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Communications Entertainment

Fox Starts TV Production For Cell Phones 232

Posted by CowboyNeal from the auto-accidents-of-the-future dept.
prostoalex writes "Broadcasting television to the cell phones, which few people were actually interested in, is becoming a reality pretty fast, as Fox started making mopisodes (one-minute episodes targeted specifically for the mobile phone screen) to be broadcast on Vodafone and Verizon networks. The Fox announcement timed perfectly with Vodafone launching a broad variety of 3G services in Europe."
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Fox Starts TV Production For Cell Phones More

Fox Starts TV Production For Cell Phones

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  • CNN Coverage (Score:4, Informative)

    by calibanDNS ( 32250 ) <brad_staton@hotm ... com minus author> on Thursday November 11, 2004 @10:50PM (#10794898)
    CNN's coverage can be found here [cnn.com].

    • Rupert is The King. (Score:2, Informative)

      by scum-e-bag ( 211846 )
      I, for one, will call this a success. Rupert Murdoch is running this operation. Any Australians who know the history of Rupert and his Media Empire know that he makes the correct decision more often than not. With the full listing of News Corp on the NYSE and the re-incorporation of the company to the US only just having taken place it is to be expected that some very positive news will start to flow about the fox group and its related companies. Expect a barrage of good news after the company is listed

  • Oh boy! (Score:2, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward
    Star Wars Narrow Screen Edition.
    • Wow! That Death Star sure blew up that dust speck Alderaan really bad! :P
    • Actually, isn't Clone Wars almost this? Though those were more like 5 minutes, IIRC. And those Animatrix cartoons. Back in the silent days, one of the first movie serials, The Perils of Pauline (remembered for the protagoist being tied to railway tracks by the villain) was 20 episodes of 10 or so minutes. One minute though, is a bit too Max Headroom to contemplate. Jack can certainly kill a few people in that time though.

  • WTF (Score:4, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward on Thursday November 11, 2004 @10:54PM (#10794916)
    What an insanely stupid idea. One minute TV episodes for the cell phone. Can someone please point me to the place where they give jobs like this out, to come up with incredibly stupid ideas like this?

    Instead of spending the money on this, FOX might as well have just spent the money on sexual harassment training.

    • And it's FOX, it's debateable if any of their full length programming is of any virtue either...

    • Re:WTF (Score:5, Insightful)

      by erick99 ( 743982 ) <homerun@gmail.com> on Thursday November 11, 2004 @11:19PM (#10795034)
      People are nuts. They want the tiniest cell phone possible, and then they want full motion/realtime video on it as well as a huge amount of memory for an MP3 player, add some circuitry for GPS, and whatever else. Do people really want to watch tv on their phone? Maybe this trend has more to do with people never being home because they have to or choose to work insane hours and also run kids back and forth and try to do other things as well. We are a Type A society I suppose. If it's gotten so bad that watching tv on a cell phone seems like a good idea, well, then, it's gotten pretty bad.

      • Re:WTF (Score:3, Insightful)

        by MidnightBrewer ( 97195 )
        Live in a country where your daily commute is an hour-and-a-half train ride one way, and perhaps you'll begin to see the justification.

        • Re:WTF (Score:3, Insightful)

          by meme_police ( 645420 )
          Why would I do that? I walk to work in 15 minutes. I'd rather live close to work in a 100 sq ft apartment shared with 12 other people than take 1 1/2 hour train ride.

        • Re:WTF (Score:3, Funny)

          by corian ( 34925 )
          Live in a country where your daily commute is an hour-and-a-half train ride one way, and perhaps you'll begin to see the justification.

          A one-minute TV program isn't going to take that much of a bite out of your one-and-a-half hour comute, though...
          • > A one-minute TV program isn't going to take that much of a bite out of your
            > one-and-a-half hour comute, though... ...which certainly wont keep them from charging 99 cents per "episode".

      • Re:WTF (Score:3, Insightful)

        by tho 1234 ( 709100 )
        "Generations have been working in jobs they hate, just so they can buy what they don't really need"

        -fight club
      • "Do people really want to watch tv on their phone?"

        I'd laugh if it came to light that you had a Game Boy.
      • They can have all that, and good battery life, if they improve the network to accomodate streaming.

        The added benefit being people with bluetooth on their phones and laptops will be able to use them from anywhere.

        Of course, I'd settle just for coverage at my house right now...

      • Rupert's trying to push his media into new media. Yeah it's coerced beyond all belief, but it's how old media survives. And plenty will watch, just to know the soft feel of a warm tube once more.

        Besides, 15 minute spots are probably the sweet-spot, and that's just waiting on technology to catch up to make it feasible.
    • Actually, I'd wager that the budget for these one-minute cell phone episodes actually came out of the FOX News ethics training budget.
    • Can someone please point me to the place where they give jobs like this out, to come up with incredibly stupid ideas like this?

      Sadly, stupid ideas like this are commonplace in Fortune 500 companies.

      I swear, they pay people good money to waste the companies money on poorly planned projects.

      My dotcom company was aquired by a big Fortune 500 company. They want to replace our product with their own product. Fair enough.

      Huge chunks of this technical project were planned, and the entire budget was allocated,
      • It is a new advertising conduit. In Toronto, several gas station pumps now have video displays built in. So, why not blast video to a cell phone, and reap the advertising dollar.

    • Re:WTF (Score:3, Funny)

      by Amiga Lover ( 708890 )
      Can someone please point me to the place where they give jobs like this out, to come up with incredibly stupid ideas like this?

      The idea was pretty obvious after looking at the attention span of most cellphone users.

    • Re:WTF (Score:3, Funny)

      by sabNetwork ( 416076 )
      WELCOME TO FOX NEWS BRIEFS
      America's Most Trusted Name in Cell Phone News

      It's time for our 60-second summary!
      beep beep budeep beep beep

      This just in-- Bush approval ratings are up!
      Shares of Halliburton may rise in the near future!
      Terrorists want to kill you-- stay home today!
      Baby-killing doctors arrested in San Francisco!
      Michael Moore needs to shut up!
      John Kerry is French!

      For more information on these breaking news stories, visit www.foxnews.com.

      --

    • Farenheit 451 (Score:2, Interesting)

      by heletek ( 593030 )
      Anyone remember the part on the subway? Why do people need to be constantly entertained? In the words of George Carlin, Dosn't anybody just sit and think anymore?
    • The funny thing is, Sprint already offers several mini TV apps that include news from sources such as:
      AP and Reuters, Fox, ABC News, NPR, CBS, etc. So I guess there's a bunch of jobs out there already doing this :)

      There's also a mini-app to let you watch local TV straight on your phone, not sure if it is pre-processed by sprint or if the hardware was alrady built in to receive TV signals.

      The apps look like they range from $3.95 - $9.99 per month, and I assume that part of that money gets kicked back to th
    • Insanely stupid? Perhaps. But is does feed the attention deficit of people who are prone to buy into such things. We should worry more about assjerks who will be actually watching TV while they're driving or operating heavy machinery. I may be exaggerating, since small TVs have been available for some time, and I've never heard about a driver getting an accident due to one of them. However, with all the problems with CWD (Cellphoning While Driving), I can freely speculate that adding TV to these alread

  • 1minute episodes ? commericals (Score:5, Insightful)

    by sPaKr ( 116314 ) on Thursday November 11, 2004 @10:54PM (#10794918)
    I thought the correct term for a one minute episode was commercial. I cant belive people are going to pay for that.

  • "Mopisode" (Score:5, Interesting)

    by tepples ( 727027 ) <tepples.gmail@com> on Thursday November 11, 2004 @10:55PM (#10794922) Homepage Journal

    "Mopisode"? I thought a one-minute dramatic episode was called a "trailer".

    • No, a trailer is a preview for an upcoming movie. It is called a trailer because it used to trail the movies. Then the marketing guys came in and said, "Hey, more people will watch these movie ads if we stick them at the FRONT of the movie!"

      However, I do believe mopisode is stupid sounding and probably/hopefully won't catch on.
    • Oh, yeah. Just what we need now.

      First, there was ... "SPAM".
      Then, there was ... "SPIM".
      Now, we have ...... "SPAT".

      ('Cause a one minute dramatic episode sure
      isn't a "mopisode", but is a "trailer".)

      Am I really missing something here? Is this
      something that people need from their cell
      phones? (Okay, a one minute episode of p0rn
      might be interesting, but not if it's used to
      sell automobiles or laundry soap.) FOX needs
      to pull their heads out of that dark stinky
      place, and put the kabosh on this brainfa

      • The distraction of driving while using a cell phone has already drawn the legal ire of a number of states and localities, and rightly so. Watching a FOX "mopisode" could be deadly.

        Who's to say a driver would be watching such programs? Ever heard of carpooling or public transportation (bus, train, etc), the same places Nintendo expects grown-ups to touch their DS systems?

    • I believe the correct term is "blipvert" [clivebanks.co.uk].

  • Mobile hazard (Score:5, Funny)

    by Lancaibheal ( 813222 ) on Thursday November 11, 2004 @10:56PM (#10794931)

    Great.

    Now I have to watch out for morons watching TV on their mobile phones while they drive their souped-up 4WDs in rush hour traffic.

    Thanks, Fox!

    • Yeah, and wait until they have cars that have TV screens built into them with Video Games or DVD inputs....oh wait, those already exist :P
    • Oh, crap. I'm a cyclist. Or should I say soon-to-be-ex-cyclist if this hits Australia.

      The sort of people this is already a problem with are _exactly_ the sort of people who would watch sitcom update snippets. *uggh*.

  • One minute episodes? (Score:3, Funny)

    by wrinkledshirt ( 228541 ) on Thursday November 11, 2004 @10:58PM (#10794934) Homepage
    Well, at least they're making disinformation more efficient.

    [ducks and covers]

  • Reality? (Score:2, Interesting)

    by nerd256 ( 794968 )
    "Broadcasting television to the cell phones, which few people were actually interested in, is becoming a reality pretty fast"

    TV Phone has two factors to become a big hit
    (1) The technology has to be available
    (2) People have to shell out the money for it

    The technology is available, which, granted, is a large step and testimony to technological projects. However, people must buy/subscribe this technology which no doubt will be very expensive. I for one would not throw a pretty penny at something I could get
    • There's one more HUGE problem with it, which is this: watching video on a cell phone is going to drain the battery very, very quickly. People are going to find out their batteries are dying fast, mutter "Huh... Whaddaya know?" and stop watching TV on their cells.

      Just like that, the technology will die. Some marketing flack will bemoan the "fact" that people just aren't ready for it yet, and there will be some hand-wringing.

      Then everyone will forget about it.

  • They could call it 1440

  • What New Hell is This? (Score:4, Funny)

    by rueger ( 210566 ) * on Thursday November 11, 2004 @11:01PM (#10794952) Homepage
    Oh great now I can enjoy idiots on cel phones [amiright.com] "sharing" fine Fox programming [t-online.de] while I'm trying to enjoy my dinner in a restaurant.

    As if their pointless yattering conversations weren't enough....

  • Why is it Different in the US? (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Oyume ( 464420 ) <jdshaffer&gmail,com> on Thursday November 11, 2004 @11:02PM (#10794956)
    I wonder why Vodafones in the US aren't like the ones here in Japan -- The newer phones receive regular broadcast TV, no fees or special equipment required. On your Vodafone you can watch anything that's not on cable TV. Pretty nice. But I just don't get the whole "download and pay" gambit in the WEST...

    *shrug*

    • Re:Why is it Different in the US? (Score:5, Insightful)

      by cgenman ( 325138 ) on Thursday November 11, 2004 @11:55PM (#10795248) Homepage
      Roll-out of cellular products in the US is terribly, terribly slow. For one, uptake in the US is slow, with many people holding on to their phones until they break. For another, the US market is quite large but needs to be supported as a cohesive whole... As such if Verizon wants to try something out, they will wait until success is reasonably assured then do a full nationwide roll out. Japan is a smaller, less-risky market which has traditionally used cell phones in roles that in the west would have been filled by computers... as computer uptake was somewhat slower over there and internet access was more spotty.

      Plus the carriers out here get to say what their customers use as phones, not vice-versa. Up until recently phones had to be flashed to a specific network provider and a specific user... the idea of buying a general purpose cell phone and finding a provider later is laughable here, despite being a perfectly functional model in Europe.

      We expect the carrier to subsidise the cost of the phones, and then are shocked that we can't get any phone that has features they don't want us to have. Sigh. I'd say vote with your dollars, but we really don't have any choice here.

      • I do customer service for Verizon Wireless. People in the US expect their phone provider to give them a new phone every 8 months or so for free. They expect this because they pay a monthly fee for their service. Somehow they think that the service doesn't cost Verizon anything to provide them, so their 39.99 a month is pure profit. We make about 1$ per month on each customer in profit. When customers go over their minutes we make more. But if every 8 months we give a phone to that customer that cost us 100$

        • Re:Why is it Different in the US? (Score:4, Interesting)

          by cgenman ( 325138 ) on Friday November 12, 2004 @01:58AM (#10795759) Homepage
          I did a stint in customer service. Tough job. It's impossible to please both the customers and the company you work for.

          That having been said, the cell phone industry in the US has a lot to answer for. The fact of the matter is that everyone has been hit with at least 1 100 dollar phone bill in their lives, if not routinely. And while getting hit with that once a year means the company makes 8 dollars more per month for that subscriber, the customer suddenly feels like they're owed.

          What other industry forces you to estimate the amount of something you are going to use, pay for services that may or may not be rendered, and make you pay through the nose if you guess low? This isn't a business relationship, this is The Price is Right. Do you think you will or will not roam? Will you be making any long distance calls? Do you think you will roam off our network in your home calling area? Planning on recieving any text messages? Are you sure you're only going to use 300 minutes with the holidays coming up? *DING!* The player guessed wrong. The phone company wins!

          I got hit with a 100 dollar bill one month because I switched to "unlimited nationwide coverage" at a 15 dollar a month premium, traveled out to California, and mysteriously dropped off of AT&T's network. If I had paid an additional additional 10 dollars that month I would have had "unlimited nationwide coverage with off-network roaming" and recieved the same service from the same people for 90% less. They charged me 10 times the amount for the same service. That's 90 bucks they owe me. My girlfriend has to ask people to call her house long distance, because while her cellular phone company's landline long distance is only about 15 cents per minute (a high total these days, I might add), cellphone long distance is 60 cents per minute no matter which way the call is going. So if I pay 15 cents to get a call to the switching station of her cell phone company, and she pays a monthly fee to get it from the switch to her cell phone, she still has to pay a stupidly high fee for the priviledge of receiving the call.

          If cell phone service were like power, you would pay X cents per minute. Maybe there would be variables like X cents per minute local, or X cents per minute off-prime, but they would be linear variables. None of this exploding-bill-for-the-same-service BS.

          I buy a gallon of milk. It costs me 2 dollars. I buy another gallon of milk. It costs me 2 more dollars. I buy 400 minutes of talk time. It costs me 40 dollars. I buy another 400 minutes of talk time. It costs me 240 more dollars. Where else would we put up with this?

          If the cellular companies didn't try to screw their users, maybe their users wouldn't try to get everything they can out of them.

          Again, I know that isn't you. But you have to realize that the system you work for is not working for its users. BTW, cry not a tear for Verizon Wireless, it's making a healthy 10% [forbes.com] return on capital. I'm convinced wireless companies could be making a lot more than that with a simple, fair pay-as-you-go non-prepaid no expiring minutes bullshit.

          • Sprint has a new plan (I think they call it "Fair and Flexable") in which you get billed at the tiers (so if you use 105min, you ghet billed for 200, and if you use 250, you get billed for 500). The problem with this plan is that it costs more. I use anywhere between 100->500 minutes a month, and I calculated that it's cheaper for me to just pay for 500minutes/month ($40/month) instead of having my payments range from $35/month -> who knows how much.

            Remember that ISPs used to do this at one time a
          • I did a stint in customer service. Tough job. It's impossible to please both the customers and the company you work for.

            You would think that these would be one in the same goals.

            The fact of the matter is that everyone has been hit with at least 1 100 dollar phone bill in their lives, if not routinely.

            Not me. I don't have a cell phone. My wife has one, but it is a pre-pay. I honestly do not understand the "need" for cellphones. I am no technophobe, in fact I used to work for Motorola, and I had a

    • Re:Why is it Different in the US? (Score:5, Insightful)

      by BlastM ( 663010 ) on Friday November 12, 2004 @12:53AM (#10795481) Journal
      _Not a troll_ just an observation.

      I have never been to Japan, but from what I gather Japanese society is generally tech-profficient and consumers make educated decisions when buying electronics.

      Apart from us geeks who are skeptical of big business at the best of times and paranoid at other times, western society will consume what the television tells it to, and is short-sighted enough not to realise that micro-payments add up quickly.

      I'm an Australian, and I can see this happening right now. SMS and MMS has become a huge fad, as have mobile phones in general. Many young people now face debt problems after running up phone bills in the thousands and tens of thousands of dollars.

      Broadband internet service is well below basic for a developed nation, but that's mostly attributed to the reelection of the conservative federal government that has sold half of the telecommunications utility that owns all the copper phone infrastructure and DSLAMs and most of the outgoing internet pipes.

      The population just isn't tech-savvy enough to force the market to be competitive, and as a result we are all fucked over, although only the geeks (and the farmers in the outback who can barely make phone calls) can see it.
    • Probably because until recently, Vodafone in Japan was J-Phone, a Japanese cell phone carrier, so they inherited most of their infrastructure. Also Verizon in the US IS NOT Vodafone, Vodafone just owns a decent chunk of the company(though that did prevent vodafone from bidding to buy AT&T wireless, though I wish NTT had been able to buy them)

  • Before they do that... (Score:5, Insightful)

    by infernalC ( 51228 ) <matthew@mellon.google@com> on Thursday November 11, 2004 @11:06PM (#10794975) Homepage Journal
    By gosh, I want Verizon to get rid of those fast-busy signals around rush hour and all those dead spots on my way to work. Cell service just plain sucks for a lot of us out here.

    • Re:Before they do that... (Score:4, Informative)

      by Kintanon ( 65528 ) on Friday November 12, 2004 @01:00AM (#10795509) Homepage Journal
      If you live in the New York Metro area then rush hour is never going to get better. We've saturated the area with cell towers, but each tower can only carry so many calls. When all of you people get on the phone at once when you get off work there just isn't enough infrastructure to carry the calls. The deadspots in the cities are usually caused by dense buildings like parking garages between you and the cell tower. Older skyscrapers will also kill the signal.

      Kintanon

  • Really common here in Korea (Score:4, Informative)

    by Jack Porter ( 310054 ) on Thursday November 11, 2004 @11:18PM (#10795027)
    The 3G phones here can do streaming video (including cable TV) and it's really common to see my coworkers watching the latest movie trailer on their phones.

    You pay per packet, and for content for some 'premium' stuff like music videos, and it's a relatively closed system so the telco and the content providers love it.
  • So now fox can run up my cell phone bandwidth bill, excellent!

  • I don't get it (Score:3, Interesting)

    by thpr ( 786837 ) on Thursday November 11, 2004 @11:23PM (#10795063)
    I MIGHT (stress might) pay for a quick snippet of the end of the World Cup, Stanley Cup final, or World Series if I happened to be out and not able to actually see the same live. However, I can't see buying anything specifically for a cell phone screen. Too small, drains my battery, I'm not out wandering or driving somewhere in order to watch TV.

    Not to mention that on a price per bit basis this will be something like 100,000x as expensive as cable television.

    Of course, I think paying for ringtones is a dumb idea, too; but that's a multi-billion dollar industry!

  • I went to a presentation a month or so ago on how technology is used in not-America (it baffles the best of us!) and the speaker spent some time on a service in China where by one could subscribe to a serialized novella on the cell phone; I believe the installments were delivered during peak commute hours, and some huge percentage of the population of China signed up. Now, obviously, that's not as easy to do in English because we use letters, so we can't fit as much story on a tiny screen. I was wondering w
  • 3G is not toon porn
    3G is not toon porn
    3G is not toon porn

  • So what about the poor bastards (like myself) around these people on public transportation. My guess is commuters would have to the one of the larger markets. Do they include head phones with the phone? It sounds like a silly question, but really...

  • so much greed... (Score:3, Interesting)

    by terrymaster69 ( 792830 ) on Thursday November 11, 2004 @11:36PM (#10795144)
    This is just silly. (actually just greedy) Vodafone already sells phones that have TV tuners built into them - the image is adjusted to fit the resolution of the screen. You can buy them here in Japan, I presume other countries as well. To have Fox create something for this "new 3G service" just means a new revenue stream. Just build the tuner into the phone, let people pick up the TV they want. (TV sucks the world over though, just seems like a waste of precious battery time)

  • Uggh (Score:4, Interesting)

    by BHearsum ( 325814 ) on Thursday November 11, 2004 @11:44PM (#10795196) Homepage
    I need not post my bitching for the fourth time, but I'm still so sick of these cellphones with all this crap on it. I think it's because people want everything, but only want to pay for one device. I don't know why some people don't worry about quality at all. I don't watch TV much, but I certainly don't want to watch it on a 1'' screen.

    It's a Walmart civilization these days. People are told they want the absolute cheapest thing out there, nevermind quality. What is the point in paying for something that only half-works? People buy cellphones that have horrible reception and sound quality -- makes it quite useless as a phone. I work as a computer service technician; we get people in on a daily basis demanding to know why their shit broke. HMM! I don't know. PCchips motherboard, generic ram, FORSA video card. Fujitsu hard drive...Liteon optical. I don't understand these people. They want the world, but they don't want to pay. I used to buy cheap crap. THEN IT BROKE. Then I realized that there is a bit of truth to 'you get what you pay for', at least, for tangible things. After buying a few cheap electronics I decided NO MORE. I don't buy something to have it stop working in a few months.

    And in case anyone is wondering, I finally found a phone that works so god damned well as phone. Motorola i90c. I'm using it on the Mike network (ie. iDen) and it's amazing. I get full signal everywhere I've been so far, in places where I got no signal with my Nokia piece of crap.
    • What the hell is wrong with Lite-On!?
      • Exactly. I have an HP burner and a Lite-On burner. The Lite-On supports more formats and burns faster than the HP (both same rated speed). I've never burned a coaster with it, even at max (52x). It works, it works well. As a bonus, the company updates their firmware on a regular basis (real updates for new formats, etc. as opposed to just bug fixes).

        I'll bet you're going to knock Nero next, because it costs less than EZ CD Creator. Go back to using AOL, it's expensive, so it must be good! ($23 for dial-up,

    • Then I realized that there is a bit of truth to 'you get what you pay for', at least, for tangible things. After buying a few cheap electronics I decided NO MORE. I don't buy something to have it stop working in a few months.

      I used-to agree with you completely... THEN IT BROKE! Yes, if you think it's a pain when you buy a cheap piece of junk that breaks, you should try buying an insanely expensive piece of junk, and have it break anyhow.

      I don't buy crap from Lite-on or NEC, but at the same time, I certa

    • Re:Uggh (Score:3, Insightful)

      by NanoGator ( 522640 )
      " I think it's because people want everything, but only want to pay for one device. "

      Have you ever tried carrying around an MP3 player, Game Boy, digital camera, PDA, and Sidekick all at once?

      "I don't watch TV much, but I certainly don't want to watch it on a 1'' screen."

      Good for you. Now consider other people's desires for a moment. A phone, because of it's 'phoney' nature, is something one carries around at all times. Since that phone already does the standard phone stuff, why not have it pull do
      • 1) Putting all your eggs in one basket just ensures those eggs can get broken all at once. Wouldn't it suck for your digital camera AND MP3 player AND Game Boy AND PDA to be out of commission just because one device broke?

        2) The quality of features in an electronic device or software is inversely proportional to the number of features in the device or software. Phone? Works fine. Phone and camera? Well, battery life is lower, and the camera sucks. Phone, Camera, and MP3 player? Less room for pictures and M

  • technology that nobody asked for (Score:3, Insightful)

    by rtphokie ( 518490 ) on Friday November 12, 2004 @12:16AM (#10795336)
    this one tops the list. Just because it's possible doesn't mean it needs to be done.

  • One minute equals... (Score:3, Funny)

    by DoktorSeven ( 628331 ) on Friday November 12, 2004 @12:18AM (#10795344) Journal
    45 seconds of commercials, 5 seconds of the FOX logo ("You're watching FOX Fone!"), and 10 seconds of actual content.

    I'll pass, thanks.

  • So now... (Score:2, Funny)

    by Phidoux ( 705500 )
    ... I can talk and watch at the same time. I always knew that having an eye in my ear would come in handy one day.
  • This one is a quick market. Anyone who knows anything about market strategy will tell you that the first one in gets to set the price, product name, and features of the product category. It's valuable to the maker to be in there before the competitors.

  • Wow (Score:3, Insightful)

    by Yaa 101 ( 664725 ) on Friday November 12, 2004 @12:29AM (#10795388) Journal
    Neocon propaganda in cellphone format, isn't the world wonderfull?
  • This is a blatant plug, but a plug with a point...

    Video over mobile phone networks is actually pretty exciting, but just dumping video content onto 3G networks lacks vision and creativity.

    The idea is to make programming that takes advantage of the MOBILE part of the equation. Focusing on things you can ONLY do with a mobile video platform.

    Our first project is a mobile phone travel show. The killer idea is that the phone, knowing roughly where you are in a city, will stream a video to you on demand,

  • Fox Ringtone (Score:3, Funny)

    by wayward ( 770747 ) on Friday November 12, 2004 @01:18AM (#10795565)
    Hey, if I got a polyphonic cell phone, do you suppose I could get a ringtone with Bill O'Reilly talking about his sexual fantasies?

  • The "Wow, Cool!" factor is dead (Score:3, Informative)

    by nysus ( 162232 ) on Friday November 12, 2004 @01:31AM (#10795632)
    The market for consumer products that bank on the cool factor to sell goods and services is quickly shrinking. When every product is cool, nothing's cool anymore. I'm officially getting off the gizmo treadmill. Who wants to keep shelling out $300 every few months for some super-wham-o-dyne gadget that's going to be superseded by another super-super-wham-o-dyne gadget in two months?

    Maybe I'm just getting old. How do you younger kids feel? You bored by these things, too?
    • The key method here is to wait for the Right Gadget(TM) for what you really want to do. I waited until 3rd gen iPods came out to get one... it finally had enough space and a really good interface for a reasonable (IMHO) price. I don't foresee getting a new one for quite a while cause it just does exactly what I want it to do.

      If I was a jogger I would have picked up a flash based player with similar qualities.

      I still have my Ti Powerbook 500mhz... I paid $3400 for it but it did everything I wanted it to do
    • "Maybe I'm just getting old. How do you younger kids feel? You bored by these things, too? "

      I don't think it's indicative of the market, really. I think it may have more to do with growing maturity in your life. When you get older, work gets harder, and more serious issues pop up in your life, the desire for simplicity starts to settle in.

      You have to remember that "wow! cool!" has been around for decades. I'm not sure how you'd find them, but there are some old commercials from the 50's and 60's of n
  • Great! Now they can lie to me wherever I am.
  • Fox going to broadcast in Europe? Mmm, that will be a great succes :)
  • I hope they make these work on really tiny phones. Then you could shove it up your ass until it hits the roof of your mouth. That's an accurante depiction of what it's like to watch Fox News.

  • You know, all of you people who think that this is a bad idea are going to feel really dumb if it turns out to be the greatest invention in the 21st century.

    I mean, you don't know. That guy, last century, he thought he had mold, but really, he had penecillin, which is used to kill bad germs and save lives And now people are saying he's really great, just because he found mold. And mold is everywhere.

    Now, this phone tv is better than mold. So just imagine how important this could be.

    Also, this could be us
    • You know, all of you people who think that this is a bad idea are going to feel really dumb if it turns out to be the greatest invention in the 21st century.

      Many would say TV was one of the greatest inventions of the 20th Century, but I still think TV is a terrible idea. The social costs we pay for TV far outweigh the benefits. It is a useful tool (imaging, and the potential to put a theatre in any home), but like many such things it has been severely abused.

      Look at it this way: marijuana is popu
  • carry a jammer...
  • Why is Fox writing new content ("mopisodes???") when all anyone needs is Moe, Larry & Curly?

    Bugs Bunny & Yosemite Sam would be good, too.

    Sometimes the classics are the best.

    Chip H.

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