Utterz vs Seesmic: Two Services with the Same Goal ?

Of course I have been hearing a lot about Seesmic lately, as many of us have. I finally received an invite code for Seesmic in my email the other day and finally got around to checking it out.  It seems very easy and intuitive, although I must say I need to do a bit more exploring to really get what it is all about.
That being said, I also logged back into Utterz for the first time in a bit and was pleasantly surprised to see video Utterz being posted.  A quick look over the the Utterz blog and I saw a post from Jan 23rd announcing the video capability.

So this got me to thinking a bit, is Utterz like Seesmic, or vice versa, and if not what is the difference?  It seems to me that both are vying for the “social” video microblogging thing, would you agree ? Seesmic seems very conversational from what I can see so far whereas Utterz seems a bit more of video blogging.  While it is true Utterz has channels and also a Topic of the Day where people respond to, I am not sure it seems to be built around a conversation as Seesmic is.

As is stands now, I think Utterz is a bit more mature, I understand Seesmic is in Alpha mode, but it is has been much easier for me to find friends and search for people on Utterz.  I watched this post on Geoff Livingston’s blog tonight where he used and commented on Seesmic and how he has been impressed on how Seesmic has grasped the development of communities through the use of video.  Utterz does have “My Circle” where you can see who you are following and who is following you.  The more I look into this, the more I am starting to see pretty deep similarities.

I am really curious to see how this all develops and plays out.  How about all of you, whats your take on this?

A New Way to View Pictures Online

As I was perusing my feeds today I came across this post on Web Worker Daily. It was titled “Visual Web browsing Starts to Take Hold”. I thought it looked interesting and starred it in my reader for later viewing. Anyway I tyook a look at it this after noon and found this gem, PicLens. It is a Firefox extension, I downloaded and installed. All I can say is “Oh MY God !!” It has to be one of the most incredible things I have seen in a while. I can’t do it justice in a few words, but basically it works on sites like flickr and smugmug. After it is installed and you visit one of the sites it works with, as you hover over a pic, a play arrow appears, just hit the arrow and enjoy.

Like I said I cannot do this thing justice, so check out the video, it will blow you away.

It reminds me of an Apple add with the wall of photos, yet you are able to interact with it, grab a photo, move down the wall, make it full screen, etc. Please go check it out, you will not be dissapointed.

Silicon Valley’s Secret History

I am not sure if any of you check many YouTube videos out, but Google has some great videos up on a googletectalk channel.  I watched one the other day on Ajax. Anyway, I saw a post today pointing to another video on the Google channel.  It is a video of a presentation by Steve Blank

Steve Blank spent nearly 30 years as founder and executive of high tech companies in Silicon Valley, most recently the enterprise software firm E.piphany. He has been involved in or co-founded eight Silicon Valley startups, ranging from semiconductors to video games, and personal computers to supercomputers. He teaches entrepreneurship at U.C. Berkeley’s Haas School of Business, Columbia University and Stanford’s Graduate School of Engineering.

It is a pretty cool presentation on how the valley was built by the CIA and NSA during WWII

World War II set the stage for the creation and explosive growth of Silicon Valley, and the role of Frederick Terman and Stanford in working with government agencies (including the CIA and the National Security Agency) to set up companies in this area that sparked the creation of hundreds of other enterprises.

It is not east coast or DC news, but I thought it very interesting and wanted to share with all of you.

I cannot embed these videos, so go and check it out HERE.

Programming Alert: Upcoming Jonny’s Par-Tay !

As you all know, the “staff” here at East Coast Blogging are huge fans of Jonny’s Par-Tay, the weekly show run on blog.tv.  The show is great, as is the interaction with Jonny, the guests, and the other viewers.

I was excited to see another stellar lineup planned for this week.  Jonny’s guests will be Ann Bernard, Founder and CEO of our own DC startup WhyGoSolo.  Ann recently took WhyGoSolo live into a private beta.  I got an invite and the site looks good.  I will be anxious to hear how things are going for Ann and her team.
In addition to Ann, Jonny is going to have on Shana, aka dcconcierge.  That is if she gets back from her trip to the Keys and stops taunting us with her notes on Twitter of cruising on wine cruise and eating freshmahi ….  Shana runs a very cool web site called DC Concierge where she answers readers questions on what to do and see around town.

I believe the viewership hit a record a few shows back and hit 158 or so.  Let’s all mark our calendars to meet up in the chatroom and enjoy the show together.  Show starts Wednesday at 9pm, so I will see you all there.

Netflix Uncaps Streaming Video Rentals. And ?

So there is a lot of buzz going on today around the web to the news that  Netflix has announced that it will begin unlimited movie streaming of its 6000 title catalogue.  According to Duncan Riley over at Techcrunch:

The move is said to be in response to the expected announcement by Apple CEO Steve Jobs at the Macworld Expo Tuesday that iTunes will offer movie rentals from most major studios. The expected price of the iTunes rented movies is $3.99 each, putting Netflix is a competitive position for high value regular movie watchers.

Am I the only one who thinks this is a non issue here?  Netflix streams to a browser, meaning you have to be on your computer to watch the movie.  Apple has the AppleTV to rent movies from, if the rumors are true.  The AppleTV allows me to watch the content on my television.  Hopefully the content will be available in HD making it an even better experience.

In any case, watch in your browser or on your TV, which one would you choose ?  I’ll take the TV.

Jonny’s Par-tay with Rana June, Loved it

Last night, as many of you fellow DC’ers did, I was watching Jonny’s Par-tay with Jonny Goldstein.  It was first time watching the show.  I was turned onto it by @scottstead and I must say, I loved it.  Jonny had on as a guest the talented marketing maven Rana June of WashingtonVC.  If you did not get to see it, here is the link to the show.  Go check it out.

As I said, this was my first time watching this show, or really any streaming show for that matter.  Never got into it.  After last night though, I am a par-tay fan.  It was light hearted, yet Rana gave a lot of good info.  Along with the show there was a meebo chat room.  Many of the familiar DC names were present and we had a great conversation with each other and with the show.  I was able to ask Rana some questions about marketing a one person startup and get her feedback.

I was keeping an eye on the viewer # in the video window and I saw it hit 158 at one point.  @scottstead told me they hit a record last night and I am glad I was one of them.  Next week  Jonny is having on @mobilediner and @simedia so everyone needs to tune in.

Great work Jonny, Rana, and Scott.

Netflix & LG Fire Back at Apple

According to this Wall Street Journal article, Netflix and LG electronics have teamed up to offer direct movie downloads to an LG branded piece of hardware. This would be a very interesting twist, especially on the heels of MacWorld where the rumors have been iTunes movie rentals.

I wrote a post earlier last week stating an Apple run at movie rentals with the AppleTV could prove costly for the likes of Netflix. However, it looks as if good ol’ Netflix had a card up their sleeve. We will stay tuned for more details.

The only issue I see is that according the Silicon Alley Insider, the LG box is not due out till later this year.  Apple already has a piece of hardware in pace and may give them a small leg up.

Apple Movie Rentals, Anyone Questioning the AppleTV Now ?

Earlier this year Apple released the AppleTV as what Steve Jobs called a hobby project. It was a pretty cool device and I was impressed with it. I saw it as a good move to finally bridge the gap from the computer into our living rooms. I bought one and can honestly say it has been awesome. I have moved my entire DVD collection over to iTunes and use the AppleTV th stream the content right to an LCD in the living room. Works great.

However, lately there has been a lot of press about the low numbers of the AppleTV sales and questioning whether it should join the scrap heap or not. Notice that we never really heard any news out of Apple. They just sat back and let the talk go on. What I think Apple has known, as I have thought from the the beginning, is that the AppleTV is the perfect (okay perfect is a strong word) platform for Apple to leverage content on to. Content like, oh say … an online movie rental. The AppleTV has simply been a placeholder if you will. It is almost like iTunes is a tool where Apple loses $$ most likely to drive hardware sales in the form of the iPod.

So now we have the news that Fox has signed a deal with Apple to rent movies through the iTunes store for $2.99 for a 30 day rental. See Apple is pretty smart, they have the platform in place, now they have the content to flow to it. I think it is a great move and will make the folks at NetFlix and Blockbuster shake in their shoes a bit. Netflix is worrying about the size of the envelopes and the Postal Service while Apple is geting ready to finally deliver the digital content we have been waiting for. If only it is HD, that would be the capper.

Om Malik has another take on it. He thinks

The rumor is being viewed by some as a way to revive the flagging Apple TV platform. The reality is that Apple needs to beef up its video offerings if it wants to continue the iPod cash machine humming. The best clue is the easy-to-rip-and-transfer-to-iPod capabilities that may be built into future FOX DVD offerings.

I agree with what he is saying, videos are in short supply on iTunes and if you see his first sentence about the reviving of AppleTV, I also agree. I don’t think this is about “reviving” the AppleTV. I doubt Apple has cared too much because as they have been working this rental deal, they have known they have the Ace in their back pocket, the Ace that allows an easy pipeline right from the iTunes store to the users tv. In other words the AppleTV. Amazon for instance has video rentals, but they don’t control the entire flow. They rely on other vendors and hardware. Apple will own the entire process, and with their track record of easy to use customer experiences it is bound to be a seamless intuitive process.

I am totally excited by this news. The ability to scan the iTunes rentals right form my tv and start the download and viewing will be awesome. I will definitely watch more movies. I can only hope they actually start to use the HDMI interface they built into the hardware and deliver the HD content we viewers are demanding.

Hulu: Almost Perfect, Almost

Until 2 days ago, I did not have a Hulu account, and to be honest I didn’t think I even wanted one. I will admit I am a bit late to this party, but I was kind of mad when NBC and Apple had their tiff and NBC took their shows off of iTunes. I travel a lot and it was great to have the season of 30Rock on my iPod for the plane or even the hotel room to connect and watch on the tv.

So the other day I aw Ars Technica was giving away some invites to Hulu and I went over to grab one and check out out. I will say that my first impression was very favorable. The site is clean and easy to navigate and find the shows you want to watch. I watched several episodes of 30Rock and was shocked at the video quality. I even pushed it out to full screen on my Dell Ultrasharp monitor and the resolution was great. I was very impressed. There are a few ads interlaced, but they are very short and quite unobtrusive.

I said it was almost perfect though. Here are the problems I have. NBC has gone and taken a HUGE market out of the picture. People want to be able to buy these shows and watch them on their television. Granted NBC is selling the content via Amazon’s Unbox, but there are limited options for this service. They only allow download to non iPod devices and also to only Tivo subscribers. Oh yeah, and no player for Mac’s, big downer. At last count there are how many iPods out there ?? a lot ! NBC has taken content off those players and out from under all those paying eyeballs. I would be curious to see some numbers as to how NBC is doing as compared to selling their content on iTunes
All in all, if you are one who watches most of your shows on your computer, Hulu is awesome. I was completely impressed by the whole package. The selection is great, player clean and easy to use. They offer selections form Bravo, Fox, FX, NBC, Sundance, and Sci-Fi just to name a few. If you can get a hold of an invite it is well worth your time to sign up and enjoy.

Funny or Die Gets Another $15 Million

The comedy video website Funny or Die has been reported to have obtained another $15 million round of financing from Sequoia and other unnamed companies. I remember hearing about this web site a little while back. I think it was shortly after YouTube had hit it big and got their $1.65 billion from Google. Amongst the winners in that lottery if you recall was Sequoia. They made like $400 million off a n $8 million dollar investment. At the time I was shown Funny or Die, I remember thinking that somebody was trying to capture that magic in a bottle that occurred with YouTube. And we all know that does not happen too often.

I do know that no matter what Will Ferrel stands pretty in the whole deal. he was paid a lot of money to lend his name to the project. Granted he has contributed some funny stuff. “The Landlord” video has over 50 million views according to the web page, not bad huh .. it is very funny though. You should definitely check it out

What is surprising is that there have been reports of the sites demise. It will be interesting to see where the $$ and the web site go form here.