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via Cali Lewis

NBC on Friday said that Quarterlife, a serial Internet video that began its life on MySpace, will be aired on its television network next year, making the show the first to originate online and then move to a mainstream U.S. broadcaster. The move is a sign that the Internet may be becoming a “field team” for network television.

Quarterlife, which began its run on MySpaceTV on November 11, tells the story of six young artists. The show was created by Marshall Herskovitz and Ed Zwick, producers of thirtysomething and My So-Called Life, comes as a strike by screenwriters against Hollywood’s studios nears the end of a second week.

The shows were written so that the brief Webisodes could combine to form one-hour TV episodes. The show is expected to begin on NBC in February or March after completing its run on the Web.

What’s better than free dj software for Mac and PC that works with your iPod?

Free dj software for Mac and PC that works with your iPod that doesn’t suck – which is what you get with Beatport Sync.

Native Instruments, which makes the leading DJ software Traktor, and Beatport, an online music service for DJs, have come up with a free dj-style music application based on Traktor.

Equipped with two playback decks and a crossfader section, the software lets you mix individual tracks into a continuous dj mix. Aspects like beat detection, tempo synchronization and loudness optimization are all handled automatically and intelligently by the software.

Beatport Sync can deal with existing digital music collections, and offers extensive tag editing options, archiving features and seamless iTunes and iPod integration. It can also directly browse, play and backup music files from MP3 players, PDAs, USB sticks and cell phones.

They’ve left a ton of Traktor’s features out of Beatport Sync – but that’s not necessarily a bad thing. The app is really easy to use, is pretty powerful, lets you make mixes and sounds great.

If you try out Beatport Sync and make a sweet podcast-friendly mix, put a link in the comments so I can check it out!

The New York Times and the Wall Street Journal were, for a long time, considered two of the most successful gated communities on the net. They had enough caché that they could be closed and charge a premium for access to their content.

But, by being closed, they put up barriers for readers and encouraged readers to look to other sites for their news. As a result, instead of dominating online news, the NYT & WSJ have given other sites more than a decade to become strong competitors.

Both companies are shifting gears, offering their content freely online, because they expect to make more money offering very popular ad-supported content than they were making from a limited number of subscriptions.

The Wall Street Journal reports on this:

America’s journalistic establishment will scrutinise every move Mr (Rupert) Murdoch makes with the Journal; many newsmen fear that he may damage it by taking it downmarket or using it to further his wider commercial interests. The new owner seems intent on shaking things up as quickly as possible. After months of hints, he confirmed this week that he intends to make its website free. That goes against the wishes of the Journal’s publisher, Gordon Crovitz, who believes that wsj.com should remain partially a paid site, insiders say. In the next few weeks Mr Crovitz will make a presentation to Mr Murdoch outlining the financial impact of various options for the site‚Äîbut his new boss seems to have made up his mind.

Mr Murdoch reckons that the Journal could dominate the market for financial information online. A free wsj.com, he thinks, could attract 10m-15m regular readers from around the world (compared with 3.1m unique monthly users in September, according to comScore); the resulting increase in ad revenue would more than offset the loss of subscription income. Such a shift would be near-impossible to reverse.

The New York Times recently opened its doors, and is seeing the results immediately. In September, the site had 14.6 million visitors. In October, it had 17.5 million, an increase of about 20% in one month.

According to an interview at Beet.tv, Times management attributes their most successful month ever to offering their content for free:

In reaching 17.5 million uniques, the paper had its best month ever, a Times spokeswoman told me. The numbers are up from 14.6 million in September.

Earlier this afternoon I interviewed Vivian Schiller, Senior VP and General Manager of the NYTimes.com She attributes a significant part of the increase to the end of the subscription model called Times Select. Fueling the growth, she also cites popular multimedia features, blogs and a successful search maximization strategy.

The question this begs is this: how long until television learns the lesson of the Wall Street Journal and the New York Times?

Will the networks spend a decade pouring their efforts into closed Internet video offerings that no one seems to be interested in? Will they continue to lock up their content with DRM, when people’s attention is moving to a larger variety of video players than ever? Will they continue to sell a paltry number of videos via iTunes, while people are downloading free Internet videos by the billions?

If the networks do wait a decade to free their content, who will be their competition when they finally do open up?

Amazon is expected to unleash its Kindle ebook reader next week.

The portable reader is expected to features a 6-inch 800 x 600 pixel display, 256MB internal storage, a mini USB port, 3.5mm headphone jack and an SD slot. The Kindle also is equipped with a Wi-Fi connection that can be used to connect to Amazon for purchasing ebooks, and it’s also expected to offer EVDO wireless data access.

The final price of the Kindle is expected to be $399

Amazon has a tremendous advantage in offering an ebook reader. The company has been digitizing books by the reams for years, so it now has a huge library of copyrighted and public domain content that it could offer on the device.

However, it’s likely that the ebook reader needs something else to succeed – support for audio podcasts and some sort of text news podcasting.

Without podcast support, the Kindle will be a relatively boring, closed system, like the first-generation Zunes. It will be a Sony Reader on steroids. An interesting gadget.

If Amazon embraces podcasting, though, the company could quickly establish the Kindle as a new platform for consumption of Internet content. Users would have access to 100,000+ audio podcasts, on all sorts of topics. And because podcasting can be used to deliver all sorts of payloads, such as PDFs, it could be used with the Kindle to let you subscribe to daily news updates, online magazines and other free Web content.

We’ll be watching the Kindle introduction with interest. But, unless it supports subscribing to free Web-based content in an open way, we expect it to follow the path to nowhere blazed by the Sony Reader.

The New York Times highlights a growing trend – people are spending more time with online media and less time with television.

Why are fewer viewers watching the new fall television series? Perhaps because they are too busy watching video online.

As broadband service becomes more available at home, the growing prevalence of video programming on the Internet is catching the attention of consumers — not to mention marketers and media companies.

“Video has been liberated” from the TV set, Beth Comstock, president for integrated media at NBC Universal, said last week at a panel at the Ad:Tech conference in New York.

“If you’re in the video business,” she added, referring to companies like her employer, the NBC Universal division of General Electric, “it’s exciting to see where it’s going.”

One direction online video is going is toward the creation of scripted episodic shows that are made expressly for Web sites. Many online video programs, sometimes called Webisodes, emulate television in one respect in that they are released at the same time each day or week.

But there is a difference between online and on the air: the alphabet soup of names for TV networks (e.g., ABC, CBS, ESPN) is replaced on the Internet with madcap monikers intended to be more memorable: Blame Society, Blip.TV, Crackle, Funny or Die, Heavy, My Damn Channel and Viropop, among others.

While the article doesn’t do much to support its point, there’s plenty of research that shows attention, and advertising, is moving from television to Internet video.

MediaMelon has launched what it calls a “pioneering Video Delivery Network” that enables content owners to deliver high-resolution videos on the Internet. According to MediaMelon, they are the first service to offer video downloads to be accessed and played from a web browser.

Unfortunately, the MediaMelon site requires a software install in order to work, is sluggish and is hard to use, compared to other video sites.

Here’s a view of video browsing within MediaMelon:

It’s a clean interface, but it uses a ton of space to display very few videos and very little information.

Compare this to YouTube:

YouTube packs twice as many video thumbnails, more than twice as many browsing categories and options, and a lot of additional information into the same browser space, and still manages to find room for a massive skyscraper ad.

Even more important, though, is the fact that MediaMelon is just much slower to navigate and find videos with. There’s also numerous usability quirks – like the fact that some thumbnail previews activate user options, and others do nothing – but none actually play the video when you click them.

Instead you have to find the “Add” link, which turns into a “Play” link, if you’ve previously added the video.

Want to share a video on your blog? Don’t look for “share” or “embed”. At MediaMelon they call this “Melonize code”.

That’s right: “Melonize code”.

Here, I’ve “melonized” Kylie:

If you don’t mind creating an account at the site, installing an application, navigating very slowly, suffering through poor usability, and being locked into viewing the videos with their software on your computer, MediaMelon at least provides nice video. We tried out a variety of videos and the quality was great.

The site may have some merits as a content hosting service, but it’s hard to imagine wanting to put your viewers through the trouble.

Unfortunately, using MediaMelon is a lot more confusing that it should be. A venture capitalist needs to slap the site’s designers around a bit. MediaMelon’s complexity eliminates the possibility that it could have the viral appeal of a site like YouTube, and puts barriers between content creators and their audience.

TuneCore, a music delivery and distribution service, has released the 34 Stars compilation, which is available for free download on iTunes starting today.The album is made up exclusively of TuneCore customers, including Public Enemy, The Dandy Warhols, Steve Vai, Izzy Stadlin (of Guns n’ Roses), recent Rock And Roll Hall Of Fame Inductee Bill Medley (of The Righteous Brothers), Ray Manzarek (of The Doors) and 28 more artists.

You can download the 34 tracks using a link on the Tunecore site. (requires iTunes).

34 Stars is a partnership between TuneCore, iTunes, PayPal, Musicians Friend, Guitar Center, Yamaha and Obedia.com. Each partner will work to promote the playlist and distribute the codes.

via Free Music

The Guardian reports that the BBC is introducing music podcasts, featuring highlights from their radio programming and short music clips in “top 40” style format.

Starting Saturday, November 17, the offerings will include Folk & Acoustic with Mike Harding from Radio 2, Stuart Maconie’s Freak Zone from 6 Music and the Asian Network Chart. 1Xtra has podcasts from a range of music genres including hip hop, dancehall and garage.

Here’s the full list:

• Radio 1 Chart Show BBC Radio 1
• Radio 1 Punk Show BBC Radio 1
• Radio 1 Rock Show BBC Radio 1
• Radio 1 Indie Weekly BBC Radio 1
• Radio 1 Dance Weekly BBC Radio 1
• Zane Lowe’s Hottest Records BBC Radio 1
• Radio 1 Mini Mix BBC Radio 1
• 1Xtra RnB Top 10 BBC 1xtra
• 1Xtra Drum & Bass Top 10 BBC 1xtra
• 1Xtra Dancehall Top 10 BBC 1xtra
• 1Xtra Hip Hop Top 10 BBC 1xtra
• 1Xtra UK Garage Top 10 BBC 1xtra
• Paul Jones Rhythm And Blues BBC Radio 2
• Folk & Acoustic with Mike Harding BBC Radio 2
• Music Club with Simon Mayo BBC Radio 2
• Asian Network Music Chart BBC Asian Network
• Friction: New British Asian Music BBC Asian Network
• Jazz Library BBC Radio 3
• Stuart Maconie’s Freak Zone BBC 6 Music

BBC Podcast Directory

via Dean Whitbread

by James Lewin

Apple today released Final Cut Express 4, a update to its popular video editing software, with a new price of $199. With the reduced price, this looks to be the option for video podcasters and vloggers that found iMovie 8 to be incomplete and dumbed down.

Final Cut Express 4 adds:

• support for the latest AVCHD cameras
• allows mixing of standard and high definition content on a single timeline
• includes the ability to import iMovie ‚Äò08 projects, and
• access to hundreds of FxPlug cinematic effects and filters.

“Almost a million digital filmmakers have made Final Cut their editing application of choice,” said Rob Schoeben, Apple’s vice president of Applications Product Marketing. “With the introduction of Final Cut Express 4, Apple makes it easy for anyone to join the rapidly growing community of Final Cut editors worldwide.”

Here are the details….