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Filed under: Internet, Video, Web

Hulu to begin charging for (some) content next year?

Hulu
Hulu is quite simply one of the best ways to watch TV on the internet. In fact, in some ways, Hulu offers a better viewing experience than old fashioned TV. For example, you tend to have just 2-3 minutes of commercials to put up with when watching a one hour (or rather, 42 minute) program on Hulu, instead of 18 minutes of advertisements.

But partly for that reason, FOX, NBC, ABC, and the other content networks that are supplying Hulu with a steady stream of TV shows and movies aren't making as much money from the site as they do when that content is viewed on TV. And according to FOX News Corp deputy chairman Chase Carey, one way to address that issue is to start charging for Hulu content. '

Now, before you freak out, it's not entirely clear at the moment exactly what content would be moved behind a paid firewall. It's unlikely that Hulu would require users to pay to watch everything on the site. But it is possible that some exclusive content could be available only to paying subscribers or one-time viewers.

Of course, it's possible that the forces behind Hulu could go all out and treat itself like a cable network, requiring users to pay to view anything on the site -- at which point Hulu's audience would sharply decline while internet piracy would shoot up.

What do you think? Is there some content you would pay to see on Hulu? Or are you already paying for that content from iTunes, Amazon, or other internet video distributors?

[via TV Squad]

Filed under: Internet, Video, Web

Hulu working on a subscription-based video service

Hulu Mad Men

Over the past year or so Hulu has quickly become one of the most popular online video sites even though it's only open to US viewers. Hulu's success likely comes from a number of factors including a focus on high quality professionally produced content including network TV shows and movies, a simple user interface, and relatively unobtrusive advertisements that are much easier to put up with than the 18 minutes of ads in every hour of US broadcast television.

But Hulu's focus on advertising supported content has likely prevented some premium content owners like HBO and Showtime from making full length content available. Now it looks like Hulu is testing out a subscription-based service.

I really hope any subscription service would offer content that's not currently available to Hulu customers. I'd hate to see some of the content that's currently available for free disappear behind a paywall. But at this point it's too early to say exactly what the service will look like, or even it will ever appear.

[via Business Insider]

Filed under: Audio, iPhone

Real Rhapsody iPhone app due to arrive soon

The Rhapsody streaming music service from RealNetworks may be coming to the iPhone soon, according to a post on the RealNetworks blog. The iPhone app is finished and being sent off to Apple for review this week. There's a video demo of the app, and it looks like a decent front end for the subscription-based service. An Android app is also in the works.

The iPhone app isn't too flashy, but appears well-designed, offering all of Rhapysody's basic features, like searching and playlists. The app's best feature is a song queue that you can fill up and save as a playlist, which looks quite useful. There's also a music guide that shows current charts and what's new this week, and also allows you to browse by genre.

This is all good news for Rhapsody's 750,000+ subscribers, but I have to wonder whether an app that seemingly provides an alternative to Apple's own iTunes Music Store won't just be hit with one of Apple's notorious "duplicate functionality" rejections. Considering that the FCC is currently inquiring into a similar rejection of Google Voice, and that there are other streaming music apps on the store already - albeit free, and not with Rhapsody's extensive song library - it seems likely that Rhapsody will get a pass. Apple's been trying to clean up its review process, but the whole thing is still unpredictable, so this should be interesting to watch.

Filed under: Internet, Video, Web

Paid subscriptions coming to Hulu?

Hulu
Right now all of the content on web video service Hulu is free and ad-supported. But News Corp chief digital officer Jonathan Miller (formerly of Download Squad's parent company AOL), says that could change. Speaking at an event last night, Miller said some of the TV shows and movies on Hulu future could be made available only to paying subscribers in the future.

There are no plans to launch Hulu subscriptions at the moment, and Miller was just speaking in hypotheticals. But News Corp is one of Hulu's two primary backers (the other being NBC), so if he thinks subscriptions are a good idea, it might be time to start throwing a little money in a piggy bank for a Hulu day fund.

[via Digg]

Filed under: Business, Blogging

Amazon opens Kindle publishing to all bloggers


Do you have a blog? Does it have a working RSS feed? Congratulations! You can now publish your blog on Amazon's Kindle platform, allowing users of the Kindle device (or the Kindle iPhone app) to subscribe to your blog for a small fee. You take a 30% cut, and Amazon takes the rest. It might be small potatoes, but more blogger-generated content could attract more users to the Kindle platform, which means more blog subscribers.

You don't have to do anything special to make your blog readable on the Kindle. Just put your RSS feed in over at Kindle Publishing for Blogs, and you should be good to go. As M.G. Siegler points out at TechCrunch, it would be really nice to give your blog away for free, but that doesn't seem feasible for Amazon. Right now, they decide what to charge your readers, and it's generally around $1.99/month.

Filed under: Audio, Internet, Web

Last.fm to charge international users a subscription fee

Last.fm playerOnline music streaming service Last.fm is about to begin charging users in all but three countries a subscription. If you don't live in the US, UK, or Germany, you'll be able to listen to up to 30 tracks as part of a free trial. after that, you'll need to shell out €3.00 each month to use the service.

Last.fm, which is owned by CBS works with thousands of musicians, labels, and others to secure the rights to stream music in the US and internationally. But either Last.fm is getting greedy, or someone at the company realized that the cost of streaming music and paying for license fees in all of those countries was too high and Last.fm needs to find some way to pay its bills.

Last.fm competitor Pandora pulled the plug on all of its international streams in 2007 and 2008.

[via Mashable]

Filed under: Internet, Video, Windows, Macintosh, Adobe, Freeware

Adobe wastes time/money/effort, gives its Media Player old, new content

adobe media player flashpoint
Adobe just added new video content to its AIR-based Media Player, but it all pretty much sucks in one form or another. The Adobe Media Player is a slick media browser that can play and subscribe to videos from the web, and it also provides somewhat high-resolution content from Adobe's media partners such as MTVN and Comedy Central.

Despite the fact that the player is very visually appealing and easy to navigate, it's just not that useful. It's possible to use any regular, free browser such as Firefox to watch online video content, allowing web-travelers to avoid the installation of an extra app. As a result, the main reason for installing the app (unless you really, really like the subscription feature) is to watch the 25,000+ videos provided by Adobe.

And that's exactly what's wrong here. Adobe's video library is still weak, and most good of the good TV shows aren't full episodes but rather short clips. Furthermore, the full videos Adobe is adding aren't current TV hits like Lost or Battlestar Galactica. Instead, Adobe partnered with CBS and Sony to add tons of clips and a few movies/episodes from old stuff like Men in Black, Jerry Maguire, The Love Boat, Beverly Hilly 90210, Family Ties, and even The Price is Right. They might as well call the app something to the tune of Adobe Senior TV On Demand.

Sure, Adobe has the money to keep it up and running, but why bother if the company isn't bringing its best to the table? Why not partner with Hulu and create an official, fully functional Hulu AIR app instead?

Filed under: Windows, Office, Microsoft, Commercial

Microsoft Equipt (subscription based Office) to go on sale this week

EquiptCan't justify spending hundreds of dollars for Microsoft Office? Starting this week, Microsoft will be offering Equipt for $69.99... per year. Equipt is an office suite which features the applications from Microsoft Office Home and Student, Microsoft OneCare, and comes bundled with several (already free) Windows Live services.

When you consider the fact that Microsoft puts out a new version of Office every few years for $300 or more, Equipt might seem like a bargain. But when you factor in the fact that you can pick up a copy of Microsoft Office Home and Student for just over $100, things might start to look a bit different.

Still, your $70 gets you working versions of Word, Excel, PowerPoint, OneNote and other programs. You also get free upgrades. And as much as we love free alternatives like OpenOffice.org, we have yet to find one that's 100% compatible with Microsoft Office. Nothing screams unprofessional like opening a document a boss or colleague sends you and completely messing up the formatting.

At launch Equipt will be available only at Circuit City stores. Microsoft is expected to announce more distributors soon.

Filed under: Internet, Blogging, Web services, Social Software, web 2.0

LiveJournal kills free basic account offer

LiveJournal account features
If you go to sign up for a new LiveJournal account, you may notice something missing. The company behind the blogging service/social network has removed the Basic account option, while leaving the Plus and Paid options in place. For $2 a month you get the ability to post more picturs, receive more notifications, and store more media online than you could with a free Plus account. And you don't have to put up with advertising.

The Basic option used to be ad-free as well, but users didn't get advanced search options, additional storage space and many other features that came with Plus and Paid accounts. In other words, LiveJournal wasn't really making any money off of Basic account holders. You know, unless you count the fact that Basic account holders were adding value to the service by creating a community of active users that was so popular that some people were even willing to pay for advanced features.

When LiveJournal management announced the change earlier this month, LiveJournal users didn't exactly keep their concerns private. As of this writing, there are 68 pages filled with comments, most from users who are critical of the change. But since the new policy affects new users more than existing users, it will probably take a while to determine what impact the change will have.

[via ReadWriteWeb]

Filed under: Audio, Internet

Napster to launch web-only music service

NapsterNapster has redesigned its subscription music service and the company is launching favor of a web-based service.

Napster 4.0 lets you listen to your music collection on any internet-connected computer. The advantage to web-based software is obvious. Suddenly Napster is compatible with every Mac, Linux, and PC machine on the market, without requiring you to download and install any software. You'll still need a Windows PC running the desktop client if you want to download songs, burn them to CD, or transfer them to a portable device.

The web-based service also includes a recommendation tool, playlists managers, and music discovery features.

Filed under: Business, Design, Developer, Internet, Utilities, Blogging, Web services, Google

Google opens up FeedBurner MyBrand to all users

google feedburner mybrandHot on the heals of Google snapping up Feedburner, features that were once free paid only are starting to be opened up to all users. For instance, Google opened up Feedburner stats, a once $5/ month subscription.

Google's second free slot in FeedBurner went to the MyBrand premium service. This once $3-$14/month service that runs all feeds through publishers own domains is now open to all users. The MyBrand service allows for content publishers to obtain a transparent branded experience when their content is accessed online. All of FeedBurners services can still be utilized, but everything will run through the publishers domain (feeds.domainnamehere.com). Publishers will be able to do this by changing the CNAME in their DNS records.

The FeedBurner MyBrand service is free and accessible through FeedBurner accounts. Activation instructions can also be found upon login as well.

[via GoogleSystem]

Filed under: Audio, Business, Apple

Steve Jobs puts damper on iTunes subscription rumor

iTunesApple CEO Steve Jobs tells Reuters he has no plans to offer a subscription option for iTunes customers, despite claims that Apple was working on just such a system.

To be honest, the rumor seemed a bit unlikely, coming from an unknown company. And it's not like Apple would really need to involve a third party if it wanted to implement a subscription model.

Jobs says the subscription model has failed for most other companies that have implemented it. Apple, on the other hand has sold more than 2.5 billion songs over the past four years through the iTunes store.

Subscription service allows the record labels to collect money on an ongoing basis and provides users with a large music library. But Jobs says there's not much consumer demand for subscription based services where, if you stop paying, you lose all of your music.

Filed under: Audio, Business, Internet, Apple

Apple considering subscription option for iTunes?

iTunesTake this with a spoonful of salt. No, make that a bucket.

INTENT MediaWorks CEO Les Ottolenghi tells CNNMoney that his digital distribution company has been meeting with Apple, and that Apple is seriously considering offering iTunes customers the option of paying a monthly subscription rather than just buying music by the song or album.

Of course, given how close to the vest Apple likes to play big announcements, we wouldn't put too much stock in this guy's prediction that Apple will make an announcement within the next six months.

Not to mention the fact that iTunes is still the 800lb gorilla of online music and video stores. While subscription based stores like Napster and Rhapsody have struggled to make money, iTunes has done a pretty good job of selling music and giving customers reasons to buy iPods.

That said, Apple didn't necessarily need to partner with EMI to make DRM-free music available either. It's possible that the company is looking into the future and trying to meet the demand it expects to rise for various services like unencrypted music files, and perhaps even subscriptions.

[via iLounge]

Filed under: Developer, Windows, Productivity, Microsoft

MSDN Library is now a free download!

MSDNMicrosoft has released the MSDN library as three ISO images you can download and burn. Previously this was only available to developers who subscribed to the MSDN service. The May 2006 edition is out right now, and Rob Caron has said that future editions will also be available as they are released. Microsoft doesn't look like they will charge $1.50 for this one (which remains to be seen), and it isn't a beta either. They will have considerably less demand for this than for Office 2007 I suppose. This is great news for developers everywhere who would benefit from the library on their PC. Microsoft, thanks for making my job easier. For once.

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With Halloween fast approaching, it's a great time to get in some practice defending your territory against zombies. In Graveyard Shift, you take aim at zombies and other creepy-crawlies, blasting them into splatters of cartoony green guts. It's a casual first-person shooter, and it's very easy to get the hang of - use the mouse to aim, click to fire. Graveyard Shift has at least 15 levels, and it might even have some secret stages I haven't unlocked yet. They key to getting good at Graveyard Shift is learning to use ...

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