This entry really belongs in the “best of blogs,” only I could find no blog entry about it. It seems that in the process of building out its Fios network in Northern Virginia, Verizon practically destroyed a family’s home, wiping out household finances at the same time. According to this article in the Washington Post, a Verizon subcontractor was digging in the backyard of Amanda and Richard Di Donna in Vienna, VA laying fiber cable when the crew hit a mis-marked power line, causing the home’s electrical wiring to melt, all the appliances to short out and the house to fill with smoke.
What followed was an ordeal to get their house and lives back in order that has not ended, the couple said. They spent more than four months in hotels and apartments with their 2-year-old son while repairs were underway. Their dog had to stay at a kennel. Amanda Di Donna spent the final months of her second pregnancy uprooted and gave birth about seven weeks before the couple finally moved back into their gutted and rebuilt house last month.
The couple claims they are still owed $14,000 for the damages from the company, UtiliQuest, that mis-marked the power lines. Verizon, however, hasn’t copped to its role in the family’s disaster — the telco claims UtilQuest is at fault. Verizon spokesman calls the situation a “very unfortunate incident.”
Posted by Cynthia Brumfield at 7:55 PM | Print | Comments (0)Courtesy of Lost Remote, this article from the Puget Sound Business Journal in which MSNBC.com’s Publisher Charlie Tillinghast lays out the online news service’s strategy for growth. Tillinghast says MSNBC.com will focus on search engine optimization, content syndication, content personalization and video.
Tillinghast’s long-term vision for MSNBC is to make the site more like an online television news report, with live reporting to cover events as they happen. According to internal numbers, Hollywood actor Tom Cruise’s now-famous confrontation with “Today” show host Matt Lauer on June 24 was watched by 2.5 million people on MSNBC. In early July, the terrorist bombings in London generated 4.4 million video streams in one day. Video is also a potential jackpot for MSNBC. Tillinghast said about 10 percent of its overall advertising revenue comes from ads and short commercials that run with its video news clips.
But, wait a minute? Isn’t there already an MSNBC news channel actually on television?
Posted by Cynthia Brumfield at 4:49 PM | Print | Comments (0)
Today’s New York Times has a piece about how the six major Hollywood studios are ponying up $30 million to fund an R&D consortium called MovieLabs, a venture modeled after the cable industry’s successful CableLabs. More modest than CableLabs, MovieLabs will, at least for now, strictly focus on how to prevent copying of films.
Much mockery of the effort is starting to appear in the blogosphere. Here’s a sample snapshot from Techdirt:
The industry would be much better off taking that $30 million and spending it on creative new ways to embrace what people are doing with their content. Of course, for the movie industry, $30 million is a tiny fraction of a bad movie — so they’ll just let it go to waste on this new project and not think too much about it.Posted by Cynthia Brumfield at 10:25 AM | Print | Comments (1)
Business Week is really on top of the rapid changes taking place on the web — barely a week goes by without some cutting-edge article that deals with the shift of content and viewers to the web. This week the publication has a package of articles on how it’s a whole new web. There’s a piece on social networking, how marketers are tapping into del.icio.us and how Ajax is speeding up the web.
On top of this special package, the magazine has an in-depth piece on Skype, and an interview with Skype’s Niklas Zennstrom.
Posted by Cynthia Brumfield at 9:53 AM | Print | Comments (0)Google is reviewing bids from tech vendors to build a nationwide optical DWDM network, which means that the cash-flush web giant could soon have a communications network that few can rival. The vendors who have seen Google’s fiber network RFP say that the nature of the network can really only mean that Google ultimately hopes to push massive amounts of voice, video and data close to the end user. The perennial problem is that close is not enough — to reach the end user, Google has to have access to the last mile.
(In a plug for my new publication IP Media Monitor, see full article on Google’s optical DWDM network bids here. Access is free but registration is required.)
Posted by Cynthia Brumfield at 9:36 AM | Print | Comments (0)
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