You probably know that airfares are shooting up right now, thanks to the crazy cost of fuel. Some airlines are nickel-and-diming passengers with fees for checking bags, sitting in certain seats, and even having a soda in-flight.
But do you know the cost of that flight in CO2 emissions? That’s what programmer and environmentalist Michael Mandiberg calls the “real costs” of travel.
He’s plugged flight origination and destination information from airfare websites like Orbitz.com into a little widget called Real Costs that you can download and install into your Firefox web browser.
Then when you surf for airfares on supported websites, you’ll see an orange overlay that states the pounds of CO2 your chosen flight would generate. The Real Costs plug-in compares the flying emissions with cars, buses, and trains, plus it offers links to carbon-offset companies.
Add the CO2 costs to the financial sticker shock of airfares this day, and you might think twice about those discretionary trips. At some point, Real Costs will be available for automobile travel too.
Get an insider’s perspective from Real Costs founder Mandiberg with this interview on Yahoo! Video.
You can fly through your bookmarks and the "collections" they’re categorized in.
The AT&T browser project, Pogo, continues to move towards wide release. This day we’ve got a few hundred golden tickets to give out to people who want to try the current beta.
Unfortunately, this version, while based on Mozilla code, is based on old Mozilla code–the stuff that Firefox 2 was built on. The move to the Firefox 3 engine (Gecko 1.9) won’t happen until “post GA” (general availability), which means, basically, the next major rev.
I am too smitten by Firefox 3 right now to recommend Pogo as a primary browser, but it certainly does take the concept in new directions. Check it out if you like experimenting.
There are 500 invites earmarked for Webware readers. Go to www.pogobrowser.com, enter the code bTHTRjv1 in the “I’ve been invited” section, and go through the sign-up process. You will eventually land back on the Pogo browser page again, but this time you’ll have a username and password. Use those to go to the download page. Fortunately, the product itself is more straightforward.
For a long time, I’ve said that YouTube could become the Web’s supreme ruler of short-form and long-form video should it ever offer feature films and TV shows.
The Web’s top video-sharing site now appears to be preparing to make such a move. YouTube has begun experimenting with delivering longer videos than the typical 10-minute clips granted on the site, Fortune magazine reported Wednesday. On YouTube now are several full-length documentaries and TV shows. (See one of those videos, Howard Buttelman, Daredevil Stuntman, embedded below.)
The question is whether Google is making the move too late.
Long-form content would mark the latest attempt to help Google cash in on YouTube’s massive audience. Two years after acquiring YouTube for $1.65 billion, Google still hasn’t figured out a way to profit from the site, CEO Eric Schmidt has said several times recently.
Google hasn’t yet responded to my inquiries on the Fortune report.
While Schmidt has declined to detail why the company is struggling to squeeze profits from YouTube, some of the site’s shortcomings as a money maker are obvious.
YouTube has become a large video-hosting service, where people post clips of baby’s first steps, a sleeping puppy, or the family picnic. Most don’t attract mass audiences. Nevertheless, Google still has to pay the bandwidth costs.
Each minute, more than 10 hours of video are posted to YouTube, which “is now the majority of outbound bandwidth” for Google, Schmidt stated last week in an interview with The New Yorker. “We had to retool the network.”
Bandwidth costs are likely less of a worry than the advertising issues. If YouTube hasn’t become a cash cow after three years as the Web’s top supplier of short-form, homemade clips, perhaps its time to conclude advertisers just don’t like user-generated content–or at least they don’t care about it enough.
Greg Sterling, an advertising and marketing analyst, said studies have shown that ad agencies remain wary of putting their brands next to user-generated content. “They don’t like not knowing what they’re getting,” he said.
But Sterling doesn’t see how offering long-form content can help YouTube. In addition dealing with advertisers who are squeamish about user-generated content, YouTube must also figure out how to advertise to an audience–regardless of the length of the video–that resents advertising on the Web.
Google has yet to discover an vehicle that can get ads in front of viewers well enough to please advertisers but not alienate viewers.
The Hulu factor, and Mark Cuban weighs in Another challenge is that YouTube’s move toward long-form video comes after many of the massive content suppliers have already found other Web outlets for their material. For instance, Disney last week began showing full-length movies on the internet, beginning with Finding Nemo.
The best example of these attempts maybe Hulu, the video portal created by NBC Universal and News Corp. The site offers popular TV shows from both founding companies as well as shows owned by other media firms, including Viacom. Critics have praised the site for delivering high-quality video and for enabling users to embed Hulu videos on other sites.
Hulu has other advantages, such as owning the rights to show all the video it offers, Mark Cuban wrote on his blog Tuesday. Cuban, owner of the National Basketball Association’s Dallas Mavericks and the cable channel HDNet, is one of YouTube’s biggest critics.
He wrote that Hulu is crushing YouTube in revenue per video and revenue per user primarily because “Hulu has the right to sell advertising in and around every single video on its site,” Cuban wrote. “It can package and sell any way that might make its customers happy.”
YouTube doesn’t have the same luxury because it can advertise only “on the small percentage of videos on its site that it has a licensing deal with” Cuban wrote.
In an e-mail on Wednesday, Cuban was also skeptical that providing long-form content could help YouTube.
“By the letter of the law, YouTube is a hosting service,” Cuban said in an e-mail. “They aren’t granted to know what the content of the user uploaded videos they host are. It could be a hard core porn or the daredevil stunt-man motion picture that is 95-minutes long. Hulu knows exactly what they stream…I think long or short form, Hulu is a better platform to make money from.”
On YouTube is copyright content that the company can’t sell ads against or else risk losing its protection from lawsuits under the Digital Millennium Copyright Act, which protects hosting sites and ISPs from being held responsible for illegal acts committed by users.
That brings us to whether YouTube can acquire the rights from networks and studios that have long accused the company of failing to protect copyright.
This is where I think there will be tiny problem for YouTube. While it has been criticized for dragging its feet on providing filters that protect against piracy, it can provide content creators an audience of 71 million unique users worldwide every month.
If YouTube can deliver movies and Television shows in high quality, entertainment industry executives are going to want to be in front of YouTube’s audience.
…and looking to add on to my short position after the conference call. Take a look at the reasons why: Technicals: We have rebounded about 30% (at 27.53) from the intermediate lows of 21.17 last Thursday, a huge but somewhat expected rally since LEH was very oversold on a technical basis. Last time we’d a move […] For more visit Source:www.investment-blog.net
CNET News.com’s Caroline McCarthy interviews two NYTimes.com software engineers for a video in collaboration with Beet.tv. Note: The spelling of Derek Gottfrid has been corrected. (Credit: Beet.tv)
The New York Times has added a new feature to its Web site that takes a few cues …
If you’re flying Delta Air Lines out of New York’s LaGuardia Airport, you can now flash your cell phone to get onboard. On Tuesday, the airline rolled out a partnership with the Transportation Security Administration (TSA) to test out a “paperless check-in”–passengers download a boarding pass onto …
The questions about Lehman Brothers (LEH) won’t go away. The investment bank’s shares rose Monday after Lehman chief Richard Fuld took responsibility for its $2.8 billion second-quarter loss. He stood behind Lehman’s balance sheet marks and reaffirmed that the bank’s so-called deleveraging effort, in which it sold assets to reduce the size of its balance […] For more visit Source:www.investment-blog.net
CNET News.com’s Caroline McCarthy interviews two NYTimes.com software engineers for a video in collaboration with Beet.tv. Note: The spelling of Derek Gottfrid has been corrected. (Credit: Beet.tv)
The New York Times has added a new feature to its Web site that takes a few cues …
Bon appetit for Cooking.com: The kitchen appliance retailer announced Wednesday that it has pulled in $13 million in venture funding in a round led by Azure Capital Partners. ORIX Venture Finance also contributed venture debt to the round, and Azure partner Michael Kwatinetz is now on the company’s …
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