The iPhone redefines the road trip
My family and I just returned from a six-day road trip from Seattle to Northern California. I’m usually the flying type, but a new baby and my own bout with a nasty cold forced us to cancel the flight and jump in the car. But unlike previous road trips from years past, this time I [...]
YouTube switches to widescreen players
YouTube has officially switched to the 16 x 9 aspect ratio. Finally.
Free blogs for laid-off journalists
The folks at Six Apart have launched the “TypePad Journalist Bailout Program” — an offer to give free blogs with hosting to recently laid-off journalists. “While we can’t promise it’s going to replace having a full-time writing gig, it gets you up and running with your own site that you can start to benefit from,” [...]
XBox Live’s new experience launches
Xbox users who fire up their boxes this weekend will get the prompt to download the new interface, or experience. I was pretty stoked to get it because the new experience carries the new streaming Netflix service (many in HD). Then I found out I needed to upgrade my Live membership to gold to be [...]
Tiger Woods and smart conversational ads
During a NYT panel discussion on the future of advertising, Lars Bastholm from AKQA gave this great example of conversational advertising: EA Sports, the video-game company, is a good example. On YouTube, someone posted a clip of himself playing the company’s Tiger Woods golf game. He put it up as a joke, laughing at EA [...]
Direct your own online video show
Ok, this is really cool. Using a technology from BitGravity called Multiview, you can watch a Diggnation episode and switch between multiple cameras without any streaming delays. Screen grab… More about the technology here on TechCrunch.
Is cable the future of network TV?
There’s been plenty of talk over the years about the broadcast network-affiliate model. Now with the recession, Dianne Mermigas takes a financial approach to the big question. “Less than 30% of core expenses can be eliminated from program production budgets and legacy operations, which means that the entire broadcast network dynamic must be reengineered,” she [...]
BBC local news rejected over newspapers
The BBC pitched a plan to spend $100 million and hire 400 people to provide video news, sports and weather for dozens of local BBC websites. But British regulators, who hold the purse strings for the BBC, shot down the plan because it “would not improve services for the public enough to justify either the [...]
Local media and innovation in trying times
I re-read Clayton Christensen’s “The Innovator’s Dilemma” (1997) over the last few days, and I’ve concluded he should write a new edition of the book that uses newspapers instead of disk drives as his central case study. Christensen found in his research that time and time again, disk drive companies were made aware of radical new innovations — there were even prototypes built — but chose to ignore them. Why? Because these innovations were disruptive and generated “no value within the established network.” In other words, if you take the disruptive idea and try to make it work inside a company’s existing cost structure, customers, resources, processes and culture, it would be a failure. So instead, these companies focus on incremental innovations and startups are able to take the disruptive ideas and run with them.
Keep reading for some of Christensen’s advice on innovation and my thoughts on solving the local advertising problem.
Drudge Report one ‘best’ web designs
That’s right. Ken Yelin on 37Signals.com maintains that the Drudge Report — long ridiculed for having a terrible design — is one of the best designs on the web. Why? “My definition of design goes beyond aesthetic qualities and into areas of maintenance, cost, profitability, speed, and purpose,” he writes. “However, I still think that [...]
Struggling Crosscut.com may go nonprofit
The Northwest regional news site Crosscut.com is considering a switch to nonprofit status so it can pay the bills. “The goal, if we decide to make the shift, is a Crosscut.com that has the potential of growing bigger and faster, thanks to additional streams of revenue from donors and members,” explains Crosscut Publisher David Brewster. [...]
‘Diggnation for girls’
For those of you who have been following the exploits of Rex Sorgatz, here’s his latest project, which he says is best described as “Diggnation for girls.” Or a 20-something web version of “The View,” but without all the bickering.
Yelp growing leaps and bounds
I’ve been a longtime user of Yelp, the local directory site that has grown market-by-market and often dominates local search terms. Yelp says it racked up 15 million uniques last month, up 200 percent year to date. Yelp recently added new functionality that allows businesses to enhance their listings and monitor their traffic stats. And [...]
Two new must-have iPhone apps
Every time I show a fellow iPhone owner the Ocarina app (99 cents), they download it immediately. Great use of networked technology and a glimpse of amazing things to come. And then there’s Google, with an updated search app that translates your voice into a Google search. “After five days of using the service it [...]
Yang stepping down as Yahoo CEO
Yahoo cofounder Jerry Yang will step down as CEO and return to his former role as Chief Yahoo once the board of directors finds a replacement. Yang assumed the CEO role at the Board’s request in June 2007. He has led Yahoo through a strategic repositioning and transformation of its platform. 2008 has been a [...]
Why story comments are destructive
It’s all the rage these days. Story comments. Aren’t they neat? Joeblow2938 said the story is great! JaneinOmaha said the story sucks. BlueFriend found a way to tie the story to George W. Bush and the downfall of society. Righwnger2323 things BlueFriend is an idiot and that Obama is going to ruin the world. Just [...]
CNN Wire could be a game changer
With newspapers dropping the old AP collective left and right, CNN is hoping it can jump into the gap and provide a critical service. The nation’s number (or two or three) news website (depending on month and metric) is set to launch a wire service of its own. The company will host a “newspaper summit” [...]
