How contagious is the Wii? How great is their marketing?

My Italian, septuagenarian father-in-law visited our home a few months ago and was exposed to the Wii (I’ve always wanted to say that). He promptly went out and bought one and now the in-laws are Wii Sports fans.

My father came down to visit LA last Fall. We went to a Dodger’s game where they had a Miller Lite promotion with a home run contest on a customized Wii. He took 10 pitches and struck out nine times, but on the final pitch he put one over the center field fence. He batted .100, but it was enough to encourage him to make the purchase. Now my parents play Wii on a regular basis.

Casual gaming for the baby boomer generation. It sells itself. Geniius.

I just got an alpha account and have started playing with Boxee, the new, free, open source software that allows a frictionless way to watch web video (and much more) on your TV. Just getting into it, but Boxee already feels like a game changer:

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Two of my favorite ingredients were mixed together nicely last week as Stanford law professor Lawrence Lessig, champion of the movement to develop sensible digital copyright practices, sat down at Charlie Rose’s table to discuss his new book, Remix: Making Art and Commerce Thrive in the Hybrid Economy. (more…)

You ever get an email or a text message that was actually sent a day or more prior? It gets lost somewhere in the pipes and eventually finds bubbles up to you. That’s what I felt when I read this article (copied below) in today’s paper. It was like a story that had been written in 2005 had been lost in the editorial process at the Journal and only now had surfaced.

I love the Wall Street Journal for they know not what they do, but how can they go publish this vapor with a straight face?

How, in this day and age of death spirals for non-business-model-having-start ups, a fishwrap that’s built its reputation on sound business analysis can go to print with a fluff story like this is beyond me.

Judge for yourself (I’ve gone ahead and bolded for emphasis the phrases that make me cringe the most): (more…)

One of the big questions in the discussion of online entertainment video economics has been how to effectively and efficiently protect premium content. The prevailing theory held that by definition, digital content couldn’t be protected. You can’t stop the proliferation of pirated versions of your copyrighted material. You can only hope to contain it by playing nonstop whack-a-mole armed with take down notices. (more…)

Take an hour out of your life and watch this important video. It’s an excellent overview of the evolution of new media’s impact on human interaction. It highlights the role that YouTube is playing in the development of Fan Fiction (a somewhat inaccurate yet my current preferred euphemism for User Generated Content). If you’re short on time, skip to the conclusion at 45:15 and listen to Lawrence Lessig’s take on the cultural inflection point that we have communally reached due to the connectivity and access provided to us through digital distribution.

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The first real instance of the ubiquitous, mobile web on a consumer-friendly handset is the Apple iPhone 3G. It’s a game-changer and a technology market-mover. We all know that. But as we also know, what drives technology development and adoption more than anything else is porn. Just as users will always find ways to get their porn, smart technology companies will find ways to provide and monetize it.

But how does one find free porn video content on the new iPhone? You can’t find it on Youtube, which comes native as a featured applicaiton, and some of the better-known adult streaming sites like Youporn, Redtube, Eskimotube all serve their content for free, but in Flash video, which isn’t supported on the iPhone.

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Today, Safran Digital went public with the details of our partnership with Xbox. In particular, we’ve announced the directors for our slate of original web video pilots, which launch this fall to coincide with Xbox’s user-interface redesign.

The directors involved include James Wan (Saw, Death Sentence), David Slade (30 Days of Night, Hard Candy), James Gunn (Slither), Lucky McKee (May), Andrew Douglas (The Amityville Horror) and Marcus Nispel (The Texas Chainsaw Massacre, Friday the 13th).

I’m extremely proud of the filmmakers and their camps, the deal we’ve put together and what I believe it represents for the future of digital content economics. (more…)

Remember the caveman days of dial-up internet connections?

Remember how the world changed with the rise of affordable, high-speed broadband connections and with it, the always-on utility of the enlightened web we know today?

Tomorrow’s iPhone 3G launch will prove to be the biggest step forward in the advancement of digital distribution since the leap from dial-up to broadband. (more…)