Beyond the Box
A blog covering the world of multiplatform video, including mobile TV, IPTV, user-generated video and video blogs.
Twitter's TV Drama
While I was off playing Rock Band all day yesterday, apparently other journalists were working. What the …? That gives all of us a bad name, people. Variety’s venerable (but very young) Cynthia Littleton decided to take advantage of everyone being off and post this scoop about a potential Twitter TV show. You can click the link and see what she wrote but I’m going to quote som ...... Read More
Comments (1)Advantage Hulu
Disney made the expected announcement today that it is joining video portal Hulu as an equity partner. That means three out of four of the big broadcast networks will have their TV shows up on the site, with CBS choosing to remain the odd man out. For its part, CBS says in a statement that it “has long employed open, non-exclusive content partnerships that allow fans across the Intern ...... Read More
Comments (1)Will Twitter live up to its promise?
OK, social networking gurus – which of the three most popular, buzzed-about services has real long-term potential: Facebook, MySpace or Twitter? If you’ve been following the news lately – any news at all – you’d think all that anyone did, from Oprah to Obama, was tweet and twitter all day long. The news media has taken to writing Twitter-angled stories on just ab ...... Read More
Comments (2)Here comes the next format war
A TV-ready version of Adobe’s Flash is coming to TVs and mobile phones near you, Adobe CEO Shantanu Narayen said Monday at the National Association of Broadcasters’ convention in Las Vegas. According to the New York Times, Flash already resides on a whopping 98% of computers and 80% of Web videos are viewed using it. Some 40% of mobile phones shipped last year came packaged with Fla ...... Read More
Comments (2)Denver TV station to Twitter local surgery
I’m pretty sure TV stations – like the rest of us — have no idea what they are really supposed to be doing with social networking, but here’s a place to start. On Tuesday, April 14, CBS-owned KCNC Denver is going to cover a local surgery live at 11 a.m. MT and Twitter about it here. The station is teaming up with Presbyterian/St. Luke’s Medical Center and Rocky M ...... Read More
Comments (0)Microsoft invites Twitter and Yahoo! to the dance. Will Google throw a jealous fit?
I spend a lot of time these days writing stories about how the media market is stalled – whether that be syndication, advertising or station sales — so it’s actually sort of nice to read stories about how Google or Microsoft or someone might acquire Twitter, or about how Microsoft-Yahoo! might be back on in some small way (even though I was incredibly sick of that story when i ...... Read More
Comments (0)Should Sony put movies on YouTube?
Last week we heard that Disney was licensing short-form content to YouTube. This week, the news has been that Sony is considering licensing long-form movies to YouTube. The CNET article I link to above is one of the better explanations I’ve ever read of the difficult dance between studios and Web portals on what content should be licensed online and how it should be done. But it mostl ...... Read More
Comments (0)Google to buy Twitter?
The rumor of the day comes from Michael Arrington’s TechCrunch: Google is allegedly circling Twitter in an acquisition deal. It wouldn’t be the first time that Twitter’s founders Biz Stone and Evan Williams sold a business to Google. Five years ago, Stone and Williams sold their company Blogger.com to the giant search company. Regardless of how true the rumor is, expect other ...... Read More
Comments (0)Google Introduces CADIE, but don't fear the robots
Just minutes before the clock struck midnight on April 1, Google introduced the world’s first Cognitive Autoheuristic Distributed-Intelligence Entity (CADIE), a functional global-scale neuro-evolutionary learning cluster. “[J]ust moments ago, [CADIE] was switched on and began performing some initial functions. It’s an exciting moment that we’re determined to build upon, ...... Read More
Comments (0)Tribune creates device that solves all the world's problems
Just because Tribune Co. declared bankruptcy last December, doesn’t mean it can’t change the face of all media. On April 1, Tribune announced detailed plans to make all media, including the Internet, obsolete by next year. The company has developed a new device, tentatively called The Accelerator, that aggregates the entire sum of human knowledge and delivers it directly into people& ...... Read More
Comments (0)Colbert is money
If NASA decides against naming its new space station module “Colbert,” Comedy Central’s late-night host has this going for him: Cash4Gold.com, which gained notoriety during the Super Bowl for its direct response ad featuring Ed McMahon and MC Hammer, plans to propose minting a new global currency starring Colbert himself.”Stephen Colbert embodies a rare combination of p ...... Read More
Comments (0)Take180 Takes Off
Disney-owned Take180.com officially launched today, with three new participatory Web series: My Date, I <3 (actually a clever way to type “heart,” not a fake parentheses and a 3 as it appears) Vampires and Electric Spoofaloo. True to the Web site’s title, all the Webisodes run 180 seconds or less. Those three join the site’s other shows: My Alibi, In2ition and Juice ...... Read More
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