Took ’em long enough. After weeks of rumor and speculation, Walt Disney Co. has finally taken a stake in Hulu, the video-streaming site operated by NBC Universal, News Corporation and Providence Equity Partners. Financial terms and the structure of the deal weren’t disclosed, but sources say Disney’s stake in the venture will be 27 percent.
A look back at the week during which approximately 40 percent of the posts were about Twitter. Or at least it seemed that way.
BoomTown got the ball rolling by making a visit to Twitter HQ bearing pies. During a video tour of the premises, Biz Stone discussed rock stars and booze, and spilled the secret of the strange green deer.
Ironic, isn’t it, that Google, one of Net neutrality’s staunchest advocates, has been approaching major cable and phone companies with a proposal that appears to violate the very tenets of that principle? How could a company that has argued tirelessly that all Internet traffic should be treated equally, suddenly reverse course and seek preferential treatment for its own traffic?
Short answer: it didn’t.
As predictable as day following night, litigation has followed the Federal Communications Commission’s sanctions against Comcast. In a long-expected action, Comcast sued the commission today claiming the FCC had no legal grounds on which to punish it for throttling file-sharing traffic on its network.
Who would have thought that a search company that began as a Ph.D. research project back in 1996 would someday become of a behemoth of such bandwidth-consuming appetite that it would require its own high-bandwidth undersea communications cables? Earlier this year, Google revealed that it had joined a six-company consortium to build a new multi-terabit undersea cable linking the U.S. and Japan. And now it appears the company is planning at least two more.
Well, it’s about time. On Aug. 1, four top members of the House Committee on Energy and Commerce sent letters ordering 33 cable and Internet companies, including Google, Microsoft, and Yahoo, to explain in detail their privacy standards. Of particular concern to the Committee was “the growing trend of companies tailoring Internet advertising based on consumers’ Internet search, surfing or other use,” i.e., behavioral targeting.
About the best thing to be said about Amazon Unbox, the mediocre, odiously restrictive, video download service the retailer launched last year, is that it was … er … Windows-only, I guess. Which, obviously isn’t saying much.
If the old media advertising economy is in the toilet, then its new media counterpart is sitting atop it. According to figures compiled by the Interactive Advertising Bureau, spending on Internet advertising in 2007 rose to $21.2 billion, up 26 percent from the prior year.
Vonage’s slow death is … well, it’s slowing.The financially struggling Internet-phone company reported today a smaller first-quarter loss thanks largely to prudent cost cuts.
The cable industry may have finally settled on a wireless strategy–Sprint’s. The Wall Street Journal reports that Comcast, Time Warner Cable and Bright House Networks are discussing a WiMax partnership with Sprint and Clearwire.
Time Warner’s AOL division posted financial results today, and while its revenue did not, as some investors worried, “fall off a cliff,” it’s clearly hanging on to one for dear life.
Revenue at the AOL unit slid 23% to $1.1 billion, with much of that decline stemming from a steep 28% drop-off in dial-up subscribers. Ad-revenue [...]
Well, Comcast founder Ralph Roberts has at least one thing in common with Apple CEO Steve Jobs: an annual salary of $1. Bowing to shareholder criticism, the bandwidth-throttling cable company is slashing Roberts’s pay from $1.85 million to a buck and has amended his compensation package so that he will no longer be eligible for [...]
John Paczkowski has been poking fun at the tech industry and the personalities that drive it since 1997. From 1999 to 2007, he wrote the award-winning tech news Web log Good Morning Silicon Valley for the San Jose Mercury News, Silicon Valley's daily newspaper.
Here is a statement of my ethics and coverage policies. It is more than most of you want to know, but, in the age of suspicion of the media, I am laying it all out.
Includes “Pigs in a Polka,” “Rabbit of Seville” and, of course, “What’s Opera, Doc?”
Take the famous ballads and duets of West Side Story, insert a dozen mentions of famous social media sites like twitter and facebook, and this is what you get.
An iPod mini rebuilt with a wooden case
Star Wars meets Magnum, P.I.
Music videos recreated with new lyrics based on what’s actually happening in them. Daydream Believer and Total Eclipse of the Heart are particularly good.
In response to numerous e-mails, I have no idea what planet the giant alien creature is from. Judging from its enormous gills, I’d have to guess it’s from a watery planet. Reminder: please let me know if you plan to be in the office on Memorial Day so I can request HVAC for your floor.
For those of you who mock the wolf shirt beware. There is an old Navajo story about a young man who made fun of another man for wearing a wolf trio shirt. Legend has it that in his sleep, the wolves on the other man’s shirt came to life and tore his body to shreds. They never found any part of that man’s body. The Wolf is something to be respected and feared, not treated like a novelty.
Hands down the most inexplicably bizarre game for Wii I’ve ever seen
Yo mama is so attractive she could be on the cover of Prevention.
The inspiration for this project was to determine who could generate the worst flatulence measurable in a personally unbiased manner.
D is unlike any other executive conference. Since its debut in 2003, D has brought to life the energy and excitement of the digital revolution in an unscripted, upfront and unparalleled way. Read more »
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