who knew?: Archive

B-Roll [April 26-30, 2009]

Wikipedia does a content deal with France Telecom’s Orange: the two will share ad revenue on co-branded Wikipedia content on Orange mobile phones.
A bunch of vintage computer equipment (scanners, hard drives, etc.) play “Bohemian Rhapsody” through blips and whirrs. Naturally, that source code is available.
Nielsen Online estimates that 60% of Twitter users quit after a month (as opposed to 40% for Facebook and Myspace).
Disney joins Hulu - full episodes from ABC and some cable channels will be posted on the site in exchange for an equity stake.

You can get these B-roll links in real time by following me on Twitter.

Apr 30, 2009

Apr 29, 2009

By Merlin Mann.

Making something a BIG RED TOP TOP BIG HIGHEST #1 PRIORITY changes nothing but text styling. If it were really important, it’d already be done. Period.

[…] First, ask yourself why any “high priority” item has remained unresolved in your life for more than 60 seconds. Why isn’t it done completely? Have you ever “re-assigned” “priority” to some task? Really? Because that sounds more like procrastination than management, let alone “effective” action and decisive execution. Sounds more to me like getting paid $10,000,000 a year to re-arrange your spice rack — then wondering why your company, marriage, and back porch are all crumbling under your “prioritization.”

Click through and read all of it, please.

Apr 29, 2009

Play

Apr 27, 2009

B-Roll [April 22-24, 2009]

Bluetooth 3.0 + HS specs get released - and it’s fast. Expect wireless streaming from your camcorder direct to your HDTV in the near future.
Chris DeWolfe and Tom Anderson leave Myspace - presumably under less-than-desirable circumstances.
T-Mobile sells one million G1 handsets in the United States.
The insidious monstrosity known as Adobe Media Player is now dead - and they’re launching an “open-standard media player framework” called Strobe at NAB as well.

You can get these B-roll links in real time by following me on Twitter.

Apr 25, 2009

Great post by Ta-Nehisi Coates on the Obama administration’s “looking forward” philosophy. You should really read the whole thing, but if you can’t, here’s an excerpt where he quotes Adam Serwer:

Cohen’s argument simply reflects the consensus among certain journalistic and political elites that the powerful simply shouldn’t be held accountable when they make mistakes, because, after all, we all make mistakes. This compassionate attitude naturally doesn’t extend beyond this small group. America has the highest incarceration rate in the world, fully 1 percent of the population. I’m sure there are millions of people currently incarcerated who would like it if Cohen’s policy of absolution for crimes was extended to them.

Apr 24, 2009

Apr 23, 2009

David Zaslav at NAB

Via NewTeeVee:

Discovery CEO and President David Zaslav said today that he didn’t see an economic model for free web distribution of long-form content. He said he’d only distribute episodes online if circumstances forced him to, and so far the numbers aren’t significant enough. ‘If people start watching content on mobile phones and on the web in droves, we will have to go there or we will lose market share.’

I asked him off-stage when that day might be, and his response was an emphatic ‘Hopefully never!’ He described a la carte online content consumption, where fans identify more with shows than the channels they run on, as the antithesis of Discovery’s niche brand strategy.

I think this strategy is really interesting and makes a lot of sense. It’s common knowledge that online ad CPMs have struggled to compete with their broadcast TV counterparts, and a huge reason for broadcasters putting full TV episodes online for free is to create an alternative to piracy that generates at least a little bit of revenue with advertising. The idea that giving up a small section of your customer base to BitTorrent is better than diluting the brand might not be the best immediate strategy, but I feel like it could pay off big in the long run.

Consider some of the most popular TV on the Web. Which show brings up the strongest associations to the network on which it airs: Lost, The Daily Show or Mythbusters?

Apr 22, 2009

B-Roll [April 20, 2009]

The NAB (National Association of Broadcasters) show is finally here. This is where the crazy video tech news gets released. Example: Panasonic is developing a 1080p dual-lens video camera for live 3-D video capture.
Adobe introduces a version of Flash for televisions at NAB. Slashdot speculates that with inevitable Hulu and YouTube streaming to your television, this announcement could be a good justification for dropping your cable.
This webpage allows you to bulk opt-out of behavioral advertising.
Silicon Valley execs (including Google, Meetup, AT&T, Wired and Howcast) are in Baghdad for the week to help foster Iraq’s fledgling new media industry.

You can get these B-roll links in real time by following me on Twitter.

Play

All four defendants are sentenced to 1 year in prison and damages totalling $3.62 million USD. They’re planning to appeal, the site will remain up regardless of what happens to its founders, and the ruling could set a precedent for similar lawsuits against everyone from ISPs to Google for assisting the availability of copyrighted content.

I guess I’m not sure exactly what this verdict means - a win for TPB would have meant that Sweden would have become a ‘safe haven’ of sorts for torrent trackers to host their sites, but the fact that they were found guilty just seems to uphold the status quo. At least from my perspective it seems like the worry is over the potentially ominous precedent this case could set for the future rather than the immediate consequences of the ruling.

Apr 17, 2009

B-Roll [April 13-17, 2009]

Google Updater (that app which runs in the background and updates your Google software) is now open-source.
Mt. Holyoke College debuts 3-day Orientation For Whites - mostly devoted to discussions about race.
As expected, YouTube makes some subtle design changes to showcase premium content.
Sadly, Matthew Perry will NOT be portraying “Thomas Hobbes” in the LOST Season 5 finale. :-( so hard.

I’m sorry, you guys. I will try to find better stories next time around. You can get these B-roll links in real time by following me on Twitter.

Apr 17, 2009

“That’s our first touch product, and you know nobody gets it perfect out the door.” —Mike Lazaridis, stating the obvious during an interview about the Blackberry Storm. What makes this quote outstanding is that he’s the CEO of Research in Motion.

In March, Palin nominated Wayne Anthony Ross for attorney general. A colorful far-right lawyer, he was once considered a shoo-in for confirmation. However, his nomination was thrown into grave peril when his opponents presented evidence that he called homosexuals “degenerates,” leveled invective against an African-American student offended by a statue of a Klansman, vowed to undermine the sovereignty of Native American tribes, and allegedly defended men who rape their wives.

Not sure if that last (and most sensational) point is true - the accusation comes from a veteran lobbyist, and her supporting evidence comes in the form of her father’s concurrent assertion and a claim that she knows “a number of domestic-violence victims who witnessed Ross make ‘horrible’ statements, but are too intimidated to speak out.”

I’m obviously not defending the guy, but when I read this over the first time, the original accusation felt like a hoax meant to derail Ross’ confirmation - and as the article shows, it’s not like he hasn’t unleashed horrible invective before, so the claim is believable enough to hold merit.

Apr 13, 2009

“I wrapped a movie called ‘Zombieland,’ in which I was constantly under assault by zombies, then flew to New York, still very much in character. With my daughter at the airport I was startled by a paparazzo, who I quite understandably mistook for a zombie.” —Woody Harrelson [CNN via Videogum]

Apr 13, 2009

B-Roll [April 10, 2009]

BBC is distributing one of its new shows under a Creative Commons license on BitTorrent and have, in hilarious scene-release fashion, bundled in an NFO file complete with an ASCII rendering of the BBC logo.
What if Criterion released video games? I guess it’s a Photoshop contest. Personally, I have a soft spot for the Lode Runner cover. [via bg5000]
Current TV cancels its $100 million IPO, citing the bad economy. At least they still have Brett Erlich?
P2PBlog passes along a tutorial on how to get your PC to send you a text message once uTorrent has finished a download. You can also send email notifications to your iPhone or Blackberry.
Interesting and brief AdAge writeup concerning the so-called ‘breakthrough’ ad units premiering on The Daily Beast - starting with a monthlong sponsorship by the luxury handbag brand Bottega Veneta.

You can get these B-roll links in real time by following me on Twitter.

Apr 11, 2009

Apr 10, 2009

Post #1000

After 629 days, 14 followers, a handful of likes and reblogs, and an abundance of personal tumult, here it is. Thanks for reading.

I do put some effort into these posts, so if you like what you read here, I’d appreciate it if you told your friends about the site.

An opportunity for constructive criticism: Do you have any editorial suggestions for me? Should I cut back on the dry tech posts? Pile on the snark? Post up more pretty videos?

Apr 10, 20092 notes

Apr 9, 2009

“I have very belatedly become aware of a critique of my various comments and writing about the downturny zeitgeist… that my resistance to statements like ‘cheap is the new sexy’ or ‘frugal is the new cool’, somehow adds up to me being in denial about the economy… I do think some of the trend stories suggesting an overnight change in ‘values’ are extremely suspect. But my real problem is that many of these sweeping statements about the zeitgeist suggest consumer behavior — and thus, by extension, human behavior — is solely a function of larger economic and cultural forces. I think such assessments give short shrift to free will itself. Let me put it this way: is your behavior merely a reflection of cultural change, or does your behavior cause cultural change? I know what I think the right answer ought to be.” —Rob Walker

Apr 9, 2009

B-Roll [April 8-9, 2009]

Bumptop (a novel user interface inspired by a physical desktop) has been floating around as a cool demo video for a couple of years, but now you can download it for your Windows PC.
P2Pblog points to an interesting analysis of how the used CD market could be a huge factor in declining sales of new music.
“Ford will hand over promotion duties for its newest car to 100 twenty-somethings who have no advertising experience.”
RIM (maker of the BlackBerry) hires a “VP of user experience” who was once employed by Apple for 8 years - developing OS X ~~and probably lending a hand with creating the iPhone software~~ (blogosphere-created myth, sorry. Should have caught that one - but he did help with OS X for eight years, so still an interesting hire.)

You can get these B-roll links in real time by following me on Twitter.

Apr 9, 2009

“As amazingly revolutionary and beneficial as your new idea may be, you can’t escape this albatross of legacy data. Unless your new metaphor presents a new way of working that is such an obvious and dramatic improvement over the status quo (like pinch-to-zoom) then there’s no compelling desire to laboriously learn, adapt, and migrate to the new environment. It seems a bit fatalistic, but I can’t think of a way that the entire desktop metaphor can be overhauled without either everyone in the world switching over at once (which won’t happen), or becoming a “data island” like the Newton or Classic Mac OS. I’d love to be proven wrong, but the only realistic way up seems to be to build atop the existing infrastructure, with all of its cruft, and keep abstracting it away over time, fingers crossed all the while that Moore’s Law has a few good decades left in it.” —Steven Frank of Panic just posted an interesting take on the state of computing and HCI, and ideas of where to go from here.

Apr 9, 200963 notes

Play

Apr 8, 2009

The shares, which went public last week on the NASDAQ as CYOU, immediately jumped to $22 before settling in at $20 by the end of the day—a 25% gain. While many IPOs tend to take a breather after a strong first day, the shares have continued strong, closing yesterday at $23.84.

Changyou runs a few MMOGs in China and makes money selling in-game advertising and virtual goods. This IPO is just another sign that the virtual goods market is still strong: Habbo sold $60 million worth of virtual goods in 2008, and the social network Hi5 is hoping that selling virtual goods will be the key to solving its financial woes.

Rob Walker tackled this idea that we now place value on “immaterial” wealth (including both virtual goods and social capital) on his blog last month (#1, #2).

Apr 8, 2009

B-Roll [April 6-7, 2009]

OpenMoko Freerunner, the open-source cellphone, has been cancelled and 50% of the company’s staff has been laid off (although the company has other phones in the pipeline). Oh well.
The Barbarian Group dissects their Subservient Chicken campaign for Burger King on its fifth anniversary. [via fimoculous]
A department of the Chinese government imposes content guidelines for Internet video.

You can get these B-roll links in real time by following me on Twitter.

Apr 7, 2009

“From our perspective, we look at this pretty thoroughly and there is always a tension around fair use …I would encourage everybody, think in terms of what your reader wants. These are ultimately consumer businesses and if you piss off enough of them, you will not have any more.” —Eric Schmidt, Google CEO, speaking at the Newspaper Association of America conference only days after the AP hilariously launched a campaign to “protect” its content from aggregators like Google News

Apr 7, 2009

Play

Apr 6, 2009

Apr 6, 20092 notes

B-Roll [April 2-3, 2009]

Pilot Season (an amazing TV show from the defunct cable network Trio, with Sarah Silverman, H. Jon Benjamin and David Cross) is going to be re-released as a web series on MyDamnChannel! Awesome news.
To promote organ donation, the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation “helped develop” a script for the TV show “ER” featuring Noah Wyle getting a kidney transplant.
Who wants a piece of the e-reader market dominated by Amazon/Sprint Nextel (and to a lesser extent, Sony)? Carriers like AT&T and Verizon- as well as Rupert Murdoch.
“Saving the New York Times now ranks with saving Darfur as a high-minded cause.” - NYT editor Bill Keller. Umm… what?

You can get these B-roll links in real time by following me on Twitter.

Apr 3, 2009

“On the federal level, Kundra has already proposed a new site, Data.gov, that could be a clearinghouse for federal government data feeds. This site could be a repository of data and directory to government data sources elsewhere on the Web.” —Interview with VIvek Kundra, federal CIO

Apr 3, 2009

Bar Harbor + I Don't Know How This Ended Up Being What I Said

(We move to the side in order to let a biker on the sidewalk pass by.)
Josh: I love this town.
Sinda: Couldn't he have just, um, biked on the road?
Josh: But isn't that what love is, in a sense? Stepping aside for a moment to help others live their dreams?

Apr 2, 20091 note

“Today, there is a very drastic reduction in internet traffic. But experience from other countries suggests that while file-sharing drops on the day a law is passed, it starts climbing again. [I]t takes people a few weeks to figure out how to change their security settings so that they can share files anonymously.” —Christian Engstrom, vice-chairman of the Swedish Pirate Party, on the drop in filesharing traffic the day after a law was passed requiring service providers to divulge IP addresses of P2P uploaders.

Apr 2, 2009

“You love once and then maybe not again. Not on a day like this. The rain, the rain, the rain. You can’t even hear it outside the window but it’s still a sad thing. Rain, the grade school teachers say, makes the trees and flowers grow, but we’re not trees and flowers, and so many grade school teachers are single.” —Daniel Handler [Adverbs]

Apr 2, 2009

B-Roll [March 28-April 1, 2009]

Disney’s negotiating with YouTube to offer ABC shows (shutting out Hulu). YouTube has wider reach, but Hulu comes with an equity stake for Disney. [UPDATE: Looks like they might be making deals with both companies - offering short-form content on YouTube and full episodes on Hulu.]
In other YouTube news, the site is planning a redesign that aims to highlight premium content and increase integrated ads.
Dell forms a MVNO in Japan, selling subsidized laptops bundled with HSDPA data plans from the DoCoMo carrier..
Brand New does Verizon as an April Fool’s joke, complete with fake website and press release. This is pretty great.

You can get these B-roll links in real time by following me on Twitter.

Apr 1, 2009

who knew?

April 2009

48 posts