The news may be about the iPad this weekend but it's the cloud that will hover hot over Apple by the Fall and in many respects challenge its hegemony over how we store and share music and video.

According to CNET, that's about the time of year that it looks like Apple will unveil its cloud-based music service.

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In the meantime we are seeing a number of storage services emerge for the iPad that could be used for people to store their music and other media. Yesterday, we looked at the Box.net app. Dropbox has an iPad app as does SugarSync.

And then there are the forces that are not tethered to the iPad at all.

Last week, Canonical started a public beta for its cloud-based music service.

Most cloud-based services allow you to store your own music in the cloud. With Canonical, you purchase your music through its music store that syncs with your device and your own personal cloud. That means you control your

Apple appears to be looking at a similar strategy, allowing consumers to store music and movies in the cloud, albeit the media being that from the major labels and even more so, the studios. Will they go for it? Well, a long time ago, perhaps, but with the options available, the studios, have far more possibilities to pursue.

But how can the Apple strategy work in a cloud built on open-source? Apple's Fair Play digital rights management software is intended to keep music, movies and other entertainment lo/> [...]

Sat Apr 03, 2010 17:25 pm

Urban Airship, a Portland, Oregon based iPhone "push notifications as a service" company, announced this morning that it now offers push notifications for BlackBerry applications and will soon offer Android push as well. "We are going to see at least four, and potentially five, extremely relevant platforms for mobile applications in the near future," the company said, "and we intend to provide the push messaging and content delivery infrastructure for all of them."

If you've seen push notifications from Gowalla, Tap Tap Revenge, Yowza or Urban Rivals, then you've seen Urban Airship's service on the front end. On the back end, the company is developing push and in-app purchase infrastructure for numerous apps and devices, including the forthcoming iPad.

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Airship developer Michael Richardson put the company's cross-platform efforts into context for us this morning:

We want to make it extremely simple for mobile publishers to communicate in a real-time fashion with their users. The mobile phone is the perfect channel for that and we want to provide the ability to reach any user, any time, immediately, without the high cost or difficult implementation of SMS.

Bringing that paradigm to BlackBerry and Android will open up big new markets for the company and easy new functionality for developers. The company is offering BlackBerry push right now by integrating with BlackBerry's own API. Android push will be handled end to end by Airship and isn't ready yet. "We/> [...]

Wed Mar 10, 2010 09:50 am

We’ve all heard about the four P’s of marketing.

Product
Price
Placement
Promotion

The four P’s were created mainly to describe the ideal “marketing mix”. The term “marketing mix” became popularized after Neil H. Borden published his 1964 article, Concept of the Marketing Mix.

I would argue this killer combo of marketing is mainly for B2C marketing and thus it is best applied to the marketing of products, especially mass retail products.

So let’s take a look at another more contemporary framework for B2B marketing – the Four C’s. This framework is newer, and in my opinion, more applicable to a wider range of today’s marketing challenges.

The 4 C’s of B2B Marketing are:

• Content – the creation of a steady stream of engaging content
• Connection – connecting with the audience you wish to attract
• Communication – communicating with them in an ongoing conversation
• Conversion – and then converting them at the illusive moment of need

Since B2B Marketing is arguably more of a marathon than a sprint in marketing – you need to always have your 4 C’s engine going – creating the best content, finding the connecting with your target audience, sustaining the communications pattern until they are ready to convert – this way you have a fighting chance at making all your marketing efforts count toward one goal – Sales!

In the next post I will show you the new 4 S’s for Social Media Marketing &#/> [...]

Tue Jan 19, 2010 10:40 am

CBS and the NCAA said Friday their March Madness on Demand (MMOD) live-streaming video player attracted record traffic for the first day of the men's basketball tournament.

In total, there were 3.4 million hours of live streaming video and audio consumed, over 20 percent growth compared to 2009, with 3 million more unique visitors to the MMOD video player. Both figures represent the largest single day of traffic for a live sporting event on the Internet.

The MMOD "Boss Button" was clicked over 1.7 million times on the first day of the first round of the tournament. The "Boss Button" was redesigned for the 2010 tournament, it hides the live video on the screen and mutes the audio replacing it with a flow chart image. The 2010 Boss Button was designed by cartoonist Scott Adams, creator of the Dilbert comic.

"NCAA March Madness on Demand continues to regularly exceed our expectations," said Sean McManus, President, CBS News and Sports.

"It is the perfect combination of programming and the Internet. Our ability to successfully develop the product alongside steady growth in streaming programming for the Internet and wireless content provides many options and truly maximizes the Network's NCAA bundled rights agreement."

Other highlights from MMOD traffic include:

*The most watched game on 3-18 was the double overtime Florida vs. BYU game with 521k hours of streaming audio and video. That's up 50 prcent over 2009's most watched game from the first day of the first round (Washington vs. Mississippi State) which had 348 hours of streaming.

*The most watch hour yesterday da/> [...]

Sun Mar 21, 2010 01:10 am