This week in etilities, Comcast (Etilities Forum) tries to expand its footprint, Kazaa decides to become a law-abiding entertainment provider, and Microsoft moves its Office flagship to the cloud.

Comcast releases iPhone app, brings premium content to the web

Comcast is starting an online offering trial where if you are subscribing to HBO or Cinemax you can now watch some of the content online. There will be initially about 750 hours of content available, with both movies and TV shows.

Later in the week, Comcast also released a neat iPhone application that lets you check your voicemail, email, see TV listings, and even let you schedule on-demand rentals.

Microsoft announces Office 2010

It’s been a very exciting few weeks for the tech media with the increasingly apparent showdown in between Google and Microsoft. This week it’s Microsoft’s turn to strike with the announcement of Office 2010, which will be free, web-based, and obviously a direct jab at Google Docs.

Kazaa turns away from the dark side

I have many fond memories of Napster and Kazaa in college, providing countless hours of ‘free’ entertainment. This seems the end of an era indeed as Kazaa has announced a new offering with unlimited mp3 downloads for $20 a month. We wish them the best of luck with this new business model.
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This week in etilities, Google continues to make headlines, this time with Chrome OS, and Pandora is given a chance to prosper.

Pandora heaves a sigh of relief

We wrote almost a year ago about Pandora being in a tough situation with regards to the outrageously high royalties it has to pay to broadcast music over the web, especially compared to traditional radio. It was bad enough that it was basically impossible for the internet radio provider to turn a profit. We can only imagine their relief this week as an agreement on the issue was finally reached. In the words of Pandora’s founder Tim Westergren: “the royalty crisis is over! Webcasters, artists, and record labels have reached a resolution to the calamitous Internet radio royalty ruling of 2007. Pandora is finally on safe ground with a long-term agreement for survivable royalty rates.”

It didn’t take long for investors to pounce on the occasion. Pandora has already secured $35 million in new funding since the announcement, and it is expected to become profitable very soon.

Google announces Chrome OS

It was hard to miss Google’s announcement of Chrome OS this week, and most of the tech media has talked of little else since. The important takeaway here is that the age of the browser-as-OS will soon be upon us. Very soon. The very fact that Google is naming the OS after its browser coupled with its target market (netbooks) means that you can expect an OS built around the browser, for the browser and with little else in it.

There have been other recent developments in the industry that have shown that we’re about to turn a corner and make the browser the only truly relevant “software product” (aka not in the cloud): Mozilla is adding multiprocess support to Firefox, and Silverlight is working on utilizing your GPU (graphics card) for better HD streaming. This is a clear trend of browsers (and their extensions) becoming more and more like operating systems and the line between the two slowly fading to the point where it will soon no longer exist.

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It’s been a quiet week in etility news, probably because most of the world is either talking about the iPhone 3GS or Michael Jackson. The relevant news mostly revolved around Google’s various services and its attempt to complete its takeover of the digital world.

Google Voice can change your phone number for you

Phone number from an area code where you no longer are? Google Voice can help: for $10 you can change your phone number without any activation delay, and Google even throws in three months of continued service to your old phone.

Google is trying to attract news publishers to YouTube

Google wants more content from reputable, legitimate sources on YouTube, not just videos of your neighbor’s cat falling off a couch. It is obviously in Google’s best interest to take all of the content available on Cable TV and bring it to the web, as it increases viewership and therefore ad revenue. And so once you’ve registered your source with them (and there seems to be a review process before you’re approved), you get perks like featured premium placement, viewership analysis and even revenue sharing from Google’s ads. YouTube already has a pretty big group of sources, since it’s starting with all 25,000 registered organizations from Google News.

Google antitrust investigations heating up

We hardly need to point out that not only is Google already huge, but it also keeps on growing and growing, slowly penetrating all etility and online markets to the point where it is becoming ubiquitous. It is not surprising then that it is increasingly receiving pressure from various judicial bodies to answer antitrust charges, as is the case with its Google Book service which would establish a monopoly on orphaned books (copyrighted texts without an identifiable copyright holder).

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This week in etilities: companies keep competing for dominance in the internet TV market, the case is made for and against Google Voice, and your last excuse not to back up your data is taken away.

Comcast, Time Warner, Netflix still going after Hulu

Comcast (Etilities Forum) and Time Warner Cable (Etilities Forum) are working on a response to the Hulu (Etilities Forum) phenomenon with the development of a ‘TV Everywhere‘ service that allows users to view content that they pay for via subscriptions on their computer. The main differentiator here with Hulu is obviously the fact that you need to be paying for a subscription. If, like me, you find yourself increasingly unable to tolerate advertisement, and if Comcast and Time Warner manage to keep the costs associated with this reasonable (this is where I’m not so hopeful), this could be the beginning of an appealing alternative to ad-supported TV.

Meanwhile, Netflix (Etilities Forum) is also looking ahead, projecting that the number of subscribers for its DVD-mailing service will slowly decline over the next ten years. Their answer? Boost the number of titles available for streaming, as well as their quality. Great idea on paper; the trick will undoubtedly be to sell the big studios on it.

The case for and against Google Voice

PC World put out a great piece this week on the five reasons to use Google Voice, and the five reasons not to. What it allows you to do is centralize the control of all of your phone numbers in a single location so that, for example, calling your cell phone number also makes your phones in your home and office ring. You can also manage your voicemails, SMS messages, and much more. According the PC World, the possible downsides mainly fall within two categories: privacy and reliability.

You can now afford to keep your data safe

Do you want a place to safely store your ripped DVDs and other large amounts of data at an affordable price? You may be in luck. Gizmodo came out this week with the review of a great new product from Western Digital: the My Book World Edition II. For $700, you can buy a 4TB networked storage book with 2TB of usable storage space (the other 2TBs back up the first 2TB). Unless you have a bigger media library than I do (yeah, right), that is more than enough space and you can sleep soundly and know that your data is safe from a hard-drive failure.

You no longer have an excuse not to back up!

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This week in etilities: mobile phone practices are under close scrutiny in the public arena, AT&T tries to catch up to Apple, and lagging US broadband penetration is underlined.

Mobile phone practices under scrutiny

Competition between providers benefits consumers in the form of lower prices, better service, and more features. Unsurprisingly, wireless carriers tend to do whatever they can to either land exclusive deals or be on a level playing field with each other. The FCC, at the request of four US senators, is launching a probe investigating the AT&T / iPhone exclusivity deal while the Senate Judiciary Committee is exploring whether Verizon, AT&T, Sprint, and T-Mobile are colluding to set the price of SMS messages outrageously high. AT&T and Verizon claim that this is not the case.

AT&T is playing catch-up with the iPhone 3GS

The partnership between AT&T and Apple is proving quite a headache for the wireless carrier indeed. There has been much coverage about how the carrier is not yet ready to handle some of the new features of the iPhone 3GS, most notably SMS and Tethering. Unsurprisingly, a lot of the information out there is little more than hearsay. AT&T denied rumors that they were going to offer tethering for $55 a month and announced that multimedia messaging (MMS) capability will be included as part of the existing SMS bundles at no additional cost.

As for the iPhone 3GS early upgrade controversy, AT&T has announced that more 3G owners who are currently locked mid-contract will be eligible for the upgrade price of $199 for the 16GB model and $299 for the 32GB model as opposed to $399 and $499, respectively. There are several criteria for determining eligibility, including whether you’re a big spender with AT&T, and not everyone will benefit.

US broadband penetration needs a lot of work

Ars Technica published an article last week dicussing a topic dear to our hearts: broadband penetration. According to the survey, which measures per household broadband penetration rather than per capita penetration, the US ranks 20th, with 60% of households connected by broadband as opposed to 95% in South Korea, the top country on that list.
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This week in etilities: the DTV transition finally happens, two highly anticipated phones are placed under the spotlight, and AT&T takes a beating in the media.

The Digital TV Transition has finally happened

We’ve been talking about this for a long time, and it finally happened on Friday. Endgaget has a good summary of lead-up coverage here. As was expected, millions of people were still not ready, but the consensus seems to be that the transition was mostly smooth and that the delays did help in preparing more households for it.

New smartphones: the Palm Pre and the iPhone 3GS

This was a big week for smartphones, with the release of the Palm Pre and the announcement of the iPhone 3GS. Both phones have gotten a lot of media attention and generated much emotion among their respective fan bases. We are thrilled that the technology behind smart phones is further maturing, allowing you to take advantage of your online services everywhere you go.

AT&T wireless under fire

This week should have been a good one for AT&T (Etilities Forum), given that they are the only authorized iPhone carrier, but it was not. Indeed, not only is the carrier not ready to handle the 3GS’ new Multimedia Messaging Service or tethering capabilities, but this was pointed out pretty explicitly by Apple during its developer’s conference. This is being seen by some as a clue that it is going to be parting ways with AT&T as soon as it is legally able to do so.

Adding insult to injury,  AT&T also announced that it is charging $399 and $499 for an early upgrade as opposed to the $199 and $299 price tags if you are a brand new customer, which has generated much anger among current iPhone owners.

One thing is for sure: AT&T has a lot of PR work ahead…

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VOIP service Skype (Etilities Forum) made headlines everywhere earlier this week when it finally released its iPhone application. The reception was overwhelmingly positive with great reviews and millions of downloads. Wireless providers, however, were not so pleased: AT&T (Etilities Forum) quickly responded by changing its terms of use to restrict the use of third party apps like Sling and Skype on its network. For example, Skype can only work with a wi-fi connection. AT&T does not allow it to work over its 3G network. This of course generated much negative media coverage, with talks of already instigating FCC probes into whether these practices are anti-competitive.

Of course it’s understandable that wireless providers are scared of the prospect of a competitor offering a cheaper service than they offer on their own network. But why stop at VOIP and video streaming? Why not start banning e-mail from the AT&T network? After all, it constitutes free transmission of text that could otherwise be done via SMS, which directly profits the wireless providers. Why not shut down all web browsers, all third party apps, and lock down that phone nice and tight? That way it’ll be just like being back in the 90s!

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