internet tv - ReadWriteWeb http://www.readwriteweb.com/feeds/tag/internet tv en Copyright 2009 Richard MacManus readwriteweb@gmail.com Mon, 23 Nov 2009 12:38:45 -0800 http://www.sixapart.com/movabletype/?v=4.23-en http://blogs.law.harvard.edu/tech/rss TV on the Internet: Clicker Launches clicker_logo_nov09.pngClicker, which aims to be the TV Guide for Internet television, just launched. We first reviewed Clicker last week when it was still in private beta. The version that went live today features a number of significant improvements to the private beta version. Clicker now indexes 33% more shows than before and indexes over 400,000 full episodes from 7,000 shows. Clicker also now features an improved DVR-like playlist, integration with Facebook Connect and improved search. In addition, Clicker users can now also comment on shows and use a wiki-like feature to contribute information about a given show or episode.

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]]> In last week's review, we called Clicker a "one-stop shop for online video." Today's updates and the public launch turn it into an even more convenient service. The most important new feature is the improved playlist, which now makes it even easier to watch shows on the Internet and to keep track of which ones you have already seen. Clicker now also indexes over 30,000 movies that are available through Netflix Instant Streaming and Amazon VOD.

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Video Search Market is Heating Up

As more and more TV viewers turn to the Internet to see full-length episodes of their favorite shows, the market for services that index these shows and make them easily available is also heating up. TVGuide.com released a number of significant updates to its site yesterday that include embedded full-length shows. Microsoft's Bing video search now also makes it easier to find content from TV and cable networks online. While Google offers a comprehensive video search engine, it doesn't offer any specific features that make it easier to find and watch TV shows online.

Clicker's new DVR-like playlists give it a unique feature that makes it stand out from the crowd and turns it into a one-stop shop for TV content on the Internet. You can find our full review of Clicker here.

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http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/tv_on_the_internet_clicker_launches_public_beta.php http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/tv_on_the_internet_clicker_launches_public_beta.php News Thu, 12 Nov 2009 06:00:00 -0800 Frederic Lardinois
Cable Companies Want to Control Online TV: Now This Sounds Like a Bad Idea time_warner_comcast_logo_jun09.pngEnjoy the online TV party while it lasts, because if it is up to your favorite cable companies like Comcast and Time Warner, access to TV shows might soon go behind a paywall that will be controlled by cable or satellite TV providers. Just as the newspaper industry doesn't know how to react to the new challenges posed by the Internet, the cable industry, too, is trying to remain relevant in a world where appointment TV is a thing of the past. This is due to the proliferation of DVRs where TV networks and producers can just put their content on the web and users can watch these shows on their TVs and in their living rooms thanks to cheap hardware devices from Apple and Roku, and software like Boxee.

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]]> Currently, only a few households have abandoned their cable TV in favor of going online only, but this number is probably growing and looking forward. The cable industry is surely seeing this as a threat, especially after analyzing the current state of the newspaper industry, which is facing a very similar situation where free online content is driving readers away from their legacy product.

Authentication

Now, Comcast and Time Warner are about to start a trial with about 5,000 cable customers that would give these households access to TV programs on the web. Of course, the real test here is not whether the cable companies can deliver online TV over their networks, but whether they can figure out a good way to 'authenticate' households that have a cable subscription.

Spin: More Choice for Customers

As Om Malik points out, this also opens up the door for possible anti-trust proceedings against the large media companies that are involved here. For now, it looks like Comcast and Time Warner will be working together on this project (Time Warner uses the name TV Everywhere, Comcast calls its system "OnDemand Online"). In this limited first test, Comcast will carry some programming from Time Warner's TNT and TBS networks.

As expected, the cable companies are spinning this as an innovative agreement that will bring "customers exponentially more free content, more choice and more HD programming online as well as on TV." In reality, of course, this project is simply a way for the cable companies and networks to protect their revenue streams.

There is, however, also some truth to the cable companies' claims. A lot of cable networks do not put any of their content on the Internet, as the networks don't want to jeopardize the lucrative income stream they currently receive from the cable companies.

Hulu, the Elephant in the Room also Wants to Play

As of now, free TV programming online isn't going to go away anytime soon, but as PaidContent reports, Hulu, the most visible online TV site, is also looking into subscription models and the executives there might not be averse to joining the cable companies' authentication schemes. At some point in the future then, your cable subscription might determine which shows you can watch on Hulu and similar online TV sites.

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http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/cable_companies_want_to_control_online_tv.php http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/cable_companies_want_to_control_online_tv.php News Wed, 24 Jun 2009 09:01:30 -0800 Frederic Lardinois
Google Media Server Launched - Google Enters the PC to TV Arena Google today made its own contribution to solving the PC to TV problem with the release of Google Media Server. The Windows-only software works in conjunction with Google’s desktop search application - Google Desktop - to locate various media (photos, music and video) stored on your PC and make it available for streaming over a home network to any UPnP compatible or DLNA ‘certified’ device, such as a PlayStation 3.

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]]> Syndicated from last100, our digital lifestyle blog

Google enters the PC to TV arenaWhile many UPnP server solutions already exist for Windows (it’s a pity Google hasn’t targeted Mac users), Google Media Server does bring a few specific features to the table. Namely support for Internet-based content from its photo sharing service Picasa, along with videos hosted on YouTube (using H.264 not Flash Video). From this we can conclude that Google Media Server is designed to make Google’s desktop search application that bit more useful, as well as offer another means of accessing YouTube on a TV.

Of course, Google Media Server could also be another sign that the company is testing the waters for a much more ambitious living room strategy — see Google wants to do for TV what it did for the Web.

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.

See also last100's recently published guide: DLNA certified: how your computer, cellphone, games console, media streamer and other devices can play nicely together

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http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/google_media_server_launched.php http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/google_media_server_launched.php Digital Lifestyle Fri, 27 Jun 2008 11:30:00 -0800 Steve O'Hear, last100 editor
Comment of the Day: Oprah, Jericho, & The Mainstreaming of Online Media We have another 2 Comment of the Day prizes to give away and both of them relate to the mainstreaming of online media (specifically video and audio). The first is from our post Is Oprah Going to Save the Internet?, in which Marshall Kirkpatrick noted that Oprah Winfrey's use of podcasting, Silverlight and Skype could be "a turning point for the [Web] platforms of the future." Via trackback, Jason Kaneshiro from Webomatica suggested that the 'Oprah Effect' is so important that Steve Jobs should consider partnering with Oprah in order to sell more iPods and AppleTVs.

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]]> Our second winning comment comes from our post Internet Fandom: Still Not Ready for Primetime, where Josh Catone reported that online TV show Jericho has been cancelled. Josh wondered: "why doesn't a large online following mean success offline?"

David Dworsky responded: "When will we stop talking about internet content as one thing and TV content as something totally different?" His full comment is below.

Congratulations Jason and David, you've each won a $30 Amazon voucher - courtesy of our competition sponsors AdaptiveBlue and their Netflix Queue Widget.

"When will we stop talking about internet content as one thing and TV content as something totally different? People like to watch quality video - it doesn't matter if they use a Mac Book Pro or a Sony Bravia screen. The distribution channel is one thing and the content is another.

To have a rating system that's only based on TV viewers is plain stupid. Some people like to watch on their computer, some like to sit in the TV sofa, some like to use the ipod, some use Youtube - it's the choice of the individual.

To separate the content as TV- versus Internet-video is just an old habit from a business that haven't been fast enough to embrace new technology. It's like saying that the text in a newspaper is more worth than the same text on the newspaper website. Internet fandom is primetime (or at least it should be)."

Oprah image via The Last Podcast

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http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/oprah_jericho.php http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/oprah_jericho.php Comments Competition Sun, 23 Mar 2008 12:50:16 -0800 Richard MacManus
Joost Coming to The Browser last100 is reporting that Joost (last100 review) is planning to let viewers access its Internet TV service via a Web browser, rather than requiring them to download and install the current Mac/Windows application. last100 editor Steve O'Hear notes that "though no specific launch date is mentioned (Joost has a track record of stating that it has plans to be everything to everybody), the move to a browser based offering is interesting on a number of fronts."

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]]> Firstly, says Steve, "it would signal an admission that Joost’s strategy to build its service around the kind of “lean back” experience that it hoped to deliver via a full screen desktop application has largely failed." Also Steve points out that the Internet TV landscape has changed dramatically - there are now a plethora of companies serving a similar mission to Joost, including big hitter Hulu, the NBC/Fox joint venture. Check out the full analysis at last100.

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http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/joost_coming_to_the_browser.php http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/joost_coming_to_the_browser.php Products Fri, 21 Mar 2008 20:49:59 -0800 Richard MacManus
A Good Day for Internet TV Internet TV is on a roll today! For starters, the day began with Apple sending out emails to their Season Pass subscribers, offering them credits for missed episodes. Later on, there was breaking news from the OMMA Global Hollywood conference, an industry event dedicated to online media, marketing, and advertising - it seems that CBS wants to change the game and have online video consumption contribute to a show's ratings. Well, it's about time!

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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.

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http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/a_good_day_for_internet_tv.php http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/a_good_day_for_internet_tv.php Digital Media Tue, 18 Mar 2008 15:37:34 -0800 Sarah Perez
Internet TV Update: Hulu, Joost, TiVo This week there's been a fair bit of action in the Internet TV sector, with announcements from Hulu, Joost and TiVo. Our network blog last100 has been covering the action.

This week Hulu - the online video project from Newscorp and NBC/Universal, with participation by Sony, MGM and others (our previous coverage) - launched to the general public in the United States. It's been in private beta nearly five months, wrote Dan Langendorf at last100.

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]]> The good news is that Hulu is free and offers legal content to viewers, albeit ad-supported. But it has its bad points, for example Hulu’s network lineup is missing a few big players - CBS and Walt Disney’s ABC, although both are rumored to be in negotiations with Hulu. Check out Dan's review for the full skinny.

Joost makes live-streaming video available, starting with March Madness

Joost, the Internet TV service, is making live-streaming video available through an update to its desktop client. Joost has landed a deal with one of its investors, CBS, to stream live and relatively ad-free NCAA Men’s Basketball Championship games. The new Joost client — for the PC and Intel Macs only — was made available for download this week and is needed to access live streaming. Joost began looking into adding “live television” back in October.

TiVo continues expansion, adds YouTube to “television services” lineup

It seems a bit late, but the important thing is that TiVo keeps improving its “television services” offering. This time, TiVo is adding YouTube to its ever-expanding lineup.

TiVo’s partnership with YouTube will deliver Web video directly to user’s televisions. The catch is to get YouTube content you must own the latest TiVo HD and TiVo Series3 models.

Check out more Internet TV news from last100, our digital lifestyle blog covering Internet TV, digital music, Mobile Web and more. You can subscribe to last100 here.

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http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/internet_tv_update_hulu_joost_tivo.php http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/internet_tv_update_hulu_joost_tivo.php Digital Lifestyle Fri, 14 Mar 2008 12:52:23 -0800 Richard MacManus
pulverTV: 24/7 Indie TV Channel Launches Although we're hopeful that Hollywood's writers strike is nearly at its end, the experience has led us to discover other entertainment venues. One area where there seems to be a lot of development lately is in Internet TV. The latest is a 100% indie Internet TV channel with 24/7 programming, created by Jeff Pulver, VOIP pioneer and the founder of pulver.com. Each week, pulverTV creates 12-14 hours of their own original programming and the rest is culled from over 40 different producers of independently created Internet TV shows from the web. The TV shows span several different genres including comedy, drama, sci-fi, anime, health, cooking, lifestyles, fitness, and business/finance. ]]>Sponsor

]]> Until the launch of the 24/7 programming, pulverTV was the home of  "The Jeff Pulver Show," a program which Jeff has been hosting since April 2007. This show will continue to be one of the featured programs on pulverTV, first airing live (you can catch the next one on Wednesday, Feb 6th at 2 PM EST), then being re-broadcast later in the programming schedule.

Along with producers Ariel Schwartz and Andy Lipson and sponsor BlogTV, the pulverTV channel was formed. One of their main goals with the service is to provide a platform for the indie creators of Internet TV to get their shows discovered. By providing the technology, production, and distribution information to any of those who request it, the platform can be a launch point for currently undiscovered talent. Alongside that goal is, pulverTV wants to provide quality 24/7 programming in order to close the gap between TV and "Internet TV."

Internet TV producers and creators with an existing program they want to publicize or with one they want to create can contact Jeff via email for more information on how to get started.

Always on Internet TV (that isn't lifecasting) - love the idea! However, the current lineup at pulverTV isn't always the most riveting. Still, the idea is good one, and hopefully the talent will follow.

 

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http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/pulvertv_247_indie_tv_channel.php http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/pulvertv_247_indie_tv_channel.php Products Tue, 05 Feb 2008 07:49:37 -0800 Sarah Perez
Best Technology Innovation / Achievement - Review of the 5 Crunchies Finalists One of the categories at next week's Crunchies awards show, which ReadWriteWeb is co-hosting, is Best technology innovation / achievement. The 5 finalists in that category are: Earthmine, Like, Move Networks, Twine, Viewdle. Here's a look at what each of these startups does and what makes them "innovative".

Among the 5 finalists, there is 1 Semantic App, 2 Visual Search Engines, a 3D mapping service, and an Internet video streaming product. Tell us who you think should be the winner in the comments.

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Twine is a new Wikipedia-like knowledge management app from Radar Networks. It's currently in a private beta (RWW authors are expecting their invites next week). In our review of a Twine demo from October last year, we noted that it has aspects of social networking, wikis, blogging, knowledge management systems - but its defining feature is that it's built with Semantic Web technologies. Founder Nova Spivack told us that Twine aims to bring a usable and scalable interface to the long-promised dream of the Semantic Web.

Alex Iskold made mention of Twine in his post Semantic Web: What Is The Killer App? this week. He noted that "personal knowledge management is an important problem". However he warned that even though knowing the semantics of knowledge is an important differentiator for Twine, it will need to prove itself: "at the very least Twine has to beat del.icio.us bookmarks and ideally needs to do for personal knowledge management what Highrise is doing for CRM."

Like

Like is a visual shopping search engine that was named on AltSearchEngine's Top 100 Alternative Search Engines of the Year. Like is an offshoot of Riya, the visual search engine. As we noted at the end of 2006, Riya was the first to introduce advanced face recognition technologies in image search and Like is an attempt to commercialize that. Like is similar to Pixsta, which we profiled last year.

According to their About page, Like.com utilizes their "Likeness Technology" to create a digital signature that describes the content of a photo, which they say "enables a more accurate search for similar looking items and products." Currently the following products are featured on the site: clothing, handbags, jewelry, shoes, and watches. Users can purchase items they find via Like, through merchants such as Nordstrom and Amazon.

Viewdle

Viewdle is another visual search engine, but in this case for video. It presented at the Techcrunch40 event in September last year, at which time Emre Sokullu wrote that Viewdle uses a facial recognition algorithm to search for people within videos. The main problem, noted Emre, is that people need to be in their database to be covered, and so far they only index celebrities. Viewdle has deals with Reuters and others. One question at the TC40 event was how Viewdle plans to scale when their database enlarges to many people - the company's answer was "contextual analysis," which will allow them to recognize faces in their environment.

Earthmine

Earthmine launched at DEMOfall 07. In our coverage, Josh Catone explained that Earthmine is creating a competitor to Google's Street View maps. Rather than using video, Earthmine will use "laser range-finding and still photography", which will result in perspective-correct photos that are more detailed and complete. Earthmine claims they can capture entire towns in just weeks using their camera set up, and they plan to extrapolate 3D data from the photos. It also looks like they plan to tag real-world objects within 3D panoramas to give their "geospatial inventories" context.

Marshall Kirkpatrick commented at the time that it's "nothing but 'wow' - not truly useful."

Move Networks

Move Networks is a publishing system that includes end-to-end services for encoding, streaming, editing, and monetizing your video broadcast. As last100 noted recently, 3 major US TV networks use Move Networks to power their Internet streaming services: ABC, FOX, and The CW. As last100 editor Steve O'Hear commented: "[The Move Networks player] is not based on Flash, it’s a proprietary format that uses a QVT file to send little packets across the web, to provide a non-buffering experience for end users that scales based on their connection speed."

Which of the above 5 do you think is most worthy of the title 'Best Technology Innovation / Achievement'? Voting has now closed, but at the end of next week we'll find out which startup won.

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http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/best_technology_innovation_achievement.php http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/best_technology_innovation_achievement.php Products Fri, 11 Jan 2008 14:53:01 -0800 Richard MacManus
CES Highlights: PC-to-TV Devices, Internet-connected TVs CES: PC to TV devices, Internet-connected TVsOur digital lifestyle network blog last100 has a great round-up of the latest announcements at CES. Steve O'Hear is seeing a lot of products that bridge the gap between the PC and TV, or bring Internet content directly to a television. Highlights include the SlingCatcher (Sling Media), D-Link’s newly launched PC-on-TV Player, TiVo Desktop 2.6 (TiVo), and Internet-connected TVs from Sharp, Samsung and Panasonic.

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]]> SlingCatcherlast100: "the long-delayed SlingCatcher from Sling Media is being given its first public demo at CES. The device serves three purposes: getting content from a SlingBox (the company’s place-shifting device) onto a TV, playing back media stored on an attached USB hard drive on a TV, and viewing Internet content via a PC on a television. To achieve all of this, the SlingCatcher comes bundled with three applications. SlingPlayer for TV, SlingSync and SlingProjector."

Read about SlingCatcher and much more from CES at last100.

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http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/ces_highlights_pc-to-tv_device.php http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/ces_highlights_pc-to-tv_device.php CES 2008 Tue, 08 Jan 2008 20:59:11 -0800 Richard MacManus
Weekly Wrapup, 31 Dec 2007 - 4 Jan 2008 Here is a summary of the week's Web Tech action on ReadWriteWeb. For those of you reading this via our website, note that you can subscribe to the Weekly Wrapups, either via the special RSS feed or by email.

Highlights this week: Richard MacManus ended 2007 with a review of the top 10 Web Tech stories of the year. Marshall Kirkpatrick produced an awesome toolkit to keep track of Web Tech trends in 2008; he also showed how to fall in love with tagging again and asked some big questions on privacy in the Web age. Josh Catone offered a guide to Online Giving to start the new year and he explored how the Web is affecting the US presidential primaries.

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It was naturally a quiet news week, being the first week of 2008. But the Web had a significant part to play in the US Presidential primaries, which kicked off this week in Iowa. Josh Catone wrote pre-Iowa that if the web were an indicator of political results, then Ron Paul and Barack Obama would likely be squaring off in the US presidential elections next November. But with the first state contest out of the way, it looks like the web was only half right (any maybe didn't have much to do with it at all). Obama, who was in a statistical tie with Hillary Clinton and John Edwards according to pre-caucus polls, convincingly defeated his rivals. Paul, however, finished fifth - exactly where he was polling - and still no where near the winner, Mike Huckabee, who collected 34% of the vote to Paul's 10%.

Trends

What's Next on the Web: a ReadWriteWeb Toolkit for 2008

This is a MUST READ post by Marshall Kirkpatrick, in which he outlines 5 big topical trends in Web Technology in 2008. He also provides the following resources:

* An OPML file of top blogs on each subject. This is a bundle of feeds you can import into your reader.
* A filtered RSS feed of just the most popular items regarding each topic (using AideRSS). Remember, whenever you subscribe to new RSS feeds - some of the magic won't be visible until you mark all the initial items as read and new ones come in again.
* A Custom Search Engine that you can bookmark and use to search inside the top news and reference sites regarding each topic.

5 Ways You Can Fall in Love With Tagging Again

Tagging content online is something that doesn't seem to have taken off the way some people expected it to.

Is it too complicated for widespread adoption? Is it too arbitrary to have the impact that formal taxonomies offer? Is it just too much work while you're zipping around the web? Who knows - what's important is that tagging web pages can still be very useful!

Marshall stopped using social bookmarking tools for a big part of 2007 because saving things for his own future reference wasn't enough motivation to invest the time required. In the latter half of the year, though, he's seen what some other people are doing to make it worthwhile again. Here's five and a half ways you can fall in love with tagging URLs again.

Related: The Glory, Bliss and How-to of Screen Scraping for RSS

Is it Time to Declare Music Downloads a Loss Leader?

Radiohead's widely heralded experiment with free downloads plus a premium package and request for donations (effectively) remains shrouded in mystery, but Trent Reznor and Saul Williams released some numbers this week about a similar experiment. Those numbers indicate that very few people want to pay for recorded music these days.

Related: Threatened by the Internet? Music Biz Should Rock Like Librarians

Web Products

Songbird To Build Out Music Power-Browser

Songbird is a desktop music player Marshall been using lately instead of iTunes and he's really been enjoying it. Based at core on Mozilla technology, this week the company kicked off a 6 week campaign to build the 40 most-requested Firefox extensions for Songbird. This big burst of functionality could put Songbird over the edge as a music-lover's dream-come-true, though it's pretty close already.

Author Uses Amazon Kindle to Beta Test New Book

In his former occupation as a programmer at Microsoft, Daniel Oran developed the "start" button for the Windows 95 taskbar. As an author about to publish his second novel, Oran continues to innovate, this time by using the recently released Amazon Kindle e-book reader to let early readers help him refine a draft of his latest book. Oran's use of the Kindle is one of the more interesting we've seen, and really demonstrates the device's read/write potential.

Related: Yahoo! PDF Ads In the Wild on Kevin Kelly's Latest Book

RWW Network Blogs

last100

On our Digital Lifestyle blog last100, the big news this week was Sony BMG’s decision to, in part, ditch DRM and start selling tracks on Amazon MP3 without copy-protection. That makes four out of four, with Sony BMG joining the other major labels: EMI, Universal Music and Warner (as predicted in last100's Digital Music 2007 year in review). In a follow up post, Daniel Langendorf asked where this leaves Apple’s iTunes Store?

On the Internet TV front, Netflix made a splash with its announcement of a partnership with LG to deliver movies over the Internet directly to a TV.

In their main feature-post this week titled ‘Mobile: the Year of Wireless hasn’t arrived — yet‘, last100's Dan Langendorf took a hard look at the changing face of the mobile industry (particularly in the U.S.), calling 2007 part of the transition years — with much bigger changes yet to come this year and realized in 2009.

AltSearchEngines

This week on AltSearchEngines, there were two interesting sets of posts: the first was a pair of very telling posts about vertical search engines. The message: verticals are no longer "gaining strength," they have now arrived.

Also this week ASE investigated ChaCha - with a review of ChaCha's mobile launch, followed by Natalya Murakhver's interview with ChaCha CEO Scott Jones.

That's a wrap for another week! Enjoy your weekend everyone.

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http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/weekly_wrapup_4jan08.php http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/weekly_wrapup_4jan08.php Weekly Wrapups Sat, 05 Jan 2008 16:10:43 -0800 Richard MacManus
Internet TV: 2007 Year in Review Joost et alFrom YouTube’s continued dominance, the television networks’ newfound willingness to experiment online, the rise of the desktop Internet TV application, and a number of new PC-to-TV devices and set-top boxes — it’s been a big year for Internet TV in all shapes and forms. In this post we look back at 2007 through the lens of last100’s coverage, highlighting some of the important stories and trends, and how they point to what we might expect for Internet TV in 2008.

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YouTube logoWhile the market for Internet TV is growing steadily — survey after survey shows that people are consuming more video online than ever before — as 2007 draws to an end, Google-owned YouTube is still the number one video destination site.

This isn’t just true in terms of traffic but also in terms of “mind share”; when people talk about online video they often refer only to YouTube. As a result, a number of hardware companies have added YouTube support to their devices in 2007, such as YouTube-compatible cameras and mobile phones capable of viewing and publishing video to YouTube.

And then there’s the strong relationship between Google and Apple, which this year has led to YouTube support being added to both the AppleTV and iPhone, with a change in the video format to boot. Apple successfully persuaded YouTube to start re-encoding its video catalog to the much higher quality (and Apple-preferred) H.264 codec.

Not one to rest on its laurels, YouTube introduced a number of new features of their own, including a redesiged player, the introduction of interactive overlay ads, better copyright filtering, and — like many Google properties — improvements to its mobile offering.

What can we expect in 2008?

YouTube mobileCoinciding with improvements to the quality of Flash video, YouTube co-founder Steve Chen has said that the company is currently testing a version of its player that detects the speed of the viewer’s Internet connection and serves up higher-quality video if the user wants it. According to Chen, we can expect to see higher-quality playback on YouTube as early as February 08.

Also in part related to an upgrade to Flash Lite (Adobe’s version of Flash for mobile devices) that adds full support for Flash video, along with the launch of Google’s mobile phone-oriented OS called Android, 2008 will likely see YouTube being offered on an ever greater number of mobile devices.

On the content front, with Google stepping up its monetization options for YouTube, including expanding its ad-revenue share scheme with independent producers, 2008 may well see more professionally-produced video being offered on the site.

Television networks and movie studios reluctantly experiment

In 2007 we’ve seen a large amount of online experimentation from the television networks (both in the U.S. and UK) and, to a lesser extent, from the major movie studios too. The problem, however, is that many seem to have been doing so with their hands tied behind their back.

U.S. TV networksIn September, we took an extensive look at what the U.S. television networks, ABC, CBS, NBC, Fox, and The CW, were offering on their own websites. Dan Langendorf wrote at the time:

The good news: Major U.S. television networks continue to embrace Internet technology and are putting their shows on the Web for online viewing, just like they did last year.

The bad news: Their online offerings remain sporadic; their Internet strategies feel like “we have to” rather than “we want to”; and — worst of all — they still haven’t embraced the idea that we are living in a new digital world, with different rules, participants, and expectations all around.

This year also saw a number of new efforts by the U.S. television networks to offer their content elsewhere on the Web (not just through their own sites), embracing both ad-supported models and paid-for rental and to-own.

HuluOn the ad-supported front, the big news was the launch of the much awaited video destination site Hulu, a joint venture between News Corp. and NBC that offers streaming video of both companies’ television and film content along with offerings from other studios such as Sony Pictures Television and MGM. While many industry pundits were skeptical of Hulu’s chances, upon viewing a Beta version of the site, early reactions have been positive.

NBCNBC, who in some ways seem the most willing to experiment, also launched a Beta version of NBC Direct, an Internet-based catchup TV service. We came away unimpressed by NBC’s thinking, however, noting that shows are only available up to seven days after broadcast, and once downloaded, expire after 48 hours.

With regards to paid-for downloads of television shows, 2007 was also the year in which NBC and Apple’s iTunes divorced. Following a very public spat, NBC chose not to renew its partnership with Apple and is instead selling downloads through Amazon’s UnBox, Sandisk’s Fanfare, and Netflix, among others.

In July we took a look at the Internet TV offerings of the five major UK television broadcasters, noting that the then yet-to-launch iPlayer from the BBC looked the most promising.

However, when the iPlayer finally launched it wasn’t without controversy. The BBC was accused of being corrupt due to the iPlayer’s reliance on Microsoft technology and its lack of Mac/Linux support, and UK ISPs were reportedly critical of the application’s use of peer-to-peer technology and potentially high bandwidth costs. Answering the former, in October the BBC announced it had partnered with Adobe to develop a streaming version of iPlayer based on Flash that will be compatible with Windows, Mac and Linux PCs, and possibly mobile devices in the future.

In the movie download space we compared eleven download stores, concluding that “it’s still very early days in the paid-for video download space, where so far, greater competition hasn’t produced nearly enough innovation in terms of pricing and convenience — particularly in relation to copy-protection.”

What can we expect in 2008?

There’s evidence to suggest that watching full length TV shows online is becoming increasingly popular, in part due to higher broadband penetration rates but also because the studios are making more of their content available on the Web. Encouraged by this, we hope to see the television networks and movie studios take greater risks, although don’t expect the constraints of traditional scheduling and release dates or geographical territories to go away anytime soon.

One likely possibility is that iTunes will start to offer online movie rentals, putting Apple in direct competition with Netflix.

In the UK, broadcasters, BBC, ITV and Channel 4 have announced an initiative to develop a combined service for accessing their on-demand and catch-up services. The new service is currently known under the working title “Kangaroo”, and if approved by the BBC’s governing body, could emerge in 2008.

Internet TV comes to the desktop

Joost et alThe year 2007 is definitely the year of the desktop Internet TV application, with a number of companies launching products that aim to combine a TV-like viewing experience with the best of the Web.

Joost, founded by the team behind Skype, is the most high profile, along with Italian billionaire Silvio Scaglia’s Babelgum. Add to list VeohTV, Zattoo, Livestation, Next.TV (backed by HP), Adobe’s Media Player, and Microsoft’s Internet TV, and it becomes clear how crowded this space has got in 2007.

What can we expect in 2008?

The jury is out on whether people are really willing to leave their web browser and use a number of separate desktop applications in order to get their Internet TV fix. A big question mark also remains around whether the various desktop offerings will be able to secure enough compelling content in order to compete with the Web as a whole.

PC-to-TV and set-top box ambitions

Admittedly we at last100 are more obsessed with PC-to-TV and Internet connected set-top boxes than most industry watchers and consumers alike — 2007 has been a fairly busy year for these type of devices.

The biggest launch was that of the AppleTV, which at the time Steve Jobs hailed as the final piece to Apple’s digital lifestyle strategy, since the device bridges the gap between the PC and the television. However, the AppleTV has been far from a smash hit, with worldwide sales reportedly as low as 400,000 units, a dwindling amount of video content following the NBC Universal loss, and Jobs himself repositioning the device as the company’s “hobby”.

In comparison to the AppleTV, which feels far too tied to the iTunes store, in 2007 TiVo added numerous third-party web services to its line of broadband-enabled DVRs.

This year saw the launch of the Vudu set-top movie box and accompanying download store.

Microsoft and its partners’ unveiled the latest Windows Media Extender devices, with new functionality including higher-speed wireless and DivX support.

Sandisk also entered the PC-to-TV space, with the launch of TakeTV and download service Fanfare.

But perhaps the two companies who best positioned themselves in 2007 to eventually solve the PC to TV problem, along with getting Internet content into the living room, are Microsoft with the XBox360 and Sony with its PlayStation 3.

What can we expect in 2008?

While the market for PC-to-TV devices will remain modest, getting Internet content directly into the living room will remain the pursuit of many companies, particularly Apple, Microsoft and Sony. For example, we’re pretty confident Apple will take a second stab at the AppleTV, and Microsoft and Sony will ramp up their efforts to offer more video and other content through their respective game consoles. Also expect TiVo to continue to add more web services to it DVRs.

Other companies to watch in 2008, in relation to set-top box activity, are Netflix, DivX and possibly Joost.

DivX support is everywhere

DivX logoAnother trend in 2007 was an increasing number of devices supporting DivX video, most notably Microsoft’s Extenders for Media Center and XBox 360, as well as forthcoming DivX support on the Sony PlayStation 3. Additionally, DivX has developed a reference design for its own DivX enabled set-top box, and Sandisk added DivX support to its Sansa line of portable media players.

What can we expect in 2008?

More of the same.

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http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/internet_tv_2007_year_in_review.php http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/internet_tv_2007_year_in_review.php Products Thu, 20 Dec 2007 04:20:04 -0800 Steve O'Hear, last100 editor
Internet TV Startups - Outlook Bleak? VCs predict an uncertain future for Internet TV startupsOn our network blog last100, Natalie Fonseca is covering the NewTeeVee Live event. One of the panels today featured VCs talking about funding for the Internet TV market. Depending on who was talking - and the panel included VCs who have backed online video startups like Veoh and Heavy.com - the outlook for VC investments "varied from treacherous to less treacherous", reported Natalie. She wrote:

"Entertainment-lawyer-turned-VC Dennis Miller of Spark Capital warned that there are already investors who are becoming “roadkill” and there will be more roadkill ahead. George Zachary of Charles River Ventures generally agreed that there aren’t a lot of Google-like opportunities in video now that will pay mega-dividends to early investors. Instead, Zachary thinks the money isn’t in the content but in the social networks that are built around content.

Mike Hirshland of Polaris Venture Partners was more optimistic about the possibility for at least a few companies to reach the critical mass needed to really take off — and to pay off for VCs who’ve taken a chance on them."

Other NewTeeVee Live coverage on last100:

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http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/internet_tv_startups_outlook_bleak.php http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/internet_tv_startups_outlook_bleak.php Events Wed, 14 Nov 2007 19:18:55 -0800 Richard MacManus