The Boston Globe

Michael Cai, Internet analyst for Parks Associates in Dallas, said that Verizon sees online gamers as a crucial market for advanced Internet services. ``The core gamer segment is known to be heavy digital media consumers," said Cai, with a big appetite for digital music and video as well as games. This makes them likely customers for Verizon's DSL broadband Internet service.

From the article "The big 10 online games," by Hiawatha Bray 

Women make up 59 per cent of all consumers who play games on cellphones, according to Parks Associates, a research firm. And they drive more than 60 per cent of the revenue in almost every genre of mobile games, according to research firm Telephia Inc. The exception is in action and adventure, where men are the chief players.

From the article "Mobile gaming a woman's world," by Kim-Mai Cutler.

Michael Cai, director of broadband and gaming research at Parks Associates, a research firm in Dallas, said that Carbonite doesn't face much competition. ''Right now the online storage and backup market is still nascent," he said. ''There aren't that many subscribers yet."

But Cai said Carbonite won't stand much of a chance if major Internet providers like Verizon Communications Inc. offer online backups to their subscribers.

From the article "Hub start-up will back up data f ...read more

In video games, cable companies see a lucrative business with several options for profit. The video game industry generated $12 billion in revenue last year, according to Parks Associates, a Dallas market research firm. Most significant to cable companies was the $1.1 billion gamers spent on online services like subscriptions to Microsoft's Xbox Live.

That's expected to grow to $3.9 billion by 2009, according to the data. Michael Cai, Parks' director of broadband and gaming, sa ...read more

By year's end, RCN Corp., which provides broadband, cable TV, and phone service in parts of Boston and 15 suburbs, plans to begin selling its own similar system, called MegaWatch. For an upfront charge of around $100 and a monthly service fee of $10, RCN technicians would install security webcams that would connect to a standard RCN WiFi, or wireless fidelity, home networking system to give people a way of looking in on their homes or children or pets.

"This is definitely a ser ...read more

Parks Associates, a Dallas market-research firm, puts the figure even higher, reporting 42 percent of US broadband households downloaded music at least once a week. That was up from 27 percent in 2002. Parks also estimates that 60 percent of people who use broadband Net connections at home have created personal music libraries on their computers.

From the article "Moving music off your PC? New gadgets abound" By Peter J. Howe