I’m frankly surprised by the lack of recent news about over-the-top video in the US.

While BBC iPlayer is increasingly available on multiple devices in the UK, though not yet in form of mobile network enabled iPhone/Android app, Hulu and its minor competitors appear essentially stuck in the PC world.

Yes, one could connect its computer to the TV screen. Of course it’s not the same thing. I wish I could just receive a feed like the one below onto a widget-enabled STB, press OK on the remote control and play the latest Heroes episode seamlessly…

The amazing aspect of technology-driven markets is how swiftly change happens.

In 1995 Joseph Bower and Clayton Christensen, two researchers at Harvard Business School, felt the need to invent a new term for defining the most radical of those markets’ innovations: disruptive technology.

Of course change isn’t loved by everyone. As Wikipedia states: “Disruptive technologies are particularly threatening to the leaders of an existing market, because they are competition coming from an unexpected direction.” The risk for incumbent companies is that of the proverbial boiling frog: they often can’t guess the right moment to switch to the new technology, until it’s too late.

Now, which is the market heading to the next disruptive change?

My bet is on TV, where some old-fashioned broadcasters seem very unlikely to keep their leadership over the next decade. Yes, of course they’re moving some content to the cloud and granting some sort of on-demand access to their customers. But real competition can reveal tough to deal with… especially when it comes from copyright owners, suddenly able to speak directly to their viewers.

While video-on-demand has a constant coverage for the continuous release of new projects, from Hulu and iPlayer to the growing number of VoD enabled over-the-top devices, the online music market has been perceived as quite steady during the last few years (with Apple’s iTunes Music Store maintaining a share of over 70%).

Nonetheless, I believe a couple of interesting alternatives have a good chance to gradually increase competition.

1. Napster Music Store

I’ve got a special bond with the Napster brand: it wasn’t only the first peer-to-peer service I bumped into years ago, but also the main topic of my graduation thesis. Everyone probably agrees that it changed forever the way we mean music…

A few months ago, Napster has been relaunched as a legal music store backed by Best Buy. I couldn’t resist: I had to check it out!

Well, for just $5 per month I’ve got not only five DRM-free legal downloads… but also unlimited listening of every song from the catalogue! It’s like merging a traditional store (say Amazon) into the concept of online radio services such as Last.fm or Pandora. Respect to those, Napster has much progress to do in terms of recommendation engine, but grants its users far deeper control: you can select songs or entire albums, put them in a playlist and just listen with no limits.

It’s easy to reckon that the “listening” part comes almost for free, since most songs cost $0.99 on traditional stores.

2. DoubleTwist

I believe part of Apple’s success in the digital music market comes from iTunes, which most iPod users wouldn’t ever replace (well, not even if they could). Of course iTunes works with its own Music Store only, is based on DRMs and doesn’t manage any devices but the iPods.

Well, now imagine a comparable software which relies on the DRM-free Amazon music store and allows synchronization with nearly every device.

Currently available for Macs only, this all-devices-welcome player (definition borrowed from a Gizmodo article containing also a short video) might be headed to a promising evolution.

Whoever has read “The Pillars of the Earth” or “World without End” by Ken Follett, contemporary literary masterpieces set in a rural medieval society, can imagine what it meant to live in a world where Catholic Church had both spiritual authority and temporal power.

As Rick Falkvinge points out, that was possible thanks to a substantial monopoly over information. Mr Falkvinge, founder and leader of the Swedish Pirate Party, reckons that power has always been consequence of an information advantage. Of course new technologies, such as printing press, threatened those advantages and were thus hardly fought… until the United Kingdom, on May 4th 1557, took a different approach and created a monopoly called copyright.

It’s interesting to find similar reactions across history with the subsequent big innovations: TV and radio have always been monopolies until relatively recent times. And even in wealthy countries such as Italy, member of the G8 but ranked only 65th in the 2008 Freedom of the Press chart, they’ve just turned into controlled systems with very poor competition.

Of course there’s a notable exception: everybody can be user of unlimited information and even editor of original content through the Internet. No revolution has ever had the potential of the world-wide-web. And the effects are already starting to become clear in the most advanced and free countries.

Yes, the surprising election of Mr Falkvinge to the European Parliament is a very good example, but not the greatest…

Reading advice: Yes We Did! An inside look at how social media built the Obama brand.

I’m not sure about the statistical reliability of this research, but I find its results fascinating nonetheless.

People who works in technology would be a better-than-average lover, because more focused on pleasing the partner and far less selfish. Great and distinctive features, folks, especially for men!

The explanation of this result might be easy to find, if you consider the supposedly methodical nature of tech-minded individuals. More naughty interpreters could think about the manual skills gained by hours of console playing…

Either way, even though I’m not a 100% geek but rather a marketing professional with a deep passion for technology, I must admit a certain sense of identification and amusement.

Summer time is around the corner. Gyms become suddenly crowded, while parks and streets are filled with bicycle riders and runners.

My girlfriend lately belongs to the latter category, also thanks to an amazing on-line platform which is definitely contributing to her commitment: Nikeplus.

Nikeplus allows to keep track of how many miles you run, through a smart (and unexpectedly cheap) iPod Nano accessory, then to upload those information to the cloud via iTunes. What makes Nikeplus unique is the compelling and attractive way it presents and manages your data, building a community of runners who challenge each other and share their passion for sport and healthy lifestyle.

My master swimming season is still in its topic period, which is even longer this year because of the European Championship in Spain. But I must confess a strong temptation to get my running shoes out of the closet, sooner or later. Maybe this time I wouldn’t miss the fascinating target of running a marathon, thanks to this new breed of training tools…

Do you remember the first video-enabled iPod? It was an amazing device, but loading a home-made or ripped video required you to follow very specific guidelines: H.264 format, resolution of 320×240 pixels, bitrate up to 768 Kbit/s, refresh rate of 30 fps…

I’m talking about three years ago only. And I clearly remember that I picked out ImTOO Mpeg Encoder as my preferred software for clips conversion. Yes, I know: it’s unacceptable for an average user to deal with this kind of geek stuff. And it wasn’t so convenient for me either.

Of course most of today’s devices, including mobile phones, are far more flexible in playing various formats and resolutions. But you’re still required to make at least some syncing. Meanwhile, a few on-line services promise to do even better: your favourite videos are brought into a cloud, ready to be delivered onto your devices in the most suitable format.

Reeplay.it belongs to the latter category. Just select a video from the Internet (through a bookmarklet or a small application) and you’ll be able to download or view it with many different devices: mobile phone, iPod, Wii, PlayStation… and of course personal computer, as a common podcast.

A social aspect couldn’t be missing. So you’re allowed to create and share playlists and single videos with your friends.

The service works pretty well with most of the on-line video portals, including YouTube and the aggregator Blinkx. Check it out!

Perhaps something new is developing underneath: this is the main feeling I brought away, back from the ipTV World Forum in London.

Of course the big players had large stands and released powerful features. But a back-to-the-basics mood spread out from many presentations. Moreover, maybe because of the current recession, much more interest than expected has developed around the Open IPTV association, whose aim is to develop end-to-end specifications for IPTV, based upon existing technologies and open standards, for either managed or unmanaged networks.

Let’s say it: most of the current IPTV deployments really fit the definition of Cable TV in Telco’s clothes. They support everything with huge investments, but still don’t know which business they really want to be in. Thus the adoption of standard technologies might be a winning strategy: not only for cost reduction, but even in order to deliver new services and get the market response in a very short time. Essentially a perpetual beta approach.

Would this drive us to eventually enjoy the Internet potential within a television box, like the oncoming IPTV technology has promised years ago?

Of course I don’t have this answer. I just believe that indirect competition is highlighting the urgency of a route change. I’m especially referring to those services which rely on the open Internet, delivering quality content through an outstanding experience: the multi-platform BBC iPlayer is the european best-practice by now, while devices such as Roku and TiVo make the US video-rental offers handier every day.

Cinema: what a big passion!

Once stricly linked to the physical theatre, today movies are distributed through dozens of media and devices, allowing many different use cases. Everything started in the 80s with a successful company named Blockbuster: couch, pop-corns and VHS cassettes have been the ingredients of a great concept.

Then DVDs, promptly decrypted by the norvegian student Jon Johansen, have represented the first sparkle of a massive revolution: digital support, unlimited copies with no quality loss…

Today broadcasters and ISPs deliver digital content onto our televisions in real time, new formats like mpeg4 and DivX have disclosed commercial opportunities and also set up a fertile ground for piracy, video content can be easily watched through the Internet Protocol with many different devices… while high definition and home-theatre systems turn our living rooms into an amazing environment.

At least the Hollywood Studios, perhaps adviced by the discographic disastrous experience, have exploited rather than fought this revolution. So Steve Jobs’ latest announcement is what we’ve been waiting for: besides songs, iTunes is going to sell thousands of movies. What’s next?

A few months ago I’ve been guest of the Telco TV Summit.

The aim of my speech, titled like this post and based on my experience with Bulldog Broadband in the UK, was showing how user-centered design can effectively lead an IPTV interface development, in order to bring some of the Internet potential into the television box.

The starting point is necessarily the Internet. A medium? A technology? Every definition would be reductive. Instead, let’s give a look at the sketch Tim Berners-Lee conceived the hypertext with. It’s displayed at the Computer History Museum in Mountain View and appears so ingenious in its (relative) simplicity.

Doesn’t it look somehow like Doc Brown’s flux capacitor chart, the one he draws in 1955 after clashing against the toilet? Unforgettable!   But let’s remain focused…

The Internet has changed our lives because it allows users to customize, interact, build relationships. Everybody is the main character in the world-wide-web, because can build up his personal way of collecting, managing and enjoying unlimited content and amazing tools.

On the other hand, television is the typical passive medium. In front of the small screen we’re all spectators, ads viewers, recipients of a programme schedule that somebody else has defined for all of us.

The great advantage of traditional TV? Being prompt, immediate, outrageously easy-to-use. The real challenge for IPTV? Delivering the unlimited Internet potential onto the TV screen, without losing that easiness. Interactivity would be eventually available for everyone!

Consider the basic customer, threatened by these computers that send information throughout the world. Then give him a remote control. He’ll suddenly feel confident, and will gradually get ready to discover new amazing possibilities, as long as you provide them through a great user-experience.

Very soon he’ll play a movie whenever he wants, check the weather forecasts, share photographs and thoughts… And he’ll build his own TV schedule, as easily as I manage my iGoogle personal page.