Online Media Cultist

If you’re a fan of politics, this year is a gift. After a long and hard fought primary season on the Democratic side, we finally have our general election showdown between Barack Obama and John McCain gearing up. The Internet is playing a part in national politics like never before. The Howard Dean online phenomenon, the [...]

Yesterday, I wrote about how Twitter and FriendFeed – two lifestreaming or mini-blogging or what I like “smart people network” platforms – are adding elements of smart content aggregation to their core services to provide further value for their audiences. Steve Rubel of Micro Persuasion, one of FriendFeed’s well known and outspoken proponents, mused during [...]

Although I’ll be voting for Barack Obama in November, I like and admire John McCain. And he’s certainly the Republican I could best hope would be the GOP’s nominee, any policy differences aside. McCain’s at his best, in my view, in casual situations where he can show off his intellect, experience, and wit. That said, the 71-year-old [...]

The current state of my online media consumption is driven by two important rising social media tides, which I like to think of as smart content aggregation and smart people networks. Smart content aggregation can come in the form of social news sites, though I’ve recently mused whether Digg is as useful as it used to [...]

For a long time, everyone asked how YouTube planned to make money. And ever since Google purchased YouTube for $1.65 billion, everyone has asked how Google is going to make money on such a massive investment. We’re starting to see some signs of what direction this is heading in. There are several challenges to overcome with [...]

It’s Friday, time for some hilarity (or an attempt in that direction, at the least) to get us ready for the weekend. In this case, it’s Jack Black, Robert Downey, Jr., and Ben Stiller cooking up a “viral video” to promote their new movie, Tropic Thunder. I probably have the mentality of a 12-year-old when it comes [...]

Now that the Democratic nomination has come to a close with Tuesday’s final primaries and news that Hillary Clinton will (finally!) concede to Barack Obama on Saturday, the general election interactive maps pitting Obama against Republican nominee John McCain are popping out all over the place. Some sites, like Election Projection, keep it pretty simple. However, [...]

Google and Amazon have been hailed as the two “long-term winners” poised to withstand rocky economic times, according to a new report put out by a Wall Street firm. I tend to be wary and skeptical of these kinds of reports, and this one’s no different. The report, called “U.S. Internet: The End of the Beginning” (catchy, [...]

There’s some buzz and chatter today about whether or not the Kindle, Amazon’s electronic reader, has reached the proverbial tipping point. Whether or not it has quite yet, I think it’s clear that Amazon has found an iTunes-like model for bringing electronic versions of books, magazines, and blogs to mobile devices, and eventually the masses. It [...]

Take a quick step back for a second and consider: many people have nice television sets these days. Even if they’re not high end monstrous widescreens, many homes have pretty nice TVs that rock a pretty nice picture. Now, broadband adoption is also now pretty widespread. So we have nice cable television pictures and video being [...]