Archive for July, 2006
July 7, 2006 at · Filed under internet, movies, television
replayTV has announced a version of their DVR for Windows. users can download the software (30 days free trial) and use it on their PCs to watch and record TV shows. buying the software will cost $100 for a year and will include the EPG (electronic programming guide).
what i don't understand is why do they even bother. Microsoft Media Center PC is offering the same functionality for free, and if you want an even better experience you can download one of the open-source versions. i think MediaPortal is the best choice.
replay has lost its battle with TiVO, which lost its battle with the cable/sattelite companies (ala EchoStar and DirectTV). these companies need to re-invent themselves, but offering a PC DVR is probably too little, too late for these guys.
a better direction (which i believe TiVO is pursuing) is the internet, rather than try to bring the TV content to the PC, how about making it simpler to consume internet video on the TV? and i don't mean just bringing YouTube stuff, there are video blogs and there is also a lot of professionaly produced video content that just does not make it to the cable channels and/or video-on-demand catalog.
July 7, 2006 at · Filed under internet
eBay's president of north america published a letter to end users talking about the problem of excessive shipping charges.
by excessive shipping he talks about situations where sellers sell an item for $1 and charge a $100 shipping fee.. he claims this is the #1 issue deterring buyers from completing transactions, and said eBay is starting to clean up the site and remove such sellers.
i am surprised it took them that long to deal with it, since this has been an issue almost from the beginning of the service. i think they can automate the removal of such items quite easily, it should help make the eBay listings a bit more honest.
July 6, 2006 at · Filed under internet
there are lots of rumors about microsoft launching an "iPod killer" before x-mas. apparently they got tired of waiting for their hardware partners to come up with a better device/brand/user experience, and decided to try and do it on their own. i wish them luck.
engadget reported today that as part of their marketing plan they are going to offer iTunes users to scan their iTunes library and automatically download these songs to the microsoft device/service free of charge, and free of iTunes evil DRM (though including microsoft's DRM…)
i think it's a very good idea. i hate the fact that it is such a pain to try and transfer iTunes music to other computers. not to mention trying to use it on other devices. but instead of exchanging one DRM for another i wish there was a simple utility that will scan my iTunes library and just download all of the songs from bittorrent (or any other file sharing network).
if you know of such an application let me know :)
July 6, 2006 at · Filed under internet
there was news this week about an in-text advertising company, Kontera, raising $7M. there is another company in this space, intellitxt.
what these companies do is that they integrate advertising into the regular text of the website. so lets say there is an article and it mentions a digital camera. when the user views the site the words 'digital camera' will be highlighted like a regular hyperlink. a mouse-over will pop-up a window that will have an ad for a digital camera.
i think this is a terrible way for websites to generate ad revenues, since it really hinders the user experience. i am sure many users are fooled into clicking those links. not surprisingly there are already products out there that are intended to remove these links..
i really don't like this stuff, and i wish VCs will stop funding these type of companies. but i guess failing websites starving for revenues will want to do whatever they can to squeeze dollars out of every page view, so there is a market for this garbage.
July 6, 2006 at · Filed under internet
there was a new york times article and multiple posts (here is one) about how video sharing sites are looking for new ways to moentize their service and share the revenues with the users.
the revenue model for video sharing sites is quite straight forward, they can:
- insert video ads into the video clips
- text/banner advertising on the web page where the user views the clip
- offer premium video content (and either charge for it or share ad revenues with the content owner)
- serve as distribution channel for movie trailers, music videos, etc. and charge the content owner
what is new for these video sharing sites (but not the first time it is being done on the internet) is that they are trying to put together a model in which they will share the revenues with the end-users (not those that visit the site, but rather those that submit the videos).
this model makes perfect sense to me and is fair to the end-users, it will probably be abused by click-fraud and spammers, so these sites will have to spend a lot of time fighting it and protecting their revenue stream. i hope this trend will also lead to more reasonable site policies with regard to the site rights with regard to the content (some of these sites, including YouTube, are giving themselves too many rights when it comes to what they can do with the content)
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