Category Archives: technology

technology

CNN.com Free Video Launch

Leave a comment

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.

technology

Mintel, Anyone?

Leave a comment

Is it particularly chilly in hell today? At the Apple WorldWide Developers Conference in San Francisco this morning, Apple CEO Steve Jobs announced a plan to completely migrate from Motorola PowerPC processors to Intel CPUs by 2007. MacWorld has a running commentary from the WWDC, and are holding up to the onsalught of traffic. Amazingly, he reports that for the past five years, every Mac OS build has been compiled to run on the Intel platform. For one, Jobs mentioned that Apple had to make this move to continue to improve the PowerBook line – the PowerPC just wasn’t going to cut it on power and heat issues. Here’s a key quote from Jobs:

“I stood up here two years ago and promised you 3.0 GHz. I think a lot of you would like a G5 in your PowerBook, and we haven’t been able to deliver that to you. But as we look ahead, and though we’ve got great products now, and great PowerPC products still to come, we can envision great products we want to build, and we can’t envision how to build them with the current PowerPC roadmap.”

First machines will ship with Intel inside (cough, marketing slogan, cough) by this time in 2006. I want to know how this implementation will prevent users from installing the Intel-compatible builds of OSX on generic Intel hardware. If not, this opens the Mac up in ways some thought would never happen. Good luck, Mr. Jobs, and I think congrats are in order.
Update: very good analysis from AppleMatters.com is here. All assumptions aren’t valid, but some are right on target.

technology

CNN.com Video in the News

Leave a comment

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:

BusinessWeek

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.
Continue reading CNN.com Video in the News →

technology

Turner Announces GameTap Broadband Service

Leave a comment

Woooo doggy! My employer, Turner Broadcasting, took the wraps off a project which has been in the works for around two years, the broadband gaming service dubbed GameTap. Following the model which has created robust businesses from archival content like Cartoon Network and Turner Classic Movies, GameTap will be a subscription service allowing users to play hundreds or even thousands of game titles, going all the way back to early arcade classics. Reuters has this quote from my coworker Blake Lewin who created this product:

“We have a brand new network … but Turner’s in the same business it’s always been…We want to program games as if they were TV shows.”

The service will leverage the same infrastructure built by the team I’ve been working with here for years – serving CNN.com, SI.com and NASCAR.com.

In a world where new game titles are often known years in advance of their release, this skunk works project has been in development for over two years, with nary a leak, despite a team of more than 100 members.

Coverage around the web today:
Gametap’s Press Release is here.
The Atlanta Journal Constitution (registration req.)
Gizmodo has a brief as well.
PaidContent.org brief here.
Reuters story on the announcement
Kenny Bunch Programming Tidbits roundup.
Jesse Warden’s Blog sorta gets it.
New York Post coverage.
Hollywood Reporter coverage.
Red Herring report here.