Im proud to say that HDNet Film’s first effort, Enron – The Smartest Guys in the Room expands around the country starting this friday, April 29th.

If you have missed the reviews, they have been amazing.

“Should be essential viewing.” John Anderson, NEWSDAY

“The picture it paints is scarier than anything offered by any of Hollywood’s recycled gore-fests.” James Berardinelli, REELVIEWS

“A thoroughly fascinating and horrifying documentary about the giant corporate house of cards that came crashing down on the heads of all the little people while the big guys cashed out for mega-millions, smirking all the way.” Jami Bernard, NEW YORK DAILY NEWS

“The Smartest Guys in the Room lays bare, in funny and shocking video clips, the culture of arrogance at Enron.” Owen Gleiberman, ENTERTAINMENT WEEKLY

“Enron: The Smartest Guys in the Room is not only a great cautionary tale, it’s a civics lesson that should be seen by every concerned citizen.” James Greenberg, HOLLYWOOD REPORTER

“Less corporate noir than capitalist disaster film.” J. Hoberman, VILLAGE VOICE

“By turns amazing, amusing and appalling.” Joe Leydon, VARIETY

“This cinematic scrutiny of runaway corporate greed reveals the nightmarish rapaciousness of those who engineered the fraud.” Claudia Puig, USA TODAY

“This is a brilliantly executed, brutally entertaining dissection of what one observer called the greatest corporate fraud in American history.” Richard Roeper, EBERT & ROEPER

“This sober, informative chronicle of the biggest business scandal of the decade is almost indecently entertaining.” A.O. Scott, NEW YORK TIMES

“The story is fascinating, infuriating and even laugh-out-loud funny at times.” Russell Scott Smith, NEW YORK POST

“Alex Gibney’s riveting documentary is a rape story, with the public trust as the victim.”
Peter Travers, ROLLING STONE

The buzz continues to build. The blogosphere has been talking it up as well. As is the case in the blogworld, they are even starting to create a little bit of controversy. In a Q^A session this week at the San Fran Film Festival, Alex Gibney the Director of the film said that CNBC claimed to have erased all of their footage involving Enron. It will be interesting to find out if everyone is on the same page there.

For those outside of Houston and NY, the movie opens comes to a theater near you starting April 29th. In Houston, it continues at the River Oaks and in NYC at the Sunshine and Lincoln Plaza.

April 29th… Please check it out and let me know what you think about it!

Finally, here is a note from Director Alex Gibney aboutthe movie:

Even though the story of Enron is a great human tragedy, I hope it makes you laugh.

The fact is that, from a distant perspective, the events are funny. An executive addicted to strippers, accountants making up the numbers, our most prestigious banks handing out deals to criminals that they would never consider giving to honest working people, a body-builder taking charge of California – the world’s 7th largest economy – because his political allies shut the lights off all over the state. There are skits – skits! – by Enron execs about the scams they pulled. And while the company is going down the tubes, the CEO stresses over fabric swatches for the G5 jet.

Yet, as the music makes clear, this is a black comedy, where every laugh has an undertow of moral outrage. As Tom Waits sings in the final song: “Who are the ones we kept in charge? Killers, thieves and lawyers. God’s away…God’s away…God’s away… on business!”

At the end of the day, I hope that watching the film makes you as angry as it made me when I was making it. This is the cinema v?t?ersion of the Titanic: a few people sailed off in gilt-edged lifeboats while everyone else drowned. (Again, Tom Waits – and his co-writer Kathleen Brennan: “There’s a leak, there’s a leak in the boiler room…”) But unlike the Titanic, the fault for Enron’s collapse is not limited to a few executives. As the film shows, our major investment banks, our accounting firms, our lawyers – indeed the very government that is supposed to protect us – all aided and abetted Enron in doing what it did.

Enron’s slogan on its surrealistic ads was “Ask Why.” It was supposed to suggest that Enron was an innovative company because it questioned conventional wisdom. Looking back, I think “ask why” was one of those clues that master criminals leave for detectives. “Ask why,” Enron’s earnings were so good when so little cash was coming in the door. But now, way beyond that, we should all “ask why” such a thing could have happened.

I hope you enjoy the film. I hope you laugh and I hope it makes you mad as hell.

Alex Gibney

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I have a vested interested in seeing HDTV take off.Every new HDTV set sold is another reason for someone to
subscribe to HDNet and HDNet Movies.But sales of HDTVs don’t really need much
help. They are flying off the shelves. The CEA says that digital TVs account for
more than 25 pct of TVs sold this year and that percentage is
growing.
Some are even predicting that digital will outsell analog in 2005!As prices decline further and
further, analog TVs will continue to disappear from retail shelves and HDTV sales will continue to boom. So on
this end I’m covered.

I also have a vested interested in seeing the adoption of HDTV not happening too quickly. The fact that it has
taken all these years to get this far is a beautiful thing. The conventional wisdom among cable networks is that the
market of HDTV consumers is still too small for them to cost justify investing in new content, equipment and
distribution, which for the biggest network conglomerates will reach hundreds of millions of dollars in conversion
costs, incremental equipment and distribution costs. The bigger the perceived cost for them, the slower they
move,the less the competition for HDNet and HDNet Movies.

This headstart has allowed, and will continue to allow us to release groundbreaking programs and events like the
day and date premiere of Enron The Smartest Guys in the Room on HDNet
Movies and in theaters. (we are ramping up to do this quarterly, then monthly!)

To take chances like broadcasting live from the Iraq Elections, The Vatican and The Middle East. To be way
ahead of the curve with our sports, news and entertainment programming. The more
time, the further ahead we will be when the transition finally takes place.

However, I also have a vested interest as an American citizen to see the analog spectrum occupied by regular TV
returned to the government so that it may be resold. Heck, our budge deficit needs every penny it can get, and
billions from an analog spectrum sale can’t hurt.

The spectrum can also be used for far better applications than regular analog TV. From military to high speed data
applications, it won’t take much to accomplish more. Plus, its not like free over the air TV is going away, it’s just
being replaced by over the air free digital TV signals.

The argument against replaceing the over the air analog TV signal with an over the air, free digital signal,
to return the spectrum has been two fold.

First, there are 10s of millions of TV sets that still get TV from over the air analog signals. Most are 2nd, 3rd,
4th sets in homes. In some places however, like here in Dallas, the percentage of homes that receive their primary TV
signal over the air in analog, can be as high as 40 pct. The question is, how are these people made happy when their
over the air analog signal is turned off and they are forced to get some form of equipment that enables their TVs to
receive an over the air digital signal. After all, in the USA, TV is as much a right as the First Amendment.

Which leads to the 2nd argument against.

Politicians want to be re-elected. If mom and dad, or grandma and grandpa can’t get their TV, or are confused
about how the whole thing will work, then they will be up in arms and we will see more political activism against
candidates than we have seen since the 1960s…

So of course politicians are afraid of the entire issue with just a few exceptions.
Rep Barton of Texas has attempted to take
the lead on forcing this issue forward. Rep Barton wants to set a date of Dec 31st 2006 as the cutoff date.
And he is right. That should be the date.

That cut off date provides plenty of time for everything that is going to happen to enable the transition to
happen. From reading and hearing all the debate, and I won’t rehash all the issues here, I think there are several
points that will ease the transition that have not been discussed.

Here they are:

1. The minute a date is set, everyone and anyone who can make money selling their product and service to the
estimated 20 pct of the American population who gets their analog TV over the air is going to start selling like it
was their last chance.

a. There will be a price war between cable, satellite and telco video providers to reach those 20mm
homes. I would expect that we will see deals like “$1 to get your entire home ready for the digital
conversion”. Instead of a free DVR, they will bundle in STBs for everyhome in the house.No video provider
wants to lose out on the chance to convert those 20mm to customers.

b. The explosion in subs for all the video providers will also provide for an explosion in stock prices for all
of them. Sure their customer acquisition costs will go up, but they will also see an explosion in digital subs. The
stock market will ignore the costs as 1 time and extrapolate the digital opportunities per new sub andstock
prices will rocket up.

c. There will also be a price war among TV manufacturers. This will be a once in a lifetime opportunity for them
to blow product out the door. They won’t miss out on the chance. Like the video providers, they will advertise
unbelieveable pricing specials and instead of offering promotion dollars for things like sound systems and
recliners that we often see at retail, we can expect to see trade in programs for analog sets and even bundling of
analog to digital convertors.

If there is a risk to the 12/31/06 date, its that manufacturers can’t ramp up fast enough to handle the demand
and to gain volume efficiencies on sets. If they do have enough time, look for this to be the push that sends
Plasma and LCD sets far below 1k dollars for a 42″HDTV set.

d. From a government perspective, there won’t be near the need for subsidies that most fear. The subsidies will
come from the video and TV providers in the form of customer acquisition investments in set top boxes and
promotional bundles of analog to digitial convertors.

e. The biggest winner in the transition will be anyone who sells advertising. The amount of money spent by
interested parties to educate, confuse, market, brand and gain customers could dwarf what is spent on a
Presidential election because the stakes are higher. There arent many situations where 20mm new customers are
pushed to buy something by a deadline.

If the big media companies want to see their stocks go up in 2006, seeing that this bill passes is the one way
to do it.

2. Finally, the last big gain from the analog to digital transition will be the bandwidth freed up on
cable networks. Once MSOs don’t have to providebandwidth for analog cable tv networks at 38mbs each, that
bandwidth can be freed up and used for other services, from HDTV to VOD to High Speed data. It could be the impetus
for download speeds to finally get far higher than where they are now.

It’s time for the analog to digital transition. Let’s support Rep Barton in his plans. We all stand to
gain.

ShareThis

I have a vested interested in seeing HDTV take off.Every new HDTV set sold is another reason for someone to
subscribe to HDNet and HDNet Movies.But sales of HDTVs don’t really need much
help. They are flying off the shelves. The CEA says that digital TVs account for
more than 25 pct of TVs sold this year and that percentage is
growing.
Some are even predicting that digital will outsell analog in 2005!As prices decline further and
further, analog TVs will continue to disappear from retail shelves and HDTV sales will continue to boom. So on
this end I’m covered.

I also have a vested interested in seeing the adoption of HDTV not happening too quickly. The fact that it has
taken all these years to get this far is a beautiful thing. The conventional wisdom among cable networks is that the
market of HDTV consumers is still too small for them to cost justify investing in new content, equipment and
distribution, which for the biggest network conglomerates will reach hundreds of millions of dollars in conversion
costs, incremental equipment and distribution costs. The bigger the perceived cost for them, the slower they
move,the less the competition for HDNet and HDNet Movies.

This headstart has allowed, and will continue to allow us to release groundbreaking programs and events like the
day and date premiere of Enron The Smartest Guys in the Room on HDNet
Movies and in theaters. (we are ramping up to do this quarterly, then monthly!)

To take chances like broadcasting live from the Iraq Elections, The Vatican and The Middle East. To be way
ahead of the curve with our sports, news and entertainment programming. The more
time, the further ahead we will be when the transition finally takes place.

However, I also have a vested interest as an American citizen to see the analog spectrum occupied by regular TV
returned to the government so that it may be resold. Heck, our budge deficit needs every penny it can get, and
billions from an analog spectrum sale can’t hurt.

The spectrum can also be used for far better applications than regular analog TV. From military to high speed data
applications, it won’t take much to accomplish more. Plus, its not like free over the air TV is going away, it’s just
being replaced by over the air free digital TV signals.

The argument against replaceing the over the air analog TV signal with an over the air, free digital signal,
to return the spectrum has been two fold.

First, there are 10s of millions of TV sets that still get TV from over the air analog signals. Most are 2nd, 3rd,
4th sets in homes. In some places however, like here in Dallas, the percentage of homes that receive their primary TV
signal over the air in analog, can be as high as 40 pct. The question is, how are these people made happy when their
over the air analog signal is turned off and they are forced to get some form of equipment that enables their TVs to
receive an over the air digital signal. After all, in the USA, TV is as much a right as the First Amendment.

Which leads to the 2nd argument against.

Politicians want to be re-elected. If mom and dad, or grandma and grandpa can’t get their TV, or are confused
about how the whole thing will work, then they will be up in arms and we will see more political activism against
candidates than we have seen since the 1960s…

So of course politicians are afraid of the entire issue with just a few exceptions.
Rep Barton of Texas has attempted to take
the lead on forcing this issue forward. Rep Barton wants to set a date of Dec 31st 2006 as the cutoff date.
And he is right. That should be the date.

That cut off date provides plenty of time for everything that is going to happen to enable the transition to
happen. From reading and hearing all the debate, and I won’t rehash all the issues here, I think there are several
points that will ease the transition that have not been discussed.

Here they are:

1. The minute a date is set, everyone and anyone who can make money selling their product and service to the
estimated 20 pct of the American population who gets their analog TV over the air is going to start selling like it
was their last chance.

a. There will be a price war between cable, satellite and telco video providers to reach those 20mm
homes. I would expect that we will see deals like “$1 to get your entire home ready for the digital
conversion”. Instead of a free DVR, they will bundle in STBs for everyhome in the house.No video provider
wants to lose out on the chance to convert those 20mm to customers.

b. The explosion in subs for all the video providers will also provide for an explosion in stock prices for all
of them. Sure their customer acquisition costs will go up, but they will also see an explosion in digital subs. The
stock market will ignore the costs as 1 time and extrapolate the digital opportunities per new sub andstock
prices will rocket up.

c. There will also be a price war among TV manufacturers. This will be a once in a lifetime opportunity for them
to blow product out the door. They won’t miss out on the chance. Like the video providers, they will advertise
unbelieveable pricing specials and instead of offering promotion dollars for things like sound systems and
recliners that we often see at retail, we can expect to see trade in programs for analog sets and even bundling of
analog to digital convertors.

If there is a risk to the 12/31/06 date, its that manufacturers can’t ramp up fast enough to handle the demand
and to gain volume efficiencies on sets. If they do have enough time, look for this to be the push that sends
Plasma and LCD sets far below 1k dollars for a 42″HDTV set.

d. From a government perspective, there won’t be near the need for subsidies that most fear. The subsidies will
come from the video and TV providers in the form of customer acquisition investments in set top boxes and
promotional bundles of analog to digitial convertors.

e. The biggest winner in the transition will be anyone who sells advertising. The amount of money spent by
interested parties to educate, confuse, market, brand and gain customers could dwarf what is spent on a
Presidential election because the stakes are higher. There arent many situations where 20mm new customers are
pushed to buy something by a deadline.

If the big media companies want to see their stocks go up in 2006, seeing that this bill passes is the one way
to do it.

2. Finally, the last big gain from the analog to digital transition will be the bandwidth freed up on
cable networks. Once MSOs don’t have to providebandwidth for analog cable tv networks at 38mbs each, that
bandwidth can be freed up and used for other services, from HDTV to VOD to High Speed data. It could be the impetus
for download speeds to finally get far higher than where they are now.

It’s time for the analog to digital transition. Let’s support Rep Barton in his plans. We all stand to
gain.

ShareThis

I have a vested interested in seeing HDTV take off.Every new HDTV set sold is another reason for someone to
subscribe to HDNet and HDNet Movies.But sales of HDTVs don’t really need much
help. They are flying off the shelves. The CEA says that digital TVs account for
more than 25 pct of TVs sold this year and that percentage is
growing.
Some are even predicting that digital will outsell analog in 2005!As prices decline further and
further, analog TVs will continue to disappear from retail shelves and HDTV sales will continue to boom. So on
this end I’m covered.

I also have a vested interested in seeing the adoption of HDTV not happening too quickly. The fact that it has
taken all these years to get this far is a beautiful thing. The conventional wisdom among cable networks is that the
market of HDTV consumers is still too small for them to cost justify investing in new content, equipment and
distribution, which for the biggest network conglomerates will reach hundreds of millions of dollars in conversion
costs, incremental equipment and distribution costs. The bigger the perceived cost for them, the slower they
move,the less the competition for HDNet and HDNet Movies.

This headstart has allowed, and will continue to allow us to release groundbreaking programs and events like the
day and date premiere of Enron The Smartest Guys in the Room on HDNet
Movies and in theaters. (we are ramping up to do this quarterly, then monthly!)

To take chances like broadcasting live from the Iraq Elections, The Vatican and The Middle East. To be way
ahead of the curve with our sports, news and entertainment programming. The more
time, the further ahead we will be when the transition finally takes place.

However, I also have a vested interest as an American citizen to see the analog spectrum occupied by regular TV
returned to the government so that it may be resold. Heck, our budge deficit needs every penny it can get, and
billions from an analog spectrum sale can’t hurt.

The spectrum can also be used for far better applications than regular analog TV. From military to high speed data
applications, it won’t take much to accomplish more. Plus, its not like free over the air TV is going away, it’s just
being replaced by over the air free digital TV signals.

The argument against replaceing the over the air analog TV signal with an over the air, free digital signal,
to return the spectrum has been two fold.

First, there are 10s of millions of TV sets that still get TV from over the air analog signals. Most are 2nd, 3rd,
4th sets in homes. In some places however, like here in Dallas, the percentage of homes that receive their primary TV
signal over the air in analog, can be as high as 40 pct. The question is, how are these people made happy when their
over the air analog signal is turned off and they are forced to get some form of equipment that enables their TVs to
receive an over the air digital signal. After all, in the USA, TV is as much a right as the First Amendment.

Which leads to the 2nd argument against.

Politicians want to be re-elected. If mom and dad, or grandma and grandpa can’t get their TV, or are confused
about how the whole thing will work, then they will be up in arms and we will see more political activism against
candidates than we have seen since the 1960s…

So of course politicians are afraid of the entire issue with just a few exceptions.
Rep Barton of Texas has attempted to take
the lead on forcing this issue forward. Rep Barton wants to set a date of Dec 31st 2006 as the cutoff date.
And he is right. That should be the date.

That cut off date provides plenty of time for everything that is going to happen to enable the transition to
happen. From reading and hearing all the debate, and I won’t rehash all the issues here, I think there are several
points that will ease the transition that have not been discussed.

Here they are:

1. The minute a date is set, everyone and anyone who can make money selling their product and service to the
estimated 20 pct of the American population who gets their analog TV over the air is going to start selling like it
was their last chance.

a. There will be a price war between cable, satellite and telco video providers to reach those 20mm
homes. I would expect that we will see deals like “$1 to get your entire home ready for the digital
conversion”. Instead of a free DVR, they will bundle in STBs for everyhome in the house.No video provider
wants to lose out on the chance to convert those 20mm to customers.

b. The explosion in subs for all the video providers will also provide for an explosion in stock prices for all
of them. Sure their customer acquisition costs will go up, but they will also see an explosion in digital subs. The
stock market will ignore the costs as 1 time and extrapolate the digital opportunities per new sub andstock
prices will rocket up.

c. There will also be a price war among TV manufacturers. This will be a once in a lifetime opportunity for them
to blow product out the door. They won’t miss out on the chance. Like the video providers, they will advertise
unbelieveable pricing specials and instead of offering promotion dollars for things like sound systems and
recliners that we often see at retail, we can expect to see trade in programs for analog sets and even bundling of
analog to digital convertors.

If there is a risk to the 12/31/06 date, its that manufacturers can’t ramp up fast enough to handle the demand
and to gain volume efficiencies on sets. If they do have enough time, look for this to be the push that sends
Plasma and LCD sets far below 1k dollars for a 42″HDTV set.

d. From a government perspective, there won’t be near the need for subsidies that most fear. The subsidies will
come from the video and TV providers in the form of customer acquisition investments in set top boxes and
promotional bundles of analog to digitial convertors.

e. The biggest winner in the transition will be anyone who sells advertising. The amount of money spent by
interested parties to educate, confuse, market, brand and gain customers could dwarf what is spent on a
Presidential election because the stakes are higher. There arent many situations where 20mm new customers are
pushed to buy something by a deadline.

If the big media companies want to see their stocks go up in 2006, seeing that this bill passes is the one way
to do it.

2. Finally, the last big gain from the analog to digital transition will be the bandwidth freed up on
cable networks. Once MSOs don’t have to providebandwidth for analog cable tv networks at 38mbs each, that
bandwidth can be freed up and used for other services, from HDTV to VOD to High Speed data. It could be the impetus
for download speeds to finally get far higher than where they are now.

It’s time for the analog to digital transition. Let’s support Rep Barton in his plans. We all stand to
gain.

ShareThis

I’ve had a blast watching all the commentaries from the “Naked Shorts are the end of the world” cult. Bob ‘O Brien and his buddies have done an admirable job of bringing attention to a problem that doesn’t exist by continually shouting the same slogans over and over again. Loud enough that I, along with others, opened our windows to see what the racket was.

As I have written in previous blog entries, the racket was about a whole lot of nothing. Well, apparently, the SEC heard the racket as well. This past week the SEC issued an FAQ about Reg Sho, Short Sales and Fails to Deliver.

It does a good job of explaining what Reg Sho is and isn’t, how short sales and fail to delivers are handled, and most interesting to me, and previously unbeknowst to me, lets us all know that Long Sales that are not delivered also qualify for the list.

How could that work? Let’s say you are a long in Overstock.com and you decide that you don’t want to own the stock anymore. You give your broker a sell order. It’s quite possible, and even likely that there are already short sellers who have borrowed that stock and shorted it. As a result, your broker doesn’t currently have a locate on shares of stock to sell. If enough people are selling Overstock.com shares, it could create a situation where the long sales cause Overstock.com to appear on the Reg Sho list.

This is completely the opposite of what the Naked Short cult would have you believe.

Hopefully this will shut them all of up.

And remember, rule of thumb #1 If the CEO of a company that you own stockofscreams about short sellers hurting the price of the stock. Sell the stock. Fast.

And give serious consideration to shorting the stock.

ShareThis

Back in the day, it was all about the desktop PC. Starting with the Altair in the 70s and accelerating with the IBM PC in 1981, the desktop PC was the focus of personal computing innovation.

Used to be all the good stuff started as an add on for the PC and found its way on to the motherboard. It was an all too predictable obsolesence curve. Remember the AST 6 Pack, Hercules Graphics Cards, 3com Network Cards, US Robotics Modems? When you bought a PC, you used to have to buy all these cards to make it get where you wanted it to go. How many slots the PC had was actually an issue because any power or corporate user expected to add features via cards. There was even a time when it seemed like a good idea to try to upgrade the CPU.

All those features migrated from seperate cards down to the motherboard. Hercules Graphics. Gone. AST. Gone. There is a long list of casualties over the years of companies who made good money for a short period of time selling products that soon would become part of the PC Motherboard.

The PC Desktop used to be a happening place. It was fun to read PC Week, PC Mag, Computer Reseller News, Infoworld and other publications that would speculate about the latest and greatest products coming to a PC near you.

Not any more. Could the PC desktop be any more boring these days? Could it be any more emblematic of a mature product?

Sure, HP, Dell, IBM, Gateway are trying to liven it up. The hard drives are bigger and faster. THere is more memory. The graphics cards can do more.The industry tried to juice the PC by coming up with afaster, better express slot on the motherboard, but next to nobody is even using it!

About the only thing even resembling anything fun is coming from Modders. Typically gamers who are putting flames on funky case designs and bumping processor speeds.The PC desktop has gotten to the point where kids turbocharge the old family PCrather than throw it away like kids used to turbocharge the old car in the garage.

The desktop is boring.

All the fun is happening with portable devices. Phones, Ipods, gaming consoles, PDAs, digital cameras, even hard drives and flash drives. All the good stuff is coming in small packages.

Remember the frustration of shopping fora PC in the 90s. Every couple months the PC would have something new and cool in it, and the price would drop. It was tough to know what to buy and whether you should do it now or wait.

That’s exactly what is happening in the portable.mobile device market. My Ipod, My Sidekick, my hard drives,my PSP, my Xboxeven my laptop all have overlapping features. Each is getting closer to each other in feature set every day.

Which means that the war for my pocket is on. Which is going to allow me to only fill one pocket rather than the 2, or 1 plus beltclip that I’m filling now.

It’s a fun time for portable.mobile devices. It’s the 80s and 90s for desktops all over again. Every timeI go into CompUSA or Best Buy to see what new stuff is on the shelves that I can play with, every phone has a new feature. Every hard drive is smaller, cheaper, faster. Every PDA has new features and software.

The implications of this transitionare huge. Particularly for the retail world. Right now most new technology is sold in big stores. Lots of room for monitors. Lots of room for desktops. But those are the stagnant products.

All the good stuff is small. All the traffic generators are small. Which means that we could see big changes in how retail stores are merchandised and in the size of future retail stores.

It won’t take much square footage to showevery possible cellphone, PDA, console, portable hard drive and attachable device. About the only”big” product that will need to be there are HDTVs.

Better yet, all of those devices, including the HDTVs are purely digital and consume and store or playback digital content. For under 20k dollars in storage (and falling in price every day),it’s feasible to store EVERY digital product and offer it for sale.

Even more interesting is the fact that we are used to buying service agreements with these devices. Our phones, our PDAs, we want phone service and more and more often, broadband service with it as well. We don’t buy them, we subscribe to them.

That can be a problem in a world where new features are appearing every 3 to 6 months, but we can’t trade out our devices for 12 to 24 months. Service Contracts will have to be more flexible, or they can impact the success of the very products and services they are trying to sell

We are enteringa golden age of features in portable devices that will far exceed the fun we had with desktop PCs. The quick rate of change in these products and how they are sold, will completelty alter both how the products are sold, and how we expect to buy them.

Finally, if you are expecting new and exciting features from your PC Desktop…forgettaboutit!

ShareThis

Ok, this is a shameless plug, I will admit it. If such things turn you off, read no further.

If however, you are interested in what is happening in the blogosphere, then read on.

At IceRocket.com, we have just completely rewritten and reindexed our blog searching ability so that we now reach more than 10mm blogs. That right, with every portal nowwith their own blog hosting offering, we have passed the 10mm mark.

If you have an interest in what the Bloggers of the World are saying about you, your team, your family, your favorite celeb, breaking news or any topic that comes mind, we are easily the best way to find out.

Not only can you easily search for key news topics like “The Pope’s Funeral” to find out who is there, what they are seeing and saying…or get the latest news on the “MGM vs Grokster Case“, you can also celeb hunt and or even find out what people are saying about your fave TV show, your soon to be favorite movie Enron – The Smartest Guys in the Room (premiering April 22nd) or about you!

In addition to covering every inch of the blogosphere, if you have a search you use repeatedly and want to keep up to date, we allow you to subscribe to the search and add it to My Yahoo or your favorite RSS reader.

I use this to keep up with stocks – bloggers often have better information than stock analysts. I use it to find out what people are saying about me, the Mavs and my other businesses, and to keep up with the latest technology from tech bloggers.

Check it out and let me know what you think. We continue to work hard to make it a great resource that everyone can use. And while you are at it, check out our websearch (with RSS feeds as well), and our image search (whichI think blows google’s away).

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So I’m on the Mavs latest roadtrip. I’m walking through a mall with my Ipod cranking away. I had already decided that
I wanted to pick up the soundtrack to KillBill to get the Woohoo song from the 5678s. ThenI realized, I didnt
have a way to deal with a CD.

My laptop I carry doesn’t need a dvdor cd player becauseI carry everything important on an external
hard drive that I just connect to my desktop or laptop. It has movies, tv shows and music, along with my business
files and applications I need. MeansI can travel very, very light, and if my laptop ever busts,I
justconnect my 160gb drive toa computer atthe hotel and I’m set.

So here I was, wanting to buy music to listen to and workout to that day , but I couldn’t.

I realize that I could have gone to Itunes and just gotten that 1 song, but it doesn’t sit right with me to be
limited on how and where I can use music I download. I realize I could go online and download the song for free, but
I won’t do that. That’s stealing. It’s wrong.

That’s not to say I won’t ever download for free. IfI had already owned the CD and just wanted it to play
and it was a matter of availability, I definitely would have downloaded it for free. I will also download music to
sample it, but I won’t keep it. I will buy the CD or erase the song.

I still like to buy CDs. Or at least I did up until today. I liked the idea of taking a chance and seeing if there
is more music I like. I liked having the disc, soI always have a copy , in case I have to clean up a hard drive
to make room for more stuff, or to convert to a new file format.

Then it occured to me, that I haven’t used my CD Player, portable or at home, in a long, long time. That I rarely,
if ever see anyone walking around with a portable CD player anymore. They have all been replaced by MP3 players. If
everyone is switching to MP3 players, whether they are Ipods, in phones, in PDAs, in cars, whatever, then that means
that everyone is going to have to go through a multistep process in order to get the music from where or how they buy
it, to the place they want it.

That’s not good for the people selling music. Particularly retail stores. Think about it. Apple has done such a
great job of selling us on why we should store our musically digitally, thatevery one is either doing it, or on
their way to doing it. Which means that 90 pct or more of music being sold is currently being soldon a physical
format that the segment of the music buying public that spends the most amount of money on music doesn’t want. They
are being sold CDs. They want to listen to their music from hard drives or flash drives. That’s a problem.

That got me thinking about how music is being sold, and how it might be sold in the future.

MP3 players are changing peoples listening habits. We don’t carry folders filled with CDs anymore. We carry our
library in our MP3 players. We don’t listen to CDs. We listen to playlists that we adjust all the time. We don’t burn
CDs anymore, it’s too time consuming. We copy all our music to our MP3 players so it’s all available at our
fingertips.

All of our music in a single device. Available to us wherever we are, for whenever we want it. Music how we want
it, when we want it. Easy and breezy. That’s how we want to consume music.

That’s not how we are being sold music.

To buy music these days, I have to make all kinds of choices. If I want to buy downloads from the net, it’s like
trying to figure out which mortgate to take out on a house. Now because of the cost, but because of all the rules and
regulations. Do I want to limit myself to 5 computers. DoI want to always keep my subscription live. Do I want
to store the music in a proprietary format that only a couple devices can use. Those are all tough decisions
to make when the only thing I know with certainty is that the device I’m using as an MP3 player today, is NOT going
to be the device I’m going to be using 18 months from now. There will be players that have more features,
orI willconsolidate multipleproducts into asingle device. I maybe using my phone, my
PSPor PDA or something other device for my music.

Which brings me back to CDs. At least until the music industry goes to DVD Audio or copy protected CDs, I know
that with the CD, I have control over my music. I can make my own personal copies (which I realize was illegal to do,
until the RIAA lawyer told the Supreme Court last week it was all Ok with the RIAA now). I can put them in apple
format for my IPod, Sony format for my new digital walkman or PSP, MicroSoft format for my PC, or whatever else comes
along.

That’s the only good reason to own a CD. To deal with the hassles that you know will come from having to
deal with all the different formats that MP3 players will support in coming years.

That’s not a good sign for the music business or the current retail CD business.

It is a great opportunity for someone to start selling music to consumers, where they want it, how they want
it.

There is absolutely no reason I shouldn’t have been able to buy the song or CD I wanted from the FYE record store
I was standing in side of , IPod in hand, ready to buy. If only I could just connect the thing and download the
songs.

For less than 10k dollars, it would be EASY to put together a multi-terrabyte hard drive based multi-user kiosk
that pretty much holds every song ever published. A screen to enter credit card information, swipe a debit card,
enter a member number or call for assistance to handle a cash transaction, a couple USB ports, andwireless
connection support to transfer the music, and you are in business. Check the music I want. From kiosk hard drive to
my MP3 player at speeds that could easily do 400mbs. That beats the hell out of 250k if I’m lucky real throughput at
home. It will be like going to the store to get digital prints from the camera is. Self Service, fast and easy

Loss leaders like Walmart and Best Buy can cut their music square footage by 90 pct and sell more music at lower
prices. Their inventory carrying costs will go to zero. If someone wants the CD, they can go home and burn it after
docking their MP3 player to their PC. Believe or not, the labels will make more money this way because they will make
these big boys committ to minimum guarantees at levels they are at now, and all that money after the artist cut, will
go to the bottomline.

Everything about the economics makes absolutely perfect sense for the music labels, the retailer and the
customer.

The only question is who will be the first label tocrack and offer this and how soon will it be. Of course
the cynics will say that this won’t ever happen, but I’m not buying it. It’s too much cash up front for the labels to
say no to. It also makes too much business sense.

When it happens, the music industry will EXPLODE and sales and profits will go through the
roof.

Why? Because stores can be smaller, physical inventories minimal to non-existent, and an entire segment of middle
infrastructure on both the label and retailer side for ordering, delivering, warehousing, duplicating, returning, and
forecasting of product can be eliminated.

Most importantly, that money can be spent to develop, market and promote music so that more and more people can
experience it, and also, just in case hell freezes over, be used to lower the price of music to consumers

Once that first label, or the first organized group of indies goes purely digital at retail, then the countdown
for the extinction of the CD begins. T-minus 5 years from that first day, and your CDs will be sitting right next to
the LPs your dad and mom collected when they were kids.

Until then, if Im a band selling on my own, I’m carrying a laptop to every show, and charging 5 bucks to drop a
show on an IPod. Call it concertpodding.

If I’m an indie record store, I’m making sure that all music from the labels you support is available for direct
to player. I’m offering every song as Ipod or MP3 player ready to anyone who walks in the door with their Ipod and
wants to leave listening to the music.

It’s money in the bank.

m

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