Xmarks Lives: LastPass Buys Downtrodden Bookmark Syncing Service

Just when we all thought we’d never see it again, the cross-browser bookmark syncing service Xmarks has received a life-saving injection.

The company has been acquired by LastPass, maker of a cross-browser password manager and form filler add-on. The deal was announced Thursday, and terms were not disclosed.

Xmarks will live on as a freemium service. The initial cross-browser syncing tool you’re already familiar with will be free, but users will be encouraged to upgrade to a paid subscription to unlock more advanced features. It’s the same model employed by LastPass for its own Premium version of its (otherwise free) password-syncing service.

Xmarks Premium will be offered for $1 per month ($12 per year) and it comes with some new features like apps for the iPhone and Android phones, and technical support. You will also be able to bundle the premium offerings from LastPass and Xmarks together for $20 per year.

There’s already an iPhone app for Xmarks, and the company just recently released an Android app, too. Xmarks says anyone currently using the iPhone app can continue to use it without upgrading to the premium service, but they will have to buy in to the $12 per year plan to get future upgrades.

It looked like curtains for Xmarks in September, when the company announced it would shut down its service in early 2011.

Apparently, there’s no money in a free bookmark syncing service, and the company was facing new competition from the cloud-based syncing systems being built into Firefox and Chrome. Even though Xmarks one-ups those built-in single-browser services by syncing bookmarks across all your browsers, it couldn’t stay afloat.

The service has some 4.5 million users, and there was an outcry when Xmarks announced the shutdown. Later, the company asked its fans if they would be willing to pay a subscription fee to keep Xmarks alive. Over 30,000 of them pledged to do so, and that was enough to attract the attention of LastPass.

The two companies will continue to operate under independent brands, though they may merge everything later.

So, it turns out this dark story of cloud computing had a silver lining after all.

See also:

• Xmarks to Continue Syncing Bookmarks, Thanks to Loyal Fans
• Xmarks Mulls Switch to Premium Service
• Popular Bookmark Syncing Tool XMarks to Shut Down
• Xmarks Syncs Open Tabs Across Browsers, iPhone

Transparent CSS Sprites

One of the most useful front-end development techniques of recent years is the humble “CSS Sprites”. The technique was popularised by Dave Shea on A List Apart in 2004 with his article CSS Sprites: Image Slicing’s Kiss of Death. CSS Sprites are a relatively simple technique once you understand the fundamentals and it can be applied in all manner of ways. A common use is for a graphic intensive navigation, but it can also be useful for buttons or even styling headings with the corporate font.

Sprites are simply a collection of images which are merged together to create a single file. You then use CSS, changing the

the image, to display the correct part of the image you need. I often use the analogy of a large object passing a window — you only see what is within the frame.

Over the last couple of years CSS Sprites has been one of the most widely adopted CSS-related techniques. Popularised by the Yahoo’s research and documentation around speeding up your website, many high profile websites implement the technique, including Google and Amazon. There are numerous tutorials which help you get to grips with the techniques and sprite generators which help you create the graphics themselves.

The Benefits and Potential Problems

CSS Sprites have become a de-facto way of improving the speed of your website or web application. Merging multiple images in to a single file can quickly reduce the number of HTTP requests needed on a typical website. Most browsers only allow for two concurrent connections to a single domain so although individual files can be large, the overall request and response times are considerably lower. Combining images with similar hues also means the colour and compression information is only need once, instead of per file, which can mean an overall reduced file size when compared to the files individually.

The benefits of reduced file size and HTTP requests are often publicised, but potential problems are rarely ever discussed. One of the main techinical issues with CSS Sprites is memory usage which is explained in the article “To Sprite Or Not To Sprite”. Another issue is the maintenance of the sprites, the images and the CSS, both of which can become rather complicated.

A Technological Solution

A common practice in solving slow-down in computing seems to simply throw in more hardware. We all know hardware prices are dropping all the time, so this seems like a reasonable solution. However, I feel there is a fundamental flaw with this philosophy and ingrained mentality. Developers have access to more computing power and as such they code their applications to be handled in these environments. With each new feature the application becomes slower and slower, but this problem has already has a solution — upgrade your hardware. This is an endless cycle.

Many of the user interfaces people come across today are on the Web. This means the user has to download most of the related material (images, CSS, JavaScript) before interacting with the content, so the same philosophy must be applied to the Web. Websites, or more recently web applications, are becoming more complex, even replacing many desktop applications, therefore the user must first download more and more information before beginning their experience.

Although file sizes required to view a website have increased dramatically over recent years, more and more people are upgrading their Internet connections, with broadband becoming the norm in many countries. This cycle conforms to the hardware upgrade philosophy and in theory should negate any potential user experience problems.

However, web developers are falling in to the same trap which many application developers have before. As layouts become more complex, more images are required and so the developer creates more images — even if they are sprites. This seems like a reasonable assertion, but it doesn’t mean it is the best solution.

A Twist on the Technique

Due to the limitations of the Web, there have been many inventive solutions to problems. But the Web isn’t the only place where there can be very tight limitations. Innovation strives on limitation. A great example of this was in the iconic game Super Mario Brothers where the bushes were just recoloured clouds.

This very simple but extremely effective implementation made me think about how to reuse common interface elements, trick the user to believe something the same is different!

Now on to the twist, this idea is to create a transparent sprite allowing the

to show through. If you are familiar with CSS Sprites, you should be able to grasp this twist relatively easily.

Simply, an image with a transparent “knocked-out” transparent center is placed over a background colour. Changing the background colour changes the appearance of the element. The only thing you need to pay attention to is that the colour surrounding the transparent part of the image matches the background in which you are using the techinque. This stops the background colour bleeding in to other parts of your image.

Anyway, this technique is much easier to understand in an example…

Example

The following example is only made up of three images. One for all the font samples, one image for both sets of droplets, including hover and active states, and one for the all buttons.

The Images

Fonts
The font image contains transparent typefaces on a white background, meaning they aren’t viewable on a white background. Save the file from the example, open it in your favourite graphics editor and you will see the transparent typefaces.

Drops
The drops image is used on the example above as the colour picker. A single graphic containing the gradient drop on the two different backgrounds, so the

is masked out correctly. The image contains all three states used in modern interactive interfaces — static, hover/focus, pressed/active.

Button
The button technique is the most flexible and probably most useful way to use this technique. A simple sprite image containing two states — static and hover/focus — which is then placed over text to create the button. Simply adding a

will make every use of this button the same style across your application or website.

Below is some CSS which styles simple fixed width buttons with a grey background colour, but also has two different treatments, “warning” and “go”, which have red and green background colours respectively.

a.button {
  display: block;
  width: 80px; height: 30px;
  margin: 0 20px;
  font-size: 14px; line-height: 30px; color: #fff;
  text-align: center; text-decoration: none;
  background: #4a4a4a url(button.png) no-repeat 0 0;
}
a.button:hover,
a.button:focus,
a.button:active {
  background-position: 0 -40px;
}
a.button.warning {
  background-color: #ea1d22;
}
a.button.go {
  background-color: #309721;
}

The CSS above produces the following buttons:

• Normal
• Button
• Continue
• Go!
• Stop!

Conclusion

This techinque could be useful when providing a range of themes for a website. You could create one set of buttons and icons then add the background colour which best suits the selected theme.

Although this technique will never be as broadly useful as the original CSS Sprites, the idea can be useful for websites which allow user theming. The technique could also be used when creating HTML mockups, allowing you to easily update colours based on client feedback.

The main benefit this technique has is that it reduces the number of HTTP requests. But it also reduces browser memory usage compared with what would be needed if you created a larger sprite to handle all the colours you need.

I would like to mention one caveat though, IE6, because it does not natively support transparent PNGs. There are PNG fixes, but none¹ of these support

which is needed if you are using this technique with CSS sprites, such as with the buttons and droplets above. However, you could provide a slightly less optimal experience using GIFs instead.

1. The IE PNG Fix from TwinHelix does include support for

, but the solution requires JavaScript.

Further Resources

If you are interested in any aspect of CSS Sprites, check out the following extra resources.

• Fast Rollovers Without Preload – the initial inspiration for CSS Sprites.
• SpriteMe – a bookmarklet to generate sprites based on an existing website.

Below are a list of links used within the article:

• CSS Sprites: Image Slicing’s Kiss of Death – the A List Apart article by Dave Shea.
• Yahoo! Performance Guideliness – best practices, tools and research from Yahoo!
• CSS Sprite Generator – a tool to help you create your sprites by Ed Eliot.
• To Sprite Or Not To Sprite – an article about some potential system performance caveats with sprites.

© Trevor Morris for Smashing Magazine, 2010. | Permalink | Post a comment | Add to del.icio.us | Digg this | Stumble on StumbleUpon! | Tweet it! | Submit to Reddit | Forum Smashing Magazine
Post tags: CSS

Billboard Web Design: How to Win Your Audience’s Attention

Let’s say you’re driving down the freeway at 65mph and you see the roadside plastered with advertising posters on both sides. Some small, some large, all meant in some measure to cause you to remember a brand or identity, to keep that company name in your mind. The more saturated the roadside becomes with advertisements, the more the brand has to be distinctively creative, unique and memorable.

Generally, the eye-catching ads are mostly the ones with witty taglines that are easy and fun to remember. As much as the colors of the images and fonts being used are important to make it easy on the eyes, the idea actually has to be unique and simple enough to be separated from other commercials.

Photo credit: Randy Harris

The same principle applies to any website. Though a user won’t necessarily be passing by your site at 65 mph, there is a certain bounce rate — visitors who leave your site shortly after entering it. For many websites, these rates are much too high. This poses a very similar challenge to those who design billboards. You have a very short amount of time to capture your audience’s attention and to keep it for long. With that in mind, here are some principles for developing billboard-style Web designs.

Creative and Unique

An important piece to the billboard website puzzle is creative and unique design. This can be intertwined within the other principles, and when done effectively, can be the sole reason for viewers to dig deeper into your site.

Hey Indy
Creative and fun, heyindy.com breaks the mold of an ordinary, plain and boring website. Complete with customized illustrations, drawings and playful typography, each page engages users, making them feel comfortable on the site. Notice how well the illustration on the top fits with the tagline of the site. Hey Indy creates websites, illustrations and animations and uses the “mixtape” metaphor to attract client’s attention. The site is not obtrusive, but inviting instead. A very personal, attractive design.

Dropr
This online service uses a nice typographic poster with playful typography on the front page to explain what it does. The design is attractive and inviting, although a plain simple text message could have worked just as well to deliver the message to the visitors. The interesting part are the animated clouds on the left side with colorful water drops. Very nice use of metaphor contained in the title of the service. An original and unique design.

TVLCORPs
Interested yet? Though the tagline shown on the web design below does not really say what this company does, the layout is creative and compelling; the strong, vivid contrast is more than enough to turn some heads. Notice how “UX/UI” stands out on the site, focusing the visitor’s attention on the ‘services’ section of the page.

{ ro:newmedia }
Sometimes it’s a good idea to risk an unusual design approach — be it exaggerated typography, striking color combinations or unusual design layouts. The latter is the case in point for ro:newmedia’s website. The layout is very unusual and original, and therefore memorable. Colorful large spinning circles look like an overlay of the site layout and appear vividly against the dark background. A downside: the font size of the text on the page could be a bit larger.

Pixelmator
Much different than the standard, pasted screenshot, Pixelmator works the sleek, elegant interface of their application directly into the design of their page.

Relogik
What makes this particular site effective is its ability to draw the eye to the name of the product or service they are showcasing. In this case, it works well to give the company name an afterthought as well as making the product more prominent.

Made My Day
One more test to run is to assume how much impact a particular site has on a reader, if they were to take a quick glance and look away. Ask yourself: If you were to carry out your day from that point, what were you to still remember about that particular site? The large orange circle elegantly integrated into this composition does an excellent job of leaving a style for returning visitors to remember.

Compelling Headlines

A good design only goes as far as the content it contains. For this reason, it’s vital to go beyond average with your copy text. If you’ve seen a billboard advertisement or two, you may remember the tag lines featured on them. Short and to the point, they’re meant to get you to remember a certain brand.

Many large corporations don’t even use ad copy, but rely solely on their logo and identity to remain effective. One has even gone as far as making their billboard a working sundial in this respect. Though we should all aspire to having a brand of our own this influential, it’s recommended that you stick to clear and powerful copy text along with your design to help capture your readers. Here are some examples of compelling headlines:

Ryan & Sofia
Ryan and Sofia combine hand-drawn design elements with a compelling headline, all supported by a very informal, emotional language and choice of layout. The message is strong and clear, and therefore very appealing.

Comwerks Interactive
This design agency uses a clear and simple language to communicate the purpose of the website. Cute illustrations make a website look less formal and much more engaging. The purpose is clear and the client list immediately proves that the design agency indeed builds cool stuff. A downside: the text on the images in the slideshow would benefit from not being embedded in the images.

Camera+
Clear, contrasting colors only add to the effectiveness of the headline given on this website. In a clear and elegant manner, a reader is quickly able to glance at this website and know its purpose.

Just Dot
Sticking to the billboard clarity, Just Dot provides a clever design and tagline to attract readers. Along with a creative chalkboard theme, this site features neat and clean navigation to help guide readers through the site.

Jeroen Homan
In clear and impacting typography, this site screams out its purpose distinctly. In today’s fast-lane crowd of web-surfers, such clear and impacting titles are a must-have for a captivating and inviting website. This of course, is the case as long as the amount of content allows for this.

DBA Products
An important part of capturing your reader’s attention is in engaging in a conversation. When one reads, “Think before you write” a first reaction is to wonder about what is actually meant by that phrase. Firstly, attention is captured. Secondly, a reader eye is lead to the bottom left corner where they can view a video to learn more.

Clever and Poignant

Not every billboard is meant to be humorous, however, almost all strive in some way to get a point across in a not-so-ordinary fashion. Consider the last few advertisements you’ve seen. If they were selling toothpaste, did the ad simply state “Buy this Toothpaste” or was there something creative and direct to get you to remember that particular brand?

In Web design, the same principle can be applied. With the hundreds, if not thousands, of websites we’re exposed to overall, trends can be seen which are all too often followed. But because the Web is ever changing, simply following trends can lead to a site becoming outdated the moment it’s published.

How can this be avoided? Once again, we can look back at billboard advertisements. What makes many of them effective is their ability to deliver something creative, or other than what the average person was expecting to see.

Tea Round
Complete with high-quality images, Tea Round’s website captures attention, while incorporating a creative tagline.

Spring: Supporting Biodiversity
This particular tagline is effective because it engages you with a question. Notice how the question is not “Do you support biodiversity?” but rather “What will you do to support biodiversity?” which places the reader in a position to feel as though they need to take action!

Tapbots
Another element to creating memorable billboard-style web designs, is the product or service itself. Short and snappy names are just as, if not more important, than the tagline. “Calcbot” is much easier to say and much more memorable than something like “Calculator Application for iPhone.”

Pointy
Featuring a vibrant color scheme and typestyle, Pointy successfully merges creative typography with a compelling and challenging headline. Along with the headline is a clear next action for the reader to take: “Let’s talk”.

Powerfully Branded

Though it’s already been touched a bit thus far, branding is another important piece to powerful Web design which deserves further attention. As with the toothpaste example, a billboard’s purpose may in the end be to generate sales, but just as important is the building of the brand the company is advertising. After all, you can get dozens of different brands of toothpaste, just as there are a multitude of of websites out there, so how is one among the crowd to be remembered? Building a brand through a Web design is the very mark or entity visitors remember you by.

Nike®
Showing the importance of subtle repetition, Nike® combines a creative display of their shoes, while giving viewers multiple views of their logo.

McCafé®
With every cup featuring the McDonald’s® and McCafé® logo, a viewer can be grabbed by the quality of the product, while remembering the brand correlating to it.

Coca-Cola®
The Coca-Cola&reg website is a billboard in action. Complete with the clean logo and bottle, with the clear and simple tagline, the brand is very easy to remember.

What Does a Brand Have to do with a Website Anyway?

Even if the website you’re developing doesn’t have the sole purpose of making money, a brand is still very important. Brands are essential for goading visitors to come back time and time again. Consider some of the recent advertisements you’ve seen. If there is a company you know and love, would you say you’re much more apt to spend time looking at that advertisement, as oppose to the dozens of others you’ve never seen before, or the ones that don’t interest you? The same applies for websites.

Eye-catching, yet tactful

There are countless sites on the web that will undoubtedly catch your attention, but only for the worse. Poor, outdated design, or a heap of flashing animated gifs will only increase your bounce-rate. Appealing sites achieve a balance between capturing reader’s attention and providing an adequate amount of useful information. Something to keep in mind: the design is a key piece of your website, but if it distracts away from the aimed content, it no longer serves its purpose!

Megumi
With jaw-dropping elegance and simplicity, this web design effectively brands their name, gives a brief tour, all while keeping the design clean and clear.

MailChimp
MailChimp’s website design is bold and clean, and it sticks to a consistent color scheme. Bright, complimenting colors are used while making the main content readable.

Row to the Pole
Still retaining a subdued and clean typestyle and color scheme, this site is still able to feature a commanding headline. Communication, clarity, and balanced design are all utilized exceptionally on this layout.

Clean, Simple and Straight to the point

Of course, one of the options is also as simple as simplicity. Not to say we cannot be creative in our delivery, but a saturation of text and images, especially on a home page, can motivate our viewers to click that back button! Here we’ll take a look at some good billboard-style websites that have captured the essence of simplicity to attract readers:

Less
Less has a clean and well-designed interface. Complete with a clever tagline, this application shows you a screenshot of exactly what they’re offering to you. It doesn’t get much clearer than this.

Courier Mac App
Complete with a well crafted icon, Courier clearly depicts their application with cool, soft colors, yet elegantly displaying the showcased application. The catchy subtitle also assists with remembering the name. Something to take note of as well is the fact that the “download” and “purchase” buttons are clearly displayed at the top of the page.

We Are Omazing
With a simplistic approach, this site integrates the imagery and style into the tagline. Branding is in effect as a memorable name is complimented with readable design.

Clarity and Contrast

Pivotal to any design, good contrast is a must. While subtle typefaces and graphics have their place in design, strong contrast is important to quickly direct a reader’s attention or get them to remember something particular. If viewers have to hunt around for what you do or what you offer – more than likely they will not stick around for long. Make it easy for your readers to know what you’re about from the very beginning.

Charles Elena
Don’t be afraid to go big with your text. This site sports an effectively large Sans-Serif font to grab the attention of its readers and to get them to remember what they do. The design isn’t necessarily strong and vivid, but the message is communicated very clearly.

Live Books
There are many different features listed on Live Book’s website, but one thing that’s executed exceptionally well is its clarity. There’s no mystery here, you know exactly what they offer.

Conclusion

In an age where advertisements saturate our market, it becomes all the more visible of the need for creative and effective design. As we’ve explored here, good design goes beyond making things look nice, or following trends, but rather effectively capturing the audience of those whom we wish to view the site. In the end, what action viewers do, or do not take, can come down to the finest details of the decisions made by the Web developer.

Feel free to share your opinions or experiences in the comment section below!

Bonus Billboard Template Download

In addition to the concepts explored here, you can download your free billboard website/image template for displaying your billboard-style design. Place any 440px wide image into the code provided, or modify it yourself for a great way to display your images. See some samples below:

Download the template for free

• download the PSD template (20 Mb, .zip)
• download HTML with CSS (+ a Web ready version of the billboard image)

(ik) (vf)

© Thomas McGee for Smashing Magazine, 2010. | Permalink | Post a comment | Add to del.icio.us | Digg this | Stumble on StumbleUpon! | Tweet it! | Submit to Reddit | Forum Smashing Magazine
Post tags: advertisement, audience, billboard, commercial, showcases, tagline

AT&T launches health care business

New AT&T ForHealth division will tap into wireless and cloud-based services to help people electronically monitor their own health and let doctors more securely store medical records online.

Google Docs may soon offer cloud printing, device syncing

Blog site reveals source code behind Google Docs showing that cloud printing, device syncing, and third-party apps may be coming soon.

AT&T launches health care business

New AT&T ForHealth division will tap into wireless and cloud-based services to help people electronically monitor their own health and let doctors more securely store medical records online.

Apple Has Already Won the Flash-HTML5 War

A majority of web video is now HTML5-ready, according to new research from MeFeedia, showing that web standards — and Apple — are winning the day when it comes to how video is delivered and viewed online. The research shows that the amount of video viewable in an HTML5 video player has doubled in the last five months and now accounts for 54 percent of all video content online.

It’s important to note that HTML5 video is not replacing Flash video on the web, but augmenting it; most HTML5 videos today are available through a universal embed code that auto-detects the device requesting the video and serves up the appropriate version. That means for most of these videos, there are at least two versions — one Flash and one HTML5  – stored online.

It’s not only HTML5-ready web browsers that are pushing the envelope; it’s a multitude of mobile devices, which have caused publishers to rethink the formats for delivering online videos. The biggest proponent in the move to HTML5 video has been Apple, which refused to support Adobe’s Flash on its iOS devices — including the iPhone and iPad — meaning that publishers that wanted to have videos on those devices would have to turn to standards-based, in-browser delivery.

The launch of the iPad, in particular, has been instrumental in leading this change. Despite the iPhone being HTML5-only for years, the amount of video available through the nascent web standard in January was just 10 percent. But owing to the iPad’s larger screen real estate and its propensity to be used as a video consumption device, many more publishers were forced to jump on board. At the time it was launched, just one-quarter of web video was available in an HTML5 video player. Now it’s up to more than half of all web videos.

The iPad has been the biggest driver of HTML5 video, but all mobile devices should benefit from the change. Despite the fact that newer Android-based devices come with Flash pre-installed, theoretically giving them access to all the web’s video, our own tests have shown that it’s not always a great experience. In fact, sometimes it’s shockingly bad.

While launching the video in a separate Flash player might help, Flash is still a processor hog and mobile devices don’t really have the gigahertz, nor the spare battery power, to keep Flash happy. HTML5, which delivers video natively (without extra software) is leaner. That’s bad news for Adobe, which has been banking on embedding the Flash player into mobile and connected TV devices. But if a native HTML5 implementation is available for most videos online, it might be smarter for those videos to be delivered in HTML5 than in Flash. Why waste cycles and power if a device doesn’t need to?

It seems that even Adobe has conceded this point, recently rolling out an HTML5 video player widget that serves up standards-based video to devices that don’t support Flash. The widget works by trying to serve up HTML5 video, but defaults to Flash when the standard isn’t supported. With mobile viewing growing in importance, that delivery scenario may be the future for most web video, which leaves Adobe Flash hanging on by its fingernails (or rather, a widget).

To learn more about Adobe’s plans for HTML5, come see CTO Kevin Lynch at this year’s NewTeeVee Live on Nov. 10 in San Francisco.

Image courtesy of Flickr user Cameron Russell.

Related content on GigaOM Pro: (subscription required)

• Mobile Operators’ Strategies for Connected Devices
• How to Market Your iPhone App — A Developer’s Guide
• How the Cloud Can Help Carriers Sell Content

India Government Unveils Android Tablet Prototype Cloud Computer predicts $10 to 1.2 Billion People

NEW VIDEO WITH SPECS HERE www.youtube.com PLEASE SHARE AND EMBED UPDATED GLOBAL NEWS WORD ON THE STREET RUMOR IS TO BE ANDROID BASED India Government Unveils Android Tablet Cloud Computer $10 may go to 1.2 Billion People in India Computers Internet Computing Breaking Global News Worldwide World Unnamed prototype possible code name Karma unnamed device prototype dropping to $20 and possibly getting as low as $10. Android Linux-based computer tablet Web browser multimedia player PDF reader Wi-Fi camera cameras webcam video conferencings2GB of RAM and on the cloud plus memory card and USB ports utilizing YouTube for education and social networking Indian Institute of Technology co-design motherboards Low Cost access –Cum-Computing Device Unveiled by Shri Kapil Sibal 17:31 IST The Union Minister for human Resource Development, Shri Kapil Sibal unveiled a low cost computing-cum-access device, here today. The price of the device exhibited today is expected to be around $35 per piece, gradually dropping down to $20 and ultimately to $10 a piece. Since this effort of continuous reduction in price and enhancement in capabilities would require a constant endeavour for R&D, IIT Rajasthan and some other IITs and technical institutions are setting up research teams to cover a wide range of issues in achieving our ultimate goal in terms of price and quality. The three cardinal principles of the Education Policy viz., access, equity and quality could be served well by providing …

Author: SBARTSTV
Duration: 215
Published: 2010-07-24 05:39:26
India Government Unveils Android Tablet Prototype Cloud Computer predicts $10 to 1.2 Billion People

Access

Apple TV, connected TVs create more cord-cutting worries for pay-TV operators

That dark cloud on the horizon is the storm clouds building around the launches of Google TV and Apple TV, and like all good storms, it’s kicking up some big winds in advance of it arrival. A new report from Strategy Analytics says that 13 percent of Americans “are very likely” to cut the cord to their pay-TV service in the next 12 months, and forecast that that number could be 20 percent or more in another 12 months.

The reasons? Value and choice.

“We just surveyed 2,000 American households,” said Strategy Analytics researcher Jia Wu, “And we found that the perceived value of pay-TV is very low. In fact, only 20 percent said their service exceeds or greatly exceeds their expectations.”

Wu said that, increasingly, consumers don’t want to bundle services, they want to choose what channels they pay for. “Interestingly, 18 percent of the people we surveyed said that they would be willing to pay more to have a la carte. People want the flexibility of choosing what content they want, they don’t want the crap.”

Wu said that with the arrival of Apple TV and its rental service through iTunes, the potential for cord cutting to accelerate beyond the 13 percent mark is very real. Add connected TVs to the equation and up to 1-in-5 consumers might begin to consider dropping their pay-TV providers.

“With something like a Sony TV, you don’t have to have a set-top box, you don’t have to make any confusing connections, it’s all right there,” he said. “And, while older viewers might be slow to change their habits, younger users already are getting their content from other places than traditional pay-TV. It’s just another shake out of the pay-TV industry.”

Over-the-top delivery of content is something that younger Americans already have a lot of experience with, and they’re likely to use it even more as they age.

Ben Piper, Director in the Strategy Analytics Digital Consumer Practice, said it’s key that service providers not ignore the changing habits of younger viewers.

“Today’s teenagers are tomorrow’s customers,” he said. “While it may represent only a relatively small percentage today, we anticipate the number of cord cutters to increase going forward.”

Younger Americans consume and value content in a way far different from their parents’ generation, and have little regard for how content is delivered, according to the report.

“Like the music industry prior to iTunes and the iPod, the online premium video market still lacks a perfect provider that can connect a service with a device to create a great user experience,” added Wu. “With its new and improved TV product, Apple is now preparing itself to repeat the success it has had in the music business in the rapidly growing online premium video market.”

Related articles:
Yankee Group says cord cutting will accelerate
Cord cutting: Numbers up, and accelerating as more turn to web
Report: Online video success forces strategic shift in cable, IPTV
Canadians turn to online video from Pay TV
Can TV Everywhere stop the cord-cutting trend?