It’s no secret that the publishing industry is facing the same challenges that all of the other content industries are facing. On the one hand, new technology offers publishers the chance to fundamentally re-invent their business models, on the other hand new media is syphoning off the attention of a growing number of would-be book [...]

Medialoper: February 18, 2009 — Yesterday morning Herbert Cackin turned on his television set to find nothing but static. Cursing, he assumed his 25 year old Zenith had finally “konked out”. Next he turned on the television in his bedroom only to find the same problem. Finally he tried the set in the [...]

Earlier this week Google unveiled the new Street View feature on Google Maps. Street View takes the mapping service to a whole new level. Where previously we were awed by the detail of the aerial photography overlaid on Google’s mapping system, now users can zoom down to street level to see exactly what’s happening in [...]

We’ve all been hearing the hype about Joost for months now. The broadband video service has been hailed as both the future of television and the ultimate YouTube killer. New ventures seldom live up to such high expectations when they’re finally launched. Joost may be one of those rare services that actually delivers on [...]

It’s no secret that the newspaper business is in serious trouble. Circulations are plummeting and advertising revenue is in a free-fall. It’s widely agreed that the Internet is to blame, so you might think that newspapers would embrace new technology and work to establish strategic partnerships with companies that could help them deliver news [...]

Ninjas are cool, but pirates have always played a bigger role in popular culture — at least in the West. That’s probably because we know so much about the history of pirates and their lifestyle, and we know almost nothing about ninjas. Ninjas are a mystery. Actually, I should say, ninjas were a mystery [...]

If you’re a fan of independent or foreign films it can be surprisingly difficult to track down new and interesting movies. You’re pretty much limited to catching films at the local art-house during the first run, waiting for them to run on IFC or the Sundance channel, waiting for a copy to become available on [...]

When the world’s most popular social network decides to get into the social news business, you expect them to make it, well, social. On the contrary, the new MySpace News site is anything but social. In fact, MySpace has left out just about every feature that makes competing social news sites like Digg [...]

Sony should win a lifetime achievement award for its efforts to help raise consumer awareness about the problems inherent in DRM technology. It seems like every time the company attempts to “innovate’ in the area of DRM the effort backfires in a manner that ends up demonstrating just how bad DRM can really be.
Sony’s [...]

If you’ve been exposed to any of the recent media hype surrounding Second Life you may have come to the conclusion that Linden Lab’s virtual world is some kind of unstoppable force. Second Life membership has accelerated to nearly half-million new signups per month, Linden founder Philip Rosedale seems to be everywhere at once [...]