techarati

A new Korean study shows that people will spend more time watching Mobile TV (DMB) then they spend reading the newspaper according to the Korean Broadcasting Advertising Company.

The study's results, titled "Consumer Behavior 2005", are inline with the world wide trend of the last decade witnessing consumers migrating away from paper based products, and towards electronic versions of the same products (i.e.: email vs. postal mail).

A synapses of the results show that the average Korean consumer spends 82 minutes watching TV, spends 61 minutes watching mobile TV (DMB), and only 42 minutes reading the newspaper each day. The most popular content on mobile TV is News - 19.2%, movies - 14.5%, and music - 14.4%, with 45% of mobile TV (dmb) users being in their 20's. Though most of these figures line up squarely with most first world nations, the most surprising figure was that DMB consumers are more willing to endure advertising versus other media (DMB 77.7%, Regular TV 74.2%, and Radio 68.8%).

Via: MobileMag.Com

One connection for all device mania has hit, and it's about damned time!

Today's breaking news is that a beavy of computer industry heavyweights want to create a new device connection between your monitor and computer called the unified display interface or UDI, by Q1 2006. This interface will not only be used for computers but also for consumer entertainment electronics unifying the two, seperated at birth, industries. UDI will be backwards compatible with DVI, and looking forward, will be compatable with HDMI (High-Definition Multimedia Interface), the standard digital interface for High Definition TVs (HDTVs). Sadly, UDI will also use High-bandwidth Digital Content Protection (HDCP), a technology used today in HDMI-compatible products to prevent copying media to other devices.

Industry heavyweights involved in the movement to create this new interface (folks, it's just a new fangled cable) include: Apple, Intel Corp., LG Electronics, National Semiconductor Corp., Samsung Electronics and Silicon Image Inc., NVIDIA Corp., THine Electronics Inc., FCI, Foxconn Electronics Inc. and JAE Electronics Inc.. You can read the entire press release at eHome Upgrade.

Although this sounds to be an improvements, we already have a tangle of cords hidden behind our desks to deal with today. Lets take a look at a short and incomplete list, video (DVI/VGA), sound, three variations of USB, two variations of FireWire, our ancient standard power cord, ethernet, and now the Computer/Entertainment industry wishes to add another cable... whew, it almost makes a tech geek like me want to run and hide. I hope that this new cable standard will carry sound, USB and FireWire to the monitor, so that the snarl of cords really does get tempered.

This news follows closely on the heals of South Korean cell phone manufacturer's initiative aimed at creating one cable for all cell phones, making it easier for consumers to utilize their devices, and increasing the sales of cell phone accessories. You can read more about this development at engadget.com.

One Cable to Rule Them All.

One Cable to Find Them,

One Cable to Bring Them All

And in the Darkness Bind Them!

Gizmodo.com is running a post about how a reader was gypped by Cingular with their new rebate for the RAZR phones.  Cingular is sending out Visa Debit Rewards Cards in leu of rebate checks.  I know this readers pain first hand, as I just bought two phones (Siemens SX 66 and a Sony Ericsson s710a) from Cingular for my wife and I, and we received our $150.00 rebate in the form of three separately mailed $50 Visa Rewards cards.  You can't use them to pay for most things online... like my hosting service, or my Gizmo Minutes, you can't get cash back from an ATM, and you must use them inside at your local stop-n-rob for gas (pay at the pump won't work). 

All I can say is two words, "class action" anyone?