valleylist(sm) end of summer v120 r.1
high tech products companies consumers
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new – - – - > youtube videos [completed]
NEWS
+ mobile users still wary of being found survey says
+ emmy awards go digital with twitter facebook and youtube
+ intel buys wireless chip tech for mobile phone
+ streaming netflix for iphone or ipod touch
INTERACTIVE TELEVISION BY SPECIAL REQUEST. email from steve jobs. a surprise. ipad is in the mail. new iphone 4g yet to arrive. 17 inch laptop yet to be ordered. lots of problems. where’s my new hardware? apple’s problem these days?
what’s the best app?
try apple facetime video phone.
what’s apple doing in the television business anyway?
steve jobs email is a special request. apple wants “valleylist” to find out what happened to interactive television.
philo t farnsworh inventor of television and san francisco native is the “valleylist” avatar this week.
top 10 candidates for what was supposed to end up interactive television
[vs. internet television]
1.apple tv - buy and rent movies right from your tv enjoy youtube videos hd television shows music and podcasts
2.google tv - – combine the television you know and love with the freedom and power of the Internet
3.aol tv - – what’s new on television episode guides series news the latest video clips popular television series online
4.youtube - – discover watch upload and share videos
5.warner cable - – time warner cable offers digital cable television high-speed online and digital phone services across the nation
6.cox cable – - entertainment and broadband services pioneering bundled television Internet and telephone services together
7.san francisco chronicle – - local news information weather traffic classifieds sports scores real estate jobs cars food travel and entertainment
8.the new york times - – newspapers and web sites enhancing society by creating collecting and distributing high-quality news information and entertainment
9.sony - – electronics games music movies
10.yahoo! tv - – guide to tv online from show listings and episode guides to the latest photos clips news recaps and cast yet yahoo intel plan for web content on television flounders as usual
it should have been a remarkably interactive future. instead it’s overpriced everything and technology that’s too time consuming to consume.
interactive vs. internet television. these days people watch a lot of television on the internet. if it’s not youtube it’s content from download companies like itunes amazon blockbuster netflix hulu vimeo or any of the other leading online content services. apple is so certain they don’t need cd’s delivered through the mail like netflix any more they have designed the ipad without a dvd drive. youtube is great because it is your videos as well as commercials and television excerpts. all the other services focuses on movies delivered via the internet. then there’s streaming video which allows everybody to watch real television programs from their local television stations.
where’s the internet only television station
entrepreneurs got as far as new programming just for internet viewers without much success. is youtube the mtv of the internet generation?
new youtube videos worth mentioning are zhang huan’s three heads six arms marcel duchamp ghandi and david letterman apple ipad top ten list. youtube has many immitators and no real competitors. everybody from barackobama to crosby stills and nash need their own youtube channel. interactive television these days just displays content from twitter or facebook and displays internet content on the screen. no real live interaction with the television viewing audience. mtv tried pulling up the latest internet chat or email messages to add interactivity and it didn’t get a lot of mileage. so it’s television with a few internet moments thrown in.live talk shows like regis and kelly have been doing live caller interaction for years. shop-at-home is a version of interactive television where the catalogue is on television and home viewers call and order from the television screen. barry diller and the home shopping network made a lot of money specializing in jewelry and fashion. live shows like good morning america and regis and kelly like a lot of audience participation. it’s very difficult for television hosts to interact with everybody in the home viewing audience. yet that was the objective of interactive television at qube warner cable.”valleylist” will be doing a live interactive project with regis and kelly. will it be interactive or internet television. probably twitter television.
for the complete story of interactive television try the museum of broadcast communications
speaking of archaic. i worked at many of these companies. the infamous warner cable qube market trial found that programming falls to the way side because of a lack of interest from the viewing audience. sony interactive video disc became an entire videogame crazed generation of fun and folly. kpix television san francisco introduced me to many famous talk show hosts like ron lorenzen creator people are talking because of an experimental teletext trial only to find yet again audience response is the big problem. experimental projects at san francisco state university were very successful because the project was promoted continuously on the universities cable channel. “do you want to know a secret” involved live call in with a videotext display of viewers private stories.it all ended up a long way off from lorenzen’s mega success “people are talking”.
the long now foundation competes with universities like stanford mit rutgers and carnegie-mellon for future scenario projects. toss in stanford research institute and the rand corporation and your have the really important contributors to the world’s future. government organizations are always buying future planning scenarios from these and a few other specialized institutions.
bush’s social reengineering project remains a joke.
longnow wants to instruct people on dealing with the future. it’s a difficult concept other than the next year’s budget or the 5 – 10 strategic planning project. the whole earth catalogue was a product that enabled an entire new lifestyle for the hippie generation. a little too far out for most of us. the success of the merry pranksters and their hippie movement comes from a lot of constructive effort to achieve an impact on the real world. it’s a “plus” strategy. additive in nature. longnow needs a new product like the whole earth catalogue to facilitate the next stage growth.
brand seems stuck in the 80′s like everybody else. it’s no nukes and let’s fly to outer space. there’s a need to come up with something other than the obvious decay of the end of the 20th century depicted in the bonfire of the vanities. here are some real problems. for example the next longnow seminar is richard rhodes “twilight of the bombs”. previous seminars were martin rees “life’s future in the cosmos” jesse schell “visions of the gamepocalypse” frank gavin “five ways to use history well”.
otherwise go see a good movie like 2012 or contact the government planning office or the stanford school of engineering – imagine the future project or the m.i.t. future of nuclear power project and find out what the futurists are telling people.
outside of science fiction and great thinkers like stewart brand or alvin toffler there’s not a lot of reliable information for the future. the obvious example is george bush trying to come up with a few new scenarios for the future and ending up with the “duo-opoly” and endless war in the middle east. bush-cheney really needed futurists and instead ended up with con men interested only in making themselves rich. it was the era of tom ridge and the creation of homeland security in response to the attack on new york city. some say ridge and his co-hort scooter libbey were in on the terrible incident. or at least had inside information on the attack. then get rich. how very bush-cheney.
not too different from my cmu chums are other former classmates that made it to washington. these include military school chums like john mowen now a lobbiest for gang and hood constiuencies based in san jose. bill wyman promoter of a new “hoax” to put everybody on a “schedule” based on innocent looking drugs in the food [also called food additives]. wyman is a big pal of tom ridge and the survivalist mentality. jerry ruglowski the proponent of a “hood” based economy that expostulates that if the “hood” shows up then do what they tell you to do. chuck ciranni the lucky one who dropped out of the lobbiest-or-bust project early and is living a normal life somewhere in the pennsylvania mountains. all these are grade school pals from saint joseph’s military academy. also known as remedial training for troubled teens. i came out ok. lots of other guys ended up with law enforcement for some reason. little kids wearing little uniforms and living a military lifestyle. it was a weird experience. i only got as far a being a young lieutenant before graduating with honors. also involved and never made it to lieutenant vince defelice john deleonardo brian boswell and scotty oliver. ralph roberto shows up all the time in san francisco while louis castagnero says stay away from the old school gang. too involved with police work.
in the meantime former speaker willie brown now retired wishes the worst things in the world on me. in fact he publicly stated he wished my entire family dead. teach people a lesson about life. willie is joined by barbara reed and her biggest fan san jose mayor chuck reed and former phone company weirdos john barnette dave flores ted west and bill long in an endless battle to keep me “in” and rip me off. even if it means going back to jail. they all line up with willie because in fact it’s a willie brown kind of crime. i will vaporize you. i will make you disappear. no reason.
my clever reply is that i should actually be hiding out in new york just like the rest of the “bug family”.
locally the big push is to end to former sfpd chief earl “fajitagate” sander’s project to keep me “in” until he get’s what he wants. the police claim it’s a “special project”.
further work on the legal front to liberate “valleylist” is put a definitive end to former sfpd chief heather ”something ugly” fong’s campaign to get away with her crime.
george bush and dick cheney really lost control of their project. i think it ended up in the hands of a “group of people”. most likely the gang of 8 and their endless quest to be the “hood of the century” and to try to fit everybody into one world-wide codo. put somebody just out of jail in charge. go “naive”. send over a thousand people out at the same time there to confuse people.
the “gang” needs to reign supreme. the con. someday it’ll be legal. no it won’t.
conclusion. interactive television is not happening because warner cable cox cable and other big cable companies dropped the ball. my experience is that there is an enormous marketing problem finding ways to get viewers to participate. the qube experiment ended up going professional sports instead of interactive programming.
warner went mtv. merged with time inc. bought aol. then lost their shirts.
interactive television is probably the next big thing after apple finishes polishing off the hardware business. who needs real software anyway.
yet again the latest in interactivity is email.
greg mckenna
publisher
valleylist
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