CES News - Sony

The news just keeps rolling in from the CES in Las Vegas. After snooping around various sites in an effort to find the latest CES news, I found a press kit at the Sony site detailing their latest gizmos for 2007. The most interesting for Web 2.0 aficionados is the collaboration between Sony, AOL, Yahoo!, and Grouper to support a new attachable Internet HD module for Sony TV’s. The new module will be available for most Sony TV’s this summer.

The Xross Media Bar™, or XMB for short, is essentially the same system used for the PLAYSTATION®3 gaming console, and the icon based user interface allows viewers to watch Internet HD and digital video without the use of a PC. Several new BRAVIA™ LCD’s will be available with the new capability this spring.

Stan Glasgow, Sony Electronics President, told the audience that

While other companies struggle with standard definition, Sony has developed a scalable Internet HDTV solution with some notable partners providing content.

Executives from AOL, Yahoo!, and Grouper joined Glasgow in yesterday’s demonstration.

Sony Pictures Entertainment and Sony BMG Music Entertainment are also major contributors to the new venture. The magnitude and number of these types of ventures is as important to web 2.0 proponents as the actual gizmos themselves. It should be evident that Internet based media is becoming exponentially more important to the big players. This is especially as true now as it was in the late 90’s. We are seeing one major corporation after another integrating new Internet mechanisms into both marketing and manufacturing processes. Sony does not start a manufacturing process unless it is going somewhere!

It is not really difficult to envision what late 2007 might look like on our little (or big) screens. Web 2.0 is about people, and people love technology and interaction. Most of all we want to be counted, and we want to be able to express and enjoy the things that drive us onward. Beauty, competition, information, communication, art, and world events are ever closer at hand than at any time in history. I do not intend to overly applaud Sony, or any of the multitudes of corporations for that matter, but rather I am applauding the steps we are taking towards better. Better is what we should be after, and when huge corporations respond to people, that is progress! You see the gadgets are not nearly as important as the symbolic message that the business is responding.

Ultimately, the average person is willing to give their money to the corporations. People just want what they need and desire. The problem with Web 1.0 and World 1.0 was that people got what the corporation wanted to sell them. If we can be better informed and educate ourselves to want the right things, then we can really do something excellent. This is also what I think we here at Profy are trying to accomplish.