As a kid I’d walk (my bike tire always had a puncture) up to Kloof’s library and either read Rolling Stone magazine or an Usborne book.  My favourites were the Usborne Books of the Future.  I’d sit there for hours absorbing the detailed panacea that was life beyond the year 2000.  It all seemed so wonderful compared with the day to day reality of living in a small suburb of a despised country. I remember getting mad for being born “too” soon and willed time to run quicker so I could begin enjoying my “Home of the Future”.  In it I was promised amongst other things, a giant sized TV (but not thicker than 5cm), the ability to work away from the office using faxes to communicate and a video disk to record TV.  Or course all this was powered by “sunshine power” (I guess solar power hadn’t caught on yet).  And when I got bored of lounging around the house I could take a spin in  a jet powered by liquid hydrogen travelling at mach 3.

And then I’d begin my 30 minute walk home wondering how it would all turn out and what I could do to speed things up.  I wanted to be ready. And once I returned home I’d ask,
“Mom, when will we be in the future?”

It’s a good thing for squirrels that Warren Buffett, also from Omaha, went into finance rather than lampshade manufacture.

I’ve posted the pictures from yesterday in Mayrhofen. The conditions were excellent. The apre-ski was even better and I had good company. All in all, a good, and much needed day out. More pictures are on my Flickr photostream.

I’ve attended a couple of mobile conferences recently and chatted with the folks responsible for Vodafone’s mobile TV initiative. I’ve sat though multiple operators extolling the success of their mobile TV roll-outs. I’ve seen a bevy of products released to do pre-roll and post-roll ad insertions, new handset introductions and marketing campaigns from the network operators. I’m always amazed with their gusto for piping TV to the mobile phone but what concerns me is whether anyone is asking for it? Something is missing.

What’s mobile TV? Not to be confused with viewing YouTube videos on a mobile iPhone style, mobile TV aims to display what you’d normally receive over the air from DVB-T broadcasts. But since you are moving, the way this is broadcast is differently to how the home TV signal is broadcast. Also noteworthy is that the operators now control programming, not BBC1 or Sky.
So what’s missing? Consumer demand. Nobody wants mobile TV. Phones are not TVs. Their screens are too small and even if they were bigger, phone use is orientated around short bursts of communications orientated activity and not around watching the next episode of “24”. And here’s the real kicker: you have to have a special, extra klunky, battery sapping, mobile phone to view mobile TV.

Currently people want phones with GPSs, navigation software and cameras. I’ve not heard a single person ask for a mobile TV. If they did, I’d send them out to buy the latest DVB-T portable TV. It works and I don’t pay €3 to view a 3 minute clip. Sure it may not work so well on the move, but in Europe people move on public transport and wouldn’t want to disturb those around them or drive in which case they shouldn’t be watching TV anyway (incidentally I see the DVB-T equipped Mercs now shut off the TV the moment you start moving).
The future will not in be in carriers’ TV offerings. Especially when the operators are controlling the programming: carriers excel at running marketing campaigns and operating a billing infrastructure (heck, most of them don’t even run their own networks anymore). That’s the way it should be. So would you want your carrier deciding which videos you should watch? No, the future will be in an iPhone style approach – unlimited internet use with access to YouTube type sites where the users’ peers email them with short recommended clips. And like all nascent industries, this will be most likely start with porn.

Remember when AOL used to try and “do content”? Now they do pipes. All ISPs now just do pipes and eventually the opeators will grasp this too. An ISP trying to do content would be dead in the water. Even ISPs offering TV packages just rebroadcast pre-existing channels.

The exciting stuff is found at the edge of the net. Users will migrate to carriers that provide them with a cheap pipe to the edge. To the Flickrs, to the YouTubes to their home-grown app, to Mrs Robinson’s recipe collection. When did we last see a carrier innovate and produce the same level of content as all these sites – never! It’s just not in their DNA. The same way they now shop around for cheap (but reliable) DSL providers they will shop around for mobile pipes to video clip sites. A mobile operator’s video offering will be routed around and ignored. And the marketing train will move on to advertising the carriers latest cheap data package. Thankfully.

It’s a good thing I’m not planning on retiring soon.  My Google Adsense earnings have not been stellar, but the cash trickles in.  Unfortunately I’m paid in US dollars so it’s anyone’s guess as to how much I’ve really made taking today’s fluctuations.  Since I began I’ve amassed a grand total of $5,48.  That’ll cover today’s bread and gruel lunch nicely.  But when I take the cost of electricity into account, I’m still running at a loss.  Good thing I’m not doing this as a business.