Net Soup: Frank Beacham

Frank Beacham is a New York City-based writer and producer. Visit his Web site at www.beacham.com. E-mail: frank@beacham.com

A Decade Later, 'Net Issues Remain the Same
It was 1996, almost exactly a decade ago, when I wrote a column for this publication posing some questions about the future of the Internet.

Revisiting a '50s Audio Classic
In the rush of new production technologies that constantly come and go, it's easy to forget valuable tools that have been around for a long, long time simply because they do a single job very well.

Videography Is More Than Wielding a Camera
A few months ago--in a New York City coffee shop that I frequent--a waitress deposited her brand new $6,000-plus HD camcorder on just the spot I had been expecting my breakfast.

News at the Crossroads of Multimedia
At about the same time television news sold its soul to the devil, a savvy Internet innovator was standing at the crossroads to salvage the wreckage.

Broadcasters Engulfed In 'Perfect Storm'
America's over-the-air broadcasters are facing the threat of a new kind of convergence--this one consisting of a volatile mix of right-wing politics and alternative distribution technologies.

Digitizing a 'Bankers Box' of Media Assets
Over the past year there's been much news about the distribution of television programming over the Internet. However, a revolution in the work habits of those who use the 'Net to research stories and collaborate in the making of films and television programming has been less visible.

Sony Produces an Instant Podcast Classic
As a child of the 1970s "Portapak" revolution, I'll always have a weak spot for Sony--the visionary company that fired the engines of the portable video revolution.

Here's to the Visionaries!
When I began working in broadcasting in the mid-1960s, most of the equipment in the local radio and television stations was from the Radio Corporation of America. The cameras, microphones, audio consoles--even the "on-air" lights--had that distinctive RCA logo.

Making Podcasts More Personal
Podcasting arrived out of nowhere, knocking the wind out of the "expert" prognosticators.

Collisions Along The Internet Timeline
A dozen years ago, in articles for this publication, I wrote of the great dispute over whether the Internet should become commercial. Yes, younger readers, there was a time when a substantial number of idealistic people, including myself, fiercely argued that the Internet should be free of all advertising.

FiOS: Telco Rolls Dice on the Big Pipe
FiOS, Verizon's new fiber-to-the-home network, is where Internet rubber meets the television road. Its success--or failure--stands to have huge implications for the direction of American communications throughout the remainder of this decade.

Static Begins to Clear on How Internet Affects TV
Thanks to vastly improved and lower-cost Internet technology, more users and new data on human behavior, we are getting a clearer picture of how television and the 'net are co-existing.

Mobile TV: Do Wireless Carriers Have it Backwards?
Am I dreaming, or is this another case of "been there, done that?"

Broadband Expansion Spawns 'PodCasting'
Just as personal blogging is impacting major newspapers and broadcast news operations, now a newer form of even more targeted Internet technology has exploded onto the scene in an attempt to reach the hearts and minds of audiences.

Net Update: More Lawsuits; New Journalist Tools
As it becomes clearer that broadband is developing into the next big media distribution system, showdowns between large content owners and Net users are escalating and getting nastier.

Ear Time Versus Eye Time
By Christmas, we'll be seeing a flurry of new portable devices that store, playback and allow the personalized viewing of video programming away from home.

"The Whole World is Watching," Revisited
Spanning this 36-year bridge of time, I found myself in the middle of the two largest political convention protests in American history.

Flag Rebellion: Build Your Own Recorder
A big DTV "gotcha"--a snake now quietly hidden in the grass--won't raise its head until next summer. When it does, expect a big bang from viewers who will rightfully feel deceived and ripped off by the world's largest media companies.

Law Could Lead to High-Tech Terrorism
The widening use of digital recording technology has ignited a continuing battle with those who seek to own and control our culture. That conflict has now escalated to a new level of viciousness--one that pits a who's who of high-tech entrepreneurs in a face-to-face showdown with the world's largest content owners.

EFF Launches Patent Busting Project
There's a trend, the group found, of patent holders threatening and filing lawsuits against small businesses, individuals and nonprofits over claimed patent violations in their use of the Internet.

Mobile Videophones Meet TV News
A new generation of digital imaging - both still photographs and motion video - coupled with wireless access to the Internet, is already making its mark on history.

Internet Erases True Customer Service
In case you haven't noticed - and I'll bet you have - the last remnants of what used to be called "customer service" are quickly evaporating from the planet. Unfortunately, we can blame this sad legacy directly on the Internet and the value system that it's creating.

Bluetooth: It Just Works
Experience has demonstrated that the bleeding edge of technology is usually a very uncomfortable place to be. However, Bluetooth - a wireless connectivity technology that operates in the 2.4 Ghz range - has proved to be an exception.

Producing Better Streaming Audio
Too many Web producers haphazardly encode any sound sent their way without consideration to optimizing it for Internet delivery.

The New Killer App(le)
Jobs coupled the online store to a software jukebox, iTunes, and Apple's iPod, an elegant portable music player with a miniature hard drive. He made copy protection invisible, putting convenience, modern design and hipness first. Although the skeptics confidently predicted disaster, Jobs hit a homerun.

For E-mail Users, Little Relief From Spam
What was once the Net's biggest attraction is quickly turning into a monstrous time waster.

'Leaky Documents': A Dangerous Internet Trap
Did you know that when you exchange common Microsoft Word files over the Internet that you may be revealing hidden information from your computer?

Media Theft: An Internet Reality Check
Among the most overheated issues this year is copyright protection of electronic media. From the proposed "broadcast flag" in digital television to the downloading of audio and video entertainment over the Internet, we're told there is a crisis. The world's largest media companies say they are being stolen blind by hordes of digital pirates.

Love and Theft
"That actress...was a thief," declared Howard Stringer, Sony's top American executive, at a New Yorker Magazine breakfast last month. "She should have adopted the Internet defense: 'I was downloading music in the morning, downloading movies in the afternoon and then I thought I'd rustle a few dresses out of the local department store...and all of a sudden, I'm arrested. How is that fair?'"

For Many Internet Users, Frustration Rules
To those of us who have made the Internet an integral part of our daily lives, it's easy to forget that not everyone is aboard the online train. In fact, according to recent research, a very large block of the U.S. population is still resisting the connected society.

'Dark Side' Shows Bright Side to Music Malaise
Until he enlightened us with his newfound digital religion at the recent NAB gathering, Disney chairman Michael Eisner always acted very threatened by thieves.

New Power Tools For Journalists
When it comes to their tools, working journalists tend to be a very conservative lot. Those who are open to change should be interested in two new devices that offer genuine benefits to reporters of all kinds-whether they work in TV, radio, print or on the Internet.

Not So Trusted Computing
Recently, I was asked to participate in still another panel on the future of television. This one was focused on interactivity and the living room of the future, circa 2010. It was all I could do not to yawn.

The MP3 War: An Artist's View
In recent weeks - while working on music-related projects - I've spent a good bit of time with recording artists who sell their music for a living. So far, I've found few that agree with the corporate music industry's harsh position against computer users that download free music over the Internet.

Microsoft Draws Battle Lines On Content Protection
In the end it wasn't Fritz Hollings, Jack Valenti or the FCC that took the first step into the explosive minefield of content protection. It was - to the surprise of many - Bill Gates

The Fine Art of Simplicity
Perhaps, when the high-tech economic bubble burst, so did the "wow factor" of technology for technology's sake. With the gadget gold rush over, many technologies stood naked - the hazy fog of the emperor's clothes no longer diverting genuine scrutiny.

RealVideo 9 Notches Up Streaming Standard
RealNetworks, the never-look-back streaming media people, recently released RealVideo 9 and RealAudio Surround, bringing home theater audio and video to broadband users and a near VHS-quality video experience to dial-up modem users.

The Internet: Shifting from Entertainment to Business Tool
America's Internet habits continue to evolve at a rapid pace. In recent months, we've learned that net surfers are less experimental, focusing their online time on fewer Web sites. New data finds that users are becoming serious, increasingly treating the Web more as a utility for purposeful tasks than frivolous entertainment.

An Internet Survival Tool for Reporters
Many news reporters are reassessing their Internet tools in light of events since Sept. 11. Gear that once appeared to be solid technology now seems fragile and vulnerable. These days, we want rugged devices we can count on.

9/11: What Worked, What Didn't
The big technology test came on the morning of Sept. 11. Terrorists had attacked the World Trade Center and the Pentagon. Thousands of people were missing. Americans wanted to communicate.

Those Annoying Pop-Under Ads (And How to Stop Them)
They came out of the blue. One, then another, suddenly a swarm. Like aggressive flies assaulting the comfort of a summer evening. Here come the pop-under ads, the latest electronic pests of the Internet.

Is ITV the Next I-Spy?
Personal privacy violations on the Internet have become so rampant that even the most-unsophisticated users are quickly learning not to entrust their private data to nosy Web sites.

Corporate Super Sites Limit Web Diversity
It was only a few years ago, during the frontier days of the Internet, when passionate arguments raged over the impact advertising might have on the network's future.

Bose Wave/PC Tackles Computer Audio
As the networked personal computer continues to evolve into a home entertainment center, some glaring weaknesses in traditional PC technology have become apparent.

Mac OS X: Let the Adventure Begin
Tis the season of new personal computer operating systems. Apple's Mac OS X (Version 1.0) hit the market last month, while a final beta of Microsoft's Windows XP recently made it to the PC faithful.

Media Consolidation: The Noose Tightens
As media outlets consolidate, diversity diminishes. Now, armed with a significant new court ruling, the pay television industries are poised to consolidate much further.

PC, Internet Woes Deepen
In this winter of discontent, an economic freeze is putting the hard bite on personal computer sales and Internet specialty companies.

New Internet Content Creation and Distribution Apps Debut
One of the neat things about the Internet is that people are constantly coming up with new things to do with it.

Non-PC Internet Access Soars
Personal computers are finally taking a hit – at least for domestic Internet access. From April through July of this year, there was a 12 percent increase in U.S. households owning non-PC digital devices that can connect with the Internet.

‘Cyber Ethics’ – Oh, Please!
After being summoned to a Manhattan television studio to serve up some instant punditry on the arrest of the notorious Canadian hacker, Mafiaboy, I caught a live TV feed on the breaking story.

Consuming Images
When Janet Reno staged the armed raid to seize little Elian in the darkness of a Miami morning, it wasn't the television images that defined the event.

Being a Mac User in a PC World
During Apple Computer's long dry spell, many video people stayed with their beloved Macintosh machines because Macs work better than their Windows counterparts.

It's Not Just Cable - It's AOL Anywhere
In terms of pure technology, it's a mistake to view the mega-merger of America Online and Time Warner as simply a broadband cable play.

Going Wireless Works ... Sort Of
In recent weeks I've noticed an interesting human twist to e-mail. People send it to you and assume you received it. If you don't respond quickly, they assume you are ignoring them.