Month: April 2013

The iPhone Comes To The Newly Contactless T-Mobile & Facebook Can Now Take Over You Phone

Linda Reimer

It has been another busy, busy day in library land so this will be a briefer than usual posting!

I know, I know!  “short” is not a word you usually find in my vocabulary especially with regard to writing anything as tech blog postings go! As frequently tech blog viewers know. However, I really will try and do a short posting this evening!

Two of the largest tech stories today, and in deed for this week, are the fact that the iPhone is finally available for T-Mobile customers – and perhaps as you’ll recall T-Mobile recently discontinued its contract cell phone programs so you can get the iPhone 5 for $100 down (and $20 extra dollars per month until the phone is paid off) through T-Mobile and leave T-Mobile at any time for another cell phone company if you wish – you just have to pay off the balance you own on your phone.

Here’s a link to a CNET article that offers more information about the iPhone now being available to T-Mobile customers:

http://news.cnet.com/8301-13579_3-57579367-37/t-mobiles-iphone-off-to-a-damp-but-hopeful-start/

And as far as Facebook taking over your smart phone you can now get the Facebook home app from the Google Play Store for all Android phones (not yet for iPhones). This app will basically put your phone in the Facebook universe as it overlays Facebook features on top of the OS of your phone. So if you are a huge Facebook fan you’ll be able to get this app and then easily reply, send and see Facebook postings among other Facebook related options.

Here’s a link to a CNET story on that same subject:

http://news.cnet.com/8301-1023_3-57579370-93/facebook-home-arrives-in-google-play-store/

Have a great weekend everyone!

Linda R.

P.S. I did it – it is short – only one Word length page!

References

Cheng, Roger. (2013, April 12). T-Mobile’s iPhone off to a damp, but hopeful, start: The iPhone finally launches at T-Mobile, injecting a little energy into the smallest national carrier. CNET. Online.

Van Grove, Jennifer. (2013, April 12). Facebook Home arrives in Google Play store. CNET. Online.

 

Funny List Of Kitchen Gadgets You Can Probably Do Without & The Next Xbox May Become The Brains Of Your TV Viewing Experience

Linda Reimer

Funny List Of Kitchen Gadgets You Can Probably Do Without: The tech site Gizmodo offers a humorous story today highlighting 15 of what they describe as “Insanely Specific Kitchen Gadgets.” It really is a funny list! There is a hot dog slicer for those that would rather not slice hot dogs with a knife, a “Nana Saver” for those that only want to eat half a banana now, hard-boiled egg molds for those who want to have their hard-boiled eggs look like a cat or bear head and even a s’mores maker for those who would rather not squash s’mores ingredients together by hand!

Here’s a link to the article & list:
http://gizmodo.com/5992324/15-more-insanely-specific-kitchen-gadgets

The Next Xbox May Become The Brains Of Your TV Viewing Experience: The tech site The Verge offers an article today on the next generation Microsoft Xbox which it reports will be sophisticated enough to not only run your cable box but to overlay its own software on top of the cable box menu and channel guide. This new Xbox will also have the ability to sense how many people are in the room and allow people to change or pause whatever they are viewing by eye or hand movement – so your remote may soon be a thing of the past! Just exactly when the next generation Xbox Condole and Kinect Sensor will debut isn’t yet known but even so it will be cool to be able to change television channels or pause video playback simply by moving your eyes or hands!

And The Verge article makes me wonder, yet again, what Apple is working on television wise as my guess is whatever smart television or updated media player they come up with is likely to allow for voice commands; just imagine being able to tell your television to turn on and play the latest episode of your favorite television series by simply saying the words “TV on,” “Play insert-name-of-your- favorite-TV series here!”

Here’s the link to The Verge article which is titled Exclusive: Microsoft’s next Xbox will take over your TV, interact with your cable box:

http://www.theverge.com/2013/4/10/4208970/next-xbox-tv-entertainment-plans

Have a great day!

Linda R.

References

Horn, Leslie. (2013, April 10). 15 More Insanely Specific Kitchen Gadgets. Gizmodo. Online.

Warren, Tom. Exclusive: Microsoft’s next Xbox will take over your TV, interact with your cable box: The fight for the living room continues. The Verge. Online. 

iPad Flies Off Top Of Car And Into Passing Motorist’s Bumper & More On The Aereo vs. Broadcaster Battle

Linda Reimer

iPad Flies Off Top Of Car And Into Passing Motorist’s Bumper: Have you ever left your smartphone or tablet on top of your car and then drove away with the device still on top of your car? If so then, or even if not, you’ll appreciate the link to the video that follows! It seems that a gal in South Carolina was driving down the road  and heard a moderate noise but didn’t feel anything hit her car so she drove on to her destination and when she stopped she found an iPad lodged into the bumper of her car! The iPad, which was still in working condition, was so tightly embedded into her bumper she had to get a hammer to knock it out – and then she looked up the owner’s information on the iPad and called him. It seems to owner put the iPad on top of his car and forgot to put it in his car before he left home!

Here’s the link:

http://www.abc57.com/news/national-world/iPad-stuck–202194801.html

More On The Aereo vs. Broadcaster Battle: And here a links to two mainstream (aka not tech news sites or magazines) stories on the battle between the upstart Aereo Streaming services that offers its customers access to the free broadcast television content – streamed to all their tech gadgets and on demand – and the traditional networks who are not pleased with the service!

The first link is to a New York Times article titled Broadcasters Circle Wagons Against a TV Streaming Upstart:

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/04/10/business/media/aereo-has-tv-networks-circling-the-wagons.html?ref=technology&_r=0

And the second is to a news story that appeared on NBC Nightly news last night titled Aereo presents challenge to broadcasters: Some broadcasters are considering moving their product exclusively to cable now because of a new way of distributing TV programs online.  NBC’s John Yang report:

http://www.nbcnews.com/video/nightly-news/51485531/#51485531

Have a great day!

Linda R.

References

Johnson, Peter. (2013, April 10). iPad stuck in car bumper. ABC 57 News. Online.

Nightly News. Aereo presents challenge to brodcasters. NBC. Online.

Stelter, Brian. (2013, April 9). Broadcasters Circle Wagons Against a TV Streaming Upstart. New York Times. Online.

 

Is An Ebook A Thing? A&M Teachers Tracking Their Students Text E-Book Usage & Vudu Customer Account Information Stolen

Linda Reimer

Is An Ebook A Thing? The Digital Book World offers an article titled “Is an ebook an experience or a thing?” and the author ponders the question is an e-book a thing as a paper book is or is it an experience? Obviously e-books aren’t tangible things that you can hold in your hand the way you can paper books. And I agree that reading is an experience; and, one can argue that the words flow off the page, whether that page is made up of paper or bytes, and it is the words that paint mental pictures in your mind that are important but I still think you should be able to buy e-books just as you can buy printed books. After all the words are the same even if the format is different.

Here’s the link to the article:

http://www.digitalbookworld.com/2013/is-an-ebook-an-experience-or-a-thing/

A&M Teachers Tracking Their Students Text E-Book Usage: The New York Times offers an interesting article on a new way teachers at Texas A&M can electronically see if their students are reading their text e-books. The teachers can track the text e-book usage of their students via a new technology known as CourseSmart which allows them to see when individual students have accessed their text e-books, what passages they’ve highlighted, what notes they’ve taken and for how long they’ve actually accessed (read) the text ebook. This technology sort of harkens back to George Orwell’s 1984 and Big Brother is watching you but it can also be seen as a useful educational tool because it will allow teachers to suggest to some students that they need to spend more time reading the text and the notes and highlights students make in their e-text books will allow teachers to see if students are getting the gist of the text or if there is some part of the text that multiple students don’t understand – and then the teachers can explain whatever it is the students aren’t understanding in the text.

Here’s the link to the Times article which is titled Teacher Knows if You’ve Done the E-Reading:

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/04/09/technology/coursesmart-e-textbooks-track-students-progress-for-teachers.html?ref=technology&_r=0

Vudu Customer Account Information Stolen: The Walmart owned streaming video service Vudu has reported that a thief broke into their offices and stole a hard drive which contained the customer account information. In response the hacking Vudu has re-set all customer passwords. So if you have a Vudu account you may want to check you ,ay want to check your password and account status.  

Here’s a link to an Engadget article on the subject titled Vudu offices burglarized and customer info stolen:

http://www.engadget.com/2013/04/09/vudu-offices-burglarized-and-customer-info-stolen/

Have a great day and/or evening!

Linda R.

References

Bacon, Beth. (2013, April 8). Is an ebook an experience or a thing. Digital Book World Online.

Gorman, Michael. Vudu offices burglarized and customer info stolen. Engadget. Online.

Streitfeld, David. (2013, April 8). Teacher Knows if You’ve Done the E-Reading. New York Times. Online.

Walmart’s Vudu resets all customer passwords after March office break-in leads to hard drive theft. The Next Web. Online. Accessed April 9, 2013. 

The Rise Of Group Subscriptions Or Accessing Television Subscription Content You Don’t Pay For & And Rdio Vdio Streaming Service Debuts

Linda Reimer

The Rise Of Group Subscriptions Or Accessing Television Subscription Content You Don’t Pay: The New York Times featured a cool article over the weekend which chronicles a growing trend – the growing number of people who access paid television content by using the cable subscription of a friend or relative so they don’t have to pay for the content. It seems an increasing number of people are accessing paid television shows and movies by accessing cable accounts online or via apps through their tablets or smartphones and then logging into their cable accounts with the log in information of a friend or relative. This new trend seems to be the most popular way for Cord Nevers. The term Cord Nevers referring to young adults that have grown up and accessed television shows and movies both online and by their parents or some other family members’ cable subscriptions and never had to pay for that content – and now they don’t want to so they are essentially getting accessing their favorite television shows and movies by a work-around logging into the HBO, Time Warner or other cable vendors subscription accounts with someone else’s login information.  

Consider this example that is relayed in the article – the HBO television series Game of Thrones is in the midst of its third season. And episodes of the series can be streamed for free from the smartphone and tablet HBO app and also through the HBO website. And the only thing a person needs to stream the episodes is someone’s’ cable subscription login information – it doesn’t have to be theirs. Having the login information in hand can allow five or six members of the same family to watch episodes of Game of Thrones, or any other HBO content, on demand and when they want to! The only stipulation is that two people cannot be logged in and watching the same television episode at the same time.

This is an interesting trend as it shows how the traditional cable TV bundled channel subscription package business model is walking down the road to obsolesce.

Here’s the link to the New York Times article which is titled No TV? No Subscription? No Problem:

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/04/07/business/streaming-sites-and-the-rise-of-shared-accounts.html?ref=technology

And Rdio Vdio Streaming Service Debuts: The company behind the Rdio streaming music service has just introduced a new video streaming service called Vdio. Unlike Rdio, which is a subscription music service, the new Vdio service allows you to buy or rent streaming videos. And currently Vdio is only available to Rdio Unlimited subscribers who can watch the Vdio videos through a web browser or if they have an Apple device through the Apple app – there isn’t yet a Vdio app for Android smartphones and tablets.

And as I’ve already gotten up on my soapbox on for the above section on the New York Times article and gone on about how the traditional cable TV bundled channel business model is changing in our 24-7-365-Internet connected world – I won’t do it again today!

Sufficient to say the new Vdio streaming videos service is another example of how the traditional way people watch movies and television shows.

Billboard offers an article with more in-depth information on this new streaming video service via the following link:

http://www.billboard.com/biz/articles/news/digital-and-mobile/1555894/rdio-launches-vdio-new-tv-and-film-marketplace-updated

Have a great day!

Linda R

References

Dredge, Stuart. (2013, April 4). Vdio streaming TV and film service goes live in the US and UK. The Guardian. Online.

Wortham, Jenna. (2013, April 6). No TV? No Subscription? No Problem. New York Times. Online. 

StarCat & The STLS Digital Catalog – What’s The Difference?

Linda Reimer

I had a patron ask me a question this week that I’d never been asked before! She asked me what the difference was between StarCat and The STLS Digital Catalog.

I thought that was an excellent question! That question is one that those of us who work in library land know the answer to; and we know the answer to the question to the extent that it would not ever occur to us to even mention the differences in to patrons in person, on Facebook or on our library tech blog!

So that was an excellent question!

And the answer to the question: “What is the difference between StarCat and the STLS Digital Catalog?” is that StarCat is the catalog of physical library materials and The STLS Digital Catalog is the catalog of digital library materials.

With StarCat, which you can access via the Library Catalog link on our website found at http://ssclibrary.org/, you can:

  • Request books or other library materials – so if you want to read the latest Susan Mallery novel or watch the new DVD Lincoln you can place a request (also known as a hold!) – all you need is  your library card number and PIN number (your PIN is initially the last four digits of your telephone number).
  • Renew items you have checked out (So you don’t have to run to the library during a very busy day!)
  • Access your library check out history (To see if you checked out a specific title before – so you don’
  • Simply see what items you currently have checked out
  • And see the status of any items you have requested (aka placed on hold)

Here’s a direct link to StarCat if you’d like to check it out!

http://starcat.stls.org/client/default

With the STLS Digital Catalog, which you can also access via our homepage found at http://ssclibrary.org/, you can:

  • Check out e-books
  • Check out digital audio books
  • Check out digital videos
  • Check out digital albums
  • Request e-books, digital audios, videos and albums
  • See what digital items you currently checked out.

And here’s a direct link to The STLS Digital Catalog:

http://stls.lib.overdrive.com/6D66E60E-4731-4EE4-83EB-17D4BA99B797/10/50/en/Default.htm

So in essence, the difference between the two catalogs is that StarCat is for physical items held in the real world that you must visit the library to check out and The STLS Digital Catalog is for digital materials that you can check out to a computer from anywhere you have an Internet connection.

Important Note: You can indeed check out  library e-books, digital audios, videos and albums and download them to a computer. However, with e-books and audio books you can also download titles to a great variety of smartphones and tablets. Basically if you have an Apple or Android app device you can go to your app store and download the OverDrive Media Console app – and then download e-books and MP3 audios through that app and listen to those audios and/or read those e-books on your smartphone or tablet!

If you want to check out a WMA formatted audio – you can do that too! However, you will have to download it to a computer first and then transfer it to an Apple or Android device.

At the present time albums and videos must be listened to or watched on a PC or a handful of portable devices – but may not be watched or listened to on any Android or Apple devices.

If you have questions about which formats in the STLS Digital Catalog can be used to read, listen to and watch titles in the STLS Digital Catalog you can post questions to this blog or check out the OverDrive Device Resources Center found at the following link:

http://www.overdrive.com/drc/

Have a great weekend!

Linda R.

 

 

Mashable’s Top Ten YouTube Channels For You – If You’d Like To Learn More & New York City Subway Gets Touchscreen Kiosks

Linda Reimer

Mashable’s Top Ten YouTube Channels For You – If You’d Like To Learn More: Apologies for the title but I couldn’t resist! The tech site Mashable published a list today of the top ten YouTube channels they recommend you visit if you’d like to learn more about the universe, usually in 15 minutes or less and without going back to school! And as a huge proponent of public libraries, their goals and services I am all for life-long learning so I thought the article was cool and so are the videos on each of the channels!

Most of the channels focus on scientific topics but some, like Crash Course, offer other subjects as well like history and philosophy and every one of the videos I’ve checked out so far really is cool and has offered a fun learning experience.

Here, briefly are the top ten channels – and if you’d like to learn more about any of the channels click on the link below the channel list to access the Mashable article.

1) Veritasium:  The name is Latin and means “Truth” (not to mention it is the name of a truth telling potion in the Harry Potter Universe!): This channel features neat videos that briefly seek scientific truth on one topic or another and one of the most popular is titled “Slinky Physics.”

2) Vsauce:  a philosophical channel that offers videos focusing on existential questions like “What if the sun disappeared” and “What if everyone jumped at once?”

3) C.G.P. Gray: This channel covers a great range of topics from small items like the correct pronunciation of a word to all the basics of copyright law.

4) MinutePhysics: A channel that focuses on the obvious topic of physics!

5) Smarter Every Day: This channel is hosted by real Rocket Scientist Destin who takes his viewers with him on his daily quest to be smarter every day.

6) SciShow: A fun channel that features science videos.

7) Crash Course: This channel offers really quick introductions to a number of topics. For example they have a video on the origins of World War I that runs 11 minutes and 45 seconds (this is my favorite channel so far as it offers quite a few cool history videos!).

8) Numberphile: A channel that offers video clips that focus on numbers and math.

9) ASAP Science: This channel offers videos by biologists Gregory Brown and Mitchell Moffit and their science related videos are so popular they’ve been written up in The Atlantic and Scientific American magazines.

10) Bad Astronomy: In this case “Bad” can be equated with the hip version of the word “Cool;” as in good! This is the companion YouTube channel for Philip Plait’s space related website.

Here’s the link to the Mashable article which is titled 10 YouTube Channels That Will Make You Smarter:

http://mashable.com/2013/04/04/youtube-education/?utm_medium=feed&utm_source=rss

New York City Subway Gets Touchscreen Kiosks: The New York City subway system is in the process of having 77 new 47” touch screen information kiosks installed at its subway stations. The kiosks, which are said to be indestructible, will allow people to see exactly where they are in New York City and to access information allowing them to easily see on a displayed, interactive map, how to get where they want to go. I think interactive touch screen displays like the subway kiosks are the wave of the future. And that in the near future not only will you find touchscreen computers in public places that will allow you to access all sorts of useful information on demand; but you’ll also be able to have your smartphone, tablet or smart watch communicate with the information kiosk computers via the evolving Near Field Communication technology. So in essence, the New York City touchscreen kiosks are a foreshadowing of that even more advanced communication era that we’ll see unfold in the next ten years or so!

Here’s a link to the Business Insider article which is titled New York City Subways Are Getting A New Touchscreen Network:

http://www.businessinsider.com/new-york-city-subway-touchscreens-2013-3?op=1

And here’s a link to an article from The Wall Street Journal’s All Things D blog on the subject of Near Field Communication – which offers an explanation of how that technology works:

http://allthingsd.com/20130218/nfc-what-you-need-to-know/

Have a great evening!

Linda R.

References

Al-Green, Bob. (2013, April 4). 10 YouTube Channels That Will Make You Smarter. Mashable. Online.

Dickey, Megan Rose. (2013, March 28). New York City Subways Are Getting A New Touchscreen Network. Business Insider. Online.

Goode, Lauren. (2013, February 18). Near Field Communication. All Things D.

Cool Historic Tech Sounds Slideshow & Warner Brothers Archival Streaming Video Service Debuts

Linda Reimer

Cool Historic Tech Sounds Slideshow: I came across a neat slideshow on the tech site IT World yesterday that offers the actual sounds some obsolete (or on their way out) technologies made while operating – like the sound the dial up connection for dial up Internet makes, the sound of AOL’s old email greeting (“You’ve got mail.”), the greeting sound of various versions of Windows (this is the sound you hear when you first turn on a Windows PC and it is starting up), the sound of a telephone busy signal (in the days before voice mail!), the sound of a dot matrix printer jamming  and the sound an old carousel slide projector made as you clicked from one slide to the next!

The slideshow features 22 slides with sound effects – and it is fun!

Here’s the link:

http://www.itworld.com/slideshow/88695/20-historic-tech-sounds-you-may-have-forgotten-348135?source=fkcarouseltechsounds

Warner Brothers Archival Streaming Video Service Debuts: Warner Brothers has just debuted a streaming video service offering select archive television shows and movies for  unlimited streaming to subscribers for $9.99 per month. And while I think it is past time for some of the major networks and media companies to get onboard the Digital Revolution bandwagon and start making more of their back catalog titles available for consumers to access as streaming videos; I think a $9.99 per month fee they are charging consumers to access the few hundred titles they have in their streaming catalog is a rather high price to expect people to pay. After all you can subscribe to a streaming subscription for Netflix and gain unlimited access to the thousands of titles in their streaming library for $7.99 per month and you can gain access to the thousands of titles in the Amazon Prime streaming library for a yearly price of $79. So why would people want to pay more to Warner Brothers to access a few hundred old movies and televisions shows? Nevertheless the fact that Warner Brothers is offering a streaming subscription service is notable and they should be applauded for doing so! And perhaps they’ll increase the number of titles in their catalog in the near future.

Here’s a link to a short Endgadget article on the new Warner Archive Instant video service:

http://www.engadget.com/2013/04/02/warner-archive-instant-launches/

And a link to the Warner Archive Instant site itself where you can sign up for a two-week trial if  you’d like to check out the service (you can also just browse through the titles currently in the Warner Archive catalog):

http://instant.warnerarchive.com/

Have a great day!

Linda R.

References

Lawler, Richard. (2013, April 2). Warner Archive Instant launches, offers subscription to stream classic movies and TV shows. Engadget. Online.

Raphael, J. R. (2103, March 13). 20 historic tech sounds you may have forgotten. Boy, does technology evolve fast. How many of these iconic sounds do you remember? IT World. Online.

WB Instant Archive. Warner Archive. Online. Accessed April 3, 2013.

 

Flexible, Bendable Mobile Screens & Why Internet Natives Expect Digital Content To Be Free

Linda Reimer

Flexible, Bendable Mobile Screens: Corning Inc. is one of the largest producers of display glass in the world. Their Gorilla glass is used in many smartphones and tablets because it is so tough – scratch and dirt resistant. And not being content to rest on its laurels Corning is now working on a new type of flexible display glass, called Willow glass, that will bend; thus in the future this glass should be incorporated into the design of Internet connecting displays that will be so thin you’ll be able to fold them up and take them you as if it they were scrolls of clear paper.   

I came across a brief Mobile Phones article on the subject of Corning’s flexible display glass titled Flexible Mobile Screens Coming Soon – here’s the link:

http://www.mobilephones.org.uk/flexible-mobile-screens-coming-soon/

And here, on the related subject of general Corning display glass, is a link to a short Today’s iPhone article that relays the tech rumor that Corning is going to supply the display glass for the rumored upcoming Apple TV:
http://www.todaysiphone.com/2013/03/apple-itv-display-panels-to-be-supplied-by-foxconn-covered-in-corning-glass/

Why Internet Natives Expect Digital Content To Be Free: There have been a number of articles in the news in the last six months or so on the subject of what is being described as “Cord Nevers” (instead of cord cutters). This new term refers to people in their twenties who have never paid for cable television, who like to watch Internet accessed television shows and movies on their smartphones, tablets and computers whenever they want to and are not inclined to pay to watch TV shows and movies because they’ve never had too. This group of people has so far in their lives gained access to their favorite movies and television shows from friends’ collections or family or friends cable subscriptions.

This is an interesting subject because it clearly illustrates a growing trend – increasingly television and movie fans want to watch the shows and movies they are interested in when they want to watch them and on whichever Internet connecting device they have at hand at the moment; whether that consists of their smartphone while they are standing in line at the grocery store, their tablets when they are on their lunch break at work or their laptop or large screen smart TVs when they are at home.

And as is frequently the case you can see the shift in society – in this case in how people access video content – starting in earnest with young adults. So this is an interesting trend to watch because it rather cuts all the debates and conversations about how expensive bundled cable bill are off at the knees! Those people who aren’t willing to pay for cable TV packages at all aren’t going to care how much money Time Warner or Comcast charges for their cable packages as they aren’t going to subscribe to any of them anyway thus losing the cable companies what has traditionally been a steady part of their business – new cable subscribers.

Here’s a link to a related story from the PaidContent site titled Generation Mooch Why 20 Somethings Have A Hard Time Paying For Content:

http://paidcontent.org/2013/03/29/generation-mooch-why-20-somethings-have-a-hard-time-paying-for-content/

And a second link to an article from the Atlantic on the growing number of young adult cord nevers:

http://www.theatlanticwire.com/technology/2013/02/fear-cord-never-generation/62033/

Have a great day!

Linda R.

References

Bunton, Cam. (2013, March 28). Apple ‘iTV’ display panels to be supplies by Foxconn, covered in Corning glass? Today’s iPhone. Online.

Degivlle, Sean. (2013, March 31). Flexible Mobile Screens Coming Soon. Mobile Phones. Online.

Greenfield, Rebecca. (2013, February 12). Fear of a Cord-Never Generation. The Atlantic. Online.

Kern, Eliza. (2013, March 29). Generation Mooch? Why 20-somethings have a hard time paying for content. PaidContent. Online.

Aereo Streaming Television Service Wins Appeal & Expands Service

Linda Reimer

I’ve mentioned Aereo in blog postings before but just to refresh all our memories; Aereo is a New York City based company that offers broadcast television shows that go out over the airwaves and into Aereo’s office and then are sent to subscribers via the Internet. The idea is that you don’t have to be home in front of your television set to watch content that you could get for free via aerial antennae if you were at home.

And to give you an example, it used to be, and sometimes still is, that people lived far enough out of town that they couldn’t subscribe to a cable TV service via a cable service provider like Comcast or Time Warner Cable because the cable wires were not set up that far out of town – so no service was offered in their out-of-town region. So instead they hooked antennas to their roofs and/or television sets to receive a basic number of broadcast television channels for free. Now granted you couldn’t get all television channels that way – premium paid channels like HBO and Showtime weren’t available; however your local network stations and PBS were – so you could tune in to ABC, NBC, CBS or PBS if you were at home and watch whatever programs were being shown. And Aereo offers those free over-the-air (aerial) broadcast channels to customers in their service areas by actually having a small antenna for each customer in their service centers that receives the free broadcast programming and then sends it to customer’s accounts over the Internet.

And thus Aereo offers the free over-the-air broadcast television stations to their customers to access via an app on their smartphones and tablets. And Aereo further offers a certain amount of DVR storage for each customer so if you live in one of their service areas you can record that episode of Law & Order or Seinfeld that you missed the first time around and watch it later via your smartphone or tablet whenever you want to.

Aereo debut its service to consumers living in the New York City region last March. And as you can imagine this system is not one that the cable and media companies are pleased with! Comcast, CBS & Walt Disney have so far brought two law suits against Aereo claiming that Aereo is illegally broadcasting their content by essentially cutting cable service providers out of the picture altogether. They claim that Aereo is infringing on their copyright for the channel programming they sell to their customers even though it is perfectly legal for consumers to put a TV antenna on their own roofs and to access over-the-air television channels for free when they are at home; and Aereo is only broadcasting over-the-air channels to people who could obtain those channels for free, via rooftop antenna, in their area. So last March, just before the Aereo service debuted, Comcast, CBS & Walt Disney filed an initial law suit against Aereo claiming that their service was illegal – the court ruled against them and for Aereo stating that the Aereo service was in fact legal. And not surprisingly the plantiffs appealed the ruling. This morning a second court decision was also handed down upholding the first decision and yet again ruling that the Aero service is legal.

And so far this year Aereo has expanded its service to include 29 additional near-by counties in Pennsylvania, New Jersey and Connecticut so the ability to access broadcast television networks and their shows via the Internet may become the new norm.  I’m sure most people, including myself, would be willing to pay the $8.00 per month subscription fee (or the $80 yearly fee) to watch broadcast television programs via our smartphones, tablets or streaming media players whenever we want to.

And in relation, I think that they cable companies, by tight fistedly trying to hang on to their outdated bundled channel business model, are missing the proverbial boat and the opportunity it presents to make money in this new high tech Internet streaming age of ours. I can’t of course speak for anyone but myself but I did that cord-cutting thing three years ago and I much prefer it! I stream video content at home via my Roku and Apple TV players via my Wi-Fi network, and on the go via my smartphone and iPad. And I pay Netflix $7.99 a month for their all-you-can-eat (okay all-you-can-view) subscription to their catalog of titles and $79 per year to Amazon for unlimited access to their Prime Library of video titles and I can then watch them anywhere I can access the Internet. I can also purchase or rent videos from Amazon and buy videos from Apple so if I want to watch the latest episode of Grimm or Mad Men I can buy it the day after it airs on television. TV episodes come in standard definition for $1.99 and HD for $2.99 and I don’t mind paying that for episodes of a series I really like but I did mind an ever increasing cable bill that had me subscribing to many channels I never watched just so I could watch the handful of channels that I did want to watch. And did I mention the price? Amazon Prime & a yearly subscription to Netflix totals $175.77 – and I was paying almost that for my monthly cable bill before I cut the cord.

So I am excited by the second court ruling in favor of Aereo because I see this as not just a win for Aereo but also a win for consumers who today increasingly like to be able to watch whatever video content they want to watch when and where they want to watch it and not be tied to a cable TV cord.

Here’s a link to a New York Times article on Aereo and the new court ruling in its favor:

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/04/02/business/media/aereo-wins-in-appeals-court-setting-stage-for-trial-on-streaming-broadcast-tv.html?ref=technology&_r=0

A second link to a Tech Crunch article on the same subject:

http://techcrunch.com/2013/04/01/aereo-looks-to-tv-providers-isps-to-accelerate-growth/

A third link to a short USA Today article that sums up the basics of the subject:

http://www.usatoday.com/story/tech/2013/04/01/aereo-wins-appeals-court-ruling/2042527/

And a link to the Aereo website that offers you a look at the pricing of their service plans:

https://aereo.com/plans

Have a great day!

Linda R.

References

Compare Plans. Aereo. Online. Accessed April 1, 2013.

Crook, Jordan. (2013, April 1). Aereo Looks To TV Providers, ISPs To Accelerate Growth. Tech Crunch. Online.

Stelter, Brian. (2013, April 1). Aereo Wins Appeal: Trail Likely for Streaming TV.

Yu, Roger. (2013, April 1). Good news for cable cord-cutters in Aereo win. USA Today. Online.