Donncha: WP Super Cache 0.9.9.7

WP Super Cache is a full page caching plugin for WordPress that makes your website run much faster!

I’ve just released a new version and the biggest change in this one is the addition of Content Delivery Network (CDN) support thanks to Mark Kubacki who allowed me to integrate his OSSDL CDN Off Linker plugin. (Please go visit his blog and say thank you if you use this feature!)

The CDN support simply rewrites images, CSS and Javascript files so they point at a different hostname. That hostname can be another virtual host on your own server (aka “Poor Man’s CDN”) pointing at your WordPress install or a fully fledged CDN. If your CDN supports “origin pull” then all the files on your server will be copied there as they are requested by visitors. Otherwise you’ll have to transfer the files over manually.

Apart from that, bugs have been fixed, a few features have been tweaked including the uninstall script which has been streamlined somewhat.

I also added links (on the “Easy” settngs page) to some plugins and tools you may find useful in making your site run faster.

Problems? Go to the forum and someone may already have had that problem and solved it. If not, post there and you’ll get a reply.

Related Posts

• WP Super Cache 0.8.4, the garbage collector
• WP Super Cache 0.8.7
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Fixed rate shipping module available at GetShopped

Available at GetShopped.org now, the fixed rate shipping module allows local and small businesses to charge with fixed shipping rates. Special and custom shipping options are available, including adding separate locations. As explained at GetShopped:

…for example if your business is located in Manhattan you may offer free shipping in Manhattan, but charge a little fee for the delivery in the rest of New York. Or if your business is in Italy you may want to charge extra for delivery to islands like Sicily and Sardinia.

You can download this plugin from the WordPress Plugin Directory. Keep in mind, you will need the WP e-Commerce plugin as well.

If you are a small or local business selling products online, you need to check this one out!

Pentax Swallows Paint and Robots, Vomits Camera

Somebody at Pentax has just plain lost it. Here you see the forthcoming limited-edition K-r, a custom version of the regular 12 megapixel DSLR. It seems to have been built from eye-searingly bright children’s building blocks, and somebody has even wedged a robot-head into the hot-shoe.

Pentax has a history of colorful experimentation, from the “world’s reddest DSLR” to the rainbow-colored K-x which “requires sunglasses to use”. But with this Korejanairobomoderu, or Korejanai robot edition, Pentax has reached a new high. And I mean “high” in the drug-smoking sense.

Other than its candy-coated shell (and decapitated robot head), the camera is unchanged from the stock K-r. It does have a matching lens, though, a special-edition version of the 35mm ƒ2.4, which equates roughly to the length of a 50mm when used on a crop-frame body.

The price for this Willy Wonka camera will be ¥99,800, or $1,190, and only 100 will be made (that’s precisely 100 too many). Pre-ordering opens at 12PM on December 24th, for delivery in January.

K-r colorama [Pentax]

See Also:

• Bright-Red Pentax K-r Fails to Stir Passion
• Pentax Hides Bland New Retro Digicams in Groovy Getup
• Rainbow-Colored Pentax K-x Requires Sunglasses to Use
• Pentax K-x: World's Reddest DSLR?

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

Microsoft Giving Up On Silverlight, Joining HTML5 Party

We now have further confirmation that Microsoft is giving up on its Silverlight rich Internet application platform. Bob Muglia, Microsoft’s president in charge of server and tools, told ZDNet that the company is “shifting away” from Silverlight as a cross-platform development framework, and pushing the HTML5 web standard instead.

There’s been plenty of evidence to suggest this was the case. After all, with the launch of Internet Explorer 9, Microsoft has fully embraced and touted many of HTML5′s features. But it doesn’t just stop there; Microsoft will be leveraging HTML5 for the latest version of its Bing search engine, and is using H.264-encoded HTML5 video in lieu of Silverlight Smooth Streaming for delivery of live video on its Xbox 360 game console.

Microsoft will continue to develop and lean on Silverlight, especially for application development on its recently launched Windows Phone 7 operating system for mobile devices. However, Muglia told ZDNet, “HTML is the only true cross-platform solution for everything, including (Apple’s) iOS platform.”

That Microsoft would align itself with Apple, especially in the embrace of a web standard, might seem peculiar to some. After all, the two software makers have been battling for decades in the PC space, and now are bumping heads in mobile as Microsoft tries to offer up a compelling alternative to Apple’s iPhone.

But it also makes sense that Microsoft would begin de-emphasizing Silverlight as a cross-platform development platform. Despite some of the advances Microsoft was able to push with its development, including HTTP and adaptive bit rate streaming, it wasn’t able to dethrone Flash as the de facto rich Internet application and video platform on the web. And with the emergence of HTML5, it was no longer a matter of playing second fiddle to Adobe, but lagging behind a web standard that was also being rapidly adopted.

To see what Adobe CTO Kevin Lynch has to say about adoption of HTML5 and its positioning against Flash, come see him speak at NewTeeVee Live on November 10 in San Francisco.

Related content on GigaOM Pro:

• HTML5’s a Game-Changer for Web Apps
• Three Reasons Over-The-Top TV Apps Will Beat Big-Cable
• How to Market Your iPhone App: A Developer’s Guide

Who Will Redbox Choose as Its Digital Partner?

Expectations were high that Redbox would announce its strategy for digital delivery on today’s Coinstar earnings call, and those who believed that the company would lay out its plan must have been disappointed. While the company confirmed that it would go to market with a digital offering in 2011, and said it would do so with a partner, the DVD kiosk company had little to say about the specifics of what such a plan would look like.

Coinstar CEO Paul Davis said that the company spent a good long time debating whether or not to build its own digital offering or to find another company to partner with. But in the end Redbox decided that the partner strategy was the way to go, based on its ability to roll out a digital offering quickly from a technological perspective, as well as a partner’s ability to offer up a wide range of digital content without the DVD kiosk firm having to do a lot of heavy lifting in striking content deals.

While Redbox declined to name which companies it was in discussions with, it did talk about the reasons why it would be an attractive partner for any of those companies. “Consumers have told us that they are hungry for [digital content],” Davis told analysts on the call. Not just that, but Redbox customers are well-positioned to take advantage of a digital offering, with 91 percent of them having broadband connections at home. Finally, Redbox said its strong brand and extensive physical presence would also offer up a opportunity for any potential partners.

That said, it’s not clear whether Redbox would roll out a subscription service to compete against Netflix, as has been widely rumored, or whether it would pursue a digital VOD strategy to compete against rentals from iTunes and other digital storefronts. That strategy would primarily depend on whatever partner it chooses and which options are available through such a deal. With that in mind, these are probably the top potential partners for a Redbox digital offering:

Walmart

Walmart and Redbox have long been partners in the physical DVD world, with the big box retailer playing host to a number of its kiosks around the country. It would only make sense for Walmart to extend that partnership to the digital realm. Wal-mart purchased Vudu earlier this year, and the digital video subsidiary has been mainly quiet ever since. Vudu has distribution on a number of connected consumer electronics devices, and just announced today that it has struck a deal to bring Hollywood movies to the Boxee Box. With Vudu back out of its quiet mode, it wouldn’t be surprising for Walmart to leverage that asset to help out Redbox with a white-label or co-branded offering from Vudu.

Pros: A wide distribution on CE devices, a strong partnership with Redbox already.

Cons: Walmart has struggled with digital offerings in the past.

Amazon

Ever since Amazon rolled out its video on demand offering, it has struggled to gain traction in the digital marketplace, mainly playing second fiddle to Apple’s iTunes. Even so, Amazon has managed to snag some consumer electronics deals, landing on TiVo DVRs, as well as Roku broadband set-top boxes and Google TV devices from Sony and Logitech. Striking a Redbox partnership would go a long way to expanding its market clout, but it might not give Redbox the flexibility it desires from a distribution point of view.

Pros: Quick, easy access to a library of 40,000 on-demand titles.

Cons: Somewhat limited CE distribution.

Sonic Solutions

Sonic could be the dark horse in Redbox’s partner hunt; while it doesn’t have the instant name recognition that Walmart or Amazon have, it’s providing behind-the-scenes help to a number of digital storefronts already, including those from Best Buy and Blockbuster. The owner of the RoxioNow video purchase and rental offering already is embedded on a number of CE devices and would be able to turn on a branded Redbox offering pretty quickly. At the same time, a Redbox-branded storefront and content library would be competing directly against similar offerings from other Sonic partners.

Pros: Wide distribution, potential for a quick turnaround on a Redbox-branded storefront.

Cons: Direct competition against other Sonic partners.

Related content on GigaOM Pro: (subscription required)

• Apple’s Path to the Living Room
• The Return of DRM
• The Quest to Monetize File Sharing

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
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DVD Sales Down, Digital Delivery Growing

I just read some interesting stuff from the Digital Entertainment Group. It seems that DVD sales are dropping fast, perhaps going the way of the 8-track soon  as digital delivery and Blu-Ray are gaining in consumer confidence and adoption. That means, all your online video efforts are far more important now than they have ever [...]

Sonic Solutions’ OTT platform RoxioNow built into new SoCs from Renesas Electronics

Sonic Solutions (NASDAQ: SNIC) says its RoxioNow entertainment platform will be available on new system-on-chips from Renesas Electronics Corp., which will allow consumers to stream a broad catalog of premium digital entertainment, including the newest movie releases, on next-generation connected HDTVs and Blu-ray Disc players from a range of manufacturers.

The RoxioNow platform has been selected to power digital entertainment delivery for a range of companies including Best Buy, Blockbuster, Dell, HP, Lionsgate, and Sears/Kmart, and is available on a broad variety of consumer electronics devices.

SoC devices for digital home electronics is a key area of focus for Renesas Electronics, said Masao Hirasawa, associate general manager of Home Multimedia SoC Business Division, Renesas Electronics Corporation. “Our SoCs enable a range of device controls, audio/video functions, as well as Internet connectivity capabilities, which will be further enhanced with the integration of direct support for digital entertainment services powered by RoxioNow.”

For more:
– see this release

Related articles:
Sonic Solutions to deliver movie downloads for Sears, Kmart
Boxee to Team with Sonic Solutions on Premium Content Streaming

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?