It is the end of September, which means it is time for the traditional Fall to Spring broadcast television season to begin.  I personally have limited the number of shows, old and new that I choose to watch.  In fact, I did not watch any new series last season (I might one day decide to watch Fringe on Netflix, but I do not feel any need to watch it now). One of my favorite shows the past few seasons [...]

Today on Twitter, I have held a dialogue with @carlalynnehall, sprouting from the decision by the City of Philadelphia, PA to close all of their public libraries.  This clearly is a loss to the public, no matter what the reasoning (or excuses) are for this. The closure of libraries deny people of all levels of income access to books, magazines, periodicals and other educational media they might not [...]

DirecTV has announced that they will be offering NFL Sunday Ticket to cable subscribers, with a catch.  The video would be delivered over broadband to customers who can’t recieve DirecTV satelite television service. The big issue?  DirecTV is not a broadband provider, and users of the NFL Sunday Ticket service would be using some other company’s internet access.  Perhaps from a cable [...]

Yesterday, Facebook, the big social network you know about and probably have an account on acquired a significantly smaller competitor called FriendFeed. How many of you have ever heard of FriendFeed before?  Raise your hand. Personally, I’ve had a FriendFeed for over a year, yet rarely use it.  Yet I’m happy I have an account there.  It is a social media aggregator, which expands the [...]

This past Friday, the FCC sent letters to Apple, Google and AT&T about the politics of Apple’s decision to reject the Google Voice application for the iPhone. There are many sources reporting on it. I say you check outTechCrunch’s coverage over this good stuff. This is a big change in the FCC, which recently went to a Democratic majority now that Obama is in office.  They reacted [...]

One of the big stories this week is a 10 year deal between Yahoo and Microsoft, to have their new search engine Bing power the search on Yahoo’s entire network.  This means that Yahoo is going to abandon their own search technology, replacing it with the fairly new Bing.  The goal of any company in the search engine business can be summarized down to two words: Beat Google. Google has only [...]

Big breaking news this morning is that Ben Silverman, co-chairman of NBC Entertainment and Universal Media Studios is leaving the company to start a new multimedia production company at IAC. Who is Ben Silverman?  He is a successful agent turned producer turned network head.  His specialty has been adapting international TV formats in the US.  This is not necessarily the easiest thing.  Remember [...]

1. Online shoe retailer Zappos.com is sold to Amazon for $807 Million. Zappos has built its business through exceptionally strong customer service, including, but not limited to their Twitter account.  The company’s name also plays off of the spanish word for shoes, zapatos, but in a way where it is also appealing to English speakers, since the word “zap” is kinda cool. 2. ESPN exercises [...]

I am one of the few lucky ones, I guess.  In 2007, I signed up for a beta for a free phone service called GrandCentral, not to be confused with the beautiful Metro-North terminal.  It is a free phone service that allowed users to redirect a number they gave you to any phone that you chose.  It was revolutionary. Then Google bought it, froze the ability for its users to invite others.  Anyone interested, [...]

Phish is using a fun flash video to keep fans engaged during their monthlong tour break. Friday, June 26, 2009 was a day many of us won’t forget.  The top story throughout the news media was the death of some super famous celebrity, but it wasn’t the only thing that was on the mind of music fans. One of my favorite bands, Phish, unveiled a flash movie on its homepage, to “Save The [...]