Daily Marauder

ONLINE SERVICES/INTERACTIVE MEDIA

NBC has launched its online video hub for the 2008 Olympics, which features free on-demand video for over 20 sports. In order to maximize quality, the videos are available as downloads (you can start watching before the download finishes) and will be in “up to HD” quality. Unfortunately, the video downloads will only be available on Windows machines running Windows Media Center – once again Mac users are left in the cold, likely because of DRM issues (and the fact that Lenovo and Microsoft are sponsors). (http://www.techcrunch.com/2008/07/31/nbc-launches-on-demand-olympic-coverage-in-hd 7/31)

Google‘s video-sharing site YouTube will show daily coverage of the Beijing Olympics in India, Nigeria and 75 other countries where broadcasters haven’t bought exclusive rights to the programming. YouTube promises to block the content in areas where rights have been sold to others. (Iwantmedia 8/4, http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601087&sid=aOh2Npv1H8Kk 8/4)

Time Warner is moving forward with its plans to sell off AOL in pieces, and is finally ready to formally separate the AOL portal and advertising business from its legacy dial-up access business. But how much can it hope to get for these parts? When Google invested $1 billion in AOL a few years ago for a 5 percent stake, that valued AOL at $20 billion (which some people thought was an inflated figure even back then). Today, even after breaking it up, Time Warner will be lucky to get more than $7 billion for the whole lot. (http://www.techcrunch.com/2008/08/04/time-warner-ready-to-unload-aol-in-pieces-but-at-what-price 8/4)

In a demonstration of just how open Yahoo search can be, one of its senior engineers has created a simple search mashup that combines Yahoo’s BOSS framework and Google’s App Engine. Yahoo BOSS allows developers to create their own customized search apps based on Yahoo’s search engine, and the Google App Engine is a platform for hosting apps. Vik Singh, the engineer who leads the Yahoo Boss project (and a former Google engineer) created a simple Question-Answering Service, where you put in a question, and it tries to come up with the answer based on the top 50 results from Yahoo. (So, if you ask, “Who invented the light bulb?,” it looks for the most popular dates in the top 50 results and returns: “Thomas Edison”). (http://www.techcrunch.com/2008/08/04/yahoo-boss-is-so-open-it-runs-on-googles-app-engine 8/4)

Yahoo‘s Aug. 1 shareholder’s meeting came and went without a mutiny as CEO Jerry Yang received 85% of the vote to stay at the helm of the company. Investors also voted to retain all nine current directors. (Cynopsis 8/4)

AOL’s video portal, which has an online syndication deal with Discovery Networks, the Big Four broadcasters and other cable services, has received a makeover with a greater focus on linking with other AOL sites, such as AOL Music, AOL Television and GameDaily. New ingredients will include a search engine more targeted to viewers’ preferences and more advertising opportunities. Broadcasting & Cable (8/4)

Joss Whedon’s online musical “Dr. Horrible’s Sing-Along Blog” crashed when it went live July 15, when some 1,000 people a second tried to view the show. “Dr. Horrible” is seen as a notable test of what people will pay money to watch on their computers. (Iwantmedia 8/4, http://www.nytimes.com/2008/08/02/arts/television/02horr.html 8/2)

The music industry should embrace illegal file-sharing Web sites, according to a study by the MCPS-PRS Alliance, which represents music rights holders, and Big Champagne, an online media measurement company. The illegal sites have strong brand loyalty and “will never go away.” (Iwantmedia 8/4, http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/e72884f6-6175-11dd-af94-000077b07658.html?nclick_check=1 8/3)

Amazon has acquired twelve year old Canadian company Abebooks (formerly the Advanced Book Exchange), the companies just announced. AbeBooks is an online marketplace for books focusing on used, rare and out of print titles for sale by independent booksellers – it currently has 110 million books for sale from 13,500 sellers. (http://www.techcrunch.com/2008/08/01/amazon-to-acquire-abebooks 8/1)

Fox Searchlight has just posted a new R-rated trailer for the upcoming Choke movie, based on author Chuck Palahnluk’s novel of the same name starring Sam Rockwell. (Cynopsis 8/4)

U.S. federal regulators are declaring that Comcast’s throttling of BitTorrent traffic last year was unlawful, marking the first time that any U.S. broadband provider has ever been found to violate Net neutrality rules. Comcast will be required to disclose in the future how it manages traffic. (Iwantmedia 8/4, http://news.cnet.com/8301-13578_3-10004508-38.html 8/1)