Archives: March 2006

Iraqi bloggers in the mainstream

Posted by: Stephen Baker on March 31, Categories: international, mainstream media

I remember sitting at a blogger symposium 14 months ago and hearing New York Times Managing Editor Jill Abramson asking bloggers if they realized how much it cost to maintain...

YouTube Profile

Posted by: Heather Green on March 31, Categories: digital media

BW profile of the founders of YouTube, Steve Chen and Chad Hurley, and how they're trying to turn the video sharing service into a partner Hollywood can work with.

Needed: software to transcribe interviews

Posted by: Stephen Baker on March 31, Categories: podcasting

I came out of IBM research Wednesday with a two-hour interview on my digital recorder. A 100-mb file. (I may have to dial down the bit rate.) Taping interviews is...

Videos: A Weekly Siren Call to 24% of Web Surfers

Posted by: Heather Green on March 30, Categories: digital media

OPA's new study shows that about one in four people online watch a video each week. The favorite style? Short humor and news clips. DO clips have to reign forever though?

Engaging Advertising: More than a Buzzword

Posted by: Heather Green on March 30, Categories: advertising

When advertising actually hits the bar and is engaging.

Six Apart Does Widgets

Posted by: Heather Green on March 30, Categories: blog technology

To liven up blogs, Six Apart adds widgets from Indeed, Technorati, Rollyo and 29 others and opens up its widget API.

The Appeal of Second Life

Posted by: Heather Green on March 29, Categories: digital media

One of the most fascinating things about Second Life, the online game, is the alternative economy that's growing up within that game itself.

BW Podcast with Terry Heaton from Donata

Posted by: Heather Green on March 29, Categories: digital media

The guest on BW Cutting Edge podcast is Terry Heaton, the new media consultant, who is helping traditional media companies get their heads around working with blogs and the host of people flocking to user generated content.

Space.com Lives and Blogs

Posted by: Heather Green on March 29, Categories: blog business

After eeking it through the dotcom bust and emerging as Imaginova, the one time Space.com starts dishing up blogs.

Time Inc. puts blogs at center of strategy

Posted by: Stephen Baker on March 29, Categories: BusinessWeek, mainstream media

This WSJ story lays out Time Inc's Internet strategy. To this BW staffer, it looks pretty familiar. BW too is tearing down walls between online and print staffs, prodding print...

Web 2.0 Awards: It had to Happen

Posted by: Heather Green on March 28, Categories: digital media

The Web 2.0 Awards are here! Who is on the list, you ask? Well, the real question to me is will they, or the awards be around next year....

Current TV Gains Ground with Comcast

Posted by: Heather Green on March 28, Categories: Citizen Media

Current TV, the new cable channel created by former VP Al Gore to help democratize TV by getting viewers involved, lands Comcast as a new distribution partner. Big step forward.

Facebook On the Block, Looking For $2 Billion

Posted by: Heather Green on March 28, Categories: digital media

After turning down an offer for $750 million, Facebook has put itself on the block, hoping to get $2 billion, BusinessWeek reports.

Federal Election Commission Rules in Favor of Blogs

Posted by: Heather Green on March 28, Categories: society

Missed this yesterday, but in a big decision and a victory for political bloggers, the Federal Election Commission ruled yesterday that the only political activity it would regulate would be paid Internet ads

Wikipedia's Jimmy Wales Gets $4 million in Funding

Posted by: Heather Green on March 28, Categories:

In what looks like a way to promote citizens media, a for profit wiki service started by Wikipedia's Jimmy Wales gets $4 million in funding.

Trucks on beaches, the ultimate wedge issue

Posted by: Stephen Baker on March 28, Categories: society

Just one off-topic post following a weekend in lovely St. Augustine. When people who drive trucks on beaches want to sunbathe, stroll or swim, do they choose traffic-free beaches? Or...

Reader suggests BusinessWeek doesn't understand mag business

Posted by: Stephen Baker on March 28, Categories: BusinessWeek, advertising

Interesting responses to Ben Elgin's BW article on Google's fizzling foray into magazine ads. One reader, Labeler2003, writes: "Come on Business Week. You know more about print advertising than this...

Apple, iTunes and Apparent Contradictions

Posted by: Heather Green on March 27, Categories: podcasting

Nivi pulled together a couple of quotes that seem to demonstrate that Jobs may have at one point agreed with the tact the French are taking on iTunes and the...

Fred Wilson, Animated Heads, and Yikes!

Posted by: Heather Green on March 27, Categories: society

On being greeted by an animated version of Fred Wilson when you visit his blog.

Podcasts anchored in the computer

Posted by: Stephen Baker on March 26, Categories: podcasting

Looks like people don't get around to transferring lots of podcasts to their mp3 players. I notice a radical shift in my behavior. The first month after buying my iPod,...

AT&T and "Blogging Delivered"

Posted by: Heather Green on March 25, Categories: advertising

Insight needed on deciphering an ad marketing AT&T as the onramp for blogging.

Thank God for laptops

Posted by: Stephen Baker on March 25, Categories:

Some 8,000 people had been cooped up in a trade show yesterday in Orlando. And at 4:15 p.m., the only thing keeping them from breaking out into a gorgeous sunny...

Blogging When You're Writing

Posted by: Heather Green on March 24, Categories: BusinessWeek

Writing about something entirely unrelated to blogging seems to interfere with the urge to blog.

What should we call "content?"

Posted by: Stephen Baker on March 24, Categories:

Interesting flaps from Doc Searls and Sheila Lennon about tech lexicon. "Content-producing consumers." I agree it grates on the ears. I don't mind the idea that consumption extends beyond the...

Heading to Orlando

Posted by: Stephen Baker on March 23, Categories:

I'm flying to Florida this morning to give a speech at the enormous Florida Educational Technology Conference. Theme of the speech, surprise surprise: Math and Society. I'll provide the point...

This Week's Podcast with Media buyer Mohan Renganathan

Posted by: Heather Green on March 22, Categories:

Mohan Renganathan from media agency MediaVest Worldwide is this weeks' guest on the BW Cutting Edge podcast. He talks about what advertisers are looking for in user-generated content.

Marketing On Demand

Posted by: Heather Green on March 22, Categories: advertising

An epiphany from watching a super cool video about the building of the massive new double-decker Airbus A380.

Blogs and Attribution

Posted by: Heather Green on March 22, Categories: digital media

The recent ruckkus over attribution at Engadget raises issues about how you source an item when you blog about it.

Caruso croons on iTunes

Posted by: Stephen Baker on March 22, Categories: digital media

Arik Hesseldahl points to century-old Caruso recordings available on iTunes. It's an interesting post about the ancient music available online. Fascinating troves for musicologists, I'm sure. But I don't think...

Google Finance: Why?

Posted by: Heather Green on March 21, Categories: digital media

Google's portal aspirations.

What does Internet accountability mean for magazines?

Posted by: Stephen Baker on March 21, Categories: mainstream media

This was a question I faced throughout the reporting on the Internet advertising story: If advertisers are rushing into media that can measure the reach and effectiveness of their ads,...

The Future of Advertising, According to Microsoft

Posted by: Heather Green on March 21, Categories: advertising

Joanne Bradford, the head of sales at Microsoft's MSN service, stops by to talk advertising.

Google Finance: Blogs Won't Get You Everything

Posted by: Heather Green on March 21, Categories: business blogging

Google Finance and the art of iteration.

Should mainstream bloggers be paid extra? Should I?

Posted by: Stephen Baker on March 20, Categories: BusinessWeek

Bloggers at the Washington Post are wondering if they should be paid extra. (ex BusinessBlogWire) This made me think about... myself. I'm on unpaid leave from BusinessWeek, and I'm continuing...

March Madness

Posted by: Heather Green on March 19, Categories: digital media

CBS just put out a press release, reporting that it served 14 million streams of live video and four million visitors during the first four days of the NCAA Championship....

Counterintuition: Why TiVo users avoid fewer ads

Posted by: Stephen Baker on March 18, Categories: advertising

Here's a piece from MIT suggesting that TiVo (and other DVR) users skip fewer ads than other households. Why? The remote. Traditional TV watchers channel surf madly avoiding ads. When...

Blogger Coffee

Posted by: Heather Green on March 18, Categories: society

A new take on blogging and morning coffee.

Digg Argues It Has Ways to Prevent Manipulation

Posted by: Heather Green on March 17, Categories: digital media

Questions were flying about whether Digg is being used for stock manipulation. BW reporter Elizabeth Woyke called Jay Adelson, the company's CEO about measures designed to thrawt that.

The Web 2.0 Madness

Posted by: Heather Green on March 17, Categories:

How far gone are you in Web 2.0 madness? Two simple tests will tell... Web 2.0 Certify Web 2.O or Star Wars...

Hotmail: a spam magnet

Posted by: Stephen Baker on March 17, Categories: spam and other abuses

Does Microsoft care about Hotmail anymore? If so, why not do more about spam on the service? I'm erasing about 15 spams a day in my account. GMail and Yahoo!...

How TACODA hopes to track the brain

Posted by: Stephen Baker on March 17, Categories: advertising

In this week's article, I originally hoped to dwell more on interviews I had at TACODA Systems, the behavioral advertising company. As I mentioned in the previous post, they're trying...

When Google Calls.....

Posted by: Heather Green on March 16, Categories: digital media

At a lunch in NYC, Google's Eric Schmidt talks about online video.

A flight to quality on the Net

Posted by: Stephen Baker on March 16, Categories: advertising

Here's my last story at BW before vanishing onto book leave. I worked on it with Jessi Hempel. It's a look at the new measurement techniques coming into Internet advertising....

Baseball Has Been Very Very Good to Me

Posted by: Heather Green on March 16, Categories: business blogging

Now here's a smart move. The MLB launched a blog written by players. As the season heats up and the coverage does too, the baseball players can put their own spin on events.

GE's Blogging R&D Squad

Posted by: Heather Green on March 16, Categories: business blogging

Every hardcore geek's dream: GE's R&D scientists and engineers are blogging. And they have cool videos too.

Keeping Up With What's What

Posted by: Heather Green on March 15, Categories: digital media

Looking for recommendations for how to get out of a comfort zone, when it comes to tracking new ideas and thoughts.

This Week's Podcast with Fred Wilson

Posted by: Heather Green on March 15, Categories: podcasting

Guest on this week's Cutting Edge Podcast is Fred Wilson, managing partner at venture capital firm Union Square Ventures and the writer of the popular A VC log.

What Should the Podcast Focus on Next?

Posted by: Heather Green on March 15, Categories: podcasting

So, I am thinking of winding down the podcasts on the business of podcasting. I think we've chatted with a good cross section of folks, including TWiT's Leo Laporte, the...

The New Old Web 2.0

Posted by: Heather Green on March 15, Categories: digital media

Could taking a page from beauty community MakeupAlley help today's 2.0 Geeks figure out media?

Would you take steroids to make you smarter?

Posted by: Stephen Baker on March 14, Categories: society

Mike Mandel has a very provocative post about steroids. Would we risk using them if they made us 30% smarter? How about if we knew our colleagues were using them,...

What You Know and Web 2.0

Posted by: Heather Green on March 14, Categories: digital media

Alexa reminds us how MySpace emerged out of nowhere. This sounds like the way services and companies will emerge nowadays, all the scrutiny about who will buy whom notwithstanding.

Listomania

Posted by: Heather Green on March 14, Categories: BusinessWeek

In which we realize that we made a top 25 list of influential authorities of business blogging.

How do we cope with what we just can't know?

Posted by: Stephen Baker on March 13, Categories: society

The guy at breakfast had the phone clipped to his ear, its green light blinking every three or four seconds across the table to his wife. I looked at him...

Young Entrepreneurs of Tech and Question on Newsvine

Posted by: Heather Green on March 13, Categories: digital media

Pointer to BWonline list of top techies under 30 and appeal for insight into one of the companies mentioned, Newsvine.

Elephant in the Room

Posted by: Heather Green on March 13, Categories: digital media

Interesting that in the NYTimes story about new media takeover bait, one of the experts quoted, Rafat Ali, wasn't mentioned as a candidate.

When does your mind rebel?

Posted by: Stephen Baker on March 11, Categories: society

I've been thinking a lot recently about why I was a near failure in math. A lot of it has to do with my inability in my teenage years to...

eBay and Meet-up hook up

Posted by: Stephen Baker on March 11, Categories: M&A

The news about eBay taking a piece of Meet-up indicates that the future of commerce, at least in Meg Whitman's mind, may have a big dose of he past. Will...

Behavior V. Demographic

Posted by: Heather Green on March 10, Categories: advertising

By offering demographic data to marketers, is Google yet again showing the way in how companies will buy advertising online?

Like to Make Money on Blogging? How about $1 Million

Posted by: Heather Green on March 09, Categories:

Debbie Weil writes that tech industry researcher and consultant Charlene Li brought in $1 million in business for her company, Forrester Research, through her blogging.

New York Times and Edelman: A Step Back

Posted by: Heather Green on March 09, Categories: digital media

What are lessons to take away from the discussion about the story the NYTimes did on Edelman working with bloggers.

Advice on Handling Comments?

Posted by: Heather Green on March 08, Categories: blog technology

Steve and I could use some advice on what to do about comments. Or more specifically, comments on a particular post. Last September, Steve wrote about a feature on Friendster...

Chinese Bloggers Shut Down

Posted by: Heather Green on March 08, Categories: society

Reuters has a story about China shutting down two bloggers who are critical of the government. Looks like this is happening now because the national parliament is meeting. Update March...

This Week's Podcast with World Soccer Daily

Posted by: Heather Green on March 08, Categories: podcasting

Steven Cohen talks about how the satellite radio show World Soccer Daily is using podcasts to reach a broader audience.

What Do We Blog About When the Story Dies?

Posted by: Heather Green on March 07, Categories: digital media

The RIMarkable blog devoted to all things BlackBerry asks: What do we blog about now that the hotly contested story we were following is over?

French study pans all search engines

Posted by: Stephen Baker on March 07, Categories: search

This study from France (ex Battelle) shows that most of the results delivered by search engines, including leaders Google and Yahoo!, are disappointing. Does this mean that some newcomer could...

Urban Honking.com, an invitation-only sensation

Posted by: Stephen Baker on March 06, Categories:

Great story in Willamette Week about one of the hottest blog adventures in Portland. The skinny: "Mike Merrill, Steve Schroeder and Jona Bechtolt run a website with the ungainly name...

Do you remember high school math?

Posted by: Stephen Baker on March 06, Categories: society

If you're interested in education and how much math we need, read the comments on this blog. The post discusses a girl who dropped out of high school in Los...

Video Online: 3 minutes v. 30 minutes

Posted by: Heather Green on March 06, Categories: digital media

What's the worth of a 3 minute video blog v. a 30 minute TV show?

Who wants Wikipedia on an iPod?

Posted by: Stephen Baker on March 05, Categories: Wikis

I'm tempted to download this Wikipedia application, just to see how it works on the iPod. (from Medialab) For me, it will be more of an experiment than a desire....

How about a working children blog?

Posted by: Stephen Baker on March 04, Categories:

I'm in Portland dealing with a couple of 90-something parents, dealing with some very tough decisions about their independence. I'm thinking that in addition to a Working Parents blog, we...

If book publishing is dying, have I made a bad mistake?

Posted by: Stephen Baker on March 03, Categories: society

In this wide-ranging interview with Esther Dyson, (Thanks Jason)she compares Yahoo!'s development approach to intelligent design, and contrasts it to Google's wild evolution. She dismisses the idea of the...

Blog finds fault with our (ie. Heather's) read on podcasts

Posted by: Stephen Baker on March 02, Categories: podcasting

Blogger finds faults with BW's business analysis of podcasts. But who wants to listen to ads through earbuds?

Trawling for giant calamari online

Posted by: Stephen Baker on March 02, Categories: society

Susan Crawford compares the Internet to the vast unknowns of the oceans, and says we need an explorers club to plumb its depths and send back reports. "Even beyond...

Podcast Riches?

Posted by: Heather Green on March 01, Categories: podcasting

How big will the podcast ad market be? Probably not big enough for all the podcasters who want to make money from it.

This Week's Podcast with NYTimes

Posted by: Heather Green on March 01, Categories: podcasting

This week's guest on BW's Cutting Edge podcast is Jon Landman. The deputy managing editor at the New York Times, Landman talks about the newspaper's approach to creating podcasts and...

Is Edgeio an eBay slayer?

Posted by: Stephen Baker on March 01, Categories: search

Edgeio, an RSS startup battling eBay and Craigslist, may be a good idea tracking the wrong market

Having trouble blogging remotely

Posted by: Stephen Baker on March 01, Categories: blog technology

Working with Ecto, a remote blogging tool, and I feel slimed