As I covered in the Blog Herald Podcast earlier this weekend, NBC and Apple have found themselves in a battle royale over NBC’s participation in iTunes.
In short, NBC Universal has ‘frakked itself’ to use a term from their hit show Battlestar Galactica. Apple has called their bluff and informed NBC that they will no longer carry any new material from this fall’s lineup of television shows.
Now I find all of this personally disappointing because I’m a huge Battlestar fan - but I’m not really sure that NBC knows that it’s doing. The mobile video war has been fought for now - and the combination of iPods with iTunes have won that battle. NBC is involved in the new Hulu content distribution system - but that’s proprietary and doesn’t sync with the iPod as far as I can tell.
What’s NBC thinking?
DoshDosh featured an article earlier this week on Ashley, a teenager & high school dropout from Detroit, who is making $70,000 a month selling MySpace layouts on her website WhateverLife:
Ashley is evidence of the meritocracy on the Internet that allows even companies run by neophyte entrepreneurs to compete, regardless of funding, location, size, or experience–and she’s a reminder that ingenuity is ageless.
She has taken in more than $1 million, thanks to a now-familiar Web-friendly business model. Her MySpace page layouts are available for the bargain price of…nothing. They’re free for the taking. Her only significant source of revenue so far is advertising.
You can read the original FastCompany feature article as well.
While I’ve always admired the 9rules logo and their overall design - it seems like the leaf has permeated the Web 2.0 design world. Smashing Magazine has a look at the trend of leafy logos from around the Web 2.0 world.
There’s certainly nothing wrong with using a leaf as a part of a logo - 9rules I believe was one of the first.. but what’s with the trend of using the leaf on all of these other logos?
One would think that someone could come up with a unique idea…
We’ve posted edition 2007.3 of The Blog Herald Podcast over at The Blog Herald wherein we discuss blog comments, our acquisition of Telegraphik, and a little about NBC and Vivendi leaving the iTunes store.
We’re pleased to announce that Telegraphik has been acquired by Bryghtpath LLC, a new media company based near Minneapolis, Minnesota.
Telegraphik was launched by David Krug in May 2007 and quickly became a well known online property. Whether it was discussing whether or not bloggers needed a union or looking at the latest star coming off of Youtube, Telegraphik was right in the middle of it.
Bryghtpath LLC might be a new name to some of you - but you know some of our players. Matt Craven, one of our co-founders, is the former editor of The Blog Herald, along with other key blogs such as Blog Network Watch, and BloggerJobs. Matt is also the host of The Blog Herald Podcast, a weekly tech podcast.
We’re looking forward to continuing along the same path with Telegraphik - with news and commentary that matters.
You can read the official release from Bryghtpath as well.
WordPress.com got a facelift the last few days and I didn’t even notice it. I hardly ever login to my WordPress.com blog but happened upon it late this evening. It appears WordPress.com want’s to become more of a newsy site utilizing user generated content from WordPress.com hosted blogs.
According to Automattic
Have you seen the WordPress.com front page lately? Everyone gets to see the updated design but English readers get a special treat: News Departments. Learn how we decide which posts to feature and how you can get your link and your pretty face on the front page.
According to Editor and Publisher Freakonoics has a new home and that’s the NYTimes.
The NYTimes.com announced today that it is now the exclusive host of the popular Freakonomics blog.
The deal will bring best-selling Freakonomics authors Stephen J. Dubner and Steven D. Levitt to the online Opinion section of The Times. Melissa Lafsky, previously of The Huffington Post, is the blog’s newly appointed editor.
The blog will also feature original video clips, contests, user-generated content and links to content from around the Web.
