Bob Caswell

The New York Times has an interesting piece outlining signs that advertising may be coming to our cellphones. The good news: guidelines have been established to limit ads to those who “opt in.” And by choosing to do so, cellphone customers may receive free services in exchange. The guidelines have already been agreed upon by Verizon, Sprint Nextel, T-Mobile, and others.

While some may not be too thrilled by the idea, I’m personally fine with it.

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Mike Vorhaus is the managing director of the consulting and research firm Frank N. Magid Associates and is in charge of a fairly in-depth study of consumer trends in gaming. His latest work is that of profiling “lapsed” console gamers. Here’s what he found:

Guys, of course, are the core of the console-games market and are the basis of his study. Vorhaus refers to declining gamer activity as “cliffs” in the gamers life. The first group, 12-to-17-year-old boys, has 78% playing console games at least once a week. But when boys become men and enter the 18-to-34-year-old bracket, they fall off the first cliff. Those still playing console games weekly: 42%.

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So our friends at the Wall Street Journal (subscription required) are running multiple stories on Google today with reference to online video. At the heart of the story is the classic clash between Google’s mantra “Do No Evil” and, well, the evil Google is apparently doing.

Perhaps as a result of this alleged evil, talks are back on among media companies to create a YouTube rival, according to unnamed executives involved in the situation. Another form of pseudo-pressure is coming from MySpace, which is likely to announce today a video-filtering system so as to be on the good side of those copyright protectors.

But back to the Google scandal…

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The DRM battle continues! The latest news revolves around EMI being in talks with retailers to sell music DRM-free vs. Warner Music Group’s clear “No!” fired back at Steve Jobs (who recommended a DRM-free music world earlier this week). Here’s the scoop on each side:

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So all in the same week we have the following news:

1) Steve Jobs embraces a DRM-free world but says his hands are tied.

2) Amazon & Tivo join forces to bring you Amazon digital movie downloads via your Tivo.

3) Wal-Mart announces digital movie and TV show downloads from all six of the major studios.

Let’s take each of these and have a closer look:

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When Google bought YouTube back in October for $1.65 billion, we didn’t know exactly what this meant for the founders financially. But now we know. Google today filed a registration statement with the SEC, which explains how many Google shares the founders of YouTube received as part of the deal.

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Wal-Mart today announced a partnership with all six major Hollywood Studios (Disney, Warner Brothers, Paramount, Sony, 20th Century Fox, and Universal) to offer digital movies and TV shows via its site: www.walmart.com/videodownloads. While the company has the first mover advantage (being the only digital distributor to go into business with all six studios), I still think Netflix is the company that will make online movie watching a reality (incidentally, Netflix is the company to which Wal-Mart admitted defeat in the DVD rental market). Here’s why:

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I came across two pieces of information today, and the juxtaposition was too much to not share. First piece: a new study out by AXA has found that retired people in 11 countries are now spending more time using the Internet over traditional pastimes of gardening, hiking, traveling, etc. Apparently, the term for this new demographic is “silver surfers.”

Second piece: Near North Korea’s northern border, Chinese cell phones and prepaid phone cards are a hot black-market item, regardless of the government trying to ban them. The reason: the new phones have free access to the Chinese Internet, which, even if censored, is a portal to the outside world not available to North Koreans through their regular Intranet.

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