Disney joins Hulu video site

By Paul Thomasch

NEW YORK (Reuters) – Walt Disney Co will buy a 30 percent stake in Hulu.com, bringing popular TV shows such as “Lost” and “Grey’s Anatomy” to the video website founded by NBC Universal and News Corp.

Disney’s entrance, which comes after months of negotiations, means that three of the four major U.S. broadcast networks now have stakes in Hulu: NBC, News Corp’s Fox and Disney’s ABC. Only CBS Corp is absent.

Hulu officials declined to provide financial details on the deal on Thursday. A source directly involved in the deal, who did not want to be identified because all sides in the deal decided that the terms would be confidential, put Disney’s stake at 30 percent, the same as the other networks.

Disney will get three seats on the 12-member board, the same as News Corp and NBC Universal.

Hulu has emerged as one of the most popular online video destinations since its launch in 2007. Though it still lags Google Inc’s YouTube, some 380 million videos were viewed on Hulu last month, up 14.3 percent from February, according to market research firm comScore. It is now among the top three online video sites in the United States.

Conversations with CBS are continuing, said Hulu Chief Executive Jason Kilar. “We’d love to have them be a part of Hulu … ultimately it’s their decision,” he told Reuters in an interview.

In a statement, CBS did not directly address its future plans regarding Hulu. The company said it believes in “controlling our own rights” for content across media.

“CBS has long employed open, non-exclusive content partnerships that allow fans across the Internet to engage with our programing in such a way that we control our distribution, sales and profit,” it said.

When asked if CBS could join Hulu as an investor, News Corp Chief Operating Officer Peter Chernin told Reuters, “I’m not sure there’s room, legally or economically, for another partner, but I think Hulu has consistently said they’d like to license CBS content.”

Other media companies, including Viacom Inc, provide movies or TV shows to the website, but in deals that involve advertising revenue sharing and not ownership stakes.

The only other ownership stakes are held by Providence Equity Partners, which has two seats on the board, and employees of Hulu, whose chief executive has one seat.

Disney has previously sought to expand viewership of ABC shows offered on its website and its local affiliates’ sites, on AOL.com and on Comcast Corp’s Fancast site.

HULU EYES MUSIC, WORLD

To grow further, Hulu is studying adding music videos, sports and news, while it is also looking at expanding the service outside the United States.

“We would like to continue to have as much premium content as possible,” said NBC Universal Chief Executive Jeff Zucker in an interview. NBC is a unit of General Electric Co

“Then expand Hulu internationally — that should be the goal for 2010,” Zucker added, declining to say what markets the partnership is considering.

Elsewhere, big cable network owners are working on plans to move more of their shows online but are trying to devise strategies that do not undermine the lucrative cable-network-affiliate-fee business model.

Time Warner Inc Chief Executive Jeffrey Bewkes is championing “TV Everywhere,” a plan that will allow subscribers to watch cable TV shows online that they’ve already paid for with their package. Comcast is working on a similar plan called Online On Demand.

Disney shares rose 4.2 percent to $21.90 on the New York Stock Exchange.

(Additional reporting by Yinka Adegoke and Robert MacMillan; Editing by Lisa Von Ahn, Brian Moss and Brian Moss)

Three longtime media executives are building an automated system to allow newspapers and magazines to charge for online access, including an “all you can read” subscription that would allow access to multiple publications, the executives said on Tuesday.

Their company, Journalism Online L.L.C., aims to supply publishers with ready-made tools to charge Internet fees, an idea that has gained currency as advertising revenue plummets, but whose prospects of success are doubted by many media analysts. The company, which says it may have a product ready by the fall, says the advantages are that publishers would not have to develop their own systems and readers could use a single system for many different publications.

Their plan might not draw much attention save for the stature of the people involved. The founders and investors are Steven Brill, creator of Court TV and American Lawyer magazine, among other ventures; L. Gordon Crovitz, a former publisher of The Wall Street Journal, one of the few newspapers to charge online; and Leo Hindery Jr., who has headed communications companies like Tele-Communications Inc., Global Crossing and the YES Network, and now runs InterMedia Partners, a private equity firm that specializes in media.

The company has a board of advisers that includes two of the nation’s most prominent lawyers, David Boies and Theodore B. Olson, a former solicitor general of the United States.

No publishers have signed on as yet as clients, but several major newspaper and magazine publishers have been in active talks with Journalism Online about how such a system should work.

As the company envisions the system, a nonpaying reader on a magazine or newspaper site would reach a certain point and see a page asking for payment — the Journalism Online system, operating within the publication’s Web site. But a reader who wanted a subscription to multiple sites would go directly to the new company’s own site.

“The most important thing is it’s simple to use,” Mr. Brill said in an interview. “Much of the barrier to charging online is the transaction friction, as opposed to the actual cost. With this system, you’d have a single password, give your credit card number just once.”

He said that for the unlimited subscriptions, “we’re playing with a figure of $15 a month.”

Building an online payment and billing system “is complex and costly,” said Mr. Crovitz, who has experience in that. He said publishers would also need a lot of trial and error to decide what material to charge for, “and we will gather best practices and data to help them make those decisions.”

Each publisher would be free to set its own policies, like determining which items are free and which are not, setting its own prices, and deciding whether to use a pay-per-click system or a daily, weekly or monthly subscription rate.

“There are all these religious debates going on about how to do this, and it’s too early for anyone to be making those decisions,” Mr. Brill said. “No one knows which approach is going to work. So we’re offering all of them.”

The company also plans to negotiate licensing and royalty fees with search engines and news aggregators for the use of the publications’ work, and has retained Mr. Boies’s law firm, Boies Schiller & Flexner, for that work.

And PopSci gives some pointers

By Brett Zarda Posted 04.13.2009 at 4:45 pm 

iHoop: The iHoop, available June 1st, has a specialized suspension cradle that connects an iPod or MP3 while protecting it from any hard fouls. Image courtesy of Spalding

In White Men Can’t Jump, Sidney Dean (Wesley Snipes) famously told Billy Hoyle (Woody Harrelson), “Look man, you can listen to Jimi (Hendrix), but you can’t hear him. There’s a difference, man. Just because you’re listening to him doesn’t mean you’re hearing him.” Sidney and Billy clearly weren’t balling on a court with Spalding’s new iHoop. If they had been, Jimi would’ve been loud enough for Billy to listen and hear.

The most obvious response to the introduction of the iHoop is: what took so long? According to Spalding, the iHoop is the first basketball hoop ever to feature built-in speakers capable of blaring Jimi for all to hear. With an old-school boom box sitting against the fence of every urban basketball court in America, you’d think someone would’ve thought of this earlier. At a suggested retail price of $1,299, we’re not expecting this to grace the asphalt of most inner city courts, but Country Clubs’ bricklayers wanting some James Taylor to jam to might make the investment.

The iHoop, available June 1st, has a specialized suspension cradle that connects an iPod or MP3 while protecting it from any hard fouls. A pouch literally hangs from a series of cables within a cavity in the base of the hoop to ensure it won’t bump into anything or get scratched up. A fully integrated 30-watt 2.1 stereo system pumps the sound through two 3″ full range speakers and a 5″ subwoofer. All of the components are marine grade, to ensure a light drizzle won’t stop the music.

The operating system that dares not speak its name

By Tom Conlon Posted 04.10.2009 at 10:37 am 4 Comments

Linux Baby: patrick_haverkamp (CC Licensed)

Hey kids! Have you heard of the cool new program for Windows PCs that lets you boot your system in a jiffy and gives you instant-on access to e-mail, IM, and the Web? Yeah, it’s called Linux.

Huh?

That’s the basic sales pitch for a new software package called Presto — though the official verbiage doesn’t dare go anywhere near that dirty “Linux” word. On its web site and in its documentation, Presto is positioned simply as a program for Windows. You download it as an .exe file and install it like you would any other application. To remove it, run the uninstaller or go to Add/Remove Programs in your control panel. The spiel reads:

“Presto is an easy to install program that works with Windows XP and Vista PCs. Next time you turn on your computer, you’ll have the choice of running Windows or Presto… Start up your computer in seconds – like magic. You will be able to instantly start to email, Skype, instant message, listen to music, surf the internet or download apps — before Windows XP or Vista even boots — and you will automatically be connected to the best available network.”

You guessed it: Presto isn’t actual “magic,” but rather a Linux installation. In fact, it’s a very stripped-down and highly customized distro from Xandros, the same company that makes a similarly sanitized flavor of Linux that powers the Eee PC. The categorical lack of the word “Linux” anywhere on the Presto site or within Presto itself is kind of shocking. Coupled with the way you’re required to install it, it’s clear that this total avoidance of the L-word is a very calculated move to hide it from the public. Why, I wonder? If I had to guess, I’d say it’s because Xandros figures the average person wets himself with fear a little bit any time he hears the word “Linux.” If that’s the case, then is Presto any less scary? I installed it to find out.

The short answer is that, as promised, Presto is blissfully simple to use. It’s also fast. On my HP Compaq laptop, I have to wait two minutes and six seconds from pressing the power button until Windows XP is ready to use. Presto shortens that time to 36 seconds — not exactly instant-on, but a lot faster than Windows.

The installation painlessly takes care of everything: my monitor functions, the sound works and I’m connected to the Internet. And once I’m in, it’s easy to figure out where to go next. The taskbar — docked to the left by default — gives me four giant icons to choose from. They’re so big, they remind me of the old person phone my Grandma has with the comically oversized number buttons. The icons are for Firefox, IM, Skype, File Manager and the Application Store (more on that soon). At the bottom the taskbar, there are some slightly smaller icons for turning the computer off, controlling the volume, seeing all of the programs I have open, adjusting my screen resolution and informing me of my network status. Basic stuff. Visiting my favorite web sites, checking e-mail and IMing with friends is a cinch. OpenOffice is also installed by default for creating and editing Microsoft Office documents (as well as non-Microsoft Office docs, of course).

But what if I want to do more? I pop into the Application Store and simply download new programs ala the iPhone. Within minutes of installing Presto, I’m streaming my music collection from Last.fm and drawing mustaches on friends in the Gimp photo manipulation program (think Photoshop, except 100-percent free). The app store is loaded with tons of games, utilities and productivity software, most of which is free. Otherwise, I can download a free trial.

Fast? Check. Simple? Check. Perhaps a little too simple? Hmm….check. As I said, Presto is a watered-down version of Linux in disguise. But what about folks who want its instant-on advantages with a little less handholding? No dice. Take for example, the icons in the taskbar. I can resize them to more sensible proportions if I so choose, but I can’t for the life of me figure out how to remove them. Worse, I can’t figure out how to put new ones on there for the programs I download from the application store. The same goes for desktop shortcuts. In fact, right clicking on the desktop seems to have been completely disabled. I also can’t find a control panel of any kind to customize the look of Presto, which means I’m stuck with the default background image and color scheme. Simplicity, it seems, has come at the expense of functionality and customizability. 

From pcmag.com

BOTTOM LINE:
So simple it’s almost perfect, the magicJack is the best home voice-over-IP gadget I’ve seen to date. Excellent call quality, a workable set of calling features, and an amazing price make this little box the VoIP wonder to beat.

PROS:
Nice price. Good set of calling features. Softphone capability included. Simple enough to be idiot-proof.

CONS:
Only one line (and phone number) per magicJack for now. No Linux drivers.

COMPANY: 
Ymax Corp.

Editor’s Note (2/05/09): New firmware and hardware have been released (and many readers wrote in to tell us about tech support and billing problems) since this piece was published, so we’ve published a new review of magicJack for winter 2009.

EDITOR RATING: 

Those commercials advertising cheap voice-over-IP (VoIP) phone rates look appealing, but there’s always some fine print: You have to switch cable-TV providers, install a VoIP-smart Internet router, or something. And you end up ticked once a month when the bill from MCI, Verizon, or some other telecom robber baron dips into your wallet. If this sounds like your bio, the YMax magicJack is for you: 2 minutes of setup, voice quality that’s almost indistinguishable from a straight analog POTS line, and a cost of just under $20 a year for unlimited nationwide service. When I was testing it in December 2007, the service offered phone numbers in about 90 percent of the country. International calling wasn’t available at test time, though it should be in the next few months. Pricing will be determined based upon phone rates at that time, though YMax says its mandate is to make international calling cheaper than any rate you can get with either Skype or Vonage.

The magicJack device, about the size of a box of Tic Tacs, has a USB plug on one end and an RJ-11 phone jack on the other. I had to connect mine to a Windows PC, but Mac OS X drivers should be ready soon. After USB plug meets USB port, you’ll wait a minute or so while the magicJack software gets automatically loaded. Those who already have magicJack will be happy to know that the company says a firmware rev released while I was testing makes the hardware more resilient to problems caused by fluctuating electrical levels in foreign countries. It also installs hardware echo control, which taxes your CPU about 50 percent less than before.

If this is your first time using the device, you’ll have to run through a registration process. You either request a new number or ask to have your existing number ported (porting availability depends on where you are, takes up to 60 days, and has a $10 surcharge attached); then you input the information necessary to make e911 work (so that emergency services know where you’re calling from). The process should force you off the couch for 60 seconds or so, but that’s it: no phone configuration, no Internet router tweaks. Low-tech folks who just want a cheap phone can just plug a regular analog phone into the magicJack’s RJ-11 port and start dialing.

Those who want a little more will find a fairly impressive array of features in the magicJack software, including caller ID, call waiting, call forwarding, and voice mail that will respond even if you’re not online. The software supplies a softphone that works through a headset and microphone connected to your PC. Compared with business VoIP, this might be a light feature set, but for home users it’s plenty.

Your PC plays a significant part in the service—as in no calls without one. That made me balk at first, thinking that a PC had to be on constantly to make this work. But while technically that’s true, the magicJack’s ability to pick up voice mail even while you’re offline means that your PC can be off while you’re at work or away, since you wouldn’t be there to answer phone calls anyway. And, as with any VoIP service, magicJack doesn’t care where you’re connecting to the Internet as long as the service is broadband. So if your software is installed on a notebook, you can take your home phone with you. And YMax says that in the near future a firmware upgrade will use remote wake-up (a feature that most motherboards support these days) to power up your PC when a call comes in.

MagicJack’s call quality is amazing—almost too good to be true. YMax reps say they can deliver such great sound because they built the operation as a straight phone company rather than an Internet voice provider. YMax worked to become the only such company certified in all 50 states, which, its reps claim, allows it more gateways linking the Internet and the telcos than any other voice provider has. That means it maintains control of calls much longer than a regular VoIP provider, which in turn translates into high call quality. I have no way of verifying the company’s infrastructure claims, but the voice quality speaks for itself.

What worried me is that this network sounds expensive, yet YMax is charging so little. That’s how SunRocket got killed. Then again, magicJack customer base was growing at 30 percent a week while the product was still in beta, according to the company, so maybe I’m worried about nothing. And after all, should the service go belly up, you still have alternatives: It’s not as if the telecom robber barons will disappear. Bottom line: The magicJack is the coolest little home VoIP gadget I’ve seen to date, and for less than $40, everybody should try it.