Streaming Victims

Here is an excerpt from my friend Trevor Doerksen's insightful blog entry "The Streaming Victims - Canadians" (emphasis added),

Turn Audiences to Customers
Broadcaster and producers refer to their fans as audiences. Unfortunately, these audiences don't want to be told how, when, what, and where to passively view content. I consider these fans as customers. We know their names, their email addresses, and their likes and dislikes. In fact, when speaking to broadcasters and producers in Canada I often ask what they know about their fans. They know very little. This must change. The Internet is a communications medium, it is not just a passive viewing system. Together we must develop relationships that allow everybody: the customer and the producer to benefit from knowing each other better.

Provide content not formats
In music the transformation is almost complete. Customers no longer have to pay for format. Purchasing Queen on vinyl, 8-track, cassette, CD, and digitally rights managed (DRM) digital download is over. Customers don't have to pay for the format, they just buy the content and move it around as they please. TV and movies will need to give customers what they want. They can't keep pretending. I know the customers I deal with are much smarter than that, giving them what they want is a viable business model. Providing seamless, unified, and flexible access to their favourite content is viable.

Links: 2008-02-26 Books 2.0, eBay Rebellion, FCC Net Neutrality, Muni Bonds, Google bandwidth, ABC idiot

1. Canadians are playing key role in `Books 2.0′ - WikiTrave, print-on-demand, LibriVox project audio books
2. eBay’s Seller Rebellion
3. FCC Open Hearing: Net Neutrality
4. Bad Day? Be glad you are not selling Muni Bonds
5. Google and the Unity bandwidth consortium - Google and the under-sea cable business
6. ABC thinks you’re an idiot - Lovely pix Marc (smile)

Links: 2008-02-17 Keays v. Honda, Luke Arm, CBC, Olympics athlete blogs, Internet domain tasting

1. Supreme Court of Canada to Hear Keays v. Honda Canada Inc.
2. Dean Kamen’s “Luke Arm” Prosthesis Readies for Clinical Trials (with video) [via TED]
3. A new hope? - from CBC anonymous blogger Ouimet - nice intentional (?) reference to this. (smile)
4. Beijing Olympics athletes allowed to blogged - BBC - I’ve no idea that the IOC are into the business of censorship or deciding what can be published or not.
5. No More Tasting: It’s a Bad Year To Be a Internet Domain Name Registrar

Links: 2008-02-15 Leaving Yahoo, Creative Commons, Reverse syndication, Murdoch vs Zell, Panasonic AG-MHC150, Law firm wikis, laptop suit

1. On Leaving Yahoo ... by former VP of ADD (Advanced Development Division of Yahoo)
2. Australia may give go-ahead for Creative Commons on public data
3. Reverse syndication - with newspapers losing money and laying off people, may be it is unavoidable that we will read the same story by the same reporter even if we thought we are reading multiple newspapers for wider perspectives on things
4. Mogul Showdown: Murdoch vs. Zell - I was going to write a critical piece about Murdoch, WSJ, and Fox Business News after reading Fortune's "Inside Fox Business News" but I've now changed my mind. I think it is wiser for me to wait and spend more time watching what Murdoch does with WSJ before I make any semi-intelligent observations. And here is a good linking piece "Poor, Poor, Pitiful Rupert Murdoch ["rotten old bastard"]" from Slate.
5. Panasonic AG-MHC150 pro-level HD camcorders
6. Do Wikis belong in Law Firms?
7. The Great American ... Laptop Suit?
   

Links: 2008-02-10 - Delete your Facebook, Fate of Penny, Isaac, Cancer, AIDS

1. Hitting the Delete key on social networking site like Facebook - not as easy as you like
2. A Penny for Your Thoughts? What an Insult! - More on 60 minutes this Sunday Feb 10th (unless the show gets preempted by something else)
3. Thank Goodness for Isaac
4. Cancer Control - Why Do Some Tumors Spread?
5. Disarming AIDS - nasty but needy

Links: 2008-02-07 - RFID, Patent Troll, Poetic Justice, Myspace platform, Josh Lederberg

1. Ford truck with RFID tool tracker - good and bad (see post & comments)
2. The best offense…is a good defense. - a good piece about Patent Troll
3. Buffett Sees ‘Poetic Justice’ in Banks’ Woes - Love this quote quote: “What has happened is a repricing of risk and an unavailability of what I might call ‘dumb money,’ of which there was plenty around a year ago.“
4. The MySpace Developer Platform
5. We have lost a Giant - Vint Cerf remembers Josh Lederberg

Security Links: 2008-02-07

1. Cloned Trucks - Criminals are using cloned FedEx, Wal-Mart, etc trucks to bypass security.
2. VoIP Threats - Threats in using Voice over IP
3. NSA Monitoring U.S. Government Internet Traffic

Links: 2008-02-04 Super Bowl Ads, China firewall, Prentice Copyright, Jerry Yang, IP v6

1. Super Bowl Ads: 2008 - I don’t watch the game but I will watch the Ads
2. China’s “great firewall” faces new opposition
3. Is Prentice’s Copyright Bill Born in the U.S.A.?
4. Jerry Yang e-mail reaches out to Yahoo employees
5. Q&A: IP Version 6 - BBC - (Internet’s new addressing system as of Feb 4th)

eBay power transfer

Here are NYT report and BBC report of eBay’s Meg Whitman stepping down on 31 March after 10 years as chief executive and to be replaced by John Donahoe, president of eBay’s marketplaces division.

Lack of Canadian edition of MIT Open Courseware initiative?

I have been an admirer of MIT Open Courseware initiative since it was first announced. I remember talking to a professor of mine (who also happens to be a former President of the University of Calgary) about the MIT Open Courseware initiative
and naively expected that MIT was starting a world trend.

Well, after reading this insightful article by Prof. Geist, “Why Is There No Canadian MIT?“, I guess the world’s educational institutions still have a long way to go, and including some of those in Canada.

P.S. After reading some of the comments in the post, looks like some Canadian Universities are trying a few things but they are not as wide-known as they can be or should be. For example, I am having some fun learning from a free video from McGill’s continuing medical education department. I am fascinated with eyes and here is an “interesting” video by Dr. Michael Flanders to check out. (Dr. Flanders is funny so watch out for what he compares Filet Mignon to. LOL.)

P.P.S. Pediatric and Adult Strbismus online information resources (with videos) from McGill. Warning: These are medical videos for instructional purpose, not everyone want to watch them.

CBC News: The National - Where are the videos?

As a news junkie, I try to watch CBC News: The National every night and then CTV National News with Lloyd Robertson if I have time to get a broader perspective. But deep in my heart, I am a CBC guy. (smile)

So here is my main beef with CBC News: The National - the powers to be should put all the individual segments as linkable chunks with video for people or bloggers to link to!

The most expensive part of the program/content creation is in the news reporting and the news production, etc, once those are done, every single minute of The National should be posted as linkable chunks with video up on the internet.

For example, this piece has video

Dion calls for firing of minister in spat with nuclear watchdog

where as this one doesn’t have the video that was used in The National tonight,

PM stands behind minister in isotope case

I see no good justification to not include videos in all news items that videos have already been created. Disk storage space and bandwidth are CHEAP! If these video clips are so useless/worthless and have no value to CBC, well, then upload them onto YouTube so these orphaned clips can find good homes to be used and loved.

CBC, are you listening?