Publishing is no longer just about the portal

Here's an interesting NY Times quote from the head of AOL that articulates the company's direction:

"Instead, they envision a network of loosely confederated Web sites, services, blogs and widgets that operate under a variety of names.

'Publishing is no longer just about the portal,” Mr. Falco explained in a conversation earlier this month. “We are going to be in as many different places as possible.'"

Read the article for the full story

The Fear Bubble

From The New York Times - Brad Stone and Matt Richtel write today on the front page of The Times about the surging values of Internet companies, a trend that evokes the madness of the late 1990s. The values might be mad, but this is a very different world now.

This is a bubble inflated by fear. The last one exploded from greed.

In 1995, people woke up, saw the Netscape browser, said, “This is going to change everything,” and started the world’s biggest land grab. They raised billions of dollars for grand schemes to reinvent entire industries — Webvan, VerticalNet, Homestore, and so on. Meanwhile, hoping to cash in on the revolution, investors bid up the prices of the flimsiest shells of companies to astronomical levels. | Read full article

Watching TV on the laptop--and on the cheap

From The New York Times - I know this may sound crazy, but I don't have a television.

This isn't a problem, except when I get glimpses of what I might be missing, like when the New York Mets choked and it was all anybody could talk about in the office that day.

I also happened to catch some episodes of Animal Planet's Meerkat Manor on a public hospital TV recently. I was captivated by the story of matriarch meerkat "Flower" and her tragic death from a cobra bite while saving her pups in the Kalahari desert. I just had to watch the next episode to see which of her daughters would win the power struggle to succeed her. But how could I do that without cable or even a TV? | Read full article

People Do Watch Commercials

From The New York Times - Nielsen’s hotly anticipated commercial ratings landed with a thud on Tuesday, and network executives and media buyers quickly analyzed the premiere week numbers that most of this season’s advertisements were bought and sold based on.

And the spreadsheets contained… hold your breath… no big surprises, according to Alan Wurtzel, the president for research at NBC Universal.

“It was literally a confirmation of what we expected to see,” Mr. Wurtzel said. | Read full article

Apple Backs Down on Premium Prices for Unprotected Music

From The New York Times - Apple these days may well have market clout, but it is not bigger than the market.

Today, Apple dropped the price of music downloads that are not protected by copy restrictions from $1.29 to 99 cents.

In April, Apple introduced iTunes Plus, offering songs from EMI with better sound quality and no copy protection. It attempted to create a premium price tier for songs, although full albums were priced the same as its regular downloads, which limit the number of devices on which they can be played. | Read full article

Google Takes Step on Video Copyrights

From The New York Times - Google is seeking to put an end to the copyright wars over online video.

On Monday, the company unveiled a long-anticipated system that, if effective, would allow media companies to prevent their clips from being uploaded to YouTube without permission.

Whether the system will work well enough to satisfy media companies who have been irked by the proliferation of unauthorized copyrighted clips on YouTube is not yet clear. But if successful, the system, which Google is offering to all media companies, could usher in a détente between them and Google. | Read full article

Bill Gates Presents the One (Really Big) Ringy Dingy

From The New York Times - For Cisco, Nortel, Avaya and the other companies that make telecommunications equipment, this Tuesday is a sort of D-Day.

That day, Bill Gates plans to introduce Microsoft’s invasion into their business, with a new line of software for what the company calls “unified communications.” That means it is meant to integrate all the ways that people talk to each other: voice, video, instant messaging and more elaborate forms of online collaboration.

If it is successful, this software will accelerate the shift of communications from specialized devices and networks onto Internet-based networks, desktop PCs and microprocessor-based servers. And that, in turn, could challenge the economics of the remarkably profitable telecommunications industry. | Read full article

P.&G., the Pioneer of Mixing Soap and Drama, Adds a Web Installment

From The New York Times - Can young Ashley find success and happiness in the big city? Will the dashing Eric win her heart? Can she make consumers buy more Tide detergent?

Stay tuned. Or logged on.

The company that brought soap operas to radio, then television, Procter & Gamble, is trying the same strategy online with “Crescent Heights,” a new show intended to reach young viewers where they watch the most — their PCs and cellphones. | Read full article

Growth in Broadband Slows Dramatically

From Live Science - The number of Americans with broadband Internet access rose 40 percent between 2005 and 2006, but only 12 percent between 2006 and 2007—although certain segments of the population did much better than that.

The figures, gathered by the Pew Internet & American Life Project in Washington, DC, showed that 47 percent of American adults had high-speed Internet access at the start of 2007, up from 42 percent in 2006, and 30 percent in 2005. | Read full article

TV on the Web Embraced by Viewers and Advertisers

From Live Science - If you don’t watch TV shows on your computer, it's probably only a matter time before you do. And the networks would love for you to do so, since your eyeballs are worth as much as 40 percent more when they’re parked in front of a computer than in front of a TV.

Today, 18 percent of the nation's online population watches TV shows on their computers.

That's double the rate of last year, and the figure is expected to double next year, said James McQuivey, an analyst at Forrester Research in Cambridge, Mass. McQuivey notes that the online population is about two thirds of the total U.S. population. | Read full article