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Poll: Will Metered Broadband Make You Switch Your ISP?
While not so uncommon overseas, bandwidth caps and metered broadband are coming to the US market place. Time Warner is the first major cable company to announce its metered broadband strategy & prices for a small Texas market, in what can be described as draconian.
We have written about Bend Broadband of Oregon resorting to such tricks. Comcast, recently proposed bandwidth caps as well. What it means: get ready to pay more and get less for broadband. Will this spur into action, and switch ISPs or look for alternatives. Take our poll and share your opinion.
Essay: Can We Stop with the Video CE Hardware Already?
Silicon Valley is littered with the carcasses of set-top boxes that were going to revolutionize entertainment. Rather than learning from this grim history, however, some kind of failure torch is being passed from one generation of dying-out hardware makers to a new breed angling to take a prize that just isn’t there.
MovieBeam is emblematic of both the failures of video CE’s hardware past, and the futility of its future. After floundering for years, being bought and subsequently killed by Movie Gallery, MovieBeam is now in the process of being sold to Dar Capital for $2.25 million. Is that a bargain or a big waste of time and money?
We’re guessing the latter. The only companies who have shown any success in getting consumers to adopt set-top box hardware for video content on a massive scale are the cable and satellite companies (OK, the telcos are making strong headway, too).
And it’s not like a bunch of no-names have tried.
Vid-Biz: Fora.TV, Blinkx, Net Neutrality
Fora.TV Raises $4 Million; high-brow video aggregator closes Series A from William Randolph Hearst III, Adobe Ventures and others. (Beet.tv)
Blinkx Starts Content Management Service; the Advanced Media Platform automates content discovery, indexing, distribution and presentation on a publisher’s site. (MediaPost)
Congressional Panel Split on Net Neutrality; debate over the necessity of regulation falls along party lines. (Multichannel News)
DirecTV’s Income, Subscriber Base Grows; satellite TV company reports net income of $371 million and total subscriber base at 17 million. (The Wall Street Journal)
SAG Studio Talks Stall; digital still a sticking point between the two sides; rival actors’ union AFTRA begins talks today, expected to have deal in two weeks. (Variety)
YouTube India Launches; YouTube.in features partners including Zoom, UTV and Rajshri Group. (India Times)
Harland Williams Signs Deal with Koldcast TV; comedian will produce and act in 21 episodes of Unscrewed with Harland Williams, which will feature his stand-up routines. (release)
Whatever Happened to Red Swoosh?
Remember Red Swoosh, the P2P company that was bought by Akamai for $18.7 million in April 2007? Red Swoosh used to be a competitor to Akamai, albeit on a much smaller scale, offering P2P-powered content delivery services to corporate customers. Shortly before the Akamai acquisition, the company reinvented itself, rolling out products for amateur videographers and file-swapping consumers.
This new direction opened up a lot of possibilities for Akamai. In particular, it offered a way for Akamai to extend its business model to blogs and other platforms for user-generated content. Call it the CDN solution for the long tail, if you will, complete with options to enter the advertising market. But none of that materialized. Instead, it looks like most Red Swoosh products have been discontinued or taken down.
Masters Golf an Online Hole-in-One
Talk all you want about the online viewership stats for the NCAA basketball tournament — in my book, the Masters golf event is a much better workday time-waster, for several production and sport-inherent reasons.
If you don’t like golf or don’t care about Tiger Woods’ quest for the Grand Slam, I can’t help you there. But even casual followers of the sport should at least check out the live online coverage, especially the focused segments from “Amen Corner,” the famed stretch of holes #11, #12 and #13 at Augusta National. The widescreen option and excellent camera work — and did we mention no commercial breaks? — makes for a relaxing day of golf-coverage consumption while just an alt-tab away from real work. In my mind, golf is a better fit than basketball for the small screen since there is only one golfer to zoom in on (as opposed to 10 players), with more-predictable action for the cameras to follow. Plus the announcers give you handy audio cues (”here’s Tiger for birdie”) that allow you to switch from work in time to catch the onscreen action.
Midwest Teen Sex Show’s Nikol Hasler Twitters About Poop
Sex sells, especially on the Internet, but The Midwest Teen Sex Show brand of sex is in a class of its own. Where else can you find syphilis portrayed as a chainsaw-wielding murder or learn about the truth behind towel-snapping in the guys’ locker room?
We got to sit down with the show’s host and one of its creative minds when Nikol Hasler left behind the cow pastures and horny teenagers of Wisconsin to visit San Francisco, land of fewer cow pastures but equally horny teenagers. It was a casual chat, with the conversation swinging from her Twittering habits to her childrearing techniques to the fact that she very much wouldn’t want the show to be part of sex ed curriculum. Here are just a few highlights from the intelligently coquettish and inimitably colloquial Ms. Hasler.
Hasler told us that talks are already underway with television networks about moving the Midwest Teen Sex Show to the mainstream, but stressed that the TV execs all seem to understand that the show’s inherent irreverent edginess is key to its success. While the show is ostensibly aimed at teenagers, the audience is primarily of an older (sketchier?) demographic, but Hasler says they are still making sure that everything in the show is teenager appropriate. Hence their “Abstinence” brand of condoms.
The Internet: Hillary Clinton’s BFF?
It’s hard to imagine how this election cycle might have played out without the influence of online video — especially for Hillary Clinton. Whether or not you support the senator from New York, web video has offered us a chance to call media bias into question or reexamine her stories, in theory adding a new level of sophistication to discussing her campaign.
And yet, given all these possibilities, what is today’s most-watched Clinton video on YouTube? In fact, what is today’s most watched YouTube video, period? The latest in the attractive-girl-singing-about-political-candates genre, Hillary, Be My Best Friend.
Karina’s Capsule: Here Comes McCain Again
Were you as surprised as I was that so many people even questioned whether the first McCain Girls video was an earnest effort by genuine supporters? I was amazed that some people even went as far as to suggest that it was paid for or produced by the campaign itself.
I know the jury’s still out as to whether or not the Republican candidate has the pop cultural savvy to be our commander in chief (Was that whole “Heidi Montag is a talented actress” comment made out of utter cluelessness, or was it a knowing wink at the construction of her pseudo-reality show, The Hills?) but McCain seems smart enough to generally play away from his known weaknesses.
Plus, It’s Raining McCain simply looked too good. From the hundreds of little McCains that rained on the Girls to a green-screen gaffe caused by a certain costume, the video’s very badness had a rhythm to it that was clearly intentional. But if any doubt remains that McCain Girls is something between pure parody and Obama Girl-style, cable news-baiting performance art, the Girls’ latest video should clear that up.
Rickrolling: A Timeline
On April 1, Rickrolling became Public Enemy No. 1 to those devoted to serious Internet browsing. Since it’s always best to understand one’s enemy — and since tracking the evolution of this meme is a challenge worth undertaking — we thus present:
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Rickrolling: A Timeline
1969: First message is sent via ARPANET (precursor of the Internet).
1987: Rick Astley’s Never Gonna Give You Up hits Number 1 in the United Kingdom.
2005: YouTube lauches online.
June 20, 2006: First appearance of Rick Astley’s Never Gonna Give You Up video (as dubbed from VH1’s Pop-Up Video) appears on YouTube, uploaded by user belgianpassion. (As of April 2008, it has been viewed nearly 1.2 million times.)
Weekend Vid Picks: Your Week in PSAs
Good PSAs, with their short runtime and punchy conclusions, have always done well in the online video world. This week, an assortment of odd clips came together with nothing in common other than a desire to educate people on serious (and not-so-serious) matters.
Public Service Announcement: Test your awareness
Pushing viewers to examine the action on screen — all the action — this heavily circulated ad (reaching almost 2 million views on YouTube in two weeks) has a bit of a twist. But that just makes Transport for London’s message all the more effective.
Public Service Announcement: Jeff Zucker is…funny?
Recent
GigaOM Network
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- Muppets Do Stars and Stripes Forever [NewTeeVee Station]
- Open Thread: Web Worker Independence [WebWorkerDaily]
- Structure 08 Recap: Yo Founders! There’s Gold in Them Clouds! [GigaOM]
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