04.28.06
Posted in Internet Business at 10:35 pm by Administrator
A Grand Unified Theory of YouTube and MySpace
From Boing Boing
A terrific Slate piece by Paul Boutin about the factors contributing to YouTube’s success: it’s easy to use, and it doesn’t “tell you what to do.” Snip:
The guys behind YouTube hit the sweet spot. Most important, they made it head-slappingly easy to publish and play video clips by handling the tricky parts automatically. Given up on BitTorrent because it feels like launching a mission to Mars? If you’ve sent an e-mail attachment, you’ve got the tech skills to publish on YouTube.
To post your own video, sign up for a free account and go to the Upload page. Select your file, click the Upload Video button, and you’re done! YouTube’s servers convert your vid to a standardized format, but you don’t need to know what that format is. If you send the URL to your aunt, it’ll play in her browser without spraying the screen with pop-ups and errors.
You don’t have to upload video to use YouTube. If you just like to watch, it’s even easier. There’s no software to install, no settings to muck with. The video auto-plays as soon as you load the page, without launching more windows—why can’t CNN do that?
Three months ago, I predicted Google Video would become the hottest thing on the Net. I was wrong, and I think Google has failed to take off for the simple reason that it’s more annoying to use than YouTube. To begin with, you have to install Google’s special uploading application. When I tried to upload the same clips I’d posted to YouTube, Google’s app wouldn’t let me. I combed through the FAQ and found this: “While we also support other digital formats such as QuickTime, Windows Media, and RealVideo … submitting your files in these formats may significantly delay us from using them on Google Video.” Come on, guys. Whatever happened to “I’m Feeling Lucky?”
Link
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04.26.06
Posted in Internet Business at 6:45 pm by Administrator
From Reuters
NEW YORK (Reuters) - AT&T Inc. said on Wednesday it will offer its high-speed Internet subscribers a movie delivery service in partnership with Starz Entertainment Group, a unit of Liberty Media Corp..
Vongo, the service from Starz, will feature a co-branded AT&T and Vongo Web site at http://www.att.vongo.com with a 14-day free trial to AT&T high-speed Internet subscribers.
Vongo, which was unveiled earlier this year, offers subscribers unlimited access to more than 1,500 movie and video selections as well as live, streaming Starz TV channel for $9.99 a month.
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Posted in General at 6:44 pm by Administrator
From Reuters
LOS ANGELES (Reuters) - Microsoft Corp. (Nasdaq:MSFT - news) plans to pay $200 million to $400 million for Massive Inc., a privately held company that places ads in video games, the Wall Street Journal said on Wednesday.
The deal to buy the two-year-old start-up highlights the increasing importance of advertising in nontraditional media, the report said.
A Microsoft spokeswoman said the story is based on rumor and declined comment. A spokeswoman for Massive also declined comment.
Clients of Massive, which uses always-on Internet connections to place real-time ads in games, include Coca-Cola Co. (NYSE:KO - news), Honda Motor Co. Ltd. (7267.T) and other advertisers that are boosting spending for ads in video games.
There are high expectations for in-game advertising, because it offers the promise to again connect advertisers with the desirable young male audience, which has been abandoning television and other traditional media in favor of the Internet and video games.
In an interview with Reuters in December, Massive Chief Executive Mitchell Davis said forecasts from a variety of industry sources call for real-time game advertising revenue to grow into a $3 billion-plus global market by 2010.
The new generation of in-game ads offered by Massive and rivals like Double Fusion allow advertisers to run campaigns for specific periods of time, rather than buying a slot that is hard-coded into a game. That means billboards and storefronts in games can change over time to more closely resemble the real world that some games attempt to recreate.
Video game publishers, which are struggling with rising game development costs, hope that in-game advertising will come to represent a meaningful source of revenue.
Microsoft, which already runs a large advertising business around its MSN Internet unit, has won over gamers with its
Xbox Live service that connects gamers to the Web through its Xbox and newer Xbox 360 consoles.
In an effort to close the gap on online advertising leaders Google Inc. (Nasdaq:GOOG - news) and Yahoo Inc. (Nasdaq:YHOO - news), Microsoft plans to roll out a new advertising system called adCenter that sells ads across the company’s Web content and services.
In the future, advertisers will be able to place ads through adCenter across Microsoft’s other platforms such as Xbox consoles and mobile devices.
Massive’s advertising partners include game publishers THQ Inc. (Nasdaq:THQI - news), Vivendi Universal’s (VIV.PA) games unit, Take-Two Interactive Software Inc.’s (Nasdaq:TTWO - news) 2K Sports, NCsoft Corp. (036570.KS) and Konami Corp. (9766.T)
Shares of Microsoft rose 2 cents to $27.13 in afternoon Nasdaq trade.
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Posted in Podcasting / Podcasts, Software and Web Apps at 6:40 pm by Administrator
From Podcasting News:
Sony has introduced an update for the PlayStation Portable, version 2.70, that adds support for downloading podcasts to the device for playing offline. Previously, the PSP only supported streaming media content.
It appears that Sony is avoiding use of the term podcast, though. In their information, podcasts are called “RSS Channels.”
The update lets PSP users save audio podcasts from an RSS Channel (podcast feed) onto Memory Stick Duo media. Version 2.70 also adds support for Macromedia Flash Player 6 content.
The PSP now supports saving podcasts three ways:
* Select only 1 item to save - Select the item that you want to save, and then select [Save] in the options menu.
* Save items within a channel - Select the channel that contains the content you want to save, and then select [Save] in the options menu.
* Select multiple channels and save items within those channels - Select the channels, and then select [Save Multiple] in the options menu.
A sample podcast and tutorial is available at the PlayStation site.
The update is for customers who own PSP (PlayStation Portable) system model number PSP-1001 sold in North America. The update is a free download from the Playstation site.
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Posted in Podcasting / Podcasts, Software and Web Apps at 6:34 pm by Administrator
App Streamlines Converting Video for Web, iPods, PSPs
From Podcasting news -
Unfortunatley it appears thatt his app is made for the mac and no PC / windows version is currently available…
Digigami today announced it is shipping MoviesForMyPod/PSP 1.0, a batch movie converter that is designed to make it easy to convert a collection of QuickTime videos for delivery to Web, Video iPod 5G and/or Sony Playstation Portable (PSP) devices.
“Most Podcasters and internet sites (including video.google.com) are currently offering two distinct downloadable movie types in order to serve both the Video iPod and Sony Playstation Portable (PSP). Yet both devices utilizes the MPEG-4 SP file format.” said Digigami CTO, Gen Kiyooka. “What we have done is taken the sheer simplicity of our program and added the necessary magic in order to create one output MPEG-4 movie file which plays perfectly on both devices. So you can offer a single movie file on your web site which syncs and plays flawlessly on both devices. We continue to use Apple’s MPEG-4 encoder because in our tests, the encoder produced superior audio quality.”
MoviesForMyPod/PSP a Universal Mac OS X binary, and is also designed from the ground up to be multi-core aware, to take advantage of single, dual and quad-core CPUs, Intel or PowerPC.
MoviesForMyPod/PSP is designed with the video prosumer or professional in mind. According to Digigami, “Podcasters will enjoy the fact that QuickTime metadata is preserved when making podcast movies. And internet webmasters will find their job simplified by the automatic creation of PSP thumbnail files.”
System Requirements
MoviesForMyPod/PSP requires QuickTime 7.0.3 (or higher) and iTunes 6.x (or higher).
Intel, PowerPC G3, G4, or G5 Macintosh Computer with OS X Tiger (10.4 or higher)
Pricing and Availability
MoviesForMyPod/PSP is free to individuals, podcasters, students, educational users and small “sole proprietor, less than three (<3) employee” business. Corporations pay just $89.00 under an honor license system. The free version is offered without technical support, and the paid version includes Digigami technical support services.
Download here.
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04.21.06
Posted in General at 11:34 pm by Administrator
Mobile Phones Revolutionize Webbrowsing, Study Says
By Steve Javors
From XBiz (Adult Content There - NSFW)
PARIS, France — According to the annual study by Ipsos Insight called “The Face of the Web,†mobile phone browsing is globally revolutionizing the way people view the Internet. The boom of cheap mobile phones, coupled with faster wireless networks has fueled its growth.
The study was conducted in November and December 2005 among 6,544 adults in Brazil, Canada, China, France, Germany, India, Japan, Mexico, Russia, South Korea, the U.K. and the U.S.
“Accessing the Internet on a wireless handheld device is no longer a novelty for consumers in the major global economies,†Brian Cruikshank, senior Vice President and managing director for Ipsos said. “In the long term, many of today’s PC-centric online activities could be complemented through the mobile phone or migrate to the mobile phone altogether, due to great convenience and faster connection speeds.â€
Twenty-eight percent of mobile phone owners have browsed the Internet on their cellphones according to the study. While that’s only a 3 percent increase from 2004, the study says that people over 35 are fueling the growth.
The study also showed that text messaging was the most popular online activity, used by more than half of all mobile phone households. More than one-third have sent or received emails as well, but personal computers still remain the device of choice to access the Internet.
In a related study, researchers Maryam Kamvar and Shumeet Baluja looked at 1 million search queries made to Google mobile and arrived at some surprising conclusions. According to the pair, searches for porn on cellphones exceeded similar PC-based searches by percentage. Based on the study, 20 percent of the searches on cellphones were for porn, whereas only 10 percent of PC searches sought the same material.
“We speculate that people may feel more comfortable querying adult terms on private [mobile] devices,†the study suggested. “Anecdotally, we have observed that users often consider their cellphone as a very personal and private device; perhaps even more so than their computer — the probability of others discovering their search behavior (through cached pages, auto-completion of query terms or URLs) is smaller.â€
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Posted in Software and Web Apps at 11:32 pm by Administrator
Everyone wants to be msypace, exactly why, I wonder if they even know. Most startups going into this “myspace” wanna be area are doomed for certain failure, but the details pointed out a tTechCrunch today show how AOL could easily use it;s existing databse to create a myspace like zone on the web that already has friends lists propagated, which may actually get both of AOLS feet into the “space” realm quickly.
TechCrunch leaks news of AOL’s so called “Myspace Killer”
An excerpt:
I’ve done some digging, though, and it appears that a “MySpace Killer†is exactly what AOL is trying to build. From what I am hearing (and which isn’t contradicted by Ted above), AOL plans on building a social network on the back of AIM, which will pre-populate your AIM friends as your social network friends as well. So the key AIM integration will be to pre-build relationships into the new service.
The service will launch at AIM.com, and individual user pages will be aim.com/[username]. Functionality will be similar to MySpace - with blogging, photo and music widgets available for integration. Also, third party companies are being approached to build widgets (similar to Live.com widgets) that can be integrated into the pages using AOL’s I Am Alpha API.
Read the whole article and comments at TechCrunch.
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Posted in Marketing, Software and Web Apps at 11:28 pm by Administrator
Stylehive gets rave reviews at TechCrunch; for it’s style.
Stylehive is a social bookmarking site that is focused on shopping. I believe that there is promise in this space, which includes the just funded Kaboodle, as well as Wists and the upcoming Plum. Why? Because 80% of online shopping is “research†and only 20% is actually “buyingâ€. Stylehive addresses the 80% piece of the market.
Stylehive, designed by Emily Chang and Max Kiesler at Ideacodes, is also a visually stunning site - just check out the home page. They are focusing specifically on hot designs and trends.
Read the whole post and comments about stylehive at TechCrunch.
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