Shelly’s Blog

When it comes to file-sharing, piracy, bootlegging or whatever name you like to call the act of infringing on other people’s intellectual property (IP) rights there is a general rule: Those with more time than money, steal — those with more money than time, buy. Although it is a gross over-simplification of a very complex Continue Reading →

“On the money, direct, to the point, Anne Sweeney, Co-Chair Disney Media Networks, President Disney-ABC Television Group flawlessly delivered a “let’s do it together” speech at Broadcasting & Cable’s ‘New Distribution Pipelines: Turning TV Content into Revenue’ keynote. What will we do together? Absolutely everything to do with alternative distribution of network content. How? Don’t Continue Reading →

If you look around the floor at NAB you’ll see thousands of bodies, but that’s not where the action is. This is a show about pre-set meetings … everyone who is anyone has a full dance card. One Sony exec had three “must attend” dinner invitations — an impressive calorie count for an old-fashioned “tech Continue Reading →

“To us it’s a refrigerator, to our grandparents it was technology … you may think of myspace as technology … our users don’t.” said Shawn Gold, myspace.com’s senior vice president-marketing and content.  He was referring, of course, to the 72 million registered users of myspace.com–the wild, wild West of social networks.  Myspace may not be Continue Reading →

According to its Web site, “UTOPIA (Utah Telecommunication Open Infrastructure Agency) is a Utah interlocal agency with 18 founding cities (Provo is not included) dedicated to accelerating economic development and quality of life for its citizens and businesses by deploying a publicly-owned advanced telecommunications network to all premises within member communities.” How would a gigantic Continue Reading →

Major League Baseball Advanced Media is having a little trouble sending video coverage of baseball games to your cell phone. And, according to an article in the New York Post, they may not get it together in time for this season. The technological issues they are facing are interesting, but it’s the sociological issues that Continue Reading →

Some major telcos have started lobbying our elected officials for the right to create a two-tiered Internet, “regular” and “premium.”  You guessed it, not only would the telcos get to charge everyone more for the faster service, they’d also get to deny the faster service to competitors.  Ouch! As you can imagine, the prospect of Continue Reading →

Outlook didn’t just crash, it crashed and burned.  Nobody I know had ever seen this kind of a problem before.  I called my IT guru and described the problem–dead silence on the other end of the phone.  This was bad, and I knew it was going to get worse. The nuclear option: a low-level hard Continue Reading →

Cable and Congress are at it again. During a hearing that was supposed to be about indecency, Federal Communications Commission Chairman Kevin Martin brought up a study which “concludes that purchasing cable programming in a more a la carte manner in fact could be economically feasible and in consumers’ best interest.” The idea of a Continue Reading →

As many of you know, I am a composer/producer by trade.  One of my personal heroes is Michael Brecker.  He “set the bar” for an entire generation of saxophone players (myself included).  Attempting to copy his improvisational style is a “rite of passage” for aspiring musicians young and old. You are not unfamiliar with his Continue Reading →