mathewingram.com/work

So Dell has given some more details on its plan to fulfill one of the top 10 wishes of the people who submitted ideas to its Digg-style IdeaStorm site: It’s going to start shipping Dells that have the Ubuntu flavour of Linux preloaded on them. Regardless of what you think of the move, I think it’s pretty amazing that Dell has given its fans a forum like IdeaStorm, and — more importantly — has actually listened to them.

Naturally, the Ubuntu announcement has caused plenty of cheers in the Linux camp, since the release from Mark Shuttleworth’s Canonical is seen by many as the new standard-bearer for the Windows replacement vanguard (Michael Robertson’s Linspire, formerly known as Lindows, also had some early potential, as did Xandros and Novell’s Suse). And I have to say that having Ubuntu pre-loaded on a Dell machine would help with one thing: namely, finding drivers that work for all the various hardware inside a brand new machine, especially if it’s something fancy like a Media Center.

I don’t know if Michael Dell — who is a Ubuntu user, as Engadget notes — has had any of the same problems that I have, but I’ve been trying for days to get Ubuntu’s latest release running on an HP Media Center, and have had no luck. It installs fine, and loads and I get the nice Evolution desktop that comes with Feisty Fawn (as the new release is called, following the Linux “goofy name” rule). But the network card doesn’t work.

Let me note that I am not some Linux noob. I’ve installed and run Suse 8, 9 and 10 as well as Debian and Xandros and three or four other flavours of Linux. I have personally edited the x86config file and added mode lines by hand to get an LCD monitor working, and have SSH’ed into my Debian box remotely using putty and repaired my MySQL tables. So there.

Ubuntu can’t recognize the Intel network chip, no matter what I do. I’ve edited the modules file, installed various add-ons. Nothing. Intel has a Linux driver — but you have to compile it yourself and add it to the Linux kernel, and that’s a little too close to brain surgery for yours truly. Give me a box with it all pre-installed, and I would be a pretty happy camper. If there’s one thing Windows does pretty well, it’s the drivers.

As Om Malik notes here, Joost — the peer-to-peer online TV network from Skype and Kazaa co-founders Niklas Zennstrom and Janus Friis — is almost ready to launch for widespread use (reports say it will be opened up to anyone at the end of May). In the meantime, they have opened the system up so that beta testers (like yours truly) can offer some more invites to a deserving few. So if you’re interested in one, let me know in the comments section and I will hand out as many as I can manage. I first wrote about Joost here, back when it was called the Venice Project.

Say what you will about Rupert Murdoch, the Australian brawler who runs the entertainment and media conglomerate known as News Corp.: he doesn’t shy away from big bets. He’s just written what amounts to a cheque for $5-billion U.S. and dropped it on the desk of the Bancroft family, which controls Dow Jones, and with it the Wall Street Journal — one of the world’s most prestigious media properties, both online and off.

The offer, which the Dealbook blog at the New York Times says (quoting David Faber of CNBC) has been in the works for a couple of weeks now, pushed the share price of Dow Jones up by more than 60 per cent at one point, to its highest level in more than five years. As one analyst pointed out, that’s going to make it pretty hard for the Bancroft family to resist. It’s well known that the family has been unhappy with the performance of Dow Jones for some time. The company’s first-quarter profit fell by more than 60 per cent, according to a report from Bloomberg. On the other hand.

An acquisition by Murdoch would definitely cause some fireworks in the U.S. media industry — not just because he runs a giant conglomerate, or because he’s Australian, but because he’s most closely associated (in the U.S. at least) with down-market entities such as Fox News and the New York Post, as Cynthia Brumfield points out at IPDemocracy. That’s probably not going to sit too well in some circles, including (possibly) the Bancroft household.

With Sam Zell buying the Chicago Tribune, and Rupert Murdoch paying a huge premium for the Wall Street Journal, does this mean newspaper stocks have hit bottom? And could the New York Times be next?

Further reading:

Salon co-founder Scott Rosenberg has some thoughts on the deal that are well worth reading — and notes the irony that the WSJ, the bastion of all things capitalist, is getting a fairly strong dose of its own medicine with this bid. And the Newsosaur says the premium was a signal to potential bidders (such as Bloomberg) that Murdoch is determined to do whatever it takes to get the Journal. Om thinks it could be the beginning of an acquisition wave.

A couple of interesting developments today that bring social aspects to large content sites — specifically, YouTube and eBay. The former, which hasn’t really had all that much of a social-networking bent to it (apart from comments and the ability to embed videos elsewhere) has launched something called Active Share, which lets you see who has been viewing your videos.

Meanwhile, eBay has taken a page from YouTube’s early success and added the ability to embed auction-tracking widgets in a webpage, so that people can follow an item without having to reload a page or get an email alert. Both of these make total sense to me — to the point where I’m almost surprised they didn’t already have these features.

Some items that may grow up to be blog posts someday:

• The Beeb is going to expand the on-demand TV service it has been testing, saying the video and audio service has been used by “well over” one million people watching a total of 20 million programmes since it launched six months ago. The new iPlayer system will allow viewers to store shows on a PC for 30 days.
• Chad Hurley writes a new media manifesto for Forbes magazine: “Never before has the opportunity been so great for independent writers and actors, musicians and producers to create compelling content on par with the studios, networks and labels,” he writes. “The playing field has been truly leveled.” Party on, Chad.
• Sony Pictures Television will launch a new Internet service featuring “minisodes” — short (three to five minute) versions of classic TV shows such as Charlie’s Angels and T.J. Hooker. But these aren’t clips — it’s the entire show crammed into five minutes.
• Rupert Murdoch writes his own version of a new media manifesto for Forbes, saying: “Media companies don’t control the conversation anymore, at least not to the extent that we once did. The big hits of the past were often, if not exactly flukes, then at least the beneficiaries of limited options.” You go, Rupe.
• Jesse England was experimenting with film and video, and came up with the brilliant idea of printing an eight-millimetre movie strip onto clear laminate using a bog-standard inkjet printer. It may not be high quality, but it sure is cool (hat tip to BoingBoing for the link).

I wanted to take a minute before I forget (again) and pay some respect to several bloggers who have tagged me as a “thinking blog,” which is indeed an honour. As far as I can tell, the Thinking Blog memetag got started with this blog, which is fittingly named The Thinking Blog. I got tagged first a couple of weeks ago by Jack Lail — thanks, Jack. Then just a couple of days ago I got tagged again by Jason at Webomatica and then by Steve at WinExtra.

Thanks a lot, guys. In order to push this thing forward, I’m not going to choose Jason or Steve — although I think that both of their blogs are excellent (I don’t know Jack’s as well yet) — and I’m not going to name some of the usual suspects, such as my friends Rob Hyndman or Mark Evans, or the more obvious suspects such as Scott Karp at Publishing 2.0, or my friend Paul Kedrosky, although it should go without saying that they are all excellent.

Instead, I’m going to name my friend Leigh Himel of Oponia Networks, who always has something interesting to say that makes me think, as well as Cory and Steve at Lost Remote — who cover new media like almost no one else (except maybe Rafat at PaidContent) — and my friend Dr. Tony Hung at Deep Jive Interests, who seems to find time to save lives as well as blog his heart out.

Sometimes I wish I worked at a small startup with lots of hip young kids — like, say, the group behind Connected Ventures, who run sites like Vimeo, CollegeHumor, BustedTees and Defunker. Embedded below is a lip-synch video they put together in what appears to be their office in New York.

[vimeo http://www.vimeo.com/173714 w=400&h=300]

Lip Dub – Flagpole Sitta by Harvey Danger on Vimeo

Also worth checking out: Vimeo founder Jakob Ludwick’s version of Gnarls Barkley’s Crazy. Thanks to Theory Is The Reason for the links. Just noticed that Fimoculous spotted this one too.

Jason Calacanis’s latest post about linkbaiting is a masterpiece of the genre — in the sense that it isn’t actually linkbait but a semi-satirical take on the entire concept of linkbaiting. It’s meta-linkbait. In a way, it’s the kind of post that only a by-the-bootstraps Brooklyn-ite like Jason could write: he’s making fun of the idea of linkbaiting, while at the same time engaging in it in a completely shameless way. It’s like he’s telling you about how dodgy most New Yorkers can be, and at the same time he’s picking your pocket. You have to admire that kind of chutzpah. And no, Jason, I’m not going to mention your dog 🙂 In fact, I’m not even going to try to do a post that fulfills every criteria of the linkbaiting rules, because Chris Finke beat me to it.

Ethan Kaplan at blackrimglasses.com has written something approaching a manifesto for a new age of creativity driven by cheap and accessible technology — something he distinguishes from “user-generated content,” because I think he feels that’s a marketing buzzword used primarily by big corporations, in order to try and co-opt people’s desire to contribute. As he puts it:

“The whole concept behind “User Generated Content” as a means of describing content created by and for the People is flawed in that it simultaneously is presupposing a hierarchal difference — subjugating the “User” as a different class — [and] maintaining this hierarchy by virtue of a disingenuous altruistic elevation of said content to that of Corporate under the guise of Marketing.”

Can you tell that Ethan (the director of technology at Warner Brothers Records) has a degree in fine art and cultural theory? I thought you probably could. But he is right, in the sense that things like the Modest Mouse video contest are an attempt to give fans the illusion that they are actually interacting with the band when they are doing anything but. Ethan goes on to say:

“Here’s the thing: the best of what we now call UGC, and I choose to call GOOD FILM/VIDEO came from subversive desire and goals, as well as the desire for uninhibited creative expression outside of the confines of economics and hierarchy which define the media industry.”

“Take back the media! Do not partake in systems meant to enforce hierarchy, and instead embrace those that seek to diminish and eliminate it.”

A call to arms indeed. Creative artists of the world, unite! Take up the cellphone and the video camera — you have nothing to lose but your media chains.

First, we got the news that Joost — the Internet TV venture started by the Skype boys, Janus Friis and Niklas Zennstrom — has signed three-month advertising deals with 31 major brand advertisers, including Procter & Gamble, Coca-Cola, Nike and GM. Joost EVP David Clark said that the traditional 30-second spot “is far from dead” — although I think that remains to be proven. The New York Times has some more details.

Meanwhile, YouTube is also working on rolling out ads, according to its head of advertising Suzie Reider, who spoke at Ad:Tech in San Francisco, according to Red Herring. BusinessWeek media columnist Jon Fine — who moderated the panel that Ms. Reider was on — has some more details on his blog. Red Herring quotes Ms. Reider as saying “We’re looking at executions like a very quick little intro preceding a video, then the video, then a commercial execution on the backside of the content.” She said the idea is to generate revenue that can be shared with the more than 1,000 premium content creators on the site.

To my mind, the main questions are: 1) How will viewers of YouTube clips take to ads? Many observers have speculated that once ads start appearing, viewers will turn away, but I’m not so sure. And 2) What kinds of advertisers will YouTube be able to attract? Critics such as Mark Cuban have argued that most advertisers won’t want to be associated with the kind of content that’s on the site, whereas Joost is much more like regular TV.