“Welcome back my friends to the show that never ends…”
Welcome to BC$ MobileTV’s Main Blog, after a month of downtime we’re back and ready to go strong for 2008-2009.
This will be our first of many posts as we work towards developing our vision for a Semantic Web-enabled Online & Mobile Video experience.
Once we’re fully setup and running smoothly, some of the types of posts you can expect to see here include:
- WEEKLY UPDATES from the development team on the status of the BC$ Recommendation System Project
- Reports & Report Summaries on the Mobile Industry with a focus on East Asia (Japan, South Korea & China)
- Reviews on some relevant Third-Party Products, Services, Software and Electronics that members of our development team have tested
Also, be sure to stay tuned for some Unique Content produced exclusively for BC$ MobileTV.
e-activists’ petitions
e-activists.org has released a beta of its excellent new “Petitions” feature. Could potentially be useful once its finished, if you want to run petitions on your site but don’t feel like building the functionality from scratch.
Check out the full set of services offered by e-activists and support their efforts in humanitarian and fundraising work, this is definitely a great initiative that we expect to take off in the near future.
To add the petitions functionality, just include the following script on your website or blog:
Right now, you will be given the latest petition at e-activists:
However, it will truly be useful when you can create & manage your own petitions… and apparently this feature is coming in the near future.
Re-cap: The Amazon Start-up Challenge (2007)
Old news now, but worth mentioning
Last month, the Amazon Start-up Challenge took place with a great deal of hype and excitement, and some stiff competition. Apart from being the first ever “Web Services-user-voted” contest, it was also the first contest in which the winner would receive as much as $100,000 (half in cash, half in Amazon Web Services account credit).
Why did I get LumLum’s iTunes list?!?
Wow… Apple… seriously. First they make yet another round of mandatory “security” updates. THEN, when I finally agree to make their stupid iTunes updates I lose my list and everything and end up with some random person’s? It’s not even in English… I mean, seriously for shame Apple, for shame…
Now, although I agree that there are tons of potential security holes in iTunes, this was obviously a thinly veiled cover-up for their new additions to enable the support of Movie Rentals in the iTunes interface. Luckily, I know this already though, because Apple finds it tough to keep a secret and all three of my main email inboxes were hit with notifications of the new Movies feature the day before the updates.
Well, I wish them luck, but I think they are going the absolute wrong way with these online Movie rentals. They should instead focus on finding interesting and innovative ways of maintaining and growing their existing dominance in Music downloads. How about using your power in this area to build a user experience that drives music sales back up again? It’s not that unlikely, just look at what innovative companies like last.fm, Napster, Pandora and SprialFrog are doing. The music market is not entirely dead, unless Apple just lets it continue to die its current swift death…
Excellent News… Writers are finally taking their fight (and ideas) to the internet!!!
In Striking Writers Plan Online Channel, Deputy Editor of MediaPost, Tanya Irwin discusses the new Strike TV service which will provide original internet programming with a Strike-themed nature, meant to act as a fundraiser for the on-going lock-out.
Liz Gannes of NewTeeVee reports that: “Aaron Mendelsohn, writer of the Disney film Air Bud and an active WGA member, is captaining the efforts, and says he has gotten a group of “A-list” film and TV writers on the team. He’s also partnering with online community experts from Silicon Valley and raising “north of $30 million” in venture capital, with the idea of launching a company called Virtual Artists later this year.” While $30 Million is a hefty asking price for a net start-up of this nature, we assume that it is necessary in order to secure the A-List Actors which Medelsohn claims are “on-board”. The on-board must clearly be conditional on the pay, and it is not like they will be donating their services. Still, this represents a significant, positive move in the right direction for online video and new media in general. With 60Frames (our coverage), Blowtorch Entertainment (our coverage), and more in tow, Gannes mentions the recent Los Angeles Times piece which talks about another venture from striking writers called Hollywood Disrupted. Either way, the digital content distribution landscape is poised to change forever, and we at BC$ are working tirelessly to ensure that the landscape will be fair and equitable for all parties involved… get ready, because the tide is truly turning in the entertainment business!BC$ = Behavior, Content, Money
The goal of the BC$ project is to raise awareness and make changes with respect to the three pillars of information freedom - Behavior (pursuit of interests and passions), Content (sharing/exchanging ideas in various formats), Money (fairness and accessibility) - bringing to light the fact that:
1. We regularly hand over our browser histories, search histories and daily online activities to companies that want our money, or, to benefit from our use of their services with lucrative ad deals or sales of personal information.
2. We create and/or consume interesting content on their services, but we aren't adequately rewarded for our creative efforts or loyalty.
3. We pay money to be connected online (and possibly also over mobile), yet we lose both time and money by allowing companies to market to us with unsolicited advertisements, irrelevant product offers and unfairly structured service pricing plans.