Archive for August 8th, 2006
So first AOL announces it’s going free, then a few days later, a few employees decide it would be cool if academic researchers could pore through the search data of 657,000 Americans. Brilliant! Of course, bloggers picked up on it, and then the media, so AOL pulled it down and apologized. But even though AOL didn’t release any names with the data — just ID numbers — that doesn’t mean that certain people, say, the New York Times can start putting some names to numbers. Enter AOL searcher 4417749, a 62-year-old widow named Thelma Arnold. “It did not take much investigating to follow (the) data trial,” reported the Times, which listed (with her permission) her searches: “numb fingers” and “60 single men” and “dog that urinates on everything.” It’s enough for one privacy rights group to call search data “a ticking privacy time bomb.” Should search companies be allowed to retain this information organized by user?
August 8th, 2006
Bouyed by bloggers and even his own YouTube group, upstart millionaire Ned Lamont beat Senator Joe Lieberman in the Connecticut Democratic primary. Not only was Lieberman outmaneuvered online, his site went down in flames on Tuesday — inaccessible for most of the day. At first Lieberman’s campaign said they were hacked in a denial-of-service attack — and aides blamed Lamont supporters, even calling for a criminal investigation. But later in the day, Lamont’s chief blogger said that Lieberman’s folks hadn’t anticipated all the election day traffic, and the site crashed naturally under all the load. “They use a shared server with 72 other sites. They pay their server $15 a month for 10 gigabytes. We’ve gone through more than 10 gigabytes in the last 24 hours,” blogger Tim Tagaris said. Whatever the case, it’s clear bloggers had a major impact. Slate goes as far as proclaiming that web videos dismantled the Lieberman campaign. As we move closer to November’s critical midterm elections, you can bet this campaign will have every candidate reinforcing their internet strategy — an area of focus that’s officially become even more important than TV. More…
Read the full post August 8th, 2006
It’s about time. Developments of the last few months have made it clear what those of us in the media conspiracy have long known: anything goes! We hold the American public to high standards. Too high if you ask me. Too high for us to live up to, certainly. So it is with great relief that the media is finally coming right out and admitting that it’s too damned hard to be ethical. Do-as-we-preach-and-will-kill-you-in-the-media-if-you-don’t, not as we do. Read on. I wrote many of the following paragraphs.
Read the full post August 8th, 2006
Dan Gillmor gathered a gaggle of blogging powerhouses at Harvard Law School yesterday for a very unusual event. In an age marketing overhype and media mega shows (although E3 is promising to cut back a little), coughing up a twenty at the door for grub to sit in a room with no panel, no speakers, no sizzle, makes for a pretty unconventional convention alone. Check out Doc Searl’s notes and the podcasts to see what came out of what may one day be considered a historical summit.
August 8th, 2006
RCN has announced its plans to roll out a 30-channel tier of Hispanic programming on its cable offering. Considering the Hispanic market’s continued growth in media, the move is a smart one. Other internationally-themed tiers are also in the works.
August 8th, 2006
Cable TV thrives in the summer months with original programming. Just look at TiVo’s list of the top season pass shows this month. Rescue Me (FX) tops the list, followed by The Closer (TNT) and my personal favorite, Entourage (HBO). Fox also makes a strong showing with Prison Break, So You Think You Can Dance and Bones. But CBS is the only other broadcast network with a show in the top 10 with Big Brother 7.
August 8th, 2006
Actors are pushing for royalties every time their video commercials play on new platforms, so AFTRA, SAG and the Joint Policy Committee on Broadcast Talent Union Relations (JPC) have formed a “new media committee” to try to find a new compensation system. In the meantime, the unions have come to an agreement for a contract that will give actors a bump in overall pay in exchange for advertisers to have more “flexibility” repurposing them for the web and mobile. When the new contract comes up in 2008, the committee will recommend a new compensation structure that covers new platforms.
August 8th, 2006
It all comes down to whether YouTube creates an environment that fosters the infringement of copyrighted material, explains this Information Week article. But it’s more clear cut for YouTubers who knowingly upload copyrighted material: that’s an illegal act. The question is, what’s going to happen next, especially as YouTube explores ways to monetize its content, some of which is copyrighted material. If you were running YouTube right now — paying out huge costs — what would you do…?
August 8th, 2006
Sprint Nextel announced today it’s planning on spending up to $3 billion over the next two years to build a high-speed wireless network based on WiMax technology. “Imagine accessing YouTube.com and MySpace.com literally on the fly,” Sprint Chief Executive Gary Forsee told a news conference (pictured). Also to consider, WiMax enables higher-speed uploading which will take user-created content to the next level (better quality video uploaded on location). Sprint aims to launch advanced wireless broadband services in trial markets by the end of 2007 and be available to as many as 100 million people in 2008.
Plus: MobiTV announces support for WiMax
August 8th, 2006
Dell has signed up to sponsor CNN Exchange, CNN.com’s new user created content section. The company will get a video pre-roll spot on each user clip starting later in August (all clips are pre-screened before they appear online) in a sponsorship that runs through October, as well as sponsorship and ad opportunities elsewhere on the site. Not even two weeks old, CNN Exchange has just a handful of video clips and photos — which I imagine will take off in a hurry once it’s promoted on the air during a major story.
August 8th, 2006
In effort to boost its capabilities in delivering mobile music, Nokia says it’s buying Seattle-based Loudeye, a digital music distributor. “Music is now the number one service for selling advanced mobile phones — it has been cameras, and in the future it might be television — but in 2006 music has become the service phone makers have been concentrating on,” said FIM Securities analyst Erik Sucksdorff. Interesting factoid: Nokia said it sold more than 15 million music-enabled phones in April to June, roughly double the amount Apple’s iPod’s and making it the world’s largest manufacturer of digital music players.
August 8th, 2006
In absolute terms, Yahoo News is the undisputed leader in the category, attracting 31.2 million users in June, according to comScore Media Metrix. The next biggest sites, MSNBC, AOL, and CNN all slid while Yahoo grew 13 % on a year-over-year basis. Overall, 54% of the total internet audience visited a news site in June, a 4% growth over last year.
August 8th, 2006
The Huffington Post has secured $5 million in venture financing, which it will use to expand staff and offer more video content, taking the site out of the pure blog play arena.
August 8th, 2006
