I haven’t yet joined the iPod revolution, mostly because I don’t use a portable stereo or listen to music via headphones anywhere away from my computer. (I also dislike the controls Apple puts on files that you download from them, but that’s a whole other story.) Recently, however, I’ve felt the strong urge to bring digital media files into my car, the one place where I really don’t have access to these files (without going through the hassle of burning a CD… can you believe we EVER made mix tapes???). I was shortly enthralled with the idea of purchasing the Omnifi DMP-1, a revolutionary car mp3 player equipped with a 20GB hard drive and optional wireless connection to the home network (allowing wireless transfer of files to the aforementioned hard drive), however when I considered the prospects of taking apart my car’s dashboard, those delusions of grandeur seemed to slip away. (I have no problem taking apart my computer, but I’ve never ventured into the realm of car tinkering and at this point don’t have a strong desire to.)

So, the other option was to get some sort of portable mp3 player. I do still have a tape player in my car (remember them?), so I don’t even have to bother with the supposedly ineffective FM modulators, although the analog connection provided by the tape converter is not perfect either. In addition, I was lucky enough to discover that my sister has an old iPod she no longer uses (recently upgraded to a mini), a second-generation click wheel gadget with 10GB of storage. The battery no longer holds a charge, and there is no USB support, but the essentials are in place, and geeks like me never shy away from a challenge.

As is bound to happen anytime one works with Mac products, the process has turned from a fun, interesting experiment to a long, drawn out process that may never end. But, I’m determined to beat this darn thing and at the end have a functioning 10GB iPod that I can use in my car. My ordeal follows:

The first thing I needed to procur was a car charger suitable for the iPod (since the battery doesn’t work). Without much further thought, I went where any red-blooded American would look for such a thing: eBay, of course. The first one I picked up ($0.01 plus $6.95 shipping, arrived in a padded envelope that cost no more than $1 including postage) worked only on iPods with dock connectors, which mine didn’t have. Serves me right for jumping on the first one I saw without actually looking at the iPod first. (Luckily, it works for my GFs iPod and she was more than happy to take it from me.) After the first mistake, I picked up another eBay adapter that had a firewire input (this time $0.01 plus $8.99 shipping, came in same envelope, less postage), but it arrived the same day as the wrong one and worked like a charm! The ipod charged while the car was running, the tape converter works, and I’m in business. Too bad the 10GB is filled with my sister’s songs, and I have no way to update it.

What will our hero do next? Can an old Mac iPod even connect to a PC? Read The iPodyssey, Part 2.

Cox announced plans to roll out iTV services to five systems by the end of this year. Much of the services, which will be free to customers, are web-like functionality, such as weather forecasts, movie listings and news headlines. The most interesting service on the list is the ability for customers to pay and manage their accounts through the tv — which could lead the way to eCommerce down the line. Cox is working with MetaTV, a susidiary focused on iTV, on this new venture.

On a slightly related topic, it is very interesting how many players are out there right now for iTV. Cox and Comcast just purchased another iTV provider, Liberate, through a joint venture called, cutely, “Double C”. There’s also openTV, GoldPocket, and several others in the market. At some point, we should see mass consolidation.

About a month ago, Home Shopping Network announced a joint venture with GoldPocket Media to develop a “click & buy” interactive TV application, allowing customers to purchase items being shown on the network via their TV remote control. The company’s press release calls this new technology an “unprecedented blend of interactive television and TV shopping” and a “groundbreaking initiative”, all of which would be true if their biggest competitor (starts with ‘Q’, ends with ‘VC’) had not already launched this functionality last summer with iTV provider OpenTV and Charter Cable.

Regardless, this new functionality may finally take interactive TV out of the theoretical and into the real for the first time. For a while, many industry insiders have speculated as to the implementations of interactive TV, with the click and buy functionality at the top of the list. Fox already lists the songs played during each week’s episode of “The O.C.” before the credits — imagine if viewers could buy them through their remote controls without even leaving the couch? Once that’s in place, the product possibilities are endless — at the very least I’d expect to see every piece of clothing that Marissa and Summer wore during that same episode up for sale.

These ideas have been around for a while, but the progress of iTV has really stalled in this country, most likely because cable companies have focused on other enhancements like digital programming and onDemand movies instead of iTV buying capabilities. However, as I mentioned earlier, with Verizon and SBC entering the market, added competition could encourage all the players to ramp up their schedule for further interactivity.

It makes complete sense for the TV shopping channels to act as guinea pigs for this functionality, as they would most likely not feel the backlash that in-your-face product placement may initially have on network TV. People watching these channels are at least somewhat interested in shopping for products, and will be far more likely to adopt a remote control click-to-buy process early on.

These new product placement possibilites do come along at a perfect time to offset the loss of commercial viewership due to DVRs and TiVo. Now that Comcast offers a usable DVR for just $9.95 a month with no setup fee, more and more people are learning how to fast forward through commercials every day. Savvy content producers will ignore the urge to squelch progress and will get the message customers are sending: we don’t like watching commercials. Customers do, however, like to watch actual TV shows. Product placement within shows kills two birds — it keeps advertisers happy and ad revenues high while reaching receptive viewers in a timely, efficient manner.

Clearly commercials are not going away any time soon, but it seems to me that the Truman Show was prophetic: it’s much easier to reach a teenage girl through her favorite character on The O.C. than through some commercial that she’s probably not going to be watching even if she doesn’t have access to a DVR. Allowing her to buy the item instantly will only make it that much easier.

Verizon announced that they have reached an agreement with Starz to carry the movie channels 13 stations over its fiber-technology network. Sources also say the company has reached agreement with at least 100 additional content providers.
Read more here…

If Verizon can truly make their TV network available to three million customers by the end of this year, it will turn the cable business on its ear. One thing to really watch out for is the effect this could have on interactive TV, which seems finally to be gaining some steam within the industry after years of speculation. Creating competition in the marketplace could force both cable and phone companies to use Interactive TV features as differentiation points of their service, and would push the market forward. (It seems that in recent years, the near-monopoly held by cable TV companies has allowed them to rest on their laurels as far as interactive TV progress is concerned.)

USAir gets a lot of flack these days, most of it deserved, and probably won’t be around much longer. Still, I’m pretty fed up with them right now and need anoutlet to vent my frustration.

I can’t claim that they were the first airline to install the online check-in (print boarding pass) functionality, but theirs was the first I discovered. As someone who hates standing in line more than perhaps anything else on God’s green earth, this was a huge revelation for me. Being able to select a seat, print a boarding pass, and then go directly to the gate is easily the best thing that’s happened to air travel in my lifetime. (Even better than Orbitz.) It was too easy… just print, and go. What I have unfortunately discovered this morning, now for the second time, is that their system is impossibly unforgiving. With one tiny mistake, the system completely locks up and the user is left stranded, unsure of what to do or where to go to get help. Read the rest of this entry »

One of the hot features many e-commerce websites are showing off these days is eCatalogs (or online catalogs), exact conversions of print catalogs into flash or images for browsing on the web. Many traditional catalog vendors have begun promoting the electronic versions on their website, such as Nordstrom, Anthropologie, JCPenney, and JJill, to name just a few. While these eCatalogs do offer a “flashy” way for customers to shop and make the sites in question seem to exist on the cutting edge, in reality they provide little more than a difficult, frustrating user experience. Print catalogs are made for one specific reason — to be read in print form. They are not optimized or even applicable to the web, and companies that use them are showcasing laziness more than innovation. Instead of relying on the antiquated and irrelevant rules of print media, the focus should be on transforming catalog content into viable, engaging web interfaces. Read the rest of this entry »