MLB.com will stream George Mitchell’s press conference live at 2pm EST today, early unofficial lists of the roided up players in the report are already circulating with Roger Clemens name right at the top.
A live press conference from Bud Selig will follow at 4:30, we expect the commissioner to be wearing the same suit he has worn every day since takng over in 1994.
It couldn’t be more perfect. On the day that awards seasons kicks off with the Golden Globe nominations being announced, Paramount Pictures Digital Entertainment announced that they will distribute the next installment of Jackass via broadband.
Blockbuster will debut “Jackass 2.5″ for free on their website, JackassWorld, beginning December 19th. Instead of ticket sales, the studio hopes to make money from downloads, sales of the DVD, and from ad revenue. This highlights the significance of the writer’s strike and digital distribution, although this particular film doesn’t actually require any “writing.” But we’ll overlook that small caveat for the sake of the broader argument.
Additionally, this distribution model supports a recent survey from Choicestream, that found that 65% of the content consumed online is traditional TV fare ported over to the Web, rising to 70% when looking at the critical 18-24 demo.
Above: Johnny Knoxville’s Announcement From a Dentist Chair
Ben adds: This is more of a stunt to promote the new Jackass website than any kind of shift in distribution strategy. Jackass 2.5, which combines unused footage from Jackass 2 with new scenes is more an attempt to make money off old footage than to reinvent distribution.
It should be interesting to see how much money they can actually make from downloads, DVD sales and embedded ads. The Studios have the machine of film distribution to their advantage and while they may gain word of mouth and publicity from online promos and “midquels,” offering theater released films for free online won’t improve their bottom line.
First off, Twitter is a great idea. But it was only really good at the start. Unlike most new technologies it got worse with scale. First with slowdowns and outages as they added features, then as a result of information overload as more people came online.
I don’t know that I entirely agree with Scott Carp that it is a massive waste of time. But I appreciate his saying so because I have used Twitter less and less lately. The problem is that relevance is very hard to realize until you have it. Twitter may be a conversation ecosystem, but it’s neither a successful intermediary nor a compete medium.
Carp points to the issue of only getting half of a conversation, but that’s only part of it, the main problem is it needs to find a way to be all things to all people, and despite improvements and growth it has failed to achieve that with scale.
Twitter became an easy way to follow people we know and respect. But it’s not the most efficent way. It’s a work in progress, but the issue as with most of the long tail is one of the filter. Without a better way of sorting what goes through it, it’s just an additional stream of mostly unnecessary data.
The lead story on ABC 7 news in New York tonight was a YouTube video of high school girls apparently beating up an unidentified man on a NYC subway in October.
The victim, likely embarrassed about being beat up by a group of high school girls never pressed charges. Nothing actually came of it until the video was picked up by The Smoking Gun, then by Gothamist, which suspected it to be a hoax, and eventually ABC.
Swarmcast today released Autobahn HD for Flash, a network accelerator that provides seamless playback of Flash content using adaptive bitrate streaming to specifically tailor video quality to a user’s connection.
The company will also open up their source code, giving developers the tools to take advantage of Swarmcast technology, which makes it possible to significantly improve viewer experience for very little cost.
YouTube announced yesterday that it is expanding its Partner Program. The partner program enables original content creators to generate revenue from their webisodes or other programming through an ad supported revenue sharing model.
The program is now expanded (read: no long a “pilot program”) to “anyone living in the United States or Canada.” Users can register at the Partner Program Site.
We feel it’s important to reward our most dedicated community members: those who are regularly uploading original content to YouTube. In evaluating applications, we will focus on the users who have built a significant audience on YouTube.
Looks like a win-win situation for people that have already built up a loyal following.
Another vid for the holiday season gaining some viral traction. Added on Dec 1., the video of “Chinese Food on Christmas” has more than 193,000 views and counting. And not a minute too soon. I don’t think I could take another season full of Adam Sandler’s Chanukah song again. This version is a “music video” of the song, which Walker originally performed and posted last year, gathering more than half a million views.
In an effort to bring fans “closer to the on-campus experience” as well as to save a few bucks, ESPNU today announced an initiative to include student-generated content across a number of ESPN platforms. This is a very smart move.
Students enrolled at schools with some of the premier athletic programs in the country will take part in everything from live play by play to sideline reporting to producing video and writing articles for ESPN.com (see an example here.)
AT&T today announced that they are following Verizon’s lead and opening their network effective immediately. “You can use any handset on our network you want,” AT&T Wireless CEO Ralph de told USA Today. “We don’t prohibit it, or even police it.”
We love to hate on Google and their New World Order here at OVW. Eric Schmidt is always saying something Orwellian. But they have a good side. In a matter of months, they have brought about an opening of the U.S. cellular market, something that was unthinkable several years ago.
Go to Europe, or even better, South Korea and the mobile phone is a far more useful and powerful device. Oligarchy in the U.S. market has smothered innovation. Google’s planned entry into mobile has accelerated things.
Thanks to Google’s Open Handset Alliance and their $10m Android Challenge, applications created by non-telecom developers will be designed usefulness rather than their ability to drive profit. This will transform the way we communicate and how our devices relate to all other technology.
More than 440,00 views in less than a week, and over 500 comments make this video for “Here Comes Another Bubble” from The Richter Scales quite the heatseeker.
Whether or not you think there’s another web bubble going on, this video is pretty damn funny.
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