Comcast XFinity: TV (Almost) Everywhere

There’s been lots of industry buzzz about Time Warner and Comcast’s TV Everywhere plan, which would allow subscribers to fixed-wire cable offerings access to premium content over internet connections, freeing content from the cable box (or cable card). Although it isn’t exactly setting content free on the web, it does seem a positive step in the direction of moving beyond the cable box and cable as the only distribution mechanism for certain kinds of premium content. Users want greater control of what they watch, when they watch it, and where they watch it: TV Everywhere falls short of giving complete control but takes a step in the right direction.

Earlier this month, Comcast launched Fancast XFinity, their branded name for their version of TV Everyehwere. Essentially, XFinity is a distributed authentication system, in which users prove their association to an existing cable subscription, and receive corresponding entitlements to an online video catalog.
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OMMA Global Day One: The Year the Media Died

Highlight of OMMA Global day one for me was Terence Kawaja of GCA Savvian, whose presentation included a verse by verse playing and discussion of his own satirical song “Mad Avenue Blues” (sung to the tune of “American Pie,” with the refrain changed to “The Year the Media Died”).

Like the original, it’s long (9:21 in this case) and as Kawaja said in presenting it, lends itself to the elegiac mode – he wouldn’t quite say media is dead but it’s hard to write a catchy lyric about the era in which large mainstream media companies faced downward revenue pressure:

Interesting video for the luncheon keynote at a conference on online media, marketing, and advertising – but it hits on much of the industry’s current malaise.

The good news, such as it is, is that John Battelle challenged Kawaja to write an upbeat song on the state of the media – send your suggestions to @tkawaja.

See Also: Wall Street Journal coverage of the song

Politics and Poetics of DeCSS

NYU’s Gabriella Coleman’s talk from the Open Video conference on the way in which DVD Jon and DeCSS brought together code and speech in relation to freedom:

Her slides are also available, as are other videos from the conference.

Crowdsourcing, Incentive, and Value

In this video, Jeff Howe, a contributing editor at Wired and the author of Crowdsourcing: Why the Power of the Crowd is Driving the Future of Business, presents during a Berkman Center Luncheon on some of the key issues around the concept, including:

• What motivates the contributors in crowdsourced efforts? Specifically, to what extent are monetary incentives a driver as compared to extra-monetary ones?
• What about “crowdsourced” projects which are not creative or knowlege-worker oriented, but outsourced menial labor?
• How can or should “creatives” respond to the rise of crowdsourced alternatives?

Jeff Howe at Berkman Center on Crowdsourcing

Where do Memes come from? The Meme Factory

I’ve often thought that if I hadn’t left academia to work in web development and consulting, I’d have become a professional analyst of Internet memes. Instead, I get to just be a fan.

A few videos to spark (or reinforce) your interest. First, (via Biella) a two-part series from an event by the Meme Factory, from March 24th of this year, in which they give a ~45 minute overview of internet memes. (Warning: much of the content may be NSFW – remember the Internet is Serious Business).
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