Fame is fleeting but fame on the Internet fades more swiftly still. Amanda Congdon, who rapidly reached a pinnacle of Internet-era stardom with Rocketboom, is making her continued existence known with a new video blog, Amanda Across America. Amanda is finally making her trip to Los Angeles (a reputed source of tension between she and RocketBoom co-owner Andrew Baron) with a video camera and crew in tow.
She’s broadcasting (v’casting? vlogging?) her adventures along the way. One of her first videos is an interview with uberblogger Jeff Jarvis about new media and from what I’ve seen, she’s playing it straight…no funny bits.
The show is sponsored by some feel-good groups, including Environmental Countdown and Natural Resources Defense Council — Amanda and her crew are making the trip in what is billed as “the world”s first hybrid SUV,” the Ford Escape Hybrid. Vlogging and Internet TV show start-up blip.tv is hosting the videos.
Posted by Cynthia Brumfield at 4:48 PM | Print | Comments (0)I don’t usually write about personal matters in this blog but the cable industry lost a good person this morning. Technologist Wendell Bailey passed away after a short illness.
Wendell was someone who everybody in the cable industry knew as a point-man for technology translation. At the time he passed away, he had his own consulting business called Strategic Technology International. Before that, he was Chief, Technologies, Advanced Broadband Technology at NBC, Inc., working for Bob Wright and Tom Rogers (now CEO of Tivo). But, before that he spent 17 years as the Vice President of Science and Technology at the National Cable & Telecommunications Association, where I worked closely with him and became his friend.
Wendell was a great supporter of mine and he spent as much time as it took to teach me the ins-and-outs of cable technology. When I moved from NCTA to work for Paul Kagan Associates, where I was charged with writing the Cable TV Technology investment newsletter, I could always count on Wendell to help me figure things out and to put me in touch with the right people so that I could get the answers I needed.
There’s no denying that Wendell was also a character; he knew how to have fun. His NCTA Engineering Committee trips were, in a word, a blast.
I saw him recently and I didn’t have a business card on me. He gave me his card and I promised to call him for lunch. I didn’t and I wish I had.
Posted by Cynthia Brumfield at 12:07 PM | Print | Comments (1)
The Euro-antipathy toward Google reached some kind of apex earlier this month when a Belgian court ordered the search giant to remove Belgian publications’ content from its search index and Google News. The court further ordered Google to post its ruling on the home page of Google.be and Google News Belgium.
This decision came down following a complaint by a group called Copiepresse, which represents some Belgian newspapers. Copiepresse believes that Google’s indexing, and Google’s inclusion of its members’ articles in Google News, violates their copyrights and the court agreed.
The demand to be pulled from Google strikes most English-speaking people as, well, “nuts,” but there’s no denying the strong cultural animosity toward the dominant search engine in large parts of the world, particularly French-speaking nations. Google has remained relatively silent on the court’s decision…until now.
Google posted its limited (the case is ongoing) reaction to the order on its official blog this morning. European Director of Communications and Public Affairs Rachel Whetstone said that although Google couldn’t discuss legal matters,
Nevertheless we do feel that this case raises important and complex issues. It goes to the heart of how search engines work: showing snippets of text and linking users to the websites where the information resides is what makes them so useful. And after all, it’s not just users that benefit from these links but publishers do too — because we drive huge amounts of web traffic to their sites.
Of course, if publishers don’t want their websites to appear in search results (most do) the robots.txt standard (something that webmasters understand) enables them to prevent automatically the indexing of their content. It’s nearly universally accepted and honoured by all reputable search engines.
Google News is no different than Google web search in this regard: We only ever show the headlines and a bit of text. If people want to read the entire story they have to click through to the newspaper’s website. And if a newspaper does not want to be part of Google News we remove their content from our index –- all they have to do is ask.
So, Google already gives publishers the right to yank their content from both the search engine and news indices….why, then, is the group of Belgian newspapers so upset? It’s a mystery to so many people. Bully for the Belgian newspapers — they won, for now. They’re no longer in Google.
The question is: what did they win? Well, for starters, a whole lot less traffic. It’s not like Google will suddenly start paying copyright royalties to Belgian publishers. It’s more like Belgium as a publishing nation will silently slip into some kind of global obscurity and ultimately invisibility.
They have, however, achieved a vague moral victory over Google and let’s hope that makes them happy. Or, as John Murrell at Good Morning Silicon Valley said a little while back, “in whatever language, the four applicable words are: cut, nose, spite, face.”
Posted by Cynthia Brumfield at 10:02 AM | Print | Comments (0)
Business Week Online’s Olga Kharif has this piece about a new move by VoIP provider Jajah that will be announced today. Jajah is unveiling Jajah Mobile that will allow callers who have any one of up to 80 mobile phone models to make free phone calls to other Jajah members by downloading a software plug-in. Jajah claims it will soon cover all cell phone models.
But the real news is that Jajah is offering very low cost international phone calls (as low as $.02/minute) to its members, a move that could ratchet up international calling from cell phones. Another market-changer: Jajah only chews up users’ incoming call minutes — it doesn’t require the use of outgoing minutes. Most mobile phone users opt for contracts that allow for unlimited incoming calls but cap the minutes for outgoing calls.
But, as Jon Arnold notes in the article, Jajah has only one million registered users, so some costs will kick in for contacting non-registered users. The freebie and low-cost element of the deal is dependent on calling other Jajah users. But with a downloadable software plug-in, how hard could it be for a user to let friends know they should do the same thing?
Posted by Cynthia Brumfield at 8:54 AM | Print | Comments (0)MarketWatch’s Bambi Francisco has this piece today about a new comScore/Media Metrix report on web site video viewing and the surprise top site for video is New Corp.’s MySpace, which beats out even YouTube and Google Video.
According to the report, which will be released today, 37.4 million unique individuals watched a video on MySpace in July, collectively watching 1.4 billion videos. Yahoo! was the second most popular video site, with 812 million video streams. YouTube was third with 649 million video streams. Time Warner was fourth with 258 million video streams, followed by ROO Group (186 million streams), Microsoft (156 million video streams), Viacom, Google, Ebaumsworld and Major League Baseball.
MySpace, according to the report, accounts for 20% of all web video viewing, an accomplishment achieved in only six months — MySpace didn’t begin offering videos until six months ago. Another interesting stat: 3 out of 5 Internet users are watching videos, typically twice a day.
Be prepared for howls of protest regarding comScore’s results from YouTube and Google. The online measurement leader is coming under increasing criticism for getting its numbers wrong.
| Internet Video Viewing, July 2006 | |||
| Streams initiated (mm) | Unique streamers (000) | Streams per streamer | |
| Total Internet | 7,182 | 106,534 | 67.4 |
| MySpace | 1,459 | 37,422 | 39 |
| Yahoo sites | 812 | 37,934 | 21.4 |
| YouTube | 649 | 30,538 | 21.2 |
| Time Warner Network | 258 | 25,675 | 10.1 |
| ROO Group | 186 | 5,841 | 31.9 |
| Microsoft sites | 156 | 16,227 | 9.6 |
| Viacom Digital | 322 | 14,077 | 22.9 |
| Google sites | 60 | 7,520 | 7.9 |
| Ebaumsworld | 67 | 7,143 | 9.4 |
| MLB | 30 | 6,442 | 4.6 |
| Source: comScore Media Metrix. | |||
Posted by Cynthia Brumfield at 8:16 AM | Print | Comments (0)
Online movie service CinemaNow is announcing today that it has broken through one barrier that is holding up the online sale of movies: it will sell for $9.99 a downloadable version of “The Fast and the Furious: Tokyo Drift” that can be burned on a DVD viewable on any player at the same time it’s selling it in retail outlets via DVD.
CinemaNow CEO Curt Marvis thinks this will be a catalyst to the wider release of movies on the Internet. Not only is the film viewable on standard DVD players, and hence watchable on TV and not restricted to PC viewing as has been the case, but customers can get the film without a trip to the store.
An earlier barrier broken by CinemaNow, allowing customers to burn movies to DVDs that can be viewed on ordinary players, is apparently paying off. Marvis says that CinemaNow’s roughly 100 download-to-burn titles that can be watched on TVs are downloaded at a rate five times higher than the computer-only films. (Plug here: Over at IP Media Monitor, we’re hosting an audio event on October 4 on movies-over-the-web featuring execs from AOL and Movielink, with more speakers to come.)
Posted by Cynthia Brumfield at 7:17 AM | Print | Comments (0)
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