Microsoft’s weak quarterly earnings report is pushing some to call on the company to abandon its once-hyped “iPod-killer”, the Zune.

According to a Marketwatch story, investors think it’s time to dump the Zune and focus their attention on competing with Apple’s iPhone:

“The market reception for Zune is so disappointing that many retailers have even stopped selling it altogether,” said George Kurian, a vice president at Tradition Capital Management LLC, which owns Microsoft shares.

Kurian said Apple has successfully outflanked Microsoft by shifting its iPod users to higher-margin devices like the iPhone.

“Microsoft should abandon Zune and follow Apple’s strategy to try to make its presence felt in the high-growth smartphone sector,” Kurian said.

The Zune had a lukewarm reception when it was introduced, because the device failed to significantly differentiate itself from both the iPod and other iPod competitors. Marketing blunders, like the PR fiasco of the Zunepocolypse and Microsoft’s inability to generate interest with teens, have caused Microsoft’s Zune revenue to plummet.

What do you think? Is there still hope for the Zune brand? And is there any hope for a Zune phone?

YouTube took credit today for pushing Chris Brown’s Forever, a song that was released over a year ago, to #4 on the iTunes singles chart and #3 on Amazon’s best-selling MP3 list.

YouTube suggests that user-generated video, combined with their rights management tools, packs a powerful marketing punch:

At YouTube, we have sophisticated content management tools in place to help rights holders control their content on our site. The rights holders for “Forever” used these tools to claim and monetize the song, as well as to start running Click-to-Buy links over the video, giving viewers the opportunity to purchase the music track on Amazon and iTunes.

As a result, the rights holders were able to capitalize on the massive wave of popularity generated by “JK Wedding Entrance Dance” — in the last week, searches for “Chris Brown Forever” on YouTube have skyrocketed, making it one of the most popular queries on the site.

Clearly, a viral video hit like the JK Wedding Entrance Dance, which has been viewed over 12 millions times, has the power to sell music.

Viral video hits are few and far between, though, so it could be a mistake to try and draw conclusions from this one. For every JK Wedding Entrance Dance, there are millions of YouTube videos that get only a few views.

What do you think? Is the JK Wedding Entrance Dance video an example of how companies should be capitalizing on user-generated video, or is it just an extreme case?

VoloMedia, a provider of advertising and reporting solutions for portable media, today announced that it was awarded U.S. Patent 7,568,213, titled Method for Providing Episodic Media yesterday.

The company says it expects companies creating products relating to podcasting and media synchronization to enter into partnerships with VoloMedia.

Founder Murgesh Navar has this to say about the patent:

The relative breadth of the issued claims under this patent has given rise to many questions. I’d like to take this opportunity to provide some context to our announcement: “VoloMedia Awarded U.S. Patent for Podcasting”.

Over the years, I have heard arguments, pro and con, to the utility and necessity of an intellectual property (IP) system. One one hand, there are arguments that say exclusive rights to ideas awarded on a patent excludes others from doing what they want to do and, therefore, IP systems close down access to knowledge. On the other hand, patents and intellectual property rights do drive innovation, as well as investments in new ideas. I do not wish to debate the merits of the U.S. patent system, but just acknowledge there are two sides to the issue of patent awards. VoloMedia has filed a dozen U.S. patent applications since 2003. Patent no. 7,568,213 is the first in the pipeline to issue. We expect the others to follow suit.

With specific reference to our newly issued 7,568,213 patent, it was filed in November 2003, almost a year before the start of podcasting. This helps underscore the point, that for nearly six years, VoloMedia has been focused on helping publishers monetize portable media…. and has continued these efforts with the addition of a wide array of smartphone-based applications. The patent that issued yesterday helps to tie together and reinforce the value of the various technologies and services that VoloMedia has developed to help accomplish this objective. VoloMedia’s intent is to continue to work collaboratively with key participants in the industry, leveraging its unique range of products to further grow and accelerate the market. Today, podcasting is 100% RSS-based. However, the patent is not RSS-dependent. Rather, it covers all episodic media downloads. It just so happens that, today, the majority of episodic media downloads are RSS-based podcasts, which is why we titled our announcement the way we did.

The episodic media download industry is still in its infancy. There will come a day when all the content on Hulu is available as an episodic download. Consumers will then have legitimate choices in how they consume their media: on a downloaded and portable basis, or by visiting a content aggregation website. As the medium matures, one would expect to see new entrants into the episodic download arena. The impact of a strong growing IP portfolio is such that we would expect new entrants into the podcasting arena to have a collaborative relationship with VoloMedia, just as do many of the current players.

This patent raises all sorts of questions:

• Is there really anything unique technologically about podcasting? Is the publish and subscribe mechanism that podcasting is based on different than other data synchronization systems?.
• Will this promote the development of podcasting or reward those that have developed it?
• Is this going to kill off new developments in the world of podcasting and new media?

What do you think of VoloMedia’s patent on podcasting?

For reference, below are the claims, per VoloMedia, issued under U.S. patent 7,568,213:

1. A method for providing episodic media, the method comprising: providing a user with access to a channel dedicated to episodic media, wherein the episodic media provided over the channel is pre-defined into one or more episodes by a remote publisher of the episodic media; receiving a subscription request to the channel dedicated to the episodic media from the user; automatically downloading updated episodic media associated with the channel dedicated to the episodic media to a computing device associated with the user in accordance with the subscription request upon availability of the updated episodic media, the automatic download occurring without further user interaction; and providing the user with: an indication of a maximum available channel depth, the channel depth indicating a size of episodic media yet to be downloaded from the channel and size of episodic media already downloaded from the channel, the channel depth being specified in playtime or storage resources, and the ability to modify the channel depth by deleting selected episodic media content, thereby overriding the previously configured channel depth.

2. The method of claim 1, further comprising automatically providing the user with an indication of the availability of updated episodic media via the channel dedicated to the episodic media in accordance with the subscription request.

3. The method of claim 1, further comprising synchronizing the updated episodic media automatically downloaded to the computing device associated with the user with a portable computing device communicatively coupled to the computing device associated with the user.

4. The method of claim 3, wherein synchronization of the updated episodic media automatically occurs in response to a predetermined user setting.

5. The method of claim 3, wherein synchronization of the updated episodic media occurs in response to a request received from the user.

6. The method of claim 1, wherein the updated episodic media is made available to users not associated with the computing device over a local area network.

7. The method of claim 1, wherein the automatic download is further based on a priority assigned to the channel.

8. The method of claim 3, wherein the channel dedicated to the episodic media is reduced in size during synchronization in order to fit available cache storage within the portable device.

9. The method of claim 1, wherein the channel dedicated to the episodic media is modified in size by removing one or more episodes of episodic media.
Learn more about Volomedia

via contentinople

Chicago’s Horizon Realty, a property management company, filed a $50,000 libel lawsuit Monday against a former tenant, Amanda Bonnen, over one of her alleged Twitter posts.

Horizon argues that Bonnen libeled the company with her May 12th tweet, which read in part “Who said sleeping in a moldy apartment was bad for you? Horizon Realty thinks it’s okay.”

Bonnen’s alleged twitter account, abonnen, is no longer active. But, based on information in Google’s cache, it appears that Bonnen had 22 followers.

“The statements are obviously false, and it’s our intention to prove that,” said Horizon’s Jeffrey Michael. “We’re a sue first, ask questions later kind of an organization.” Michael added that the company has a “good reputation it wants to preserve.”

Sue First, Ask Questions Later

Horizon may be breaking new ground in public relations with its response.

By suing Bonnen for $50,000 over a tweet that was probably seen by a fraction of abonnen’s 22 followers, the company is bringing Bonnen’s complaint to tens of thousands of readers on Twitter, in blogs and in news stories that the situation will generate.

Instead of preserving the company’s “good reputation”, Horizon Realty is establishing itself as a “sue first, ask questions later” kind of company.

The kind of company that will sue you for $50,000 if you have something bad to say about one of their apartments.

If Horizon’s lawsuit goes forward, fixing the damage it will do to the company’s reputation will take a lot more than $50,000.

Horizon’s response looks like a textbook case of what not to do when faced with a new media PR problem. What do you think the right response would have been?

Update: Horizon has responded to the controversy over the lawsuit, saying that their lawsuit was part of their response to a class action lawsuit filed by Ms. Bonnen. (pdf)

Horizon Realty is now the top search result for Twitter lawsuit in Google.

Amanda Bonnen’s Twitter stream (Google cache) shows that Horizon was one of many targets of her complaints:

• Top five of worst flights ever. Never again spirit air.3:45 PM Jul 9th from mobile web
• All of these people eating McDonalds is making me want to hurl.12:28 PM Jul 9th from mobile web
• I can tell im on the right flight for fort meyers, the average age tends to be about 70.12:09 PM Jul 9th from mobile web
• Damn you Ohare and your 2hr security lines.11:25 AM Jul 9th from mobile web
• Whoever designed the train with the bi-fold doors was a duche.4:30 PM Jul 2nd from mobile web

The Apple Tablet is still complete vaporware - but it’s looking more and more likely that Apple is developing a large-scale version of the iPod touch.

While some think the idea of an Apple Tablet is a train wreck, Apple hasn’t released many train wrecks recently.

With that in mind, here are five reasons that the Apple Tablet will rock:

• It will be a great ereader - the Kindle was the first ebook reader to really get people’s attention. But the Kindle’s primary focus is to be a platform for Amazon to sell you proprietary, DRM’d ebooks. That’s looking backwards. Apple will come up with something forward-looking, and make its tablet computer a great platform for reading books, but also for reading anything else that you like. And watching anything you like. And playing anything you like. And doing anything you like. All that, and it will be in color, extra sexy and actually let you touch hyperlinks to open them up.
• It will be open to app developers - Apple’s learned from its insanely popular iPhone app store that people want a dead-simple way to load apps. Apple’s also learned the value of establishing a successful new mobile app platform. That means the App Store is coming to the Tablet. People can quibble about Apple’s screening process, but nobody has done a better app store than Apple. App developers will have no problem working with larger screens, and they’ll love the extra real estate. The platform will have 10,000 apps in a year.
• It will be awesome for video - the iPhone is a great media platform, but a larger screen will crank things up a notch. The Apple Tablet will also have an advantage over any other notebook platform; it will sync with iTunes, making loading and buying media a no-brainer for anyone who’s ever used an iPod.
• It will be a great game platform - The success of games on the Wii and the iPhone show that raw gaming power isn’t as important as making gaming easy and fun. Games that were fiddly on a tiny iPhone screen will be way more fun with a big touchscreen. A larger screen opens the platform up to games with two simultaneous players touching the screen, too.
• It will be a great platform for new media - any Apple Tablet will make it easy to use YouTube and video podcasts. But the Apple Tablet will be great for reading blogs, pdfs and all sorts of Internet media - making it great platform for new media developers, and giving users access to an unprecedented variety of free media. And because of the larger screen, blogging and creating new media will be much more practical.

Add to that bigger versions of Maps and Mail and you’ve got a winner, if Apple gets the price right. And if they don’t, they’ll sell it at a premium to the rich for a year and then cut the price and watch it sell like hotcakes.

The Apple Tablet may be vaporware - but it’s got “hit” written all over it.

What do you think? Is the Apple Tablet speculation out of hand, or are you getting excited about the idea of a new platform from Apple?