Hulu Cuts Off Boxee

Well, it was bound to happen. Someone was going to step over the line. Making content available for viewing on a PC was fine as long as it didn't cut into the television audience. With Boxee making it just a bit too easy to watch internet TV on a TV, that was cutting too close to home.

Hulu announced that its media partners requested that their content not be made available through Boxee. (good summary article HERE at www.avc.com).

Any industry that feels threatened will fight tooth and nail to preserve the status quo. Remember when the motion picture industry lobbied congress to BAN the VCR? Remember when the record industry pushed for a TAX on DAT equipment and tapes?

Any business that lets people drive big cars, fly first class is not going to give that up very easily.

This is the new reality and it is really hitting close to home. Just like the VCR, big media will be forced to stop trying to kill it and figure out how to adapt to it.

People have been writing me and asking me if I was worried that this happened. My answer is 'no'. This is simply the natural, predictable progression. It is easy to predict the violent opposition by the entrenched. But just like the VCR, the industry will be compelled to figure all out.

Don't Always Listen To The Experts

When we started this adventure, we talked to a lot of venture capitalists. Part of my speach 2 years ago was a prediction that television sets were going to start adding internet connectivity.

Well, I was roundly dismissed. Don't get me wrong, these are very smart and connected people, but they were dead wrong.

Some of the reasons I was given -
1. I don't understand the TV manufacturing business. It takes 18 months to bring a set to market and no manufacturer would take that risk.
2. TV's with other stuff built in have never done that well.
3. I was being very naive to think that change could happen that fast.

I eventually had to pull that part from my pitch, go too many negative arguments I could not win.

Well, LG Electronics, Sony, Vizio, Panasonic have all announce TV's with internet connections.

The lesson here is follow your instincts, smart people are often wrong.

Guy Kawasaki has some great examples of experts being wrong

Don’t let the bozos grind you down

2 kinds of bozos:
- The slovenly bozo with no credibility
- The successful bozo, which is the most dangerous since people tend to believe them.

Examples of “dangerous bozosity”:
“I think there is a world market for maybe five computers”
Western Union dismissed the telephone in 1876
“It’s too far to drive and I don’t see how it can be a business” Guy’s reply to an offer to be CEO of Yahoo. He says it cost him $2bn.

Anyway, as I always say, "Being right is great! That and $1.25 will get you a cup of coffee"

Just don't believe everything people tell you, no how matter how smart they are.

Great Article in Linux Devices

Here is an example of homerun PR
Click here to view: Linux Devices Article

It does not get any better than this! This article will be picked up by others and we will actively promote it.

I got this by talking with the editor.

Some Internet PR Lessons Learned

We've had a wild ride in getting the word out about Myka. First, I'd like to thank my brother Howard for helping us through all this. He actually knows what he's doing (check out his blog - Nanobot).

We had just concluded our licensing agreement with BitTorrent and felt we needed to test the waters for demand. I dusted off my HTML skills and put up a website in 2 days. It wasn't perfect, but it got the job done. We sent out a few messages to a few blogs and suddenly it hit. We were seeing almost 10,000 visitors a day and taking pre-orders. It was stunning. Before we know it, we were on Engadet and Wired.

So, fast forward several months. We send out a few test emails to some of the people on our pre-order list. Well, one of them leaked the letter to a tech blog. We were off to the races again. However, our website was not ready. We were dealing with both positive and negative press. It's been a scramble, but we got the new site up (www.myka.tv). I shifted from the notepad/hand rolled HTML to JOOMLA.

Here are some things I think I learned during this adventure -

1. Include a high quality picture. The big industrial blogs and news sites love them.
2. Make your text very easy to cut and paste into articles.
3. If things get picked up, use the opportunity to get to know the editors.
4. NEVER engage in a comment war on a blog.
5. Keep the news coming out of your site POSTIVE.

There are more minor lessons to be learned, but you will have to wait for the book.
Just talked with the Wired editor, we are supposed be mentioned this Monday!

Our UI Video

We needed to present our UI vision for Myka to a potential partner on the west coast. Instead of getting on an airplane or attempting a Skype video conference, we decided to create a quick UI demo. Pardon the low production values. We did this in one take and completed everything in half an hour.

It's HERE on YouTube.

Saved us a trip and got the point across. There just maybe a business there.

Times, They Are a Changin'

Great post on VideoNuze

Tom Rogers of TiVo is warning of the coming storm. The television business is going to change. Just look at how a 17 year old consumes media.

The Media gatekeeper business is not going to be what it once was. We are quickly approaching a point where a large aggregator/distributor is no longer needed. Every few months there is an article about someone turning off their cable and getting all their content from the internet. Today, the answer is that it's not quite ready. The difference between 'not quite ready' and a stampede is getting smaller.

In the next year, you will see a huge leap in what is available, direct to your home, over the internet.

That's why we're so excited about Myka. It's all happening.

My take on Mark Cuban's 'Great Internet Video Lie'

Mark Cuban has published an aggressive blog post about video over the internet.

http://blogmaverick.com/2009/01/27/the-great-internet-video-lie/

His argument is that video over the net is not viable because the current state of technology cannot support that massive numbers of simultaneous viewers the cable or satellite.

While that statement is true, it does not paint the whole picture. If you look at the content delivered by cable, most of it pre-recorded. It does not matter when you watch programs on The History Channel.

A background download of The History Channel makes perfect sense in that context. Add a little smarts to it, like always keep three episodes downloaded and you negate the CDN bandwidth issue.

Look at the Tivo model. People became very accustomed to the time shift. In that model, the device had to wait for another broadcast to record. In a pure download environment, the new episode is replaced when it is most convenient.