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August 17, 2008

NYT pays tribute to the best fake political team in television

Filed under: YouTube, journalism, media, television, video — Rocky Agrawal @ 4:19 pm
Jon Stewart on his first post-9/11 broadcast

Jon Stewart on his first post-9/11 broadcast

The New York Times ran a great profile of fake news purveyor Jon Stewart this weekend. According to a 2007 Pew poll, Stewart was tied with real newsmen Brian Williams, Tom Brokaw, Andersen Cooper and Dan Rather for #4 as the journalist they most admired.

The Daily Show is my go to source for television news. Stewart and his crew do a much better job than “real” journalists on calling politicians on their hypocrisy. The Times profile barely touches on Stewart’s agenda-setting effect; it isn’t uncommon to see hypocrisy exposed on his show get called out later in more traditional news shows.

Stewart is as tough, if not tougher, on journalists. His media criticism is often sharper than that of Washington Post media critic Howard Kurtz. (Kurtz frequently uses clips from The Daily Show on his CNN program Reliable Sources.)

The show has also changed my expectations of the late night talk show. I find that I’m disappointed when the interview segment is an actor, instead of an author or politician.

The Daily Show and The Colbert Report are ahead of many in the old media when it comes to presenting video content on the Web. After a slow start, this year’s upgrades to the Web site show that they really get the new world of audience interaction and content delivery. Full episodes of each show are available the day after broadcast. You can scroll back through previous episodes. Videos can be embedded on Web sites. Want to see that clip everyone is talking about? The search feature lets you easily find it. You can even find shows going back years. Unfortunately, there’s no way to get video from a specific date years ago.

The Times could learn from them. The nearly 3,000 word story includes two pictures and not a single video. The author describes a few segments, including an extended description of Stewart’s first post 9/11 broadcast, which scream for video. (The video is available on thedailyshow.com.)

May 5, 2008

Occasional reader – cognitive surplus, Larry Page on changing the world, CSI and mapping crime

Filed under: apple, dash, google, gps, iphone, microsoft, reader, satellite navigation, television, video, weekly reader — Rocky Agrawal @ 8:46 pm

Some interesting reads from the last few weeks:

  • Clay Shirky at Web 2.0 Expo on the cognitive surplus (Web 2.0 video) – Author Clay Shirky spoke recently on how much could be done if only a fraction of the time spent watching TV is put to other uses. He estimates that 2,000 Wikipedias could be created with just the time Americans spend watching TV in a year. (I just clicked off the TV to write this post.) While Shirky focuses his talk on production of content, all that production also has a significant effect on consumption. Time is a zero-sum game. The time I spend on Facebook or reading about Jon’s exploits in Russia is time I’m not spending with TV or traditional media. And for every producer, there are at least 10 to 20 consumers.
  • Larry Page on how to change the world (Fortune) – Google co-founder Larry Page lays out the challenges we face in changing the world. The core problem is that not enough people and companies take risks. Part of this undoubtedly is due to the risk/reward systems in most companies. Innovation (and the people who chase it) are often the first to go when belts need to be tightened.
    I was at a conference last week where Erik Jorgensen of Microsoft demoed some amazing technologies in mapping, such as 3D map tours. A questioner from the audience, a Microsoft shareholder, asked what the ROI was. Fortunately, Microsoft and Google do well enough in their core businesses that most investors give them the freedom to innovate.
  • ‘CSI’ sleuths out Microsoft’s latest technology (USA Today) – CSI:NY producer Anthony E. Zuiker is teaming with folks at Microsoft labs to bring bleeding edge technology to viewers. (And no doubt frustrating real life criminalists with increased expectations.) Last week’s episode featured Microsoft’s Photosynth technology. CSI:Miami used variations of Microsoft’s Surface computing. Microsoft isn’t the only one in the CSI product placement game; many of the pictures processed by the Photosynth technology in that episode were taken with iPhones.
  • Honda system to warn motorists of crime hotspots (AFP) – In-car navigation systems and PNDs are getting more data rich all the time. On recent Acuras you can get Zagat ratings. With a Dash Express PND, you have access to Yahoo! Search results. Now, in Japan, your Honda can tell you when you’re in a dangerous neighborhood. I suspect that fears of redlining and disparate data sources will keep that from happening here. But I wouldn’t be surprised if some enterprising Dash users use create and share localized feeds for such an app.

March 17, 2008

Occasional reader – Hulu, Tellme, slum tourism, layoffs

Filed under: journalism, media, newspapers, reader, television, travel, video, weekly reader — Rocky Agrawal @ 12:30 am

Some interesting reads from the past couple of weeks:

  • Hulu: Great Product, Still Screwed (Silicon Alley Insider) – The much-hyped video site from NBC and News Corp. is now out of beta. Hulu offers free access to full episodes from many NBC and Fox shows, plus a few free full-length movies. Hulu has decent quality video, is easy to navigate and does a good job of suggesting related content. (Hulu’s search feature can use a lot of help with its poor indexing and cryptic snippets like “Season 2 : Ep. 10″.) Despite all this, analyst Henry Blodget thinks Hulu will have a hard time making it due to constraints imposed on it by its corporate parents.
  • Kara Visits Tellme (aka A Little Bit of Microsoft in Silicon Valley)! (All Things Digital) – Kara Swisher visited Tellme recently and talked to General Manager Mike McCue (my boss’ boss). The video offers a glimpse of life at Tellme. In another video, Mike talks about trends in speech recognition. (The videos didn’t work for me in Firefox; if you have trouble, try IE.)
  • Slum Visits: Tourism or Voyeurism? (New York Times) – It’s not my idea of vacation, but apparently a new trend in tourism is organized tours of slums in cities like Mumbai and Rio. Are these tours exploiting the poor in the search for profit? That’s a good question. I was surprised how quickly organized tours of hurricane damage developed in New Orleans. I’ve been to New Orleans twice since Katrina and have refused to go on them.
  • How to Deal With Layoffs and Buyouts (AAJA) – What’s glummer than a gathering of AOL employees at layoff time? A gathering of journalists discussing the future of their business. As newsrooms across the country rapidly contract, young and mid-career journalists face tough decisions on whether to continue to play musical chairs or get out of the business altogether. The Asian American Journalists Association held an informative discussion offering advice to journalists on how to cope in troubled times. Although much of the advice is specific to journalists, there is also solid financial advice for anyone facing layoffs.

July 2, 2007

MeCasts coming to your TV

Filed under: YouTube, apple tv, personalization, social networking, television, video — Rocky Agrawal @ 9:59 am

I’ve written before about the fragmentation of television. With cable and satellite, programmers can reach smaller and smaller audience segments. With content delivered over broadband, those segments become even smaller. Broadband distribution ultimately enables everyone to have his or her own channel.

People are already broadcasting their lives using Facebook, Flickr, YouTube and other social networking tools. You can see their latest pictures, video and random thoughts.

That’s a fairly active process right now; you have to seek out the various social networks to consume that information. Incorporate these services into television and you can expand the reach. You’d be able to change to the “grandkids” channel, just as easily as you tune in to the Discovery Channel. I can imagine grandparents tuning their TVs to the all grandkids channel, featuring pictures and video of their own grandchildren. Of course, content within these virtual channels would also be available on demand.

There are a couple of services out there that approximate parts of this experience. One of my favorite flickr add ons is slickr. It downloads pictures from your flickr contacts and runs them in place of your Windows screensaver. It’s a fun, passive way to keep up with my friends are up to.

On the video side, TiVo has a relationship with One True Media that allows you to share videos with friends and family that play back on their TiVos.

Apple TV’s integration of YouTube doesn’t currently allow you to subscribe to a person’s videos, but I expect we’ll see that soon enough.

June 21, 2007

Revolutionizing television

Filed under: apple, apple tv, consumer electronics, media, television, video — Rocky Agrawal @ 3:28 pm

The next two years are going to bring big changes in television. Next month, the FCC is going to begin requiring cable companies to let users buy and connect their own cable boxes (instead of leasing them from the cable company). In February 2009, analog over-the-air broadcasts are set to end.

But after spending some time lately with Apple TV and TivoCast, I think the biggest changes are going to come from Internet delivery of content.

Television content has gone through a few transformations already, each leading to more and more niche content. With cable came 24-hour news, weather and sports networks, content that in most markets couldn’t profitably exist in the limited broadcast spectrum. Satellite brought additional capacity that made it profitable to serve smaller ethnic markets like Russians, Indians, Portugese and Ukranians. Tivo brought the ability to watch what you want when you want.

Now Internet TV allows users to get content that would never interest 10 thousand people, much less 10 million. I watch podcasts from CNET, Mobuzz, washingtonpost.com and others on my TV. Yesterday, I watched a 30 minute video of Eric Schmidt at the World Economic Forum on my Apple TV. I can’t imagine any TV network that would broadcast that.

Tivo’s Universal Swivel Search allows you to search across broadcast, cable and Internet content. A search for “LOST”, would theoretically return both the TV show and the podcast. You don’t even need to know where it is; it’ll just show up. (The big difference is that the Internet content will be available within a few minutes, but you’ll have to wait for the scheduled time for the broadcast and cable content.)

Launching a new television network isn’t easy. You have to negotiate for carriage with the three big cable companies, DirecTV and Dish. You’re competing with giants like Disney and Time Warner that can bundle their new channels with must-haves like ESPN and CNN. And, if you manage to get that far, you have to find content to fill the channel.

Internet television opens up the TV screen to anyone with a video camera and a Web server. Some content is already available in HD quality – I watch Mobuzz and washingtonpost.com in 720p. I can’t even get Comedy Central in HD on cable.

The one thing I still haven’t gotten used to is that programs vary in length. Freed from the conventions of television, shows go on as long as they need to. The same show can be 3 minutes one day and 10 minutes the next based on how much they have to say.

June 20, 2007

YouTube takes the stage on my Apple TV

Filed under: YouTube, apple, apple tv, media, terrorism, video — Rocky Agrawal @ 2:00 pm

I got the YouTube software upgrade on my Apple TV today. As impressed as I was with Apple TV, the YouTube upgrade is a very welcome addition.

From the YouTube menu, you can watch featured videos, highest rated videos, most viewed and most recent. You can also log into you account and see your favorite videos.

YouTube menu

The user interface and graphics of the YouTube implementation are as gorgeous as for the other features of Apple TV. The quality of the video varies dramatically based on the quality of the source content. It’s not HD, but some videos were as good as standard TV quality. After watching a video, you get a list of related videos.

The YouTube content available on Apple TV right now is thin. Of the 22 videos I have in my favorites, only 2 were available on Apple TV. The featured video list, however, largely reflects the videos featured on the YouTube homepage.

A search option is also available, though trying to type out keywords using the onscreen keyboard is more trouble than its worth. The search filters as you type providing a list of available videos, saving you some remote control torture if the video you’re looking for appears before you finish typing.

Upgrading the software was relatively painless, but I had to prompt my machine to check for the upgrade. It took about seven minutes total.

I encountered a few glitches: Some of the videos played back without audio. The on-screen keyboard wasn’t always responsive. The search implementation is a little odd; the number of results can go or up or down with each letter entered.

What’s missing? I’d like a way to create playlists for Apple TV from the Web. Right now there is no indication on YouTube.com of which videos are playable on Apple TV (or on mobile for that matter).

If Apple can bring flickr to Apple TV with a similar execution, I’ll be thrilled.

Update: Here’s a link to the Apple press release (thanks Paul). Apple also announced that they will be releasing a custom YouTube client for iPhone.

Related stories:

June 18, 2007

Kill time anywhere with YouTube mobile

Filed under: YouTube, google, mobile, video, wireless, wireless data — Rocky Agrawal @ 3:53 pm

YouTube mobileNewTeeVee reports on the launch of YouTube mobile.

Now you can kill time watching YouTube videos anywhere, assuming you have a phone that can display streaming video. You should also have an unlimited data plan, lest you have to hold up a Brinks truck to pay your cell phone bill. Just go to http://m.youtube.com. (The link also works from a Web browser.)

YouTube previously had an exclusive deal with Verizon Wireless.

The current version of the service is limited to selected videos. You can’t log into your account and show strangers videos of your kids or access your playlists. According to the FAQ, “We have a selected library of videos on the mobile website. We try to make the best videos from the website available on mobile, and we are working hard to add more content.”

The videos were intelligible on my Samsung A900, though noticeably worse than the same videos on the Web. The quality will suffice for killing a few minutes before a flight.

June 14, 2007

YouTube reshaping the American political process

Filed under: YouTube, elections, google, journalism, media, video, web 2, web 2.0 — Rocky Agrawal @ 7:07 pm

YouTube and CNN announced today debates with Democratic and Republican candidates for president. The debates will feature video questions uploaded to YouTube and will air on CNN this summer and fall. Audience questions have been featured in presidential debates before, but these are usually submitted in writing and read by a moderator or asked by an audience member in a “town hall” format.

Video adds another dimension: the questioners can use props and backgrounds to help illustrate their question. Although the questions will be screened for content and production values, it should be interesting to watch. I hope that all submitted videos will be available, not just the ones that are aired.

YouTube has already had a large effect on American politics. If it weren’t for his macaca moment, it’s very likely George Allen would have been re-elected to the U.S. Senate from Virginia, tipping the balance in the U.S. Senate. A gaffe that otherwise wouldn’t have made it on TV blew up in Allen’s face after being posted on YouTube.

The National Republican Senatorial Committee has issued a guide for candidates (pdf) on how to make the most of Internet video. Among the guidelines: assume that you’re on camera all the time, record every public event of your own and send people to record video of your opponent.

The guide also emphasizes the importance of email, blogs and the Web in a section comparing the old vs. new ways of communicating messages to the public. Its conclusion: “Voters hear about issue/candidate/opponent through blog community, local newspaper, local news station, national media, email, website, etc.” (The Politico has a great analysis.)

Internet video allows candidates to get their precisely crafted, highly produced message to voters without being filtered by the mainstream media. But, as the Wall Street Journal reports, the top videos aren’t those produced by the candidates.

An anti-Clinton “1984″ video, in which the New York senator is portrayed as a Big Brother-ish figure, accounted for about 75% of all traffic to candidate-related videos on YouTube in March, Nielsen found.

A month later, a video of Mr. McCain, the Arizona senator, joking about bombing Iran to the tune of the Beach Boys classic “Barbara Ann,” helped him attract more than twice as many visitors on YouTube than his Republican rivals.

And then there’s this tribute to Obama.

June 12, 2007

Apple TV brings your media to life

Filed under: YouTube, apple, consumer electronics, media, television, video — Rocky Agrawal @ 7:52 am

Apple TVI bought an Apple TV over the weekend. It’s quite simply the most elegant, well-designed consumer electronics device I’ve used.

Apple TV works with iTunes to bring music, video, movies, photos and podcasts to life on your HDTV. (In geek terms, it’s a “digital media adapter.”)

You can virtually flip through your music collection and select what you want to listen to. Album art is shown on screen as the music plays. You can play unprotected music or music purchased through iTunes; music from competing services such as Rhapsody won’t work.

In the photos section, photos from your PC are rendered in high definition. The pictures are so vivid that I could watch them for hours. You can choose to have background music as the slideshow runs.

Apple TV also plays back audio and video podcasts, including some podcasts that are HD quality. This opens up a wide new range of content possibilities for your TV.

You can also watch TV shows and movies purchased from iTunes; I haven’t tried either of those.

The software is easy to understand and the graphics are gorgeous. The photo screensaver alone is almost worth the price of the box.

Unlike my new laptop, configuring it to work with my wireless network took just a few minutes.

A lot of companies have tried over the years to bridge the computer-to-PC divide and I’ve tried many of these products. This is the first one worth using. And this is just the first release.

Some of the things I’d like to see:

  • A better remote control. Apple TV comes with a very limited remote control. For content libraries with thousands of songs and photos, the remote is serviceable, but not ideal.
  • The ability to rent movies from iTunes. I really don’t want to pay $10 or $13 to “buy” a movie from iTunes. Rumors are that rentals are in the works.
  • More Internet connectivity. You can watch movie trailers on Apple TV; you should be able to click to get showtimes. You should be able to share pictures with friends.

I’m excited about the possibilities for a device like Apple TV, but I may be one of the few. The signs so far aren’t good — I’ve seen pallets of Apple TVs sitting at Costco. In a recent speech, Steve Jobs referred to Apple TV as a “hobby”. There’s still hope, though: Jobs also announced upcoming support for playing videos from YouTube.

March 23, 2007

NewsCorpNBCYahooMSNMySpaceAOLTube vs. GooTube

Filed under: YouTube, aol, apple, google, media, microsoft, television, video, yahoo — Rocky Agrawal @ 7:01 pm

NBC and News Corp announced a broad-reaching partnership this week that will feature shows from NBC and Fox on AOL, MSN, MySpace and Yahoo! — all the major Internet players except Google, the owner of YouTube.

The major television networks already offer shows on their respective Web sites. Their big challenges to date have been distribution and product.

Despite all the on-air promotion, people don’t go to the network Web sites. YouTube had 34.4 million unique visitors in February 2007, according to comScore. NBC sites had 6.8 million and Fox had 2.8 million. The combined reach of the 4 major networks is 17.9 million, about half of YouTube’s.

The press release claims that the distribution deal will let them reach 96% of Internet households. That’s an extremely optimistic figure, dependent on thoroughly penetrating each online network. Most internal products at companies like AOL and Yahoo! can’t fully penetrate their own network; it’s unlikely that a third party offering will. Still, it’s a huge boost.

The networks have many of the assets they need to deliver a compelling product — one much better than YouTube for copyrighted content. But I wouldn’t bet on it. And  I wouldn’t hold my breath on NBC and News Corp. making the summer launch date.

Here is how I expect the final product to stack up against YouTube on six important dimensions:

  • Completeness – Tie
  • Timeliness – Tie
  • Quality – Networks
  • Usability – YouTube
  • Sharability – YouTube
  • Community – Possibly networks, likely YouTube

(details after the break)

Missing from the announcement was any tie up with Apple. Delivering high quality programs free to the recently released Apple TV could be a huge win. But the affiliates and cable companies won’t like that very much. And the Internet might grind to a halt.
(more…)

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