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MORE TECH SHIT! Live coverage from Digital Music Forum West in LA continues… pardon the typos!

4:40pm – 5:25pm
PANEL 3: MOBILE APPS:
The Next Frontier
Apps for smart phones and the iPad have created new opportunities for artists to connect with fans, distribute music, keep fans updated with new information, exclusive videos, chat rooms, and Twitter-style news feeds. This panel will discuss the opportunities around music apps with a focus on how artists and labels are using apps to promote and even distribute music. What is the next frontier of mobile apps and the music industry?

Panelists
Mitch Rotter, SVP, Marketing & Product Dev., Universal Music Group
Jim Rondinelli, SVP, Strategic Development, Slacker
Jackson Gates, Director, Business Development, Pandora
Arvind Venkateswaran, SVP, WW Bus Dev / GM – Americas & Asia, Geodesic
Brock Batten, Creative Director, Mobile Roadie
Moderator: Steve Bradbury, Vice President, GoTV Networks

Advantages of native mobile app over web?

Batten: Native apps offer lots of advantages; the app sits on a phone – instead of the big, vast web or even desktop – and native apps offer greater ability to develop and customize.

Rotter: Mobile web is just fine for many situations. When something deserves to be an app, it should be created – otherwise, new features are not necessarily introduced in many situations.

Gates: Pandora just wants to be everywhere, so these discussions are less important. For example, dashboard is a critical point of integration looking ahead – specifics of what that takes are secondary.

The mobile app represented a big, new frontier for Pandora, and totally expanded listening patterns and applicability to music fans – dashboard integration next – native car integration.

GM deal signed two days ago… more ahead…

Rotter: discussion is about portability…

Definition of mobile? Phone, tablet… how broadly are these lines drawn?

Rondinelli: We’ve never differentiated in the history of our company. Distinction is artificial, irrelevant.

Rotter: concept is simple – device here, then on any device, that’s the definition of mobility, portability.

Rondinelli: Michael Robertson accurately predicted cloud models in Oct 1997

…also notes that apps look quite different on different platforms, a ‘truly relevant’ experience on every environment..

So, how to make money in this space?

Gates: We’re a radio service, so to make money on mobile platforms the game is to effectively manager audio ads. “There’s a lot of money there if you do it effectively…”

Does FM radio eventually get replaced by an app?

Rondinelli: KPFK – support, listen, “it’s one of those things we don’t have in this country..”

NPR, Clear Channel (iHeart), all developing apps. Will they all mesh?

On a broader level, governments can compress audio broadcasting into a digital frequency -

Gates: Isn’t the larger question of converting radio into an experience that is linear vs. non-linear?

I want to time-shift, skip forward… if you have an internet service and not doing that, you are really missing the boat.

Rondinelli: discusses parity issues, differences between all sorts of formats…

Rotter: and the countries not offering recording royalties on broadcasts? N. Korea… who else?

Geo-location? How is that being injected and enhancing current mobile apps?

Batten: geo-location offers powerful benefits like reminders, mapping users…

and so what do you do with all of that information?

Rotter: social component, who’s around me, etc. also allows label or artist to start stories in places where they are getting the most reaction. the incredible data that mobile apps provide is pretty compelling…

how can this data be monetized?

Rotter: challenges pressure to monetize something immediately…

Rondinelli: offers a more relevant experience…

Rotter: points to GroupOn, the more hyper-local, the less the breakage is…

Rondinelli: allows labels to locate fans of an artist and effectively “contain them into a small area and manage them effectively”…

how are you rewarding top people?

Rotter: just seeing birth of social loyalty… idea that I can be engaged and rewarded for that engagement – you can start segmenting that fanbase.

Batten: we offer data to bands, they can decide how to implement rewards…

Bradbury: rewards and prizes and degrade the value of what you are buying … it has that risk

What about Pandora automobile deals?

Gates: GM, Ford, Mercedes deals already happened. The central idea is that the ‘brain’ is in your pocket – the central idea is that the app pairs with the dashboard interface – smartphone screen grays out. The core functionality remains on the mobile application.

Plus, a pair of deals happening ahead.

So, what lies ahead?

Batten: deepening social integration, expanding into new platforms like RIM, iPad, etc.

Rondinelli: adding lots of more cacheing capabilities, lots of offline accessibility

Rotter: if anyone tells you they have the answer, they’re full of shit…

important for this technology to be not a ‘cul-de-sac’ but part of the stream…

Gates: buying a new car in the next year, w/ native Pandora functionality – odds are that a new car will come with native functionality…

Bradbury: Curious about Froyo upgrades…

Rondinelli: Froyo 2.2 has an issue with AAC – it’s a bug that requires updating…

Sakakibara Kikai put the final touches on a significantly smaller exoskeleton designed specifically for children. The Kid’s Walker stands just over five feet tall and weighs four hundred pounds, and though the gasoline-powered creature doesn’t exactly walk, its wheeled feet definitely stroll around. The Japanese company said the suit isn’t presently for sale — just rentals for now — but would probably cost about 1.8 million yen (around $21,600) should it come to market. If you ask us, that’s a small price to pay; everyone knows it’s always the young mecha pilots that end up saving the world. Video after the break.

Two tiny black 720p boxes, two interesting choices. The $59 Roku HD will put Netflix, Amazon Video on Demand and Roku’s 75 other content channels on your TV quickly and easily, while the $99 Apple TV offers up iTunes rentals, Netflix, and eventually AirPlay streaming from your iPad or iPhone. (You could step up to the Roku XDS with 1080p support for $99, but we don’t think the extra money will be really worth it until the USB playback channel is released and / or there’s more useful 1080p content available.) It’s a tough decision, so check out our Apple TV review, our Roku XDS review, and our in-depth comparison chart to just try to make up your mind. Then again, you could grab ‘em both and still not break the bank.

The BlackBerry cat is out of the bag and it’s called Torch – RIM’s newest slider smartphone. In an apparent slip up (funny just like the lost iphone 4) on AT&T’s part the Torch smartphone appeared on AT&T’s Website, complete with images and specifications, just before an 11am (ET) press conference was being held by RIM to officially announce the phone.

Here is what we know so far thanks to the AT&T slip up:

The Torch will sport RIM’s BlackBerry 6 mobile operating system which includes a beefed-up mobile Web browser and what is being touted as RIM’s “next generation” messaging system. The new BlackBerry OS also integrate support for Twitter and Facebook and other social networking feeds. The new BlackBerry 6 OS includes MediaSych functionality, supporting wireless syncing to a music library via Wi-Fi.

The BlackBerry Torch features a QWERTY keyboard and optical trackpad in a slider style phone body. The Torch has a 3.2-inch (480×360) touchscreen, 5MP camera, and has over 1GB of combined RAM/ROM storage, 4GB memory, and sports 4GB microSD card. As for connectivity the Torch supports 802.11n Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, and 3G connectivity.

The Torch weighs in at 161 grams, is 111 x 62 x 14.6 mm large, comes equipped with a 1300 mAh lithium battery. The GSM talk time is rated at 5.5 hours and standby time is 17 days.

More on RIM’s BlackBerry Torch as reports come in from Tuesday’s press conference.

Apple is facing more than just a reception glitch on the new iPhone. Even the most ardent Macheads are growing impatient with Cupertino’s refusal to admit that anything’s wrong with its latest iPhone despite mounting evidence to the contrary. Experts are warning that Apple has nothing less than a PR disaster on its hands. Would a full-on recall help polish Apple’s tarnished image?
The iPhone “death grip” drama began almost immediately after the iPhone 4 launch last month, and escalated Monday after Consumer Reports announced it would not recommend the new iPhone. Its test results confirmed the handset’s widely reported “death grip” woes, in which touching a certain spot weakens the cellular signal.

Over at Cult of Mac, Apple blogger Leander Kahney has lined up a panel of “crisis management” experts who say Apple risks a “Toyota-style PR crisis” (not that bad phone reception is anywhere near as dangerous as a stuck accelerator, of course) unless it ceases its “foot-dragging” and takes some decisive action — something above and beyond the promised software fix for the iPhone’s supposedly wonky signal strength display.

One option: free Bumper cases for everyone, to cover the iPhone’s external steel antenna that Consumer Reports and several other testers say is the root cause of the “death grip.”

Another, more dramatic gesture: a full-on recall, a move that PR expert Matthew Seeger thinks Apple will be “forced to do” if it wants to protect its brand from “potentially devastating” damage, according to Cult of Mac.

Buzz Out Loud co-host Molly Wood takes up the iPhone recall cry at CNET, writing that although a recall would be “expensive and unprecedented,” it would “give Apple major goodwill and prove its commitment to the impeccable quality and design principles it’s always espoused.”

Of course, a recall would entail the extraordinary step of Apple admitting that there’s a fundamental problem with the iPhone’s design — something Apple seems reluctant to do, considering Steve Jobs’ initial, eyebrow-raising response to complaints about the iPhone’s reception (“just avoid holding it that way”) and Apple’s follow-up letter (which blames a “totally wrong” signal display formula for the reception complaints while insisting that the iPhone 4′s “wireless performance is the best we’ve ever shipped”).

For the sake of argument, let’s say Apple did swallow hard and announce an iPhone recall. What would happen next?

If the experts are correct, the iPhone’s reception problems stem from a fundamental design problem: an external antenna, with a sensitive gap separating two antenna segments on the lower-left edge of the phone, right where a user might reasonably want to cradle it. Besides sticking a piece of tape over the gap (which Consumer Reports suggests), Apple may not be able to fix the iPhone’s reception problems without a radical, costly, time-consuming hardware revamp.

Practical matters aside, though, Apple needs to make some kind of real gesture here — be it free Bumpers, an admission of mistakes, an apology or even a recall — before its tarnished image is damaged beyond repair (if it isn’t already). Software update and/or radio silence isn’t going to cut it anymore.