Author Archives ⇒ Brandon Hann

Multiple WordPress Multi-User Installations

· Brandon Hann

I’ve scoured the Internet looking for the answer to this question and I have found it. The question was, can you you install multiple WordPressMU blogs and have them run under one webhost. The short answer is no. However, as with most things in the online world, it is possible with the right “tool”.

If you’re wondering why I would want to have two separate installs of this, it’s because I have more than one client on my web server, each of which are running their own sites. This is fine for most applications, but when you start dabbling in things like SSL certificates and wildcard sub-domains, that’s when the trouble starts. These are just two items that require their own IP address.

One of my clients would like to run multiple blogs on his WordPress Network, but because I’m already doing that for Ledfrog.com, I’m essentially blocking him from doing so. This is because Ledfrog.com is the main domain on my server and any changes utilizing different ports such as 443 for SSL certificates or services like WordPressMU that use wildcard sub-domains have to go through the server’s IP address and since this IP is assigned to my domain, his will not work.

The way WordPressMU works is once you convert your WordPress install into a network, you have the ability to add new sites to it. These sites utilize all of the main structure of the original WordPress installation while creating a separate blog directory inside the wp-content folder to store all of that blog’s specific files such as media uploads and so forth. Plugins and theme are then made available to all sites provided that you (the network admin) have made them available. The advantages here are that you no longer have to install a whole new copy of WordPress, create a new database, download all the same themes and plugins or manage different webhost accounts every time you want to start a new blog. Everything except the media files are shared. You can imagine how much faster updates are too!

Anyway, to make this happen, you need to create a wildcard sub-domain ‘A’ record in your DNS server that points *.yourdomain.com to your server’s IP address. This is needed because when you create a new site on your network, a virtual subdomain is created. An example of this is my personal blog site, Ledfrog.me. When I created it in my network, I was actually creating me.ledfrog.com.

The real magic happens with a feature called Domain Mapping. This is where you can map a real domain (provided it’s been added to your DNS server) to any virtual WordPress site you have created. Using the same example, I was able to map the domain Ledfrog.me to my virtual blog, me.ledfrog.com, so when you access either of those URLs, you’ll wind up at Ledfrog.me. Make sense?!

WordPressMU Domain Mapping

So all this is fine and dandy when you’re working with one server, one IP address and one main domain, but in my case, another client of mine would like to create his own network. The problems begin when you try to create the wildcard sub-domain. While doing this is possible and serves a valuable function—allowing him to create his own real sub-domains—it does nothing for WordPressMU!

I’ve contacted my webhost, I’ve ran all over Google and even tried Bing out for the first time looking for some help with this and eo far I’ve found two answers. First, I keep getting sent to sets of instructions that allow you use vhost.conf files in your client’s vhost container to allow the use of a wildcard sub-domain. This process basically has you creating a conf file that you then configure into Apache to tell the server that you want it to be included into the configuration for that site. It’s great for adding site-specific features to httpd.conf without affecting your whole server.

The second answer I get is the correct one. You can’t use WordPressMU on two separate installations without an additional static IP address! To verify this, all you have to do is install it on another client on your same server and watch what happens when you try to access one of the the virtual blog sites. Here’s what it does:

Domain1.com is the main domain attached to the server’s ONLY IP address.
site2.domain1.com is a virtual blog site created inside the WordPressMU installation.
site2.com is the domain that is mapped to the sub-domain above.
If you access site2.com, you are really only looking at site2.domain1.com.

Domain2.com is in another client’s hosting account on the same server and same IP address.
site2.domain2.com is a virtual blog that’s created inside the WordPressMU installation.
If you access site2.domain2.com, you are redirected to Domain1.com with an error about registrations being closed.

The reason for that is because site2.domain2.com is being read as a sub-domain of Domain1.com!!

I hope you’re not confused. More so, I hope someone who reads this is laughing their head off because they know the way around all this. Oh and by the way, I’m not try to escape having to purchase a separate IP address. It’s just that my host won’t sell me one without a valid reason and apparently this doesn’t count because they said it’s possible to use one address!

Is Apple "Watching" You Through iOS 4?

· Brandon Hann

It would appear that a newly discovered un-encrypted file located on iOS 4 devices has been storing location information since it launched back on June 21, 2010. What’s not entirely clear is exactly how Apple is using this information, if at all. The file is called consolidated.db and it works by downloading latitude and longitude information taken from triangulated cell phone towers as you move about various locations.

As you would imagine, the iPhone and the iPad are the only iOS 4 devices that this could possibly affect, however there are no indications that any of this information is being sent to Apple. Some believe it’s just an easier way for iPhoto to correctly tag information to pictures taken on the devices while others think it may have to do with the new free MobileMe feature called Find My iPhone that allows you to find the location of a lost phone with the added benefit of being able to send a direct system message to the device and/or wipe its contents remotely.

Of course, this new information is likely to only upset a small handful of users seriously concerned with data privacy issues and anyone developing any new concerns should be reminded that the information collected in this file is the same that any phone company can obtain from their own data-collection processes. With cell phones, it’s possible for any law enforcement agency to find out your previous GPS history—with a court order of course.

As far as protecting you and your device from unwanted eyes, the best thing you can do besides turning your device off is to simply encrypt your iTunes backups.

Finally, for anyone wishing to complain to Apple (or anyone else), understand that all of this information was divulged to us in a long EULA that we all generally fail to read on just about everything with buy! Here’s a direct quote from Apple’s terms:

Apple and our partners and licensees may collect, use, and share precise location data, including the real-time geographic location of your Apple computer or device. This location data is collected anonymously in a form that does not personally identify you and is used by Apple and our partners and licensees to provide and improve location-based products and services.

I, for one am not worried about anything—for two reasons—1. I’m doing nothing wrong and 2. There are plenty of apps out there that use location tracking as their primary function.

So, to answer the stated question directly, no, Apple is not watching you! But at least it’s nice to understand how your device works a little bit more, right?

Tonido – Run your own personal cloud

· Brandon Hann

Sometimes I might be away from my home, perhaps at a friend’s out or maybe even out of town. While I generally have my MacBook to keep me connected, there are many times when I go to do something and I can’t because I realize everything is stored on my desktop computer. Of course there are services out there that allow you to upload data to the “cloud”, but I don’t like them because they are either too limited or too costly.

For anyone who doesn’t already know, cloud computing is the new terminology used to describe how we interact with our computers and data on the Internet. In the simplest of terms, creating a cloud allows you to make all of your files available online so you can access them wherever you are.

Tonido

Tonido is free software that allows you to turn your home computer into your own personal cloud! Now, you can run your own cloud services similar to that of Apple’s MobileMe and Google Docs with two major differences: it’s free and you don’t have to upload your files to any 3rd parties.

The top 10 reasons to run Tonido:

  1. Secure and private – Use an external DNS name such as cloud.domain.com to access your Tonidio-enabled computer from anywhere in the world.
  2. File management – You can have full access to all of your files.
  3. Tonido WebShare – Create specific file shares for specific users, allowing them to have access to only what you want them to while using easy-to-remember URLs. There is a $29.99 charge to purchase the Pro version of this which enables quite a few new features. See Tonido Webshare for more information.
  4. Stream videos – Ever wanted to take your movies and videos with you on vacation, but could never decided on which ones to bring because you didn’t want to fill up your hard drive? You can now stream any video file directly from your home computer through Tonido Explorer.
  5. Stream music – Just as you would imagine, you can also stream all of your music. No need to bring your entire music collection with you anymore!
  6. Manage torrents – I used to have to wait until I got home to start any torrent downloads I wanted to get, but Tonido allows you to create and manage all of your downloads remotely.
  7. Manage money – There’s an add-on feature that allows you to manage all your finances remotely too.
  8. Backups – Use Tonido to remotely backup your whole computer to another computer on the network or to any other computer on the Internet.
  9. Personal blog – If you’ve always wanted to run a personal blog, but didn’t want to deal with all of the hassle of webhosting, you can use Tonido’s “Thots” to do just that. Make it only available to you or the whole world; you decide.
  10. Cross platform – Tonido is available on Windows, Mac and Linux. Remote software is available for those as well as the latest smartphones.

My two cents

From the looks of things, everything is free except the WebShare Pro. Ironically, this is probably the piece of software that you’d use most, so all in all, setting up your own cloud would cost about $30. Of course, you also have to provide your own hardware and be willing to leave a computer on 24/7. After all is considered, you really can’t beat this configuration. Even if you went with MobileMe, you’d have to pay about $99 per year plus deal with storage limitations.

If you’re anything like me, then you probably prefer to do everything yourself because at least you’d have full control of your cloud plus you can un-limit yourself by providing as much hard drive space as needed. My weekend project is going to be setting up such a system. I’ll be posting my final reviews on Tonido once I’ve played around with it a bit.

What can BlogGlue do for you?

· Brandon Hann

UPDATE: BlueGlue is no longer in service. Per an email I received yesterday, the company running BlogGlue has decided to shut down the service and seek some sort of buyout. It’s possible that this service could be resurrected under a new owner, but I wouldn’t hold my breath. It was fun while it lasted! I’m leaving this article up for historical purposes, but will be removing all outgoing links. This was the email sent out to all users:

BlogGlue Closed

Original article:

Just over 1 year ago, I joined a little known website called Arkayne. I even wrote about how to drive focused traffic to your site with Arkayne being the central topic. The purpose of Arkayne was to enhance your blog’s presence by connecting the posts you create with other blog owners who write about similar topics. It was such a simple concept; one that has helped my site grow in ways I didn’t think were possible. Today, Arkayne is now BlogGlue and their concept has remained simple, but has become much more powerful.

For me, blogging isn’t about ranking high in search engines or making thousands of dollars a day selling useless information or products—it’s about sharing ideas and providing valuable information about the things I know with people who want to learn. Of course, if I made thousands of dollars doing this, that would be great, but I don’t intend to sacrifice quality for quantity. This is where BlogGlue really helps out.

BlogGlue Partnerships

The give and take process of BlogGlue starts with a recommendation. As you browse the ever-growing community of blogs, you’ll start noticing many websites that share some common interests with your site. As you click through each one, you can choose the ones you like based on how well they complement your site and submit a recommendation.

The site owners you recommended are then notified of your recommendation and have the option to review your site. If they like what they see and recommend you back, you both become partners. At that point, your blogs are linked.

The plugin

The BlogGlue plugin on your site will add Related Links at the bottom of each post. It gets these links from your partners, so it’s important not to just add every partner under the sun to increase your count. Your site, your partners’ sites and your visitors will all benefit from these partnerships.

The process works both ways as well. Your links will start appearing on partner’s sites in the same location. This is the main function of BlogGlue and it works really well! The more partners you have, the most choices the plugin will have in pulling quality content. And as you would imagine, if you don’t like a particular site’s content, simply delete them as a partner and their links will never show up again!

When writing a post, the plugin also offers some instant help with basic SEO tips. After you saved your first draft, you can click the Test Now button and see exactly what you might be missing and how you can improve the page’s optimization.

The costs

There are three service plans available.

  • Free – $0.00/month – You accept up to 5 partners, but you can have unlimited recommendations. Your site content is limited to 200 pages/posts.
  • Basic – $9.97/month – You can have up 15 partners and still have unlimited recommendations. Your site content is limited to 1000 pages/posts.
  • Unlimited – $19.97/month – You can have unlimited partners and unlimited recommendations. Your site content is limited to 5000 pages/posts.

The best part about these plans is that you can grow into them. Start out free and as you start to notice your traffic increasing, just upgrade instantly to the next plan. At some point, your site will be getting hundreds or thousands of hits a day and the unlimited plan will be needed, but you’ll likely be making money at that point!

There are no contracts, hidden fees, cancellation charges, upgrade charges, taxes, etc, etc.! What you see is what you get.

My two cents

I’ve been using BlogGlue for over a year now and I can tell you just by looking at my stats, they have helped my site grow almost 300% and the numbers continue to rise as I become partners with more and more quality blogs. Their customer support has been super gracious and exceptionally fast with any issues I’ve had and I haven’t had many…that’s for sure.

I can’t say enough great things about the operation they’re running over there. Check them out over at www.blogglue.com.

Being Forgotten By Google

· Brandon Hann

This is not the kind of talk that any successful webmaster (or aspiring one) would ever want to entertain! Imagine one day, everything you’ve put into creating your place in the Internet world was simply forgotten by Google—ceased to exist, gone, goodbye, no more. However, it would seem that the desire to be forgotten is not that uncommon for regular people out there.

In Spain, there’s a court case against Google that is requesting they remove information on 90 people found within its indexes. Spain’s Data Privacy Agency is ordering that this information be removed after it received complaints about the content being old and now considered to be embarrassing if not libelous to the individuals involved. I’m not here to report the news, so if you want to read the full article go check out Yahoo’s ‘Right to be Forgotten’ article.

What I do want to talk about is just how much information there is out there in regards to your personal information. As for myself, I’ve always been very careful about what I put online and when I’m on Facebook, I’m very vigilant about staying on top of who’s posting comments and pictures involving me and removing items I don’t “approve” of.

Google yourself

As a test, I Googled my full name and I’m happy to report that where most people might find the top links to be some type of people-finding service and reverse phone-number lookups, I’ve managed to secure the top 10 results with various profile pages of mine and web projects I’ve created or worked on. The reason I’m happy about this is because I control every single one of those links. If one day, I don’t like that I posted my email address online, I can remove it and it will cease to exist from that link forever.

How do you fare when Googling your name? None of this may matter right now, but think about your future. Maybe one day you become famous or run for office and because of this wonderful Internet we have, practically all of your personal information is left to the world forever! We’ve all heard stories about people getting fired from their jobs because of unscrupulous Facebook posts and raunchy pictures. In fact, one of my favorite examples of this is the following:

Employee gets fired on Facebook

Becoming forgotten

According to the aforementioned case, one of the individuals involved is running a plastic surgery business and when his practice is searched, the top link shows you his site and relevant information, but the next one shows off a lawsuit that the surgeon was involved in back in 1991. His argument is that this information is detrimental to his business. I should say so! In fact, I’m kind of thinking that maybe people should know this information before getting involved in plastic surgery. On the other hand, is it right (or fair) to judge someone based on extremely old data?

It goes without saying that Google receives tons of removal requests like this from all over the world, but Google doesn’t remove a single one because they don’t want to jeopardize the integrity of their indexes.

So how does one become forgotten online? There is no complete solution to this dilemma because the Internet just keeps collecting data, day after day, after day. The only true way to control information on yourself is to control the source. If you can’t do that, then always remember this one simple rule: if you put it on the Internet, assume everyone in the world has seen it. And if they haven’t, it’s only a matter of time.

The Future of 'Big Box' Retailers

· Brandon Hann

I started at Best Buy as a seasonal digital camera sales rep in 2002 and ended as an agent of the Geek Squad in 2010, just shy of eight full years. Among the many, many things I learned about retail, technology, people, customers and business, the one question I constantly asked myself (and still do to this day), is how much longer can outfits like these survive?

In our morning meetings, we often heard the latest reports about what our competitors were doing and how we were supposed to respond to changes in the market and I remember a specific statement that was said about Walmart. It was along the lines of ‘People are using [Best Buy] as a means to get informed and then taking this knowledge to Walmart to get the better price.’ What struck me more about this than its truth was that I was also doing that very thing! The difference for me, however was that I was spending my money online. What made me think about all this was I happened across an article about the future of Best Buy and in it, Don Reisinger said:

“For people, like me, getting more comfortable with online purchasing, I simply don’t know what would stop me from using Best Buy as a research center. I can go to the store, check out a new camcorder or surround sound system and then decide if it’s something I want. If it is, I’ll ask the manager if they can match Amazon’s deeply discounted price. If he can, I’ll buy it at Best Buy. If not, I’ll go home and order it online.”

The answer to the implied question is the only thing that would stop someone from doing that would be a price match. I doubt even great customer service can save them in the end.

Online Shopping

So what makes people shop in a store rather than shopping online for the convenience and cost-savings? The short answer might be trust. I think we still have a large group of people (mostly in the older generations) that don’t have a full grasp of the concept of the Internet and people are naturally fearful of what they don’t understand. You mix this in with the horror stories of online identity theft, items that ship broken or bad eBay experiences and you get a recipe for disaster.

In my opinion, it’s actually safer/more economical/better to shop online! There…I said it! Let me explain why I believe this:

  1. Credit Cards: Shopping online requires the use of electronic payments and therefore you’re not lugging around a wad of cash or an antiquated checkbook into a store that can target you for theft (or loss).
  2. Fraud protection: Check with your credit card company…I can promise you that if you use your credit card online and there is even the slightest hint of fraud, you will get your money back.
  3. Price: No or low overhead (stores, sales people, etc.) equals lower prices.
  4. Co2 footprint: Reduce your carbon emissions by not driving to the store and sitting in traffic.
  5. Convenience: Patience is a virtue and even though you have to wait for your items to arrive, the added bonus of being able to use your iPhone to make a purchase while you’re waiting for your kids to get out of school is much better.
  6. Availability: Sometimes online shops do go out of stock, but not nearly as often as a regular store.
  7. Selection: Try walking into Best Buy and choosing from over 13,000,000 songs like you can on iTunes.

Above all, the deciding factor for me is simply price. It’s very hard to find a product in a store that can’t be found online for less. Plus, online, you sometimes have the option of buying overstock models, discontinued items, lightly used items and refurbished products–all of which can knock off lots of dollars. In my case, I worked at Best Buy and they give all their employees an employee discount. In case you were wondering how much, it’s cost plus 5%. This equates to whatever the cost Best Buy paid for the item and an additional 5%. Anyone who knows retail knows that low margin items such as computers, anything made by Apple, music cds and older DVDs don’t give you much of a discount where as higher margin items like printer and video cables, accessories and some software can range dramatically.

Interestingly enough, I found that my discount actually cost more than some items online! In other cases, if something was on sale (like a new DVD release), I would end up spending more if I processed the transaction with my employee number!!

Anyway, having a brick and mortar store is nice because if offers these advantages:

  • Physical product you can touch and play with or test out.
  • Live human beings you can talk to and ask questions or hear opinions.
  • A real shopping cart you can stand on and fly down the aisles.
  • Instant delivery of product.

If all those matter to you, maybe shopping at an actual store is your style or maybe you just like to use a store to do research and then take your money elsewhere to get a better price like the rest of us! At any rate, I’m not proposing that Best Buy simply shut down and disappear, but I do think there’s something to be said about the convenience and selection of stores like Amazon.com.

In fact, their new slogan is, “Earth’s largest selection.”

Google's New Panda Algorithm Changes The Face of Search Rankings

· Brandon Hann

In Google’s never-ending effort to rid their indexes of low or no-quality websites while boosting rankings for higher-quality sites, they have launched a new algorithm focused primarily on user feedback. As a publisher myself, this is a very important change. However, since I don’t practice in any deceiving tactics in order to boost my own traffic, I’m not too worried about it. As always, with any site that I write for or work on, what you see is what you get.

For those who have spent lots of time and other resources on building worthless websites, ripping content from higher quality sites, participating in link farms or any other form of “search fraud”, you can probably kiss your work goodbye. At this point, it’s only a matter of time until you lose your foothold and/or become removed altogether.

What did Google change?

To put it as simply as possible, Google changed the way it ranks websites. Before, it was all about keywords, how those keywords related to content, links and other factors. As of a month ago, it’s more about user opinions on particular sites. Essentially these are user feedback signals that can affect how well a site will rank compared to others of similar content. The goal for this change is to allow users (in time) to generate the popularity of the search results. While this may seem like a good plan on the surface, adding any human element of this magnitude can possibly carry some negative side effects:

  1. Some users mistake low-quality sites for high-quality sites and vote accordingly. For example, a person who has always gotten their “news” from AssociatedContent.com might feel like it’s more authoritative than Msn.com, thus making MSN rank lower.
  2. DoS-type attacks. I don’t know of any way to stop someone from creating some kind of bot that allows them to “vote down” targeted websites in hopes of getting their own site ranked higher.

More local search results

Another major change is the localization of results. For those of you who have some type of Google account, be it iGoogle, Gmail, AdSense, etc., you are already aware of how specialized the search results are for you based on a number of things like your previous searches, but this new update brings up more related results to your area based on your Internet connection.

Granted, this is helpful when you’re looking for local businesses or places to eat, but what about if you’re looking for national or international businesses? The Internet was designed to connect you to the world and some of the main reasons most people use it is to find those obscure places to buy products or to get information you can’t get locally. So what happens? Well, those results are more likely to get drowned out down into the next couple of pages.

The upsides

If you’ve built an all-original site and have continued to update it without the use of shady tactics aimed at gaining your higher search results, then you generally have nothing to worry about. In fact, these changes might actually help your site because it’ll clear out most of the junk that is probably ranking higher than you right now.

If you’re just a Google user, then these changes will help you dramatically because over time, the results you see will be based on what other people have said about a particular site and how great they felt the content was. Plus, we should be able to kiss the days when any search would pull up 20 spam sites goodbye!

My two cents

My one tip of advice: don’t write content just to get more traffic! Always write with the user in mind. Trust me on this. It will take longer to do and cause you to spend more time researching, but it will pay off greatly in the end. You can play the SEO game until you’re blue in the face, but what’s it all worth if you spend countless hours and money getting all this traffic to your site only to have Google make one simple change down the road that causes your site to lose 75% of your efforts?!

Use SEO as a way to make your already-great content shine even more. Don’t use it to just to play the ranking game. The best side-effect of this approach is that Google will never penalize great, original websites, so you’ll never have to worry about another Google update!

The Mysterious White iPhone 4

· Brandon Hann

What a week this has been. We talked about the new iPad 2 and how it compares with the Macbook Air, looked at the overview of what’s in store for OS X Lion and now we’re talking about the white iPhone…again.

It’s been 10 months since the iPhone 4 launch and even though Apple clearly stated that the white version was going to be delayed, I don’t think anyone ever expected this kind of delay! There were all sorts of speculation as to why the delay even happened…everything from parts not being available, manufacturers not being able to live up to Apple’s standards and my favorite…Apple couldn’t create white glass.

The real reason was simply because the color white naturally has some opacity, so there were areas around the screen and camera that caused some light leakage (although this has not been confirmed by Apple). This would have caused flawed photos as well has a rather pretty-looking iPhone to be have its image marred. But nonetheless, Apple stated that the white iPhone is indeed due out this spring. What’s interesting about these Apple delays is that there are companies out there selling after-market kits that allow you to convert your iPhone into another color including…white. So how is it that they have managed to make the parts, but Apple can’t??

Check out these sites:Transparent iPhone 4

  • iPhone4Parts.com – If you’re willing to drop $80+, you can change the color of your iPhone without getting a lame case. I thought about changing mine to white, but they also have a transparent kit!!
  • WhiteiPhone4me.com – They offer just the white, but also have sim unlocking services as well. The pricing for the kit is £129 which equals about $210. Ouch!

But do we even really care anymore? Given Apple’s release history of the iPhone, shouldn’t we be expecting the iPhone 5 sometime in June? Well, it may seem that this won’t the case this year. PCWorld estimates that the iPhone 5 might not be released until late 2011 or as far out as 2012. This would seem likely due to the fact that Verizon just recently got the iPhone 4 and Apple may want to let those customers settle in before bringing out a new device so soon. In fact, there are already manufacturers claiming that iPhone 5 production isn’t beginning until at least September.

At any rate, if we can’t expect an iPhone 5 this summer, I’m all for it! I’m really getting tired of forking over large amounts of cash just to get the latest and greatest. I know I don’t have to, but I just can’t help it! 🙁 If a new iPhone 5 does make an appearance this summer, let’s just hope that Apple releases it in both white and black so we can stop blogging about this whole issue.

Apple Versus Netflix: The Digital Entertainment War

· Brandon Hann

I just talked about this yesterday and it looks like the rumors are already gaining momentum. The debate about whether Apple would try to take on Netflix in their ability to serve up digital content to the masses has the community jumping. The evidence? A huge, brand new data center built by Apple in North Carolina is on the verge of going operational.

This data center is said to rival those of other media companies like Google and Microsoft. Even better, Apple is already planning to build another one! All this information points to Apple’s desire and ability to be the leader of digital entertainment distribution.

iTunes has been widely successful since it first launched in 2001 and it has been the leader in digital music sales for years. However, it’s always lacked in the television and film arena. For television, it’s a no-brainer—competing with cable and broadcast networks who deliver instant programming 24/7 on hundreds of channels is no small feat. However in the film industry, we have been renting movies since 1985 when Blockbuster first opened and then in 1999, Netflix revolutionized this process by bringing movies to your door. Netflix revolutionized this process again by offering most of these same movies in live streaming.Netflix

Apple has the Apple TV and the iTunes store which allows for the “purchase” of movies and even tv shows (mostly those that have made it to DVD collections), but so far, they can’t touch Netflix. In fact, only recently has Apple began streaming their movies through the new Apple TV opting to cut out the ability to download and store movies on the device itself. This major change could very well be the stepping stone Apple needed in their quest to dominate your living room.

Pros and Cons

In Netflix’s corner:
Pros

  • Ability to have physical DVD and Blu-ray discs sent directly to your door
  • Live streaming of thousands of titles (and more coming each day)
  • Multi-device support (Blu-ray players, free phone apps, TVs, etc.)
  • Relatively cheap
  • New pricing plans for streaming service only (no in-home discs)

Cons

  • Not all movies are available via streaming
  • In-home disc count limited to 4 max at one time
  • TV shows limited to those only available on DVD

In Apple’s corner (Potentially):
Pros

  • Live streaming of thousands of titles
  • Possibly cheap? We’ll have to wait and see.
  • Multi-device support?

Cons

  • Might have to buy Apple TV to stream
  • No in-home discs

It’s hard to develop a pros and cons list with a product/service that doesn’t exist yet, but in terms of pure speculation, Netflix slightly leads the pack. The main reason for this is because they have a huge head start. Not only do they have hundreds of thousands of physical media for rental, but they are gaining massive traction with adding new streaming content. Netflix also has their software available on almost every connected device these days. Just about any Blu-ray player and TV comes with the ability to stream movies from your account. Knowing Apple, that alone might be the sole competitive difference. Apple is not known to be too kind when it comes to sharing software.

My two cents

Apple does have the advantage when it comes to customer base. They have millions of users already linked to iTunes via their credit cards, so adding an additional service charge to bring movies into the picture will likely not be a major hurdle for most consumers. Only time will tell of course and for me, it’s dependent on just how well Apple delivers that content. The deciding factor will come down to three things: 1. Title availability, 2. Network speed and 3. Where I’ll be able to watch this content.

iPad Poised to Take Out Radio and Other Media

· Brandon Hann

A new survey from Google shows that more and more people are opting to use their tablet devices, with most of them being iPads, over traditional media streams like listening to the radio or watching broadcast tv. This is happening just now?! I can’t remember the last time I listened to the radio!

The survey points out that more than half of the people questioned said they use their iPad more than listening to the radio and just about 25% of them use an iPad more than a computer. Finally, a third of these individuals stated they use iPad more than they watch tv. Because the iPad is so versatile, people can now use one device to access the Internet, watch videos, stream movies and tv shows, read newspapers and magazines, listen to music and play games. Of course cable and satellite providers have made honest attempts at keeping you on your television by offering on-demand content, DVR services, music channels, downloadable content, HD content, 3D content, free movies, etc., but without a tv capable of handling some of these things, you’re kind of up a creek.

Apple TV

Apple TV
Since the iPad is an Apple product, I doubt Steve Jobs cares that one of his own products is cannibalizing another market, but I know he figures he might as well have a piece of that pie too. Before he retires, Steve Jobs plans to “revolutionize” the living room. The Apple TV has been an interesting, yet vastly overlooked product since its inception. Originally called iTV (how original), the Apple TV began shipping in 2007 and has seen one major upgrade in 2010. However, nobody is really talking about it.

Is it possible that not everything Apple touches turns to gold? In light of this new survey, one could wonder what the future of Apple TV will be. If you actually take the time to look at the device, it really is pretty cool. You can stream purchases of videos, movies and music right from your iTunes account, access Netflix, NBA tv, YouTube and display slideshows from Flickr photo albums.

However, it would seem that this device is doomed. With the realization that iPads are here to stay, along with other competing products, Steve Jobs is likely to bring the cloud experience to your living room. By connecting all of your devices together, you’ll be able to do anything and everything on just about anything and everything in your home. I can see the commercial now:

  • Man is at work with 2 minutes left to go, watching a Netflix movie on his Macbook.
  • Man leaves work and continues same movie on iPhone while riding the subway home (I know there’s no cell service on subways, but work with me here!)
  • Man walks in the door, turns on tv and continues streaming same movie.
  • Man grabs iPad because he has to go to the bathroom and doesn’t want to pause the movie.
  • Man’s iPad battery dies, he gets upset and breaks iPad.
  • Man gets even more upset, breaks Macbook and tv.
  • Wife says she’s leaving because husband is to “connected” to technology.
  • Man is sad and lonely because Apple Care won’t cover physical damage.

On a serious note, if anyone makes that script into a YouTube video, I want credit!

My two cents

Of course the above example is a huge exaggeration, but the questions are pretty clear. Do we really need all this stuff? Do we really want everything to be so connected that we become so dependent on them? What I would like to see is a way for consumers to pay much smaller fees for tv service. If Apple plans to cloud up the living room with more on-demand tv choices like those you can get from Hulu, then I hope the cable companies respond by allowing customers to only pay for channels they wish to receive. At the rate all this is going, I’m sure it won’t be much longer before network television simply allows you to subscribe to your favorite shows rather than paying to have the whole channel.