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Editor’s note: The following guest post is by Ashkan Karbasfrooshan, the CEO of WatchMojo, a producer and distributor of premium video content. Read his other posts here, or follow him on Twitter @ashkan

My cohort at Revision 3, CEO Jim Louderback, recently wrote an article called “Screw Viral Videos.” Why? Because according to Louderback, “viral videos deliver little or no value to anyone.” Which led me to wonder: what about content farms?

The Definition of Content Farms

While no official description exists yet, a content farm is the term given to a website or media organization that

• seeks to maximize content production output
• while minimizing production costs
• to acquire as much organic search traffic as possible
• with the main intent of converting that traffic into revenue, generally from advertising.

Over the past few years, anticipation of “content farm” poster boy Demand Media’s IPO has fueled both a lot of media cynicism and investor curiosity. No doubt, the fact that most of the content farms are seeking to disrupt traditional media organizations, in general, and journalists, in particular, explains some of the cynicism, but it does little to ask the question of whether the strategy itself is wise.

From One Dumb Idea to Another

Just five years ago, the conventional wisdom suggested that ad-supported media organizations should embrace user-generated content as a way to “scale” content offerings on their site, arguing that marketers will chase eyeballs no matter what. Today, that ranks up there as one of the dumber strategies in the history of publishing and advertising as marketers totally rejected UGC and even the biggest proponents of UGC shifted their business models to address that reality.

Back in April, I asked “Will AOL and Demand Media’s Content Farm Strategy Prevail?” and basically concluded that a “machine-gun, carpet-bombing” editorial strategy relying on a freelance model might work with articles but runs the risk of producing wildly inconsistent videos which would scare off advertisers. The important word to consider in all of this is not in fact content, but advertising, since—paywalls and iPad subscription fantasies notwithstanding—content remains largely an ad-supported game.

With Advertising, Value Trumps Cost

As Google’s CEO Eric Schmidt once stated: “advertising remains the last bastion of unaccountable spending in corporate America.”  Profiting from that disequilibrium are the ad agencies who care less about costs than they do about value—getting the most bang for their advertising buck

In economic terms, what matters most to them is balancing quality with cost to provide value; not minimizing cost and maximizing output. The effort to maximize output is based on the objective of maximizing organic traffic, but as we saw with UGC, more traffic does not mean more revenue, it just means a greater supply of inventory which pummels ad rates.

Who Are Your Clients: Financiers or Marketers?

In other words, if you don’t come from a publishing or advertising background—and you’re business is supported by venture capitalists or private equity bankers while you try to woo investment bankers—then, indeed, you need to stress that you can produce more content more cheaply than anyone else.  But that kind of downward spiral rhetoric will ring hollow to marketers who underwrite most of the media world.

Marketers Don’t Like Cheap Dates

Conversely, if your business aims to serve marketers and other media companies, that is not the right tone to strike: after all, should content producers really be conveying the fact that we’re cheap dates?

Being in the content business requires an understanding that you will be perpetually trying to master the art and science of production, distribution and monetization; that is an ongoing process. It is not at all akin to writing code for software that—once built—can create an infinite amount of copies and licenses to sell.

The jury’s out on whether the content farm approach will prove successful, but I am betting that in 2011, you will start to see a regression to the mean, with the very same companies who are rushing to emulate the leading content farm companies revert back towards a more balanced approach to publishing and focus on quality.  Meanwhile, the firms who bet the farm on quality and focus on offering value  in the form of quality content, instead of focusing on costs and output alone, will reap the most come harvest time.

Photo credit: Flickr/ h.koppdelaney

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You’ll forgive me for sneaking in some pop culture in the mix because it’s Saturday and all, right? Rapper Kanye West is having a bit of a moment on Twitter the past few hours, apologizing for the Taylor Swift incident from last year when he stormed the stage during the artist’s acceptance speech at the MTV Video Music Awards to complain that Beyonce should have won the Best Female Video award instead.

But not just that. He’s also making it crystal clear, as others have before him admittedly, that Twitter has changed the way celebrities interact with their fans and anyone who’s interested in what they have to say really. And slamming mainstream media in the process.

So reading about four pages of tweets by West, there are some interesting gems to be found in there besides his apologies to Swift and his complaints about the massive backlash he’s received since then, receiving death threats and getting booed off stage and so on.

This blog reposted the long rant (easier to read).

Here’s part of his rant against mainstream media, and his love for Twitter:

Man I love Twitter… I’ve always been at the mercy of the press but no more… The media tried to demonize me

She deserves the apology more than anyone. Thank you Biz Stone and Evan Williams for creating a platform where we can communicate directly

and

These aren’t regular tweets… this is stream of consciousness … I want you guys to know and feel where my head is at…

These tweets have no manager, no publicist , no grammar checking… this is raw

True enough, the rapper could have written a thoughtful blog post (or a letter) on the matter and it would have been picked up by followers and celeb watchers just the same, but the beauty of Twitter is that it enables, encourages even, people to be more concise and direct.

You can consider his tweets insane rambling by a celebrity who is up late and possibly drunk, or as some lame way of getting attention (if it is, I’ll take this over most publicity stunts I’ve seen over the past three decades).

Or you can look at it this way: 5 years ago, how were fans able to get this much insight into their idols’ thoughts and feelings? Answer is they didn’t.

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When I was ready to transition from computer programmer to project manager, my employer, Xerox Corporation, sent me to its huge training center in Leesburg, Virginia. Over two weeks, the people there taught me some of the skills I needed in order to succeed in my new role: managing projects, motivating people, complying with employment regulations, and preparing status reports and presentations. The company also encouraged me to complete an MBA, on a part-time basis, at New York University. It gave me lots of time off and paid for the tuition.

Tech companies in the internet era offer their employees some great perks. But do you think that Facebook, Groupon, or Zynga provide budding professionals with any serious management training? Not at all. Given the way tech companies grow and the HR challenges they face, management training and career development are more important than ever. But few have the time—they are too busy surviving.

Professors Robert Fulmer and Byron Hanson of Duke University’s Corporate Education group researched the management practices of 23 leading high-tech firms. Corporate executives in an overwhelming majority, 89 percent, believed that leadership development was becoming increasingly important for their companies; 58 percent ranked this as a high corporate priority. Yet less than one-fourth of the managers interviewed had a clear roadmap for how they could develop themselves, and more than half didn’t even know who in their organization was responsible for the development of leaders. The conclusion of the researchers wasn’t surprising: many high-tech companies are young, so their systems and procedures for grooming leaders aren’t well developed or firmly established.

Maybe this is why so many tech companies suffer from morale problems, missed deadlines, customer-support disasters, and high turnover. And this may be one of the reasons why so many tech startups who succeed in selling their vision and raising millions in financing are just a flash in the pan.

One of the interesting findings in the Fulmer and Hanson research was that more than 70 percent of the tech executives interviewed said that leadership development in technology-driven firms is different than in other industries. The researchers believed, just as I do, that these tech executives were dead wrong. The lessons that leading companies like Proctor and Gamble and General Electric have learned about management development and training apply as much, if not more, to tech companies.

This means that if you’re a fresh grad joining a hot new tech startup, you shouldn’t expect your managers to train and groom you, or the company to provide you with time off to complete an MBA. You’re on your own. If you are working at some of the more established companies, such as IBM and HP—which do have excellent management-development practices—take full advantage of them. You need to learn all you can.

Many people are born with an innate sense of vision; they readily learn new technologies and master them. Some are very good at communicating and inspiring others. But you can’t be born with the skills needed to plan projects, adhere to EEOC guidelines, and prepare budgets and manage finances, or to know the intricacies of business and intellectual property law. All this has to be learned. Some skills can be developed on the job, but this is usually through trial and error.

I usually recommend that engineering students who want to become managers and CEOs complete a fifth year of education. There are one-year long engineering management programs which cover such subjects as marketing, finance, intellectual property, business law, and management—similar to the key courses in an MBA program; plus tech-oriented subjects like innovation management, operations management, and entrepreneurship.  One such program (and there are many) is the Duke Masters of Engineering Management program, at which I teach.

For experienced tech workers in Silicon Valley, Berkeley and Stanford both have excellent executive MBA programs. Berkeley Haas School dean, Rich Lyons told me over dinner, last month, of his plans to make his school the premier training ground for Silicon Valley executives. Boston’s Babson College is also launching a program in San Francisco.

But not everyone needs to spend two years doing an MBA. Berkeley’s college of engineering is creating a much shorter program targeted at Silicon Valley techies with leadership potential. Under the aegis of Fung Institute Chief Scientist and Director of UC Berkeley’s Center for Entrepreneurship & Technology, Ikhlaq Sidhu, the school is developing a professional program in Engineering Leadership. This will meet one evening a week for six months and teach subjects like product management, entrepreneurial thinking, leadership and finance. It will also teach team building, business management, and motivation.

The new Berkeley program is highly selective however.  It will only accept 25 candidates in 2011, based on recommendations from senior executives in the valley. Sidhu says that he hopes to address the “symptoms of engineering without leadership”—which include organizational indecision about new products and services; unresolved conflict between product management and engineering; and superficial technology strategies.  Berkeley will likely expand this program significantly over time and add many others. After all there is a great need.

Editor’s note: Guest writer Vivek Wadhwa  is an entrepreneur turned academic. He is a Visiting Scholar at the School of Information at UC-Berkeley, Senior Research Associate at Harvard Law School and Director of Research at the Center for Entrepreneurship and Research Commercialization at Duke University. You can follow him on Twitter at @vwadhwaand find his research at www.wadhwa.com.

The man's keeping the Apple TV down, and this case that man isn't Steve Jobs. Nothing can defeat the iPod touch, and the Macalope's not breaking a sweat over reports of the Mac's lost market share.

Look out Plancast and Upcoming, here comes Lanyrd. Ok, maybe that's a slight exaggeration, but if it's possible to have a SXSW "tipping point" at an event then Lanyrd just had it at dConstruct, a popular design and developer conference in the UK. So what is it? The guys behind Lanyrd say they are not trying to build a general purpose events site but instead they are just interested in conferences and everything associated with them: speakers, attendees, venues, books, video and audio, twitter conversation, blog coverage - you name it.

The Funded founder Adeo Ressi was arrested and briefly detained earlier this evening over an altercation with a flight attendant. The airline? Virgin America, which I’ve been holding up as virtually the only airline that doesn’t suck (See Virgin Airlines Fails To Commit Atrocities On Flight VX746 and Delta Flight 1843 From JFK To Hell).

Ressi’s description of the incident is below, and he has sent this to Virgin, he tells me. I’ve reached out to Virgin America for their position.

I can’t help but note the similarities with Jet Blue flight attendant Steven Slater, who has now been rewarded for his behavior with a reality tv show. The worse the flight attendant, the better the chance for fame and glory, I guess.

You posted something nice about Virgin America a little over a week ago. I actually agreed until I was briefly and wrongly arrested as a result of a stressed out flight attendant today.

I am horrified by the incident on VX22 today, after flying over 70,000 miles with the company. Here are the details.

I was on flight VX22 in seat 2B, First Class, under the name Adeodato Gregory Ressi di Cervia. My company, the Founder Institute, is enrolling hundreds of entrepreneurs from eight cities into the incubator, so I was working before taking off. I shut everything down when the cabin door was shut, and started working again when the Internet was turned on at 10,000 feet, reviewing founder applications.

The first class steward, the “ITL,” served some food, but otherwise ignored passengers. There was a young stewardess in the back of the plane that brought me two ginger ails, some nuts, and Pringles. It was strange that the steward ignored passengers, focusing his attention on a baby in the font row, but I didn’t really notice much, since I was busy.

As we started to descend, the captain came on and asked everyone to shut down computers and electronic devices. The ITL walked down the isle immediately following the captain’s announcement and tapped my computer to indicate that I should shut off my computer. I looked up, nodded and indicated that I needed a second to finish an email, and he walked past me into coach.

By the time he returned, approximately 60 to 90 seconds later, I had finished the email at exactly 5:33 PM EST (according to email records), and I was closing the laptop lid. He stood above me, and the ITL said in a loud voice, “I told you to close the computer. You need to listen to me. You need to obey my orders. I am in charge. I told you to close the computer. You need to listen. I am in charge. Not you.” This went on for a while. It was awkward, uncalled for and embarrassing.

Meanwhile, I was holding the closed computer up off the tray table for everyone to see, as it was being shut down even before he walked over. He then said, “I can contact the authorities and have you arrested.” I responded, “I have done nothing wrong. Go ahead, if you like, I have done nothing wrong.”

Now, a few minutes after the original announcement by the captain, the ITL walks up to the bulkhead phone, and I presume he calls the captain. The captain then makes an announcement that everyone should have their devices off or “the authorities will be contacted and meet us upon landing.” My device was already off for a few minutes at this point, and I ask for the ITL’s name, who now completely ignores me.

As we continue to descend, I had a bag on the floor in First Class, which I know is not allowed on Virgin America First Class because I have flown over 70,000 miles on the airline. So, I ask the ITL to put the bag up, and he responds, “get up, and put it away yourself.”

I get up, and then the ITL starts yelling at me again for standing up when the plane is below 10,000 feet. I toss the bag into the overhead, leaving it open, sit down quickly and he calls the captain again using the bulkhead phone. He then comes over to shut the overhead compartment. At this point, we did not speak again during the flight.

We land at 5:49 PM, 16 minutes after I closed my computer down. We taxi to the gate, and there was a 15 minute delay while the authorities were called. Two NYC police men escorted me off the plane. Passengers are delayed even further as the police interrogated me in front of the exit door. Once I start moving up the platform, escorted by two police men, and the passengers are finally let out. Three First Class and Main Cabin Select passengers agree to be witnesses on my behalf to the police, taking more of their valuable time to say that I did nothing wrong.

Meanwhile, I was detained for an hour at the gate by police, who eventually let me go, jokingly referring to this as an “argument over a cell phone” to the TSA. Meanwhile, the Virgin America captain lectured me twice on the importance of turning your computer off, without even listening to my side of the story. The ITL told the police a story that I had been disruptive at other points in the flight, and the police said that the Virgin America flight team were now defending each other. The police also clearly indicated that they thought the ITL was not telling the truth. The police and the TSA had no charges.

You can get the police report for the names of two supportive First Class customers.

I am extremely disturbed by this incident in First Class on Virgin America. I request that Virgin America (1) terminate the ITL in question and (2) refund my money for the whole trip, allowing me to purchase alternative travel home. I do not want to wind up with this ITL on my flight again, as I have recognized him from my 70,000+ miles of flight with the airline.

I a law abiding citizen that has never gotten more than a mild speeding ticket, and I fly over 250,000 miles per year. I never raised my voice. I never cursed. I followed the captain’s instructions. Yet, I was removed from a Virgin America by police for doing absolutely nothing wrong.

Thank you.

Adeo Ressi

Apple CEO Steve Jobs’ obsessive focus on design detail is at least partially responsible for why the tech sphere and the design sphere are so intertwined at the moment. Which makes the ire that Jobs has received for the current iTunes 10 logo (not to mention the foibles of Ping) particularly poignant. The universal hatred for this thing has spawned an @BPGlobalPR-esque Twitter account, some pretty impressive suggestions of alternate logos over on design collaboration site Dribbble, and an email to Jobs himself.

ValuLeads designer Joshua Kopac:

Enjoyed the presentation today. But … this new iTunes logo really sucks. You’re taking 10+ years of instant product recognition and replacing it with an unknown. Let’s both cross our fingers on this….

Steve Jobs to designer Joshua Kopac:

We disagree.

Sent from my iPhone

Attention Joshua Kopac, Steve Jobs has been reinventing the design landscape since before you were using Mac Paint. HE TOOK A FONT CLASS AT REED FOR CHRISSAKES.

But yeah, people love to backseat graphic design among other things, so I’ll tell you what, anyone who thinks that they can do a better job at logo design than Jobs, Jony Ive and team is welcome to have at it. Just send your submissions to tips@techcrunch, with subject line: “I am better than Steve Jobs” or something more clever and I’ll link to and post the best ones here.

Because I for one find the more “Metal” iTunes 10 logo kind of cool and I’m sure our readers, nerds that they are, could do way better.

Side note: How much do you think sending that “Sent from my iPhone” notification pleases Steve Jobs? I’m willing to bet a heckuva a lot. I’m almost surprised Jobs doesn’t include a * after the “my” as in, *”I designed it, bitch.”

Image: Rich Hemsley

Update: We’ve got our first post-worthy alternate by Chris Carlozzi. Not sure what the heart on the right is supposed to symbolize, but the rest of it is top notch.

And here’s our second by Felipe Hauser.

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Bad news for Craigslist users who like to peruse the Erotic Services Adult Services section of their site. It’s gone, replaced by a large black and white “censored” logo.

I’ve reached out to Craigslist for comment and await their reply. But the choice of words is significant – the section wasn’t simply removed, the censored word was used.

The site has been embattled as old press and state attorneys general use any excuse to blame sex crimes on the site. From South Carolina Attorney General Henry McMaster’s failed crusade against them to a variety of press stories about sex and other crimes. If it’s just a sex crime it isn’t a story. But if a listing on Craigslist was involved, it’s a big story.

Craigslist has fought back using little more than their blog and logic. And they’re right. Having prostitution up front and regulated, as Craigslist does, means less crime is associated with it. It’s not like prostitution, sometimes called the world’s oldest profession, was invented on the site.

The fact that eBay and others do exactly the same thing, but without human review and moderation, doesn’t seem to matter. Craigslist Sex is what scares the general population, and it’s what the press and the politicians will continue to use to get their hits and votes.

So the Craigslist Adult Section was removed. Is the world now a safer place?

Update: This only appears to affect U.S. sites, so if you’re looking for a happy ending in Saskatoon or the West Bank, have at it.

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The Obama administration back in January promised $8 billion in funding for cities and states to build high-speed, intercity rail projects.

This week, the Department of Transporation issued its specifications for the manufacture of new fast trains, namely double-decker coach, dining, baggage, and business class passenger rail cars that can travel between 79 MPH and up to 220 MPH.

Bi-level rail cars not typical in the US today, would accommodate more passengers, and hopefully alleviate congested roads and some resulting air pollution.

According to the American Association of State Highway & Transportation Officials (AASHTO) 95 percent of passenger travel in America is made by car, motorcycle and truck on our highways now.

Expanding highway capacity and overhauling busted roads with more durable and sustainable materials can prevent some traffic jams. But even highway professionals advocate building efficient, intercity, high speed trains and upgrading our freight rail systems.

Wireless companies like Groundlink and D-Link could win business rigging new high speed trains with internet service and related equipment.

Cities that recently won government funding for their high speed passenger rail projects include: Cleveland, Columbus and Cincinnati, Ohio, and Battle Creek, Michigan among others along the Detroit to Chicago route.

Feds promised the biggest piece of the budget in their national high speed rail transit program earlier this year to large-scale efforts in Florida and California that would connect Tampa and Orlando with 168 MPH trains, and Los Angeles and San Francisco with trains running up to 200 MPH.

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As a longtime Apple TV owner, I’ll admit a dirty little secret: I really like the device. Sure, it has been one of the rare flops for Apple in recent years. And it could be so much more with say, a Blu-ray player or a web browser. But it is really good at its core functionality: bringing iTunes content into your living room. And that’s why this new version of the Apple TV makes sense — at least for now.

When I first bought the Apple TV, there were two varieties: a 40 gigabyte version and a 160 gigabyte version. I was torn between which one to get, but I ultimately went with the 160 GB one thinking I could put most of my movies on it. Big mistake. I basically never use the hard drive on my Apple TV, so it’s a 160 GB hard drive sitting there doing nothing. Instead, I stream everything to the Apple TV.

In fact, the only time I do use the hard drive on my current Apple TV is when I rent a movie on it. Currently, even when renting, you download a movie to your hard drive where it sits for up to 30 days (or 24 hours after you start playing it). But with the new iTunes rentals (both TV and movies) everything is streamed — no hard drive is required (besides a small one for buffering purposes). Thanks to that, and undoubtedly the knowledge that most owners were using it for streaming, Apple removed the hard drive from the device, and cut it down in size and price.

Now, at one-forth the size and less than half the price, it’s an even more attractive way to get your iTunes content into your living room. And it has a few very nice bonuses. The mixture of the new Netflix functionality with Apple’s new release rental movies makes this an excellent in-home movie machine for the masses. For those who pay $9 a month to Netflix, you get access to tens of thousands of older movies. For those interested in newer movies, they’re $4.99 a pop from Apple.

Yes, Apple removed the option to buy movies on the Apple TV itself. But you can still do this through iTunes on your computer — or on your iPad/iPhone/iPod touch. And guess what? With the forthcoming AirPlay feature, you’ll be able to stream any of those purchased movies right from any of those devices to the Apple TV. In a way, it sort of does make the Apple TV a $99 iPad accessory.

Further, the removal of the option to buy (as well as the removal of the SD options) make Apple TV much less complicated for general consumers. Now there is no question about whether you should rent or buy. There is also no question about whether you should do rent or buy in HD or SD. I suspect most people were renting in HD on the device, which is why Apple made the move it did to eliminate the other unnecessary options. They’re keeping it simple, stupid.

Apple also removed the option to buy TV shows — which never really made much sense to me. There are some shows that people would like to own, but most are definitely watch-once programs. Previously, there was no rental option, you had to buy. Worse, even if you did want to own a lot, the old Apple TV didn’t have nearly enough storage to handle them all — some HD TV show seasons take up 30 GB of space or more. The model just didn’t make a lot of sense.

Granted, Apple’s current $0.99 TV show rental option is pretty weak. They only have shows from ABC and Fox — and only some shows from Fox. But obviously, just as happened with iTunes music and movies, Apple is hoping all the studios eventually get on board.  And if they do relatively soon, the Apple TV will be a very interesting device to consumers as both a movie box and as a potential cable replacement. Sure, most people aren’t going to feel comfortable totally killing cable just yet — but at $99, this will be a very interesting experiment for a lot of people.

All that said, let’s be clear: this Apple TV is not the killer device in the living room. This will be more popular than the current Apple TV, but it will not be iPod/iPhone/iPad-big. And Apple seems to know that, which is why they’re still talking cautiously about it.

The problem Apple faces is the same problem that everyone faces: content agreements. Hollywood is proving much harder to convince than the music labels were. In a few years, if DVD sales keep falling and cable revenues start decreasing, they’ll be more receptive to new options.

The killer Apple TV would have TV network subscription packages. It would offer live events. It would have every movie ever made available on-demand.

And on-demand is the big key to all of this. All of this content is going to move to the cloud. It has too for storage purposes and given how many devices we all have. Rentals just completely made the jump, but eventually purchases will too. At first, you’ll have the option to download certain movies you’ve bought to take on the go, but when you’re at your home, even movies you “own” will be streamed — they’ll simply be streamed for free. And then one day, all of this stuff will be in the cloud entirely as mobile devices will always be connected by high-speed wireless.

This is the future. It’s Apple’s future along with everyone else’s. This Apple TV is one small step in that direction, and at $99 it makes sense for now — at $229, it never did. This is a stepping stone to the cloud age. Right now it’s a mixture of the internal cloud (streaming from within your house) with the external cloud (streaming rentals from the cloud). Soon it will all be external.

If this half-step isn’t your thing, if you want more functionality, buy a Mac mini. There’s a reason Apple just added a HDMI output to it. But that device is too complicated and way too expensive for most consumers to use as a set-top box. The Apple TV is simple.

Oh, and one more thing: the true killer Apple TV device will have apps. I’m still absolutely convinced (as many people are) that it’s only a question of when they make the jump to the living room. The fact that this new Apple TV is running iOS seems to be all the proof one should need that this will come eventually.

When that happens, the Apple TV will become a hell of a lot more than a hobby.

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Location-based service Echo Echo recently posted the above image to their blog in a (successful) attempt to garner some media attention as the debate around online privacy continues to rage.

As extreme as their“If Mark Zuckerberg Cared About Privacy” example is, it does call attention to the needless complexity of various web service privacy agreements, settings and policies.

In the wake of a $8.5 million lawsuit settlement today, search giant Google made a gesture of good faith in the “caring about privacy” department, assuring users that it was taking steps in order to make the minutae of online privacy easier to understand.

“For example, we’re deleting a sentence that reads, ‘The affiliated sites through which our services are offered may have different privacy practices and we encourage you to read their privacy policies,’ since it seems obvious that sites not owned by Google might have their own privacy policies.”

Perhaps this concerted movement towards being more transparent and simple with regards to privacy would also work well for Facebook which, like Google, is currently involved in various privacy scuffles.

Vidyo, a company that specializes in high-quality video conferencing technology for the enterprise, is betting big on bringing video conferencing to mobile devices, including tablets and smartphones. Similar to Skype, Vidyo offers a technology that allows people to connect with each other over the web via video conferencing. However, the company says that Vidyo system is focused more on the enterprise, providing a reliable system, allowing conferencing for many parties at once, and offering high quality video. And Vidyo has built a big business licensing its technology to large electronics companies, such as HP, Intel and Hitachi. Vidyo’s technology is also used by Google to power video for Google Chat.

Apple today announced that in less than 48 hours since its launch on Wednesday, more than one million users have joined Ping, its new social network for music. Ping lets users follow their favorite artists and friends to discover what music they’re talking about, listening to, and downloading. “One-third of the people who have downloaded iTunes 10 have joined Ping,“ said Eddy Cue, Apple’s vice president of Internet Services. “As many more people download iTunes 10 in the coming weeks, we expect the Ping community to continue growing.“

Computerworld reviewer Michael deAgonia writes that for “the past month, the latest 27-inch iMac from Apple has been the center of my digital universe.” Citing the computer’s high-resolution LED-backlit display, clean design, and speed, deAgonia concludes: “The iMac is pretty much everything I could want from a modern computer, the ultimate all-in-one.”

Curious what Google’s Gmail Priority Inbox means for those of us that use an IMAP or POP client like Mac Mail or the Mail function on an iPhone? Well as of yet the feature is not fully enabled on either IMAP or POP-compatible third party or mobile clients, leaving a large percentage of people who hate viewing email a standard web browser out in the cold.

If you try to use the service in Mac Mail right now the emails determined by the Priority Inbox algorithm to be “Important” are sent to an “Important” folder under Gmail. In order to reach them in Mail for the iPhone you also have to search for the “Important” folder under your Gmail account folder.

Priority Inbox is like a pet, you have to train it in order for it to function properly, and this training is partly accomplished using the up-voting and down-voting arrows currently only available in your browser. The algorithm also tracks archiving behaviors like starring , which are also limited when using IMAP/POP. And while Google plans on adding the training feature to both Gmail mobile browsers like Google for the iPhone and to Android, third party IMAP clients like Mac Mail will most likely be left out of the loop, at least for the time being.

The majority of complaints I’ve heard from Priority Inbox users (“It’s still showing me junk mail!”) are from people who basically don’t grasp the key fact that the algorithm needs to be trained to get good, which is hard to do if you’re primarily viewing email over the phone or through Mac Mail.

When the IMAP issues were pointed out, a Google spokesperson responded, unsurprisingly, “Priority Inbox is best when viewed in Gmail’s web UI.”

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Can someone please explain this Bloomberg Businessweek story to me? I’ve read it a few times and am still having a hard time understanding what is or what isn’t being implied, or not implied, about a partnership between Coinstar and Apple.

First of all, the title is awful because most people likely don’t know that Coinstar owns Redbox (they acquired them last year), the DVD rental kiosk company. Instead, most people know Coinstar as those machines in supermarkets where you turn in your loose change for cash or silly things, like Facebook Credits. So why on Earth would they be partnering with Apple on some online venture?

Well, again, it’s about Redbox, as they sort of note in the first paragraph. But what are they going to do with Apple?

“I would not conclude we are or are not doing a streaming deal with them,” Coinstar CEO Paul Davis told Bloomberg. Well that clears things right up.

A streaming deal? While Davis notes Coinstar’s “longstanding relationship” with Apple, that’s for iTunes gift cards right now, which is an option at some of their kiosks. A streaming deal is another matter entirely, obviously.

Clearly, Coinstar (again, Redbox) wants to get into that market to be able to compete with their main rival now: Netflix. The problem with partnering with Apple is that Netflix beat them to it. Just this week, Apple unveiled their new Apple TV which has Netflix streaming built-in. Now, Netflix focuses mainly on catalog (read: older) titles, while Redbox focuses on newer titles, but that’s because Redbox is doing DVDs right now (the business Netflix is slowly moving away from). If Redbox gets into streaming, it would likely have to move more towards catalog titles as well.

Further, Apple already offers new movie releases on their own. And they actually get the majority of them before Redbox does because Redbox was forced to cave to ridiculous Hollywood studio demands that they wait 28 days before getting new release DVDs. As Apple CEO Steve Jobs pointed out a few times on stage this week, Apple gets those movies day-and-date (they day they are released for sale on DVD).

So it’s not clear to me how this possibly maybe non-partnership partnership would actually be beneficial to Apple. iTunes kiosks? Perhaps. But the article doesn’t mention that at all. It just non-talks about a streaming non-deal that may or may not be real. And may or may not make any sense. Or something.

CrunchBase InformationredboxAppleInformation provided by CrunchBase

It seems that one of the beta testers for Google TV couldn’t keep all that goodness to himself, and has posted several pictures and some video of the near-finished interface and hardware. It’s a brief and not particularly shocking video, but seeing it running on a home TV and hearing a regular guy expressing legitimate (if subdued) excitement make it a lot more real.

Continue reading…

Justin Long goes PC, Android may have gotten its logo inspiration from a surprising source, and Google and Apple may be going face-to-face in yet another market segment.

Google is facing an antitrust review in Texas.

First we had the Google vs China debacle, then came Saudi Arabia’s tussle with RIM. And now it’s India’s turn: threatening to block RIM, Google and Skype unless the companies agree to set up localised servers, all the better for state monitoring of communications.

Curiously, compared to the outrage levelled at the Saudi and Chinese governments, American reaction to India’s move has been pretty muted. Could it be that India is somehow perceived as “less evil” than the Muslim/Communist nations? Also: to what extent is India simply doing what every government – including the US government – tries to do: demanding the ability to monitor digital chatter in the hope of foiling criminal and terrorist plots? After all, if Big Brother can’t read your BBMs, haven’t the terrorists already won?

In this week’s episode of Why Is This News, we talk to Harvard Law professor Jon Zittrain, who explains the differences between governments who obey the rule of law, and those who don’t – and why Sarah’s right to criticize the government by email is totally protected, unless she should happen to email it to Paul.

Video below.