Strange New World: Tech Picks of the Week

Aug. 1, 2008— -- This week in the Strange New World, we're caught in the grips of Olympic fever as we await the start of the games in Beijing. But if we can't be home to watch TV, we'll still be able to catch our beloved modern pentathlon. We also rejoice about the NFL's finally coming to the Internet, but that doesn't bode all too well for the future of telecom companies in the TV business. And it turns out that the Centro is the little phone that could. Here are our picks of the week.

Palm Sells 2 Million Centros

A few months ago, when the Palm Centro came out, we were a little skeptical about its design, OS and tiny keyboard. It looks like our concerns didn't really hold much weight because Palm just announced it has sold 2 million Centro units. What's driving these sales?

We'd have to say price is the main factor. Sure, devices with Windows Mobile OS and the Blackberry OS are more powerful, but those devices are not $99. In addition, recent data released by AdMob, the largest advertising network on the mobile Web, states that Centro is among the top 10 devices worldwide for mobile Internet. Will this lead to more gateway phones, in between a standard cell phone and a full-on smart phone? We think so. Will this product help Palm rebound from the disaster of their Palm Folio product release? Not quite.

Catch the Olympics on the Go

Next week, the summer Olympics start up and around the world people will be glued to their TV sets to watch sports that we only care about every four years. But what are you to do if you have to go to work every day and won't be home to get your gymnastics fix?

NBC.com is going to offer an astounding 4,400 hours of on-demand streaming content in addition to its 2,200 hours of live streaming content, so that should pretty much destroy the bandwidth of office parks around the country. If you want to watch the Olympics live on your cell phone, you're out of luck if you don't have AT&T. They have managed to score an exclusive Media Flo-based channel for their mobile TV network. Before you get too excited, the channel won't be available on the iPhone.

NFL comes to the Web

Now that the digital television era has officially begun -- the NFL is finally going to start streaming games on the Web -- it's no longer heresy to point out that despite bazillions invested, phone companies will never be serious TV players here in North America.

Putting it kindly, North American deployment of telecom TV has been slow. While worldwide IPTV subs are roughly at 54 million according to In-Stat, AT&T will have just 1 million subs here in America by the end of 2008. And as of mid-March, there are 6 million American homes with Verizon's excellent FIOS fiber-optic product. Heck, we subscribe to their Internet service, but they've only got 1 million taking their TV service.

And there is a glut of technological issues crippling IPTV. Just like the cell phone industry, public markets inhibit investment in proper networks. Regulators slow the deployment through simply ridiculous franchise processes, and there is also the explosion of competing software standards to contend with. There are now so many different types of code running on IPTV systems that even though the market is tiny, it is impossible for third-party developers to create interesting content. There is basically nothing to put on IPTV.

And the NFL deal seals it. If Joe FIOS Customer can get first-quality content as part of his flat broadband rate, why would he pay more for IPTV-delivered football? He won't.

Jonathan Blum and Dan Evans co-host "Strange New World," a weekly syndicated radio show. Blum hosts the blog Blumsday.com and Evans is a features editor at PC Magazine.