I Heart My Geek

Dollhouse may have bombed on TV but it was a hit on iTunes and online streaming sites like Hulu. Firefly (also a Joss Whedon project) didn’t even make it through a whole season but gained a cult following after it went off the air. Perhaps it would have gained more traction and made it through if iTunes and Hulu were options at the time because what we are seeing, increasingly, is different market segmentation and target population between regular TV and internet TV.

Now, there are the people who watch the telly, TiVo, stream via internet, get the DVD after the season’s over, and download using bit torrent. It would be interesting to see whether the media industry fights the multiple streams or go beyond harnessing the new market segmentation with sites like tv.com and actually use the new market segmentation to target specific audiences. For example, starting shows like Dollhouse on mainstream TV for the first few episodes to raise awareness then move it to an internet-based series or even limit the launch to the web (e.g. Dr. Horrible’s Sing-a-long Blog).

What’s encouraging is that most TV channels seem to have finally moved from fighting the internet, but still have trouble deciding what to do about and measure possible revenue streams. Likely, they’ll have to move away from the SuperBowl-style “as many eyeballs as possible on one ad” to a more sophisticated ad sales plan that puts one or two specific relevant products tailored for a particular show show . A bit of a long tail take on ads, if you will. Takes more finesse and relies on a high spread of viewers and smaller payments from ad buyers across multiple shows rather than a high volume of viewers and ads for one prime time slot.

Intelligent Robots

First, it was robots who could hunt for their own food.  Now, it looks like the University of Aberdeen has a robot that can mimic biological evolution. At the moment, it’s limited to adaptation ability, but the researchers hope to open doors to a robot that can instruct its creator on what parts to add to it. Does anyone else find the rapid developments kind of cool and very creepy?

User Content Responsibility

To what extent should companies be held liable for how people use their products? If the old school “Caution HOT” law suit for McDonald’s coffee is any indicator, it’s - very liable. But what about user generated content on the web? YouTube has struggled with that and tried various responses, from removing videos to muting the sound. But what if the company (especially in popular websites) is simply not aware of the content? Is it still liable then?

Yes, if the Italian prosecution in the current Google case has their way.

Chiptole’s iPhone app pulled a Windows7 yesterday. The application was to allow customers to order their respective burritos and tacos ahead of time for pick up using their iPhones. However, their servers were not ready to handle the traffic volume and the application was pulled hours after its launch. Its crash was reminiscent of the recent Win7 crash, where the giant underestimated the number of people who wanted to download a Win7 trial.

Crashing aside, I’m a fan of Chiptole’s app and see other “me too” apps a-coming. A particularly good market for these apps would be college students, who are happy early-ish adopters and appreciate convenient food orders all hours of the day (and night). Sites like campusfood.com could benefit from developing an app like this, as would smaller-scale services like Tiffin Dinner, which already allows orders via phone, email, and IM.

This New Year’s Eve was spent at the SF Symphony. It was quite a bit of fun with bands, dancing, performances, food, and champagne. Oh, and 2009 balloons falling from the ceiling at countdown, which the event website would have me point out.

Anyhow, going to the performance reminded me of when I used to play the cello in school orchestras. I remembered the fuss of getting certain pages taped together and timing the page turnings with my partner and the knocking down of flimsy stands and random pages. Now, wouldn’t it be nice if there were some Kindle equivalent for music scores? Just download a bunch of scores to your screen instead of lugging a bunch of books about and use a pedal (wireless or wired) to “turn” the pages back and forth? With today’s touch screen technology, it probably wouldn’t be too difficult to let musicians add notes, phrasing, bow markings and such during rehearsal either. Read more

From podcasts to TiVo, it is increasingly apparent that today’s consumer culture is about getting what you want when you want. Nobody really wants the hassle of tuning in at the exact right time unless it’s along the lines of the 2008 Presidential election or the New Year’s Eve countdown. So it’s no surprise that there are an increasing number of sites that are catering TV offerings to the “I want it, and I want it now” generation such as FiOS TV, Hulu or SurfTheChannel. Given, broadcasting stations have tried to keep up and offer episodes online and added various frills in an effort to build communities around their shows. But I simply find them cluttered and my efforts to play the advertised “fully episodes available online!” are usually buggy and unsuccessful.

Korea’s affinity for technology is high, hi-speed broadband is readily available, and the downloading community strong. So the lack of centralized internet TV and connection between the TV and internet surprised me. Given, the various TV stations adopted internet streaming of past shows early on and TVs could be hooked up to computers if one wanted to create a dual-system BUT there was no official streamlined process that I knew of.
Enter, the IPTV - or Internet Protocol TV. Now supported by the government. Finally, Korea’s catching up with America’s offerings (for more on the US IPTV industry, click here). Previously, broadcasters were wary of losing advertising money and declined to share content with IPTV. Now, they are sensing the shift and realizing that if they don’t move along with it, the new “it” child of media will move right along without them. Read more

You really can’t look down on China, no matter what the cynics say. With that many people, there have to be a countless number of extremely talented people, whether it is in theoretical physics or the practical physics of balancing two pigs on a motorcycle (for delivery). Go here for more.

I have no idea what woulds possess someone to spend a lot of time doing this but it is pretty cool.

[via brotherhood 2.0]

Putting aside the annoying music, pretentious voice, and the cheesey acting these doors are REALLY cool. I doubt we will see them in cars for a long time though. They are probably prohibitively expensive.

[found via Gizmodo]