Roundup: Apple Tablet coming? Facebook book definitely is, and more
Here’s the latest action
Apple Tablet looking even more real — More here and here.
Tokyo park keeps teen vandals out using high-pitched noisemaker — Wow. And is this a civil rights issue?
“The Accidental Billionaires: The Founding of Facebook A Tale of Sex, Money, Genius and Betrayal” — The title says it all. Facebook’s early days were mild compared to, say, the average fraternity — c’mon it was mostly dudes working on computers. But facts can’t stop a sensational story,… Continue Reading
Disney on Hulu would leave CBS as the odd network out
The premium video streaming site Hulu works first and foremost because it has great content. And it looks to be on the verge of getting even better.
A deal to bring Disney’s content to Hulu is “basically done,” a source familiar with the negotiations tells Silicon Alley Insider. This means we should see content from ESPN, ABC and probably some Disney movies on the service. It’s a huge win for Hulu and its fans.
With ABC on… Continue Reading
Boxee and Hulu can’t reach an agreement, so Boxee creates a workaround (and launches an app store)
When Boxee was forced to pull Hulu support a few weeks ago, users were outraged. And rightfully so. It’s not like Boxee, a software media center startup, was blocking the advertisements Hulu was showing, it was really just another way to view the content, almost like another browser. But the powers that be behind Hulu — that is, the big media companies that product the content — forced Hulu to shutdown the pipeline of content… Continue Reading
Hulu channels Michael Corleone, Boxee support also whacked
Hulu, it seems, is tying up some loose ends.
Earlier today, it was revealed that the online streaming service had pulled its content off of CBS-owned TV.com — but that’s not all. It has also requested its content be removed from the media center software startup Boxee, an email from the company says. There’s the big media we all love to hate.
Hulu, which is backed by both NBC and Fox, offers many of the hit shows… Continue Reading
iTunes cuts the price of 24. A sign of falling prices?
I received an unexpected email tonight from the iTunes Store, telling me that my season pass to the Fox show 24 had been reduced in price from $67.99 to $59.99. Even stranger, Apple decided to give me a $10 iTunes gift certificate because of it (that’s more than the price reduction).
I have absolutely no idea what that’s all about, and I’m not complaining, but it seems a bit odd. You might think Apple or Fox… Continue Reading
Apple TV is at a crossroads
It’s nothing new for pundits and bloggers to say what functionality they think should be included in the Apple TV. The device, which brings iTunes and other digital content into the living room by hooking up to your TV, has the potential to be Apple’s next big thing — if it makes the right moves. Today brings two long reports about Apple TV’s future that take what are basically opposite stances.
On one side, you have… Continue Reading
Dreamworks and Intel pull out the glasses for a wacky 3-D Super Bowl
Perhaps the craziest marketing stunt planned for this year’s Super Bowl will be an unlikely joint promotion of the film “Monsters vs. Aliens” using 3-D glasses.
By their own admission, Intel, DreamWorks Animation and NBC are spending a bazillion dollars on this one. They want you to watch the trailer of the film in three dimensions, using 3-D glasses that are allegedly far better than what our grandparents had in the 1950s when the 3-D fad… Continue Reading
The “secret” behind Hulu in a Super Bowl ad?
Video site Hulu sent an email out today telling people to watch Super Bowl XLIII (that’s 43 for you non-Romans) for the launch of Hulu’s ad campaign. That, in and of itself, is somewhat interesting because the video site backed by two television studios (NBC and Fox) is spending millions of dollars (or rather losing millions of dollars since NBC is airing the Super Bowl) to promote a medium that may ultimately kill television as… Continue Reading
Hulu could catch YouTube in 2009 — in revenue, not traffic
Maybe you’ve read some of the headlines this morning about the NBC and Fox-backed online video site Hulu “catching” or getting “bigger” than YouTube. Hopefully you read deeper into those articles, because while the headlines suggest that Hulu is catching YouTube in traffic, that’s not the case. What they mean to say is that Hulu could match YouTube’s U.S. revenue by next year, according to The Financial Times.
And really, that’s not all that surprising. Everyone knows… Continue Reading
Finally, I can avoid watching Bulletproof Monk on YouTube too
YouTube is set to announce a deal with movie studio MGM that will allow for some of its content to be viewed on the extremely popular online video site, The New York Times reports. This deal, which had been previously rumored (though the studio involved wasn’t clear at the time), will bring feature films to YouTube — legally. That’s big news, but it’s not all great news.
While it always seemed likely that any studio would… Continue Reading
NBC content and the web: It just works
When NBC made the decision to pull its television content from Apple’s iTunes store late last year, a lot of users were upset. Ten days ago, Apple announced an agreement with NBC to bring the content back, and since then it’s already sold 1 million shows on the service, according to numbers from Apple. That’s pretty amazing, considering that most of the new fall shows have yet to premier.
But iTunes is hardly the only Internet… Continue Reading
Is Hollywood forming DECE to wage a digital content war against Apple?
Digital rights management (DRM), for better or worse, is still the cornerstone of digital content. But the name has such a negative connotation now that major players in the entertainment and electronics industry appear to be trying to change it.
According to Reuters, some of the Hollywood studios are working on a consortium with various retailers, service providers, and consumer electronics/information technology companies that’s set to be unveiled at the Consumer Electronics Show (CES) in January… Continue Reading
After months in exile, NBC content returns to iTunes…in HD
When NBC made the decision to leave Apple’s iTunes store late last year, several of its shows were among the most popular on the service. NBC went on to put its content on several other services, including iTunes-rival Amazon, and launched its own service with Fox, the online streaming video site Hulu. Still, it always seemed odd that NBC, which has arguably the best content, wouldn’t be paired with iTunes, perhaps the top content provider…. Continue Reading
Joost’s desktop client is toast
Since early on in its testing phase, I found Joost to be a compelling take on Internet Protocol Television (IPTV). Let me rephrase: I found the idea of Joost to be compelling. It offered free video content on the web in a way that was somewhat similar to a television experience but added the interactivity that the web offers. The service’s problem was in its execution — namely that it required a seperate desktop client to… Continue Reading
Roundup: Obama’s big Bay Area night, Xbox 360 sells out in Japan, Hulu going international and more
Here’s the latest action:
Obama Bay Area event sets fund-raising record — Democratic Presidential candidate Barack Obama visited the Bay Area and racked up $7.8 million in fund-raising, a record for a single event, according to Draper Fisher Jurvestson’s Steve Jurvetson, who, with his wife Karla Jurvetson, donated in $9,200.
Xbox 360 sells out in Japan — The Microsoft gaming console has never been able to gain a strong foothold in the country which prefers its own Nintendo Wii… Continue Reading
Roundup: Facebook users triple in Japan, MySpace selects citizen journalists and more
Here’s the latest action:
ComScore: Facebook users triple in Japan during the last year – But Mixi.jp is still number one, with 12.7 million visitors compared to Facebook’s 538,000.
MySpace and NBC select citizen journalists — They’ve chosen Matt Britten and Sara Pat Badgley to cover the Democratic and Republican Conventions, respectively, as part of the companies’ Decision08 contest. Britten and Badgley’s videos and blog posts will appear on MySpace, and possibly on the MSNBC TV channel and… Continue Reading
Hulu gets more serious about HD content (still not that serious)
Hulu, the online streaming video site backed by NBC and Fox, has been nothing short of successful. The usage numbers are very good and the amount of free, ad-supported content is arguably better. If there is a knock that can be made against it though (besides its lack of availability outside the United States), it’s in the department of high definition content.
Though Hulu launched its “HD Gallery” back in December, it basically only contained movie… Continue Reading
Use the web to get your 2008 Beijing Olympics fix
We’re one week away from the opening of the 2008 Summer Olympics in Beijing, China. Most of us stateside likely won’t be making the long trip, but there are a few interesting ways to keep up to date on the action around the web.
First and foremost, NBC will be streaming over 2,000 hours of live content and 3,000 hours of on-demand video to the Internet via its site NBCOlympics.com, reports CNET. This will not only… Continue Reading
Roundup: Yahoo’s bad (but not awful) day, Icahn’s wild weekend, shuffle at the top of Etsy and more
Here’s the latest action:
Yahoo has a bad day, but it could have been much worse — The Internet giant announced its earnings today and fell short of expectations, but only by about a penny-a-share. Net income was down 19 percent from the same quarter last year. Still, considering it no longer has a Carl Icahn-led hostile takeover to worry about, the company can — and more importantly, will live with these numbers.
Icahn’s wild weekend — While Yahoo was… Continue Reading
Jimmy Fallon to do some minor league web video work before moving to the big leagues
Comedian Jimmy Fallon is taking over NBC’s “Late Night” show next year when current host Conan O’Brien moves up to replace Jay Leno on the “Tonight Show.” Producer Lorne Michaels, apparently unsure if Fallon is ready to make the jump to nightly television, has a novel idea: Work out his kinks on the web first.
Fallon will debut this fall on a site to be determined, with 5- to 10-minute episodes every night, according to the… Continue Reading