With today's Brightcove partnership, Boxee can point major networks towards a solution that allows them to increase control over their web video content and advertising. Brightcove offers customers the option to automatically serve video ads or they can choose to utilize a turnkey solution for customized ad placement. Meanwhile Boxee offers content owners a chance to move web video to television audiences. If Brightcove clients like Fox, Showtime Networks and A&E Entertainment welcome Boxee integration, other providers can't help but take notice. This is important given Boxee's battle for Hulu integration.

While Boxee users have always loved the Hulu app, Hulu's content partners requested removal from the Boxee community in early February. Boxee was forced to respond with a workaround solution. The new deal further legitimizes Boxee as a distributor of mainstream content. For a complete list of Brightcove customers and potential Boxee content providers, visit the Brightcove customers page.

To chose a CC license as the default for your photo uploads, you have to scroll down towards the bottom of your privacy settings page. Searching for CC photos requires that you scroll to the very bottom of the Advanced Search page or start at this page. There would be a whole lot more CC photos on Flickr if those options were given better placement on the site. In 2006 13% of the photos uploaded to Flickr were given a CC license; today that number is 4%. Flickr is much bigger and now includes the perhaps more cautious former users of Yahoo Photos as well. Only about 1% of the photos on Flickr can be used in a commercial setting (like this blog) even with attribution given; otherwise, explicit permission is needed. That's a real loss.

More collaboration equals more creativity equals more communication equals a better world - and more photography for Flickr. It certainly seems in their interests to promote CC more as well.

What do you think? Should Flickr do more to promote Creative Commons or ought we simply be grateful for everything they've done already?

The change will apply to all text and multimedia content, including video, images, and audio now licensed under GFDL 1.2 or later versions and will increase "the compatibility and availability of free content," according to the WMF site.

The change in licensing was made possible in November 2008 when the Free Software Foundation updated its most recent of the GFDL, adding language specifically to accomodate the WMF's desire to switch to Creative Commons licensing.

As we reported last month, in the event that the WMF board approves the proposal, existing content will be dual-licensed and new content will be CC-BY-SA licensed only. "This will ensure that any content shared from Wikipedia in the future can be done under the now broadly-used terms of Creative Commons licensing and without the additional restrictions required by the GFDL, which was created more for application code documentation and is slightly more stringent, for example requiring anyone using the content to include the full license code with each use," wrote RWW blogger Phil Glockner.

"When I started Wikipedia, Creative Commons did not exist," wrote Wikipedia founder Jimmy Wales on the site's Q&A page regarding the licensing changes. "The CC-BY-SA license is a more generic license that meets the needs of Wikipedia today, and I'm very grateful that the FSF has allowed this change to happen... It's a critically necessary change for the future of Wikimedia."

McCarthy tends the gears of Techmeme, makes sure the content on the site remains of high quality and helps ensure the inclusion of new and important voices. It sounds like an awesome job and one that has probably never existed before - a half woman, half robot, news gathering machine. How can you get your blog on Techmeme? What's in the future for the site? We asked Megan in the following interview.

Marshall Kirkpatrick: What do you do all day? I imagine you standing next to one of the most awesome news discovery machines available, tending it, making sure it keeps running smoothly, and looking out beyond its reaches to feed it things it hasn't gotten to yet itself. Is that an accurate picture?

Megan McCarthy: That is fairly accurate, actually. I make sure that the news on Techmeme represents an accurate, current, and full overview of what's happening in technology right now. So, that's trimming back stories that aren't relevant, adding in viewpoints that ought to be heard, etc.

Marshall: Can you tell us a little bit about your personal background?

Megan: My personal background is a little varied. Prior to [writing for] Valleywag, I bounced around a few different jobs and places and never really found a niche. I lived in Hawaii for a few years, had various office drone jobs and other gigs to pay the bills (Nanny, bartender, coffee server). But I loved following technology and reading about what was happening in silicon valley - and I've been a news junkie since I was young.

News Selection and Twitter Tips on Techmeme

Marshall: So, did your coming on board "break" the "objectivity" of the site?

Megan: Techmeme is biased and has been so for a while. If you read Gabe's post announcing the addition of an editor, he makes that point.

What do you think, though? What changes have you noticed since I joined?

Marshall: I have noticed no changes to story selection, perhaps less wonky stuff. I've always considered Techmeme a very reliable source of news and I think you're doing a good job continuing that tradition - but there were certainly some people who grumbled about the human touch being formally introduced, an editor.

Megan: I think some of those people might grumble about anything.

Marshall: How can new bloggers get indexed on Techmeme?

Megan: We just introduced a program where people can tip relevant posts to us through Twitter. Anyone can tip any post they think is relevant to us.

Marshall: How is the new Twitter tips program working out? I see a lot of stories go up with thanks to Twitter, quite a lot - is it changing the face of the site substantially? Changing the content?

I see a handful of people getting thanks over and again, I imagine there's limited participation so far but how does the algorithm determine whose tips to accept and whose not to?

Also, a lot of people are sending tips regarding their own stories - is that ok? Even mainstream media outlets.

Megan: I don't think it's changing the content overall. Many of the stories that are tipped are ones which are worthy of a Techmeme headline. Not everything that gets tipped to us gets on the site. There are two situations that I can think of where the tip program does affect the content: It can help surface breaking stories faster, and if there are two similar stories from different outlets and someone cares enough to tip a certain one, that will probably effect which one ends up as a headline on Techmeme.

As for people tipping their own stories... personally I'm not completely opposed to it. If a writer has a breaking story that he or she wants to let us know right away, that's a good way to do it. But, they should keep in mind that their twitter handle will be credited with tipping us to the story. If "Thanks: Marshall" showed up next to every Techmeme headline you get, people might put two and two together and think that you really like your work.

To my knowledge, the identity of the person tipping the story has no effect on whether or not it will show up on the page. It's about the post itself.

Marshall: Well, if shame and loads of people saying "you're an f*ing jackass" was sufficient deterrent to anti-social behavior in social media, then...[indecipherable, record of this part of the conversation lost forever.]

Megan: Ha. Is he though?

Marshall: Oh I'm sure he is. ANYWAY. Is accuracy taken into account on Techmeme?

Megan: Accuracy is absolutely taken into account on Techmeme. That's one of my goals, anyway. If there's a post which has a lot of buzz around it, which turns out not to be true...

Marshall: What does that look like? Are you like "Steve Jobs is NOT out at Apple, I don't believe those reports! Story...gone!"

Megan: Or, a story that says "Steve Jobs NOT out at Apple" gets published next to the earlier, erroneous rumor.

Marshall: Then you yank the false story?

Megan: Either yank it or surround it with stories pointing out *why* it's false. Sometimes the false rumor becomes a story itself and yanking it can be jarring. We want our readers to be able to visit the site and know what's going on in technology - to know what people are talking about. The earlier rumor would probably be replaced as the top story by one with the correct information, but yanking it without giving our readers full context of the overall arc might be a bit jarring.

Marshall: You have to be reading a lot of these stories in great detail. What time does your work day start and end?

Megan: I start around 7:30ish and end later than that. News never stops!

The Future of Techmeme and Other Aggregators

Marshall: So, everyone wants to be an aggregator these days. All the young kids are like "mommy, I'm going to grow up to find recommended stories for an online news publisher."

What kinds of things do you foresee becoming points of leverage for content aggregators and news discovers in the future?

Megan: I think a reliable real-time web is going to have the greatest impact on aggregation services. I'd love to be able to see stories from sites as they're published, without a lag.

I hope that quality, accurate, and speedy stories get rewarded by receiving more attention - and that new voices are discovered and make the media chorus sound fuller and stronger.

You were asking me about my electric sheep dreams.

Marshall: Are you a cyborg?

Megan: Depends on my mood.

Marshall: At least between 7am and 7pm?

Megan: That sounds about right. This is super-nerdy, but reading an overwhelming amount of news is something that I rather enjoy doing.

Thanks to Megan McCarthy and Techmeme for doing this interview and doing the things they do each day - help us find the hottest conversation in technology. We appreciate it. You can find Megan on Twitter as well. Photo at top by Scott Beale

Dylan, who coincidentally is the eldest son of folk legend Bob Dylan, uses his familiar style to aggregate a quick selection of scientists explaining why a web-based revision of copyright policy is so important for the advancement of scientists. "Scientists are the ultimate remixers," one interviewee says, and we agree that Creative Commons in science is a very exciting idea.

Few media are as compelling as video and we hope that this new short work is helpful in garnering support for Creative Commons in the sciences.

Dylan's work joins a long list of well made Creative Commons videos, which have been helpful in explaining the movement to revise copyright to countless people, no doubt including even President Elect Barack Obama, whose own website was recently put under a Creative Commons license.

So what draws developers like Nicolas Gramlich to Android? Gramlich says that "Android's main attraction is its simplicity" and that this enables the rapid development of "feature-rich applications".

Asked by Steve O'Hear what kind of apps we can expect from Android, Gramlich replied that "we will definitely see a lot of location-aware and social-networking applications, that will try to be the social app for Android. I've seen so many that I cannot even count them." He noted that integration with Google Maps is especially tight, which he says doesn't currently exist on other mobile platforms. Indeed his own Android app is a free navigation app called AndNav! (screenshot below).

Despite all the positive attributes of Android, currently it is vaporware (no commercial phones running Android yet exist) and there has also been developer unrest because the SDK hasn't been updated for some time. Gramlich admits that "the next SDK has to be overwhelming to get Android back on track".

For the full interview, hop over to last100. Also see last100's recent interview with the zintin CEO talking iPhone, Android and mobile future.

LinkedIn users are now being shown personalized news targeting their industry verticals on the Business and Technology sections of NYTimes.com and will then be prompted to share those stories will professional associates.

A number of other social networks and bookmarking services have "share this story" links on NYT stories, but it's unclear how much traction those links alone are getting. Last month we wrote about one of those services, social news site Mixx, that's still seeing fewer than 1 million unique visitors per month despite "share this on Mixx" buttons on a long list of the biggest news sites in the world, including NYTimes.com.

How much more compelling is this partnership? We think it's a lot more compelling; check out the screenshots below and imagine the feedback loop this could create between the NYT and LinkedIn. LinkedIn has 25 million registered users and the NYT sees 17 million + unique visitors per month, but the partnership will need none the less to introduce more people to LinkedIn in order to really be a home run. See this NYT page for an "introduction to LinkedIn." That's pretty classy, though it's unclear yet when that link will be displayed and when it won't.

We'll see how the recommendation process works; we hope it doesn't rely exclusively only on explicitly shared links, but we'll see. This certainly gets the mental juices flowing about any number of other integration and recommendation possibilities.

One question we have is about money changing hands. There has been extensive discussion around the web of late about LinkedIn using partnerships as a revenue source and it wouldn't surprise us if the NYT is paying for this integration. LinkedIn may not be a huge social network, but its user demographics are some of the most financially desirable in the world.

We expect to see more partnerships like this emerge, perhaps from a chastised Facebook attempting to relaunch its Beacon program in a more acceptable fashion.

The API itself should be done by the time summer arrives in the US, with more significant chunks available to the public within 6 months.

The New York Times has taken a lead in bringing newspapers into the digital landscape over the past year. In 2006, the company launched its specialized RSS reader built on the Microsoft WPF platform, but it was this past fall that things really started to heat up on the digital side of the Times.

The paper put out a Facebook application, which has been a modest success with about 1,500 daily active users. They followed that in October with the controversial decision to put reader comments on the main page of the paper's web site.

In November, the Times took Techmeme full on by launching its own news aggregator powered by the Blogrunner technology it had acquired. Blogrunner "is our answer to Techmeme, integrated with our main site. It is technology we've built ourselves, based on Blogrunner, a company we bought last year," NYT Tech Editor Saul Hansell told us at the time.

Then in January, the company made an investment in Wordpress, the popular blogging engine that powers their own blogs.

Conclusion

An API is a logical next step for newspapers. It will give developers access to their vast amounts of well-researched data, and allows the paper's brand to be spread easily across the web. More access to Times content and the ability to mash it up in new and interesting ways can only be a win for both readers and the paper.

"The web of the near-term future isn't about pages any more," wrote Marshall Kirkpatrick in his massive post on APIs in March. "It's about data, flying around, hopefully under the control of users, and offering a world of possibilities that few of us could have imagined just a few years ago."

The New York Times seems to understand that. Says Aron Pilhofer, the paper's interactive news editor, the goal of an API is to "make the NYT programmable. Everything we produce should be organized data."

Viacom, Paramount, MGM and Lionsgate announced a joint venture to create a new premium TV channel and VOD service, which will be rolled out in the fall of 2009. The project will include a strong online component, according to Viacom CEO Philippe Dauman: “It will also meet the needs of varying distributors and take advantage of online distribution…innovative both in presenting the content and in distributing it.”

A new report surfaced this week on Sony's forthcoming movie download service for the PlayStation 3. Not much is yet known, except that negotiations with Hollywood studios are taking place — no word on pricing or if the movies and TV shows are for rent or purchase. One tantalizing tidbit, however, is being floated about: “Unlike closed networks such as Apple’s, Sony plans to embrace open standards that would make its offering compatible with a range of computers and hand-held devices, including the PlayStation Portable,” according to the LA Times.

Lastly, Motorola is rumored to be planning movie download service for its mobile devices. This is from a company that reported a $1.2 billion operating loss last year, and is considering splitting off or selling its handset division. Our advice: Worry about getting cool new phones on the market to compete with Nokia, Apple, Samsung, LG, and the highly-anticipated Google-powered Android phones. Otherwise, Motorola has bigger problems than the latest Hollywood releases.

The latest company thought to be readying its own Internet TV set-top box plans is Blockbuster, according to Hollywood Reporter. The new “set-top device for streaming films directly to TV sets” could be announced as early as this month, and would utilize the company’s recent acquisition of online movie service Movielink, giving users access to over 3,000 film titles from major Hollywood studios Paramount, Sony, Universal, Warner Bros. and MGM.

BBC iPlayer lands on Wii - who said Nintendo doesn’t do media center?

A version of the BBC’s iPlayer will be made available on Nintendo’s Wii, announced the UK public broadcaster’s Future Media and Technology chief Erik Huggers during a keynote speech at the MipTV-Milia conference in Cannes. The move marks the first time the iPlayer will be available on a games console, and perhaps surprisingly, not one designed specifically to be a media center. So much for the ‘trojan horse into the living room’ strategies of Sony’s PS3 and Microsoft’s XBox 360.

Babelgum commissions feature-length environmental documentary

Internet TV platform Babelgum has always pitched itself as serving the interests of independent video producers who want to find and connect with niche audiences. By tapping into the Long Tail, the company maintains it’s possible to “find an audience that rivals or exceeds the mainstream TV audience in any local market.” However, Babelgum has now crossed a line, moving away from being purely a content distributor to also commissioning original and exclusive content of its own. Last month, the company announced plans to set up a $10+ million production fund, telling Variety that Babelgum was “transforming into a digital media studio.” The first of those commissions is thought to be a feature-length environmental documentary about the threatened Athabasca Oil Sands region in Alberta, Canada.

Surprisingly, answers to most of the basic type of questions, like those found on social networking sites, did not help users figure out what each other were "really" like. Instead, the researchers found that when a user posted things on their profile like their most embarrassing moment, proudest moment, or spirituality, their personalities were much better understood.

A Typical Facebook profile

Even by just posting a link to a funny online video, other people were better able to "get" the other person's personality more accurately that by basic questions alone.

Gosling was drawn to this research because he believed that how one is perceived online is more important than ever these days since social networks are often where other people get their first impression of you. He also mentioned that your social networking profile could also impact your employment opportunities as savvy employers have learned to search out the online profiles of potential new hires.

The full details on the findings of this research project will be presented Monday at the International Conference on Weblogs and Social Media in Seattle.

The Methods

The GTD Method: GTD, or "Getting it Done," methodology arose from David Allen's popular and ground-breaking work-life management system. His techniques can be applied to nearly all aspects of work and life. Specifically, using the GTD method for processing email involves taking action on every piece of email that arrives in your inbox. As you review each item, you should should do one of these 3 items if the item requires action: 1) Do it (if it takes less than two minutes), 2) Delegate it, 3) Defer it. If the item does not require action, either 1) File it, 2) Delete it, or 3) Incubate it for possible action later. By processing mail this way, you'll always have an empty inbox.

Implement It:

Due to GTD's popularity, there are now several software tools to choose from. A list and comparison chart of many of these tools can be found here.

One of the more popular tools, boasting 80,000 users, is the GTDInbox Firefox extension for Gmail. This extension, which recently relaunched with a new version, GTDInbox 2.0, automatically sets up Gmail labels like "Next Action," "Waiting On," "Someday," and "Finished." The extension is smart - as you label items as "Finished," it will automatically remove the label "Next Action." The extension also structures Gmail as a personal database of projects, references, and people, clustering related items together so you can easily find everything related to a project, contact, or file. For example, you could click on a project and email all the associated contacts.

The 4-Hour Workweek Method: Timothy Ferriss also released a popular book which offered the blueprint to how you could eliminate most of your workload and outsource your life in order to regain more personal time ("mini-retirements," as he called it). He recommends managing email through more of an avoidance strategy, calling email "the greatest single interruption in the modern world." To counter the time-wasting aspect of email, Ferris recommends you begin by turning off the audible alert and/or visual notification. Then move to checking your email only twice per day: once at 12:00 noon (or just prior to lunch) and again at 4:00 pm. He advises you to never check email first thing in the morning.

Implement It:

To help implement this process, an auto-response email template can be used, which advises of your new process while also offering a way to reach you in the case of an actual emergency (like a cell #). If you become the master of this method, like Ferriss, you could even move to checking your email once per week. Of course there are other things that need to be adjusted in order for this to work, like removing yourself as an information bottleneck or empowering subordinates or employees to make decisions on their own, but ultimately the goal is to reduce your email inbox from being filled with urgent to-do items.

The "Treat Email As SMS" Policy: Another method to dealing with email involves treating all incoming email as if it were an SMS text message. Only use a set number of sentences to respond. How many sentences is up to you.

Implement It:

A web site called sentenc.es can help you implement this. Begin by updating your email with a signature similar to the following:

The link takes you to the web site explaining what you're doing. There are also sites available for four, three, and two sentences, if you want to be even briefer.

The Folders & Rules Method: The classic old-school way of organizing your email into meaningful folders containing similar items. This method arose from a time when desktop email software was the norm and email search was either poorly executed or non-existent. Despite the fact that there are now clearly superior ways to organize mail, many people are still moving email into folders. This process can be automated in desktop software, like Outlook, or in web-software, like Gmail, by using "Rules" (aka "Filters" in Gmail). This process involves having incoming mail identified based on sender, keywords, subject, etc and then categorized and filing appropriately. Gmail also introduced Labels, which allows for mail to exist in multiple "folders," an option that is more like tagging your mail, but ultimately, it is just folders 2.0, leading Gmail users to having multiple labels for mail instead of single folders.

Implement It:

No don't! But if you must, at least make it easier on yourself. Read up on Outlook rules, Thunderbird filters, Gmail filters, or documentation for whatever your mail client of choice is. You can augment your software by using add-ons and extensions, too. For Outlook users, the Clear Context add-in will overhaul your email system and help you manage your inbox better. Apple mail users can use Mail Act-On.

The Email Bankruptcy Method: Surprisingly, some people are just giving up on email. The term's origin may have originated from MIT professor, Sherry Turkle's, concept after conducting research on people's relationship with technology. She discovered that some people had fantasies about escaping the burden of their email. However it was author, Lawrence Lessig, who popularized it.

Take this example from a Washington Post article:

But, according to the article, dropping out is copping out - "a reactionary and isolationist way of dealing with modern communications."

Implement It:

You shouldn't declare email bankruptcy unless you really have no other choice. If you are going this extreme route, the best way to do so would be to send out a mass email to all of your contacts with an explanation and an apology. Offer them other ways to reach you like phone numbers and snail mail addresses, unless you are committing to becoming a total hermit. Prepare to be ridiculed.

Conclusion

After reviewing the mailbox management methodologies, are there any that really stand out as the best way? The GTD method makes a lot of sense, but it takes time to retrain yourself to change years of behavior you've become accustomed to. Of course, time to train and change is something you often don't have due to the very same burden you're trying to overcome. Besides reading the success stories on the acclaimed authors web sites, how many people have implemented a GTD or alternative email methodology and stuck with it over time? Have you? Share your thoughts in the comments.

Although the poll features UK users only, it's easy to extrapolate some commonalities from the answers they provided. UK users are a subset of networks in question, but just as digitally invested in their social connections as any other demographic of users.

Who's Online and What Are They Doing?

The survey shows the top five UK social networks to be, in order, Facebook MySpace, Friends Reunited, YouTube, and Bebo. MSN Spaces falls just behind Bebo, if you're not one to count YouTube as a social network as they do because of its community element.

In the UK, social network usage does correlate with age, but even 1 in 8 of 45-54 year olds regularly use them, as do half of teenage males and two thirds of teenage females. Looking at the younger demographic (under 25 years old), 60% are using social networks.

Usage levels

This gain in popularity comes from the expense of other activities and media. The main activities showing a decline in time spent doing are doing work/homework, watching broadcast television (-12%), reading print (books are -10%, magazines are -8%, newspapers are -7%), visiting other web sites, and playing games. Among teens, the decline is even more pronounced with -32% less time spent on homework/work, -21% less time spent on TV, and -14% less time spent reading books. However, female teens show a +19% increase in listening to music.

Other activities suffer

And while many of today's social network offer the ability to stream content, the survey points towards their potential to become more significant players in the media and content distribution business. In fact, 1 out of every 4 users (27%) said social networks could be the main way they would access video and music if these features became available and the player was good. And for the under 25-year-olds, acceptance was even higher: for example, 40% of males, 20-24, agreed that the social networks could be the main way they would access content if available.

Beyond just accessing music and video, the potential for other types of content distribution is present as well. 26% of the social network users (1031 out of the survey's 1600 respondents) are interested in the ability to chat about the video streams, 23% are interested in using the network as a "serious" media player to stream music, 22% are interested in using the network as a serious media player to view TV programs, 21% would stream movies, and even 13% would be interested in using embedded online gambling. (Imagine if you could play Scrabulus for money!).

Moving Beyond Content Discovery

Social networks currently excel in content discovery, with 30% of users responding that they occasionally use them to search for new music, and for teenage girls this figure was 1 in 2. Meanwhile, 1 in 4 said that they would find out about movies and TV shows via peer recommendation within the network.

The telling figure is that 1 in 5 reported that they purchased music based on peer recommendation and have searched a social network to find new music to purchase.

If social networks chose to become more than content discovery tools in this area, they would already have a built-in customer base ready to buy, as long as the process from discovery to purchase remained easy and intuitive.

This idea is something that MySpace seems to already be working on. Last month, news was leaked about the upcoming MySpace music service, which may even be offering mp3 downloads and possibly via an Amazon partnership. If that's the case, then it wouldn't take long for MySpace to take over the media distribution game and become the number one online music retailer, beating iTunes with ease by sheer number of users.

Adobe CEO Shantanu Narayen says that, with or without Apple's blessing, the company plans to develop a Flash player for the iPhone/iPod touch platform.

During yesterday's earnings call (see SeekingAlpha transcript), Narayen told investors that that Flash was "synonymous with the Internet and frankly, anybody who wants to browse the web and experience the web’s glory really needs Flash support".

With new research suggesting that the iPhone has already established itself as the No.1 mobile browser in the U.S., and No.2 in the UK, Narayen would say that.

However, only a week or so ago, Apple CEO Steve Jobs poured cold water on the idea of Flash on the iPhone/iPod touch, saying that the version designed specifically for mobile devices - Flash Lite - wasn't good enough, and that Adobe's more powerful desktop offering runs too slowly on the iPhone. What was needed is a “missing product in the middle”, argued Jobs.

Is Adobe committing itself to building the missing version of Flash that Jobs demands?

Or does Adobe really believe it can go-it-alone?

Without Apple providing the hooks to enable Adobe to tap into the iPhone's Safari web browser, it's hard to see how a Flash plug-in could be implemented. Instead, Adobe might be able to create a work around: some kind of stand-alone Flash Player that opens full screen to play certain content. This would work best for playing Flash video but would be useless for viewing websites that integrate Flash with regular HTML components.

Therefore, presuming that Adobe needs Apple's support - which I think is almost certain - and that users want the kind of experiences that Flash supports, how long can Steve Jobs hold out before agreeing to work with Adobe?

The answer: quite a long time, if not indefinitely.

Firstly, the biggest user of Flash video - YouTube - already offers a non-Flash version of the site designed specifically for the iPhone/iPod touch.

Secondly, rather than utilizing Flash to build "rich" Internet-aware applications (RIAs) for the iPhone/iPod touch, Apple is providing developers with an official SDK that will enable them to build native clients for a range of Internet services (as an example, think of the Google Maps application for the iPhone).

And thirdly, in Safari, Apple has already raised the potential of web-based applications by providing a very capable mobile web browser that supports modern so-called Web 2.0 coding standards. In fact, Adobe's own Rich Internet Application Evangelist, Ryan Stewart, recently described the latest desktop version of Safari (3.1) as Apple's own RIA platform, "complete with video and animation support (and offline storage)." Since Safari mobile is built on top of the same codebase as the desktop version, we can expect to see those same improvements brought to the iPhone/iPod touch very soon.

This post is syndicated from last100, our digital lifestyle blog covering Internet TV, digital music, Mobile Web and more. You can subscribe to last100 here.

For some, today's big Apple news may be the release of Safari 3.1, but for others it's going to be the email from Apple that showed up in their inboxes this morning. The email informs Apple Season Pass subscribers that they will receive credit for the episodes they missed due to the Hollywood writer's strike.

According to the email, Apple will provide for the following:

1. Any additional episodes broadcast for the 2007-2008 season will still arrive as iTunes receives them (I'm taking this to mean that they will still arrive, even if the season would have normally ended by now.)
2. If the season winds up with fewer episodes than planned, a partial credit will be given for the difference.
3. A credit for two free videos has been applied, which can be used for any two TV episodes, music videos, or short films on the iTunes Store.

So, not only will customers receive partial credits for their losses, they're also receiving bonus credits just because of the inconvenience caused by the strike, something which wasn't even Apple's fault. That's great customer service and sure to please Apple's customers.

CBS Shocker - Internet TV Viewing Should Count

Big media has been somewhat slow to change, but today's CBS news shows a promising shift for the television industry. Patrick Keane, Vice President and Chief Marketing Officer for CBS Interactive, proposed a move to an aggregate ratings system, which would combine TV viewing with online video consumption. These combined ratings could then provide advertisers with a cross-platform option that is more detailed in terms of data, thanks to online metrics.

Keane cited internet darling "Jericho" as an example: the online viewers of one episode boosted the ratings from 4.2 to 5.1 - nearly a whole percentage point. Although Keane didn't mention the online campaign that did, in fact, save Jericho from cancellation, had these online ratings been taken into account from the beginning, desperate measures by hardcore fans would never have been needed.

Internet fans save Jericho

Another example Keane used was this year's Grammys. TV viewers accounted for 16.9 million of the viewers for the annual music awards show - down 15% from the previous year. But taking into account the web viewers, an additional 7.9 video streams could be added to that number, as well as 4.9 million page views, making the decline in viewership not as bad as previously thought.

Getting With the Program

As a correlation to yesterday's article (reading isn't down, it just moved online), it goes to reason that other activities have made the move online, too. More people are watching both TV and movies online as well as on portable devices. And while shows may suffer a little in number of live "real-time" viewers, why wouldn't the networks count all of a show's viewers towards the popularity of that program?

This shift has been a long time in the making; it was late fall of 2006 that should have been the wake-up call for TV broadcasters when a struggling new show called "The Office" was saved from cancellation after being put on iTunes. The show, which quickly became the number one downloaded show, surprised the NBC execs who realized that there actually was an audience for the program - they just happened to be online.

NBC's save of "The Office" may have been a turning point which prompted the networks to begin offering their content on iTunes, and on their own web sites as well. Unfortunately, it appears that even now, in 2008, the networks are still trying to figure out how to make the online viewings count for something.

"The Office" on iTunes

However, with today's news, not to mention the launch of sophisticated and well-executed sites like NBC/Universal's Hulu.com, it seems the networks are finally starting to figure what the pirates have known for years: the internet was made for content and it's what the people want. No matter what, the move to online media will change the television industry forever, so it's promising to see them headed in the right direction.