Digital media: explained by others, compiled by me, presented to you

This post from @kevinrose (founder of Digg.com ) suggests television will never be the same after Apple launches its rumoured $99 set-top box. From a consumer POV, this device or the new Google TV may check all of the boxes for those people who want to cut their TV cable cord (see my earlier blog post about my experiences without cable) but a game changer? Read the comments on his blog to get a glimpse of the doubters, and here are some further considerations I’d like to hear more opinions on:

- Programming costs a lot of money to make. $100K per half hour is considered cheap. After Apple gets it cut, how many episode purchases from consumers will need to be made in order for the producer to break even, and who will fight for the international programming distribution rights?

- Broadly speaking, successful television programming in Canada is made with funds provided by the government and cable companies, who are mandated to reinvest some dollars into the local industry. To get access to this funding, a broadcaster also needs to invest in the TV program. The broadcaster makes its money for content from advertising dollars. Like it or not, reducing the power and influence of cable companies such as Rogers, Bell, Shaw, etc.,  as well as the broadcaster and the advertisers will greatly diminish the funding available to television producers to create new products for both linear TV and online (unless, of course, Apple and Google are mandated to invest in local programming and are considered by the CRTC as ‘cable company’).

-  Broadcasters want to be in this multi-screened space and are investing additional financial and people resources to make it happen. Given the extra resources it takes to put broadcasted episodes on third party content aggregators such as Apple, profit (if any) is invested back into making this content available on digital media. The industry might be willing to play with AppleTV and GoogleTV if that’s what consumers want, but in the end, each broadcaster and cable company would rather create their own walled garden for maximum return on investment.

- This tweet from Modern Family creator, Steve Levitan (@stevelevitan) brings up a good point. It’s not only broadcasters and cable companies who want a return on their investment.

It’s about choice. If anything, Apple TV and GoogleTV will help offer new choice to the user, but will it actually change the industry forever?

What do you think? Will the cable industry crumble when these devices launch, or are there other examples pointing to why Apple TV will be just another player in the marketplace?

A recent article in Mashable pointed me to a new website that promises to help you stay on track of your resolutions: Dorthy. The site promises to give the user a living page that focusses on their specific goals, provides information on said goal, and connect the user to other like-minded goal searchers.  It’s a focussed Google with a bare-bones community attached.

On first visit, I’m left wondering what to do after I input my dream: to find more time to update this website (lame dream, yeah). I’m taken to an overview page (called a dreampage – very Oprah-esque) that looks similar to what I would find if I typed “I want to find time to update my website” into a Google search: I see online articles, videos pulled from You Tube and Vimeo, photos and links to blogs that I think have the “update website” phrase within their copy. Since it seems to work by automatically pulling keywords (even though the site says “We’ve abandoned key words and moves beyond traditional semantics to develop an implicit understanding of what you’re interested in,”) I wonder if this blog entry you’re reading now will eventually show up in this Dorthy feed about updating websites? Vouldn’t that be Veird?

When I click on the community tab, it takes me to other members who have entered similar goals and I can subscribe to their dreams so my own page is updated with their updates. From what I can see, there’s no way to contact the person, which the introvert in me likes but may have helped create a virtual “cheerleader” squadron to the user’s goal achievements. The site uses Facebook Connect, which could translate that community support from Dorthy onto a Facebook page, I suppose.

Snooping around, I see someone entered a dream to run a marathon in Maui. This opens a dreampage that’s a little more focussed than my vague goal but again, I don’t see anything I wouldn’t have seen without entering the same dream into a search engine.

This isn’t to say the site doesn’t have potential… As more people subscribe and enter data, perhaps the algorithms will improve and my Dreampage will be more relevant and less vague.

Maybe I’ll set a goal on this site to review Dorthy in 6 months to see what’s changed on the site.

Let me know what you think and what sites you use to keep on track of your goals.