NBC Launches On-Demand Olympic Coverage In HD
NBC has launched its online video hub for the 2008 Olympics, which features free on-demand video for over 20 sports. In order to maximize quality, the videos are available as downloads (you can start watching before the download finishes) and will be in “up to HD” quality. Unfortunately, the video downloads will only be available on Windows machines running Windows Media Center - once again Mac users are left in the cold, likely because of DRM issues (and the fact that Lenovo and Microsoft are sponsors).
While the Olympic ceremonies don’t kick off until August 8, NBC has already posted footage of Olympic trials. Once the games begin, NBC expects to have the footage available around 12 hours after each competition (which shouldn’t be too annoying given the time difference).
Microsoft is participating in the partnership, so access to the videos will be integrated into Media Center’s main panel. Users can also visit this TVTonic page, and the content will be available directly from NBCOlympics.com beginning next week. You can read more about the service at the TVTonic blog post here.
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Philip Rosedale Doesn’t See Browser-Based Virtual Worlds As A Threat to Second Life. Is He In Denial?
Recently, there’s been a growing wave of startups and products appearing that are bringing 3-D virtual worlds to the browser. These include Vivaty, Google’s Lively project, and the Electric Sheep Co.’s WebFlock. And I’ve seen a few stealth companies working the same vein.
None of these are as fully featured or immersive as Second Life, which requires a separate desktop client download. But it may not matter because a good-enough experience available via standard browsers may eventually qwn Second Life. Linden Lab, which operates Second Life, is working with IBM and others to make virtual worlds interoperable with each other. Still, for the most part, they don’t play nicely with the Web.
Last week I caught Linden Lab founder Philip Rosedale on video at Fortune’s Brainstorm conference in Half Moon Bay, and asked him if Second Life is threatened by browser-based virtual worlds. In the video above, he argues that the browser is not yet ready to deliver the type of experience that you can get in Second Life. He does acknowledge that virtual worlds need to be opened up and standardized. But he doesn’t see the browser as a viable alternative to client-based virtual worlds any time soon.
Is he right, or is he in denial?
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Welcome to Bizarro Scrabble
Scrabulous, the Scrabble knockoff that became a hit on Facebook, has relauched as Wordscraper. Will Hasbro still sue it?
Motorola’s Big Quarterly Profit Surprise
After many disappointments, the troubled mobile phone maker turns in a second-quarter profit of $4 million
Yahoo’s big summer letdown
With a cast of defiant board members, angry shareholders and a billionaire investor ready to make trouble, Yahoo's annual shareholder meeting Friday was once the hottest ticket in Silicon Valley.
GumGum Rethinks Its Approach. Drops Flash
Music and movies may grab the most headlines when it comes to piracy, but many content providers on the web are also having trouble managing their images, which are easy to crop, resize, and copy. Some services, like Attributor, try to monitor and track offending images, but the ultimate solution may well lie in removing the temptation in the first place by offering cheap and easy to find legal images.
Earlier this year, GumGum launched an image licensing platform that was designed to help publishers quickly locate and license images. The site served as a content hub, offering a searchable database of images that could be licensed on a CPM basis or for free alongside an ad.
Unfortunately, every one of GumGum’s images was served as an embeddable Flash widget, which made them both clunky and annoying for publishers, as the images couldn’t be resized or modified. The use of Flash allowed GumGum to include their ads with the images, and also made it harder for people to rip them off (though you could always just take a screenshot). PicApp, a similar image search and licensing platform, uses Flash as well and suffers from the same issues.
Today GumGum has announced a new approach to their licensing platform, and this time, there won’t be any Flash involved. To use the system, users need only include a single line of JavaScript on their page. From there, they can include any image they want using a standard HTML tag. The pricing models will be the same: publishers can either pay a fee based on image impressions, or they can include ads on top of their images. GumGum’s new platform can detect licensed images and overlays the ad on top of it, so there’s no need to use a special widget.
Another key shift in GumGum’s new approach is its decision to stop acting as an image hub - you’ll no longer be able to search through content catalogs to find an image. Instead, GumGum says that it will connect you directly with the content providers, who typically offer their own databases. By taking this approach, GumGum is turning away from the typical consumer and is becoming more of a B2B solution for blogs and sites that frequently rely on licensed images.
GumGum isn’t going to be able to stop image piracy - there’s simply no way to get around the “Print Screen” function without including an annoying watermark. But businesses who can’t afford to be caught up with illegal content may well appreciate GumGum’s new more flexible system, provided the company can make good on its arrangements with content providers. The service has already landed some big customers, including MTV Europe.
In conjunction with the launch of the new platform, GumGum has annouced a Series A funding round of a reported $1.2 million.
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Credit card help is on the way
Questionable credit card company practices have been dogging consumers for years. But a Credit Card Bill of Rights is working its way to congress. Here are the details.
How to Spend Apple’s Cash
Its stash may soon be bigger than Microsoft's. But should all those billions continue to lie dormant?