Garry Owen Lives!
Posted on August 8, 2010
Five hundred years before Columbus discovered the Western Hemisphere, Vikings were raiding the British Isles. They even attacked along the western shores of Ireland where one settlement took root on the banks of the Shannon River estuary. Two hundred years later Anglo-Normans conquered the area and built a castle to control river traffic. The fortress was named after King John who was later forced to sign the Magna Carta back in England.
Download audio to iPod, iPad, and iPhone here (six minutes)
A town grew up around King John’s castle. Apparently the residents were a fun-loving sort as indicated by the ribald poetic form that took the city’s name of Limerick. High ground across the river and toward the south east provided broad commanding views of the castle and surrounding terrain. It was a pleasant place for recreation. While the elderly imbibed under shade trees youths played ball games and other athletic activities on the green, or lingered in hedgerows with fair acquaintances. From the Gaelic words for “garden” and “John” the area got its compound Anglicized name, Garryowen.
In time the “boys of Garryowen” developed a reputation for rowdiness often amplified by generous intoxication. Sometime before the end of the eighteenth century a minstrel, whose name is lost to history, composed a lively tune the Garryowen boys would sing as they staggered from tavern-to-tavern. Read more…
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Monetizing TV Shows and Movies on the Net
Posted on August 6, 2010
Most film producers and other companies associated with conventional television fear the Internet. They don’t see how they can profit from it. Instead they worry it will erode revenues from conventional sources, replacing them with lower amounts. To date their concerns are well founded.
For audio to iPod, iPhone, and iPad click here (six minutes)
For example, few Internet users will pay a subscription fee for shows already on television. Moreover, the Internet provides no “carriage fees” like those paid by satellite and CATV operators to the networks — and indirectly the producers. While movie downloads admittedly provide revenues from sales and rentals, they are at least partly at the expense of DVD rentals and sales. Finally, online advertising revenues at video streaming sites like Hulu and YouTube are pathetically small by comparison to those available from conventional television. Much like the record labels, it’s likely that the Hollywood studios and television show producers wish that the Internet had never been invented. Read more…
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Year Ahead of Wall Street Journal
Posted on April 19, 2010
Phil Leigh
Last week Walt Mossberg of The Wall Street Journal reviewed a couple of new products from Hillcrest Labs. First, is a Web Browser built especially for big monitors such as televisions. Second is a hand-held device designed to control the browser remotely from a comfortable viewing distance as would apply when a TV is used as a computer’s display screen.
To play audio on iPhone, iPod, or iPad click here. (5 Minutes)
The browser, termed Kylo, contains big icons for 128 popular Web video sites. Navigation to other websites is via an onscreen virtual keyboard. Hillcrest characterizes the loop pointer as a remote mouse. About the size of a gymnastics ring the pointer offers gesture-sensitive control much like a similar unit for the Nintendo Wii. In point of fact, Hillcrest claims Nintendo is infringing patents.
Read more…
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Lessons from a Digital Media Pioneer
Posted on January 23, 2010
Phil Leigh
Like the lost adventurer Carnehan from Rudyard Kipling’s The Man Who Would be King, RealNetworks crept back into the news with the recent resignation of its CEO and Founder, Rob Glaser. Also like Carnehan Real hardly resembled the robust $12 billion market value industry leader it was at the turn of the Century having since dropped 95% in stock price. While Carnehan had an amazing story to tell, at least Glaser has an edifying one. Read more…
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Apple Service Might be a “Game Changer”
Posted on January 18, 2010
Phil Leigh
It’s become obvious over the past seven years that Apple can develop innovative products that revolutionize both emerging and established industries. An example of the first is the iPod. When it hit the market about seven years ago it was the first portable MP3 player with enough capacity to enable most of us to carry our entire music collection around with us. An example of the second is the iPhone which forever changed our concept of what a mobile phone should be able to do. In short, it combined voice telephony with unlimited Internet access.
Now, speculation is rife that Apple is at the threshold of introducing not only a new product but a new service as well. Read more…
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How to Make Google AdWords Work
Posted on January 9, 2010
If you would like to learn how to make Google AdWords be more effective, this interview is for you.
Today’s guests are Dr. Donald Berndt and Ricardo Lasa who are the founders of Sitewit.com. Their company enables users of Google AdWords and similar online ad platforms to obtain better results by employing artificial intelligence to manage campaigns. Sitewit provides an analytical engine to dynamically optimize such ad campaigns as an online service.
Since the Great Recession of 2008 it has become abundantly clear that conventional advertising is not working as well as in the past. This applies to newspapers, Yellow Pages, television, and radio. As a result, sponsors are turning to the Internet. Read more…
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Content is King (Like Cotton)
Posted on December 12, 2009
Phil Leigh
Comcast bought NBC to gain control over content distributed by its CATV system. Time-Warner advocates that popular TV shows be made available on the Internet only to consumers already subscribing to conventional Cable and Satellite networks. Prominent publishers require that new book releases be hard-cover-only thereby delaying ebook versions by four months. Such actions reflect the spurious notion that “Content is King”. Unfortunately it’ll prove to be about as effective as King Cotton diplomacy was for the Confederacy. Read more…
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Cable Operators Will Abandon TV
Posted on December 5, 2009
Phil Leigh
If you would like to learn what will motivate the CATV and Telco industries to abandon traditional video services in favor of a video-centric Internet, this audio podcast is for you.
Since the release of our February ’09 Third Generation Television research report, we repeatedly emphasized that the future of television is Internet Video, period. Ultimately, the advantages to consumers, sponsors, content providers, and even network operators are simply too compelling. Read more…
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