Google TV Coming Soon?

Google TV Coming Soon?

Today, there have been a couple of people bringing up the topic of Google hiring TV engineers. They both point to an article at The Radioactive Yak, which shows a "recent" job posting at Google for a "Product Manager - Interactive TV." Actually, I saw this job posting a few weeks ago, and then dug up some more information, and noticed it wasn't incredibly new then. This is just more evidence that Google is making a play at TV, from what Gary posted back on Nov. 30, 2005.

The New Wisdom of the Web
Why is everyone so happy in Silicon Valley again? A new wave of start-ups are cashing in on the next stage of the Internet. And this time, it's all about ... you.

By Steven Levy and Brad Stone
Newsweek

April 3, 2006 issue - A little over two years ago, even the most sensitive entrepreneurial radar could not pick out two pairs of people on opposite ends of the West Coast starting companies that would make plenty out of nothing. In Santa Monica, Calif., dot-com survivors Chris DeWolfe and Tom Anderson were hatching the idea of taking on biggies like AOL and Yahoo with a Web site consisting only of stuff that people would bring to it. And up in Vancouver, B.C., married collaborators Stewart Butterfield and Caterina Fake were just figuring out that the online game they were developing might work better as a way for people to share their digital photos with each other.

Now both fledgling companies are leading a charge of innovators making hay out of the Internet's ability to empower citizens and enrich those who help with the empowerment. The southern California guys head MySpace, the prime hangout for 65 million (mostly young) people, and thousands of rock bands, movie stars and marketers begging for their attention. Canadian-born Flickr, by building a 2.5 million-member community solely around a passion for sharing photos, has become a poster child on how a well-executed Net effort can make big changes in people's habits. Welcome to the new tech boom.

Oh, and unlike the old boom, where entrepreneurs couldn't get to the IPO broker's office quick enough, these crafty duos have already taken the money and stayed. Yahoo has snapped up Flickr to bolster the portfolio of services it offers to its half-billion users. And the new owner of MySpace is that wild and crazy (like, um, a fox) digital punkster, Rupert Murdoch—hedging his bets on what might be the next Net-powered media upheaval.

The massive success of MySpace and the exemplary strategy of Flickr are milestones in a new high-tech wave reminiscent of the craziness of the early dot-com days. This rebooting owes everything to the enhanced power and pervasiveness of the Web, which has finally matured to the point where it can fulfill some of the outlandish promises that we heard in the '90s. The generic term for this movement, especially among the hundreds of new companies jamming the waiting rooms of venture-capital offices, is Web 2.0, but that's misleading—some supposedly Web 1.0 companies like eBay and Google have been clueful about this all along. A more fitting description comes from Mary Hodder, the CEO of a social-video-sharing start-up called Dabble. (Since Dabble has not yet launched, I can't explain exactly what that means.) "This is the live Web," she says.

What makes the Web alive is, quite simply, us. Our presence, most often conducted at the speed of broadband, is constant and mandatory. Thanks to our activity, the Web has replaced phone books, and is in the process of replacing phones. It's the place that answers our questions in four tenths of a second and ships us funny clips that mix the "Back to the Future" guys with the "Brokeback Mountain" soundtrack. It's the main news source for the non-arthritic population, and a megaphone for those who make their own media. As we keep offloading our activities to the Web and adding previously unmanageable or unthinkable new pursuits, it's fair to say that our everyday exist-ence is a network effect. That has made some splendid opportunities for smart, nimble new companies, and threatened the existence of old ones now afloat in the mainstream.

Get Ready For Your Close-Up - Forbes.com

Digital Media
Get Ready For Your Close-Up
Rachel Rosmarin, 03.14.06, 3:35 PM ET
Burlingame, Calif. -
Microsoft can’t stop playing follow the leader.

Now that it has ramped up its Windows Live product suite--a direct response to Google and Yahoo!'s popular Web-based software--the company can’t bear to leave any popular Internet category untouched, no matter how crowded the playing field already is.

Microsoft has owned up to eventually entering the Web-based, user-generated video space, with a project code-named “Warhol” that could end up as Windows Live Video. Blogs have reported that the product will launch in April, though a person familiar with Microsoft's plans said it would be later than that.

“We are keeping the possibility of user-generated video content top-of-mind as we plan for upcoming MSN and Windows Live Services,” says Rob Bennett, general manager of entertainment and video for MSN.

Dozens of companies have already popularized the user-generated video category, with YouTube and Google Video leading the pack. Yahoo! has also made loud noises about the space (see: "Yahoo! Switches Channels”), and smaller players like Grouper, Vimeo and ClipShack are working on ways to make amateur videos easy to upload and share.

Microsoft hasn’t said how it plans to differentiate its pending video offering from this plethora of competitors. November 2005 memos from Microsoft Chairman Bill Gates and Chief Technical Officer Ray Ozzie outlined areas where other companies had taken a lead in Web-based software, and how Microsoft planned to compete.

Since then, beta versions of Web-based classifieds, mapping, image and news search, e-mail and office productivity software have launched. Though many of these products have existed for only a few months, none of them have seen dramatic adoption at the expense of Google’s comparable offerings.

But Microsoft isn’t new to online videos. Its MSN video product, which relies on advertising revenue and requires a software download to operate, gets more traffic than any other video site, according to Nielsen NetRatings. This video content comes from all over the Web, but it is up to Microsoft, not users, to provide it.

With a site full of user-generated videos, Microsoft could opt to allow users to charge money for submissions and take a percentage of the purchase cost as a fee, as Google does with its video store. But Microsoft also has an opportunity to integrate user-generated videos with other social applications in its network, such as MSN Spaces and Windows Messenger, something Google hasn’t attempted.

YouTube Shaking Up Traditional Business & Promo Models
By Jerry Weinstein (from www.mediavillage.com)

Esther Dyson's annual PC Forum conference is always a hot ticket. It's a Renaissance Weekend for the Technorati. Dyson's strength is keeping abreast of trends and sticking her neck out to pronounce what's next. It's no coincidence that the theme of this year's conference - which took place in Carlsbad, CA this past week - was Erosion of Power: Users in Charge.

The theme could not be more timely. Sure, we hear the drumbeat of consumers moving away from traditional media:

CD sales are down.
Box office receipts - down
Network audiences, down.
Newspaper circulation…down.
The news isn't all dour. Crain's New York Business (see link (1) below) reports that revenues for online content have hit a new record high and according to the Online Publishers Association, the entertainment/lifestyles segment of the marketplace has reached $2 billion, up 15% since 2004, outpacing that of the online dating space.

We live in interesting times.

On the one hand, celebrity has never had such currency. Media consolidation means that there are only a handful of players that own print publications, TV stations, film studios and exhibitors, and of course, record labels.

All you have to do is read the last three days of the New York Times to get a sense of just how frothy (and complex) the future of media is. What Saul calls Slivercasting - todays paper calls nich. But will it be Sail.tv or backyard wrestling? Or both. Stay tuned.

March 12, 2006
As Internet TV Aims at Niche Audiences, the Slivercast Is Born

By SAUL HANSELL
ANDY STEWARD, a successful London computer consultant and sailboat racer, became exasperated when trying to watch his favorite sport on television. There were a few half-hour recaps of some major sailing races, but they were always shown late at night.

Mr. Steward looked into creating a sailing channel on the Sky satellite service in Britain, but his idea was soon dead in the water. He would have had to pay £85,000 (nearly $150,000) to start the channel and £40,000 a month (nearly $70,000), as well as the production costs. That was a lot of money for an untested concept.

But in January, he did introduce a sailing channel, one that is rapidly filling with sailing talk shows, product reviews, programs on sailing techniques and, most important, intense coverage of the sort of smaller races that don't make it onto traditional television.

His new channel, however, will not be available over the air. And it won't be found on cable or even on satellite, at least not yet. The channel, called Sail.tv, is broadcast only on the Internet, which enables video to reach a much larger worldwide audience at a much lower initial cost than a satellite channel. Because "we didn't have any idea how big the audience would be," Mr. Steward said, he wanted to keep his expenses as low as possible. "Internet television is an investment we can grow into," he said.

Google Does Word Processing

Posted by Harry McCracken
Friday, March 10, 2006, 09:04 AM (PST)

For eons, there have been rumors a possibly browser-based Google office suite. Now there's an intriguing nugget of reality to ponder: Google has bought Writely, the impressive free browser-based collaborative word processor.

What Google is going to do with Writely isn't entirely clear--it says there are no plans to embed advertising in the service--but it's yet another recent example (along with Google Base, the new Google Desktop, and Google Page Creator) of Google doing something involving being a repository for information, not just an indexer of it. (They've always said that their mission was to "organize the world's information and make it universally accessible and useful"--maybe it's time to add "and store it, too" to that statement.)

I don't know if Google has specific intentions for Writely, but the acquisition makes perfect sense in a big-picture way. Writely already follows Google-esque principles better than some of Google's own offerings: It's innovative, easy, useful, fun, and free. If it becomes a springboard for other broswer-based productivity tools from Google, that might be a very good thing. And if Google had tried to develop its own word processor from scratch, I can't imagine it would have been any better...or much different.

One other note. In the short term, the Google-Writely deal has one major downside: Writely has stopped signing up new users while it moves the service to Google's platform. (No word on when it might open up again.)

If you're already a Writely user, you can still get in, but you have a cap on the number of people you can invite in to work on a document. Collaboration is one of the primary notions behind Writely, so that may be an issue for some Writely fans.

Lesson: As great as great free stuff (like Writely) is, you've got to be careful about coming to depend on it. Freeloaders can't be choosers--or at least it's harder for them to be quite as demanding as paying customers. (Oddly enough, I just finished writing an Up Front column for the next issue of PC World which touched on this issue.)

If you're intrigued by Writely and bummed you can't get in, check out ZohoWriter, a similar, similarly nifty free service that's still signing up new users.

(originally published in Morph
Journalism. India. The Bomb.

I watched the ABC Evening News last night. I watched John Stewart last night.

One program is billed as journalism, the other as comedy.

The contrast was stark, and left me wondering about how viewers would ever be able to sort out what is truely going on in the world.

Stewart asked astute questions about our willingness to help India with its nuclear program, while denying the same help to our Pakastani alies. He then played a piece of video in which that question was put to the President. George Bush said: "India and Pakistan are different countries with different histories." Huh?

The point that the comedy show was making was that the answer made no sense. It demanded a followup - or maybe a few.

On ABC, the idea of playing a piece of video tape like that simply didn't fit the "rules." Instead, ABC showed the President playing cricket - a totally staged photo op that played like a totally staged photo op.

So, what are viewers to make of this? Is the fact that the President is blithely handing over the keys to the country's nuclear technology to India while playing cricket not newsworty? Is the simple fact that ABC doesn't make news, it covers it, so our President speaking without any coherence isn't "News," just an awkward fact that can't fit into the broadcast?

AOL to sell shows online

By Kenneth Li

NEW YORK (Reuters) - Time Warner Inc.'s AOL plans to sell programing on its Web site by the middle of this year, a top executive said, as it hastens to secure a place in the market for video-on-demand over the Internet.

The market for online media is booming after Apple Computer Inc. began offering shows for sale on its popular iTunes digital music and videos service last year.

The expansion of AOL's video service, which will combine free and pay-per-download shows from established programmers and user-created video clips, aims to address complaints about the rigid pricing structure and the mix of available programing on iTunes.

Boob tube meets online maps as TV fans get creative | CNET News.com

Ever wonder where the Soup Nazi is located in Seinfeld's New York City? How about the back road where Tony Soprano nearly whacks his drugged-out second cousin Christopher?

To feed the growing hunger for more information about their favorite shows, fans are creating Web sites called mashups with details about the programs, including pinpoints of exactly where on a map key events in the shows happened and hometowns of reality show stars.

The makers of these fan sites are doing it, more than anything, because of the passion they feel for their favorite shows. Few of them expect to make much money off their projects. In fact, they run the risk of getting slapped with a lawsuit for infringing on the copyrights of the companies that have created the shows.

Tue, Feb 28, 2006
Community-Generated Media

Forum assesses community-generated media, sometimes called "citizen journalism." What is it, how is it evolving, and what does it mean for the "traditional" media?
Host: Michael Krasny

Guests:
Dan Gillmor, director of the Center for Citizen Media, which is affiliated with graduate school of journalism at UC-Berkeley and the Berkman Center for Internet and Society at Harvard

Steve Rosenbaum, a managing partner at Magnify Media and creator of MTV's "Unfiltered" series, which used documentary film citizen storytellers to create a film about the 2004 election

Tom Rosenstiel, director of the Project for Excellence in Journalism in Washington, D.C. and co-author of "The Elements of Journalism"

Venice Wagner, an assistant professor at San Francisco State University, and a former journalist for the Chronicle and Examiner newspapers

Link for audio

Yahoo Says It Is Backing Away From TV-Style Web Shows - New York Times

March 2, 2006
Yahoo Says It Is Backing Away From TV-Style Web Shows

By SAUL HANSELL
After proclaiming grand plans to bring elaborately produced sitcoms, talk shows and other television-style programs to the Internet, the head of Yahoo's Media Group said yesterday that he was sharply scaling back those efforts. He said the group would shift its focus to content acquired from other media companies or submitted by users.

The executive, Lloyd Braun, the former chairman of ABC Entertainment, was the subject of speculation in recent weeks that he was leaving Yahoo over differences with its chief executive, Terry S. Semel.

Mr. Braun said yesterday that he had called a meeting of his group tomorrow in Santa Monica, Calif., where he would outline the new strategy. He said Mr. Semel would attend to endorse it.

"I thought it would be a good time, given all the rumor and innuendo, for me to reiterate once and for all that I am not going anywhere," Mr. Braun said.

Yahoo said Mr. Semel was not available for comment yesterday, but Daniel L. Rosensweig, the company's chief operating officer, said, "We are very happy with Lloyd, and Lloyd is very happy with Yahoo." Mr. Braun acknowledged some differences with Yahoo's management — his initial budget requests for this year were rejected, he said — but he dismissed that as normal corporate back-and-forth. And he said he had been engaged in a discussion with Mr. Semel and others at Yahoo's corporate headquarters in Sunnyvale, Calif., about his revised strategy for the media group, which includes Yahoo's news, sports, finance and entertainment sites.

"I didn't fully appreciate what success in this medium is really going to look like," he said. "This is not about creating one-off hits like in my old business. That is not going to create a sustainable competitive advantage over the long term."

With advertisers moving large parts of their budgets online, the market for content, created by professionals, bloggers and individual users, is expanding rapidly — as is the competition. Major media companies are developing video-based programming for the Internet. Myspace.com, purchased last year by the News Corporation, has become a major site based on user-contributed content. Many start-ups, like youtube.com, seek to follow suit.

Indeed, Mr. Braun said yesterday that the way to keep users on Yahoo's site longer — and thus be able to show them more advertising — was to offer ways they can create their own content and look at content created by others. He pointed to the site Yahoo built for the 2006 Winter Olympics, which prominently featured photographs from Flickr, Yahoo's photo-sharing site, along with articles both by news agencies and by a few columnists exclusive to Yahoo.

"I now get excited about user-generated content the way I used to get excited about thinking about what television shows would work," he said.

Mr. Braun insisted that Yahoo would not abandon its efforts to have original material, but he said it would embark on only a handful of new ventures this year, not the dozens he had been promising last year.

The company is not canceling its initial forays into programming — "Kevin Sites in the Hot Zone," a series of war reports, and "Richard Bangs Adventures," travelogues about unusual locales. But other initiatives, like a revival of "The Runner," an elaborate reality concept Mr. Braun originally developed for ABC, have been shelved.

"Original content is the salt and pepper on the meal," he said. "It is certainly not the engine driving this."

He acknowledged that coming off developing ABC programs like "Lost" and "Desperate Housewives," he had overly grand expectations for what he should do at Yahoo.

"I realized I have to check my ego at the door for a moment, and forget whatever expectations people had about me because of my former life, and really take a hard look at who should this business be built for the long term — a business that is not dependent on a series of expensive one-off's to survive," he said. Jordan Rohan, an analyst with RBC Capital Markets, said Yahoo's shift in strategy was sound. "Embracing things like blogs and sharing of content between individuals" is at least as important as "coming up with the next mega-online event," he said. "The Internet is such a niche content environment that the broadcast model does not really work."

Mr. Rosensweig, the chief operating officer, said Yahoo's intention had always been to combine content from users, media companies and to a lesser extent its own creation.

"Where the confusion has come in, and maybe the emphasis has evolved, is we always felt that kind of programming was a component of what we were going to do, not only what we do," he said. "It happened to be the part people associated with Lloyd, because that is what he had been doing."

Mr. Braun's track record so far is mixed. The sites he took over, which generally have been among the most popular in their respective fields, have been neither leaders nor laggards in audience growth. Yahoo News, for example, was the most popular news site in January, with 27.5 million users. But that is only a 2 percent growth in users from a year earlier, compared to 19 percent growth for the No. 2 site, MSNBC.com.

Yahoo's original-content efforts have yet to create the sort of hit Mr. Braun had talked about. "Kevin Sites in the Hot Zone" had 791,000 users in January, according to figures from comScore Networks provided by Yahoo. That was more than popular blogs like Gawker and DailyKos, but marginal for Yahoo, with more than 400 million monthly users.

Joanna Stevens, a Yahoo spokeswoman, said the company was pleased with the site because it attracted an affluent audience that was attractive to advertisers and because of "the positioning it gives Yahoo News as a serious news brand."

One possible consideration for Yahoo in its original-content efforts was concern among movie studios and television networks that it might be a competitor rather than a potential distribution arm — perhaps encouraging them to offer content first to Google, which says it has no interest in creating its own content.

"Hollywood is always paranoid about that sort of thing," said John Rose, a media consultant for the Boston Consulting Group. But he said their fears were overblown.

Mr. Rosensweig said concerns among studios were misguided. "We still think today, we have the best relationships with — and are the best partner for — the big media companies," he said.