SBC Will Offer Access to Some Yahoo Services via Television
More convergence. This time involving television and wireless access to some Yahoo services.
I’m wouldn’t doubt that Yahoo television search (keyword access to actual television programs) and another venue for Overture advertising, especially local ads, is also in the works.
Jeffry Bartash reports in the article: SBC and Yahoo team up in TV, wireless that the companies have announced a deal where customers can acess some Yahoo services via their tv set and wireless devices. Look for it to begin sometime in 2005.
“Customers want communications that revolve around them, not the other way around,” said Edward Whitacre, SBC’s chairman, in a statement.
Instead of transferring an address book from one device to another, for example, a customer would create a list in his SBC Yahoo account and be able to access it from any device — laptops, wireless phones or even TV sets.
Similarly, customers could check e-mail, voice mail or faxes from any one device.
Once SBC rolls out its television service, customers could set up programs to record from their work computer or even from a cell phone. They could also set parental controls from any device to monitor their children’s Web-surfing, viewing and listening habits.
“This alliance advances the SBC strategy to evolve the ‘digital home’ into the ‘digital lifestyle,’ ” Whitacre said. “What you see on your SBC Yahoo Internet home page is coming to a TV set or wireless phone near you.”
SBC and Yahoo have partnered on a broadband service for several years.
More in this news release.
A few weeks ago, Nathan at InsideGoogle speculated about how Google might be developing “television” applications. I also posted about several tools that currently allow you to search tv content.