt been a shot of life for Facebook. So much that just the other day Facebook reported hitting thirty million active members on the site!

This got me thinking however: what exactly determines an “active” member within social networks?!

• If a member signs in once every two months to check their page: is that an active member?

• Is the active member number based on the amount of unique members signing in for the past month?

There is great debate as to what exactly is an active user. And until there is a standard definition for “active user” established… I guess MySpace can call a user that signed in once in the past 11 months an active user or whatsoever they please.

Nevertheless, this is very troubling; something both users and online marketers need to keep an eye out for. When social networks have the ability to use the word “active user” as they please, we all must be little hesitant when believing such news.

Oh… and don’t forget the countless number of robot operated spam pages on MySpace; they count as active users too!