New York Times:
An Adviser Puts His Stamp on McCain Campaign  —  ST. PAUL — It was what aides to Senator John McCain describe as probably the worst night of his campaign.  As Senator Barack Obama claimed the Democratic nomination before a cheering sea of faces on national television, Mr. McCain countered …

David Frum / New York Times:
The Vanishing Republican Voter  —  I LIVE IN WASHINGTON, in a neighborhood that is home to lawyers, political consultants, television personalities and the chief executive of the TIAA-CREF pension fund.  Not exactly an abode of the superrich, but the kind of neighborhood where almost nobody does …

David Bauder / Associated Press:
McCain, Obama tied in TV audiences  —  NEW YORK (AP) - As a television draw, John McCain was every bit the equal of Barack Obama.  —  The GOP presidential candidate attracted roughly the same number of viewers to his convention acceptance speech Thursday as Obama did before the Democrats last week, according to Nielsen Media Research.

ReadWriteWeb is one of the media partners for DEMOfall 08, which starts this weekend September 7-9 in San Diego. Sarah Perez will be there to cover the event for RWW.

ReadWriteWeb readers can receive a discount rate of $2,395 ($600 off the standard rate of $2,995 and $400 lower than the July early bird rate of $2795) by clicking here for registration.

There are 70 companies presenting and they fall into the following broad categories: Moving the Chains ("smart incrementation" of innovation); Television Meets the Web; Web Meets the Television; Words, Pictures and Music; Your Mobile, Your Life; Open Studios ("seamless cooperation"); Protecting What's Yours (security); Getting Embedded with Social Networks; It's Easy Being Green; Managing Green; Activism; Web 2.0 Gets to Work; Defining the Next Web.

Here is the entire agenda.

I’ve made no secret of the fact that I don’t like Comcast. Using their service, my Internet connectivity is slow, my cable is constantly on the fritz, and the interactive program guide is the definition of clunky. But Comcast — I say this through very gritted teeth, indeed — has some very promising plans for Fancast, its broadband video portal.

Because now Comcast wants to turn Fancast into the link from the Internet back into its cable programming service. If Comcast is even remotely successful with this web-to-TV convergence, then Fancast could very well represent a model for linking together new and old distribution methods.

Fancast this week added an online store through which users can rent and/or own more than 3,000 television shows and movies, and that store is supposedly the start of the broad new Fancast strategy.

Keep in mind, I’m not suggesting that Fancast is a better online store than others. I am a huge iTunes advocate and think it provides the greatest ease of use among online stores. Rather, the Comcast strategy with Fancast is worth watching because the operator appears to be taking steps to become more than just a dumb pipe. After all, cable’s role as the middle man in delivering content is under siege as consumers turn to the web to watch video programming. A broader Fancast is more of a retention play than a revenue driver. Customers who contemplate jettisoning cable programming in favor of becoming Internet-only video viewers might think twice if Comcast can strengthen the ties between its web and TV services.

Later this year, Comcast will begin testing the capability of synching Fancast to your Comcast DVR, which means you could program your home DVR from the Fancast site using your work computer. As a Comcast spokesperson noted, “The end user should feel like they can find and manage and get all their entertainment that they want no matter where it is.”

The next step will be to loop in video-on-demand functionality into Fancast. That could mean programming a VOD playlist directly from Fancast.com. So I could set up a “Daisy’s Shows” category that includes AMC’s Mad Men, HBO Entourage and fitness videos. Then when I sink down into my cushy couch at night all I’d have to do — theoretically — is click on my playlist to find my pre-programmed VOD picks.

As with anything, we’ll have to wait and see if Comcast can pull this off.

Auteur : digitaldave1982
Tags : PBS Logos IdentsNorth Carolina Public Television UNC-TV
Envoyé : 06 septembre 2008
Note :0.0
Votes :0

A list of fifty great arts video available on YouTube, including Joy Division playing on Grenada Television in 1978, Jack Kerouac reads On the Road in 1959, and Jackson Pollock making one of his drip paintings in 1951.

Although he passed in 1995, who can forget Bob Ross, the soft-spoken, afro-wearing public television host of The Joy of Painting? Definitely not Raleigh's indie-poppers Annuals, who used one of the painter's creations as the cover of its newest effort Such Fun, due October 7. The homage is a direct one.

"The way that Bob made his paintings, and the way he paints in particular, is pretty similar to the way that our band makes a record," the band explained. "Bob Ross starts his paintings with simple little smudges and blotches, making 'happy trees' or 'cute little bridges.' But when it’s finished, and his blotches take form, we see that his paintings are actually intricate landscapes."

Have a listen to Annuals' new single "Confessor" below and let us know if it sounds like the music you heard in your head the first time you saw Ross "beat the Devil" out of his canvases back in the day. Looking for more tunes? Annuals hits the road for a national tour on October 8 in Spokane.

STREAM: Annuals' "Confessor"

Photo: Canvasback Music

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Jonah Lerher on daydreaming and the human brain's default network. Creativity, especially with regard to children, might be stifled by too little daydreaming and too much television.

After monitoring the daily schedule of the children for several months, Belton came to the conclusion that their lack of imagination was, at least in part, caused by the absence of "empty time," or periods without any activity or sensory stimulation. She noticed that as soon as these children got even a little bit bored, they simply turned on the television: the moving images kept their minds occupied. "It was a very automatic reaction," she says. "Television was what they did when they didn't know what else to do."

The problem with this habit, Belton says, is that it kept the kids from daydreaming. Because the children were rarely bored -- at least, when a television was nearby -- they never learned how to use their own imagination as a form of entertainment. "The capacity to daydream enables a person to fill empty time with an enjoyable activity that can be carried on anywhere," Belton says. "But that's a skill that requires real practice. Too many kids never get the practice."

But television isn't the default network that Lehrer is referring to: