Got a surprise invite to Google Music

I don't remember asking for Google Music invite. Surprisingly received an invite today and promptly signed up for it. It is obviously a competing service to iCloud and Amazon Cloud Drive, no matter how slice and dice it. Difference is, Google Music is free while the others are offered for a nominal price but with unlimited storage.

After sign up, the music service ask you to select your preferred genre of music style. To upload your songs you need need install a small piece of software. You can update up to 20,000 tracks to the service. I suppose that is more than enough to store most people's collection (I've 32k tracks!). Here is a screenshot of the service:

Google Music has free selection of music that is presented to you based on the music genres you like. I've some free selections shown (I cannot figure out the total number of tracks in my free music playlist?).

The service is a good add-on for Google's ChromeBook OS, as a iTunes replacement for ChromeBook. Google's strategy does seem to evolve towards moving users to Cloud based OS, Storage and Media(refer my previous post on SageTV acquisition). However, I would like to have offline storage as well. ChromeBook's cloud OS seem to choke my computing senses by offering just a browser. I invariably try to close that damn browser (jail) and feel choked when I cannot access my hard disk!. Why not offer a local caching option so that I don't need to always look for internet connection to use my Laptop? Have some intelligent caching and offer users a way to access local storage for music, photos and video that they don't want to upload to cloud?

Google acquires SageTV, Hulu up for sale, very intetesting dynamics emerging in the fight for living room

This acquisition makes sense for a variety of reasons. Personally, I've been using SageTV as replacement for Dish network from Nov 2010. I've also been watching this company for some two years now. They have nifty little new hardware device (HD 300) that plays almost any multimedia file you throw at it. They also have a very nice DVR and EPG guide for those of us want to use OTA transmission and get rid of Cable/Satellite.

Now that Google has acquired SageTV one wonders what their plan is? Is SageTV going to be the base platform for building Google TV ver 2.0? What SageTV features are going to be integrated in to Google TV? Will Google continue to support DVR functionality in SageTV?

How about hardware HD 300? Is it going to be a reference platform for Google's partners (Logitech/Sony)? Is there a plan to build DVR-in-the-Cloud?

Two companies that will be watching closely are going to be NetFlix and Apple. SageTV offers a fantastic platform to build advanced multimedia capabilities. Only if Google can get license agreements with Studios and Television Networks they will be in a much better position to compete against Apple and possibly threaten NetFlix.

Should Google get into the bidding game for Hulu with Yahoo? (Does it make sense to Yahoo to acquire Hulu?). Hulu is still trying to prove its business model (free vs paid) to its overlords. It is not hugely successful in raising its advertisement revenue. Google has ambition to extend its search and advertisement beyond YouTube into the living rooms. Google TV is  complicated to setup and expensive to buy for a common person. Combining the Hulu content with YouTube on the content side and simplifying setup and also reducing the cost with SageTV will be a big win for Google. Now Apple should worry about this compelling eco-system from Google.

Related articles

• Will YouTube Buy Hulu? (247wallst.com)
• Google buys Sage TV (geek.com)
• Google Acquires Sage TV, Google TV Looks Bright Again (techie-buzz.com)

Google's 11 rules for Good Management

Infographic: Anatomy of a startup

     Original Graphic Here

Silicon: Intel reinvents chip design with 3D and 22nm

• Intel announced that it is going to use 3D chips technology in forth coming chips.
• High lights:
• Pack more processing power with a small form factor
• Less power consumption  
• Extend Moore's law.
• Business Leaders
• Keep on the lookout for similar offerings from NVidea and AMD.
• Carefully compare alternative architectures (eg. ARM) against this.
• What sort of devices you can build with this architecture?
• How your existing investments in other architectures are affected?
• For End Users
• Interesting times ahead with more powerful, lighter, smaller and long lasting devices on the horizon
• More choice in terms of devices
• Expect to pay more initially for devices based on this new design.
• Video: Intel's Mark Bohr Explains the Design

                

Infographic: A brief history of iPad

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A Brief History of the iPad Infographic created by a discount codes website

Cisco Cius in NCIS: Los Angeles

• NCIS: Los Angeles is one program I llike to watch once in a while.  SageTV records it automatically  every week. I watch it whenever I've sometime to spare. 
• This week Cisco Digital Display systems signage in building J piqued my interest with a reference to NCIS: Los Angeles. As usual NCIS: Los Angeles catered to  in the building J showed that my favorite show was going to feature Cisco Cius. 
•  I'm a skeptic of the utility of Cius Tablet . I for one think Cisco would be better of creating a software for Telepresence End Point that runs in Android and iOS tablets.
• Well... I'm not the product manager!!!? 
• I had the same thought when Cisco acquired Pure Digital (flip). I know you would say it is hindsight 20/20!. 
• Product placement is a marketing technique used by many companies to promote their product to much wider audience. 
• New products get introduced to much wider audience.
• Movies and TV shows get another source of revenue
• NCIS: Los Angeles is too generous in product placements. 
• Recently one of the episodes prompted me to search for a sexy Chrysler car in the episode. In the end it wasn't Chrysler rather an expensive Aston Martin Rapide.
• Who would've thought Navy detectives would drive such an expensive car.
• Clever product placement.. huh.
• In the "Plab B" episode, NCIS analyst Nell uses Cius in the office and (surprisingly) in the moving car, in High Def!. Nice, does that demonstrate Cius's 3G capability!
• Remember "Super Size Me?". The same team has created another documentary that deals with the product placement in movies and TV shows, called "Greatest Movie Ever Sold" . I can't wait to watch it (in NetFlix - ofcourse).