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Webinar: Getting Started With Google Apps
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Industry Moves: Arts Alliance's Valkin Is Endemol's New Digital Head
Adam Valkin, a partner in Arts Alliance and an online media veteran, is leaving the VC house after nine years to join Endemol as its global head of digital media and new business, as the TV maker continues its new line-up. Valkin joins on September 1 and will oversee areas including identification, acquisition and development of business in growth areas for the company responsible for Big Brother and Ready Steady Cook. That suggests participatory TV formats will continue to be the order of the day for Endemol. Valkin's VC experience may also hint at further investments from Endemol's digital fund, which has so far taken stakes in MoMedia and Pure Grass Films. More after the jump.
Harvard grad Valkin joined Arts Alliance in 1999 after stints at Barnes & Noble and Firefly Network, becoming the first CEO of Arts Alliance Media's Lovefilm DVD rental service. He has a litany of board seats at the likes of Blinkbox and Player X and is a Southwark Playhouse trustee. He will have a London office with Endemol but will be traveling frequently. Endemol lured Fox Kids CEO Ynon Kreiz to be its new CEO last year, under the new ownership of John De Mol, Mediaset and Goldman Sachs. Peter Cowley remains Endemol UK digital director.
Related
ContentNext's EconCeleb Seminar examines what drives the economics of celebrity content. July 23, 2008 at the Roosevelt Hotel, Hollywood. Learn more.
Joey Chestnut Beats Kobayashi Again in Hot-Dog Eating Contest
It’s not the 4th of July without the Coney Island Hot-Dog Eating Contest (that’s how we celebrate in Brooklyn, by stuffing our faces with as many hot dogs we can fit). This year’s winner is defending champion Joey “Jaws” Chestunt, who won in overtime from six-time champion Takeru Kobayashi.
Both ate 59 hot dogs during the 10 minute contest (down from 12 minutes in the past), and then the contest went into overtime to see who could eat five additional hot dogs the fastest. CNN has all the details, but Kurt Dietrich’s wonderful Flickr photos tell the story best.
Happy 4th of July everyone. Try to go easy on those hot dogs.
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Ask.com Completes Lexico Acquisition, Bags Dictionary.com Et Al
Losing its independence on Independence Day, Lexico is now part of the Ask.com family, as IAC's (NSDQ: IACI) portal completes its purported $100 million cash acquisition of the Dictionary.com, Thesaurus.com and Reference.com operator. Announcing the completion, which had been expected in Q3, Ask.com Jim Safka: "The combination… significantly expands our audience reach, and aligns perfectly with our customers' needs."
The Long Beach, Calif.-based company was founded in 1995 by CEO Brian Kariger and Daniel Fierro. Both will be staying on for the integration into Ask.com. Its iconic domains come with a serious amount of traffic, increasing the Ask Network's traffic by 11 percent to 145 million-plus uniques. Neither party disclosed the price when they announced the deal on May 15 - estimates came from a source familiar with the situation.
Related
ContentNext's EconCeleb Seminar examines what drives the economics of celebrity content. July 23, 2008 at the Roosevelt Hotel, Hollywood. Learn more.
The Problem With Identi.ca Is That It Is Not Twitter
The launch of Twitter clone Identi.ca earlier this week caused a bit of a blogstorm because it appears to have a solution to Twitter’s all-too-regular downtime. (That problem has reached comical proportions, with the familiar Twitter Fail Whale now appearing on T-shirts and kitschy art).
Identi.ca’s answer to Twitter’s scaling issues is by open-sourcing its code and encouraging others to host Identi.ca on their own servers, thus distributing the load. The service also supports other open standards, such as OpenID and a new one called OpenMicroblogging. Based on OAuth, the OpenMicroblogging standard is aimed at making it easy for people on other messaging services to subscribe to Identi.ca users and vice versa.
Identi.ca is the brainchild of Canadian developer Evan Prodromou, who explains the thinking behind the project here. He has a lot of good ideas. In particular, we agree that decentralizing Twitter is the key to making it scale better, although there are other ways to do that as well. The service is also based on the idea that you can take your data with you at any time to any other microblogging service.
But for now, Identi.ca is only for super-early adopters. It lacks some basic functionality, such as the ability to search for other users to follow or to import your contacts from other services. (I guess you are supposed to e-mail all your friends the link to your Identi.ca profile so that they can subscribe to you or just hope they find your name on the public feed). These problems are easy enough to address, and Identi.ca has along list of features it is working on.
The bigger problem with Identi.ca is simply that it is not Twitter. However annoying Twitter’s erratic outages may be, it still has the advantage of having many more users than any other competing service. If everyone is on Twitter, what’s the point of going to Identi.ca? That can change over time, obviously, especially if Twitter does not get its act together. But the inconvenience of switching means that it still has time to fix itself.
That does not mean Twitter can afford to ignore the excitement generated by Identi.ca. In fact, it should adopt some of its ideas, like decentralizing its messaging system and making it easy for people to export their friends and data to other services.
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Two simple web businesses
IM at Work: a Double-Edged Sword
Happy Independence Day
My five-minute CSPAN-like tribute to Gen. Henry Knox is featured on Hammock.com as our 4th of July special. Knox (for whom both Knoxville and Fort Knox are named) is an unsung hero of the Revolutionary War. While at the DAR Headquarters in Washington recently (they are a client of Hammock), I learned more about his role in the war and the founding of America through an exhibit they have of a recently acquired collection of Knox-family documents.:
Data are news
Tom Loosemore, blogging MP Tom Watson — and others, including the Guardian — have been fighting to get more public data made public in the UK. Now Watson and Loosemore have launched a $40k prize to mashup this data and come out with lots of lemonade. Here’s Paul Bradshaw on the movement. Here are some — as a Brit tweet said — stonking good ideas already.
: LATER: This tweet by Charles Arthur of the Guardian — “wtf? No downloadable school league tables?” — made me realize that newspapers are also foolish not to make their data mashuppable. If we put out all our sports data as tables that could be downloaded and mashed up people would build no end of great stuff on top of us. That’s thinking like a platform. WWGD?
Follow Animal Migrations On Google Earth
Google Earth is turning out to be a great resource for scientists to visualize and communicate the phenomena they study. You can see the migration patterns of endangered and other threatened animals, based on data collected by the Commission for Environmental Cooperation. (The image above shows the range of both the Northern spotted owl and the Mexican spotted owl).
Anybody can take geographical data and turn it into a layer on Google Earth. Scientists are doing this in droves. You can also track storms, the paths of solar eclipses, volcano activity, arctic ice melting, bird flu mutations and biomaps of emotional stress levels in different cities (see this Popular Science article for more info).
Since these are all KML files, they could be made into layers on the regular Google Maps as well. Although they wouldn’t look as cool, more people would see them.
Crunch Network: CrunchGear drool over the sexiest new gadgets and hardware.
Cerf, Roberts Weigh In on Internet Traffic Jam
Fourth of July Logos from the Search Engines
Today marks the celebration of the birthday of the United States of America; Independence Day, the Fourth of July. While many Americans are enjoying their day off, the three day weekend, fireworks and backyard bbq’s, the search engines are also showing their love for our independence, with their celebratory logos.
Google’s Fireworks over the lake logo :
Yahoo also brings fireworks into their 4th of July logo, with a bit of Old Glory in their animated logo :
What’s Better : Long Copy Versus Several Related Short Copies?
Many webmasters come across one common dilemma: is it worth focusing efforts on one huge brilliant copy or is it wiser to split it into several related copies.
Like with many topics we discuss here, there is no definitive answer to that. I’ve compiled all pros and cons in one table for us to consider (more…)
It’s not just me
So now The New York Times frets — as I have — that once he got the nomination, Barack Obama has been making u-turns and right turns as he rejects public financing, embraces the Supreme Court’s gun decision, criticizes the Supreme Court on the death penalty, and flip-flops on FISA. (Oh, and I forgot, as he endorses “faith-based initiatives.” Here, alone, we see a helluva compilation of Constitutional views on guns, unreasonable search and seizure, capital punishment, and separation of church and state. He taught con law — let’s look up some of his old lectures, someone, please.)
I don’t want to — I really don’t want to — say I told you so. But this is what I feared from him: that his empty rhetoric was the mark of high cynicism in politics (if I get get them to buy this hot air without saying anything then I can do anything I need to do to get elected… though he’s not even letting what he has said stop him from flipping). My other fear is that he is unproven and could be Jimmy Carter, and given the clumsiness of his dash from left to middle — overshooting the mark and ending up too far to the right for The Times’ comfort — I’d say he’s not looking so smooth right now.
So what is it you can believe in with Obama? What is change? Answer me that.
Oh, I’m stuck voting for him. So are his cultists who are now protesting his moves; they’re really trapped. But this is what I feared.
Says The Times:
We are not shocked when a candidate moves to the center for the general election. But Mr. Obama’s shifts are striking because he was the candidate who proposed to change the face of politics, the man of passionate convictions who did not play old political games.
There are still vital differences between Mr. Obama and Senator John McCain on issues like the war in Iraq, taxes, health care and Supreme Court nominations. We don’t want any “redefining” on these big questions. This country needs change it can believe in.
He’s just a politician.
: LATER: In the comments, Fred Wilson is making what is now becoming a common argument: he’s doing what he has to do to win: “I feared he wasn’t tough and polished and skilled. These moves show that he is.” Hear Eric Alterman saying the same thing: “I don’t know what he really believes in his heart.” Read Mike Tomasky saying the same thing: “It’s acceptable - and necessary - for Barack Obama to compromise his liberal principles in order to get elected…. I’ve always objected to setting up principle as a value that’s oppositional to winning. To me, winning is a principle. It’s the highest principle there is.”
So move on, folks, there’s nothing to believe in here. Change? What change? Chump change. Plus ça etc.
Well, since everyone’s abandoning principle for expediency, even though I disagree with the Obama supporters who are criticizing him on FISA — I actually support his stand — I will celebrate how they are holding his feet to the fire on his own principles and I’ll say what we need in particpatory democracy is more folks like them and fewer who are willing to throw aside principle for power, means for the end. That is politics the old way. That is what we were promised would be changing. In the immortal word of another blogger: Heh.
: LATER STILL: In my recitation of Obama’s flipping and sidling, I forgot to include his possible rethinking on Iraq. Here, again, I agree with him — he should reconsider dates and deadlines based on reality; I’ve said that all along (and so did Hillary). But this, too, will piss off the loyalists who got him where he is.
: And the Kossaks are restless. In response to Obama’s statement — which acknowledges the revolt brewing under his own wing at MyBarackObama.com — comments include:
The only explanation for his Oct 2007 FISA stance? Principle. He stood to gain nothing otherwise from it.
The only explanation for his current stance? Political necessity.
The only problem? It’s not necessary. We’re getting played, here, folks. This explanation is crap. He’s using several of the very same frames used by other capitulators and moderate Rs.
We’re. Getting. Played.
But other Kossaks are sounding like the robot on Lost in Space: Does not compute. Does not compute.
One complains: “Has this site always been so insane or has it really, really jumped the shark recently? I don’t belong here anymore.” Another adds: “That’s how I feel Like I don’t belong with the net roots anymore. Even TPM has been hammering Obama.”
And just as in every cult I’ve covered (and I covered them in my San Francisco newspaper days), paranoia emerges: “This is another ‘operation chaos’ style invasion to create a wedge among Obama’s supporters. The sad part is that Markos from Kos and Arianna from Huffpost, indirectly sparked the idea when they criticized FISA. While criticism and accountability should be welcome, those in a position of influence such as Ko and Arianna should use it more responsibly, knowing that Rove, Limbaugh and right-wing nuts are out there ready and desperate to use any tactic to diminish O’s support base.” The cult is cracking. They always do.
Open Text - acquire or be acquired?
It's a logical enough addition to the panoply of content applications within the Open Text portfolio, and appears to have been bought at a bargain price. It's not exactly a game changer, but it does resurrect the question of Open Text's own future.
Acquire to grow and compete, or be acquired -- those are the current options. It seems likely that if Open Text itself does not get bought by HP, SAP, or Microsoft in the near future (the most likely bidders), then they will themselves acquire again, probably on a more ambitious basis. Now that they find themselves competing against giants like EMC, Oracle, IBM, and Microsoft it seems the only route to survive. Most likely in their sights is Interwoven, an acquisition that would bring near complete dominance in the Legal and Services sectors, along with some interesting new technologies in the bargain. I'll predict that one of these options -- big acquisition or get acquired -- is highly likely to occur in the next year.
But is Open Text really able to absorb so many counter-cultures and technology stacks? The firm has swallowed up rivals at a pace only Oracle could match -- but Open Text is not Oracle, and they simply do not have the resources to handle this kind of acquisition rate. Indeed many Open Text customers that we have interviewed for the ECM Suites Report regularly complain about disjointed and uneven support, confusing product roadmaps, and long-term concern about the future direction of the company. At the same time it's fair to also report that Open Text customers generally like the company and don't regret choosing them, but goodwill can only go so far.
With this small acquisition, Open Text has put itself back under the spotlight. The industry is again abuzz with rumors -- some of which may be true some of which may not. This remains a very uncertain time for buyers and partners alike.
Independence Day
Tomorrow we celebrate July 4th, and a week later our long National Nightmare is over. On the 11th we deposit our 2G iPhones in the FriendFeed donation bins and officially hook ourselves up to the Enterprise iPhone. The ePhone will change how we work and play, and in the process free us from the tyranny of our jobs as consumers.
When the iPhone shipped last year, IT responded with a wave of dismissal to the shiny new platform. No keyboard, no push email, no secure deployability, and certainly no way to decommission the phone on exit from a company
Continue reading on TechcrunchIT >>
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Regator Wants To Be A Blog Reader For The Masses
Regator, a new blog aggregator that hopes to reduce the blogosphere down to consumable chunks for the average user, has launched today in private beta. The site acts like a combination between Digg and a standard RSS reader, allowing users to vote on the most popular stories drawn from 3,000 blogs that have been hand-picked by Regator editors. TechCrunch readers looking to try the site can get one of 100 invites here by entering the code “techcrunch”.
The Ajax-heavy site seems best suited for users who aren’t interested in heavy-duty blog reading. There’s no way to add an RSS feed that isn’t already on the site, and the sharing options seem to be limited compared to more mature offerings like Google Reader. Each story has voting arrows which allow users to determine the most popular articles - a nice touch, but one that may turn Regator into a Digg-clone instead of a more general news reader.
Beyond standard text search, Regator offers an audio and video search across its indexed blogs, but the results aren’t always appropriate - a video search for “Yahoo” yielded a YouTube trailer for the movie Wanted as the second highest hit.
Regator will see competition from a number of blog aggregators, which include Blogged, which launched a similar feature yesterday, and TechMeme, which uses an algorithm rather than user input to rate top stories.
Crunch Network: CrunchBoard because it’s time for you to find a new Job2.0
LA Times Cuts 250 Jobs; 150 Cuts in Editorial Include Online
The most troubled big newspaper in U.S. is cutting off 250 jobs, including an unprecedented 150 positions in editorial, to bring its expenses down in line with declining revenues.The Los Angeles Times newspaper will also reduce the number of pages it publishes each week by 15 percent, it announced on a slow Wednesday prior to July 4th holiday week. These cuts will be across all departments of The Times, including circulation, marketing and advertising; the company will have about 3,000 employees after the reductions.
This is among the biggest such cuts announced by any major market U.S. newspaper in recent history. The editorial cuts amount to roughly 17 percent of the 876 the company employs now, will be spread between the print newsroom and The Times' online operations and are to be completed by Labor Day.
Times Editor Russ Stanton explained the paradox in a staff memo: "Thanks to the Internet, we have more readers for our great journalism than at any time in our history. But also thanks to the Internet, our advertisers have more choices, and we have less money." Also thanks to the Internet, the luxury of monopoly is gone too…
The cuts on the online side are a bit surprising, considering LATimes.com has been trying to build up its online operations with blogs, special vertical sections, search, video and other services. But the Times will be combining its print and Web staffs into a single operation with a unified budget, and that perhaps explains some of the online cuts, to do away with the redundancies. Recently the company said that LATimes.com expects to generate $25 million in display ad revenue this year, more than tripling the $6 million that area attracted three years ago.
From publisher David Hiller's memo to staff, some plans for the future:
-- A re-designed flagship Los Angeles Times newspaper to debut in the fall, reflecting the work of the Reinvent team, the Spring Street Project, and related efforts underway for quite some time
-- A re-designed latimes.com website
-- A combined multimedia newsroom to produce excellent content for both
-- More targeted products for new audience segments
-- A re-organized sales team fired up to turn our revenue picture around
-- Increased utilization of our operating strengths so we can print and distribute newspapers and other products all across SoCal
The Tribune-owned paper has seen a lot of management turmoil over the last few years, and even since Sam Zell took over the company. Announcements of hundreds of reductions were issued only last week by dailies other Tribune papers, Boston, San Jose, Detroit and elsewhere.
Related
ContentNext's EconCeleb Seminar examines what drives the economics of celebrity content. July 23, 2008 at the Roosevelt Hotel, Hollywood. Learn more.
Gannett Buying Out Rest Of ShopLocal From Tribune and McClatchy
Gannett (NYSE: GCI), which has a big budget to do digital M&As, is buying out the rest of local sales info site ShopLocal, from the other partners Tribune and McClatchy (NYSE: MNI), reports LocalOnliner, citing sources. The site is a searchable directory of local specials and sale items similar to those found in newspaper circulars.
Gannett owned about 42.5 percent of the business prior to this, and so did Tribune...McClatchy, which bought out Knight Ridder in 2006, owned the rest. In 2006, ShopLocal was valued at $85 million. No details on what Tribune or McClatchy sold their stakes for, but they are probably happy getting some money...well, any money these days. As of March 30 this year, Tribune's equity investments in ShopLocal was $33 million, while McClatchy's was $11.13 million, according to its SEC filings
Related
ContentNext's EconCeleb Seminar examines what drives the economics of celebrity content. July 23, 2008 at the Roosevelt Hotel, Hollywood. Learn more.
Industry Moves: Verisign CEO Roper Resigns; Bidzos Is Interim Head
Verisign, which has pared down the company over the last year, has seen another CEO change: William Roper, who had been president and CEO for a bit more than a year, has resigned and the company board has named Jim Bidzos as interim CEO, president and executive chairman. Bidzos was the company's founder and first CEO in 1995, and he tried to reassure analysts Thursday that he had the background to step into the role and quickly move forward, WSJ reports.
No specific reasons were given for Roper's departure. He was appointed CEO in May 2007 after previous CEO Stratton Sclavos stepped down for undisclosed reasons. Bidzos said the company expects to have sold most of its non-core businesses on schedule by the end this year. Among the biggest unit yet to be sold include its communications division, which focuses on telecoms routing technologies, and a unit that processes billing transactions for wireless providers. It sold off its CDN Kontki to MK Capital in April for a paltry $1 million plus stake in the new business. Wonder what will happen to its mobile content business Jamba, in which it owns 49 percent, with the rest being owned by News Corp…
Related
ContentNext's EconCeleb Seminar examines what drives the economics of celebrity content. July 23, 2008 at the Roosevelt Hotel, Hollywood. Learn more.
