Also: New York Times and NBC partner on election coverage | Economist's innovation project quietly drops off a cliff | iPhone sales under target | EMusic's mobile service for indie artists | An open source Google killer?! | The Facebook target | Facebook burps
The rather slick My Damn Channel launches today, a web video site set up by a handful of Hollywood execs trying to plug what they see as a demand for professional video content online. And they've taken a leaf out of Apple's swivelly selection tool thing, too.
The focus is on programming made for the web, rather than repeats and out-takes, and the channel has the likes of Harry Shearer on board - he's responsible for a few voices on The Simpsons.
Founder and former MTV and CBS Radio executive Rob Barnett pointed to Will Farrell's The Landlord clip, which spread around the viral video web like wildfire and helped launch the comedy site FunnyorDie. Shearer is hosting a music show for the site, and YouTube already features a My Damn Channel section. (AP)
New York Times and NBC partner on 2008 election coverage
The New York Times and NBC are collaborating on coverage of the 2008 Presidential campaign across online, print and video. MSNBC.com will publish coverage, NYTimes.com will feature NBC video and the two organisations will also share reporters on the campaign trail. This is all in addition to their core political coverage and will not replace their various other content partnerships. Combined reach of the two platforms is a not insignificant 45m users, although that is an estimated audience across all their platforms - slightly under a sixth of the entire US population, according to my pop maths. (Release)
Economist's innovation project quietly drops off a cliff
The Economist's social media project appears top have imploded after ten months without any outcome, reports paidContent. Project Red Stripe was charged with creating an innovative web-based product service or business model with £100,000. The problem appears to be a lack of demand among the target NGO audience, as well as a lack of obvious ways to monetise it. It was a bold move to push editorial research this way, but maybe too far from the Economist's core offering? (paidContent)
iPhone sales under target
US mobile network AT&T has said that only 146,000 iPhones were registered on its network in the two days after the launch, prompting a 7.5% slide in Apple's stock - worth $10bn - last week. Sales were about 100,000 lower than targeted, but as this Register report says, a full month's reports will be more reflective, ironing out any activation problems that might have been AT&T's domain. First year sales targets are still likely to be met. (Register)
On the other hand, I fondled my first iPhone last week and it really is quite impressive. Way faster that the (Windows Mobile-based) HTC Touch I'm trying. But I'll wait for the UK launch for a full run, of course.
EMusic's mobile music service for indie artists
No doubt keen for any press over Apple, music downloads service EMusic has announced a deal with AT&T to enable music purchases via mobile. The US deal focuses on independent labels, EMusic's speciality, and will make nearly all EMusic's 2.7m catalogue available by mobile. Tracks will cost more than online - $7.49 for five songs instead of $9.99 for 30, reflecting the greater cost of sending data by mobile.
Gartner's vice president of research Mike McGuire said the service could be good for indie music: "For eight bucks a month, you can get exposed to music you can't hear elsewhere, so you might be more likely to experiment. It could be an interesting way to discover music."
And although EMusic's service runs on the same network as Apple, the service won't work on the iPhone, which still requires users to log in and download via their computer. (New York Times)
An open-source Google killer?!
Wikipedia overlord Jimmy Wales has clarified his plans for an open source search platform rival Google. Wikia's search product has been kicked off by the acquisition of Grub, a web crawler that will be used to index web content.
Wales told a developers conference: "If we can get good quality search results, I think it will really change the balance of power from the search companies back to the publishers."
While not connected directly to Wikipedia, Wikia's search project would be built through community development and collaboration. Grub itself was founded on open source software. Interestingly, Wikia had previously been using Google's ad services but switched to LookSmart last week. (Reuters)
The Facebook target
CNet reports that Facebook is likely to be a target for cyber-criminals who can gather personal information from the site, possibly via a seemingly legitimate application that disguises malicious code. (CNet)
Facebook burps
Meanwhile, Facebook has been down for much of the last night and this morning, either inaccessible or refusing to load beyond the login page that cites maintenance work. That really doesn't help when I need contact details on there. Can someone please come up with a application that backs up all you Facebook information offline?
Did someone mention the Facebook cul-de-sac?
