Ideas are Orange

Reuters's retail end

I recently read the article by Carl J. Loomis in Fortune about Bloomberg's Money Machine. It is of course fantastic. It really got me thinking about where Reuters is in the market and some ideas on that.

• We are heading towards an experience economy
• Owning the retail end of the business is where the experience is provided. That's why there's Apple Stores, Sony Style and Nike Town.
• In the next wave, you don't want to be in the back-end or being the provider of the guys facing the customer. Unless you are in India or China and your economy is at that stage.
• The experience requires great design!
• Reuters could use Jeff Han, to create a new kind of terminal that is organic in all features. That is touchscreen and motion enabled. That can be manipulated with fingers instead of keys. This would provide a great experience. I´ve seen and used a Bloomberg... not pretty.
• Reuters can beat Bloomberg in usability! If Bloomberg has the volume side of the market they can go for the margin side of that
• Reuters needs Microsoft for voice recognition purposes. With thousands of commands and options, these systems need some voice activated functions.
• Reuters should also apply some Wikinomics to the equation in order to get global ratings, build a massive investment guide, emerging markets information, etc...
• Reuters should be riding the ipod economy. Why isn't there a Belkin made accesory called the Reuters-Link that wirelessly downloads ll video and audio content to an ipod? Bloomberg can be accessed by a Blackberry... there are a lot more ipods out there. Reuters can learn from the Nike + Apple partnership.

I suppose it boils down to out-innovating your competition, but with a clear [blue ocean] differentiation, reducing features, raising content, creating usability, eliminating complexity.

Apple TV - Quicktime - Youtube - Bollywood

Apple is out to change the movie business as it seems. Both through their software (itunes) and hardware (appletv). Part of getting people to use Apple TV and let apple grab the market, will have to do with the same two critical success factors that got people to use the ipod. Those are software and content.

Software

• The more I think about it, itunes (reads tunes you know) shouldn't have flicks.
• The software should be iflicks and be a new tab, new piece, etc... or simply be a souped up version of quicktime. Why is the quicktime offering (which delivers movies) not aligned with the appletv-video content initiative?
• Quicktime could be a movie library, the same way itunes is a music library.
• Let video sites use some Apple web services to promote their content on the software.
• Let it have a powerful search engine... what about "search inside the movie"?

Content

• Go global... not just US. How feasable is it to get Bollywood movies or Chinese/Hong Kong movies on board? There is a lot of content there. Perhaps create a geo-reference of where movies come from.
• Let people upload movies, much like Youtube lets people upload video. Host an "Apple Oscars" ceremony handing out awards.
• Link Youtube in there. Get Youtube to deliver a Tubefeed, which via xml lets quicktime (or iflicks) know the latest and greatest. Its podcasts for video... or videocasts -duh. They could just be videocasts, but they could come from youtube mass users, specialized users, etc...
• Use a "meme" approach to crate a new Pixar hit. Post the script online and let people work out scenes with common characters. Pick the best scenes.

There are endless possibilities, but it seems to me that the more they try to fit the round peg in the square hole (the movies into music software) the more it limits them from expanding the offering.

Search Inside the Song

A few years ago Amazon.com launched search inside the book. I think what they really launched was the notion that you need to provide "search" as a service to look inside whatever you are selling. Some people only know the bits of something and not the whole. Or you might simply be interested with learning more about something, and search is the way to translate your understanding of that thing into what it really means. You search for "great vacation" and get "bora bora" for example.

Apple is the case that is interesting to me due to their hold on digital music. They should have a service called "search inside the song". Something to input lyrics or "something that you caught" from a song, and get songs that are related. With a 30 second clip you could find out if that is the song you are searching for. Or perhaps the 30 second clip wouldn't have to be of the first thirty seconds, but of the bit you liked.

There are dozens of moments where you memorize the bits of a song but it is a tricky process to find the song. Or you find out what the song is long after, when the impulse to buy it is gone.

This could be integrated into the itunes search box, by allowing to search your library (desktop), the itunes store (available songs), or the

There could also be more examples of allowing "search inside"

• You could "search inside the car" for components or characteristics that you need to find a meaning for.
• You could "search inside the building" to find a specific unit in a real estate project that fits your description (your description is "great view"), not 30 ft terrace.
• You could "search inside the product" to find the nutritional value of a specific food product. Perhaps your doctor recommended Vitamin E and you want to know

Is this a way to integrate search and commerce? Breaking the products in bits and effectively translating the bits into the customer need?

Apple TV could own the living room... but no

Apple TV will be released in a few weeks. No huge buzz has hit the Internet around this, and if it did, I missed it. This is essentially an "airport express" for video, not audio. All movies you download to your itunes can be beamed to Apple TV. This has an HDMI cable from Apple TV to your TV to get the image through, and voilá, you have wireless movies being projected to your TV.

But this is all a closed circuit - no surprise from Apple, and some people were here before Apple, with different formats which puts Apple at a disadvantage.

1. Most people who have had experience with downloading movies have DivX as their preferred movie format. Apple either needs to buy DivX to own the digital movie world (much like they own the digital music world) or it needs to come up with an open way of ripping DVDs into digital files, much like you rip a cd into itunes songs.
2. DivX movies are usually played with DivX player, Windows Media Player or any other option as long as you have the codec. Movies cannot be beamed from these applications to Apple TV. This really is the killing benefit, at least the reason I won't buy. I already have movies that I get from my home pc to my TV using a DVI cable to HDMI cable. Sure I would love to beam, but not at the expense of reincoding.
3. Why isn´t there an iLife suite, and that has itunes (for music), and iflicks (for movies), and pretty soon something like imobile (for mobile phone stuff). Apple needs to match hardware and software one to one, have a clear alignment here instead of mixing apples and carrots in the itunes offering.
4. iflicks needs to be a new piece of software. This could keep a repository of everything you've watched, beamed, etc... just the way itunes does for music. It also needs to be able to handle external drives with movies (hard drives will fall short if you intend to have 150+ movies).P eople would probably want to beam from Youtube, iFilm or other sites, Apple will own the TV when they get this done.
5. Apple could also be piggybacking on MS Windows, much like everyone has piggybacked on the ipod. They could be selling iLife for MS Windows, so that people got Music+Movies+Pictures in one place, which is pretty much what Apple boiled life down to. They haven't ever made a puse for the work side of the equation, buy they have at life.

I will not be buying Apple TV until it can beam DIVx Movies or any other movie file... including Flash files that can be downloaded from the web. That is why you need iflicks, to organize video content and beam to AppleTV.

he internet is between the Internet and the user. The TV involves family and friends. More viewers means more money. Having a piece of software to organize video - not apple movies - and beaming any of that to Apple TV is where its at.