Japan Tsunami Video
This is one of the most unbelievable and horrific videos I have seen of the Tsunami in Japan.
If you are Canadian and wish to make a donation, you can donate to the Canadian Red Cross or text ASIA to 30333 from your cell to donate $5.
Doctors Without Borders is also currently helping the relief effort in Japan.
Video Source: Joshua Topolsky
iPad 2
Just got home with my brand new, white 32GB iPad 2. And while we were down in Seattle waiting in line we were featured on Engadget!
iPad 2 Line at Alderwood Mall in Seattle
Looking forward to finally getting my hands on one!
Update:
Looks like between 200 and 300 people in the line now at Alderwood Mall. Maybe even more because we can't see the end. It goes all the way to the parking lot, past Borders.
MIS Presentation: Mobile Applications
This is a presentation that I gave last semester on mobile applications for Commerce 438 (Management of Information Systems).
It doesn't include any of the content that we spoke about in our presentation, and it doesn't have the demo that I gave in the middle of the presentation (I demoed the Pizza Hut app on my iPhone through the projector) but hopefully the keynote is still interesting on its own!
Our Team: Michael Silverwood, Leslie Lo, Cathy Law, Jimmy Lin, Teresa Wang, Victor Wong.
Digital and Mobile Distribution of Entertainment
Digital distribution has already become prevalent in the music industry, making iTunes the number one music retailer in the US, and digitally downloaded copies of video games are approaching 50% of the total market as well. The film industry has been the most resistant to this trend thus far, largely due to fears of piracy and changing business models, and while these fears are not completely unjustified, other comparable industries have proven that the move to digital content is not only unavoidable, but also potentially lucrative if handled properly.
Digital Distribution in the Music Industry
When Napster launched in 1999, the true power of digital distribution was witnessed for the first time, and the music industry was unprepared to adapt its traditional business models fast enough to meet consumer demand. Eleven years later, however, the industry has adapted, and is still extremely profitable with iTunes alone selling more than 10 billion digital songs as of February 24, 2010.The movie industry faces similar risks of not adapting fast enough in a world where broadband Internet connections are getting fast enough to download feature-length films in a matter of minutes. Napster proved that if the content creators did not provide consumers with a convenient way to download digital content, they would find ways to get it themselves. However, the music industry also discovered that those same consumers were willing to pay for digital downloads if they were offered in a convenient way, and the early movers in the film industry will be in the best position to reap these same benefits in the coming years.
As evidenced by the data shown above, the increase in sales of Blu-ray disks has not been able make up for the rapid decline in DVD sales. As a result, physical media sales have declined overall. Digital distribution was still quite small proportionally in 2010 (at $1.8 billion) but represents a substantial opportunity for growth. In 2010, it grew by 19%.
Early Trends Towards Digitally Distributed Film
In the current market for digitally downloaded and streamed movies, the content has already been met with significant consumer demand, regardless of the fact that most of the largest studios have not supported it whole-heartedly. Even though streaming services such as Netflix rely heavily on older, back-catalogue content, they have been met with astonishing success. Netflix now accounts for more than 20% of peak downstream Internet traffic in the United States, and has almost single handedly forced conventional rental services, such as Blockbuster, towards bankruptcy.Apple has also been increasingly successful with digitally distributed movies on its iTunes Movie Store. According to Thomas K. Arnold, iTunes accounted for the vast majority of electronic movies sold in 2010, and lead the industry to a 37% increase over 2009. However, the industry is still intent on using stringent copy protection for digital copies of movies, and limiting the devices that purchased films can be viewed on. Without an easy way to truly own the content, watch it anywhere, and lend it to friends, consumers are forced to either buy multiple copies or resort to piracy.
Apple already made its entire iTunes music library DRM-free, and it is time for the film industry to let paying consumers watch their content wherever they choose.
Mobile Distribution and the Future
Music might have been the first form of entertainment to experience the shift towards digital distribution in 1999, but it was not until 2008 that the exponential growth of this trend truly came into focus. On July 10, 2008, Apple launched the App Store to sell content for its iPhone and iPod Touch devices in an exclusively digital format. Since then, entertainment products ranging from video games to video streaming services (including Netflix) have been phenomenally successful in the store, proving that consumer demand for digital entertainment is extremely high on mobile devices as well. Moreover, the App Store recently reached 10 billion downloads after only 2.5 years – a benchmark that took the iTunes Music Store just under seven years to achieve. This demonstrates the staggering rise in demand for digital entertainment over the past few years, and underscores the need for the film industry to offer consumers a convenient way to purchase movies that they know will play on any screen that they choose to watch it on.
The App Store has also proven that consumers are looking increasingly for entertainment content to consume on their mobile devices. To support this growing demand, studios should invest in mobile applications that feature their movie libraries.
Mobile apps are able to provide a great amount of value to both the studios and consumers, and can do so by using a number of different business models. Some of the many ways the studios could offer their movie libraries on mobile devices include:
- Free, ad-supported content that acts as a promotional tool (many consumers will want to see the films on a large screen as well after seeing the mobile version).
- Low cost ($0.99) content to drive sales volume (high volume provides large profits as well as high promotional exposure).
- Content that becomes unlocked by entering a code packaged with the DVD/Blu-ray release or included with another digital version.
The most important screen for film, however, will undeniably remain the television. Fortunately, a mobile-focused strategy will support this goal as well. Apple and Google, two of the world's largest smartphone makers, have recently entered the market for set-top boxes that allow users to digitally purchase and watch video on their televisions. Furthermore, the underlying operating systems that these products (Apple TV and Google TV) rely on are the very same technologies that power their mobile phones.
App stores for TVs might have to take on a slightly different form than on phones and tablets, but regardless of the format, it is clear that they will be a reality very soon. As a result, it should be very easy for studios to migrate their phone applications to the television as set-top boxes increase in popularity.
These set-top boxes, however, have the same issues as every piece in the digital puzzle: DRM-protected purchased content will not play on every box, and consumer confusion still exists about how to buy movies. Until it becomes just as convenient to watch purchased movies as it is to watch pirated movies, the film industry will continue to lose sales in physical media without anything to fill the gap. It is time to truly embrace digital, and provide consumers with the entertainment content they desire wherever they want it.
Welcome to MichaelSilverwood.ca
For anyone with an iPhone, going to the homepage will automatically take you to a mobile version of the site. The iPhone version provides all the same information as the main site, but in a format that is easy to read and navigate on an iPhone. You can even save the site to your iPhone as an app by clicking the "+" button on your phone, and choosing "Add to Home Screen."On this blog I will be posted interesting articles and links centered primarily around technology and business, and if you are interested in marketing you can read my UBC blog by clicking the link above.
I hope you really enjoy browsing through everything the site has to offer! It was my goal to make the experience as interactive and enjoyable as possible. This is only the first version of the site, so check back soon for new features and updates, and follow me on Twitter (@michael_one) or subscribe to my RSS feed to keep up to date on the site, and get interesting news on the tech industry.
Below you can see how to add the app to your iPhone's home screen:
