Posted on 30/11/2008, 4:23 am, by Colin Charles, under New Media.
I hardly visit websites anymore, preferring instead to muck with feeds, in my current feed reader of choice (Google Reader, on this very fine day, kept in a site-specific browser). But I did visit The Star Online recently, and was shocked to find that they had a multimedia section, that also had video clips! Its called TheStarOnline.tv.
A newspaper, traditional media that is print, embracing video? I wonder if reporters are carrying around little FlipMino’s :)
Its interesting to see that they’re hosting the videos on YouTube and embedding them. They have 740 subscribers to their YouTube feed (soon to be 741 as I subscribe to them :P)… They’ve been around for over a year, and have had under 35,000 views in their channel – nothing exactly fancy, but a good start. Its also good to note that they’re not updating it like once every day – it gets updated several times a day.
Kudos to this old media company, exploring new media… As more people think about IPTV, as more mobile phones support fast data access, as more people stop reading dead tree newspapers, this kind of experimentation is going to pay off for them.
Posted on 19/8/2008, 12:26 am, by Colin Charles, under New Media.
I think YouTube has arrived. MTV, Channel V, and the rest should start worrying. Why?
I have Channel V and MTV on cable TV. I mostly use cable for the news channels, and music, but lately, these music channels are showing more and more “reality TV” shows, news features and other garbage. Yes, Punkd/Jackass is funny (as is the one where a bunch of guys go on dates, do stupid things for cash), but the whole purpose of a music channel is to show me music videos…
I notice that in the States, there’s VH1, which seems to be mostly music centric. VH1 is interesting as a channel… every music video they have, tacks on a little advert for Rhapsody. I’ve never had the privilege of trying Rhapsody, because they’re US only, but its a smart move.
Now why has YouTube arrived for me? Shitty consumer DSL link (1mbps/512kbps) is allowing me to stream music videos in realtime. If I tether a PC to the TV (MythTV maybe? Apple TV?) I’ve got an MTV replacement right there.
Playlist creation is something I think can be improved with YouTube. Maybe a mechanism to cache FLV files locally afterward (does Squid do this?), so that eventually I build up a music video library all thanks to YouTube.
All in all, ways to make cable TV more and more irrelevant (for example, I haven’t bothered with HBO after Sex & The City ended).
Can’t Smile Without You, go Barry Manilow (Live)
Look What You’ve Done – Jet
Good times ahead. Maybe I should just build that Myth box… Wonder how current Mikal+Stewart’s MythTV book still is… (and if there’s coverage on building your MTV killer).
Colin Charles is an open source software hacker and entrepreneur.
I live in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia. I tend to have a hectic travel schedule.
I work at Monty Program Ab, on MariaDB, and Open Ocean Investments on Web of Trust, and MoSync.
This is a personal web log, and the opinions here in no way reflect the opinions of my past, present, or future: clients, employers, or associates. Standard disclaimers apply.
Contacting me? I'm byte@bytebot.net or call me at +6-012-204-3201 (preferably not, or my usual consulting rate will apply).
