Mobile & Wireless

As I have often said, Steve Jobs is the world’s foremost expert in making me buy stuff I don’t need with money I don’t want to spend. In this regard, the 8GB iPhone is his ultimate achievement. It is, by far, the most viscerally exciting, aesthetically pleasing piece of technology I have ever held in Continue Reading →

 TUBEMOGUL, a video analytics company, has conducted a fascinating study of video sites to determine how viewers are counted. YouTube, Yahoo Video, and Metacafe were found to have strict counting requirements – generally requiring long views, and often ignoring multiple views from the same computer. AOL, MySpace, and Revver were found to have much Continue Reading →

BLINKX is planning to launch a new online video ad platform. The system is called AdHoc, and it will use audio recognition to place targeted ads inside and next to online video. AdHoc is expected to be announced on Monday. VERIZON‘s FiOS TV service will fail to comply with the FCC mandate to offer CableCARD-ready Continue Reading →

APPLE issued two YOUTUBE announcements yesterday. AppleTV’s were sent a software update that added YouTube functionality, and the forthcoming iPhone will feature a special Apple-designed YouTube application. YouTube is re-encoding its entire video library in the H.264 format to reduce battery usage on the iPhone and other mobile devices. 10,000 videos will be ready in Continue Reading →

What you are about to read is not an indictment of the iPhone platform, the concept or its design. I truly love the device. It’s just not very useful as a phone, PDA or business tool. Right now, I’m forwarding all of my Verizon calls to my iPhone. I didn’t have the guts to port Continue Reading →

WARNER BROS. will begin a trial-run of releasing movies to VOD and DVD on the same day. The experiment begins on July 10th with “The Astronaut Farmer,” which underperformed at the box office. YOUTUBE will soon begin testing home-grown video fingerprinting to identify copyrighted material. Content owners of identified clips will have the option of Continue Reading →

The DOLAN FAMILY privatization bid for CABLEVISION has been accepted by the board, but still must pass a shareholder vote. A “majority of the minority” must approve the deal. BRIGHTCOVE will syndicate CBS NEWS content across blogs and websites. Syndicates will be allowed to insert clips from CBS Evening News with Katie Couric, The Early Continue Reading →

CBS will use MICROSOFT‘s new Silverlight technology to enable user-generated content on the sites of CBS-owned stations. The sites will mix station-owned content with UGC. Launch is expected for later this year. US NEWSPAPER circulation fell 2.1% between October and March. The New York Times was down 1.9%. However, The WSJ was up 0.6%, and Continue Reading →

The FCC is setting rules for auctioning the 700 MHZ spectrum, formerly used for Analog TV. Analog will stop using the spectrum in February 2009. YAHOO has launched a searchable database of music lyrics. The database includes the official versions of lyrics to over 400,000 songs, supplied by music publishers. Yahoo and the rights-holders will Continue Reading →

The INTERACTIVE ADVERTISING BUREAU is calling for an audit of comScore and Nielsen/NetRatings. Many companies disagree with the numbers reported by the two tracking companies. Out-dated methods may be to blame. eMARKETER is predicting that overall online ad growth will fall to 18.9% this year. Last year, online advertising grew 30.8%. RIM will begin selling Continue Reading →