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Warning: This web at
toLearn.net/marketing/ is two years old, it's unattended, and the
links are rotting. However, in June 2000, the
server recorded over 10,000 page requests during more than 3,000 visitor sessions from dozens of
countries. Thus, I'm reluctant to take it down completely. Ricci Street | MBA 604 | marketing |
The Plug-In Nightmare The next TV you buy will probably be one
of those new HDTVs. They'll be able to receive the digital broadcasts that will become the
standards in the next few years. The digital TV image has a much higher resolution, so
you'll need a screen more like your computer monitor than your current TV. Just as TV is moving toward the Internet, the Internet is moving toward TV. In the April 20, 1998, Internet World, Gus Venditto writes about SMIL -- Synchronized Multimedia Integration Language. It will let you put data streams into Web pages. Thus Web sites will offer TV-like programming. With a big difference: interactivity. For example, you're watching a boring Red Sox game. Mo Vaughn comes to the plate against Roger Clemens. You click on Mo, click on Roger and up pops the whole history of their appearances against each other. Lo and behold, Mo has never had a hit off his old teammate. Why didn't the announcer tell you that? With SMIL, the ball players' images will carry their stats with them as meta-data. Are you watching this game on TV or the Web? You won't be able to tell the difference. SMIL is a spec, or specification. In other words, it's a set of instructions about how to do something, in this case, deliver real-time streaming video over the Internet. Today, we're doing that with plug-ins, special pieces of software usually free for downloading.
The driving force is interoperable standards that let any computer on the Net communicate to any other computer. The restraining force is capitalism, which values better ideas. It's the interoperable standards like TCP/IP, HTML, and SMIL that make browsing possible at all. It's the competition (and partial incompatibility) of the Microsoft and Netscape browsers that make the browsers better. This standardization is not unlike what railroads went through agreeing to run the same width of track or the automotive industry went through agreeing to stop using proprietary tires or the entertainment industry went through with Beta and VHS. The same struggle is playing out in the Java wars between Microsoft and Sun. Venditto quotes the chair of the SMIL group as saying, "This means you can have media-on-demand on the Web ... and many other uses that will only be invented after SMIL becomes widely implemented." In the April 21, 1998, Buffalo News (p. E3) Brian Meyer reported on a recent standing-room only seminar driven by forecasts that business-to-business sales will soar far beyond last year's $8 billion. Brian quotes a Price Waterhouse rep: "We're talking about businesses that are already Internet-literate. They're looking up information on the Web, but they're just not sure if they're ready to start doing business on the 'net." Added a board member of Info-Tech Niagara, an association of local technology firms: "Some companies are exploring advertising and promotion efforts while others are interested in using the Internet for customer-service functions." Brian reports further that "Many fledgling Internet users said they face some nagging issues, including security, building traffic on their Web site, and devising innovative sites in an era of increasing competition in cyberspace. Other business owners are struggling to keep tabs on changing software and hardware technology."
For example, try to find how to place an on-line ad with them. After a (too) long search, I can't find anything. They don't tell you how much it costs. All the ads are undated. They never had to worry about that because the date is on the top of each page in the paper. Well, it's not on the online pages. To see what other print newspapers are doing, check out the San Jose Mercury News or the Raleigh News and Observer.
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Venditto writes, "After months of
study, a World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) committee on synchronized multimedia has come up
with SMIL, a spec that should have a long-lasting impact. ... To me, it sounds like more
welcome relief to the whole plug-in nightmare."
If you track the progress of SMIL over the next year, you'll see the public
comment part. If it gets understood as something that won't, can't, or shouldn't make the
Net more attractive and accessible, it will go back to committee or disappear. If it gets
understood as worth pursuing, Venditto points out, "The group announced that it had
created a usable standard ready for public discussion, and changes will be made in the
next few months." Once that process settles down, all the folks with bright ideas
about how to use it will hire new media development teams: designers, artists,
programmers, hopefully a usability specialist.
How fast is that change? Venditto
writes, "Milestones fly by; standards rise and are toppled. We often seem to be
circling back to a place we passed six months ago. Yet it makes perfect sense, because the
laws of technology are immutable. Innovation brings chaos, followed by standards and real
progress."
