After delaying and delaying this project for various reasons, I’ve finally launched a new blog design for Lance Weatherby????????. Lance, whom I’ve worked with for about a year at ATDC, has been a great friend and mentor. He’s provided great input, advice and leadership.

As a way of saying thanks, I decided to lend my design skills to help Lance’s blog become a little more appealing. Check it out, comments are always welcome.

Two malls in the UK have installed monitoring devices that track people by monitoring their cellphones. By picking up the signals from their phones, the devices can track which stores people enter and how long they stay.

Although these statistics could prove useful for the mall and it’s retailers, it is an obvious privacy concern. It will be interesting to see if the technology spreads or is imported to the states.

That’s what Bill Rosenplatt, a DRM “specialist,” states in this Guardian article on Apple’s plans for DRM. Discouraged by Apple’s huge market share and clout, EMI pulled their catalog from iTunes and offered it DRM-free through Amazon. This move provided statistics to determine if offering DRM-free music would increase piracy of that music. Apparently, the answer is no.

“The statistics show that there’s no effect on piracy,” says Rosenplatt. The article goes on to state “that most download stores will remove DRM on permanent music downloads” and that Apple will soon be “selling iPods preinstalled with unlimited access to music, or with a bundle to a subscription offering,” all with DRM-free music.

This means greater control for the consumer. We will have the choice of what we can do with music and what devices we can use to listen to our music.

I officially started my internship with Cox Communications, the nation’s third largest cable company, this week. I’ll be spending the summer with Cox’s strategy and product development group. Needless to say, it will be an interesting summer as I’ll be involved in numerous exciting initiatives that Cox has brewing.

As expected, I’m restricted on what I can say. However, I can tell you that the MSOs and telcos are facing some interesting hurdles and have big future plans for the consumer. I’m looking forward to helping make these plans a reality.