Archive for December, 2006
You’d need a lot of diamonds to afford the rights to the diamond.com name. According to DNjournal, it sold for $7.5 million this past year, making it the highest amount paid for a URL in 2006. Vodka.com, which resolves to Russian Standard vokda’s site, sold for $3 million, (a heck of a lot of money for a redirect, no?). Other big ticket names were used for annoying Google-ads-only sites: Cameras.com snapped up $1.5 million, and the $500,000 sites wrestling.com, bike.com and blue.com are just traps for searchers. Also going for a half-mil was gays.com which looks to be under construction. And this note: typosquatting was big business, too, with mortage.com requiring a mortgage-like $242,000 and forclosures.com getting $150,000. Memo to Cory: Must purchase lostremoat.com, lostreemote and lostreemotez in 2007. (Via Freakonomics Blog)
December 28th, 2006
CBS did not break into its regular programming to announce the death of President Ford on Tuesday. The news came late on the East Coast and during prime time on the West Coast. CBS went with a crawl announcing the news rather than a full-on special report. ABC and NBC ran special reports. Katie Couric is on an overseas vacation, but CBS says she is coming home to anchor the news and for any upcoming Ford coverage, possibly starting Friday. CBS’s choice reflects recent decisions by the networks to steer away from news during programming and leave it to the news channels.
December 28th, 2006
MSNBC.com has put together a year-in-review section that includes some of the best video from 2006. According to a MSNBC source, the vids are streaming in excellent numbers: 1.5 million in the first week of the section, and that’s during a slow work week when not as many people are going online. What I like about this stat is how MSNBC.com went to the well to find a creative way to use its existing material. Most stations do year-enders on-air. It makes sense to highlight those online, and even do a few different ones. Just put up the top videos from the year, and you’ll see a bump.
December 28th, 2006
I’m a huge NFL fan, and nothing makes me happier than reading a Wall Street Journal article that explains how the NFL Network is losing the battle with the cable companies. (For background, the NFL has banned local TV photographers from the sidelines and stopped local TV websites from posting video of anything shot in the stadium on game day. At the same time, they’re turning their team sites into media sites to compete with local media for coverage of the team. Hence my dislike for the league.) Anyway, back to the WSJ article. Remember the NFL Network decided to give itself 8 games this season. The idea was to convince cable companies to pay a pricey 70 cents a subscriber for the channel because viewers would hit the ceiling if they couldn’t find the games. Well, if you live in Seattle and the NFL Network has the game, a local broadcaster also carries it. So not many viewers called their cable systems, and the NFL Network’s ratings have been less than exciting. “This is the first time in a long time that the power of the NFL hasn’t been enough to create some compromise,” says media analyst Mike Trager. Aaah, you gotta love it. (WSJ sub. req.)
December 27th, 2006
The uncensored version of “Special Treat in a Box” (you know it by a slightly different name) is already the 13th most-watched video ever on YouTube. With more than seven million views, it should easily crack the top ten - and it has only been posted for a week. It is already YouTube’s most viewed clip from a traditional media outlet. Other “All Time Honors” for it so far: #2 Top Favorite, Entertainment; #40 Most Discussed; #5 Most Viewed, Entertainment-English; and a whole bunch of numbers ones for the month. Lesson: playing nice with YouTube is much better than suing YouTube. The publicity for this video (and hence, SNL) has been amazing.
December 27th, 2006
John Edwards is announcing his candidacy for the presidency on Thursday, but today his website let the cat out of the bag by launching the “Edwards 2008″ redesign a day early. Shortly later, they pulled it down. “Better a day earlier than a day late,” said an adviser. Edwards has been a friend-of-technology, so in my humble opinion, he should have broken the news online all along. Hmmm, maybe it was on purpose.
December 27th, 2006
Jakob Nielsen has updated his annual list of the top mistakes in web design, and I can’t agree more with the top item on the list, bad search. Here’s all ten.
December 27th, 2006
Fox Sports will sell complete downloads of the Cotton Bowl, Fiesta Bowl, Orange Bowl, Sugar Bowl and the BCS Championship Game via FoxSports.com (Direct2Drive), iTunes, Amazon, AOL, CinemaNow and Instant Media. Plus, FoxSports.com will stream the Cotton Bowl live, for free. Not only that, but sports fans can download preview shows, highlight packages and “Short Cuts,” a condensed game version. Very impressive. Most full-length games will be available for download within 24 hours of a given game’s completion for $2.99, and game packages with the preview shows, etc., will go for $4.99. Several distribution partners will enable fans to pre-order any of the games starting December 28. “This content offering represents important first steps in digital delivery for both the BCS and FOX Sports, and we look forward to finding more ways to deliver sports content to fans via digital download in the future,” said Gary Ehrlich, EVP of FOX Sports Enterprises. Press release here as well as a Direct2Drive screen grab below…
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With gazillions of people armed with their new iPods and iTunes gift codes from the Holidays, the iTunes gift store periodically crashed on Monday and Tuesday, sometimes taking as long as 20 minutes to download a single song. Hitwise reported that four times as many people visited iTunes on Christmas this year compared to last year. Prediction: YouTube will see a bump in use, as well, with people uploading video from their brand new cameras. Although not nearly as much as iTunes.
December 27th, 2006
Apologies for using lostremote for my own selfless purposes, but over the years, lostremoters have come together as a great community of forward thinkers, and I want to share something with you all. It is the Christmas present I made for my wife. Sure, other husbands might make their wives homemade gifts like a woodcarving or something, but I just happen to make Web sites, so I gave her MyGreenSpace.net and turned it up on Christmas day. Please read on for the action items after the jump…
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The mornings are growth dayparts, and stations like WMAQ are debuting new newscasts for early risers. The Chicago NBC station has launched “Barely Today” at 4:30 a.m., and it will be simulcast on the radio. And Northwest Cable News here in Seattle has been running a live 4 a.m. newscast for the last year or two with surprising success. (Full disclosure: I work for KING and NWCN.)
December 27th, 2006
D.C.
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New York, NY
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Virginia Beach, VA
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Open for negotiation
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Open for negotiation
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Seattle
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President Gerald Ford died Tuesday at age 93. The news of his death came too late for many morning newspapers, and probably caught plenty of newsrooms off guard during this traditionally slow news week. Here are some resources to help with coverage in the next few days: Website for the Ford Library, Official page for condolences, UCSB archive of Ford presidential papers (excellent historical resource with transcripts of significant papers), official biography, Wikipedia bio, TIME article from Sept. 9, 1974, famous quotes.
December 27th, 2006
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