Category: Video

I Want a Real Apple TV

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Apple keep talking about a tablet to be released

sometime soon.  What i really want is an AppleTV – and i don’t mean the box that attaches to the TV.  I want an actual TV created by Apple that’s an LCD or Plasma that runs OSX.

appletv

The levels of convergence would be ridiculous.  You could use it as a Time Machine device to back up all your machines in your house.  It could have a built in cable modem and airport so it could broadcast wireless everywhere.  You’re basically converging Time Machine, Airport Express, the AppleTV box and adding a device that has a screen and processing power. The different models will vary by harddrive size.

The experience would be sick.  The TV would, of course, have an App Store so people could make living room applications.  This could be anything from a Party Playlist to Pictionary, or Charades.  The remote could be an iPod or an iPhone.

Apple tried to integrate iTunes into Motorola phones (such as the Rockr) and found it to be such a horrible experience that they just built the entire stack and worked with a service provider (AT&T) for the iPhone.  They’ve been doing the same with television.  They have the AppleTV which is an add-on and can never get into the experience.

There are so many possibilities.  Come on Steve Jobs.  Make it happen

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Jonny Flynn and the Timberwolves

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jonny flynnThere’s been lots of talk about Ricky Rubio and all the he could potentially bring to the twolves.  And while i think he’s pretty special, I’m also very excited about Johnny Flynn.  What happened on draft day is that the the Timberwolves had ranked Flynn as #1 on their board of people they thought they could get (above Curry).  Somehow Rubio dropped to the number 5 spot so they felt they had to choose him.  Then with the number 6 they were faced with the option of choosing someone they believed was worse to fill the shooting guard spot or choose the best guy remaining which was Jonny Flynn.  At least that is the explanation that the GM provided.

I was skeptical but i just watched this video (below) of Flynn’s summer league play and he looks fan-fricking-tastic.  I’m very excited to see what he can do with KLove, Big Al and rest of the squad.

Also, i want to touch on the fact that Mad Dog Madsen was traded to the Clippers.  While not the best player in the league i think he’s done a great job of communicating with the public.  His blog is good read and he’s clearly a very smart dude (from Stanford). He’s missing Minnesota and I’ll miss him too.

Check this out:

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Why YouTube’s Losses Are Much Smaller Than Expected

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Picture 3There’s been a lot of buzz about a month ago about how YouTube loses money and is a horrible business.  Most of these articles came after Credit Suisse’s published an estimate of YouTube’s losses at $470M a year.  This is a large number and people pounced on it. However, there is a good report i just read (PDF only and downloadable here) that challenges Credit Suisse’s assumptions with some more accurate numbers.  For instance, Amazon Web Services could provide storage for 50% of the costs included in CS’s study.  The survey ends with:

Regardless of what you may hear, YouTube costs are a fraction of any other company running similar operations. Most of Google’s bandwidth is free or near-free; its hardware is cost-optimized; and its data center costs are mostly committed or sunk. The top customers of our sourcing advisory service, whose prices are on average 20% better than the average market level, cannot deliver content as cheaply as Google’s massively scaled operation. Surprisingly enough, the ones that come closest are often thosethat leverage the scale of others through using cloud services.
But even if a fair accounting of its costs showed a loss, YouTube gives Google the ability to achieve needed improvements in lowering cost of other operations. Loud stories about YouTube’s losses can only help deter copyright lawsuits and demands from content owners. Skepticism is warranted — but be ready for surprise news of profitability in the future.

The article does explore the upside of allowing the market to believe the YouTube business is quick unprofitable.  With license-holders eager to renogotiate and reap larger profits, it’s better to all them to perceive that it’s much too expensive to host and deliver these files and thus license payments should be low.

But this is clearly wrong.  In yesterday’s earnings call, Google had this to say about YouTube:

“Monetized views” on YouTube have more than tripled over the last year, said SVP Jonathan Rosenberg. Executives would not say whether YouTube was profitable, although they did say it was on a trajectory to become a “very profitable business for us” in the “not too distant future,” giving a collective heart attack to analysts who have speculated about how much money the site is losing. In a follow-up call with analysts, CFO Patrick Pichette said that the company wanted to reaffirm that YouTube’s business model was credible. “There’s been so much press with all these documentations of massive costs and no business model,” he said.

Interesting to think about next time someone speaks up about how horrible the YouTube business is.

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Ze Frank Video

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Last night i watched this video of Ze Frank (below).  He’s a kooky guy but totally entertaining. I do like that he takes common elements of the internet and uses them to better connect people and to create social happenings and actual events and items.   Instead of people trying to create products and platforms, he’s actually trying to create content in innovative ways – which i find both interesting and refreshing.  I think some of the things he posted in here were just awesome.

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First, he found this song on the internet that a dad was singing for his daughter called “I’m going to whoop somebody’s ass”.  He took the song asked his fans to sign along and interact. The fans did that and more.  This song spawned countless numbers of remixes. A video was created. A video was story boarded by a member of the “audience”, then another member offered portrait sketches to anyone who would help fill in the video. The video was made.  The remix appeared in a movie, in a car commercial and countless other places and suddenly the creator – a unsuspecting PhD-turned-preacher nammed Ray, now finds the trajectory of his life shifted, as he is inundated with countless versions of his song, in audio and even video format.  Awesome.  (below is a video remix of Ray’s song)

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sbGtefy_Uqw]

Ze does a lot with songs.  Another intance, he created a song for a woman who wrote in that she was scared of the dark and he made up a song for her.  You can hear that song by clicking on the image below

Picture 2Another fun thing that he did was called “youngme / nowme” where people take picturs of themselves when they were young and recreate those pictures now.  It’s hilarious to see what people have done.  Some are simple, some are very involved.  In both cases, they are fun to look at.  He’s got a whole site with the submissions here 2gfdyuszhp

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There are lots of examples of cool things Ze has done in his talk.  These are just a few.  I always enjoy his creativity and if you have some time, it’s worth checking out.

Obama and ASU

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i have a few things to say about Obama’s commencement address at ASU this week.

First, i think the address itself was really good.  I like how he keep’s it real.  Even though he now officially part of “The System” he can still talk about short-term election-winning activities and doing what’s good for the country.  That makes me happy.  He says:

In the face of these challenges, it may be tempting to fall back on the formulas for success that have dominated these recent years. Many of you have been taught to chase after the usual brass rings: being on this “who’s who” list or that top 100 list; how much money you make and how big your corner office is; whether you have a fancy enough title or a nice enough car.

You can take that road – and it may work for some of you. But at this difficult time, let me suggest that such an approach won’t get you where you want to go; that in fact, the elevation of appearance over substance, celebrity over character, short-term gain over lasting achievement is precisely what your generation needs to help end.

I also thought it was cool how he was able to relate Winston Churchill to Kurt Warner:

Just look to history. Thomas Paine was a failed corset maker, a failed teacher, and a failed tax collector before he made his mark on history with a little book called Common Sense that helped ignite a revolution. Julia Child didn’t publish her first cookbook until she was almost fifty, and Colonel Sanders didn’t open up his first Kentucky Fried Chicken until he was in his sixties. Winston Churchill was dismissed as little more than a has-been, who enjoyed scotch just a bit too much, before he took over as Prime Minister and saw Great Britain through its finest hour. And no one thought a former football player stocking shelves at the local supermarket would return to the game he loved, become a Super Bowl MVP, and then come here to Arizona and lead your Cardinals to their first Super Bowl.

Each of them, at one point in their life, didn’t have any title or much status to speak of. But they had a passion, a commitment to following that passion wherever it would lead, and to working hard every step along the way.

But by far my favorite thing about him going to ASU and not getting an honorary degree is The Daily Show skit about it.  They just take ASU apart.  Click to watch:

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Fred Wilson's Take on Twitter

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Image representing Twitter as depicted in Crun...

There’s a good video by Fred Wilson about Twitter and what he, as an investor in it, thinks about it.  What he boils it down to is three points:

  1. “the single most important is that twitter from day 1 is a platform that others can build upon”
  2. “it is very one-dimensional…it doesn’t do anything that is not in the timeline….It’s power comes from that – it’s straightforward”
  3. “Twitter is the news feed for the web” as people embed links in their tweets and it’s now an alerting system

What else is interesting is that Twitter wasn’t pitched to Fred but rather he was an early user of it and he pitched to them to try to get them to take money from Union Square Ventures.  This is why i think Fred is one of the best VC’s in the business because he uses the products.  The web is all about product.  It’s not like the industrial revolution, it is a consumer facing which means that the usability is extremely important.  He is an early adopter and gets into the weeds. I have a hard time imagining other VC’s using Twitter when it was still a part of Odeo.

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Fzl5k2B84Kg]

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Wednesday's inspiration comes from Britian

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picture-2This is a great 5 minute video from the British version of American Idol.  It’s the story of a 47 year old Susan Boyle and her audition for the show.  This is why the web beats mainstream TV.  The fact that i can watch this little clip which is better than 90% of the scripted shows on network television is why i have great love for the internet.

Click here to watch this clip