The conversation I had with the reporter from New Zealand us up online!

Bad reviews matter just as much as good ones, argues Jason Zinoman at The New York Times Arts blog.

Think people are unwilling to pay for online content?  Mobile data was worth about $734 million last year in the UK alone.

The Internet is the new black, according to fashion designer Nicole Miller, who shifted her whole ad budget online this year.

Read More …

Hurricane Isabel, wikimedia commons

I’m writing this on an iPad with the power still off at my home in Riverside, CT.  This is the third day without power, phone and Internet.  We came within inches of a flooded basement, had three feet of water in the driveway, and there are still lots of tree limbs on the lawn.  But that’s it for damage.

Yet my adult daughter and my wife, who were glued to the TV leading up to the storm, had pictured us all standing on the roof of our house surrounded by forty feet of water waiting for a helicopter to airlift us to safety.  The Weather Channel reports were the most histrionic.  One actually said that Irene would be “the worst storm we will see in our lifetime.”

I never thought for a moment that our lives would be at risk. Read More …

Google’s Eric Schmidt is delivering a speech at Edingburgh’s Television Festival next week, and is expected to outline the company’s plan to make a splash with GoogleTV in the U.K.

What would the news look like if PR firms could do whatever they wanted online?  For the Chinese, this is not a hypothetical question.

Why booming e-book sales are actually bad news for publishers, at least for now.

Here’s something nobody expected: non-profit news is getting MORE ideologically polarized, not less, says Pew.

Wal-Mart has become a major player in online movie rentals and downloads.

The death of books has been greatly exaggerated, says Lloyd Shepherd in a sane and cheerful article for the Guardian.

Bids for Hulu are still coming in, and numbers between 500 million and 2 billion are expected. The site’s instance as joint venture between media majors has brought access to many hours of premium content, however it has also created many conflicts of  interest. Potential investors could potentially open doors for the site and make it a stronger competitor in the online streaming space.

Freshman at Florida Atlantic University get a lesson in how journalism was done before the internet, and are surprised by how much has been forgotten in just twenty short years.

Stephen Colbert’s Super PAC blurs the line between satire and activism, but that may just be the point, in an America with no limits on campaign spending, and where political power is impossible without and often inseparable from media presence.

Whatever may be happening in the economy, we say with certainty that the news consensus says the economy is ailing, and hasn’t been this bad since 2009.

Bill Moyers returns to public television!

Another Google books dispute in France ends in settlement. Following a similar deal between Google and Hachette, French publisher La Martiniere has agreed to share revenue for out-of-print books from its collection which are to be scanned by Google.

Last week in the New York Times, author James Wescott asked the question “Did Youtube Kill Performance Art?”, noting the transformation that arises when performance art is placed online, eliciting a different reaction from the viewer.

The John S. and James L. Knight Foundation teamed up with the National Endowment for the Arts to promote innovation in arts journalism in select areas across the country. Applicants have until August 18th to submit their ideas for innovative new, sustainable arts journalism. You can find more information here: KNIGHT ARTS

Anthony Tommasini’s article in Sunday’s NY Times describes an ‘exponential’ increase in the number of extraordinarily proficient pianists as of late.

Time Warner Cable has expanded its Midwest operations by acquiring cable company Insight Communications for 3 billion.

Youtube’s most popular content: Music videos. According to a report from Ad Age, 40% of Youtube viewers in July visited the site to watch music videos, with VEVO and Warner music taking in more views than any other branded channel on the video streaming site. Meanwhile, the National Music Publishers Association signed a licensing fee deal with Youtube, offering a source of revenue for music publishers whose music videos and songs evidently make the site such a popular destination.

Netflix is making headway into Spain and Britain in 2012. The company will not have the same head start in premium streaming video services that it did in the US – it will be competing with other major streaming sites such as Lovefilm, Europe’s leading streaming service, acquired by Amazon in January.

The traditional TV advertising format is gaining steam online. Mid-roll advertisements are increasing in length, and viewers are sticking around to watch them. The study confirming the ongoing shift can be found here: Freewheel

Amazon now has 100,000 movies and tv shows available for a-la-carte purchase online, whereas its streaming content stands at a much lower 9,000 titles. Amazon’s approach is unique in that it offers consumers both an a-la-carte (pay per download) and subscription options.