Sign up for our mailing list.
Upcoming Events
Categories
Tag Archives: Internet
Lord of the Ringtones
Everyone’s focusing right now on whether AT&T’s proposed merger with T-Mobile will give it too much power in wireless. But that’s only part of the worry. AT&T also wants to sell you a so-called “triple play” of cable, telephone and … Continue reading
Posted in Media, Mobile, Television, Uncategorized, Video
Tagged AT&T, broadband, cable, Comcast, Dept. of Justice, FCC, FIOS, Internet, IPTV, Merger, Mobile, NBC Universal, quad play, satellite, Sprint, Strategy Analytics, T-Mobile, telephone, Time Warner Cable, triple play, TV, U-Verse, Verizon
Leave a comment
Going Gaga at Amazon
At some point, some people decided they’d better eat the costs of their mule herd and invest in tractors to haul stuff if they wanted to survive. Which side of history is the music industry on? Continue reading
Posted in Entertainment, iHollywood Forum, Internet, Media, Mobile
Tagged Amazon, Apple, cloud, cloud-drive-and-illegal-music, digital media, ebooks-an-epublishing-good-or-bad, glassless-3d-tv-with-face-recognition-video, Google, indirect-revenue-apple-and-starbucks, Internet, ipads, iphones, iPods, iTunes, lady-gaga-new-album-not-doing-so-well-sales, Mobile, Music, piracy, RIAA, wireless
1 Comment
Are You Sure You Want to Friend Facebook?
The media business (and yes, since Facebook and Google put content on screens, they are part of it) is entering a Brave New World where marketers are learning with extraordinary specificity your occupation, state of health, social status, hobbies, favorite movies and music, sexual proclivities and practically every other piece of meaningful information about you. We are told that this will improve the rate of return on advertising by orders of magnitude, and I believe it.
But the downsides are potentially enormous, and haven’t been thought through. If information is power, we are handing power on an unprecedented scale to the people who control what we see and hear on those broadband pipes. When Barack Obama joked at Facebook last week that “I’m the guy who got Mark Zuckerberg to put on a coat and tie”, he was a lot closer to the truth of his position in the scheme of things than he realized. Continue reading
Posted in iHollywood Forum, Internet, Media
Tagged Comcast, Facebook, facebook-publishing-rights-all-photos, fitsomething, how-to-prevent-facebook-from-claming-the-rights-to-your-photos, how-to-prevent-facebook-from-photos, Internet, iphone5, is-facebook-going-to-have-all-publishing-rights-to-our-pribate-photos, mark-zuckerberg, mark-zuckerberg-favorite-movies, Media, movies, NBC, nextechforum-com, privacy, savannah-stern, social media, Television, whatdoyoucallpantsthatdontfityouanymore
Leave a comment
Deathly Web Hallows
While I sympathize with Warner Bros.’ concern about the half hour of “Harry Potter” that ended up on the Web, it’s hard to get too exercised about it. Even assuming the entire movie had ended up on the Internet, I seriously doubt that would have stopped anyone (my daughter and myself included) from lining up for the movie last night at midnight. Continue reading
Boxee…Just What Your Cable Box Ordered
Nothing irks me more than to see a Time Warner pitchman come on my TV to talk about all the money they’re “saving” me over satellite. Please. I’m currently spending more than $150 a month on my cable service, and … Continue reading
CBS/CNET and the Re-Alignment of News
As I was reading about CBS’ $1.8 billion purchase of CNET on MarketWatch.com, I couldn’t help but remember when CBS purchased MarketWatch. Today, MarketWatch is owned by Dow Jones. And Dow Jones, of course, is owned by Rupert Murdoch. Meanwhile, … Continue reading
Microsoft’s Yahoo! Hedge
Microsoft’s $44.6 billion bid for Yahoo! is as much about its software business as its Internet business. Microsoft is ill-prepared to counteract Google’s assault on its Office monopoly.. Instead of fighting Microsoft in the PC software market, Google has … Continue reading
Posted in iHollywood Forum
Tagged Google, Internet, Microsoft, Search, software, Time Warner, Yahoo
Leave a comment
Content is King…Except When It’s Crap
When I first started iHollywood Forum with my wife six years ago, my Uncle Irv from Castro Valley was skeptical about the idea of public conversations about digitized Hollywood content. “Hollywood just makes crap for TV and movies,” he groused, showing … Continue reading
Posted in iHollywood Forum
Tagged citizen journalist, Internet, journalism, Media, Mobile, Television, thomson-content-is-king
Leave a comment