There are some 100 million game consoles worldwide about 73 million PlayStations, 16 million Xboxes and 14 million GameCubes. According to the Zelos Group, 45 million full-feature media-capable handsets will be in the global market by the end of the year. Software that supports music, video and game downloads will follow.
Photoblogs provide free or inexpensive ways to share photos. Fotolog and Fotopages host photoblogs from all over the world. If you already have a Web site with FTP, Snaplog is an easy tool for publishing your photoblog.
Here are some other options for creating music and video downloads:
- Apple’s Quicktime
The QuickTime Player works with 3GPP, 3GPP2, MPEG-4, MPEG-2 files and other common media (except Real and WindowsMedia). Can download music from iTunes. Its suite includes QuickTime Streaming Server for live or on demand feeds over the Internet and 3G mobile neworks with no per-stream license fees. The Darwin Streaming Server, is a free, open source version running on Linux, Solaris, and Windows 2000. QuickTime Broadcaster allows just about anyone to produce a live broadcast event.
- Real’s Helix Mobile Platform
Real Mobile Suite was designed for deployment inside the mobile operator networks.Their music download service, Rhapsody, will likely go mobile. Mobile Producer and Universal Server deliver live and on-demand audio and video to consumer handsets. It works over all major wireless data networks, including CDMAone, GPRS, UMTS, EDGE, PHS, PDC, WCDMA, CDMA2000 and 802.11b-WiFi. With the broadest support for mobile delivery standards, including support for live streaming of 3GPP content. Real provides four hours of sports, news and entertainment video content every day through media partnerships. - Microsoft Windows Media
Windows Media Player 10 Mobile plays music and videos on Pocket PCs and Smartphones such as the Audiovox SMT5600, Dell Axim X50, T-Mobile MDA III and Motorola MPx220. Can download music from MSN. Uses Exchange Server, Windows Media Streaming media server and Windows Media Encoder. Producer 2003 is a popular add-on for Microsoft PowerPoint. - Perseus Wireless
Develops mobile video applications for the closed-circuit security industry, is now offering surveillance services over the AT&T Wireless high-speed (3G) network. In addition to the cellular connectivity, the Perseus phones also support Wi-Fi (802.11 wireless LAN) and Ethernet connections. - MusicGremlin
MusicGremlin provides downloads over wireless LAN. The company’s technology and proposed music portal are intended to bring the equivalent of iTunes to the handset. - OnAir Entertainment
OnAir is taking television to the Wi-Fi hot spot. It has created a media server that turns a laptop connected to a wireless LAN into a television and personal video recorder. They deliver live satellite TV directly to Wi-Fi enabled laptops and PDAs for airports, hotels, trains and convention centers. - KnowledgeWhere is a Location Application Platform (LAP) for location-based services. Swordfish, a location-based fishing game, uses KnowledgeWhere and Java enabled mobile phones that are GPS equipped.
- Herecast uses an ordinary Wi-Fi device to figure out where you are. It’s open to all developers, making it relatively easy to create your own location aware services.
NewsBreak (right), a Pocket PC application, can access “podcasts” (recent feeds) of international or local news. In your neighborhood. On your block. It uses whatever wireless connectivity you have available including WiFi, Bluetooth, and cellular connections. Anyone can provide an RSS feed with audio or video enclosures. For practically nothin’. Audio makes sense for handhelds. WebJay it.
Location-Based Services such as mobile games, child tracking, social networking and other services will be on this train. Location service providers for cellular networks include Adesso Systems, Aeroscout, Enpocket, F-Secure, Intellisync, Tatara Systems, Sproqit Technologies, MapQuest and Xora to name a few. How boring. Localizing PDA Content is free. Like speech.
Open source tools like Open GIS, Google, Yahoo and a million creative minds will energize the “free” cloud into a crackling powerhouse.
Video Blog TV Channels and MobileTV via DVB-H are GOING to happen. WiFi/WiMax networks will bust out of the walled prison.
This revolution is unstoppable. Just look around. Drop historic photos into PhotoStory and add narration. Every hot spot can have unique content…and a live birdcam.
Remote content hubs don’t even need an internet connection. A solar-powered Linksys WRT-54G with embedded NoCat ($60) can provide users with multi-media files linked on the splash page. No moving parts.
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