When Jimmy Wales & co earlier this year quietly added Wikianswers to the host of products launched under the Wikia umbrella, we weren’t the only ones who were skeptical about its potential to make waves. Did the Internet really need yet another Q&A site, we wondered?
We already have dozens of those, including popular sites like WikiAnswers.com (not affiliated with the Wikia service but with a terribly confusing name resemblance), Yahoo Answers, Mahalo Answers, Linkedin Answers (anyone else spotting a naming pattern?) and a plethora of similar services. Wikia thought there was room for one more regardless and was going to try and make a difference by focusing on an open, freely licensed community where copyright remains with the user who submits the content at all times. → Read More
http://c.brightcove.com/services/viewer/federated_f9/16681868001?isVid=1&publisherID=184253309 Just wanted to share this in case you haven’t seen it. Marvel Motion Comics → Read More
When Nikon let us know about the two new cameras today, they also mentioned two new lenses. Follow in the tradition of the recently 35mm, instead of creating something new, they are improving on existing lens technology to further bridge the gap between the old school film shooter and digital photogs. → Read More
Like everyone else I’ve watched the print media world fall apart over the last few years. The poster child for that industry is the New York Times, of course, and their many missteps in recent memory have been well chronicled. In early 2008 Marc Andreessen started a New York Times Deathwatch, and the company’s financial performance has degraded since then.
I keep wondering what would happen if the top 10% of the writers at the NYTimes just…walked out. I know it’s crazy, but let’s just explore this a bit for the heck of it.
Today the company is worth just a little over $1 billion. As recently as five years ago it was worth nearly 5x that much. You have to go back to the early 1980s to see a lower stock price.
I certainly don’t think the NYTimes is going to be shutting down any time soon. The company still pulls in nearly $3 billion a year in revenue, down just 10% or so from 2005. But massive overhead, and more than 9,300 employees, make profitability an increasingly difficult goal for The Gray Lady. Her age is showing. → Read More
We got a call from Nikon earlier, and they laid out for us what we know was coming: the new entry-level D3000 and prosumer D300s. We’ve known these were coming for months now, and as it turns out, the specs that were leaked a while ago were exactly on target. You’re leaking, Nikon! So what do these things have to offer? → Read More
Folks, I’m not making this up. Steve Jobs was spotted at Apple today! Can you believe it! He really does work there. The photograph of course comes to us from the most trusted source of celebrity news, TMZ.
Alright. Fine. I’ll ask the question that’s on everyone’s mind. → Read More
Remember that Leica S2 we heard about the other day? It’s kind of like a medium-format camera stuffed into a chubby SLR body, but since it’s Leica, it works out better than it sounds. However, since it’s Leica, it also costs a bundle — more than I guessed when the camera got previewed.
I won’t tease you with it, here it is: sixteen… hundred… times ten… pounds sterling. → Read More
In June we wrote about AOL’s evolving “Toyota” strategy to evolve into an online media powerhouse just as the print media world is falling apart. New CEO Tim Armstrong hasn’t been pinned down on how hard he’s betting on this strategy in recent public appearances. But the strategy is clearly kicking into high gear anyway, even as the company prepares for a public spinoff from parent company Time Warner.
AOL now has 1,500 people writing content across its scores of content sub-brands, we’ve confirmed. Around 1,000 of those people are working full time for AOL, the rest are freelancing. That’s more than double the number that they had creating content a year ago, and by this time next year, we’ve heard, the plan is to have 2-3x as many people as they do now.
Where is AOL hiring these journalists? From the failing print world. We’ve obtained a list of hundreds of these individuals, including former journalists at BusinessWeek, New York Times, USA Today, ESPN, Washington Post, Wall Street Journal, Forbes, Consumer Reports, Condé Nast and scores of regional and national newspapers and magazines. A few of them are listed at the end of this report.
From our earlier post describing the media strategy: → Read More
Yes, I just made up the “hot pants” device right now. You remember that song? “Hot pants… with the zipper in the back. Any color will do… any color will do.” No? Well I like the term, and I’m keeping it. Is this going to be a problem?
Good. A hot pants device, then, has the controls on the back, and you manipulate stuff by seeing through it or possibly just by instinct. These Apple patents seem to indicate such an interface on a little lozenge-type device with a “force-sensitive touch based surface.” You mean you have to be a Jedi to use this thing? → Read More
So a pair of tourists, looking to drive to beautiful Capri, accidentally typed “Carpi” into their navigation system, and followed it for a full 400 miles before deciding maybe there was something wrong. What clued them in? The fact that Capri is an island and their route never crossed a body of water? Actually, they asked where to find the Blue Grotto when they actually got to Carpi. It’s silly, but it’s also indicative of an increasingly common attitude, which is that our devices are infallible. It leads to us relying on them more than on ourselves, and further down that road, to us no longer trusting ourselves to do something which used to be second nature. → Read More
Whether it’s a sign of economic recovery or just investment bankers getting ready to take off the month of August, there’s been a lot acquisition activity lately. In the last week alone, IBM purchased SPSS for $1.2 billion, Amazon bought Zappos for $928 million, Sprint paid $483 million for Virgin Mobile, AdKnowledge paid $50 million for Super Rewards, and Yahoo picked up Xoopit for $20 million.
So far in July, the value of the acquisitions we track on CrunchBase totals $9.6 billion, which is nearly three times more M&A activity than the $2.6 billion we tracked in June. M&A exits already started to perk up in the second quarter , according to our latest CrunchBase report. But the increased deal flow on July suggests that corporate buyers are opening up their purse strings even more while acquisition prices are still relatively cheap. → Read More
I’ve never been a car person, or an audiophile, but I understand that for some people, their car is their baby and the place where they most often listen to the music they love. Sure, I’m okay with crackly FM in an 18-year-old Plymouth Voyager, but if you’re rocking a soft-top XKR or something similar, not only should you have higher expectations but the audio qualities are totally different.
If you really care about your music and are willing to pay for it (because it’s difficult to do any other way), this is a really great guide to get you the sound you deserve. → Read More
Claims of the day
Oh dear. Apple and the Federal Government have both lost all connection with reality. I mean, it’s not like there was much to begin with, but this is like a policy debate Godwin. It seems that the activities you and I think of as simply illegal and/or unwanted (jailbreaking and P2P software), are a clear and present danger to this country and everyone in it. → Read More
I’m guessing that a lot of households utilize filters on computers to, well, keep the kiddies away from, you know, the Internet sites you look at. Netgear and OpenDNS aim to take that task away from the individual computer and start filtering at the router. That way, every device connected to the Internet through that router – including iPod touches, game consoles, and every computer – will be subject to filtering. → Read More
So Capcom just revealed the box art for their upcoming Wii RE title, but there’s a mystery character in the shadows that won’t be revealed until the game comes out. Any guesses as to who it is? That’s Steve Burnside hanging tough in the back with the mystery guy and I hope you know who the two in the front are. → Read More
Twitter is now seeing dozens of tweets a minute from users reporting that their Twitter updates are being posted as automatic updates to their Facebook profile, apparently without their consent. The change seems to have happened very recently, and reactions are ranging from surprise to anger.
At this point it isn’t clear exactly what’s going on — it seems like some users may have installed the official Twitter application at some point and not had it post updates until now. But others are reporting that they’ve never installed a Twitter-related app, which makes the situation all the more confusing. We’re reaching out to Twitter and Facebook to find out what the cause is.
My hunch is that these users have previously installed the official Twitter app on Facebook, which has had problems in the past, and used it to occasionally check their Twitter profiles without realizing that it was also meant to auto-post their tweets to Facebook (a bug may have prevented these posts from ever actually appearing). Now Twitter has fixed the bug, and users don’t know what’s going on. We’ll update as soon we we know the actual cause. → Read More
