archiving the day

TV is still a viable medium for entertainment and in fact has become more popular than ever. It makes sense when you think about the spread of DVRs. Who wouldn’t want to watch more TV on demand? I think in the very near future with the mass distribution of IPtv we’re not going to be able to tell the difference between online video and TV consumption anymore.

From the article:

So video viewing on one medium can potentially cut into total viewing on another. But it has not happened yet in the aggregate, since overall viewing time keeps going up—as does the number of viewers. The number of TV and online video viewers in the US is also predicted to rise through 2012, when more than 300 million will watch TV and 190 million will watch online video.

The article pretty much speaks for itself. But three things that make me nervous about this merger.

1. The two companies are conspiring to give us a “better way” to advertise online, but that way entails that very few people will be in control of the pricing for 90% of online search advertising. How can this be legal? By its very nature its anti-competitive even if they swear they’re going to let the market determine the prices.

2. I started feeling weird when I was finding sources and articles for this post because I used Google exclusively. I like Google as much as anyone else but its never good when we don’t have choices and that’s our future if trends hold. I’ve seen videos of East Berlin in the 70’s and it didn’t seem like something I’d be into.

3. I’m most worried about the fact that no one in the advertising industry seems to understand or care that this is happening. We should have lobbyists standing arm in arm with the folks from Microsoft to stop this from occuring.

Providing further proof that Google is slowly taking over the world and that Radiohead is a kind of artist 2.0, the two have partnered to release Radioheads new music video.

From a Washington Post article:

“It’s definitely not your average video considering that there were no cameras or lights used: it’s all data. The video uses real time 3D recording, utilizing structured light and laser-enhanced scanners. Google is hosting the interactive video application at code.google.com and providing an iGoogle gadget for the video and application.”

The technology allows for fans to re-mix the video from the site provided by Google. The LIDAR data is the same technology google uses to scale its street maps. So, same type of data radically cooler use.

So my question is what does partnering with one of the biggest corporations in the world do for Radiohead’s reputation? I for one think it was a great idea and salute our new leaders in their quest for world domination.

Here’s the vid:

VentureBeat has an article singing the praises of AdMob which is the largest mobile media buying/planning agency (as far as I can tell). The article expounds on the current size of the mobile advertising market and goes on to show a graph (so it has to be true) predicting the future growth of the market.

There’s one problem with the premise of the article/the graph/ and Admob’s business model aside from the fact that no one is paying any attention to mobile ads… The problem is that the mobile web is a stopgap doomed to go the way of the teletype machine. Its not that people won’t be accessing the web via mobile phones (or whatever we end up calling the all in one devices we carry). Its that we’ll be able to get the real web like the one you use on a computer.

Nowhere in the article does the author really address the issue of a medium that is constantly changing. The truth is no one knows what’s really going to happen but to me it seems negligent to start putting wild predictions about billion dollar growth out there for real investors to see.  I looked to see if Admob addresses the question on their site and oddly enough Admob’s website isn’t very good and I found nothing nodding to the presence of the real web on the most popular new phone on the market. But they aren’t at fault here for the shortsightedness of the headline. AdMob isn’t a problem and in fact is a great solution for companies that want to advertise on the mobile web they’ll have to innovate with their medium.

Very nice visualization makes it easy to see just how much money is being spent by the federal government. Also shows the percent change from last year. A couple of interesting areas:

1. Public Broadcasting -55%

2. National Endowment for the Arts -12%

3. FEMA -15% (really?)

4. Joint Strike Fighter +55%