BrandBrains

• Nuance - Dragon AudioMining - Technology
• Cellphone Carriers Let Others Sell Mobile Content to Users - WSJ.com
  (tags: verizon mlb thumbplay cingular mobizzo dada.net)
• Electronic Arts Sees Increase In Revenue From ‘Dynamic’ Ads
  “Electronic Arts Inc. expects to see a big boost during the holidays from in-game advertising in the latest version of its Need for Speed racing game, in a positive sign for a potentially significant new source of revenue for the games business.”
  (tags: ea electronicarts advertising gaming digitalmedia)
• Yahoo Quietly Launches Mobile Social-Networking Service
  “…Yahoo plans to market Mixd on a handful of college campuses across the nation. The strategy focuses on Yahoo’s target audience, so-called Generation Yers who are the biggest users of their mobile phones’ data services.”
  (tags: yahoo mobile socialnetworking mixd geny)
• NBC is mulling broadcasting Friday night rehearsal sessions of “Saturday Night Live” on the Internet.
  (tags: nbc snl saturdaynightlive digitalmedia video streamingmedia)
• Sling Media hires former MTV digital chiefs
  “The maker of Slingbox, a set-top box that lets viewers watch cable television on laptops and advanced cellphones, has hired former chief digital officer at MTV Networks Jason Hirschorn, and former vice president of MTV digital media Ben White…”
  (tags: slingmedia slingbox jasonhirschorn benwhite mtv video digitalmedia)
• A Small Orange - Web Hosting, Software and more!
  (tags: webhosting asmallorange hosting)

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BuzzFeed is following a trend that they’re referring to as “Photoshopped Images of Non-Existent Apple Products.” There are some interesting (and ridiculous) product designs, but the round-up of articles and photos is worth checking out.

Technorati Tags: Apple, Creativity, iPhone, iPod, Photoshop, Technology

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I received a response today to my recent support requests and blog posts about Media Temple:

Dear John,

Our records indicate that you recently opened up a support request related to an open incident, wide-spread problem, or known issue relating to (mt) Media Temple’s new (gs) Grid-Server system. We want to apologize for the inconveniences this may have caused you.

We are compensating you 2 months of service as a concession for the troubles we may have caused you and your site. No action is required on your part. In the next 24 hours this will appear in your account in the form of a credit.

We will be announcing GRID MASTER RELEASE (v.1.1), and version upgrade which fixed hundreds of bugs and will dramatically improve your overall experience with this system.

(mt) Media Temple wishes to thank you sincerely for your patience during the course of these incidents. We believe the (gs) Grid-Server is an amazing system with new technology that has only begun to reach its real potential. Please look forward to announcements in the next few days relating to our new master release.

Thank you again.

Best Regards,

(mt) Media Temple
Hosting Operations

This is definitely good customer service on their part. Of course, free or not, I’ll have to see how the service holds up over the next two months. If I continue to be unsatisfied, I’ll vote with my feet.

Nonetheless, I appreciate the gesture and respect their focus on the customer.

Technorati Tags: Blogging, Blogs, Communication, Customer Experience, Customer Relations, Customer Relationship Management, Digital Media, Marketing, Media Temple, On Digital Media, Technology, Web Hosting

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• Zune Violates Spirit of Creative Commons Licenses
  (tags: zune creativecommons music video)
• Walmart offers innovative movie download option
  “For $1.97 more, you can download a digital version of that movie compatible with portable devices. For $2.97, you can buy a higher quality version, suitable for PCs. Or you can get both add-ons for $3.97.”
  (tags: walmart video dvd downloads copyright fairuse dmca)
• Walmart Video Download Follow-Up
  (tags: walmart video dvd downloads)
• After partnering with YouTube, Verizon Wireless adds Revver to stable of user-generated videos
  
  (tags: revver verizonwireless video vcast)

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My primary email address was partially crippled today. It was my fault: I tweaked the settings on my spam filter which resulted in a bunch of false positives, which in turn resulted in a bunch of bounced inbound mail.

To top it off, my web host was down. Again. So, reaching me via my web sites wouldn’t work either. What ultimately worked? SMS. People were able to reach me by texting me on my cell phone to tell me that my server was bouncing mail.

Lots of people ask me why I need so many bits of technology to stay connected. (cell phone, one-number service, office phone, home office phone, SMS, email, skype, aim, gizmo…) Today’s experience was the perfect answer to that question.

Now, if Media Temple can just get their act together and keep my web sites up, I’d be a happy camper.

Technorati Tags: Blogs, Cell Phones, Computers, Email, Gadgets, Gizmo Project, Media Temple, Skype, SMS, Technology, Texting, Treo 700p, Web Hosting

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• How To Setup Development Domains On OS X
  (tags: apple mac osx development apache)
• ‘No iPod Movie Rips’ says Library of Congress
  “You’d imagine, wouldn’t you, that you should be allowed to transfer material you own so long as you make sure that multiple copies would never be played simultaneously. But no. The RIAA strenuously disagrees.”
  (tags: ipod digitalmedia riaa cd dvd digitalaudio digitalvideo portablemedia)
• MySpace Store Could Make Billions?
  (tags: myspace ecommerce)
• eBags Firewall Laptop Brief > Non-Wheeled Computer Cases > Computer - eBags
  (tags: laptopbags ebags)
• Eyeglasses Stores are for Suckers
  (tags: eyeglasses ecommerce)
• Parent Hacks: Real-world parenting tips from real parents
  (tags: parenting kids children)
• Building a Mac Home Media Center, Part 1: How To Get iTV Capabilities Today, For Less
  (tags: mediacenter mac itv)
• Geek to Live: Take better cameraphone photos
  (tags: cameraphone photos)
• Belkin : CushTop
  “The CushTop provides increased padded comfort when using your laptop on your couch, bed or floor. A convenient storage pocket keeps your power adapter and mouse tucked away. By flipping its platform over, the CushTop can accommodate small or large laptop
  (tags: laptops gadgets)
• Musicovery : interactive webRadio
  (tags: music widgets)
• Free wifi airports
  (tags: wifi travel businesstravel airports)
• Quotiki.com - Search and Share Your Favorite Quotations
  “Quotiki is social quotes site that lets you quickly find and enjoy quotes. As a member of our community, you can start tagging, submitting, rating and collecting quotes.”
  (tags: quotes wiki)
• Diy desktop microphone stand on Flickr
  (tags: podcasting microphones hack diy)
• Search Free Fonts - over 13,000 free fonts available for download
  (tags: fonts design)
• iLike music recommendation community
  (tags: music socialnetworking)
• Hack Attack: Make your Mac’s Speech Recognition work for you
  (tags: mac osx apple speechrecognition)
• Wize product review aggregator
  “Wize sucks in thousands of product reviews from all over the web and calculates what they call a WizeRank (ala Google’s PageRank) based on what folks are saying.”
  (tags: shopping productreviews wize)
• Zamzar - Free online file conversion
  (tags: files conversion zamzar)
• Regular Exercise Plays A Consistent And Significant Role In Reducing Fatigue
  “A lot of times when people are fatigued the last thing they want to do is exercise,� said professor Patrick O’Connor, co-director of the UGA exercise psychology laboratory. “But if you’re physically inactive and fatigued, being just a bit more
  (tags: health fitness fatigue exercise)
• TagWorld
  (tags: socialnetworks tagworld music groups blogs video)
• Online video ‘eroding TV viewing’
  “The online video boom is starting to eat into TV viewing time, an ICM survey of 2,070 people for the BBC suggests.”
  (tags: onlinevideo tv television research bbc digitalmedia mobilecontent portablemedia)
• Web site hikes pay for fledgling video directors
  “Back in January 2005, Break.com started paying $50 per video and raised the price to $250 before Sunday’s new hike [to $400], Chief Executive Officer Keith Richman said.”
  (tags: break.com onlinevideo video youtube revver)
• Cera is ‘Good’ for Innertube
  “CBS is drafting TV talent for its broadband channel, Innertube, signing Michael Cera of “Arrested Development” to do a scripted shortform series.”
  (tags: michaelcera innertube cbs cbs.com onlinevideo video)
• HBO considers launching internet TV channel
  “[HBO]…is mulling a new broadband internet channel that would be available to customers who also subscribe to its cable television service.”
  (tags: hbo onlinevideo videoondemand vod iptv)
• Apple’s iTunes may get Beatles songs for iPod listeners
  “Apple … is said to be angling to become the exclusive online music store for the Beatles for a limited window of time.”
  (tags: apple itunes itms ipod beatles)
• Is It News…or Is It an Ad?
  “It’s ethically problematic at the least and potentially quite corrosive of journalistic quality and credibility,” says Bob Steele, the senior ethics faculty member at the Poynter Institute, a journalism school in St. Petersburg, Fla.”
  (tags: journalism advertising contextualadvertising foxnews.com newscorp news)
• Curbly | DIY Design Community
  “Curbly is a Web community for people who love where they live.”
  (tags: diy homeimprovement homedecor)
• Stokke Gravity Chair Leans Back and Forward: We’re Stoked
  (tags: chair furniture gadgets gravitychair stokke homefurnishings homedecor)
• Seeking Executive to Tame the Digital Future
  “WANTED Digital media genius to guide a nimble — or at least we like to think we are — media giant through transformation from analog to digital in all its gory glory.”
  (tags: media digitalmedia)
• Mobile Adult Content Market To Grow To $3.3 Billion By 2011
  (tags: mobilecontent)
• The Fuzzy Math of Big Media’s Digital Revenue
  “Despite Different Counting Methods, It Comes to $500 Million”
  (tags: advertising digitalmedia bigmedia)
• AIM Upgrades - Adds RSS, More Buddies
  “AOL is planning an upgrade to its messenger software that will tell users not only when their friends are online but also what content they are uploading.”
  (tags: aim rss usergeneratedcontent video music audio photos flickr youtube)
• Autocue
  “Podcast Autocue is a script prompter that will turn you into a one-take wonder and help you set your podcast apart from all the rambling, stuttering soliloquies packing folks’ iPods.”
  (tags: autocue scriptprompter podcasting)
• The Eisner American Museum of Advertising & Design
  (tags: advertising design museum eisner milwaukee)
• SlideShare: Share and discover slide shows and presentations
  (tags: slideshare presentations slideshows)

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• OpenLaszlo | the premier open-source platform for rich internet applications
  (tags: ajax openlaszlo ria)
• RTX Dualphone: First PC-less Cordless Skype Phone
  “The base station connects into your ethernet network and your landline, meaning you’re free to take the cordless handset anywhere in your house.”
  (tags: skype phone)
• How To Bypass The Zune’s WiFi Sharing DRM
  (tags: zune drm hack wifi)
• Red LED Name Badge (3.1″x1.6″) - LED-NB-Red
  (tags: led sign)
• ESPN.com Announces Local Podcast Net
  “For the first time, local ESPN radio shows that air on five ESPN owned-and-operated stations in markets such as Pittsburgh and New York will now be available for downloading at the ESPN.com PodCenter…”
  (tags: espn podcasting local media digitalmedia sports)
• GM announces feature-packed key fob - Engadget
  “…it’ll display your car’s tire pressure, odometer reading, and the amount of fuel in the tank, as well as let you change the radio station settings before you step outside, not to mention start the car if you get the remote start package along with it.
  (tags: gm cars gadgets)
• MPAA strikes again, says transporting DVDs to iPods is wrong
  (tags: portablevideo portablemedia ipod mpaa dmca)

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I recently switched from Dreamhost to Media Temple’s “Grid Server” system as I was becoming increasingly frustrated with the poor uptime and performance at Dreamhost.

Media Temple received a positive write up on TechCrunch and the premise behind it seemed sound - a cluster of machines hosting groups of web sites, rather than the traditional shared hosting model. So, after some due diligence, I jumped in with both feet.

After much consternation, I moved both of my Wordpress-based sites to Media Temple and was quite relieved when I got everything working properly and all the DNS changes had propagated.

That said, since switching over about a month ago, I’ve seen more outages on Media Temple than I did on Dreamhost. (Mostly database connectivity issues.)

C’mon guys - are you going to get the Grid Server working right at some point? I really don’t feel like moving my sites again, but I will if I must.

Mosso offers a similar system, but it’s $100/month and targeted toward hosting resellers.

All I want is reliable hosting for my blog and podcast without spending a fortune. (These are side projects, after all…)

Technorati Tags: Blogging, Blogs, Digital Media, Dreamhost, John Federico, Media Temple, Mosso, On Digital Media, Podcast, Podcasting, TechCrunch, Technology, Web Hosting, Wordpress

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• Pew Internet: Podcast Downloading
  Some 12% of internet users say they have downloaded a podcast so they can listen to it or view it at a later time. However, few internet users are downloading podcasts with great frequency; just 1% report downloading a podcast on a typical day.
  (tags: pewinternet podcasting research)

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Jack and “Gramps” set up an electric train set on Thanksgiving. This video was shot on my Treo 700p. The audio was fine in the original video but there’s no audio in the flash video for some reason…

Technorati Tags: Children, Digital Video, Family, Gadgets, Google Video, John Federico, Kids, Online Video, Palm, Parenting, Personal, Treo 700p, Video

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