Posts Tagged ‘techcrunch’

Time Warner Cable shows subscribers how to cut cord

January 7th, 2010

As we are in the worst recession in 70 years, only three things are guaranteed: death, taxes, and a yearly 5% or more increase in cable subscription fees.

So – as a consumer, witnessing the on-g0ing scrimmishes between Broadcast TV providers and premium content (cable) providers is also entertainment.

Although this year’s skirmish between Fox and Time Warner was resolved at the 11th hour, Time Warner’s detailed instructions which show its customers how to watch Fox online, for free, with the suggestion viewers head to the likes of Hulu, Fancast, or any search engine–to find their favorite shows.

Time Warner Cable’s instructions on “How to Connect Your PC to Your TV” can be accessed by clicking on the image at the bottom of this post.

Still, no matter how this resolves, the danger for both sides is that consumers really do take up Time Warner Cable on its offer and start watching Fox stuff on the Web, since Fox definitely wants people keep paying for cable TV since Fox really covets subscription fees from cable TV providers.

To paraphrase Douglas Adams:  Corporations, who are almost unique in having the ability to learn from the experience of others, are also remarkable for their apparent disinclination to do so.

Related content:

A Netflix Stream in Hand…

… would be a killer app – and in more ways than one; streaming more than one movie would easily eat up most people’s iPhone minutes package on AT&T without making *any* calls… Today, from TechCrunch, via Hacking Netflix: Rumor: Netflix Streaming Coming To The iPhone by MG Siegler on August 3, 2009 One big story …

Comcast Takes on Hulu in the Battle for TV to be Everywhere

Via CNN.com today: Comcast rolled out a Web-based on-demand television and movie service on Tuesday that gives customers access to more than 2,000 hours of television and movies. – more – The service, named Fancast XFINITY TV (formerly TV Everywhere),  is getting mixed reviews on Twitter,  and is in beta, with limited …

Dead Like Me.

I’ve been broadcast/cable tv free for about a month now, with only mild withdrawal symptoms (having really re-run episodes of NCIS makes great white noise for me when I work from home; so now I have to improvise….). Even so – the combination of watching/running Netflix offerings in the background is …

Hello, Roku HD…!

When I still had cable tv, I loved my Tivo, even though I never upgraded my Tivo 2 box the Tivo HD. Why not?  Pricing.  I had a lifetime (of the Tivo 2 box) subscription, so upgrading would have been very expensive for me – first because of Tivo’s high pricing …

Hulu-baloo, Part 2.

I seem to be thinking mostly in images these days, when not thinking in terms of databases… Related content: Help Wanted: Zookeeper with a Good Attitude. Most job postings are dry.  Really dry.  And – they usually include “must haves” which require skills and/or experience with everything but being able to both plumb AND …

Hulu-baloo.

According to Silicon Alley Insider, with data partly from Comscore, 38 million people watched Hulu at least once in July - a viewership which easily topped Time Warner Cable’s July viewership of 34 million. That same month, only DirecTV (47 million viewers) and Comcast (62 million) pulled larger audiences: While impressive, Hulu.com has a long way to go before reaching the cable companies’ …

For Whom The Bell Tolls… or, Another Business Model for $0.00

From Techcrunch, last week: At first this announcement appeared to be a good candidate for “News of the Weird:” Microsoft Officially Retires Soapbox, The Poor Man’s YouTube by Leena Rao on July 21, 2009 Microsoft’s YouTube clone Soapbox is officially shutting its doors, according to reports today. Soapbox, which was launched in 2006 as a hub for downloading …

Free is Not Always Free.

So – the featured speaker at the July 2009 Seattle Chamber of Commerce’s speaker at this month’s “Author Speaker Breakfast” is Chris Anderson, author of FREE: The Future of a Radical Price: FREE: The Future of a Radical Price by Chris Anderson the bestselling author of the The Long Tail In his revolutionary …

Free is Sometimes Free: The Future of a Radical Price

For those not able to make the Seattle Chamber of Commerce breakfast tomorrow, featuring Chris Anderson talking about his book Free: The Future of a Radical Price, his presentation at Wired’s “Disruptive Business Conference” is available online, for free: Related content: Free is Not Always Free. So – the featured speaker at …

Free: The Future of a Radical New Price is now…Free!

Late last month, Chris Anderson released a free downloadable unabridged podcast/audiobook version of his book, Free: The Future of a Radical New Price as zipped mp3 files, and via  iTunes.  It chapter is an individual podcast; all of which are  narrated by Chris. [caption id=”attachment_1506″ align=”aligncenter” width=”162″ caption=”Free: The Future of a Radical …

Tags: apparent disinclination, iphone, techcrunch, google, cable providers, fancast, cable tv providers, cnn, broadcast tv
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Roku + Hulu = The Killer App?

November 23rd, 2009

The Roku Channel Store will roll out 10 new (and free, at least for now) channels to users within the next two weeks:  Pandora, MotionBox, MediaFly, blip.tv, TWiT.tv, Facebook Photos, Revision3, framechannel, flickr & MobileTribe.

More channels are promised “as they become available.”

Tip for Roku:  adding Hulu would be a lot more compelling.   How about a January 2010 release for that one? :)

Roku_Netflixplayer

A Netflix Stream in Hand…

… would be a killer app – and in more ways than one; streaming more than one movie would easily eat up most people’s iPhone minutes package on AT&T without making *any* calls… Today, from TechCrunch, via Hacking Netflix: Rumor: Netflix Streaming Coming To The iPhone by MG Siegler on August 3, 2009 One big story …

Hello, Roku HD…!

When I still had cable tv, I love my Tivo, even though I never upgraded my Tivo 2 box the Tivo HD. Why not?  Pricing.  I had a lifetime (of the Tivo 2 box) subscription, so upgrading would have been very expensive for me – first because of Tivo’s high pricing …

Netflix, its Algorithm, My Neighbors, and Me.

I still haven’t quite figured out how Netflix’s business model keeps it profitable - even with a paid subscriber base of 10,000,000, there are a lot of operational costs behind Netflix.com, from software engineering to shipping costs to and from that paid subscriber base; each queued title shipped as a DVD …

Hulu-baloo.

According to Silicon Alley Insider, with data partly from Comscore, 38 million people watched Hulu at least once in July - a viewership which easily topped Time Warner Cable’s July viewership of 34 million. That same month, only DirecTV (47 million viewers) and Comcast (62 million) pulled larger audiences: While impressive, Hulu.com has a long way to go before reaching the cable companies’ …

Hulu-baloo, Part 2.

I seem to be thinking mostly in images these days, when not thinking in terms of databases… Related content: Help Wanted: Zookeeper with a Good Attitude. Most job postings are dry.  Really dry.  And – they usually include “must haves” which require skills and/or experience with everything but being able to both plumb AND …

It’s Official: “BellKor’s Pragmatic Chaos” Team Wins Netflix Prize

Today Netflix Corp. awarded its long-awaited $1M Grand Prize to team “BellKor’s Pragmatic Chaos,” which consisted of Bob Bell, Martin Chabbert, Michael Jahrer, Yehuda Koren, Martin Piotte, Andreas Töscher and Chris Volinsky. The 3-year crowdsourcing contest motivated self-forming, unpaid volunteer teams to compete for one $1 million dollar prize by creating  an …

Tags: million viewers, netflix, tivo 2, comcast, killer app, viewership
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Hello, Roku HD…!

November 2nd, 2009

When I still had cable tv, I loved my Tivo, even though I never upgraded my Tivo 2 box the Tivo HD.

Why not?  Pricing.  I had a lifetime (of the Tivo 2 box) subscription, so upgrading would have been very expensive for me – first because of Tivo’s high pricing for the Tivo HD box – which was over $700 about this time last year; although today the Tivo HD XL box is priced at $599.00.

TiVoHDXL_front_wremote_602

In any case, I would have had to resubscribe to Tivo in order to actually use the new HD box, plus the monthly subscription cost for my old digital cable package; you do the math.

Since then, I’ve switched from cable to Netflix, especially Netflix’s On Demand offerings, which I watch on my HD tv thanks to my Roku box which while not HD, produces a signal as good as my former cable provider offered those HD viewers who didn’t pony up extra money each month for their “HD Viewing” add on.

Roku just announced two new models  will be available in addition to the existing Roku HD Player; all three are much less expensive than Tivo’s HD box:

Roku SD: $79.99. Standard definition player with composite video and RCA audio, ethernet and 802.11b/g WIFI. Here’s the back of the Roku SD Player:

current_Roku_box

Roku HD: $99.99. Existing player with HDMI, composite, and component video, RCA audio and optical video out, ethernet and 802.11b/g WIFI.

Roku HD-XR: $129.99. Same video and audio I/O as Roku HD, but with 802.11b/g and 802.11n networking support, as well as a mysterious USB port on the back for “future use.”

Here’s the back of the Roku HD player:

NewRokuHD

Within the next month, Roku will launch a Roku Channel Store for customers to choose channels to watch via their Roku box.

Sign me up, Roku HD!

Related content:

A Netflix Stream in Hand…

… would be a killer app – and in more ways than one; streaming more than one movie would easily eat up most people’s iPhone minutes package on AT&T without making *any* calls… Today, from TechCrunch, via Hacking Netflix: Rumor: Netflix Streaming Coming To The iPhone by MG Siegler on August 3, 2009 One big story …

Dead Like Me.

I’ve been broadcast/cable tv free for about a month now, with only mild withdrawal symptoms (having really re-run episodes of NCIS makes great white noise for me when I work from home; so now I have to improvise….). Even so – the combination of watching/running Netflix offerings in the background is …

Here Today, Gone Tomorrow; or Redundancy, x 2

Last week a “minority” of T-Mobile Sidekick users learned the “Rule of Data Redundancy” the long, slow, hard way – and through no fault of their own. Sidekick users who stored their data locally (on the device) or backed up their data on a PC through a sync still have their …

How the Netflix Prize Was Won…

Not surprisingly <G>, Wired has an interesting follow up story on how the Netflix prize was won – and notes real progress was made in the contest’s goal to improve the Netflix movie recommendation algorithm by 10 percent only after the leaders joined forces with members of some of the also-ran teams. The …

Hulu-baloo.

According to Silicon Alley Insider, with data partly from Comscore, 38 million people watched Hulu at least once in July - a viewership which easily topped Time Warner Cable’s July viewership of 34 million. That same month, only DirecTV (47 million viewers) and Comcast (62 million) pulled larger audiences: While impressive, Hulu.com has a long way to go before reaching the cable companies’ …

Is the Paradigm for Search Engines Changing Again?

Clive Thompson has an interesting article in Wired this month about today’s “real-time Web,” which is changing the playing field for traditional search engines such as Google, Bing, Ask.com, et al; and at least for now, creating a market-changing opportunity for real time search engines such as Tweetmeme, OneRiot, Topsy, …

It’s Official: “BellKor’s Pragmatic Chaos” Team Wins Netflix Prize

Today Netflix Corp. awarded its long-awaited $1M Grand Prize to team “BellKor’s Pragmatic Chaos,” which consisted of Bob Bell, Martin Chabbert, Michael Jahrer, Yehuda Koren, Martin Piotte, Andreas Töscher and Chris Volinsky. The 3-year crowdsourcing contest motivated self-forming, unpaid volunteer teams to compete for one $1 million dollar prize by creating  an …

Tags: iphone, tivo, ethernet, rca, techcrunch, cable provider, tivo box, wifi
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Some Broadcasters Doth Protest Too Much.

September 25th, 2009

Change is certain, progress isn’t as internet media business models morph by the second in the never ending search for profitability.

Yesterday Erick Schonfeld posted an interesting article on TechCrunchLeaked Email: Quincy Smith Of CBS Wants To Counter “Reckless Hulu Streams,” which included a Contentinople piece quoting members of a recent Advertising Week discussion panel, who disparaged Hulu.com for giving away premium content.

Smith, CEO of CBS Interactive, confirmed the leaked email is real.  What remains to be seen is which entities’ business model succeeds, and which is based on product envy…

Read the full post here.

The lady doth protest too much, methinks.“ - William Shakespeare (1564 –1616), Hamlet Act 3, scene 2, 222–230

hulu-logo

Related content:

A Netflix Stream in Hand…

… would be a killer app – and in more ways than one; streaming more than one movie would easily eat up most people’s iPhone minutes package on AT&amp;T without making *any* calls… Today, from TechCrunch, via Hacking Netflix: Rumor: Netflix Streaming Coming To The iPhone by MG Siegler on August 3, 2009 One big story …

Dead Like Me.

I’ve been broadcast/cable tv free for about a month now, with only mild withdrawal symptoms (having really re-run episodes of NCIS makes great white noise for me when I work from home; so now I have to improvise….). Even so – the combination of watching/running Netflix offerings in the background is …

Hulu-baloo.

According to Silicon Alley Insider, with data partly from Comscore, 38 million people watched Hulu at least once in July - a viewership which easily topped Time Warner Cable’s July viewership of 34 million. That same month, only DirecTV (47 million viewers) and Comcast (62 million) pulled larger audiences: While impressive, Hulu.com has a long way to go before reaching the cable companies’ …

Rescue Me

Each economic downturn brings some cultural shift or change; during this one I realized I’d pretty much given up on network TV. I’ve never watched even one “Survivor,” “Dancing with the Stars,” “American Idol” or “The Apprentice.”  I’m going to keep it that way. Other than some of the original series on cable …

For Whom The Bell Tolls… or, Another Business Model for $0.00

From Techcrunch, last week: At first this announcement appeared to be a good candidate for “News of the Weird:” Microsoft Officially Retires Soapbox, The Poor Man’s YouTube by Leena Rao on July 21, 2009 Microsoft’s YouTube clone Soapbox is officially shutting its doors, according to reports today. Soapbox, which was launched in 2006 as a hub for downloading …

Free is Not Always Free.

So – the featured speaker at the July 2009 Seattle Chamber of Commerce’s speaker at this month’s “Author Speaker Breakfast” is Chris Anderson, author of FREE: The Future of a Radical Price: FREE: The Future of a Radical Price by Chris Anderson the bestselling author of the The Long Tail In his revolutionary …

Free is Sometimes Free: The Future of a Radical Price

For those not able to make the Seattle Chamber of Commerce breakfast tomorrow, featuring Chris Anderson talking about his book Free: The Future of a Radical Price, his presentation at Wired’s “Disruptive Business Conference” is available online, for free: Related content: Free is Not Always Free. So – the featured speaker at …

Free: The Future of a Radical New Price is now…Free!

Late last month, Chris Anderson released a free downloadable unabridged podcast/audiobook version of his book, Free: The Future of a Radical New Price as zipped mp3 files, and via  iTunes.  It chapter is an individual podcast; all of which are  narrated by Chris…

Tags: iphone, radical, ncis, viewership, techcrunch, siegler
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Marketing Really is All About Targeting Your Customers.

September 9th, 2009

From TechCrunch, today:

badabing

…but one thing about Bing really stands out – it may be the best porn search engine ever created (see Badda-Bing Indeed). In private conversations Microsoft employees always said that the porn search feature was an unintended byproduct of good video search. But we always wondered if that was true.

Anyway, in May we noticed Bing ads on Google, which seemed a little ironic to us given how seriously the two companies compete with each other.

But one thing we didn’t notice until now is that Bing is also advertising on Google for the query “pornography.”

Which in our opinion removes all doubt about Bing’s intentions. There’s nothing wrong with being a good porn search engine, in our opinion. And why not go ahead and advertise it to the world.

Discovered via a TechCrunch employee who has asked to remain anonymous….

Check out the full story here.

Related content:

For Whom The Bell Tolls… or, Another Business Model for $0.00

From Techcrunch, last week: At first this announcement appeared to be a good candidate for “News of the Weird:” Microsoft Officially Retires Soapbox, The Poor Man’s YouTube by Leena Rao on July 21, 2009 Microsoft’s YouTube clone Soapbox is officially shutting its doors, according to reports today. Soapbox, which was launched in 2006 as a hub for downloading …

Free is Sometimes Free: The Future of a Radical Price

For those not able to make the Seattle Chamber of Commerce breakfast tomorrow, featuring Chris Anderson talking about his book Free: The Future of a Radical Price, his presentation at Wired’s “Disruptive Business Conference” is available online, for free: Related content: Free is Not Always Free. So – the featured speaker at …

Tags: good porn, youtube, porn search engine, seattle chamber of commerce, badda bing, microsoft employees, best porn, free, google, microsoft
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Hulu-baloo.

September 7th, 2009

According to Silicon Alley Insider, with data partly from Comscore, 38 million people watched Hulu at least once in July - a viewership which easily topped Time Warner Cable’s July viewership of 34 million.

That same month, only DirecTV (47 million viewers) and Comcast (62 million) pulled larger audiences:

SilliconAlleyInsiderHuluComp

While impressive, Hulu.com has a long way to go before reaching the cable companies’ levels of profitability; the average Hulu viewer spent approximately 1.25 hours a month on the site, while a typical viewer of cable tv was tuned in for significantly more frequent, and also longer periods of time; and ad revenue is based on both frequency and reach.

Having canceled my cable tv subscription, I now rely on Hulu to keep up with those tv shows (plus some movies) I used to watch via cable.

Besides being able to view those programs on demand, I also appreciate each program I watch via Hulu airs with maybe 4 15-second ads, and not 16 ad filled minutes per program when broadcast over the air, or via cable.

Hopefully HBO will soon include “True Blood,” “Big Love,” and the “No. 1 Ladies Detective Agency” in Hulu’s offerings, or offer consumers a direct subscription to watch those shows on HBO.com.

If/when that happens, I won’t miss cable tv at all.

Related content:

A Netflix Stream in Hand…

… would be a killer app – and in more ways than one; streaming more than one movie would easily eat up most people’s iPhone minutes package on AT&amp;T without making *any* calls… Today, from TechCrunch, via Hacking Netflix: Rumor: Netflix Streaming Coming To The iPhone by MG Siegler on August 3, 2009 One big story …

Dead Like Me.

I’ve been broadcast/cable tv free for about a month now, with only mild withdrawal symptoms (having really re-run episodes of NCIS makes great white noise for me when I work from home; so now I have to improvise….). Even so – the combination of watching/running Netflix offerings in the background is …

Rescue Me

Each economic downturn brings some cultural shift or change; during this one I realized I’d pretty much given up on network TV. I’ve never watched even one “Survivor,” “Dancing with the Stars,” “American Idol” or “The Apprentice.”  I’m going to keep it that way. Other than some of the original series on cable …

Retro Me

Another TV show I haven’t yet watched is AMC’s Mad Men; but the free Mad Men Yourself Avatar maker is so swanky, I’m going to Hulu it and give it a try. Click here to recreate yourself in  ’60’s style.  Remember – be sleek, be stylish, but also yourself… For the record, …

Tags: cable companies, true blood, viewer, ncis, iphone, time warner cable, techcrunch, subscription, siegler, viewership
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Upping Your Netflix Geek Factor

August 11th, 2009

Worried you’re not getting your money’s worth from your $8.99 a month, 1 physical DVD at a time but also unlimited “Instant Watch” membership?

Want easy to digest, visualized data updated ever 24 hours about:

FeedFliks is an independent website created by Netflix members for other Netflix members, and utilizes the Netflix API to visualize yours – and other’s – rental and instant watch habits.

Worried about Privacy? (and really, who but bloggers isn’t these days? <G>) The site’s privacy policy is here; highlights include:

  • New  users by default only have their Netflix Reviews shared
  • All other data, their Queues, their Recommendations etc are private
  • Users’ Rental and Streaming Histories have *always* been private – as have been their statistics, graphs and calculations
  • By default, FeedFliks members share only their Reviews shared (unless they’ve made that section also private already)
  • User who prefer to share more can set their sharing preferences via their Sharing page.

Even better – it’s FREE.  (And at least for now, the website is almost advertising free too; the only banner ad is to join Netflix).

Related Content:

A Netflix Stream in Hand…

… would be a killer app – and in more ways than one; streaming more than one movie would easily eat up most people’s iPhone minutes package on AT&amp;T without making *any* calls… Today, from TechCrunch, via Hacking Netflix: Rumor: Netflix Streaming Coming To The iPhone by MG Siegler on August 3, 2009 One big story …

Netflix and the Speed of Light.

Yesterday around 1pm the US Postal Service picked up my red Netflix envelope with Slumdog Millionaire inside, preaddressed for the PO Box of their Tacoma, WA warehouse. This morning at 6:36 am, Netflix emailed me my shipment with Slumdog Millionaire was received; and the next dvd in my queue would be …

Netflix, its Algorithm, My Neighbors, and Me.

I still haven’t quite figured out how Netflix’s business model keeps it profitable - even with a paid subscriber base of 10,000,000, there are a lot of operational costs behind Netflix.com, from software engineering to shipping costs to and from that paid subscriber base; each queued title shipped as a DVD …

Rescue Me

Each economic downturn brings some cultural shift or change; during this one I realized I’d pretty much given up on network TV. I’ve never watched even one “Survivor,” “Dancing with the Stars,” “American Idol” or “The Apprentice.”  I’m going to keep it that way. Other than some of the original series on cable …

Free is Sometimes Free: The Future of a Radical Price

For those not able to make the Seattle Chamber of Commerce breakfast tomorrow, featuring Chris Anderson talking about his book Free: The Future of a Radical Price, his presentation at Wired’s “Disruptive Business Conference” is available online, for free: Related content: Free is Not Always Free. So – the featured speaker at …

For Whom The Bell Tolls… or, Another Business Model for $0.00

From Techcrunch, last week: At first this announcement appeared to be a good candidate for “News of the Weird:” Microsoft Officially Retires Soapbox, The Poor Man’s YouTube by Leena Rao on July 21, 2009 Microsoft’s YouTube clone Soapbox is officially shutting its doors, according to reports today. Soapbox, which was launched in 2006 as a hub for downloading …

Tags: geek factor, bloggers, millionaire, netflix, iphone, independent website
  • Share/Bookmark

Free: The Future of a Radical New Price is now…Free!

August 6th, 2009

Late last month, Chris Anderson released a free downloadable unabridged podcast/audiobook version of his book, Free: The Future of a Radical New Price as zipped mp3 files, and via  iTunes.  It chapter is an individual podcast; all of which are  narrated by Chris.

Free: The Future of a Radical Price

Thanks, Chris :)

Hugh MacLeod today posted an interesting interview with Chris; several key takeaways for me were:

  • I’d like to be equally know for innovations in business models.
  • Don’t wait to be given a job to do something cool. Follow your passions, create something every day, take chances and try to be the best in the world at something, no matter how tiny and trivial.  Nothing impresses me more than initiative. And there has never been a better time to take it.
  • I think that leading people is perhaps the most important skill these days.  My business card says “Editor in Chief”. I suspect that if any of my children follow in my footsteps, their card will say “Community Manager”. Helping (and inspiring) other people to do cool stuff is what an editor does, and when you take it out of a purely professional media context that looks more and more like effective community management.  It’s a great skill and I admire those who do it well.

Related content:

For Whom The Bell Tolls… or, Another Business Model for $0.00

From Techcrunch, last week: At first this announcement appeared to be a good candidate for “News of the Weird:” Microsoft Officially Retires Soapbox, The Poor Man’s YouTube by Leena Rao on July 21, 2009 Microsoft’s YouTube clone Soapbox is officially shutting its doors, according to reports today. Soapbox, which was launched in 2006 as a hub for downloading …

Free is Not Always Free.

So – the featured speaker at the July 2009 Seattle Chamber of Commerce’s speaker at this month’s “Author Speaker Breakfast” is Chris Anderson, author of FREE: The Future of a Radical Price: FREE: The Future of a Radical Price by Chris Anderson the bestselling author of the The Long Tail In his revolutionary …

Free is Sometimes Free: The Future of a Radical Price

For those not able to make the Seattle Chamber of Commerce breakfast tomorrow, featuring Chris Anderson talking about his book Free: The Future of a Radical Price, his presentation at Wired’s “Disruptive Business Conference” is available online, for free: Related content: Free is Not Always Free. So – the featured speaker at …

Tags: macleod, chris anderson, techcrunch, takeaways, soapbox, rao, free, podcast, better time
  • Share/Bookmark