As part of it's deal with a variety of labels including EMI Group, Sony Corp's Sony Music Entertainment, Vivendi's Universal Music Group and Warner Music Group, Apple's 'Project Cocktail' promises to bring a novel content format (e-album) together with a unique form-factor (tbreleased in August, the Apple tablet) to create a new channel that could be targeted at Early-adopter baby boomers, Tech-challenged prosumers or other music-loving categories.

Could Cocktail represent Apple's answer to the Amazon Kindle? Retail model competition is already heating up with eBay's Skype product being sized-up by a plethora of VoIP packages emerging from the Cloud, and subscriber-based, Broadband enabled, form-friendly consumption could be the next market approach.

How will our friends in Cupertino market this innovative new package?

More to follow !

broad-based technology improving our lives(right!)

Why didn't they have dorm-room Supercomputer/heater's when I was in school? (http://www.wired.com/gadgetlab/2009/06/ibm-supercomputer/)

It's not just Cable vs. Telco

and the billions that are being invested in the development of new services,.. It's the rich voice, video and data environment that you will soon be experiencing in your home, and all this, well, it's about to change !(http://adage.com/article?article_id=136688)

Take a look at my LinkedIn poll and tell me what you think !
http://polls.linkedin.com/p/38511/yqwuw

What do you think?

Check out my LinkedIn poll on Broadband market movements !
http://polls.linkedin.com/p/36878/hmsge

Broadband consequences - what do they mean for you?

To address 230 million US internet users and thier demand for Broadband services in 2009, Privately held Operators will invest ~$80B across North American communications networks (roughly 5% of the US GDP, representing more than 3X of the annual investment in the original US Interstate Highway system). With US Broadband penetration (~33%) notably lower than other 1st and 2nd world economies (e.g. 42% in Denmark, Netherlands, 40% in Norway, Switzerland), it's interesting to note that a 10% increase in U.S. broadband penetration could help create 3 million jobs (source: Connected Nation), roughly 60% of those job growth targets identified by Barak Hussein Obama. This same 10% could generate $134 billion in incremental annual economic stimulus, while saving 9 billion vehicle miles (or 3.5 million tons of CO2 emissions). It is clear that VoIP is a potential winner in this environment - U.S. VoIP revenues will grow by 26% to $3.4 billion in 2009, while subscribers will also grow by 23% to 19 million.
With ~60% of US households accessing the internet via Fixed, Mobile and Broadband devices, legacy behaviors will continue to drive domain growth. Low-tech lifestyles (circuit-switched voice traffic, Pedestrian shopping, On site banking, F2F games, analog music and video) are services that will increasingly be found online - if you factor in Social Networking, IM, Browsing and User Generated Content, it seems that demand (in real numbers) for current and emerging broadband technologies will be easy to value for the average consumer.

Since 2007, 69 laptops have gone missing from the Los Alamos nuclear weapons laboratory in New Mexico

...Yet today's IT decision makers may have to move on before the risk of this kind of data loss is fully understood and addressed.

According to Gartner, that will be 2019, when ~50% of the U.S.'s current I.T. workforce retires. Those technicians will be replaced by a new generation of Web 2.0-savvy workers, comfortable with Social networks, familiar with cloud-based email and with expecations for local services that are delivered globally.

Is the threat of the cloud keeping your Network Engineers up at night? If you're not paying attention to Network Security now, you will be soon.

How are you using 'G-data' (aka The Cloud) for real-time decision making?

A few G-facts:

Google knows an amazing number of web-connected things, including:
- 67% of all Web search results,
- 1% of all Web sales transactions,
- The traffic to more than 1.5 million Web sites,
- The physical locations of many things,
- The health of your machine if you have installed Google apps and
- The usage patterns of Google registered users.

Many experts have written about the weather pattern of knowledge exchange and transformed data access opportunities that have been created by Google - among the many positive effects of working with the Search giant, the ability to scale economically while reducing risks/costs/delays associated with new market entry may be among the most powerful. In today's Information economy, the ability to act on and enable time sensitive data can become a unique differentiator and a Brand-multiplier. Google may possess more knowledge than any organization in history of organizations, but what is your organization doing to create sustainable value with Google search results?

This obvious next step for any Growth-stage organization is to determine how to ensure access; given the amazingly short half-life of unique market data, Ensured Access has broad implications.

Thoughtful customers/partners will consider Google's emerging suite of cloud-based Enterprise services in context of how access to these evolves over time - the critical question becomes, "What can you do today to monetize the information that Google provides, and how is this information (and access to it) likely to change?" Also,"What are you doing to increase your familiarity with Google's capabilities/applications/tools?" Service-centered industries should build redundant networks that ensure access to Google value data (G-data), mindful that the true potential value of G-data lies not just your unfettered access to it but also your ability to act on or execute against it.