NEW YORK (CBS.MW) -- Consumers will pay $5.8 billion by 2006 for online news, information, audio and video content, and access to entertainment features, according to results of a consumer survey released Monday by Jupiter Media Metrix (JMXI). That's up from an estimated $1.4 billion this year, implying revenue growth compounding at a decidedly optimistic 40 percent a year.

The categories most likely to produce the highest revenues from subscriptions and access fees are audio/video entertainment ($600 million), adult entertainment ($400 million), and investor-related information ($350 million), the researchers said. JMM presented its report at the opening of the research firm's ninth-annual Media Forum, a two-day conference taking place at the New York Hilton

keys to success - qwerty + email/PIM connectivity + camera + phone...or..phone/camera/sms for the going out device and qwerty/big for wireless PDA. the Sharp Zarus has a PHENOMENAL screen, the new Sony Clie uses Palm, and all the top pocket PCs are not quite there yet. maybe this year? Can I get a phone with bluetooth (I always take a phone with me) that provide the data link for the PDA?? that's all anybody needs.

The culture of kewl. What a concpet. a google search turned up tons of kewl sites. When asked to talk about it, what can a 41-year-old white geek say?? how the hell do I know? Ask one of my daughters. It's not genX, not even genY...it's more like genIM, or, genDigital (the 6 year old that showed mom how to use the VCR..now he's 15). but it's new and different. broadband brats. geek chic. the single biggest opportunity in wireless non-voice applications that there is. growing up pointing and clicking. Anytime I hear pundits lament that "there's no model to sell music that works besides concerts and CDs" I laugh. 10 year olds purchase HitClip jukeboxes and tunes at a rate of $10/month. Not convinced? That's mobile...just like Cybiko applicaitions. who needs an 802.11b (or a or g) wireless LAN when you can peer-to-peer wirelessly using 900 MHz ISM band?? Personalization, location apps (friend finders)...and...IM + SMS=the SIMS?? Seriously, with an average of 100 IMs/day - 80% of online youth are doing this in a big way.easier to break barriers I guess. Funny how the active buddy is called "smarterchild"...I guess if you don't have any real buddies SMARTERCHILD is always there. Now that high schools are eliminating barriers to use mobile phones, acceptance and market penetration should go up.

CTIA Wireless Show from Orlando issue......

What fun this was, well, sort of. That's me answering questions on Wireless Week's Big Talk. It should be called Big "Type" since it is one half Q&A and one half typing test. Our PR person was sitting over my shoulder looking at what I was typing and making me fix the grammer. You get to see all the questions and pick and choose which ones you will answer. For example, some were easy like "what do you think about number portability", others were insider questions like "you are planning on spending $300million in CAPEX in the next 6 months....what on?"...sorry, thanks for playing, no details on that. More data guys this year at the wireless show. Intel had a mini "home of the future" over in a corner with their universal plug'n play system...sort of a stretch to see an 10BaseT port on a lamp, but I defer to their wisdom (may drive the lamp cost up just a bit). We had some fun with one of our phone vendors. How many shots of vodka can one table consume? Any how come nobody knows old 80s tunes on the piano??

There is nothing worth less than old news. While it is CURRENTLY impossible to get fresher information than live televised broadcasts, that will not be true forever. Companies like GPIX and INETCAM and others are assembling back end systems that will allow the viewing of a network of webcams, and infinite network, permitting everybody to see most anywhere in the world at anytime. Everywhere there are webcams and permission of course. As I write this, for example, you could view one of the most boring but frequently viewed images - a guy sitting typing on a keyboard in front of a computer. After doing almost ZERO research I've concluded the most common live image possible is just that. The second most common image has got to be one of these "hey big boy, come visit me and my sorroity sisters in our webcam room for only $5/min" emails. Back to news freshness....as people are not yet paying for all this fresh news on wireless devices, and since there is such a paucity of them that really work, the pickings are rather slim today. That will all change, probably by 2010 when today's 18 year olds are 28 and making decisions in the IT areas of companies and in their own lives that match their lifestyle. For now, nothing beats the newspaper for fresh news, of all sorts, with great photos, at a low price.

sorry about the last post. I forgot you had to pay for RCR. here's the text (the good parts): The term "open standards" may be the industry's glorious oxymoron today as one man's open system is another man's walled garden. Caught between profit and cooperation, wireless companies are simultaneously pursuing proprietary and interoperable solutions. The search for open standards has created a frenzy of initiatives geared toward cooperation in the past half-year among hardware and software vendors, with an eye on the ever-coquettish carriers.

Nokia Corp. recently announced its Open Mobile Infrastructure called OMA, which enables the mobile equipment of other companies to interoperate in a common environment.

"Openness will further improve research and development efficiency, speed up time-to-market and help the entire industry to offer consumers and business users new mobile services in the most cost-efficient manner," said Nokia in a statement.

Nokia said it expects the network technology sharing experience to cover all levels of the network from the base station to the mobile phone.

While pursuing this agenda, Nokia is on a collision course with another company that it may want to be part of its OMA: Microsoft Corp. Microsoft and Nokia want to make reference designs for handsets, another project in open standardization. But both companies are signing deals with Texas Instruments, which also has sought to make its products open. But Texas Instrument finds itself on a collision course with Intel Corp., which also is striving to leverage its XScale infrastructure as an open platform for everybody.

Microsoft has often been accused by competitors Sun Microsystems and Oracle Corp. of trying to foist its Windows and .NET solutions on the world, while Sun continues to enjoy the intellectual property from Java, which is seen as an open platform.

Yet, Microsoft is teaming with Sun and other industry titans like rival AOL Time Warner Inc. as well as smaller players to form a consortium called The Liberty Alliance, which seeks to develop standards to allow consumers to use one user name and password to access various services online. Other companies in the consortium include Hewlett-Packard Co. and American Express Co.

As if to stress the point that it is sleeping with the enemy, Sun is opening its systems to Microsoft rival Linux, whose operating system has been perceived by analysts as ramping up fast. Although it has its limitations in tackling great tasks and security concerns, analysts think Sun still would want to throw its weight behind the budding technology if only to rattle Microsoft's tent. Microsoft applications have been criticized as being cumbersome.

Sun also snorts with discomfort as San Diego-based Qualcomm Inc. aims its BREW technology at Sun's Java 2 Micro Edition, which has remained dominant on the market.

Both companies continue to say openly that they are complementary, but each tries to convince the market about their differentiating qualities. While BREW began as a CDMA-compliant technology, Qualcomm is making it open to all air interfaces, so as to match Java, which has racked up innumerable developers.

Another Nokia rival, L.M. Ericsson

don't you love it when somebody sees past all the BS and gets it?

Memo to Spotlife - I'm pissed I upgraded to your annual $24.95 unlimited web cam site. your 4 day turnaround on why I can no longer upload files is not acceptable. My free account works, so stop sending me email telling me to reinstall the software and go reset my account on your server...(I'm glad I got THAT off my chest)

my new FREE acount is funknetz...which is german for wireless network, and my AIM handle.

Mobility for business applications is not a new idea. In fact, it’s one of the oldest dating back to the early 80s and earlier. Taxis and other dispatch services, including law enforcement and emergency services have relied on mobile voice as a core element of their business. Mobile data has evolved through more expensive dedicated and proprietary solutions using the Mobitex network and CDPD. With widespread higher quality data networks being deployed and upgraded this decade should see the growth of massive mobile data applications – but will it?

There are ongoing “who owns the customer” debates going on daily. The prevailing wisdom seems to change with the wind. Two years ago application developers were pitching their ideas to wireless carriers with the threat that “if you don’t evolve to offer this sort of service soon, you run the risk of becoming a dumb pipe”. This thought terrified some executives who saw themselves as leader and icons, not pipes. Carriers begun partnering with firms to offer wireless access to email and contact lists through companies like WirelessKnowledge, Seven, Aether and Accenture (formerly Anderson Conuslting). These groups would allow the businesses themselves to master of their own destiny with the carriers providing the pipe function.



The only carrier that has played exclusively to the small business market has been Nextel. Formerly called “Fleetcall”, this carrier began using specialized mobile radio (SMR) spectrum to offer mobile services to local blue-collar oriented business. They worked with a single vendor (Motorola) to develop a proprietary exclusive technology that allowed walkie-talkie like functions over cell phones. At first the going was tough. Nextell employed and ex-FCC commissioner, Morgan O’Brien to work with expanding out of the SMR space with Enhanced SMR (ESMR) technology. The system called MIRS (Motorola Integrated Radio System) was problematic at first with poor voice quality and network glitches. Motorola remade the system, calling it iDen (some of the engineers, ducking the problems with MIRS claimed iden stood for “iden do it!”). Nextel forged ahead, fixed glitches and became the highest revenue/user carrier in the US. In the early part of the 21st century however, even the high arpu seemed inadequate to deal with the massive debt and high cost to provision and support the Nextel users. Meanwhile, other companies began experimenting with push-to-talk technology of their own. With many “me too” services coming to market, the niche position held by Nextel appears destined to be commoditized and lost to others in a looming price war. But is this the best strategy? Compete as carriers?

Oh yea, the web cam is here.

I'm back to going webcam crazy. well, sort of. After a 2 year break I've got back to having a few around. One is in front of me now (go to Spotlife.com and look for "funniest", I think that's what I called it). The wireless webcam is closer all the time to realization. The dream, probably previously mentioned,was the webcam network that could be accessed by the cellphones of..TODAY! I have a phone in my room here that can do that using not one, but two methods! QUALCOMM's BREW system will be launched any day now by Verizon. I had the rare opportunity to use a color brew phone. On this phone is an application that allows viewing of remotely hosted webcams (with a thin protocol - this phone worked fine at 14.4 kpbs!). Anyhow, the one I used was from the folks at GPIX. They have a couple demo cams aimed at a carwash (I think) and a freeway. Perfect shots. I was hoping for a bar-cam so you could see who was in every bar. For example, the Bourbon Street in New Orleans, or the JamesJoyce bar in Santa Barbra. Or funnier yet, the Nimbin, Australia shop that's not famous for its drinks. All could conceivably be reformatted for your phone.