Web No Threat to TV....
Web no threat to TV, says UK expert
By Ben Fenton, Chief Media Correspondent
A leading UK media academic has warned broadcasters and national newspapers not to be fooled by “hype” about the internet.
Patrick Barwise, emeritus professor of management and marketing at the London Business School, defined as “Bollocks 2.0” claims about the threat to traditional media from innovations such as social networking and internet television.
He said human behaviour guaranteed the future of television, in spite of the downturn in advertising.“Television is not a market going into catastrophic decline,” Prof Barwise told an audience of broadcasters, regulators and analysts at LBS. Advertising was bad, but “it is not falling off a cliff”, he said.
This was in contrast to regional newspapers and classified advertising, where a genuine collapse was taking place, he added.
Television, however, was the medium for display advertising used for brand-building, which is “far more resilient”.
There was a danger of overreacting to the current state of the advertising market, which was “not a cause for headless chicken behaviour”, he said.
Prof Barwise criticised the “obsession” with the threat posed by the internet.
“People who should know better are talking about a digital revolution, about whether or not we will all be watching ‘linear television’ in five years’ time. They have signed up for what I call ‘Bollocks 2.0’.”
The term “Web 2.0” is commonly used to describe the second generation of internet applications that allow users to share information online.
Broadband was an inefficient way of distributing content, Prof Barwise said, while digital broadcasting on satellite, the airwaves or cable met the same needs at “much, much greater efficiency levels”.
Detailed research on the use of personal video recorders had reached surprising conclusions, he said. “There is next to no demand for on-demand. The argument is wildly out of proportion about how important this is for television.”
Copyright The Financial Times Limited 2008
4 months ago
A first...
L’UdeM est la première université canadienne à diffuser des nouvelles par vidéo
http://nouvelles.umontreal.ca/content/view/1475/131/
First Canadian university to webcast news
http://nouvelles.umontreal.ca/content/view/1474/206/
6 months agoPissed
Can somebody tell why we don’t have more of these in the CND market…criss!?!
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Tesla v1.5: ‘Really Phenomenal’ Torque, Better Range
Engineers at Tesla Motors have sorted out the revised drivetrain they’ll be dropping into the Roadster later this year, and aside from being more efficient and less complex, it provides a hell of a lot more torque.
J.B. Straubel, the company’s chief technology officer, says they’ve installed the improved motor, inverter and gearbox — a system dubbed Powertrain 1.5 — in a Roadster and started racking up miles to see how it works on the road.
“The higher torque is really phenomenal,” he writes in the company’s blog. “I have many hours behind the wheel of the 1.0 powertrain and this is simply much better. The motor torque is improved by a bit more than 30 percent beyond what was already great and the ¼ mile time for the car is now in the 12.9 second range.”
Tesla is still testing and refining Powertrain 1.5 but says it’s on track to introduce it in production models “around vehicle #41” later this year.
So what’s different about Powertrain 1.5?
The most obvious change is Tesla ditched a two-speed transmission “that had many durability, efficiency and cost challenges” in favor of a simpler, more efficient one-speed unit that weighs about 17 pounds less. It’s got a gear ratio 12 percent shorter than the two-speed box, bumping the car’s 0 to 60 time to 4 seconds. The one-speed trans also creates less drag on the motor, increasing efficiency and bumping the car’s range by about 10 miles.
Powertrain 1.5 features a power electronics module that supplies 33 percent more current to the motor. As Autoblog Green notes, pushing more current generates more heat, but rather than boost the engine’s cooling capacity — the easiest solution — it appears Tesla improved the transistors to reduce electrical resistance, and therefore heat.
Modifying the PEM requiring modifying the engine, which features redesigned terminals and lower resistance. It’s beefier, too, and provides 33 percent more torque at the thermal limit, Straubel writes.
Straubel says Tesla is aggressively testing Powertrain 1.5 on the dynameter and on the road. A Roadster with Powertrain 1.5 will go to Death Valley later this summer for thermal testing, and another will rack up 40,000 kilometers (about 25,000 miles) of low- and high-speed durability testing on a track.
“When all is said and done,” Straubel writes, “this evolution of our Powertrain system results in a vastly improved overall product for our customers. We have maintained the key performance targets while increasing efficiency and durability.”
Those customers driving Roadsters with the two-speed transmissions will have their cars retrofitted to Powertrain 1.5.
Lots more pics and technical details on the Tesla Motors blog.
Photo: Tesla Motors.
6 months ago