April 04, 2006
010203040506 - Singularity Meme
01:02:03 04/05/06 - a moment that can only happen once every 100 years (assuming a two digit format for the year). It's coming on Wednesday morning. Some have suggested the blogosphere post what they were doing at this auspicious moment. I'll be sleeping, thank you very much. Thanks to my cousin Herb for emailing me about this. It's apparently all the rage.
technorati tags: singularity, meme, 01:02:03 04/05/06, 010203040506
Posted by jetrotz at 09:32 PM | Comments (0)
April 03, 2006
NYTimes.com Redesigns
Wider format, most popular emailed/blogged/searched feature and a new horizontal drill-down navigation added with more prominent multimedia. Also a very smart 'Today's Paper' feature that let's you find articles as they are organized in the print edition - would like to see more scans of the printed pages there however. Editor in chief's letter to readers is here. Mytimes.com feature which is supposed to allow users to customize a page with both Times and other web site's content is touted in the letter, but it has a 'coming soon' message when I visited it. Sounds like a custom RSS aggregator to me....technorati tags: nytimes, redesign, rss
Posted by jetrotz at 11:27 AM | Comments (0)
Digital Movies on Demand
Movielink.com and CinemaNow.com both revealed today that they will now offer movies for download (to own or rent) simultaneously with their DVD release to stores. Reuters story here. The price point is a head-scratcher, though: $20-$30 for the 'own the file' of current DVD releases. With DVDs themselves selling for less than that, and the fact that with DRM in place users will not be able to burn these downloads to removable media, the value here is seriously undercut, IMHO. Unless you happen to have a spiffy Windows MCE or Viiv setup where you can watch these on your TV screen, $30 for a movie I can only watch on my 20" LCD in the home office (or perhaps on my Powerbook Tablet PC (no Mac support, sigh) is not a great value. I'd much rather get the disc from Netflix or pick it up at BestBuy and watch it with the wife in 50 inches of glorious color. And given the price point of full-length television shows currently selling on the iTunes store ($1.99), I would like to think that given Apple's history with negotiating their music deals for the ITMS will allow them to cut a better deal on behalf of the consumer - and that their product strategy includes a simpler way of providing hardware that let's us see these downloadable movies in HD-quality on our living room sets. A guy can hope, right?
technorati tags: DVD, ITMS, DRM, Movielink, CinemaNow
Posted by jetrotz at 11:19 AM | Comments (0)
February 13, 2006
SI Swimsuit on Your iPod
While some may find it hard to believe, I'm quite happy to not be involved in the coding, editing and (ahem) 'quality control' of the annual SI.com Swimsuit Edition. The NYTimes picked up on this year's efforts, and goes into great detail on this much-heralded product launch tomorrow (on Valentines Day, 'natch). The annual staple has grown to not only include the magaine itself, but videos for your iPod, AIM icons, mobile phone wallpapers, and a cross-country series of parties with Anheuser-Busch (which picked up this sponsorship after Miller bowed out recently). Not to mention a few hundred very nice photos on SI.com. Get ready, get set - now go make sure all those images are cropped correctly in three different size formats, the swimsuit credits are correct, and no one left off any thumbnail images for gallery 42 of 50! Believe me - stare at those pictures long enough, and you'll grow hair where you don't want it - or perhaps get tired of supermodels. Probably NOT the latter, though.
technorati tags: si, swimsuit, ipod, video, sports illustrated
Posted by jetrotz at 02:14 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
February 10, 2006
My Four Things
As if I didn't have enough to do, I was tagged and need to post my response (more examples of the Four Things meme here).
Four jobs I've had in my life:
- Thrifty Hardware & Supply Company clerk - worked for my dad, doing fun things like working the pipe cutting machine and getting covered in the lubricating oil. I'd come home looking like I'd been in one of those Wesson-oil wrestling matches.
- Waltham Camera & Stereo counter sales - back in college, I earned extra $$ working at this high-end stereo and photo store. We'd spend hours listening to our favorite music on these $25k systems, and I was able to buy all sorts of gear at cost. Heck, I still have some of the speakers I bought back in the day.
- Photojournalist - I was a stringer for the AP during college, then a staff photographer and editor for the Savannah Morning News and The Augusta Chronicle. Amazing experiences during that time - from travelling with the U.N. to Sarajevo in '92 to photographing the antics of the ill-fated '86 Red Sox, to covering the darker side of my home town during the violent crack-gang violence in the early 90s.
- Turner Broadcasting - that would be my current job, and it's been a blast, from the annual Swimsuit Edition for SI.com to iTV projects for CNN and the rest of our brands, it's been a great experience. PS - Swimsuit 2006 launches on Valentines Day next week!
Four TV shows I love to watch:
- 24
- Survivor (yeah, I know)
- Curb Your Enthusiasm
- Family Guy
- Isla Mujeres, Mexico - wonderful small island off Cancun - peaceful and beautiful
- Haifa, Israel - rather like Carmel, California. Went before the Intafada, when the only worries were rockets coming in from Lebanon
- Volcano Village, Hawaii - among the many places we went on our honeymoon, by far the most magical
- Highlands, NC - a great escape from Atlanta - wonderful hiking, amazing food and wine, and good geocaching!
- Toro!
- Osso Bucco
- Lobster, pretty much any way you serve it
- Berries
Four places I would rather be right now:
- The aforementioned Big Island of Hawaii
- At home, with my wife and son
- Savannah, GA (my hometown)
- Boston (my adoptive hometown)
technorati tags: four things, meme, tagged
Posted by jetrotz at 06:25 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
December 20, 2005
Digital Edge Awards
The Newspaper Association of America's New Media Federation (one of the top two online
journalism ogranizations focused on the newspaper business) has announced their 2006 awards nominees - and two of my old companies - The Savannah Morning News and The Augusta Chronicle received the ol' hat tip in the Best Overall News Site (50k-99k circulation).
Also receiving kudos for innovative storytelling in the 50k-100k category is a multimedia project photographed by Josh Meltzer for the Roanoke News, where Josh and my good friend Natalee Waters are photojournalists. Augusta also gets a nomination for their 'Spotted' site - a slick take on user-generated photo-blogging their parent company, Morris Communications, has syndicated to several of their newspapers.
Also nominated is the Chronicle's Masters web site. I launched this back in 1996 in a joint effort with Sports Illustrated magazine. In 1997, we took the "Digital Edge Award", recognizing the most innovative web site in the newspaper industry, besting papers of all sizes including the New York Times which took the number two spot that year. Morris has a great history of breaking new boundaries in the online news business, and it looks like this continues today. Great to see my old cohorts keeping up the good work!
technorati tags: savannah, augusta, newspaper, morris communication, naa, digital edge awards
Posted by jetrotz at 01:47 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
December 06, 2005
Don't 'diss a blogger
Thomas Hawk documents his experience with a Brooklyn discount photo store (PriceRitePhoto.com) as he tried to purchase a new Canon EOS 5D. Like all the lore suggests, the price was just too good to be true, and the retailer threatened Mr. Hawk after learning that he was going to blog his experience after the seller refused to fulfill the deal unless he purchased all sorts of high-markup accessories. Long story short - Yahoo! Shopping delisted the company, Digg.com users nearly took the company's server down, and they ended up being pulled from most of the major comparison shopping sites following the brouhaha. I've experienced this on occasion before myself, though not quite to this degree. Seller beware!
technorati tags: eos d5, canon, priceritephoto, thomas hawk, photography
Posted by jetrotz at 02:32 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
October 24, 2005
Flock has Landed
Noticed that by friend Lee Clontz had blogged that the tag-savvy, blogging-friendly browser Flock had been released and he was trying it out. Flock cautions users of the current build:
If you're the bleeding-edge type and don't mind a few scrapes and busted knees from time to time, feel free to give it a whirl....So if a bucket of source code and developer binaries sound enticing, head over to our Developer page now.
I'm posting this via the built-in blogging tools now. Seems very user friendly, although the import of my Safari bookmarks keeps failing. But the tagging support, RSS system (multiple 'topbars' yay!) and Flickr integration make this very attractive.
Flock (via Clontzville.com )
Posted by jetrotz at 05:54 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
October 03, 2005
Gametap is Live!
Turner Broadcasting System's several-years-in-the-making broadband gaming service which I blogged about a few months back has launched to the public today.
Joystiq has coverage here, and Kotaku points out a set of viral faux-blogs intended to bring consumers into the new service.
There's at least five sites out there, as reported below by Joystiq:
- What is ADAT?: A site dedicated to people suffering from Third Dimensia
- Upgradius: Think Gizmondo for video game characters
- X-Treme Platform Jumping School: The name says it all
- First Person Get Aways: A travel agency that specializes in video game vacations
- Jalopixel: A game car site with a very Gawkerish name.
After you wander about these blogs you'll eventually get to the Gametap site, with this snarky little quote:
Well played. You found us out. That page you just came from? Not real. And there's more like it out there. You see, you've fallen prey to one of our little traps to make friends with the world. We want to be your friend.
I'm not going to get into the arguments of fake marketing blogs. Draw your own conclusions. I'm just happy to see Gametap finally exposed to the public. I've been fooling with the app for a while, and it's pretty entertaining to go back to the games of our youth, and to have access to some more recent PC titles I was too lazy to go out and buy. There's some discussion on Joyqstiq about most of this being available via emulators and ROMs, but even if those are free, they are buggy, often a pain to setup, etc. I think it's worth a few bucks to package these older titles in a cohesive manner, and let me drop in, play, and drop back out when I have a few moments. Oh, and the classic photo from Joystiq at the top of this entry is definitely a keeper.
Posted by jetrotz at 07:58 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
September 19, 2005
Arrrrrrrr
Avast! It's Talk Like A Pirate Day! Just a quick note - today is the all-important, soon-to-be-nationally-observed 'Talk Like a Pirate Day!' Visit this web site for all the lowdown. So I leave you with this quote - 'Brwaack! Polly want a cracker? … Oh, wait. That’s for Talk Like a PARROT Day.'
Posted by jetrotz at 09:17 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
September 02, 2005
Liveblogger inside NOLA data center continues posting
First hand accounts keep coming on this blog -- from a guy working for a hosting company (DirectNIC.org). He and a small team of colleagues remain in New Orleans to keep their network up and running. Text and images posted regularly. Link (Thanks, Tom Whalen and others) (Via BoingBoing).
The streaming video he has running is amazing all on it's own. This guy has been posting photos, running this webcam etc. Amazing, really.
Also of note: Streaming local police scanner here. And this video blog on Current documents one young Cajun's efforts to assist in rescue efforts. His analogy of asking a Cajun to come help people with his flat bottom boat is akin to asking a child at a fat camp to come help with a surplus of pizza. Bless him.
Posted by jetrotz at 03:12 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
August 29, 2005
Hurricane Katrina targets New Orleans
Here's a list of live streams, blogs and resources for Katrina:
Live streams: WWL | WDSU | WPMI | WLOX | WKRG | WJTV
Blogs: NOLA | WPMI 1 & 2 | Weather.com | CNN | MSNBC
New Orleans: Nola.com | WWL | WDSU | WGNO
Mobile: Al.com | WPMI | WKRG | WALA
Jackson: Clarion-Ledger | WAPT | WJTV | WLBT
Citizen journalists: MSNBC | CNN Storm track | Hurricane warning | NWS | Satellite | Map
Posted by jetrotz at 12:49 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
Savannah on a Segway
Carriage tours are so passe. An entrepreneurial gentleman with connections to Savannah, GA is offering tours of the city's historic district - on Segway HTs! At $65/person for a two-hour session including training, the tours are not cheap, but what a great way to enjoy a Segway short of plunking down $5k for one yourself. I wouldn't recommend it in the August heat - but you snowbirds heading down I-95 this Winter should stop by and check these out.
Link: Kinetic Tours - Tomorrow’s Tours of Yesterday
Posted by jetrotz at 07:31 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
August 10, 2005
Kitten War
Kitten War is a site with a simple idea: people send in scans of their kitties, and then two kittens enter, with only the cute kitten leaving. Fair enough, but the golden nugget of this site is not the cute stuff, it's the hall of losers. These are not happy animals. Looks like the kitten equivalent of a media indecency watch group.
Link: Kitten War
(Via Eyebeam, via Screenhead)
Posted by jetrotz at 01:13 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
August 02, 2005
Flickr auto-finds coolest photos, related photos
Flickr has just released some new features organized around their the nature/relationships implied by user activity around the images on their site, an interesting expansion/improvement on their tagging structure.
Interestingness creates a daily page with the most 'Interesting' pics uploaded as defined by how favored the image is, how many comments exist for it, and how widely distributed the user interest happens to be. Very slick. The other new feature, Clustering, groups tags by concept. So the "cute cluster" gets broken in to "cute kittens," "cute puppies," "cute babies" and "cute smiles." Bush gets broken into 'protest president politics', 'green-flower-nature', 'grafitti-sticker-stencil', etc. The flickr blog discusses the new features. Very slick stuff.
(via BoingBoing.)
Posted by jetrotz at 07:33 AM | Comments (0)
August 01, 2005
Brown-Bag Your Way To Half a Million!
Over at personal finance blog Hello, Dollar! they've got a great post about how bringing your four times a week can eventually earn you half a million dollars.
So let's see, four days bringing lunch at $2 plus one day out at $7 equals $15 per week. Eating out every day would cost $35 per week, so I save $20. $20 a week! That's over $80 a month -- that covers my utility bills right there. Who couldn't use that?
40 years and the miracle of compound interest turns that into $581,826! Nice!
(via Lifehacker)
Posted by jetrotz at 07:48 AM | Comments (0)
WiFi GPS via MSFT Location Finder & MSN Virtual Earth
Interesting free app from Microsoft, the 'Location Finder.' Does a lookup of your location based on your WiFi access point or IP lookup and displays your position on MSN Virtual Earth.
(via Charlie Owen's Retrosight).
Posted by jetrotz at 07:42 AM | Comments (0)
More on Windows Vista Beta 1
Interesting commentary and insight on Longhorn UI. Sean Alexander of MSFT takes note of a positive report from eWeek on the just released beta.
David Coursey at eWeek wrote:
Windows Vista is the best-looking OS Microsoft has ever produced and is competitive with, and in some ways better, than Apple's recently-introduced Mac OS X 10.4, aka Tiger.
That's great. That's super. But one would expect a beta product far from general release with close to two years of development left to be at least on par with a shipping product to tens of millions of users. The UI changes are spiffy in Vista - PC Magazine has a good overview on the UI changes alone.
(via Addicted to Digital Media)
Posted by jetrotz at 07:32 AM | Comments (0)
July 29, 2005
Watchin' the Shuttle launch in style...
Could someone please buy the man a plasma TV? Doesn't he have, like, a situation room or something with a hi-def feed from the nose cone of the freaking shuttle available to him? Sad, sad, sad. (Via Engadget.)
If you don't want to make the same mistake as George above, MSNBC.com has a fabulous Flash application to review the Discovery launch. It's a user-selected, sychronized, multi-cam app where you pick your camera positions to watch the launch. Very slick execution. (Via LostRemote.)Posted by jetrotz at 01:01 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
July 28, 2005
AOL launches MyAOL beta, Feedster to do RSS search
Om Malik today takes note of AOL's new partnership with Feedster for their new 'MyAOL' - as he notes, Yahoo must be thinking that's soooo 1999 ;-). Interesting to see a tool like this on AOL; bringing RSS closer to the massses...
"America Online is one step closer in its bid to transform itself from a dial-up ISP into a content powerhouse. The company has just announced MyAOL (it must be 1999, Yahoo people are thinking.) The most exciting part of the news is that they are taking RSS mainstream. Yup - right out of the elites into the AOLplanet. Yahoo, Ask Jeeves (via Bloglines) and supposedly Google are already making RSS part of their future, and now even AOL has signed up."
He also notes:
"The new site will also allow folks to subscribe and read RSS feeds. This is also a good day for RSS spammers, who can now find gullible clickers amongst the AOL hordes. Going back to that step-closer remark, they are still amillion miles away from where they need to be."
(Via Om Malik's Broadband Blog.)
Posted by jetrotz at 09:21 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
July 27, 2005
Watch MSNBC Video On MSN Messenger
Hat tip to LostRemote.com this morning. Interesting stats on how much video is viewed on their service, and their newly announced extension to MSN Messenger.
Watch MSNBC Video On MSN Messenger: "'Online video is becoming more and more mainstream,' says Charlie Tillinghast, GM and publisher of MSNBC.com. 'One out of every five visits to MSNBC.com includes a video play and we're reaching audiences that traditional broadcasters are struggling to reach.' Now the site 'plans to extend those videos to users of MSN Messenger,' WebProNews.com says. 'While many users do not stay on a web site all day, especially at work, many do have instant messaging clients available.' (Via Lost Remote)"
Posted by jetrotz at 10:37 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
July 18, 2005
In the Pipeline
Over the weekend, CNN loosened some of the secrecy around the upcoming premium video product hinted at in June when free on-demand video clips were launched. The new product, called CNN Pipeline, will feature multiple live video streams from around the world, according to the press release. CNN News Group Pres (and my former boss at CNN/SI) Jim Walton presented a demo to the Television Critics’ Association summer press tour, and compared some other network's recently announced offerings as being to 'PONG' as Pipeline is to Playstation. Jim doesn't mince words, ya know.
There is plenty of buzz in the media and the blogosphere - here's a roundup.
Broadcasting & Cable - LINK
Reuters - LINK
MediaBistro - Code for the Pipeline
PaidContent.org - How different can Pipeline be?
LostRemote - CNN.com gives Pipeline sneak peak
What's Happening at CNN - Pipeline Revealed
Posted by jetrotz at 07:31 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
June 19, 2005
Happy Father's Day!
Amy and Sam both surprised me with very touching cards this morning on this, my first Father's Day. That boy is really amazing. I could almost read his handwriting! We spent the day in relaxing, had a nice dinner out at Fritti with Sam getting all the attention, etc. To cap the day off, I'd encourage anyone reading the blog to visit the CNN.com free video site and find the 'CNN's dads give advice' video. You may have to use the 'search' box at upper right - just put in 'dads give advice' and you'll find it. Really quite touching. Guess I'm turning into a big ol' softie as a dad.
Posted by jetrotz at 09:25 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
CNN.com Free Video Launch
So after three long years where CNN.com's video was a premium (ie - pay) product licensed to various wholesale companies as well as direct to consumers, the site launched on Saturday (two days ahead of schedule) their new free video product. Supported by the burgeoning broadband video advertising market, the new product is slated to feature some 30 new videos daily. I was involved in the product development aspects of the advertising technology and operations side of the project. This gallery shows the combined technical teams in our 'Port:80' conference room gathered for the launch effort, some 12 hours of work beginning at 6am on Saturday. The best news of all - it went off without a hitch, and the reviews are already coming in.
Lost Remote TV Blog review is here.
Media Bistro's TV Newser talks about the return of free video (finally)
PaidContent.org talks about the Saturday launch, and CNN.com plans for the fall.
Posted by jetrotz at 09:03 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
May 16, 2005
CNN.com Video in the News
It's all over the web today - CNN.com has announced a new strategy with their video products. I've been working on some aspects of these for a while - nice to see the project out in the public eye. Here are some quotes from today's coverage:
CNN.com will make its existing online video offerings available for free beginning June 20 as it prepares a new video package that will cost money to watch. The company said the premium offering would deliver multiple live feeds and provide access to CNN's video archives. Susan Grant (executive vice president for the CNN News unit that oversees the Web site) would offer no other details on the premium service or on how the free video would differ from the current offerings, other than its placement on the home page.
MediaPost.com (subscription required)
As part of the June 20 launch, the CNN.com home page will spotlight ad-supported video news coverage as part of a broader restyling of the site....The change reflects the background of CNN President Jonathan Klein--who came to the Turner Broadcasting unit from the FeedRoom, a company he founded that builds broadband Web sites and streams online content--although the Web project is being supervised by Susan Grant, executive vice president of CNN News Services.
Read the expanded entry for the full press release.
CNN Broadband Press Release
For Release: May 16, 2005
CNN.com Announces Groundbreaking Broadband Service
Top Internet News Site Expands Online Offerings with Free Video, Unmatched Premium Product
CNN.com extends its leadership as the Internet's top site for news and information through an unprecedented investment in broadband that includes free video and a premium product that places the site at the control of the online user, it was announced today by Susan Grant, executive vice president of CNN News Services.
CNN.com will make the free video available starting June 20, while it will unveil its complete premium product this fall with more options and features than any other online news and information site.
As part of the June 20 launch of free video, the CNN.com home page will prominently feature video as part of a restyling of the site.
In addition, ad-supported video packaged specifically for CNN.com will be woven throughout the site on section fronts, story pages and special reports complementary to the content.
"Online users have begun to expect high-quality, up-to-the-minute news video as part of their news-browsing experience," Grant said. "With free video drawing from the extensive resources of CNN, our users get quick, reliable and accurate multimedia information, thus connecting them with CNN in a deeper, richer and more satisfying way."
With the free video, online users each day can view various distinct on-demand videos across several topic areas, including politics, world news, business, sports, entertainment, science and technology and more.
A specially designed video player enables users to search and organize videos so they can quickly focus on the content they wish to see. As part of the free offering, CNN.com staff will also produce two-minute newscasts every hour called "Now in the News," delivering the latest updates and breaking news.
In the fall, CNN.com will offer an innovative subscription-based service delivering multiple live video streams, access to CNN's video archives and user-customized options. This new premium product will enable CNN.com users to get the full impact of watching the news with as much choice and control as watching television or using a Web site.
As the first Internet site dedicated to 24-hour news coverage, CNN.com ranks as the leading online news and information site, attracting an average of 23 million unique users each month. Launched in 1995, CNN.com draws from the worldwide resources of the CNN News Group to provide relevant, up-to-the minute news and information. CNN.com features the latest multimedia technologies, from video streaming to audio packages to searchable archives of news features and background information.
CNN, a division of Turner Broadcasting System, Inc., a Time Warner Company, is one of the world's most respected and trusted sources for news and information. Its reach extends to 14 cable and satellite television networks; two private place-based networks; two radio networks; wireless devices around the world; six Web sites, including CNN.com, the first major news and information Web site; and CNN Newsource, the world's most extensively syndicated news service.
Posted by jetrotz at 08:30 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
March 21, 2005
FireFox Goes Madison Ave
Not clear if this is a student project or ad creative Firefox.org plans to actuallly buy ad time to show, but Screenhead (via Waxy.org links), seems to think it's legit. Not bad, but then again, it's not too direct about what the heck Firefox actually *IS*. Watch the Quicktime clip here at the Savannah College of Art & Design's student website before the management yanks the clip for sucking too much bandwidth.
Posted by jetrotz at 07:01 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
February 14, 2005
The RSS Challenge
Lots of interesting things happening in the RSS space. MediaPost Daily (free registration required) has an interesting run-down on the anxiety level among mostly ad-sponsored publishers concerned that the pressure to deploy RSS feeds could eat into their bottom line. MediaMusings talks about one solution - customized, branded RSS readers like C|net's Newsburst. I've fooled around with the C|Net application, and the interface/organization of items doesn't thrill me. It's still beta, and I'll continue to fool around with it. But for my true RSS fix, I'll continue to stick with zFeeder for now.
Posted by jetrotz at 07:30 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
February 07, 2005
Isometric Screenshots
Interesting project here. This project by artist Jon Haddock recreates important historical moments (and a few bits of movie magic) as isometric 2-D images like you'd see in older computer games. He does extensive research to 're-create' the scenes. Interesting. Gallery here. Tutorial on creating one of the images here.
Posted by jetrotz at 07:03 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
January 25, 2005
Google Browser Rumors
In more Google news today, Reuters reports that Google has hired the lead engineer for Firefox. This comes on the heels of their registration of the Gbrowser.com domain and hiring of several Internet Explorer engineers last year.
Posted by jetrotz at 08:02 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
Googling Television
Google and Yahoo are expanding their search products to television. Google Labs released their beta of 'Google Video' today. This system allows a user to search closed captioning and see still frame grabs of the relevant video. Some PVRs and TV tuner cards for PCs have done this in the past - tuning to or alerting when certain keywords were matched. But these projects are on a much broader scale.
In a New York Times story this morning (free registration required), Google's vp for product management says "The long-term business model is complicated and will evolve over time." I'll say - the rights to aggregating video from hundreds of local television broadcasts, not to mention networks like CNN, ABC, etc., are going to be complex. But given Google's audience, it wil be interesting to see if broadcasters see value in placement here. The Times story digs briefly into the touchy issues of rights and network deals related to these types of technologies. A worthwhile read.
Posted by jetrotz at 08:01 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
January 08, 2005
Technorati Awards
Technorati has announced the winners of their annual developers contest. PersonalDemocracy.com, where my friend Hart Hooton is general manager, gets a nod in this well-respected competition. Woo-hoo!
Here's the description of why PD was selected:
The URL speaks for itself. This website let's you stay on top of all things political. Specifically, it uses Technorati to show which politicians are rising and falling in the blogosphere-a phenomenon that has become increasingly relevant with politics and journalism.
More on this at BoingBoing and Technorati.
Posted by jetrotz at 01:03 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
January 06, 2005
Diebold Voting
Ah, the internet is such a great source for these parodies. Here's one ironic look at a mythical Florida voting machine.
Link to video here (Quicktime)
Posted by jetrotz at 04:49 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
January 05, 2005
Swimsuit Post #2
Okay. This might be considered overkill in some circles to have two stories about the SI Swimsuit Issue. But I wanted to brag on my friend Chris Gibbons excellent Flash design for a project that launched today to promote the joint Sports Illustrated/NBC effort to find the next SI Swimsuit Model. A project I was involved with last year, this time around, it's been expanded to include a six-part reality series (Wendesdays 8/7 on NBC). Viewers will vote to choose between the last two finalists in a later episode. The Flash treatment here is very slick. And the material isn't too bad either.
Posted by jetrotz at 02:37 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
Google Searches for Oddball Ad Agency
When a company declares that one of it's guiding pricinples is to 'not do evil' in their S1 filing, you would expect that their approach to promoting themselves is going to take a slightly different tact than the usual Fortune 500. To that end, Google has already used the resources of innovative agency Crispin Porter + Bogusky, the folks behind Burger King's Subservient Chicken and Method Soap's 'Come Clean' campaign.
The first work by Crispin was a series of billboards in hi-tech areas of the country seeking job applicants for Google featuring the following statement: "{first prime digit found in consecutive digits of e}.com."
Anyway, the New York Post is reporting that Google is looking to expand their conventional advertising in light of greater competition from Yahoo and Microsoft. Google nor Crispin would comment.
Posted by jetrotz at 11:24 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
January 04, 2005
Tsunami Strikes Aceh
BBC footage from a second-story balcony in Aceh, Indonesia. This is one of the most compelling videos I've seen to date of the wave striking, in a blink of the eye obliterating everything in it's path. Single story dwellings are swept away, and only two-story buildings seem to be spared. Via Waxy.org.
Posted by jetrotz at 10:47 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
January 03, 2005
SMS Tsunami Alerts
BoingBoing reports on a remarkable idea to help warn people in remote areas, as in the case of the Christmas Tsunami. 'Problem: No effective system of mass, international alert existed in South Asia to quickly warn those in harm's way of the tsunami's approach.
One approach to a solution, created in the span of about 24 hours by an impromtu volunteer geek corps: A tech system called Alert Retrieval Cache (ARC) which collects, sorts, and routes SMS messages for the puposes of alerts and relay communication. An early warning system based on SMS, short message service.'
Posted by jetrotz at 12:27 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
Tsunami Video
On vacation last week, I was away from any readily available broadband access, so I'm catching up with some of the incredible content on the web related to the Christmas Tsunami. Cheese and Crackers has one of the better aggregated collections of video content I've found. Definetly worth a look.
Posted by jetrotz at 10:34 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
December 21, 2004
Future Media, 2014
Robin Sloan has published a Flash 'documentary' describing the downfall of the fourth estate and their replacement by the rise of Google, Amazon, Microsoft and Friendster (you had me until that last one). The vision is interesting, and potentially accurate on some points, but I think it underestimates the value and tenacity of 'old media.' The conclusion is that people get what they want - gossip and false trivia. To quote Ray Davies and the Kinks - Give the people what they want... We hope everybody gets what they deserve. Click here to see the animation - it's a bit long (~8 minutes) - but well worth it.
Posted by jetrotz at 04:11 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
The Long Tail Book Deal
In one of the most interesting articles to appear in WIRED in a long while, Chris Anderson explained the concept of 'the long tail.' Now, he has announced a book deal on his blog. This will be a must read for me. So, what is this concept, you ask? Chris explains it like this 'Forget squeezing millions from a few megahits at the top of the charts. The future of entertainment is in the millions of niche markets at the shallow end of the bitstream.' Basically, instead of the traditional bell curve to define interest - very little at either end of the graph, with most interest in the middle - the long tail of the digital age sees tremendous value (read revenue) in the tiny blips of niche interest. Check out his blog, and the WIRED story. It's eye opening.
Posted by jetrotz at 04:04 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
December 19, 2004
Where you goin'?
Since most of us are on the move this holiday season, I thought I'd point this new bit of functionality Yahoo! has rolled out this week. As reported on Slashdot, the Yahoo! Maps site is now providing real-time traffic overlays on their maps. Supported mostly in major metros, this might save a step or two when planning a (yuk) trip to the mall this season. In Atlanta, the maps are using info from the GA DOT, which looks like the same info on the Georgia Navigator site. All the same, I'll keep my Konfabulator Web Images widget showing me a set of Atlanta traffic cams all the same. And when I'm on the go (and isn't that when we usually need traffic info?), I use the GA Navigator's new PDA-friendly mobile version of their web site on my Treo 600.
Posted by jetrotz at 11:57 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack