Archive for August 24th, 2007
I happened to surf to mtv.com today to look at some of the VMA content and realized that Overdrive had been completely changed and was no longer a pop-up video player. While that’s great news, what is even better is that the videos on mtv.com are now able to be embedded on external websites!
Are there any local news websites that let people embed their videos? I don’t know of any offhand, but I’m hoping you will and can share with us.
PS - If you haven’t seen that video by Brad Paisley called “Online,” you might get a laugh out of it. Anyone who has tried to meet someone online will relate.
August 24th, 2007
FIRST ON LOST REMOTE: Hearst just announced that it is making tender offers to buy back all the outstanding publicly-owned Hearst-Argyle Television shares. “Following the transaction, Hearst-Argyle Television would become a wholly owned subsidiary of Hearst Corporation,” reports a release on Hearst’s website.
The Hearst Corporation is a privately-held company.
Update: Now everyone else has picked up on the story.
August 24th, 2007
For just the second time, someone has managed to hack an iPhone. This time, a skilled teenager managed to free an iPhone from the shackles of AT&T. 17-year-old George Holz of New Jersey cracked open his iPhone and hacked it, and now it works with his T-Mobile account. It’s not an easy hack - it takes two hours and requires soldering and software work. He has blogged instructions for the hack, and the phone is now for sale on eBay. You have to admire the kid for cracking the case (and voiding the warranty) on an expensive piece of hardware. He can’t get the visual voicemail to work but otherwise, he says, the phone works fine.
August 24th, 2007
As always, Cuban makes an interesting point but with some exaggeration thrown in. “We have reached a point of diminishing returns with today’s internet,” he explains in an interview. “The speed of broadband to your home won’t increase much more in the next five years than it has in the last five years. That is not enough to work as a platform for new levels of applications that will require much, much higher levels of bandwidth…. The only way to change that is to upgrade the platform for bandwidth transport across the country to a minimum of 1 gigabyte per second throughout to every home. At that point kids will come up with new and unique applications that we can’t imagine today. That’s when it becomes exciting. Until then, it’s dead and boring.”
August 24th, 2007
WFMY has replaced their website with digtriad.com for the Triad region that they service on-air, but it’s an unusual move as the new site has basically no branding from the station, and local news is hard to find. The top story this morning is about Iraq. The site is meant to be powered by users, but it looks more like the site was handed over to users and the station has stopped producing their own content. Perhaps it’s just launch challenges, but I’m interested in hearing everyone else’s opinions on this. Users are commenting about the new design, and I bet the station and Gannett wish they could turn off comments. Some examples:
“When I come to a “news” website, all I want is the news and/or weather.”
“I am not sure I will be coming to this site in the future.”
“I only registered so that I could comment that the new site pretty much sucks.”
“The old site was not great, but like others have said, this is terrible.”
So the question to you all: What do you think? Would you dump your own website to launch a community website with little station branding, or would you launch a second website to serve the same purpose?
(Disclosure: My employer is Hearst-Argyle, who owns WXII12.com in the same market. We do use Pluck UGC tools, which are the same commenting system used on digtriad.com.)
August 24th, 2007
