Archive for February 19th, 2008
Have you seen Yahoo Pipes yet? The service allows you to take any data source, run just about any processing you could conceive, and reoutput the data stream in a variety of formats. For instance: I wanted to put a module with the items I post to Lost Remote on my Idaho Radio News blog. I took the Lost Remote RSS feed and pulled it into Pipes. I set a filter to only allow items with my name in the creator field - then hooked it to the output. I then ran the resulting RSS feed through Feed Digest and plopped the JavaScript down on the radio blog sidebar. This is a very simple example - the Pipes directory has dozens more.
February 19th, 2008
Jeff Jarvis calls it reverse syndication: big publishers pay smaller publishers to link to their material. Jarvis has a fascinating, albeit early-stage idea to help pay for expensive news coverage. He uses the New York Times’ Iraq coverage as an example. The NYT says it puts out nearly $3 million per year to cover the war zone.
Let’s say the Times says to Tribune company that it will provide all the reporting on Iraq for Tribune’s readers. But instead of charging Tribune for syndication, the Times pays Tribune a share of the ad revenue it gets from traffic Tribune sends to the Times.
He notes that publishers could compete - paying higher commissions for traffic. If you were a smaller publisher and were looking for quality content - content that you could aggregate - wouldn’t it be attractive to use an “upstream publisher” (my term) that pays you to link to them?
February 19th, 2008
Well, you’re in luck. Welcome to AngryJournalist.com. (Via Fimoculous)
February 19th, 2008
A new Samsung set-top box, called See’n'Search, is a search engine of sorts for your television. Using closed captioning and program listings, the box automatically searches the internet to give viewers more information on the shows they’re watching. In this video demo, a newscast on the Iowa Caucus popped up key topics: Hillary Clinton, Barack Obama…etc, and you can click a topic for a variety of search results across Google, Wikipedia or even video. In the demo, the Samsung guy clicked Hillary Clinton and selected her website, which appeared full screen. While they have a ways to go on the usability front (as you can see, it’s a little cluttered), this approach to interactive TV — it doesn’t have to be pre-programmed, it just automatically correlates information on the internet — has tremendous promise.
February 19th, 2008
Today Toshiba officially pulled the plug on the HD DVD format, ending the format wars with Blu-Ray. “This was a very difficult decision to make…but when we thought about the trouble we would cause to consumers and our partners, we decided it was not right for us to keep going with such a small presence,” Toshiba Chief Executive Atsutoshi Nishida told a news conference.
February 19th, 2008
- BBC inks deal to put TV shows on iTunes
- Martha Stewart buys Emeril’s show, website, cookbook
- Gates says Microsoft isn’t negotiating higher price for Yahoo
- Will Microsoft announce Netflix deal for Xbox?
- Clear Channel station deal to Providence Equity on the rocks
February 19th, 2008
