DISQUS

The "wow factor" was helpful when people felt optimistic and rich. As GregD points out above, Apple has even managed to impress a lot of people with a mere change in manufacturing process! But the world is changing and people are now much less likely to feel optimistic and rich, and therefore much less likely to pay for something they're not convinced that they need. Much of the tech press has yet to notice that, but Amazon has certainly noticed its recent sales numbers for cheap netbooks. I think Amazon is being smart to emphasize steak not sizzle.

Ditto. I think however that it's not exactly "a few key influencers" but "a few key people who DO THINGS". Now that an individual can accomplish what in the past would have taken a team, a person who is a leader *and* is willing to do things him/herself (i.e. not the traditional leader barking orders) can drive a project forward, with others willingly getting pulled into the vortex to help. Furthermore, multiple leaders can take on different aspects of a project, creating a team of leaders with no über-leader, something that flies in the face of traditional hierarchies; I suspect that this happened with HoHoTO.

Mathew, I am a programmer (not that I've written much actual code myself lately), and I can confirm that you understand the difference between these two approaches to software development. (Some people point out, and I agree, that it's really only a difference of size: instead of doing a release every six months, there might be a release every week or two, and each such small release should still be approached in an organized and disciplined fashion -- though there's less to deal with, and there are huge differences in which programming techniques are most effective. Some supposed fans of agile approaches are simply averse to anything other than shooting from the hip, but agile won't save them.)

That's a great observation on the parallel with media. There could be transferable lessons. For instance, in software, taking the agile approach requires a tremendous shift of mindset for those steeped in the traditional "waterfall" approach, and not everyone can make the jump. I would guess that the same is true in media. In fact, I would expect the disruption to be much worse because people would be less used to change than in the software industry where technology-driven change occurs more often.

Given that Digg is Web 2.0 Central for negative and nasty comments, perhaps it should be bought by the National Enquirer.

My guess is that the vehicle was stolen off a used-car lot, hence the writing.

I wonder how long Ethan Kaplan will keep his job at Warner Brothers Records. Oh, and you work for the Globe and Mail...

But "Internet television" CAN be on "the box". It is if you got it via TiVo broadband, or if you ran it through the new Apple TV device.

And if I had a TV tuner card in my computer and watched a broadcast on the computer screen, I'd call it watching TV. Meanwhile, if my wife and I watch a DVD movie on our TV set, we don't call it watching TV, we call it watching a video. (Well, we usually call it watching a movie, but we did get it from the "video" rental place.)

So I would argue that whether something is "TV" or not depends not on the particular screen that you watch a show on, but on what actions you take to see the show. Something that comes on automatically at a particular time is called television, while if you have to insert a physical DVD or videocassette it's called a video. In between lie the things that are on demand (like a DVD is) but don't come on a physical medium, such as cable Video On Demand and YouTube. I think that how likely one of these things is to be called TV is determined by how closely it resembles traditional TV. A TV show recorded and watched later through a VCR or DVR is still a TV show. Less obviously, Joost is Internet-based but you control it a lot like television: you select a "channel" and it plays the channel's shows in a sequence of its own choosing (though you can choose to override and jump to a later or earlier show). I would call watching Joost watching television. As for cable Video On Demand, I've heard people talking about watching things "on Rod" (Rogers On Demand), while others would say they were watching television. It wouldn't surprise me if people using Apple TV devices to watch YouTube videos say they're watching television.

He discovered the meaning of life, but forgot to write it down? What a loser. Good thing you didn't submit that, Mathew.

As evidenced by the DRM-controlled Windows Vista, Microsoft has thrown its lot in with the big copyright holders. It is also now heavily dependent on the corporate buyers who will continue to purchase upgrades to Windows and Office, even if the retail market loses interest. Microsoft is now the "establishment", and we can expect it to act accordingly.

Mathew, you asked "But do readers want to socialize with their newspaper, or with the journalists who work there?"

I think many readers have no particular interest in socializing with their newspaper, nor its other readers - but would like to socialize with the journalists who work there. My subscription to the Globe continues thanks largely to its columnists.

Mathew, I'm so happy that you said this. I'd been wondering whether I was completely out of touch, with my experience of YouTube and similar sites being mostly the amateur vids - and not the lip-synching ones, but the ones with 100% original content.

Even where the stuff copied from TV is concerned, I think many bloggers are living in a time warp. (Odd, since bloggers are supposed to be on the leading edge of things.) Things have changed. NBC eventually made "Lazy Sunday" available online, so that YouTube was no longer "needed" to host it, and I believe that the Daily Show and Colbert Report clips are permitted by their owners.

Mathew, in "(a good description here)" was the "here" meant to be a link?

I believe that paid and unpaid can usefully coexist. Each digg, Netscape, or similar site has votes representing the tastes of its particular set of users, its community. So if the digg community happens to pick out stories that suit me, more than the Netscape community does, digg is where I'll be. Even if I and the rest of my community don't get paid.