• Gavin O'Malley, Aug 30, 2010, 1:16 PM
  • Stop Me If You've heard This One Before: YouTube Readies On-Demand Service Fast Company et al. In a move that could threaten a cross-section of industries, Google is reportedly in advanced talks with top movie studios to launch a YouTube-based pay-per-view movie rental service.

    "Google's YouTube video site is in negotiations with Hollywood's leading movie studios to launch a global pay-per-view video service by the end of 2010, putting it head-to-head with Apple in the race to dominate the digital distribution of film and television content," reports the Financial Times, citing unnamed sources.

    "YouTube is the dominant online destination for user-generated content," writes MediaBeat. "But the Google division wants to turn it into an international on-demand movie service in an effort to head off Apple in the digital distribution of film and TV shows."

    "This could be the video service's big break more than four years after being acquired by Google," suggests ReadWriteWeb. "The combined power of YouTube's popularity and Google's dominance in search technology could create a new revenue model to replace falling DVD sales."

    Yet, as Fast Company notes: "It's not the first time we've heard this rumor, of course -- it seems to pop up every few months or so."

    What's more, "YouTube has long been expected to get into the video-on-demand business, especially since Google removed video content purchases from its (now-defunct) Google Video service at the end of 2007," writes CNet.

    Still, "What's tricky about this service compared to all other digital movie distribution services (Apple's iTunes, Netflix) is that there isn't currently an officially supported means to get YouTube videos onto your TV," Fast Company adds. Read the whole story...
  • Report: Cisco Bids For Skype TechCrunch Skype might not get a chance to complete its IPO if Cisco has anything to say about it. The tech giant, which has been on a extended acquisition spree, has made an offer to buy the VoIP service, reports TechCrunch, citing one of its "more reliable sources." No doubt, "This would be one very big acquisition," notes TechCrunch.

    "Skype insiders are hoping for an out of the gate valuation of $5 billion or so, we've heard. Presumably Cisco would have to bidding in that range to make it interesting." According to TechCrunch, Google was rumored to be kicking Skype's tires, but antitrust concerns likely dissuaded the search giant from making a formal offer. If the acquisition goes through, it would mark Cisco's fouth this year. Just last week buying online video content manager ExtendMedia for an undisclosed sum. In May, meanwhile, it bought up optical-networking company CoreOptics and product design consulting firm Moto Development Group. Read the whole story...
  • Meet The Web TV Wranglers Bits Blog As the Web TV landscape continues to take shape, a handful of Web sites are positioning themselves as one-stop shops for finding the best programming across the digital ether. A startup named SideReel is "trying to get an edge by not only offering links to legitimate sources of shows, like network sites, but also letting users share links to sites where illegal copies are available for instant viewing," writes The New York Times' Bits blog.

    SideReel visitors can search for the latest episode of a show like "The Office" or "Entourage" and then be directed to all of the various sites where those episodes can be viewed. Based in San Francisco, the start-up has so far raised $1.5 million from angel investors, and lists around 17,000 shows -- or half a million episodes, Bits reports. According to a recent survey of 3,000 users, SideReel found that 90% of them who watch television on a laptop don't bother plugging it into their television sets. Read the whole story...
  • 'Creepy' Ad Retargeting Revisited The New York Times The New York Times takes look at "personalized retargeting" -- or the practice of delivering ads to consumers, which feature specific products they've recently viewed online. While the technique -- and the technology that facilitates it -- has been around for years, The Times suggests that its mass-marketization by Google and Microsoft has many consumers and industry watchdogs feeling uneasy.

    "It is a pretty clever marketing tool," a mother of two from Montreal tells The Times. "But it's a little creepy, especially if you don't know what's going on." Still, that hasn't stopped retailers from Zappos to Diapers.com from employing the technique. According to The Times makes clear, retargeting relies on a form of online tracking that has been around for years and is "not particularly intrusive." Read the whole story...
  • Face-Recognition Startup Refocuses On Mobile ReadWriteWeb At least for the moment, Swedish-based facial recognition startup Polar Rose is getting out of the consumer products business. Who cares? In the short term, countless Flickr users who've come to rely on the company's technology to ID friends, family, and other people of interest in theirs' and others' photos. Long term, Polar Rose's decision to refocus its efforts on research and the enterprise market could hasten the birth of the next great mobile app.

    As ReadWriteWeb explains, Polar Rose has been working with Swedish software and design company The Astonishing Tribe to create an "augmented reality concept application," which can recognize people through a mobile phone's camera in real-time. We can think of few companies (one with the word "face" in its name) that might like to get their hands on such technology. Read the whole story...
  • Web Puts Oxford Dictionary On Deathwatch The Washington Post In what ABC's Nightline would call "A sign of the times," the Oxford English Dictionary could be heading for extinction. Yes, as The Washington Post reports, the obvious culprit is the Web, which Oxford University Press now says has made the future of the printed dictionary "uncertain."

    The digital version of the Oxford English Dictionary now gets 2 million hits a month from subscribers, who pay $295 a year for the service in the U.S., according to WaPo. By contrast, the current printed edition -- a 20-volume, 750-pound ($1,165) set published in 1989 -- has sold just 30,000 sets. "The print dictionary market is just disappearing. It is falling away by tens of percent a year," Nigel Portwood, chief executive of Oxford University Press, told The Sunday Times in an interview. Read the whole story...