New Media News and Trends to Watch

UPDATE More announcments:

Apple announces the final details on ITV, Renamed Apple TV, and looks like a great product. 

And, this is huge: the  Apple iPHONE debut.

Both very likely "game changing" products. And both illustrate the trends below:

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With this week being a convergence of both the Consumer Electronics Show in Vegas and the latest MacWorld developers conference, there is a ton of news relating to new media this week.

Travis sent me on this article that is a good overview of the mobile news and the rumors of both these shows in general. Check it out.

I'd like to highlight a few specific CES announcements that point to trends which I think are important for political practitioners trying to make sense of the evolving post-broadcast media space.

First is the trend of "Internet media continuing to advance to the living room." See Bill Gates announcement of Internet TV and Media Downloads to the 10+ million Xbox 360's that are already in consumers hands -- and to all future Xboxes...

...and also see the details on the likely Apple announcements about their new ITV paltform linking Itunes Music and Video services to the home living room...many companies - including Microsoft - have failed at the PC to TV link before. Expectations are high that as they did with the iPod, this could be the new product that Apple gets right where so many others almost did.

...and on a more minor key but still worth note: Sony announced that their new Bravia TV's would allow users to directly browse internet video services, including user generated content from the video service Grouper, that they bought late last year...

Next is the trend of "Web Search morphing to the mobile space." See Yahoo's announcement about Yahoo Go! Service and thier bundling deals with major phone manufacturers. NPI has highlighted the key value of using search effectively for political use. As Search moves into the mobile space, that value gets amped up even further.

Lastly for today, there is the trend of "Mobile Media evolving and maturing." For this see the announcement that Qualcom, Verizon and MediaFlo will launch about 8 to 10 channels of live streaming TV to mobile phones this quarter in the US, this should broaden to be about 20 channels by end of 2007. Launch parters are announced as CBS, Comedy Central, Fox, MTV, NBC, and Nikelodeon. I can personally vouch that the quality level of this service is amazing.

(And it's hard to miss the rumors of a likely upcoming Apple Phone)