The 463: Inside Tech

You Like Gadgets, Right?

(Stephanie Tackach) - Innovation creates jobs, puts money into the economy, and gives us our favorite electronic devices. To highlight this, the Consumer Electronics Association’s grassroots campaign, the Innovation Movement, launched a contest to celebrate some of the most creative devices.

The “Rally for Innovation” contest will feature a weekly gadget giveaway starting this week with the Amazon Kindle.  Other exciting gadgets such as the Apple iPad, Monster Heartbeats by Lady Gaga headphones, Sony Dash and even a Gibson Guitar are set to follow.

If the movement reaches 10,000 Facebook fans and 10,000 Twitter followers, a lucky innovation supporter will have the opportunity to see the newest and most innovative gadgets up close and personal with a free trip to the 2011 International Consumer Electronics Show (CES) in Las Vegas.

For more information and to enter the gadget giveaway, check out the campaign on Facebook or Twitter.

WHAT THE WORLD CUP TAUGHT US: WE NEED MORE BROADBAND

(Tom Galvin) The World Cup is over. Now we’ll finally see our Internet speeds pick back up. During the most highly viewed games, many experienced slower Internet speeds as viewers turned to their computers to watch games for the first time.  ESPN claimed that its broadcast of the U.S. match versus Algeria broke the record for online audiences with 1.1 million viewers – and that doesn’t count the 650,000 people who watched the USA game on mobile devices.
 
We could all live with a little slowdown every four years for the World Cup, but the challenge is we’re about to see a new era of online video and the World Cup shows we’re not really ready for it. What happens when the next big TV show decides that it won’t be broadcast over conventional TV but will go exclusively on the Web? Imagine if every week a show like the Sopranos sucked up broadband. Now imagine there are 3 of them on a day. And baseball. And football. And dumb reality TV. And, oh yeah, online gaming, which will probably exceed all of them  - combined.
 
I’m not suggesting conventional TV is about to disappear, far from it, but what we have witnessed in just the last few years of online video should tell us there’s a lot more to come. But it’s a bit of a chicken and egg situation: will the shows force us to improve our speeds? Or will the lack of broadband kill these shows?
 
Here’s what we know. The number of people watching online videos is skyrocketing – in May 85 percent of U.S. Internet users watched. The number of videos is increasing – some 34 billion videos a month. And the average length of the videos is growing  – now over 4 minutes. So A+B+C = a lot of broadband requirements.
 
So, FCC, keep all of this in mind when you start thinking about how to regulate the Internet. We need investment, and regulation doesn’t exactly encourage it.
 
In the 2014 World Cup, it’s not hard to imagine that the majority of us will be watching it online or on our phones. That should be our GOOOOOOAAAAAAALLLL.

Social Media Addiction Leads to (Near) Cell Phone Drowning

(Lauren Sacks) Last week, I made the unfortunate error of hitting “off” instead of “snooze” on my alarm clock. I rolled over about an hour later and looked at the time in disbelief.  I jumped out of bed, grabbed my cell phone, and bolted into the bathroom. In this rush, I slipped and tossed my cell phone into the toilet (which thankfully was filled with clean water). I immediately fished it out, but the damage was done--my phone had been submerged in toilet water. Now the panic really set it: I had no means of communication and I was going to be late for work.

In retrospect, I realized there was something wrong with this chain of events--I was in a huge rush, and I grabbed my cell phone to go the bathroom.  Why did I instinctively bring my phone into the bathroom? Why do I feel so compelled to check my e-mails, text messages, and Facebook updates as soon as I wake up?

Not surprisingly, I am not the only one who suffers from social media addiction. Earlier this week, Oxygen Media and Lightspeed Research released a study which sampled the social media habits of 1,695 adults. The study found that 34% of women aged 18-34 check Facebook when they first wake up, even before they go to the bathroom. (The key word here is “before;” hopefully, all of these women are smart enough to not bring their phones into the bathroom.)

The study also found that 39% of these women proclaim themselves Facebook addicts. Does bringing your cell phone into the bathroom indicate addiction?  I fear that I might be an addict, but I’m making small steps towards recovery and have not brought my phone into the bathroom since the incident.  

I hope that you will learn from my mistake and leave your cell phone a safe distance away from all toilet bowls. However, if your phone does come in contact with water, remove the battery and buy rice. I left my phone overnight in a bowl of rice--the rice absorbed the moisture, reviving my phone!

Google: The Travel Industry's New 800-Pound Gorilla

Katie Hallen - Has Google just placed Kayak's IPO in jeopardy?  Late last week as we headed into the holiday weekend, news broke that Google has signed an agreement to acquire venture-backed ITA Software, a Boston-based company that specializes in organizing airline data including flight times.  ITA's technology is known to process large amounts of data really, really fast. It's used by Kayak, TripAdvisor, Orbitz, Expedia, and Microsoft's Bing Travel (previously Farecast).

Google will spend $700 million to acquire ITA, according to news sources.  The Wall Street Journal reports that ITA had previously asked for a cool billion.

Kayak, which generated $150 million in revenue last year, has long been rumored to be pursuing an IPO, an exciting development in a day where so few companies have the resources to float their stock.  But now as Google appears to move into the travel business, Kayak's future looks uncertain. 

It's always interesting to note how Internet companies take shape and change their mission over time.  Google is no longer just a place for search but a significant portal - the first destination for many on the Web. 

As consolidation in data processing and search continues, we should except Washington and its antitrust lobbyists to take note.  What's unclear with this latest move from Google is whether the company is expanding its own in-house capability or simply taking out would-be competitors.