Archive for March, 2007
NBC Universal’s new Digital2Go initiative includes the launch of two dedicated, linear video channels on the MediaFLO mobile service — NBC2Go and NBC News2Go. Over on MobiTV, NBCU is now offering full-length primetime and cable shows on demand, as well as a variety of short-form video channels. And on the mobile web front, NBCU is debuting four new WAP sites for NBC, USA, Bravo and NBC Sports. Programming and technology details follow in the press release below…
Read the full post March 27th, 2007
Developed in partnership with Action Engine Corporation and uVuMobile, MSNBC.com’s new mobile service allows users with Windows smartphones to browse video, photos and text coverage. Users can also share stories with their friends via SMS and email. “While the product will initially be available directly to consumers, we see great potential in partnering with carriers to distribute it to their subscribers and to MSNBC.com’s base of 29 million monthly unique users,” said Dan Mucha, Director of Business Strategy and Development at MSNBC.com. “Multimedia on Mobile” is accessible via smartphones at gomobile.msnbc.com, and it requires a quick application download. Press release…
Read the full post March 27th, 2007
Web designer (and Newsvine CEO) Mike Davidson pulled a sweet little prank on John McCain’s campaign today to get them back for stealing his MySpace design. Seems they not only used Davidson’s MySpace template without crediting him — which is not that big of deal, he admits — but they used his bandwidth to serve up one of his images from his server. “Bad McCain!” Davidson writes, and he explains how he swapped out his image with something a little more exciting. “A few minutes in Photoshop and a quick FTP, a new John McCain was born,” writes Davidson. “And the Straight-Talk Express isn’t just for straight people anymore.” (Thanks for the tip Corey!)
Update: Davidson’s prank is getting linked all over the place. Writes one guy in comments on Newsvine, “This is the funniest thing I have read in a LONG time. I’m sitting here laughing my ass off and clapping in my cubicle. DAMN, Mike. You’re awesome. Huge kudos.” Truly a classic web prank.
March 27th, 2007
People who watched online video pre-roll ads were less distracted and came away with a higher brand awareness than those who watch traditional TV ads, concluded a study by MillwardBrown. Online viewing led to 82 percent brand awareness and 77 percent brand recall compared to 54 percent awareness and 18 percent recall for TV. The chief reason? Online viewers are more engaged. The study found 46 percent of online users pay attention to the ads compared to 30 percent of TV viewers and 21 percent of DVR watchers. And that’s with a 30-second pre-roll ad, which is widely considered too long. But the study’s authors warn that online publishers should be careful not to run the same pre-rolls over and over again or they’ll dilute the value of online video advertising. Meanwhile, a new Doubleclick study found that 8 percent of users have some sort of interaction with video ads with a click-thru rate ranging from 0.4 to 0.74 percent.
March 27th, 2007
White House Spokesman Tony Snow has found out that cancer has returned to his body and has now spread to his liver. Snow, 51, had his colon removed in 2005, after a diagnosis of colon cancer. Yesterday doctors removed a small growth and determined it was malignant and had metastasized to his liver.
March 27th, 2007
Creative Suite 3 (or CS3) includes new versions of 13 applications including Photoshop, Dreamweaver and Flash. It’s the first integrated product line since Adobe bought Macromedia. For example, web designers will be able to manipulate photos inside Dreamweaver instead of bouncing back and forth from Photoshop. This is a pre-announcement announcement: CS3 is due out in April.
March 27th, 2007
When people asked me why I wanted a closed-loop system like Apple TV (it only works with iTunes downloads), I responded that there will be plenty of hacks soon enough. But I didn’t think it would be this soon. AppleTVHacks.net is born.
March 26th, 2007
The Onion just launched its online fake news network. A taste…
Gotta love the ad in the embedded player. No, we don’t get a cut.
March 26th, 2007
On the heels of launching OneSearch, a mobile search product with a local focus, Yahoo is poised to debut a mobile ad network with text, display and video capabilities. Initial partners include MobiTV, Opera and Go2, with others in discussions. “Yahoo has plunged aggressively into the business in the last few months,” said Gary Arlen, president of Arlen Communications, a research firm. “But it’s so new, nobody is ahead.”
March 26th, 2007
NBC Nightly News became the first network evening newscast to air in HD Monday night. Watch a clip here (in MSNBC.com’s 16×9 player) of Brian Williams describing the transition, and Nightly’s director Brett Holey has many more details on The Daily Nightly blog. Of course, it’s not a full switch to HD. While the studio cameras and graphics are in high-def, field coverage remains in standard definition (with curtains) for now. But NBC is gradually upgrading field gear and editing facilities to HD.
March 26th, 2007
Today YouTube announced the winners of its first YouTube Video Awards contest. Users picked the clips over a week of voting.
March 26th, 2007
Verizon’s IPTV network FiOS will take the wraps off a local TV channel called FiOS1 later this week in the D.C. area. It’s Verizon’s first “owned and operated TV channel in the country,” and it will carry local news, weather, traffic and sports programming — including live college games. FiOS1 will also air video from local citizen journalists. It’s yet another competitive threat for local TV news, and you can bet FiOS will launch more of these around the country as it rolls out its IPTV network.
Update: InvitedMedia in comments reminds us that this is the Michael Rosenblum project we mentioned a few months ago.
March 26th, 2007
As I was loading the Voicemail clip (see post below), I was prompted to download a quick app for ABC.com’s new video player. Sure enough, the new player is rolling out with new features such as full-screen and “mini” player modes. As previously reported, ABC.com is also adding the “pause ad,” which appears when you pause a clip.
When you mouse-over the “size” icon on the player, you see these choices.
March 26th, 2007
It’s a web-only, weekly video series that features actual voicemails from co-creator Michael Wilde (he saved them for ten years.) Pretty funny stuff, especially “Poetry.” ABC.com plans to debut several new episodes every week. Voicemail will also be available on mobile. Screen grab followed by a press release…
Read the full post March 26th, 2007
WFLD-TV in Chicago is prepping a high school sports site called FoxJox.com that encourages users to upload short video highlight clips. WFLD is visiting various schools and educators, reports this blog, to explain the new service and give shooting and editing tips. The trademarked tagline is “You Shoot it, We’ll Share it.” It’s unclear if FoxJox.com is just WFLD’s beta site or if it will become the new high school sports destination for all the Fox owned-and-operated stations. As we reported last week, CBS bought MaxPreps.com in an effort to compete on this same front. (Thanks Mike for the link!)
March 26th, 2007
For the next week, I’m going to conduct a test. I’m going to turn off my cable TV and attempt to replace the shows I watch by buying them on iTunes and watching them on Apple TV. Then at the end of the week, I’ll compare the costs and see how many shows I missed — and how many new shows and video podcasts I’ve discovered along the way. This experiment, by the way, does not preclude me from watching online video that isn’t available on iTunes, because I do that anyway. But I will miss the Final Four. Stay tuned for a full report in a week.
March 26th, 2007
In the first six weeks since Yahoo launched “Panama,” the new search ad platform has increased click rates by 10 percent. “It’s just working quicker and better than people had expected,” said UBS AG analyst Ben Schachter in New York.
March 26th, 2007
The show would feature some of the best user-generated video on the web while offering real-time feedback from viewers. Uh, viewsers. (We believe Safran invented this word years ago on Lost Remote, so we’re proud the CW is planning to call the show Viewsers.) Meanwhile, VH1’s user-generated show Acceptable.TV premiered last week (here’s some background). Screen grab below…
On Acceptable.TV, you can watch mini-shows on TV and the web. Some shows are produced by users, others by the show’s producers. Then you vote for your favorites online, and the ones with the most votes are cleared to produce another episode for the next week’s show.
March 26th, 2007
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