CBS issued a press release, boasting how the content it uploaded to YouTube has been very popular. Since they announced a partnership with the video sharing site on October 18, CBS videos have been viewed 29.2 million times. CBS is happy that, not only are the videos being viewed a lot, increasing exposure for various series, but those series are showing some gains in viewership on RegularTube.
Ratings for the network’s late night programs, in particular, have shown notable increases. CBS’s “Late Show with David Letterman” has added 200,000 (+5%) new viewers while “The Late Late Show with Craig Ferguson” is up 100,000 viewers (+7%) since the YouTube postings started. Although the success of these shows on YouTube is not the sole cause of the rise in television ratings, both companies believe that YouTube has brought a significant new audience of viewers to each broadcast.
CBS seems to be the first company to realize that having a ton of stuff on YouTube is great for business. Hopefully they’ll start putting up content from their many other properties as well. I can’t say I like how they insist on controlling everything (they take down clips by other users, sometimes replacing them with their own), but it does result in a lot of great stuff on YouTube, and all of it is legal. Keep it up!
Coverage:
TechCrunch
Reuters
November 23rd, 2006
Posted by
Nathan Weinberg |
YouTube, Services, General |
3 comments
Cingular is the first carrier to release the Palm Treo 680, which I covered last month at Digital Life. The 680 is cheap compared with the various 700 series Treos, just $199 with a contract, featuring similar specs to the Treo 650, but with an updated design and loads of improvements. The phone will be available starting tomorrow.
From the announcement:
All-in-one smart device with phone, email, messaging, Web, camera, and more1
Palm’s ease of use
Just the right size, with a large screen and an easy-type keyboard
Integrated address book, calendar, memos, and to-do list
MP3 player and streaming audio, such as Internet radio1
3-way conference calling that’s a snap to manage
Speakerphone and speed dial
Supports Word, Excel,® PowerPoint® and PDF files
Palm OS® platform runs over 30,000 applications, from games to productivity tools
64MB user-available memory—add up to 2GB more with an expansion card3
Bluetooth® and infrared wireless technologies
VGA camera/video recorder
Product Specifications:
Operating System Palm OS® 5.4.9
Processor Intel® PXA270 312 MHz processor
Screen 320×320 pixel TFT touchscreen that displays over 65,000 colors
Wireless GSM™/GPRS/EDGE class 10 radio
Quad band (850/900/1800/1900 MHz)
Communications Bluetooth® 1.2 wireless technology, Infrared (IR)
Memory 64MB non-volatile flash memory available for user storage
Camera VGA camera with 2x digital zoom and video capture support
Battery Removable, rechargeable lithium ion battery with up to 4.0 hours talk time
and up to 300 hours standby time
Expansion slot Support for MultiMediaCard, SD, and SD I/O cards
Size & weight 4.4” (h) x 2.3” (w) x 0.8” (d); 5.5 ounces
Press release after the jump.
November 23rd, 2006
Posted by
Nathan Weinberg |
DigitalLife, Consumer Products, General |
no comments
Happy Turkey Day, dear readers! Hopefully, everyone (who isn’t boycotting the holiday) will enjoy a feast tonight with the people they love the most.
Here are today’s search engine logos celebrating this day of thanks… giving:
Google:
Yahoo:
Ask doesn’t go all out, as in the past, but does put a, uh, thing, on their front page:
Philipp has an image showing the different Google Thanksgiving logos over the years. Funny, I never realized there’s a theme there:
In this year and past years, Google always shows the turkey as being served food, not being the food itself.
UPDATE: Barry has Dogpile’s logo:
Also, check out Search Engine Roundtable’s logo.
November 23rd, 2006
Posted by
Nathan Weinberg |
Ask, Doodles, Culture, Yahoo, General |
one comment
I just pulled the trigger on what could be the best purchase I’ve ever made: A 51-inch Hitachi HDTV. Thanks to Best Buy’s early Thanksgiving specials, I was able to get this TV for just $700. Any New York-area bloggers interested in coming over for the Super Bowl or some Xbox 360, the invite is open 
The Hitachi 51F59 51″ CRT Rear-Projection HDTV weighs a whopping 151 pounds, but is only 21 1/2″ thick, making it barely double some smaller, cheap LCDs. It is only two inches thicker than my previous 20″ TV. Besides the 16:9 widescreen, it features 117 points of adjustment, perfect for guys like me who like to tinker with everything until it is perfect, a 24-watt speaker that can be used as the center channel in my 5.1 system, 1 HDMI input, 2 wideband component inputs, 3 S-Video inputs, 5 A/V inputs, and 1 fixed/variable audio output. It has a built-in HDTV tuner, important for me, and support 1080i resolution. It’s even my first TV with picture-in-picture.
The TV should be arriving Wednesday. Anyone have any tips or experience with it or similar models, let me know. It is still in stock at BestBuy.com with free shipping, and will be available at the $700 price in store tomorrow and Saturday.
A bit of warning: This TV looks atrocious instore, due to poor settings out of the box. I actually spent a few minutes changing the settings at Best Buy earlier this week, and it got a hell of a lot better.
Some other great Black Friday deals, available online right now:
30-gig iPod with video - $233 with free shipping
RCA 52-inch HDTV CRT (no tuner) - $700 after mail-in rebate
Polaroid 15-inch LCD HDTV (no HD tuner) - $130 after rebate
Westinghouse 19-inch LCD HDTV - $200 after rebate
TDavid links to a pretty useful site for aggregating all the various deals sites, Dealighted.com.
November 23rd, 2006
Posted by
Nathan Weinberg |
General |
one comment
Google announced an update to Google Book Search, adding some AJAX to improve your free book searching experience. The main thing, a typical AJAX feature, is that pages don’t reload when you turn pages in the book. Pages appear one above the next, infinitely scrolling (well, until you run afoul of copyright restrictions, at least). You can choose between 
one page and 
two page views for out-of-copyright books (one page only for in-copyright), and just 
drag your way up and down, like you were reading it in Adobe Reader.
They’ve done a great job cleaning up the interface, with book reading pages almost entirely filled with the book (very much resembling Google Video, in fact). There’s even a full-screen mode switch to completely remove the entire interface and focus on just reading. The book contents page appears to contain even more information, including live links to chapters, related books, and highlighted pages, as well as tags.
The official Google blog details all of the changes.
November 23rd, 2006
Posted by
Nathan Weinberg |
Google Book, Search, General |
2 comments
