Hulu, a place you can keep up with all your favorite movies and TV shows online, is apparently for sale. Former News Corp?president Peter Chernin has offered $500 million for the social streaming service.
Since March, Hulu’s owners, News Corporation and Walt Disney, have contemplated merging.?If the merge happened, where would that leave Hulu? Enter Peter Chernin, a former Hulu board member. He left the social medium in 2009 to form his own group, which has holdings in film, TV, online radio and high tech companies. So on paper, that would make him a great candidate.?He’s??someone who has?been with the medium and continues?to be active in media. Of course,?nobody’s saying anything: not Hulu, not Disney, not Mr. Chernin’s people.
It always irks and scares me when big media corporations ‘merge’ like what’s trying to happen here. Keep in mind Hulu made $700 million last year. I guess $700 million dollars isn’t enough for them. When these mergers happen, small independent media are bullied and squeezed out even more than they already are. However, if Chernin does buy it out, hopefully he won’t tighten the grip on what can and can’t be seen on this social medium. That’s my other fear. Look at what happened to news when corporate America put it’s grip on that: we know more about?Justin Beiber ?than we do about Syria. Do you think this potential deal is good or bad for Hulu and for social media at large?
Two days ago, I reported on a little known machine named Dynabook. That got me thinking about other little known technological breakthroughs, or maybe you do know. Anyway, here we go:
10. Dynabook: This device, thought of in the early 1970s, was to have been the first hand held computer device. In some ways, it paved the way for devices we enjoy today. Just don’t tell Alan Kay that.
9. DynaTAC Phone: In 1973, Martin Cooper made the very first cell phone call to Bell Labs, also trying to build a cell phone. Need I say more.
8. The First Floppy Disk: Most people?under 21 don’t know what a floppy disk is. In 1970, IBM came up with a 100KB disk to store, hold and trade data. As the decades continued, floppy disk got smaller and smaller and magically turned into hard drives.
7. The First Hard Drive : Can you believe the hard drive was invented before the floppy disk was? In 1956, IBM invents the RAMAC 305,?for $10,000. It was over the size of a refrigerator and held 5MB of data.
6. The First Video Game Console: Before Xbox, Playstation, Nintendo, even Atari, there was Magnavox Odyssey. In the 1970s, this console sold 330,000 units and had 27 different games to choose from.
5. Telstar: Telstar is the first communication satellite, launched in 1962. That year, President John F. Kennedy had a press conference that can be seen in Europe. If there was no Telstar, there would be no Skype.
4. First?Windows System: In 1983, Bill Gates reveled an operating?system that was guaranteed to?create a multitasking environment.?And?30 years later…
3. World’s First MP3 Player: In 1998, the Saehan’s MPMan sold in Asia. A few months later, the Eiger Labs MPMan sold in the US. Let the battle with record companies and recording artist begin! And begin they did!
2. The First PC: It wasn’t Apple, IBM, Hewlett Packard, Commodore, or Xerox. It wasn’t invented in the 1970s. It was the Berkeley Enterprises Simon, in the 1950s! It was the first take home computer, to be used as a think tank. It only sold 400 machines during that decade, but paved the way for future home computers.
1. Internet: Believe it or not, it didn’t come out in the 1990s. As early as the 1960s, programming and linking between computer systems in existence were coming together. Now, we can’t picture life without the Internet.
Surely you have written, said or recorded things as a teenager you later regretted. There was that diary or that yearbook?you dug up. There was that experiment where you tied rockets to yourself?trying to fly. Oh, then there was the gangsta rap song you recorded. Better not let your spouse/significant other hear that one. Now we may have?Facebook founder Mark Zuckerburg’s adolescence playing out.
Word on the web is there’s an Angelfire page, created back in 1999, that belongs to Mark Zuckerburg.?Assuming this page?was really his:?Even at 15, he shows his online smarts. On one page, he created this Java app called ‘The Web’. Mark’s app drew people together and connected people all over the Internet. Sounds a lot like Facebook today, doesn’t it? Through a favorite list page, we learned of his teen personality. His favorite food was quesadillas. He must have been a pro wrestling fan. He says the best quote is ‘Suck It’, a popular saying by the great WWE?clique of that time, D-Generation X. I’m guessing he was an Eminem fan. On the about me page, he jokes his name is Slim Shady.
You know, it’s fun to see how big time celebrities and business people start out. One thing I love to see on You Tube is celebrities on commercials before they make it big. Here we get to see one of the greatest minds of our time?in development. I mean, he even draws on Angelfire?and writing?with different colors. So are these things embarrassing? Maybe so. Is this really young Zuckerburg’s page? I’ll let you decide.
April 1st is April Fools Day. Geeks and social media nuts are getting their pranks in order. Even major companies, like Google, are getting in the fun.
In fact, no company does April Fools like Google. Did you fall for the Google Nose/smell o’ vision? I hear a celebrity chef long for this day, and I actually thought it came true! That was an April fool on me. Do you like blue mail? Google has it. Your menu is blue. The characters and buttons?are blue. You may even get a visit from the Blue Man Group; they put on a great show by the way. Do you ever wish your smartphone was an ATM, printing money at your every beckon call? Google has a prank for that too.
Google isn’t the only one getting into the April Fools spirit. Nokia has the yellow touch screen microwave. Samsung has the eco-tree. Share your smart trees with loved ones for free. It even comes with an evolution kit. Go to Ikea and get the flat lawnmower. Log onto Think Geek and get your kid some 3-D Play dough. While you’re at it, does anybody have a bacon stretcher I can use?
What’s your April Fools prank? Is it the laptop that will print out money? Is it the iPod that will?spray you cologne. Or, play a prank on someone and put it on You Tube. So, what’s your prank going to be?
Have you ever made a You Tube video? How many hits does it have? How many subscribers do you have? In the earlier days of this social medium, they had an ‘Original Channel’ funding initiative. Hundreds of millions of dollars, much of it given to major media companies, were distributed to launch their own channels.
The first lesson is: This isn’t TV. Many channels, like Crash Course and SciShow, tried going that route, putting in lots of camera work, big sets and a large cast. Their results?backfired, and it could take years for their creators to earn that money back. The best channels, like SouceFed, were low budgeted, realistic, and took only a small number of people to produce.
Other lessons: You don’t need a lot of money to have a good You Tube video or channel. You don’t need a lot of good looking people either. Remember the top 10 video list I posted a couple of weeks ago? Most of these men and women can hardly pass as supermodels. But they said or did something that connected with Joe and Jane; that’s why they got so many hits. I think people are fed up with Wall St., Washington and Hollywood these days. So of course they’re going to gravitate to people who are closer to them. Which would you rather see: the rich get richer, the?pretty?get prettier, more?political fighting?or a homeless man who performs a kind deed get housing?
Now, You Tube advertisers are using much smaller grants, and those go to people who have experience making online videos. So it looks like they’re getting it. But are the video producers? Personally, I say start doing them yourself. With 2010s technology, it’s easier and cheaper to make an online video than ever before. If it’s good enough, it will get the attention it deserves and the money and ads will come. Will I be seeing your video one day?
On April 4, a press conference sponsored by Facebook will reveal it’s ‘home on Android’. On this day, the Facebook home screen will be shown off on an HTC handset, on a Droid system, with Facebook in control. Picture another version of Amazon Kindle.
They’re making all the right promises, like becoming closer to your friends. It will reduce the time it takes to make posts and respond to them, they say. You can use the Facebook phone to invite someone over for drinks, dinner or coffee if they are near you. And since Facebook is your home screen, as soon as you turn the phone on, you’ll be immersed in your Facebook world. Okay, this can be a great way for FB to attract advertisers and to help HTC handset, whose numbers aren’t doing that well. However…
Don’t you get enough Facebook already? It’s easy to get on your desktop, laptop or notebook. Just?about every device from the iPod Touch to the Ice Cream Sandwich offers a Facebook app. Yeah, you can let your friends know where you are, but can’t texting do that? Plus,?if I had a phone that directly?goes to my FB page, I’d probably never get anything done. I’d be on my home page, and everybody else’s, almost 24 hours a day, which is probably what?they want. So yes, I can see a few Facebook addicts?buying this device, as well as those who just have to buy into the latest trend every time they come?out. I like to call them sheeple.?Who wants a Facebook phone? Not I.
