Precisely what kind of market threat or usage shift the iPad represents has been unclear in this first year since its release. With such a bubble of male, tech-obsessed early adopters racing to get those first ten million or so devices, it was hard to extrapolate from early results. After all, users, too, were getting adjusted to the new device. While the iPad has remained a fixture in my nightly media rituals, I also know other mediaholics who just don't use it much anymore. The platform's lack of productivity chops just sent a lot of those techie types rushing back …

I admit it. I am worse than a fair weather sports fan. Just about the only thing that will get me to tune into a live sporting event is a super-high-profile moment of drama that even my mother would understand. Except when it comes to Tiger. Fallen, muddied, sullied and shamed as Tiger Woods may be, even this golf ignoramus recalls that magical Masters over a decade ago when we all watched Woods make that historic, unchallenged march: a 12-stroke win at the 1997 Masters. So when a stray headline caught my eye Sunday afternoon that Tiger was back in …

Long before we get to TV Everywhere, it looks as if we will have to lurch our way through "Some-TV-Somewhere-For-Some-Of-You-Sometime." Case in point, the mostly frustrating WatchESPN iPhone app that dropped last week and is only useful for customers of Time Warner Cable, Bright House Networks, Verizon FiOS and Verizon high speed Internet. For the rest of us, it is closer to TV-Let's-Wait-And-See.

Since word dropped yesterday that Google is planning to create original video channels on YouTube for the living room lean back experience, it seemed a good time to reflect on Google TV itself. After all, I gather that Google is imagining this reported $100 million investment in show material will be fodder for a YouTube app on Google TV and elsewhere.

With so much video pouring onto the Web from so many different directions, there must be a young Spielberg in here somewhere, no? A budding Roger Corman, maybe? Well, okay, how about just something other than the unctuous Fred? According to Break Media, there is indeed a line developing between online video production and cross platform media success.

Can a flagging brand reinvigorate its market via a Web series? Well, TV cook Paula Deen's online video series Real Women of Philadelphia was not the only component in the strategy to boost sales of the Philadelphia Cream Cheese product in 2010. But apparently it didn't hurt. The series focused on cream cheese as a cooking ingredient and invited users to submit their own recipe videos. Produced by Paula Deen Enterprises as well as Digitas and EQAL, the program attracted 1.3 million visits to the online community last year and 40,000 registered users. The companies say that users shared more …

Youngsters, believe me there really was a time when we just let media bedazzle us and didn't expect to discover precisely how it all was done. Somewhere along the line in the last forty years or so, having backstage knowledge of the media we consume has become just as important as consuming it in the first place. I am sure there is a Ph.D. dissertation to be done on this topic, and I promise I won't write it. And now advertising itself catches the "making of" virus. We not only get dazzling new ads on TV and online, we get …

The media measurement company that has become a mainstay of gauging viral video success, Visible Measures, is launching a new division to run an ad network leveraging that accumulated intelligence. Viewable Media will let media buyers acquire user-initiated video views across social media, the company claims. Visible Measures tracks 250 million video viewers a month, says CEO Brian Shinn. "We track what people watch and know what works. So, many advertising customers have been asking that we have a platform that might drive ad campaigns."

The first time I worked on a Mac, back in the mid 1980s, I think I must have spent the entire first afternoon playing with typefaces. The initial rush of power and flexibility that came with digital publishing was enormous back then. Days were spent fidgeting with layouts. The standard office joke that met the rise of Apple-inspired desktop publishing was that more time was being spent on form than function. No joke. We were all learning to be rudimentary designers and becoming aware of the aesthetics of information delivery. Curiously, we never really recognized that design was now a …

I decided a long time ago not to second-guess The Weather Channel. And I am not referring to their weather forecasts, where (like everyone) I can quibble here and there. No, I mean their far-sighted view of media. In my earliest days of covering mobile media (we're talking 2004-2005), I recall several conversations with Louis Gump, a pioneer of their mobile unit who is now with CNN. He told me that video had a huge future on mobile. I was skeptical. But TWC was already gearing up with content strategies and ad sales staff aimed at moving clients across screens. …