Mobile TV around the world

Mobile operators might as well give in and work with web companies when it comes to delivering services via mobile broadband. That’s the conclusion of the latest report out from Allot Communications, a company that aims to sell software and gear to companies like Verizon and AT&T. Allot’s latest mobile traffic report indicates that the big web players such as Google, Amazon, Facebook and Skype are still racking up gains, while newcomers offering similar services to operators are also on the rise.

Barry Diller, who created the Fox television network almost 30 years ago, now wants to free it and other networks from the chains of what he calls the “closed cable-broadcast-satellite circle.

On Tuesday, at the Manhattan headquarters of his company, IAC/InterActiveCorp, he introduced Aereo, an Internet television service that he said “pries over-the-air broadcast television out of that closed system.” Aereo is one of the most ambitious attempts to date to distribute television over the Internet, potentially posing a new threat to the cable and satellite distributors that control a vast majority of TV viewing in the United States.

IAC led a $20.5 million round of financing for Aereo, and Mr. Diller is joining the start-up’s board.

Ed Note - Waiting for the legal action from broadcasters: no one can make money out of their content without paying it!

The tablet revolution. The post-PC era. The smartphone explosion. Whatever label you want to apply to it, personal computing is changing.

People are spending more time with smaller devices like tablets and smartphones and less time on desktops and laptops. This been evident for awhile, but the trend is still relatively young and the data points are only just beginning to trickle in.

Social TV and social media helped propel the 54th Annual Grammy Awards to huge broadcast ratings and increased online chatter.

This year’s Grammy Awards were a hugely social and digital affair. Even with the tape delay (which prevented a real-time social conversation from taking place on the east and west coasts), the Grammys still broke new social TV records. According to Bluefin Labs, the Grammys earned 13 million social comments. That breaks the record from last week’s Super Bowl and absolutely dwarfs every other entertainment event from the last year. The most-talked about moments included Adele’s performance of “Rollin in the Deep” and her win for Album of the Year, Jennifer Hudson’s tribute to Whitney Houston and Chris Brown’s performance.

Showyou 3.0 launches today, and if you watch videos on an iPad, a Kindle Fire, an iPhone or an iPod Touch, you need to try it. If you have an Apple TV, so much the better.

Ed. Note: content discovery is key in vast video world. ShowYou is the map and the compass you need (and I am not affiliated in any way to this company).

The days of all-you-can eat mobile bandwidth are already ending, and landline broadband could soon follow suit. You, my data-hungry friend, my not be ready for it, but your Cookie Monster-like habit of gobbling up data has made this a certainty.

You may rail at the injustice of it all, but that won’t stop it from happening.

AT&T has promised to start throttling the top 5 percent–their heaviest data users. It began sending out texts last week to inform those users that the time had come to occasionally reduce their 3G speeds down to 2G (that is, the molasses-like Edge network).

Dish Network, sitting on an increasingly valuable stash of spectrum vital to powering wireless data traffic, is waiting on a key waiver from the Federal Communications Commission before deciding on its next move.

The waiver, similar to one that the FCC yanked from LightSquared earlier this week, would allow Dish to use its spectrum to build its own high-speed wireless network. If the FCC doesn't grant the conditional waiver to Dish, it would explore several options including the sale of the spectrum or a partnership with another carrier, CNET has learned.

The moves that Dish could make have broader implications for the wireless industry and how the various players deal with the looming spectrum crunch. Depending on what side the FCC falls on, the industry could see another wireless provider in Dish, a potential partnership with T-Mobile, or AT&T with a strengthened spectrum position.