January 29, 2007

Within five years...

The Internet is set to revolutionize television within five years, due to an explosion of online video content and the merging of PCs and TV sets, Microsoft chairman Bill Gates said on Saturday.

"I'm stunned how people aren't seeing that with TV, in five years from now, people will laugh at what we've had," he told business leaders and politicians at the World Economic Forum.

The rise of high-speed Internet and the popularity of video sites like Google Inc.'s YouTube has already led to a worldwide decline in the number hours spent by young people in front of a TV set.
[Internet to revolutionize TV in 5 years: Gates - Reuters - 01-27-07]

January 21, 2007

When you like it enough to share...

The deal was struck between Veoh, the internet TV operator in which Mr Eisner holds a significant stake, and United Talent Agency, which represents actors such as Johnny Depp, Ben Stiller and Harrison Ford.

The channel, which will be supported by advertising, will showcase new talent in an effort to discover the next Hollywood star. It will be open and available to all Veoh users to submit, view and share content.

The project also brings Hollywood together with the amateur film-making talent producing online video on user-generated content websites such as Google’s YouTube.
[Eisner strikes internet TV deal - Financial Times - 01-17-07]

January 07, 2007

It's a story about community and collaboration on a scale never seen before. It's about the cosmic compendium of knowledge Wikipedia and the million-channel people's network YouTube and the online metropolis MySpace. It's about the many wresting power from the few and helping one another for nothing and how that will not only change the world, but also change the way the world changes.
[Time's Person of the Year: You - TIME - 12-13-06]

"At the end of the month, there will be significant layoffs at the magazine division... In the last six months, the huge rate base of Time magazine has been cut by almost 20 percent, the street date has been moved, and at the end of the month, the standard editorial model -- a centralized, well-paid cadre processing every bit of copy that comes in the door -- will be kaput..."

September 17, 2006

"Never trust a computer you cannot lift." -- the "insanely great" talking MAC, with scrolling text!

September 17, 2006

July 21, 2006

After reading Sharon Cobb's "Top Ten List Of Mail To Throw In The Trash," it made me realize how plagued my inbox used to be with spam. I think she's talking about postal mail since I didn't see any penis enlargement stuff listed, but it got me thinking. I use Gmail, and I have to say it does a great job filtering that crap out all by itself. They always add new features, too. It has a calendar function that just blows me away.

At any rate, if you want to try Google's gmail, let me know in comments, and I'll shoot you an invitation.

July 20, 2006

(via Sharon Cobb) - Check out the music webcasting from the new Music Row Democrats. One song, All Gore Lives On My Street by Monkey Bowl, made me smile. Lots of familiar voices expressing outrage at President Bush. I'll try to find lyrics.

July 19, 2006

Yahoo sheds $10,400,000,000.00 in one day.

Here's Yahoo's problem as Wall Street sees it: the owner of the Internet's most trafficked Web site keeps raking in more money as advertisers continue to shift their spending online, but it still lags well behind search engine leader Google Inc. And now it looks like Yahoo won't be closing that gap as soon as management had promised.
[Yahoo Stock Falls to Biggest One-Day Drop - AP - 07-19-06]

YouTube gets the hits.

YouTube, the leader in Internet video search, said on Sunday viewers have are now watching more than 100 million videos per day on its site, marking the surge in demand for its "snack-sized" video fare.
[YouTube Boasts of 100 Million Daily Viewings - FOXNews - 07-18-06]

YouTube gets sued.

Robert Tur says video he shot of the beating of trucker Reginald Denny during the 1992 Los Angeles riots was posted at YouTube without his permission and viewed more than 1,000 times. Tur says in his lawsuit, filed Friday in U.S. District Court, that YouTube is profiting from his work while hurting his ability to license his video.
[YouTube sued over copyright infringement - ZDNet - 07-19-06]

Myspace claims top of the net.

Online teen hangout MySpace.com ranked as the No. 1 U.S. Web site last week, displacing Yahoo Inc.'s top-rated e-mail gateway and Google Inc.'s search site, Internet tracking firm Hitwise said on Tuesday.

News Corp.'s MySpace accounted for 4.46 percent of all U.S. Internet visits for the week ending July 8, pushing it past Yahoo Mail for the first time and outpacing the home pages for Yahoo, Google and Microsoft's MSN Hotmail.
[MySpace gains top ranking of US Web sites - Reuters - 07-11-06]

July 14, 2006

... sitting in a tree. K-I-S-S-I-N-G.

"How can we be of service to each other?" asked Moonves, after Hurley gave the CBS boss - who was joined by Brian Bedol, the head of CBS' College Sports Television, and an Allen & Co. banker - an overview of YouTube.

Hurley, a long-haired 29-year-old who is one of the main attractions for the execs of old line media firms here, said to Moonves, "We'd love to sell ads for you."

YouTube, which Hurley told Moonves yesterday streams some 100 million videos a day, recently inked a cross-promotion deal with NBC.
[TITANS OF OLD & NEW MEDIA MIX & MATCH - NYPOST - 07-14-06]

July 12, 2006

The Internets and cable were down this morning. It was weird having coffee without them, almost like having a little vacation ... where you went by yourself and just found out they don't have the Internets.

A little caffeine, Google Reader says, "Hello," and all of a sudden...

• Meredith says she's too old for the American Idol auditions coming soon.

  There goes that career option...guess I'm stuck with marrying rich.

• Big Joe On The Go recounts a time when he had hair after going to a Poison concert

  The 80's glam band Poison was in town last night and me and Nashville's newest celebrity, Greg from Buffalo Billiards (we made up) went to see them. For one night, I was 18 again.

• Sarcastro gets ready to rumble

  If you people want to be pissy about insensitive and offensive humor, I'm your huckleberry. Let's get some panties in a wad.

• TENNESSEE GUERILLA WOMEN has a roundup of rightwing news

  In Dean's words, "[T]hey're very aggressive in their effort to pursue and help their authority figure out or authority beliefs out. They will do whatever needs to be done in many regards. They will blindly follow."

July 11, 2006

My sister told me a friend of hers found out his daughter had a myspace account and succeeded in having it deleted. He might as well set fire to her journal, photo albums, phonebook, emails and digital record of her teenage life.

Online teen hangout MySpace.com ranked as the No. 1 U.S. Web site last week, displacing Yahoo Inc.'s top-rated e-mail gateway and Google Inc.'s search site, Internet tracking firm Hitwise said on Tuesday.

News Corp.'s MySpace accounted for 4.46 percent of all U.S. Internet visits for the week ending July 8, pushing it past Yahoo Mail for the first time and outpacing the home pages for Yahoo, Google and Microsoft's MSN Hotmail.
[MySpace gains top ranking of US Web sites - Reuters - 07-11-06]

More videos of MySpace experiences, for the lack of a better word.

• MySpace Babes: Volume 1 from Alnie.net - what?
  
• bush-myspace from killsometime.com - what?
  
• Why MySpace Sux from stinky McPooPoo pants - what?
  
• Top Ten Things NOT to Do on MySpace from some depressing aging gothic chick who has apparently figured it all out - what?
  
• MySpace Murders from still more aging gothic peeps
  

July 07, 2006

I don't know exactly what this means, but my blog has been totally farked, and somehow a lot of people are being sent here. Anyone know what this means or have a copy of the post that links here?

TotalFark.com (a site associated with Fark.com) apparently linked to an old post describing how I turn my bills into lawn fertilizer. The worms are doing great, and thanks to their appetite we have one of the best lawns in the entire neighborhood. But I wouldn't advise anyone relying on this process as a practical model for success.

December 06, 2005

Add the head of the European Publishers Council (EPC) to the growing list of ignorant industrial-aged publishers.

European publishers warned Tuesday that they cannot keep allowing Internet search engines such as Google Inc. to make money from their content. "The new models of Google and others reverse the traditional permission-based copyright model of content trading that we have built up over the years," said Francisco Pinto Balsemao, the head of the European Publishers Council, in prepared remarks for a speech at a Brussels conference.

His stance backs French news agency AFP, which is suing Google for pulling together photos and story excerpts from thousands of news Web sites.

"It is fascinating to see how these companies 'help themselves' to copyright-protected material, build up their own business models around what they have collected, and parasitically, earn advertising revenue off the back of other people's content," he said.
[Group: Online Content Cannot Remain Free - AP - 12-06-05]

Let's all do this together. Go to Google's news portal. You will clearly see thumbnails of photos and excerpts of copyrighted material the EPC views as theft. Now, marvel at your own behavior. What did you do next? If you enjoy news, you probably clicked on any story and went directly to the publisher's original work they themselves published online for the whole world to see. Very few require a subscription, but whose fault is that? Certainly not Google's.

What the hell is Francisco Pinto Balsemao's complaint here? It sounds like the same complaint Howard Kurtz has with all of us theiving readers and bloggers. Are publishers so ignorant that they can't figure out how to make money on the dramtic increase of customers showing up at their virtual door? It's no more Google's fault for directing millions of readers to a free story than it is the public library's. The EPC should be thanking Google for the traffic and hiring people that know what to do with it when it arrives.

December 02, 2005

What?

Well, it pretty much seems to be conventional wisdom: Newspapers are old, slow, tired, out of touch, boring and obsolete, and any day now we'll be getting our news from blogs and podcasts and cell phones and we can kiss those ink-smudged relics goodbye.

Or something like that.

There's just one problem with this scenario: Newspapers provide the overwhelming amount of news in this country. Washington news, investigative news, state news, local news, business news, sports news, science news, you name it. Everyone else, from Web sites to TV to magazines, poaches off newspapers. Which could create a problem if their advertising base is swallowed up by online portals and there's no revenue to pay the battalions of editors, reporters and photographers who churn out the stuff that the rest of the world feels free to borrow, steal, disparage and argue about.
[Last Throes - Washington Post - 12-02-05]

I apologize for legally borrowing an excerpt from Howard Kurtz's ink-smudged relic talk and arguing about it here, but I just read it through my FREE online Washington Post subscription. Dell, Hydroderm, Vonage and whoever else advertised on that page might appreciate it, though.

I hope Kurtz isn't expressing some fear that his writing wouldn't fetch what it's worth in digital media. The written word isn't diminished by new digital mediums and the decline of printed newspapers. I've never read as much as I have over the past 5 years, and that is thanks solely to the digital medium of the Internet. It's not my fault the Washington Post, like most industrial-age media distributors, didn't prepare for it.

For 50 cents a day, a regular Washington Post reader not only helps pay the salary of Howard Kurtz and his "battalions of editors, reporters and photographers," but also a monstrous money eating print operation, delivery trucks, and the work force necessary to distribute Kurtz's printed words every day. I'm sure the Washington Post can figure out how to get 50 cents online, put the printing press in a museum, and give poor Howard Kurtz a raise.

November 30, 2005

Who really has enough time to get to the porn and gambling on the Internets with so much work to do defending Christmas from the secularists?

Skeptics argue that even obsessive Internet use does not exact the same toll on health or family life as conventionally recognized addictions. But, mental health professionals who support the diagnosis of Internet addiction say, a majority of obsessive users are online to further addictions to gambling or pornography or have become much more dependent on those vices because of their prevalence on the Internet.
[Hooked on the Web: Help Is on the Way - New York Times - 12-01-05]

November 28, 2005

I don't know what you're reading, but I'm reading the Internets. (via Volokh)

The developments at the Tribune Company mirror those in the newspaper industry as a whole. For most big-city papers, circulation is declining, advertising is shrinking, and reporters and editors are being let go. The full extent of the crisis became apparent in May, when the Audit Bureau of Circulations reported circulation figures for 814 daily papers for the six months ending last March. Compared to the same period the year before, total daily circulation fell by 1.9 percent and Sunday circulation by 2.5 percent. Sunday circulation fell by 2 percent at The Boston Globe, 3.3 percent at the Philadelphia Inquirer, 4.7 percent at the Chicago Tribune, and 8.5 percent at the Baltimore Sun. At the Los Angeles Times, circulation fell 6.4 percent daily and 7.9 percent on Sundays. Even The Washington Post, the dominant paper in a region of strong economic growth, has suffered a 5.2 percent daily circulation decline over a two-year period.

There are a few exceptions. The New York Times and USA Today, both national newspapers, have had modest circulation gains. Even so, the New York Times Company announced in October that it was going to eliminate five hundred jobs, including forty-five in the Times newsroom and thirty-five in the newsroom of The Boston Globe. (The Globe recently announced that it was dismantling its national desk.) The Wall Street Journal has been holding its own in circulation, but its ad revenues have sharply declined.
[The End of News? - New York Review Of Books - 12-01-05]

UPDATE 10:23pm: 'What if the Internets makes us fat and stupid' and other thoughts from 1991. (via Political Animal)

Much as automobiles discourage walking, with undeniable consequences for our health and girth, textual snippets-on-demand threaten our need for the larger works from which they are extracted. Why read "Bowling Alone" — or even the shorter article upon which it builds — when you can lift a page that contains some key words? In an attempt to coax students to search inside real books rather than relying exclusively on the Web for sources, many professors require references to printed works alongside URLs. Now that those "real" full-length publications are increasingly available and searchable online, the distinction between tangible and virtual is evaporating.
[Killing the written word by snippets - LA Times - 11-28-05]