Daily Marauder

ONLINE SERVICES/INTERACTIVE MEDIA
Today, the New York Times is redefining “Extra” as stories written by others. It is turning on a new feature on its homepage called Times Extra that will start adding links from elsewhere underneath the headlines of its own articles. The related links are from other news sites and blogs (even the Wall Street Journal), with the source highlighted in green to differentiate them from the New York Times’ own stories. (http://www.techcrunch.com/2008/12/04/the-new-york-times-clutters-up-its-homepage-with-links-from-elsewhere-in-beta 12/4)

The College football game of the year is going to be available on multiple platforms. As part of its new deal with SEC, CBSSports.com and CBS Sports Mobile will provide live streaming video of the CBS Sports broadcast of the 2008 SEC Championship game between No. 1-ranked Alabama and No. 2-ranked Florida on Saturday, Dec. 6 at 4:00 PM, ET. MediaFLO subscribers can also view the game live and for free on CBS Sports Mobile. (Cynopsis 12/4)

You know times are tough when Google is forced to cut back. This is precisely the case on the Google campus according to The WSJ, as CEO Eric Schmidt and new budgeting czar Francois Delepine continue to meet with executives to decide which programs to let go. (SearchMash, virtual world Lively and Google Page Creator have already been eliminated or merged into other products.) Despite its generous funding of pet projects, Google continues to receive 97% of its revenue from search advertising. (Cynopsis 12/4)

Conde Nast is shutting down teen social networking service Flip.com on Dec. 16, according to an email sent out to users this week. The site was built as a place to come and share “flipbooks” of photos, videos and other content. (Cynopsis 12/4)

Yah, I didn’t know it was there either.  Step one.  Don’t make users sign in to use your site.  Coercion will get you no where my dear. . .  Being that I could use a kick ass slideshow tool like Animoto (even though, yes, I have to sign in), I would have little reason to use this one.  Have I mentioned I heart Animoto lately?

Comedy Central relaunched Jokes.com with a treasure trove of 12,000 text-based jokes and 5,000 standup performances from the network’s 10-year-old programming vault. It’s look is a bit pedestrian but the MTV Entertainment Digital team deserves points for building in as many touch points as humanly possible. Search the routines of comedians such as Dane Cook, Jeff Dunham and Jim Gaffigan or sort by most popular clips, comedian’s name, TV show or most recently added video. Look for jokes from 72 different categories. There are 770 jokes tagged in the pop culture category alone. The site will also function as the central hub for all Comedy Central stand-up events, tours, shows and live comedy entertainment. UGC content and more social tools are needed to make it a truly vibrant comedy portal but the depth of professional content on the site provides a terrific base to start with. (Cynopsis 12/4)

Amazon released its previously announced Public Data Sets web service this evening. The project encourages developers, researchers, universities and businesses to upload large (non-confidential) data sets to Amazon – things like census data, genomes, etc. – and then let others integrated that data into their own AWS applications. (http://www.techcrunch.com/2008/12/04/amazon-launches-public-data-sets-to-ease-research 12/4)

Also on the Hispanic front Cablevision has launched Optimum Latino, a new web channel delivering high-quality Spanish-language content exclusively for Optimum Online customers.  The service, which features news, entertainment, sports, and the 15-channel Terra TV platform, is accessible through Optimum Online’s consumer web portal, Optimum.net. (Cynopsis 12/4)

Widget syndication platform iWidgets rolled out a new version of its widgets publishing system, simplifying the process of creating content widgets to distribute out to Facebook, MySpace, Hi5, and iGoogle. iWidgets’ Social Syndication Platform offers drag-and-drop customization of widgets as well as native deployment into social networks. CBS was an early client, allowing social network users watch clips of CBS programming. (Cynopsis 12/4)

Logo‘s campy new online and on air film series “Graveyard Shift” should be worth a few laughs. The weekly series, which celebrates that curious intersection between the gay and horror film genres, kicks off tonight at midnight ET/PT with The Gay Bed & Breakfast of Terror, which tells the story of five gay couples vacationing at the quaint but deadly Sahara Salvation Inn. Logo’s is also hosting a dance-themed webcast Unbuttoned Live this Saturday live from Ultra Suede in West Hollywood, hosted by Noah’s Arc star Wilson Cruz. (Cynopsis 12/4)

(Below) Perhaps I could provide Comcast with a “your customer service sucks” meter for all of the moments when customers are unhappy?  That way, they can keep tabs on their customer’s usage in yet another way.

Comcast, possibly by the beginning of January, will start providing its high-speed Internet customers with bandwidth meters so that they can keep tabs on their own online usage. Charlie Douglas, a Comcast spokesman, said that after being tested by employees, the meters would be deployed free of charge and enable users “to very easily keep track of their aggregate data usage each month.” CNET (12/3)