USAToday

For the pay-TV industry, 2013 was a down year. But pay-TV providers can look forward to growth in the next five years.

Subscriptions dropped less than 1% in 2013 -- the first decline for providers. But homes that subscribe to pay TV are expected to grow annually from 2014 to 2019, increasing from about 101 million to 103.2 million, according to a new report from Strategy Analytics.

Better pay-TV services that incorporate Net TV content providers such as Netflix and deliver improved on-the-go content viewing will help drive increased subscriptions, the research firm says.

And more homes will opt for pay TV from telecom providers such as AT&T and Verizon. That explosion of choice -- in TV delivery and programming -- puts the onus on viewers, says Joel Espelien of The Diffusion Group. "You have to be so much more of a sophisticated consumer," he says, "because these services are part-technology, part-user interface and part-original content."

What may be a first-of-its-kind US spy satellite is set to lift off atop an Atlas V rocket.

The countdown from Cape Canaveral Air Force Station is set to begin after a more than two-week delay because of damage to an Air Force tracking radar needed to ensure public safety during the flight. The 19-story United Launch Alliance rocket and its classified National Reconnaissance Office payload returned to their Launch Complex 41 pad, repeating a trip they made March 24, the same day an electrical short disabled the tracking radar located on Kennedy Space Center.

Amateur astronomers who make a hobby of tracking satellites, including secret missions, suspect the payload is a signals intelligence, or SIGINT, satellite bound for a geosynchronous orbit more than 22,000 miles above the equator.

Signals intelligence satellites are designed to detect transmissions from broadcast communications systems such as radios, as well as radars and other electronic systems, according to an overview from the Federation of American Scientists.

Nokia's sale of its devices unit to Microsoft cleared another major hurdle, receiving regulatory approval from China.

The Finnish smartphone maker announced China cleared a deal. The deal is expected to close by the end of the month. Microsoft's $7.2 billion deal to acquire Nokia's devices division had been scheduled to close in March, but was pushed back by a month to secure additional approvals in Asia.

Vox Media, the online publisher that runs SB Nation sports blogs, launched its general news site Vox.com, providing a forum for renowned blogger Ezra Klein's experiment in broadening explanatory journalism.

Klein, who led The Washington Post's public policy blog, Wonkblog, left to join Vox Media in January after he failed to secure funding from the newspaper's editors for a new site. After several weeks of preparation and recruiting journalists, Klein and Vox Media released more details on their plans for Vox.com, promising readers news stories packaged with contextual information and graphics.

The site's mission is to make news more digestible by roasting it "to perfection with a drizzle of olive oil and hint of sea salt," Klein said. Vox.com joins a crowded field of data-driven news sites that aim to incorporate more analysis, statistics and graphics in their content. The New York Times, The Washington Post and The Wall Street Journal have similar plans.

[Commentary] Almost half a century after the first e-mail crashed the communication link between the computer science department at UCLA and the Stanford Research Institute, the Internet stands at a tipping point. Now, after a wave of telecom consolidation at the turn of the 20th century, only two of the original seven Baby Bells remain, in the form of Verizon and the reconstituted AT&T.

Along with a handful of giant cable providers and satellite giants, less than a dozen companies control the overwhelming majority of US Web traffic. In the fourth quarter of 2013, the number of TV-style commercials on digital entertainment delivered to US high-speed Internet subscribers of those companies roughly equaled the number of pieces of content they appeared next to. Moreover, Web-based video ads, and the TV shows, live events and movies that they are paired with, are growing in lock step at roughly 30% a year. With both business and consumers willing to pay for a broad array of products and services, the Internet has become the world's first global medium for delivering news and entertainment. Not surprising, then, that it's started to look a lot like television -- a medium that in the US is overwhelmingly commercial (save for PBS and local public access channels, home of the original video bloggers); and soon, it will likely be far more so. A US federal court ruling in January, which struck down rules concerning how Web traffic and capacity are priced, has already begun spurring a new wave of telecom consolidation, such as Comcast's $45 billion bid for rival Time Warner Cable.

The Internet, already half-commercialized, has just been further deregulated. Given its history and current data traffic trends, if there are going to be public spaces on the Internet of the future, online consumers may have to work hard indeed to find them.

The National Security Agency has left more than a black mark on the reputations of tech companies: It is now hurting them financially.

Americans are less likely to bank and shop online because of lingering doubts over the NSA's digital-snooping activities. Almost half the more than 2,000 adult respondents (47%) to a recent Harris poll commissioned by security firm ESET said that they have changed their behavior and think more carefully about where they go, say and do online.

Very soon, a Harvard student will find himself in the same place social media mogul Mark Zuckerburg was just a decade ago. Like the founder of Facebook, senior Patrick Colangelo will be launching a new social media platform that started in a Harvard dorm room. Spayce, a mobile start-up, wants to replicate the success of Twitter, Snapchat, Facebook and Instagram by bringing everyone within a room's reach together -- virtually. Based on the idea of "capturing the moment," Colangelo says Spayce uses hyper-location and facial recognition to put a room filled with people on your iOS or Android smartphone. "We want to show you wherever you are, what's happening around you and who's around you," says the 21-year-old from Toronto. "We're focused on what I would say is the future of social media." Spayce will allow users within a 100-meter radius of one another to connect instantly, free of charge. Whether it's a classroom, business meeting or a local bar, once Spayce users enter a location, they will be introduced to the profiles of fellow users in that vicinity.

The age of the 4G wireless connections comes to the car -- and with it the promise of a whole new level of personal computing while driving.

Audi says it will be first automaker with 4G connectivity when its new A3 arrives soon in showrooms and General Motors says it will follow this summer with a raft of models. Other automakers are working on systems as well that turn the car itself into a mobile device.

The quick connection speed afforded by 4G will allow drivers to create wireless hotspots inside their vehicles for multiple handheld devices and will allow quicker and clearer updates for everything from navigation to making dinner reservations. And it will allow automaker to broaden the kinds of apps they offer. Most of all, it will allow the auto industry to give its cars the kind of digital response times that many consumers expect, thanks to the newer smartphones they carry around in pockets or purses.

[March 10]

[Commentary] Disney, which owns ABC, made a deal with Dish Network, the satellite provider that, for the first time, will formally allow the use of technology to let viewers skip ads on ABC shows.

The fig leaf compromise here is that Dish, which will now stream ABC shows over the Web, will have to wait three days after first broadcast before letting its ad-skipper, AutoHop, go to work. But it's a big breach in an up-to-now implacable network wall. Finally, a major network has bent to the obvious -- people expect to be able to skip ads. American media, marketers and culture move inextricably closer to a world in which video is wholly unhooked from advertising. Television advertising as it continues to exist -- lucratively so -- has often seemed like some odd form of protectionism, forcing the consumer to endure something that the simplest technology makes obsolete, and as a kind of emperor's new clothes conceit: Who beyond the comatose actually watches ads, anyway?

But what happens when there is no television advertising of any kind? What happens when even the most unassertive can easily skip even network television ads? Clearly, live-event programming, from the Oscars to sports, wherein real-time pauses can be naturally filled with ads, becomes ever-more sought after.

The media have been slowly converting themselves into a subscription and licensing business -- learning to live with lower margins. Even networks now get fees from cable companies. ABC's Dish deal undermines ad dollars, but replaces them with licensing dollars, however fewer. Brands, on the other hand, while they been moving consumer ad dollars into other forms of marketing, ultimately face a bigger crisis than television producers.

Digital media, a hoped-for alternative, have woefully failed to become a method of brand identification. Sponsored content offers much less of a return than being a television sponsor. Nothing, so far, has replaced, or even suggests it might someday be able to replace, the powerful nexus of video, a passive audience and advertising in the creation of consumer desire and, indeed, in the character of modern man.

[March 10]

Your favorite social apps will soon enhance more than just your lifestyle.

If you think it's cool sharing a dish at your favorite restaurant with your friends via Facebook or Twitter, imagine using social media to quit smoking, lose weight or avoid a debilitating knee injury or heart attack. "There's no more compelling app than one for your health or (the health of) your loved ones," says Dr Leslie Saxon, a cardiologist who runs the University of Southern California's Center for Body Computing.

The health care industry is ripe for innovation thanks to a wide array of wireless medical sensors that are either in development or already being tested, Saxon said. The health industry "is where the music industry was with the vinyl LP," Saxon says.

The goal of all this invasive technology will be to give patients more control over their medical data and, therefore, over their own health care, Saxon said during her talk, titled "The Future of Networked Humans." "Consumers will be able to curate their own sensors and track the data they want," Saxon says.

[March 10]