I cruised by Digital Life yesterday, a friend was doing pr for a publishing company and we had time to catch up after the show. While he was working I wondered the main floor of The Javits Center to see if there was something I could learn or give me some inspiration. As the average age of the people in attendance was twenty years my junior, I certainly felt out of place.

The show was a mish mash of gaming (both fixed and mobile), consumer electronics, audio and communications. It was interested to see the old style Ms. PacMan alongside a mobile version of the same. What was interesting was that hardly anyone was playing the mobile version, but rather opted for twenty year old technology, certainly an oxymoron given the nature of the show and my belief that twenty somethings were early adopters of mobile gaming?

I did meet Frank Greer, CEO and President of Zipit Wireless, a company with the Z2 a $150.00 mobile communicator, I called it the Blackberry for the under twenty set, I think they liked the comparison. Given the growth of IM, texting, social networks and media sharing, they are in the sweat spot for their target market. Along with the units ability to download music and image content via Wi-Fi networks one could certainly futurecast out such capabilities such as streaming video content to users, both peer too peer as well as from content servers. Remember the IR beaming capability of the Zune? People want to share content and given the restriction with music and movie content such a capability would not prevent people from swapping their own content, be it on YouTube, Revver, or something they editing themselves. Add Wi-Max and the experience expands.

Another interesting technology was the $328.00 Supacam mini video camera/personal entertainment unit. With the capability to record up too 4-hours of 720x480 video with a 2GB SD memory card, a 12 mega pixel/8x zoom for still photos and the ability to play MP3's and video content you have what was in the Nokia N93 until they retired it, due to form factor and cost reasons. While the unit has USB capabilities, imagine Firewire in/out as well as Wi-Max, it could become the choice for Citizen and perhaps News Journalism. It you add some of the capabilities of the Zipit, you would have a platform for sharing of content.

There were a couple of other interesting technology ideas that I could fit under the general umbrella of Internet TV, but at the end of the day gaming was the main draw and I found it easy to spend a few minutes blasting someone away in Halo3, after all when in Rome...

Recently I setup a poll on my Facebook page using Pollection, an interesting application which allows people to conduct polling along with the aid of video and or still images.

I asked a simple question, which I knew, had no easy answer, namely; do you agree with the concept of the Inverted Pyramid where niche markets of five or ten thousand viewers can sustain video content?

The response was right down the middle with 66% saying No and 33% Yes; here is how the Demo broke down.

Some of the data was surprising and some suggests polling is not an exact science. <g> For instance, I would not have expected the gender split to be as close. On the other hand, the numbers did not match up between those who were high school age, their educational background and income for that same demo. I gather high school students do not earn 25k and over, more likely they embellished, ya think?

In any event, (all polls incur a sampling error rate) the data was interesting. The answers of course are far more difficult, for example;

1. If Indie and small producers can make a sustainable income serving niche market groups, what are the steps to profitability?
2. Are there any case studies and if so are they unique?
3. Do content aggregator and super aggregator sites offer Indies promise for income, or just gas money?

The original poll is located at Pollection.com

I interviewed Burhan Fatah, CEO of SIVOO.com last month about what it takes to be at the fore of content delivery in the multicultural and non-English language content space through ITV and closed IPTV systems. As OTA and cable barely cover cultures past Spanish in the U.S. Sivoo currently has 20,000 hours of programming in Spanish, Chinese, and Hindi and Burhan sees this as a Greenfield opportunity for content and Sivoo.

Note: We are evaluating a new audio player platform to provide sliced Q&A for faster access for our readers, while we are still tweaking it, please let us know what you think of it.

The road for content creators interested in navigating the ITV/IPTV landscape is no different then starting any other new business idea or product, it requires guts, planning and luck. Guy Kawasaki is one of the great thinkers for the new era of innovation and planning.

The Art Of The Start is a must read and we have a signed copy we are giving away. drop an email or reply to this post and let us know what changes, innovation you foresee for Internet TV in 2008, we will pick from the most interesting and the winner will receive the book. Deadline for entry is by September 15th.