The Oscars and the Death of the Water Cooler
If advertisers have their way, a lot of the Oscar buzz this year will have nothing to do with the best picture nominees.As with the Super Bowl, advertisers during the second-biggest advertising night of the year (the Academy Awards are known in the industry as the “Super Bowl for Women,”) are trying to inject themselves into social media conversations happening during the event.But while the Su
Mashable Weekend Recap: 22 Stories You May Have Missed
Super Bowl ads delighted us this weekend, with those brilliant mini-movies extending their reach via social media. But that wasn’t all.An exotic car and a smooth smartphone were vying for coolness honors, we found lots of places to find free music, and the Old Spice Guy showed up again, in a brand new and hilarious ad. We even did a live blog of the Super Bowl commercials during the entire game
Rumor: Amazon could launch unlimited movie streaming in February, no major studios on board yet
Just a few days after we got an early peek at Amazon's unlimited movie streaming setup, the LA Times reports "people familiar with the matter" say we could see an official launch by the end of this month. Amazon apparently pushed back its original date for technical reasons and while it tries to acquire more content to take on Netflix. Amazon reportedly has yet to lock up content from any of the s
What Makes a Hit (Consumer) Internet Service
Over the past few days, there has been a heated debate about Quora, a year-old startup, that offers a more sophisticated version of Yahoo Answers’ question-and-answer platform. Quora has found success with early adopters because of its high-fidelity content, but it has also grappling with the arrival of the masses, which are going to drown out those signals with noise. This dichotomy is one of the
The Flim-Flam Men - With Artwork by Banzai7 Labs
The Flim-Flam MenByCognitive Dissonance Artwork by WilliamBanzai7 I suspect if average Joe or Jane were asked to identify modern examples of ‘Flim-Flam Men’ most would point to Bernie Madoff and Allen Stanford. Or even to a long list of Too Big To Fail bank CEO’s past and present plus various corporate, government and Fed officials who have graced our lives over the last ten or more years. And yo
The Truth About Cutting the Cable TV Cord
Ad agency Hill Holliday recently conducted an experiment, asking five families to give up cable TV in favor of connected TV devices for a week. The growing availability of online content and video subscription services, coupled with an exploding market for connected devices, has pushed the idea of cord cutting — or dropping a traditional cable TV subscription package in favor of online video s
3 Connected-Consumer Companies to Watch in 2011
Coming out of this year’s CES, it’s pretty apparent some of the biggest technology tail winds driving the consumer space in 2011 will include connected entertainment devices (in particular, TVs), over-the-top video, real-time and/or video communication and continued integration of social software into entertainment platforms. Combine all this with rising consumer confidence, and we can expect an a
The Art of the Checkin: From Location to Content to Brand
Caroline Giegerich is the blogstress behind the Daily Marauder and a digital marketing consultant. Follow her on Twitter for more social media and emerging tech insights.Within the spectrum of social media, the act of sharing essentially amounts to a desire to personally define ourselves to others. In the age of the social network, there are an almost infinite number of options for creating tha
The Designer’s Cross-Training Toolkit
I watched a TV documentary the other day about a professional soccer player. As well as his normal soccer training he mixed in training in other sports like boxing and yoga and I thought this sounded a bit odd. Why would somebody that earns his (considerable) daily bread playing soccer spend time learning and training in areas that are not directly related to his profession?Well, it turns out
5 E-Book Trends That Will Change the Future of Publishing
Philip Ruppel is president of McGraw-Hill Professional, a leading global publisher of print and electronic content and services for the business, scientific, technical, and medical communities.Without a doubt, the e-book is practically the biggest thing that’s hit the publishing industry since the invention of movable type. Publishers and e-book resellers are reporting astronomical growth.At Mc
4 Predictions for Connected Devices in 2011
Brian David Johnson is a futurist and the director of Future Casting at the Intel Corporation. He is also the author of Screen Future: The Future of Entertainment, Computing and the Devices We Love, out in paperback January 2011.As a futurist at Intel, it’s my job to come up with an actionable vision for computing in the year 2020. Now, that might sound like science fiction, but really it’s pr
Netflix CEO Reed Hastings Argues Why The Short Sellers Are Wrong
Netflix is one of the best performing stocks this year, up 225 percent year-to-date, with a $9.3 billion market cap. But it is also priced to perfection, with a lot of short sellers hoping to profit from its fall and antsy Wall Street analysts downgrading the stock. Today, CEO Reed Hastings defended Netflix’s prospects in a very public, very detailed, and very unusual blog post on Seeking Alpha
8 Musical iPad Apps for the Digital Maestro
Peter Meyers is a digital book producer and the author of Best iPad Apps (O’Reilly Media). He’s covered the intersection of writing and technology for The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, and Wired and blogs at anewkindofbook.com.Early iPad critics were sure about one thing: This gadget was going to be for consuming, not creating. iPadders, the argument went, will spend all their time feas
22 Essential Resources for Android Owners
If you have an Android device in need of apps, boy do we have some tools and resources for you. The holidays are fast approaching and whether you’re stuck at your grandmother’s house or working overtime, we’ve got a list of Android apps and tools to help you have a little fun, while away the hours, or get that last piece of work done and out.This list has a wide range of apps including popular gam
A Very Scary Christmas: A Collection of Terrifying, Holiday-Themed Online Videos
video So I spent many a night, dear readers, mulling over what to get you for the holidays. And today, I decided: The gift of abject fear.Kidding!We asked those arbiters of awesome odd ephemera, Found Footage Festival, to curate this week’s YouTube roundup — and they were the ones who decided to scare you senseless.First check out Found Footage Festival’s frightening picks, and then partake in a few ski
81% of Gen Yers Use Facebook Daily
More good news for Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg and not-so-great news for purveyors of traditional media: 81% of upscale Gen Yers use Facebook every day, nearly twice the number who watch TV or read newspaper content, according to a report from L2 Think Tank.The report, based on a survey of 535 “high-achieving and high-earning” Gen Y adults (average age: 27), also shows that blogs and newspapers a
First Major Google TV Update Rolls Out: Updated Netflix App, Customizable Dual View, And Voice Searches
Google TV launched to a storm of piss-poor reviews and first impressions. It feels like a beta product and not something ready for living rooms. But that’s Google’s way. Two months have passed since the Logitech Revue and Sony Internet TV line launched and Google just rolled out the first major software update that at least seems to address some of the early concerns while bringing some new featur
Will Broadcasters and Big Production Houses Go The Way Of Print Media? Why Traditional Media Still Doesn’t Get It Regarding Google, and Why Not Getting It May Marginalize Them
video In media, particularly video, distribution costs have been literally flattened by the web, production costs have been dramatically reduced by digital HD technology and do-it-yourself CGI, and marketing made democratic via viral and social networking channels; the barriers to entry that allowed the big media houses to rake in fat margin profits no longer exist. Its just a matter of time before
Google Acquires Some Powerful Video-Streaming and DRM Technology
Google has announced that it has acquired Widevine, an on-demand video service known for its multiplatform DRM and adaptive streaming technologies. The acquisition price was not disclosed.Widevine works with companies that want to deliver protected and branded video across multiple channels. It licenses digital rights management technology to firms like Netflix in order to assure that content is
Google Buys On Demand Video Service Widevine To Bolster Its Own TV Efforts
Apparently on acquiring tear today, Google just bought video delivery company Widevine, it has announced on its corporate blog: “So we’re pleased to announce that we’ve agreed to acquire Widevine. The Widevine team has worked to provide a better video delivery experience for businesses of all kinds: from the studios that create your favorite shows and movies, to the cable systems and channels that
Boxee CEO To Big Media: “Resistance Is Futile”
With all the new Internet TV boxes and services sprouting this holiday season—from Google TV and Apple TV to the Boxee Box, Shufflr, and beyond—there is a lot talk about people cutting their cable cords and just getting all of their TV from the Internet. That is not going to happen anytime soon until the best TV shows and movies become available online at the same time as on TV, but the directio
3 Reasons Microsoft’s Kinect Is Hot, Hot, Hot!
video Each holiday season, there’s a must-have product that sends consumers scrambling to buy it before the store shelves are bare. Years ago, that product was the Tickle Me Elmo doll, and more recently, the Nintendo Wii during its initial launch. These two products and every hot holiday item in-between have shared one commonality: They were all standalone products. This year is different, however. In 2
What The Comcast/Level 3 Fracas Is Really About: Money
The headlines are pretty rough: Comcast hates Netflix! Net neutrality is dying! Communist forces from Russia and Cuba are attack a small town in Colorado and a ragtag band of high school students band together to fight them (although, arguably, this may have nothing to do with Comcast/Level 3)! But what’s really going on here? First, let’s understand how data gets from the cloud to you. Back in th
How Entrepreneurs Are Using Kickstarter to Fund Their Dreams
Thanks to the success of projects like Diaspora, Designing Obama and The Glif, more and more creatives are looking toward Kickstarter as a way to fund their projects.The site makes it possible for individuals or groups to fund an album, finance a documentary film or publish a quarterly magazine by soliciting backers online. The brilliance of Kickstarter is in its all-or-nothing approach. This crea
Netflix Continues To Save the Movie Industry, So Why Do Studios Continue To Hate It?
It’s always slightly flattering when a ten billion dollar company tweaks its business model just to please me. Well, ok, that’s a slight exaggeration: not just to please me, but to please me and the other writers at TechCrunch. I’m referring of course to Netflix’s decision to offer a streaming-only subscription package; the first time they’ve allowed members to view movies online without also havi
Cracking the Mainstream: Why Social Gaming Is More Than Just a Fad
Ravi Mehta is vice president of product for Viximo, where he drives the product strategy for Viximo’s social game distribution platform and helps social networks monetize via social games and virtual goods. For more information on virtual goods, visit his blog, Virtual Goods Insider, and follow him on Twitter.Since taking off in 2009, the social gaming phenomenon has drawn hundreds of millions of
5 Fresh Places to Find Great Online Video
The Digital Entertainment Series is supported by the Sony Ericsson Xperia™ X10, the seriously entertaining smartphone that knows how to have fun. Check it out here.Here at Mashable, we’re big fans of web video, and we’re not alone. People spend more and more time online watching (and many times, rewatching) video content, both user-generated and commercial.Even five years ago, during the early day