I had never heard of Chatroulette prior to February, 2010.  I saw some tech blogs pick up a story in the New York Times that the mysterious creator of this service was a 17 year old kid in Russia.  Added to that, New York-based venture capitalist Fred Wilson offered to fly this kid to New York to meet him. There you go, like many of you, I got the back story of Chatroulette before actually using [...]

As a fan, I am upset that NBC’s changes to The Tonight Show ended with Conan O’Brien leaving the network, and Jay Leno returning.  I replaced my personal Facebook photo with the “Team Coco” picture. That being said, NBC made the right move this time, with Jay Leno. As I previously mentioned in my post about the success of CBS, television is a legacy business.  In the world [...]

Many complain that the auto industry is being unethical keeping their business model alive. They keep on making and selling vehicles which rely on petroleum-based gasoline, even though cleaner, more efficient options do exist including electric-powered cars. Why am I discussing this in a blog about the creation, distribution and interaction of content? There is one large, major media company which [...]

Last month, Chris Brogan and Julien Smith published a book called Trust Agents. Being a fan of Brogan, one of my social media heroes, I bought the book the day it came out, and was amazed by it. The book outlines a personality called a “trust agent”, a person that influences many, although you may have never met them personally. Social media gives anyone with computer access to thousands of people [...]

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 [...]

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, [...]