Anyone familiar with me knows that I don’t carry around the most up-to-date cell phone. I like to use my phone for phone calls, and am content to save other apps for other gadgets. Until very recently I clung to a Motorola E815. That phone took a beating, but it always worked, and I liked the feel of it in my hand.  Then a couple weeks ago I upgraded to a first-gen Motorola RAZR. The adjustment has been easy because the interface is similar to the E815, and the RAZR has already survived several drops to the pavement. So far, so good.

A few days ago on my RAZR I received my first Verizon V CAST spam messages. The first one warned me to “stay tuned” to my phone for a “hot new opportunity from Verizon Wireless.”  The second one downloaded a video for me about  ESPN MVP on V CAST. Kind of irritating, but kind of cool. After all, I’ve never watched video on my own phone.

The little promo clip had a talking head and some screenshots showing how to set up my Fantasy Football league using V CAST. The video quality was crappy to say the least, but I found myself still entranced my moving pictures on my cell phone. If I was utterly bored and standing in line somewhere, I can see myself watching more video clips on my RAZR. Why not?

But here’s the kicker. Would I pay for video on my phone today? Hardly. First, there are a million video screens in my life. I don’t need to pay for one more. Second, my phone is not today’s most powerful hardware (and I’m fine with that), so why would I use it, and its tiny screen, for resource-hogging video when I have so many other options? Third, I can justify shelling out money once for a gadget, but I hate adding to my regular monthly bills, particularly when there’s the possibility I could end up exceeding a flat-fee service rate by going over a bandwidth cap.

So here’s a message to Verizon. Want to get me hooked on mobile video? You’re going to have to send me a lot more free video, and it’s going to have to be stuff I really want to see. Fantasy Football leagues? Meh.  Send me clips from the Olympics in a week and a half. Send me clips of the Redskins when football season actually starts. Send me trailers from some of the best new TV shows scheduled for the fall. Send it all to me for free. Get me in the habit of watching video regularly on my phone, and maybe I’ll decide it’s worth paying for some content in the future. I don’t need mobile video, so you’ll have to convince me I want it badly enough to add on the monthly fee. Otherwise, my cell phone is just going to act as a cell phone for years to come.

There’s a post over on ReadWriteWeb speculating on how the new search engine Cuil managed to get so much publicity on Day 1. My question: how did the search engine wind up with so many users on Day 1? I followed the Cuil news with some interest yesterday morning, but was shocked to discover the Motorola blog I write was already getting link referrals from the new site. Cuil just launched. Who was over there yesterday morning searching for “OCAP” and “femtocell”?

As far as my own thoughts on Cuil, I like the interface quite a bit, but whether it can deliver the comprehensive results that Google does remains to be seen. I also noticed a quirk in the results it delivered for pages I recognized. Cuil seems to add in little thumbnail pics that have nothing to do with the results they sit next to. Odd.

While this isn’t exactly the TiVo+Amazon announcement I was hoping for (that’d be HD Amazon video downloads), Amazon customers with broadband-connected Series 2 or Series3/TiVo HD units will now have the ability to initiate product purchases - triggered via in-show advertising overlays or search:

Starting today, TiVo will launch the new service to consumers by merchandising products related to several high profile shows, including but not limited to The Oprah Winfrey Show, The Ellen DeGeneres Show, The Colbert Report, and Burn Notice. Consumers will also be able to use TiVo’s Universal Swivel Search to easily explore and buy products associated with their favorite shows, movies, actors, and directors, directly from the television set

I was lucky enough to get a DVR back in 2001, and I’ve enjoyed a largely commercial-free television experience since then. But I’ve always known my ad-free days are numbered. On the one hand, there’s the Web, where pre-rolls, interstitials and sponsored ad banners are pretty common. On the other hand there are DVRs themselves, and the encroaching interests of content owners who are looking for ways to disable recording features to preserve their revenue streams.

First came that network-DVR precursor known as Start Over, offering viewers the opportunity to rewind to the beginning of some live programs, but without the ability to fast forward after that. Now comes the MPAA’s proposal for selective output control (SOC), which would allow service providers to shut off the ability for a DVR to record content around some early-release HD movies.

There’s a lot of fuss and muss around the MPAA proposal, but frankly it’s probably all for nothing. Even if the MPAA doesn’t win this fight (the CEA has come out against the proposal), content owners aren’t going to let everyone watch good stuff for free (or free plus cable/telco subscription) without finding a way to include commercials. Even if, at some point, producers start demanding the use of SOC for regular TV shows, eventually consumers are going to end up giving ground. There are some shows that folks will just turn away from if they have to watch scores of ads. But consumers aren’t going to give up on every show, even if DVRs stop working altogether. (And they won’t; they’ll just “evolve”.) TV is too convenient, and we like our episodes of Lost and CSI far too much.

It’s fun to whine and complain about the MPAA, but the old cliche is sadly true: there’s no such thing as a free lunch. To mix a metaphor, we can only hope the pendulum will stay swinging on our side for a while longer. Eventually we’ll have to start watching commercials again.

Imitation is the sincerest form of flattery…?

(via GIzmodo Australia)

Not much to say on this one, but DISH did provide me a purty image to accompany the expansion of their interactive advertising platform. Basically, television service provider on-demand advertising is here to stay (Comcast, TiVo, DISH)… Their goal really isn’t to be unobtrusive, so we can forget that. However, I’m hopeful it remains tastefully implemented (like TiVo’s thumb bug, unlike their Now Playing ads) and that interactivity will provide advertisers a platform for more entertaining campaigns. And I’ll continue to watch as many movie trailers as they throw my way.

Building on its efforts to reinvent the way audiences experience content and advertising, MTV Networks, a unit of Viacom, is partnering with Cadbury, the makers of Sour Patch Kids soft & chewy candy, and DISH Network Corporation to launch its first-ever advertiser-supported interactive television campaign. iTV voting and polling presented by Cadbury’s Sour Patch Kids will be enabled during The N’s all-new reality series, “Queen Bees,” which premieres Friday, July 11 at 9:00 p.m. ET/PT. The campaign will be available exclusively in DISH Network homes nationwide.

I’m beginning to think that soon I won’t be able to turn my head without seeing a TV screen. My local Wi-Fi cafe haunt has added a display above the registers with local advertising, and I just heard via Shiny Shiny that London is getting movie trailers piped in on screens at select Underground stops. Add on TV commercials at my local gas pump, and I fear that soon I won’t be able to go anywhere without a video screen in my face.