Say it ain’t you, Yahoo.

And yet, here’s one of the major new conceptual directions of the troubled Internet giant’s next pricey marketing campaign, aimed at recovering from its first advertising foray, which is widely considered a failure: A full frontal attack on search leader Google.

BoomTown posted several weeks ago that the new effort was being rolled out.

And now it’s here–and, in part, it’s an odd attempt to mock the simple and elegant white box that allowed Google (GOOG) to steal Yahoo’s thunder many years back, as well as lightning and any other weather system worth owning.

“There’s nothing to look at but a box and a button,” says the voice-over in the Yahoo (YHOO) marketing video–which you can see below–about an unnamed, but obvious, Web site. “When you look at this homepage nothing looks back at you. You come to this place so you can leave.”

Well, yes! Because it’s a search page!

No matter, according to Yahoo, which remains intent on pushing the idea of being “the center of your online life.”

Which has, of course, increasingly become Facebook. The social networking giant has done exactly zero advertising to get its 500 million users and has been steadily surpassing Yahoo in a number of key consumer metrics.

In fact, Facebook is Yahoo’s true nemesis, although the new ads push Facebook, as well as Twitter, in order to focus on Yahoo as the place to interact with a lot of different sites and services in one place.

“Today we are excited to preview the next phase of the Yahoo! marketing campaign, showcasing the amazing content and experiences people can find only with Yahoo!. We want people to experience first-hand how Yahoo! is the place where all the things, people, experiences, information–everything you care about–come together,” said Yahoo marketing head Elisa Steele in a blog post on the company’s Yodel Anecdotal blog tonight. “It’s a place that gets to know you, a place that surprises you. And we’ll demonstrate it by letting you sample the products, see them in action and have experiential encounters.”

Well, at least that sounds better than the willfully vague $100 million campaign Steele launched with noisy fanfare last fall with the motto: “It’s Y!ou.”

Yahoo never really answered what exactly “you” was, which is why CEO Carol Bartz finally admitted to a group of reporters in March that the effort “didn’t have a really good call to action.”

Actually, it had none and–more important–did not increase traffic in the key U.S. market (as you can see in the chart), although Yahoo execs tried mightily to spin it as successful in some international markets and as an opening effort to revive the tarnished brand.

A pretty pricey effort it was, causing Yahoo to pretty much dump the WPP Group (WPPGY) ad agency, Ogilvy & Mather, and hire Omnicom Group (OMC) unit Goodby Silverstein & Partners for the new work.

According to a report in The Wall Street Journal tonight, Yahoo will spend $75 million to $85 million on the renewed multimedia campaign, although it seems to be part of the original outlay of $100 million.

The Journal said there was a new slogan: “Your favorite stuff all in one place. Make Yahoo your home page.”

The more specific effort will show off partners that Yahoo has been integrating into the service, as well as its own properties.

And as it turns out, that’s why the “It’s You” tagline is remaining, with a spate of efforts to make it more specific and product-centric.

According to the article in the Journal, there will be a lot of marketing gimmicks, such as kiosks, giant Apple (AAPL) iPhones with a huge Yahoo search app, and photo booths.

While that is all well and good, Yahoo’s key issue–besides its talent brain drain–remains its lack of new and innovative products, which are being pumped out aggressively by Facebook, Twitter, Microsoft (MSFT) and, yes, Google.

At least we now know why Bartz took aim at Google’s search business model in a BBC interview recently, noting it was one-note.

As Yahoo is now trying to paint Google’s main product offering in its new marketing materials and, presumably, its upcoming ad campaign.

But, in fact, touting its simple search box on its own, Google spent very little on its utterly charming “Parisian Love” commercial, which aired during the Super Bowl and scored off the charts in a number of surveys.

It’s about exactly how useful one box can be.

Compare that Google marketing video with Yahoo’s effort below and decide for yourself which marketing material works better:

Here are more new Yahoo ad examples:

And here is the full text of Steele’s blog:

A Sneak Peek of Exciting & Fresh Stuff from Yahoo!

Posted May 5th, 2010 at 7:11 pm by Yahoo!, Blog Editors

Odds are that sometime in the last six months you have experienced the Yahoo! “It’s You!” campaign somewhere in your world: reading the news you crave every day, during your favorite television show, searching on why lady bugs have spots, on the side of the bus you take to work. Our goal with this campaign was to make a connection with our hundreds of millions of users over the world and have fun with your favorite stuff, all in one place!

Today we are excited to preview the next phase of the Yahoo! marketing campaign, showcasing the amazing content and experiences people can find only with Yahoo!. We want people to experience first-hand how Yahoo! is the place where all the things, people, experiences, information–everything you care about–come together. It’s a place that gets to know you, a place that surprises you. And well demonstrate it by letting you sample the products, see them in action and have experiential encounters.

Keep in mind, this is just a sneak peek into the fun ideas and experiences we are dreaming up. Starting May 18th and throughout the year, you will begin to see finished new elements of the campaign, with many fun surprises across the Y! network, web and within venues such a cinemas, television and even in the air (on planes!).

The Yahoo! marketing campaign will show users how to tap into Yahoo’s industry-leading products and make the Internet far more personally relevant. Starting a band? Yahoo! Search–a smarter, more personal search, will help you find the gear, gigs and guitar heroes you need to rock out.

Going to the movies? Yahoo! can entertain and enhance the cinema experience. Starting in the lobby before the movie starts, we will showcase Yahoo! products and properties through interactive panels. Using the new Sketch-a-Search app we can help you find a restaurant for after the movie. At the start of the film, we’ll integrate Yahoo! Search into the movie trailers, simulating a Search Wow Module.

At 30,000 feet, Yahoo! will make it fun to travel. As passengers relax on airline flights, we entertain by showing how Yahoo! brings my world and the world together through our creative campaign and tailored Yahoo! content. Each flight will feature our full video campaign, and depending on the flight and time, Yahoo! content such as Funny or Die and other pieces of Yahoo! entertainment.

Keep track of the highest bid on a vintage skateboard on eBay, share your latest photos showing you landing that kickflip on Flickr and find out who’s dating who on Facebook–all from the comfort of your Yahoo! Homepage.

We can’t wait to share the new campaign where you spend a lot of your time- online. While scrolling through the “live” images you can add all your favorite items to your Yahoo! homepage. Making it relevant and personal.

So the next time you hop on a plane, check your email or go to the movies. Yahoo! can bring YOUR world and THE world together in one convenient place–wherever you are.

Elisa Steele, Yahoo! EVP & Chief Marketing Officer

Please see this disclosure related to me and Google.

Simply put: As a quote machine for eager reporters, Yahoo CEO Carol Bartz is the proverbial gift that keeps on giving.

Mostly, a very quippy, always slightly potty-mouthed gift, but a gift nonetheless.

Last week, for example, Bartz pontificated to the BBC about how Google (GOOG) needs to get its act together and that Facebook was not all that.

Now BoomTown has gotten some good ones out of Bartz since she went to Yahoo (YHOO) at the beginning of 2009.

But this interview, just published in Esquire magazine in its “Women We Love” issue, is the mother lode of Bartzisms.

Some of the choicer quotes, among many (please go here to experience the whole shebang):

On her childhood:

“My mom died when I was eight. My grandparents took my brother and me onto their farm when I was twelve. So for four years, between eight and twelve, I was mom, housecleaner, cook–and guess what? The little shit doesn’t get to you anymore, it just doesn’t matter.”

On being a cocktail waitress:

“One night I had a trayful of drinks, and I had on black fishnet stockings and a garter, and the next thing I know I’m like getting air. Somebody had lifted my little skirt up. So I go to look over and it was my high school principal. I can’t remember his name now. I said, ‘Mr. — !’ and he went, ‘Carol!’ And you know I didn’t tolerate any of that kind of stuff and that wasn’t the kind of place it was, but he’s coming from this shit-bum little town and he’s in the big time, Madison [Wisconsin], and here comes the cocktail waitress and he’s going to show off.”

On the memos (leaked to me!) and drop-kicking Yahoos to f*&%ing Mars for doing so:

“Yahoo! had a huge problem of all kinds of internal documents getting out to the press. Terrible timing. And what I was trying to explain is, all we’re doing is hurting each other. You know we can’t have a family conversation without you running and telling the neighbors? So I was just explaining that it was a bad thing to do, and if I found them, that’s what would happen to them. If I found out who was leaking this, I’d just drop-kick you to Mars. You have to have some passion. What am I going to say? ‘Oh, please don’t…’? You think my employees would remember it? No. Did I do it because of that? No. I did it because at the moment I got myself all riled up. You know, everybody thinks I do it consciously. People actually ask me: ‘When are you going to drop the f-bomb?’ I say, ‘What do you think, put a dime in my ear and then it comes out? No, but get me worked up about something and who knows what’ll come out.’”

On key hiring criteria:

“What do I look for when hiring? Well, let’s get past the assumption that they can do the job. There has to be a no-asshole rule.

We’ll go through the whole interview, and I’ll say, ‘I have one last question. I don’t work with assholes. Are you one?’”

On making a still really wrong–but marginally better–comparison of herself with the Apple (AAPL) god:

“Apple was down for the count before Steve Jobs returned. I’m not trying to compare myself to Steve Jobs in any way–for good reasons and for bad reasons–but think about it. What was the name of that computer before the Macintosh? Apple II. I mean, it was going nowhere.

Everyone likes to think about iPod days, but it took Steve a long time, even knowing the company, to get it turned around after he came back. So of course it’s been done.”

Is unfettered Internet access a fundamental human right? Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton believes it is and said as much during a speech on Internet censorship earlier this year.

It appears this belief is widely held. The BBC put the question to more than 27,000 adults in 26 countries and got a yes from four out of five, which is nice to hear.

Less pleasant were respondents’ answers to questions about free speech on the Internet. Asked whether they agreed or disagreed with the statement, “the Internet is a safe place to express my opinions,” the survey group was almost evenly split: 48 percent agreed, 49 percent did not. The countries in which respondents were wariest of expressing their opinions online: Germany (72 percent), South Korea (70 percent), France (69 percent), Japan (65 percent) and China (55 percent).

Interesting list, isn’t it? Certainly, you’d expect to see China, Japan and South Korea on this list, but Germany and France? Seems odd–to me, anyway.

But it sure looks like the Times is charging online readers if you visit Apple’s iTunes Store, which is selling two different New York Times (NYT) iPhone apps at 99 cents a pop.

The Times has nothing to do with either app, both of which are called the “New York Times Mobile Reader.” And both are supposed to do the same thing: Spit out the paper, along with other Web content like podcasts, in iPhone-friendly form.

You’d think the Times would want Apple (AAPL) to remove the miniprograms, if only to protect the value of the paper’s own app, which is both free and very good.

When I pointed out the apps to a Times spokeswoman on Tuesday, she asked around and later confirmed that the two apps “are not authorized and our legal department is looking into the matter.” But as of Thursday morning, the apps are still there, ranked No. 14 and No. 18 on Apple’s list of top paid news apps.

As Josh Quittner notes, hijacking publishers’ names and content and turning them into paid apps isn’t uncommon at iTunes. I count at least eight such offerings among the top paid news apps at the online store.

But it shouldn’t be that hard for Apple to put the kibosh on this stuff. For instance: It ought to be fairly obvious that developer Chad Rivoli, who has produced one of the “New York Times” apps–along with ones that boast brands like CNET, Fox News, the BBC and the Drudge Report–is not authorized to do so.

But Apple’s approach to this is weirdly passive. Here’s the statement I got from Apple PR’s Trudy Muller yesterday:

As an IP holder ourselves, we understand the importance to developers of protecting their IP. We have a process in the App Store for developers to alert us to possible IP infringement. When we’re notified, our policy includes the removal of the infringing app until a resolution is reached between the parties.

If this approach sounds familiar, it’s because it’s a lot like the one Google (GOOG) takes toward YouTube copyright complaints: Put it up, then take it down if someone complains.

In Google’s case, the company claims it has no idea what people are uploading to YouTube–anyone can throw anything up there. And that approach may well be protected by the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (we’ll see). But Apple knows exactly what it’s selling via iTunes because it approves every new app individually.

Maybe the Times isn’t hell-bent on griping to Apple because it has other priorities, like working with Apple on something for the upcoming wondertablet. And maybe every other publisher whose stuff is getting repurposed for profit doesn’t want to bother Apple either. Hard to believe there is really big money being made here, after all.

All I know is that this situation wouldn’t last long at all on the regular Internet: Good luck starting a “New York Times” Web site and charging people to visit–or even just linking to the paper while using its iconic “T.”

What’s different about iTunes?

UPDATE: At least two other publishers are aware, and unhappy, about unauthorized apps. CNET tells AdAge that it has asked at least one of the developers using its stuff to take it down, apparently without success.

And Fox News says it complained directly to Apple in December, says MediaWeek. In that case, though, it seems to had at least some effect:  “Mobile News Pro — Fair & Balanced” is still available in the app store, and still aggregates Fox News content, including radio feeds. But the app’s description does note that it has “removed FOX wording per FOX request.”

Read the rest of this post on the original site

Microsoft blamed phishing, in which cybercriminals try to trick consumers into revealing personal information through fraudulent emails, for a list of Hotmail account passwords that appeared online. The company recommended Hotmail customers change their passwords and said it’s helping phishing victims fix compromised accounts.

But security firms and the BBC said Tuesday that the attack extended to other services, including those run by Google (GOOG) and Yahoo as well as AOL, EarthLink (ELNK) and Comcast (CMCSA).

Read the rest of this post on the original site

Helpful, right? Check out this MediaPost piece if you want more on the survey, conducted by media-buying shop Round2 Communications.

The bigger picture: This week, as you’ll hear over and over again, is the one-year anniversary of the Lehman Brothers collapse. The BBC has both a radio drama and a made-for-TV movie commemorating/dramatizing the event.

Which means it’s the one-year anniversary of the economy’s collapse from recession to (short-lived) catastrophe. Which means this is the one-year anniversary of the collapse of the advertising business. Which means that any year-over-year results you see now had best show an increase because they’re going up against positively brutal comparisons from 12 months ago.

Remember: This ad drop was so bad that even Google (GOOG) flatlined for a bit.

So if and when you do see signs of a rebound, make sure you’re looking at them with some perspective: There’s just about nowhere to go but up. Right?

Yahoo is closer to naming a new international head, according to sources, the last big slot left in the top management structure of CEO Carol Bartz.

While BoomTown is endeavoring to get the name of this international man of mystery, several sources said the company has come close to settling on a London-based media exec, who will move to and operate out of its Sunnyvale, Calif., HQ in Silicon Valley.

But it is unclear if or when a final appointment will be made.

That exec could be a lot of people, since Yahoo’s headhunter for the job–Heidrick & Struggles–has pretty much talked to the gamut of international Web muckety-mucks since the search started six months ago.

The many chatted up include: Former Bebo head Joanna Shields (nope, she has a noncompete from AOL); former Joost CEO Mike Volpi (nope, he just landed as a VC at Index Ventures), Microsoft (MSFT) consumer and online man in Britain Ashley Highfield (hmm, would he move so quickly after jumping from Project Kangaroo and the BBC?) and Gavin Patterson, head of the BT Retail unit.

But Yahoo could also opt for a more traditional media exec, said some sources.

In a memo to Yahoo staff after her reorganization in February, Bartz said that “international growth is critical for Yahoo!, which has become too reliant on its U.S. business over the years.”

Still, that key job remains unfilled, in an arena Yahoo has dropped the ball in recently, even as more nimble competitors like Google (GOOG) and Facebook thrive.

In the Yahoo (YHOO) management chart posted below, Bartz has filled the CFO role with Tim Morse and the customer advocacy slot with Jeff Russakow.

Without an international head, the three regional heads worldwide–Rose Tsou (Asia), Rich Riley (Europe) and Keith Nilsson (Emerging Markets)–have continued to report to Bartz. The U.S. region–Yahoo’s most significant market–is headed by Hilary Schneider.

Here is the Yahoo top management org chart, released back in February (click on it to make it larger):

“This information is wrong and dated,” said Christina Domecq, SpinVox’s chief executive, of the BBC’s article. The report, which was published Thursday, accuses the British firm of using call-center employees–not the speech-recognition technology that it markets–to transcribe voicemail recordings.

Read the rest of this post on the original site

The U.K.-based company, which boasts 30 million users across five continents, says that voicemails are translated into text via conversion technology known as “D2,” or “the Brain.” Customers can read the messages and post them on blogs, social networking sites, or send them to their email inboxes.

Read the rest of this post on the original site

CBS (CBS) will join previously announced partners Time Warner (TWX), which is offering up programming from its Turner channels and HBO; Liberty Media’s Starz; and smaller players like Scripps, Rainbow and A&E. The twist is that CBS is the only broadcaster to sign up for the trial.

I noted that this was in the works last month, and it makes plenty of sense: For one thing, CBS would like to tie up with Comcast (CMCSA) as a way to extract “retransmission fees” from the cable company for the rights to carry its programming, which it currently doesn’t get paid for. The broadcaster also needs a big ally, as its broadcast competitors at GE’s (GE) NBC, News Corp.’s (NWS) Fox and Disney’s (DIS) ABC have already tied up with Hulu.

Comcast’s trial program, which is supposed to start this month and which parallels plans being promoted throughout the cable industry, is in many ways a response to Hulu, which has unnerved the pay TV business. The industry is worried about the specter of “cable cutters” who dump their cable TV subscriptions and watch free Web TV instead. So it’s trying to convince subscribers that if they keep paying up, they’ll get to see whatever they want online, legally.

CBS, meanwhile, passed on the chance to join with Hulu early on, and has since been complaining that the joint venture’s business terms undermine broadcasters’ chances of making real money on the Web.

CBS and Comcast aren’t talking about what the economics of this tie-up look like, but given that it’s a trial, it’s likely there isn’t much to talk about yet. But ultimately, CBS imagines a world where cable companies pay it for the right to put its shows on the Web and where it can charge Internet advertisers the same rates it gets for on-air TV.

That’s a long way off, but this is a start. “This is about extending the economics of the television market to an already independent, healthy online market,” says CBS digital boss Quincy Smith.

UPDATE:  Comcast has a few more programmers on board. In addition to Scripps, A&E and Rainbow, which I’ve written about before, but which have not been formally announced, Comcast is bringing in BBC and MGM Impact, a VOD channel it runs with MGM.

Here’s the release.

CBS TO PARTICIPATE IN COMCAST’S ON DEMAND ONLINE ?NATIONWIDE TRIAL

As the First Broadcaster To Participate, CBS Agrees to Test Standards and Principles for
“TV Everywhere” Model

NEW YORK and PHILADELPHIA, July 14, 2009–CBS Corporation (NYSE:  CBS.A) and Comcast Corporation (Nasdaq: CMCSA, CMCSK) announced today that CBS is the first broadcast network to participate in Comcast’s technical trial of On Demand Online. The new service will significantly expand the number of top-rated TV shows available online and across platforms at no additional charge to Comcast’s cable customers while delivering increased advertising value to content owners. During the course of the trial, CBS plans to test various types of current and library content.

“CBS and Comcast share the same vision of giving consumers more–more content, in more places,” said Matt Bond, Executive Vice President of Content Acquisition, Comcast Cable. “On Demand Online is a major step in extending consumers’ television experiences online, and ultimately across platforms by giving any television network, including top brands like CBS, the ability to make their content available on the Web.”

“CBS is very supportive of initiatives that help extend our content to new platforms in such a way that we gain new audiences and additional value for our advertisers,” said Quincy Smith, Chief Executive Officer, CBS Interactive. “Comcast is already a trusted platform to distribute CBS content on air as well as on demand; expanding this relationship online is a logical step. In addition, CBS’s strategy has always been about open, non-exclusive distribution of our content in a consumer friendly way, which is a core tenant of TV Everywhere and On Demand Online.”

CBS’s participation in Comcast’s technical trial comes on the heels of last month’s joint announcement between Time Warner Inc. and Comcast which introduced a set of principles called “TV Everywhere.” Developed by the two companies, the principles are designed to serve as a framework to facilitate deployment of online television content in a way that is consumer friendly and pro-competitive.

Comcast will begin its technical trial of On Demand Online with approximately 5,000 customers from across the U.S. in the coming weeks–the first national trial of its kind. A major focus of the trial is to test Comcast’s new “authentication” technology, which will allow Comcast customers to receive the same content online for free that they subscribe to on TV. The service will utilize a simple log-on system for streaming content and, in the future, will allow for download content to go. The On Demand Online service will roll-out in phases, adding new features, functionality and content over time to provide consumers with a new way to watch television.

On Demand Online is part of Comcast’s Project Infinity, the company’s long-term vision to give customers an ever growing amount of video content on multiple platforms, whenever they want.

Many songs are missing the correct album titles and cover art—or just show up in Apple Inc.’s (AAPL) iTunes with mysterious names like “Track04.” Over the years I’ve used several programs to import and buy music, resulting in wild inconsistencies in my collection. I’ve got songs by Beyoncé (with accent), Beyonce (without accent), Beyoncé Knowles (with accent) and Beyonce Knowles (without accent).

Several companies have developed programs that tap into vast databases of songs to tame music collections. I’ve been testing one by San Francisco startup TuneUp Media that’s available to download online and buy in Apple’s stores. While I was reluctant to pay $19.95 for a year’s subscription to a service I reckon should be in iTunes for free, TuneUp has largely delivered on its promise to scrub my music collection with minimal effort, making sure tracks were properly titled and adding extras like album cover art.

TuneUp’s greatest asset is that it works seamlessly with iTunes (for Mac and PC). With TuneUp hooked on to the right side of the iTunes program, you drag “dirty,” or mislabeled, songs into a box identified by a spray bottle of cleaner. The software identifies songs by taking clues from information you’ve embedded in your music, as well as sampling the song’s digital fingerprint. TuneUp looks for a match to those clues in a database of songs maintained by Sony Corp.’s (SNE) Gracenote.

Some matches are a slam dunk, but almost half of my collection proved to be problematic. Of the 500 most-played songs in my pop-oriented collection, TuneUp found “matches” for songs across 79 albums and “likely matches” for songs across 209 albums. It couldn’t identify 10 songs. The company says it counts matches as a 90% or higher chance of a match, and “likely” as at least 75% chance of a match. Songs with a likelihood under 75% are labeled “not found.”

TuneUp gives you the chance to review each of the matches before it adjusts your catalog. (It comes with an undo button.) Accepting all of the sure matches is easy enough, but slogging through the likely matches is troublesome. TuneUp gives you only the option to accept or reject its one recommendation after listening to the file, if you want.I worried that I might be inadvertently mislabeling a song, but haven’t yet found evidence of errors in my collection. The company says it cut out alternative matches to simplify the cleaning process, but is working on adding them to future releases of the software.

Once a song has been cleaned by TuneUp, it is given a consistent name, track number, album cover and other helpful information, such as the year it was released. Now I’ve got songs by just Beyoncé (with accent) and almost all of my songs feature the album cover art that looks so nifty on iPhone screens. The software assigns your songs genre identifications, which can be handy for matching music to your mood. Most of the classifications aren’t terms I would have come up with: Beyoncé is dubbed “urban crossover,” while Michael Jackson is either “disco” or “other pop” depending on the era—but at least they’re consistent. You also can tell TuneUp not to change any specific part of a song’s existing catalog listing, including genre.

TuneUp takes a few seconds, depending on your computer and Internet speed, to identify and re-classify each song. Attempting to scrub a whole collection—mine has more than 10,000 songs—can be a lengthy affair. The company suggests cleaning 500 songs at a time, but you can do many more than that if you leave it running over night.

I tried out a free competitor to TuneUp called MusicBrainz Picard, which matches songs based on a database collected by a swarm of Internet users, rather than one particular company. TuneUp and MusicBrainz, which is run by a nonprofit, are as different as Britannica and Wikipedia in their approaches to cataloging information.

The MusicBrainz approach to building a user-generated database is powerful and has been tapped by companies such as the BBC and Amazon.com (AMZN) to improve the way they keep track of music on their sites. Some of my songs that TuneUp couldn’t identify, such as the song “This Way” by hip hop group Dilated Peoples, were a breeze for MusicBrainz. To date, MusicBrainz has about 700,000 “releases” (such as whole albums) and 8,000,000 individual “tracks” in its database.

But MusicBrainz’s database has limitations, such as the inability to catalog album-cover images or song lyrics, both of which are copyrighted material. The free Picard program lets you tap the MusicBrainz database from your own computer. Serious music fans will be attracted to Picard because it is more precise than TuneUp; Picard guides you to choose from a variety of options when it isn’t certain of a match. But the software is rudimentary and requires concentration and time to use. Picard also doesn’t connect directly into iTunes’ catalog. To use it with iTunes, you have to first clean up all of your music files with Picard and then re-import your songs into iTunes.

I recommend TuneUp for the average music fan who might view cleaning up a music collection as the sort of task that shouldn’t take much longer than one rainy Sunday afternoon. Picard is better for people for whom maintaining an orderly music collection is a never-ending project.

TuneUp comes with a feature called “Tuniverse,” which fills the right side of the screen with information related to whatever song iTunes is playing at the time. That information includes YouTube videos, biographical details from Wikipedia, Google (GOOG) News, music recommendations from Amazon and tickets from StubHub to coming concerts in your area. While I initially worried Tuniverse would feel like added advertising on the screen, I’ve come to enjoy the extra information. And once again, I was left wondering why Apple hasn’t built these capabilities directly into iTunes. I, for one, learned from Tuniverse that Beyoncé has a concert in San Francisco next week, and I just might buy a ticket.

Walt Mossberg is on vacation.

Write to Geoffrey A. Fowler at Geoffrey.Fowler@wsj.com

Enter RealPlayer SP beta (realplayer.com), the latest in RealNetworks Inc.’s (RNWK) long line of media players that the company has churned out since 1995. RealPlayer SP—the SP stands for social and portable—is a free download that, once installed, grabs videos from the Web, converts them to the right format and transfers them to over a dozen portable devices. While other software programs perform two or just one of these tasks, the RealPlayer SP’s trio of talent makes it like a digital Swiss army knife.

After using the RealPlayer for moving several videos of all kinds to an iPhone, BlackBerry Curve 8900 and Palm Pre, I felt like I had more control over my portable devices and the media they held. And the freedom of knowing that this player is compatible with almost anything—including Apple (AAPL) and Palm (PALM) devices, Research in Motion’s (RIMM) BlackBerrys, T-Mobile’s G1 and Sidekick, Nokia’s (NOK) N97 and certain basic cellphones—is a major plus.

Behavior Problem

My biggest problem with using the RealPlayer SP has to do with my own behavior. Most of the videos I watch online and share with friends are less than five minutes long. This means that grabbing, converting and transferring videos to a portable device using the RealPlayer SP—albeit a relatively quick process—could easily take more time than the length of the video, itself. And many of the longer videos that I would want to move to a BlackBerry or iPhone are copyright-protected and thus can’t be downloaded by the RealPlayer SP.

Another factor is that more devices now have their own built-in app stores for downloading content to the device, without plugging into a computer for transfers like with the RealPlayer SP. The iPod touch, for example, can now download movies, music videos and TV shows over Wi-Fi thanks to a recent $10 software upgrade.

Mac Version Coming Soon

The RealPlayer SP works only on Windows PCs right now; a Mac version is due out by the end of this year. Likewise, it doesn’t work on Apple’s Safari browser but does work on Firefox, Internet Explorer and Google’s (GOOG) Chrome browser; I used all three with success.

If you’re not interested in using the RealPlayer SP for transferring videos to portable devices, you can still use it for downloading videos, saving them onto your computer and sharing them with friends via Twitter, Facebook or email. Tiny icons representing each of these sharing options appear in-line beside freshly downloaded videos. I shared videos of last week’s Congressional Luau at the White House via Facebook and Twitter, but the icon to share videos via Twitter doesn’t automatically shrink URLs to fit into a tweet. I shrunk the URLs myself, but this took an extra step¹.

And though I’ve mostly focused on the RealPlayer SP’s ability to grab, convert and transfer (RealNetworks calls these tools the Downloader feature in the player), it also works as its own media player or helps you discover new content.

RealPlayer SP Beta downloads, converts and transfers videos from the Web to a variety of portable devices.

A premium version called RealPlayer Plus SP is available for $40. Premium features include DVD burning, DVD playback (if your computer can’t play DVDs) and video conversion to a special format called h.264—though the free version performs these conversions for videos being moved to Apple devices.

I jumped around the Web visiting sites and playing videos, which prompted the RealPlayer SP to display a small “Download This Video” message above videos that aren’t copyright-protected. Downloading videos worked on most sites, including AllThingsD.com, Slate, YouTube, Salon and CNET. As expected, I wasn’t so lucky with videos from the New York Times, BBC and Hulu, which hosts loads of TV shows and music videos. That’s because videos from these sites were copyright-protected and didn’t allow for downloading.

A Glitch

In one instance with a WSJ.com video, only the short ad that played before the video was downloaded, even though the download prompt indicated that the WSJ video was obtainable using RealPlayer SP. RealNetworks says this is a glitch it knows about and plans to correct.

The RealPlayer SP’s ability to download videos and transfer them to devices, rather than just copying them onto computers, forced me to be choosier about the videos that I downloaded due to the limited memory of the devices. Because of this, I wished the RealPlayer SP Downloader had a better built-in way to discover downloadable content. Currently, a link to something called the RealGuide pulls up suggestions, but I had a hard time finding clips there that I wanted to download. RealNetworks says it plans to improve the video-discovery process in the future, including adding things like YouTube keyword searches built right into the Downloader.

The Downloader Window

When I did find videos I liked, I clicked on the prompt to download the clip, found the clip in a tiny Downloader window, and chose to move the clip to a device (there’s a list of all available devices) or share it via Twitter, Facebook or email. Transfer times depend on the length of the video.

RealNetworks provides simple instructions on making sure your device is set to transfer when plugged in. For example, BlackBerrys must be set to mass-storage mode, Palm Pres should be set to USB mode and Apple devices synchronize with the iTunes library, where RealPlayer’s converted videos are sent for transferring to iPhones and iPods.

RealPlayer SP can be a real help when it comes to putting the content that you want on your portable device. Its ability to assist from start to finish—finding videos, converting and transferring them—saves time and avoids confusion. To succeed, RealPlayer SP needs to do a better job of helping people find worthwhile videos to transfer, or they’ll stop using it after just a few tries.

Corrections and Amplifications

¹ Real Networks says its RealPlayer SP Beta’s Twitter video sharing capability has an automatic URL-shortening tool built in. This week’s Mossberg Solution product said the product lacked such a feature, because it never activated itself in our tests.

Edited by Walter S. Mossberg

Write to Katherine Boehret at mossbergsolution@wsj.com

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20090630/the-swiss-army-knife-of-portable-videos/feed/ 0 http://allthingsd.com/20090626/how-the-web-survived-michael-jacksons-death/ http://allthingsd.com/20090626/how-the-web-survived-michael-jacksons-death/#comments Fri, 26 Jun 2009 13:49:13 +0000 Peter Kafka http://mediamemo.allthingsd.com/?p=8662 The “fail” meme is one of the digerati’s least pleasant contributions to pop culture. Wouldn’t be accurate, anyway. Instead, let’s just say that the Internet was…challenged yesterday by the crush of people who flocked to it when Michael Jackson died. And that it seemed to do a pretty good job in the end.

We’ve already seen the requisite “Twitter is down” stories, but in my experience, the service seemed to hold up reasonably well, and certainly it performed exponentially better than it would have just a year ago when it was a fraction of its current size.

And after the first crush of users started to slow Twitter down, the service calmly went into triage mode, disabling the search bar on the homepage that few people use anyway. Later that evening things were back to normal.

This seems to have been the pattern across the Web: Sites and services struggled with the initial burst of traffic–roughly from 5:30 pm through 7:30 pm Eastern time–then regained their footing. I’m told that AOL’s AIM service, for instance, had an outage around 5:30 pm Eastern that was likely related to Jackson chatter, but it was back up again shortly after that.

Meanwhile, the BBC has tallied up other services that had slowdowns or outages:

• Google (GOOG)
• Time Warner’s TMZ (TWX), which broke the story
• Time Warner’s AOL, which put the TMZ story on its front page within a couple of minutes of its initial publication
• Time Warner’s CNN, which was much more cautious about the story, and only reported that Jackson had been hospitalized until non-TMZ sources confirmed the story
• Yahoo (YHOO)
• MSNBC

I assume the list is longer than that, so feel free to add others in comments below. But I spent a lot of time surfing to various sites yesterday evening and was struck by how well many of them held up.

The good/bad news: Media fragmentation means that Michael Jackson is likely the last global icon, so we’re unlikely to see a repeat of this. If you want to get really macabre, you can think up other events that might put the Web under strain all over the world, but that’s no fun.

This is, though:

[Image credit: Eccentric Scholar]

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20090626/how-the-web-survived-michael-jacksons-death/feed/ 0 http://allthingsd.com/20090416/youtube-preps-its-hulu-answer-movies-tv-shows/ http://allthingsd.com/20090416/youtube-preps-its-hulu-answer-movies-tv-shows/#comments Thu, 16 Apr 2009 20:52:23 +0000 Peter Kafka http://mediamemo.allthingsd.com/?p=6403 Here’s Google’s sort-of answer to Hulu: A newly designed page to showcase TV shows and movies, along with new players and a new ad strategy.

What’s not included: almost any first-run TV show or newly released movie. That’s the content that’s made Hulu successful and what’s also driven traffic to offerings from CBS and Disney’s ABC.

You can’t accuse the Google guys of overselling this: In a press conference today, they described it as a “first step, a baby step.”

Google (GOOG) did say that it had added new content partners, but it was maddeningly imprecise about which ones it had signed up and what content they were providing. The company did confirm, however, that Sony (SNE), via its Crackle video site, would be providing content.

Google also said that it now has “thousands” of television shows and “hundreds” of movies; prior to this, the company said its catalog consisted of just “hundreds” of TV shows and “dozens” of movies.

But this is still primarily “long tail” stuff. The only first-run CBS (CBS) show YouTube offers, for instance, is “Harper’s Island,” which YouTube already offered. And if you recognize any of the following new YouTube partners, then it means you’re a show business insider: Endemol, Anime Network, Scott Entertainment, Entertainment Rights, Shout Factory, Telenext Media, Documentary Channel, First Look Studios, IndieFlix, Saavn, Snag Films, Venevision and Bandai.

Still, YouTube needs as much licensed content it can get its hands on in order to lure more advertisers to the site, which has underperformed to date.

Advertisers who do want to sign up will have a new option: a “Google TV ads” product that inserts ads into the shows, à la Google’s Adsense for Web publishers. Google said it will use “pre-roll,” “mid-roll” and “post-roll” ads–i.e., video ads that run before, during and after the movie or TV show–as well as the overlay ads that cover the bottom part of the screen, briefly, with a translucent pitch.

Google will also allow video providers to sell their own content, and in some cases, will allow them to use their own video player, a first for the company. Sony, for instance, will use its Crackle video player for its content.

Reports that YouTube had a deal with Sony to show full-length movies and TV shows on the site surfaced earlier this month. Last month, reports also indicated that YouTube was talking to Disney (DIS) about getting movies and ABC TV shows on the site, but since then I’ve been told that Hulu, the joint venture between News Corp.’s (NWS) Fox and GE’s (GE) NBC, has all but locked up ABC shows for an exclusive deal.

Here are two releases, one describing the new section and the other describing the new ad product. Screenshots follow.

Watch Shows and Movies on YouTube: Today we’re excited to announce a new destination for television shows and an improved landing page for movies on YouTube, where partners like Crackle, CBS, MGM, Lionsgate, Starz, the BBC and many others have made thousands of television episodes and hundreds of movies available for you to watch, comment on, favorite and share. This addition is one of many efforts underway to ensure that we’re offering you all the different kinds of video you want to see, from bedroom vlogs and citizen journalism reports to music videos and full-length films and TV shows.

To help you navigate through all this great content, we’re introducing two new tabs to the YouTube masthead: the “Shows” tab allows you to browse shows by genre, network, title and popularity, while the “Subscriptions” tab will grant logged-in users one-click access to fresh content from their favorite creators.

Another change you’ll notice today is the wider roll-out of in-stream ads, which we’ve been testing since October, to support our shows and movies content — not unlike what you might see when viewing this type of content on TV.

While shows and movies are currently limited to users in the US, we look forward to expanding to other regions as soon as possible.

We hope you enjoy watching shows and movies on YouTube. There’s still work to be done and we look forward to iterating with you, whether that’s rolling out new engagement features, expanding our content offering or improving your viewing experience. And, as with everything we do, we’ll track your usage and feedback to preserve your fundamental YouTube experience while we take these steps to enhance it.

Yours,
Sara Pollack
Entertainment Marketing Manager
The YouTube Team

Reach TV viewers through more than one screen
By Geoff Smith, Product Manager for Google TV Ads

Google TV Ads makes it easy for advertisers of all sizes to reach customers watching television. These days, many full-length television programs are also available for Internet users to watch online. These programs may appear in various places, including the websites of the networks which originally broadcast them and on other sites that specialize in video content. What if an advertiser wants to reach the audience of a particular program, no matter whether they’re watching on a television or online?

We’re excited to announce the beta launch of Google TV Ads Online. This is a new feature of Google TV Ads that lets advertisers place commercials into the ad breaks of TV programs watched online. It works in the same way as Google TV Ads: advertisers can target specific programs and select their cost-per-thousand (CPM) bid. Based on their targets, budget and bid, ads are inserted in the same program breaks that were designed for advertising when the programs first aired. (Ads may also be shown “pre-roll”, before the program begins, or after the online presentation of the program “post-roll.”) And like Google TV ads, we provide advertisers with measurement tools that give greater insight into how their ads perform with users.

One website where viewers are consuming more and more full-length content online is YouTube. Today, YouTube launched a new destination for full-length shows and movies, and advertisers will be able to use Google TV Ads Online to reach the millions of people who come to YouTube to watch this content. That’s not only good for advertisers, but content partners who are looking to generate revenue from their videos online. Ads will also be shown on other websites that carry full-length video programs.

Google TV Ads Online is still in beta and available to advertisers by invitation only. If you’re interested in learning more about it or would like to be considered for the program, please contact Erin Bouchier at erinb@google.com.

Here’s what the new YouTube video player looks like in full-screen mode (click to enlarge):

And here’s a “landing page” for YouTube TV shows:

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20090416/youtube-preps-its-hulu-answer-movies-tv-shows/feed/ 0 http://allthingsd.com/20090326/the-guardians-changing-media-summit-in-london-no-answers-there-either/ http://allthingsd.com/20090326/the-guardians-changing-media-summit-in-london-no-answers-there-either/#comments Thu, 26 Mar 2009 21:33:19 +0000 Kara Swisher http://kara.allthingsd.com/?p=11088

On BoomTown’s recent grand tour of Europe, I paid a visit a week ago to London to moderate some sessions at Media Guardian’s Changing Media Summit 2009.

As in the U.S., a lot of the same questions were asked there about when and how the new media business would cross the Rubicon to transform into a strongly profitable and sustainable enterprise.

Via advertising? Subscriptions? Product placement?

“We’ve got to get to a place where we’re going to become an industrialized-sized business,” said one panelist at a session on monetizing such media, in what was a common question.

Well, considering how small the revenues in new media still are compared to traditional media, along with the recent negative impact of the econalypse, even a profitable popcorn stand would be an admirable achievement right about now.

Still, the room was packed at the Park Plaza Riverbank Hotel overlooking the Thames River and Big Ben, as people searched for answers.

One of the panels I moderated had the much-too-vaunted title of “The Future of Media: Capturing the Essence of Reinvention in the New Age.”

The panelists talked about what the media company of tomorrow looks like, as well as discussing the Next Big Thing.

The group included Ashley Highfield, managing director and VP, consumer and online for Microsoft (MSFT); Larry Kramer, former president of CBS (CBS) Digital and senior adviser to Polaris Ventures; Peter Smith, president of GE (GE) NBC Universal’s international unit; and Mike Volpi, CEO of video start-up Joost.

Here’s a video of interviews I did talking about all this and more while at the Guardian Media Group’s new digital-heavy offices in London.

It includes Volpi and Kramer, as well as Guardian-owned paidContent.org head Rafat Ali and the BBC’s tech news correspondent, Rory Cellan-Jones:

[ See post to watch video ]

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