[LINK] Proprietary Clouds as Lock-In Mechanisms

[Roger Clarke]

[Some pithy paras. from the Consumer Electronics event]

Then there's cloud, a word so widely used and abused at CES that I'm 
starting to think its use should be restricted to talk about the 
weather. Cloud was to CES 2012 what untenable tablets were to last 
year's show. Panasonic seems to have decided everything from 
televisions to business phones to point-of-sale systems to digital 
signage needs to be wired into their proprietary cloud somehow 
(mostly to keep Samsung from stealing their customers). Cameras, 
scanners, routers, 3D printers, network-attached storage-all of them 
had cloud tie-ins. There was even Feedair, a little personal 
scrolling digital sign shaped like a cartoon balloon that ties into a 
cloud alert aggregator which is somehow supposed to be less intrusive 
than a smartphone push message or an on-screen alert.

And not only does everything have to have a cloud connection, but 
everyone has to have their own privately branded cloud, apparently. 
In an attempt to make the Internet compelling to consumers, it seems 
the industry wants to turn it into more walled gardens in the 
process-essentially guaranteeing that no one will ever use those 
features. Panasonic has a cloud game developer program, which I'm 
sure will get all sorts of traction from unemployed webOS developers.

As my MacBook Air's iCloud sync brought my connection to the press 
room WiFi to its knees for the fifth time, I couldn't help think what 
all this cloud debris was going to do to the Internet-or, for that 
matter, to the corporate networks that all these smartphones, 
cloud-connected ultrabooks, and other gadgets would be inflicted upon.

________________________________


Big Content: the frenemy of consumer electronics makers
By Sean Gallagher
13 January 2012
ArsTechnica
http://arstechnica.com/business/news/2012/01/content-and-cloud-abuse-at-ces.ars

A trip to CES is a combination of candy store window shopping and a 
trip to some nightmarish, dystopian future with 
thirteen-dollar-an-hour WiFi. Beneath all of the shiny gadgets, 
desperate marketing pitches, bizarre keynotes and sleep deprivation, 
there were a number of themes emerging at CES as the manufacturers of 
all these shiny toys tried to latch onto something to pull themselves 
out of the doldrums that hung over the last year. One was the lengths 
device-makers will go to for content; another was the anointment of 
"cloud" as a critical feature check-box.

For two industries that are so dependent on each other, the 
relationship between the gadget industry and content creators is an 
awfully strained one, bordering on domestic violence. On my last day 
at CES, I spoke briefly with CEA President Gary Shapiro and listened 
to his invective about how the content industry was trying to kill 
the Internet. The tension between the content and consumer technology 
communities has been around for decades-since the creation of the 
cassette tape, at least-and it doesn't seem to be getting any more 
amicable.

Which is ironic, because the tech business has never sucked up to Big 
Content quite as much as it seemed to be this year at CES. After all, 
it's content that makes people use all the gear that was being 
peddled at CES, whether it be software or video or music or text. And 
some of the companies at CES were showing the level of desperation 
they had reached in trying to get exclusive content to help power 
their shiny Internet-connected toys.
Perhaps the most obvious instance of wretchedness came from 
Panasonic, which announced a new "social TV" service in partnership 
withŠMySpace. There are other ways to get Justin Timberlake to show 
up at your press event, Panasonic.

Samsung is so desperate to get content to sell more 3D televisions 
that it is essentially paying NBC to make 3D versions of shows that 
have gone off the air, including Battlestar Galactica. And Microsoft 
CEO Steve Ballmer's talk about Xbox during his keynote was dominated 
by announcements of content deals-some old, like those with Comcast 
and Verizon, and some new, like those with Rupert Murdoch's News 
Corp. and Fox.

So can't they all just get along, and leave the poor Internet out of 
this? Think of the children.

Then there's cloud, a word so widely used and abused at CES that I'm 
starting to think its use should be restricted to talk about the 
weather. Cloud was to CES 2012 what untenable tablets were to last 
year's show. Panasonic seems to have decided everything from 
televisions to business phones to point-of-sale systems to digital 
signage needs to be wired into their proprietary cloud somehow 
(mostly to keep Samsung from stealing their customers). Cameras, 
scanners, routers, 3D printers, network-attached storage-all of them 
had cloud tie-ins. There was even Feedair, a little personal 
scrolling digital sign shaped like a cartoon balloon that ties into a 
cloud alert aggregator which is somehow supposed to be less intrusive 
than a smartphone push message or an on-screen alert.

And not only does everything have to have a cloud connection, but 
everyone has to have their own privately branded cloud, apparently. 
In an attempt to make the Internet compelling to consumers, it seems 
the industry wants to turn it into more walled gardens in the 
process-essentially guaranteeing that no one will ever use those 
features. Panasonic has a cloud game developer program, which I'm 
sure will get all sorts of traction from unemployed webOS developers.

As my MacBook Air's iCloud sync brought my connection to the press 
room WiFi to its knees for the fifth time, I couldn't help think what 
all this cloud debris was going to do to the Internet-or, for that 
matter, to the corporate networks that all these smartphones, 
cloud-connected ultrabooks, and other gadgets would be inflicted upon.

And they will be, there's no doubt. It was clear just how 
relentlessly consumer devices are marching into business IT. 
Microsoft's announcement that the Kinect's API will be shipping for 
Windows next month and the spread of voice, facial recongnition and 
gesture-based interfaces to just about everything are bound to work 
their way into board rooms and executive suites before long, as well 
as other business markets. It's bound to soon bring new meaning to 
"flipping off" your work computer.


-- 
Roger Clarke                                 http://www.rogerclarke.com/
			            
Xamax Consultancy Pty Ltd      78 Sidaway St, Chapman ACT 2611 AUSTRALIA
                    Tel: +61 2 6288 1472, and 6288 6916
mailto:Roger.Clarke at xamax.com.au                http://www.xamax.com.au/

Visiting Professor in the Faculty of Law               University of NSW
Visiting Professor in Computer Science    Australian National University