Archive for the ‘Multimedia’ Category
Would I Pay 120 Bucks a Year for Hulu?
Nope. But some people will. And I leave it to ‘em.
Just What I Need: Another Box Connected To My TV
Yesterday Google introduced Google TV, which “combines the TV you know and love with the freedom and power of the Internet.”
It’s a lot like Apple TV or maybe Boxee, only better — so I’m told — so I don’t have to get into all the details.
Basically all this boils down to Google (a) worming its way onto your TV’s “desktop”, thus enhancing its ubiquity, and (b) shoving YouTube videos front-and-center on your TV, thus giving the monetization of the site a much-needed boost. (Hey, YouTube might break even this year.)
Do I need another box connected to my TV? No. And given how the digital switchover went for me, I don’t even want to try.
You Haven’t Lived Until Steve Jobs Rips You
First it was Google. Back in January Steve Jobs called the Big G’s “Don’t Be Evil” corporate motto “bull****”. This was yet another episode in the two companies’ long and drawn-out parting of the ways. (Although a couple of months later Steve and Google CEO Eric Schmidt did meet publicly for coffee. Why do the pictures remind me of this?)
Today it was Adobe. Steve decided to “jot down some thoughts” about why Flash will never ever make it on Apple’s mobile devices:
“Flash was created during the PC era – for PCs and mice. Flash is a successful business for Adobe, and we can understand why they want to push it beyond PCs. But the mobile era is about low power devices, touch interfaces and open web standards – all areas where Flash falls short … New open standards created in the mobile era, such as HTML5, will win on mobile devices (and PCs too). Perhaps Adobe should focus more on creating great HTML5 tools for the future, and less on criticizing Apple for leaving the past behind.”
Boom.
You have to hand it to Steve, though. He’s all about equal-opportunity. You don’t have to be a big corporate competitor to get the Steve Jobs treatment — all you gotta do is “find” an iPhone and post it on the Web.
The Bottom Line, Internet Edition
Royal Pingdom gives us the Internet 2009 in numbers. I always have trouble digesting lists like this — do I really care that there are 234 million Websites? And can I be sure that number’s correct? — but there’s one thing that just jumps right out at me: the explosion of “non-traditional” Web content, to wit:
- 27.3 million – Number of tweets on Twitter per day (November, 2009)
- 2.5 billion – Photos uploaded each month to Facebook
- 12.2 billion – Videos viewed per month on YouTube in the US (November 2009)
