Memo to Flipboard, as well as Pulse, CNN’s Zite and AOL’s Editions: You might want to make some room in the already-crowded news and social reader space, because you’re about to get some bigfoot company.

Next Wednesday, according to sources close to the situation, Yahoo will finally officially unveil its offering, called Livestand.

And perhaps as early as next week or in the weeks soon after, Google will also weigh in with its version of the genre — code-named Propeller — which also might be the product’s name. Another moniker under strong consideration: Currents.

As I have previously reported, Google Propeller is an HTML5 reader for the Apple iPad and Android — essentially a souped-up version of similar apps such as Flipboard, AOL’s Editions, Zite (which was just bought by Time Warner’s CNN) and Pulse.

All these apps are part of the drastically changing habits of media consumers, helping users better navigate numerous social and media feeds — such as Facebook and Twitter, as well as news sites and more — using handsome interfaces and touch technologies on tablet devices.

Flipboard, the most prominent and elegant of these offerings, is now available only on the Apple iPad.

Flipboard’s traction among elite users, along with its high-level design ethos and strong reviews, is why Google tried to buy the well-funded company last year, sources said.

But Flipboard — which is backed by some of tech’s biggest venture players, who have invested more than $60 million at a $200 million valuation — declined the kind offer.

At the time, sources said, Google told Flipboard execs that if it did not buy the start-up, it planned to do a version of its own.

Hence, after I heard about the product earlier this year, I dubbed it the Flipinator.

According to sources, Propeller will launch with a plethora of media partners, as well as integration into the Google+ social network. The aim of the search giant is to offer media companies easy tools for publishing content on these devices, as well as a better path to monetization.

That is essentially the same plan at Yahoo, which has been working on Livestand with hopes of it being a product that will woo publishers into tight collaboration with the Silicon Valley Internet giant.

Livestand was announced by Yahoo’s now-fired CEO Carol Bartz in February, at a speech at the World Mobile Congress in Spain.

At the time, Bartz demoed a magazinelike platform that would allow publishers to put up content easily and give users the ability to personalize their selections based on search history and interests.

Bartz called it “content in context.” (You can see the demo video below.)

But while Bartz promised the product within three months, development has been slowed by its complex technologies, bugs and the need to sign on publishers.

Yahoo’s Chief Product Officer Blake Irving is pushing the product hard as a way for the company to reinvigorate its media products.

It’s not clear how many publishers Yahoo will have at launch, and neither are the distribution plans, beyond flacking it from the Web site and being present in app stores.

Google, on the other hand, has its Android platform to push out Propeller, although it all must work as well on Apple’s iPad, which is the dominant tablet on the market.

But just because both Yahoo and Google are big companies is by no means a guarantee of success — think Yahoo 360 or Google Wave or Buzz — and their lateness might be a hindrance.

And, in fact, other news reader apps are much further along. The leader, Flipboard, has already had four million downloads and 50 partnerships with leading publishers.

It also has started to introduce rich advertising products and, perhaps most importantly, has tight social integration with Twitter and Facebook.

There will be social elements on both Yahoo’s Livestand and Google’s Propeller. But news reading will be stressed more, making them more like Pulse, a tiny but highly innovative start-up.

Each of the existing apps will presumably compete by adding on more features. Pulse recently added cross-platform, cross-device syncing, while Flipboard is close to unveiling an iPhone version it has said it was working on.

Yahoo and Google PR declined comment.

Here is the Livestand demo video from February:

When I first bought my iPad, I thought it would be a household device, but by the time I had my Twitter push notifications and my Angry Birds high scores up and running, it was pretty clear who it belonged to.

So I was interested to see that personalized news reader app Zite today launched a new version that allows users to have multiple profiles.

CNN-owned Zite justified its new “Sybil” features with a survey in which one third of iPad-owning respondents said they shared their devices. (The research was conducted as a poll on Ask Your Target Market with 330 participants.)

Support for multiple users seems particularly helpful for an app like Zite, which learns over time what kind of stories each user is likely to enjoy. Of course it might be even better if Apple offered a multiple user feature on the iPad as it does on other devices.

Various developers have released and mocked up multi-user tools for the iPad. Berg London designer Matt Jones wrote last year, “The individual nature of the UI and user-model of the iPad seems so at odds to me with its form-factor, the share-ability of its screen technology and its emergent context of use.”

Also, its price!

Image credit: Matt Jones

Me and my new man crush Paul Carr both went on CNN’s weekly media show “Reliable Sources” yesterday in separate interviews with its host Howard Kurtz.

It’s a pretty good summation of the two sides of the argument about what’s been going on with the popular TechCrunch news site. (That is, until the next mantrum by one of its staffers.)

Actually, I truly hope the site, which has some very fine journalists, will add some more talent (they’re looking!) and get back to business.

Covering the tech business, I mean, and so will I.

Enjoy:

Earlier today, well-known digerati dude Robert Scoble posted on his social feed on Google+ that the search giant was working on a social and news reader.

“I heard from someone working with Google that Google is working on a Flipboard competitor for both Android and iPad,” posted Scoble. “My source says that the versions he’s seen so far are mind-blowing good.”

If blowing the minds of hot Silicon Valley start-up Flipboard and Facebook is the goal, then Scooby-Don’t's rumor is pretty spot-on.

According to numerous sources close to the situation, Google is indeed working on rolling out the new product, which is currently called Propeller.

Sources said Propeller is apparently one of a number of new socially focused announcements Google is prepping, including new apps. But the timing for their launch is unclear.

Here’s what is: Propeller is a souped-up version of similar reader apps such as Flipboard, AOL’s Editions, Yahoo’s Livestand, Zite (which was just bought by Time Warner’s CNN) and Pulse.

Facebook is also making social versions of publications available within its site. So, instead of just seeing a sidebar on a news site of what stories your friends liked, you’ll get a personalized and reformatted version of the latest news when you visit that publication’s page within Facebook.

All these apps are part of the drastically changing habits of media consumers, helping them better navigate numerous social and media feeds — such as Facebook and Twitter, as well as news sites and more — using handsome interfaces and touch technologies.

Flipboard is the most prominent and elegant of these offerings, available only on the Apple iPad. The company is working on an iPhone version, too.

Flipboard’s traction among elite users, along with its high-level design ethos and strong reviews, is why Google tried to buy the well-funded company last year, sources said.

But Flipboard — which is backed by some of tech’s biggest venture players, who have invested more than $60 million at a $200 million valuation — declined the kind offer.

At the time, sources said, Google told Flipboard execs that if it did not buy the start-up, it planned to do a version of its own.

Hence, after I heard about the product earlier this year, I dubbed it the Flipinator.

Propeller is probably a better name, I will admit.

It’s not clear what Google’s Propeller will include in the product, such as Facebook integration, since the pair of Silicon Valley behemoths have not been able to partner over data exchange.

Which is an understatement, I know.

But sources said it would be available on both Apple’s iPad and Google’s Android tablets.

In any case, stay tuned and thanks to Scoobs for the tip!

[Photo credit: This Noogler Propeller Hat -- which is given to all new Googlers -- is in the collection at the Computer History Museum, the gift of Marcin Wichary; the image is by Mark Richards.]

The arena for news readers on tablets and smartphones is competitive, with high-profile efforts such as Flipboard, Livestand from Yahoo, AOL’s Editions and start-ups such as Pulse and Zite.

The reason for CNN’s acquisition interest — as well as look-sees from several other publishers — is not a surprise: As readers turn more toward using these mobile devices to consume content, big media companies are trying to acquire the technology to serve up their fare to them.

It is a dicey arena, though, where content aggregation meets (and crashes into) content lifting. Vancouver-based Zite, for example, was sent a cease-and-desist letter in March, by a panoply of media companies (not CNN!) alleging various copyright violations.

That happened right after it was launched, with $4 million in funding from angel investors and Canadian grants and an innovative personalized article-picking algorithm.

As Liz Gannes wrote then:

[Then] Zite CEO Ali Davar describes the iPad as a way to “emancipate the technology” his team originated at research at the University of British Columbia.

It had previously been put to work in a browser plug-in called Worio. And, as you might have guessed, browser plug-ins are a tough business.

The free Zite app imports a user’s Twitter tweets, follows and Google Reader subscriptions, offers lists of pre-made categories, and then solicits feedback and refines over time a list of topics and sources the user is interested in. It features articles based on their popularity, number of shares from a user’s network and topic relevance. (Davar said he thinks a person’s Facebook network data is too heterogeneous to reliably recommend articles, so it’s not included as an option.)

Last week, a Canadian site called Techvibes first wrote about the possibility of the sale of Zite to CNN, which is based in Atlanta and owned by Time Warner.

In a press release, CNN said Zite would remain a standalone unit, as a wholly-owned subsidiary of CNN, and that CEO Mark Johnson will continue to run Zite’s operations, but now in San Francisco. CNN also said that Davar will remain an executive director and Mike Klass will continue as CTO.

In a statement, Johnson said: “Zite is thrilled about combining forces with CNN to create a world-class news discovery platform. In CNN, we have found a partner who shares our vision and passion. Being part of the CNN family gives us the capital to grow Zite’s business and continue to innovate in the space.”

“I can tweet and talk,” Lemon said, demonstrating his dual-screen pose. At other times, Lemon has Reddit open on one phone and Twitter on another. At one time, Lemon had a personal iPhone and a work BlackBerry. However, after dropping his BlackBerry in the ocean on a Key West vacation over Memorial Day, Lemon’s work got him a second iPhone.

A frequent tweeter, Lemon is something of an Apple addict, also toting an iPad and a MacBook Pro.

Lemon was in Philadelphia for the National Lesbian & Gay Journalists Association convention, where he was a featured speaker.

With Hurricane Irene making its way through Philly, Lemon was forced into weather duty, taking at least one of his iPhones out for his live shots, though he had placed it in a Ziploc bag for a little protection against the elements. (Thanks to Barbara Dozetos for the photo of Lemon out in the rain.)

Bonus factoid: When this segment aired on the East Coast last night, @ladybigmac — whose profile describes her as a “political junkie that likes to watch golf and NASCAR races” — had 19 followers. As of 7:44 am, she has 1,397. She may not be aware of her newfound celebrity, though: She’s been tweeting to @cnnAM all morning, but has yet to acknowledge her national shout-out.

Starting Monday, the New York media giant plans to make live simulcasts of its CNN and HLN cable-news channels available on the Web to people who subscribe to participating TV distributors, including Comcast Corp., Dish Network Corp., and Verizon Communications Inc.

Subscribers can sign in to watch on CNN’s website or on Apple Inc. devices like the iPad. The simulcasts—which will mirror everything shown on TV, including ads—will be made available on other mobile devices in coming months, CNN said.

Read the rest of this post on the original site »

“If you want to liberate a society, just give them the Internet,” Ghonim said in an interview with CNN.

Ghonim gives credit to the young Egyptians who organized themselves on Facebook, dating back to last June when activist Khaled Said was killed. Ghonim commented on how a video posted on Facebook (where he is administrator of a page commemorating Said) would be quickly shared by 50,000 people, calling Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg a personal hero.

Ghonim said he plans to write a book on the topic called “Revolution 2.0.”

Mubarak’s government had shut down much of Egyptian Internet access and SMS service for nearly a week during the protests, then made concessions to not run for another term, but protests only intensified until he finally agreed to step down today.

Here’s one from CNN. The Winklevii tell Piers Morgan that it’s not ironic that they are now active Facebook users, despite their ongoing legal and moral crusades against the company. “Technically we’re using our idea….It’s really our product and we’re the originators.” (The two grown men, somewhat oddly, make little effort to differentiate from each other, so I’ll just attribute those comments to both of them.)

And here’s one from the Daily, which shot crazy amounts of creative B-roll of the Winklevosses’ rippling muscles and chiseled jaws (they are Olympic rowers, after all). This is part one of a three-part series by the Daily’s Erin Ade, who discloses she’s a childhood friend of the Winklevii. Cameron and Tyler say they want to tell Zuckerberg to “grow up and admit to the world and yourself what you already know is true…because the moment you do that the chapter will be closed and you can move on as an individual.”

Please see the disclosure about Facebook in my ethics statement.

I’ll also have more later today based on some comments from Hugo Barra, who chatted about the work that went into Honeycomb, as well as how some of the features will make their way back to the phone version of Android.

In the meantime, enjoy the video.

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20110202/mobilized-gets-hands-on-with-googles-honeycomb-video/feed/ 0 http://allthingsd.com/20110121/backstage-at-the-onions-new-tv-show/ http://allthingsd.com/20110121/backstage-at-the-onions-new-tv-show/#comments Fri, 21 Jan 2011 16:05:56 +0000 Peter Kafka http://mediamemo.allthingsd.com/?p=28426 One day, maybe not that far off, we won’t distinguish between video we watch on the Web and the stuff we see on TV. But for now, TV is still the big leagues–the place you go if you want the biggest stage, and the most money.

Which might explain why the Onion has not one but two shows on TV right now, both based on the great stuff the satirists are already doing on their Web video site.

There’s SportsDome on Comedy Central, a beat-for-beat replication of ESPN’s SportsCenter. And starting tonight on IFC, there’s the Onion News Network, an uncanny amalgamation of News Corp.’s Fox News, Time Warner’s CNN, Comcast’s MSNBC et al.

Here’s a representative sample:

Snowy Conditions Proving Hazardous For Nation’s Idiots

I think it’s pretty great, but I’m a 100 percent biased observer, since I’ve been friends with some of the Onion crew for forever–think pre-Netscape. If you want a less objective take on the new show, you can check out this glowing New York Times review, or this measured one from Time.

Last week, I stopped by a promo for the show–a real/fake press conference starring the fake newsreaders, in character, moderated by Newsweek’s Jonathan Alter, who appeared as himself–and then sat down for a chat with Carol Kolb, a longtime Onion writer (and a pal–see above).

We talked in a makeshift green room set up at the very serious Paley Center for Media, and midway through, our conversation gets interrupted by the show’s cast. But that just makes it more real, right? If your coworkers aren’t cool with a few f-bombs, then this isn’t safe for work:

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20110121/backstage-at-the-onions-new-tv-show/feed/ 0 http://allthingsd.com/20101216/viral-video-larry-king-and-suspenders-bid-goodbye-to-cnn/ http://allthingsd.com/20101216/viral-video-larry-king-and-suspenders-bid-goodbye-to-cnn/#comments Thu, 16 Dec 2010 20:53:57 +0000 Kara Swisher http://kara.allthingsd.com/?p=38730

Tonight is Larry King’s last show on CNN, which did this retrospective from some key interviews on “Larry King Live” over his 25 years at the cable news network.

Personally, BoomTown likes when he forgets things, but the Marlon Brando smooch is still pretty good television.

And here is the actual goodbye:

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20101216/viral-video-larry-king-and-suspenders-bid-goodbye-to-cnn/feed/ 1 http://allthingsd.com/20101213/multitouch-pioneer-jeff-han-starts-to-think-small-devices/ http://allthingsd.com/20101213/multitouch-pioneer-jeff-han-starts-to-think-small-devices/#comments Mon, 13 Dec 2010 14:00:35 +0000 Ina Fried http://mobilized.allthingsd.com/?p=823 For years now, Jeff Han has been working on large-screen multitouch displays.

Han and his company, Perceptive Pixel, are best known for creating the giant touch wall that John King and others at CNN use to break down elections.

While Apple, Microsoft and others have targeted consumers, Perceptive Pixel has focused on niche professional markets, especially the defense and government sector.

But, after years of watching the small touchscreen device market from the sidelines, Han said he thinks he is pretty close to creating his first products that will run on those devices.

“Mobile is interesting,” he said in an interview last month at his New York offices (in the Manhattan building that Google is buying, with the amazing roof view seen below). “How can you ignore a billion devices being sold every year?”

Han said there is a reason he has stayed focused on the high end of the market.

“I have a personal bias,” he told Mobilized. “I want computers to be functional, not just playful.”

The modern tablet, he said, is the first consumer device that has enough pixels and the precision sensors to potentially be of interest to Perceptive Pixel. In particular, Han said he is intrigued by the idea of using tablets to allow meeting participants to interact with a nearby larger touchscreen that might be in use by someone leading a meeting.

“We’re looking at mobile and slate devices as a way to tie into this family of collaboration [products],” he said, noting that’s where Perceptive Pixel is spending its energy when it comes to mobile, as opposed to coming up with some killer app that works only on smaller screens. “There are a lot of smart people creating mobile apps.”

Han said his first mobile efforts should come out early next year–in the first quarter or early in the second quarter, though he wouldn’t give more specifics.

Whatever Perceptive Pixel ends up doing in the tablet space, Han said his plan is to eventually have it support multiple operating systems, though Han said the company will probably only qualify certain devices. So far, he said, Apple’s iOS and the iPad seem best suited to the applications he has in mind, while the real-time touch performance on Android has certain issues.

“We’re not going to just let it run on anything out there,” he said. “Some of them just can’t guarantee a good user interface.”

Here is the video interview Mobilized did with Han:

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20101213/multitouch-pioneer-jeff-han-starts-to-think-small-devices/feed/ 0 http://allthingsd.com/20101123/qotd-twitter-trumps-tv-says-twitter-guy-linking-to-tv-site/ http://allthingsd.com/20101123/qotd-twitter-trumps-tv-says-twitter-guy-linking-to-tv-site/#comments Tue, 23 Nov 2010 12:42:12 +0000 Peter Kafka http://mediamemo.allthingsd.com/?p=26243

“Something crazy going on between the Koreas now. TV news rundown had nothing, so watching it unfold on Twitter right now http://t.co/LL7o4mM”

– Twitter biz dev executive Tony Wang, engaged in simultaneous media criticism and product promotion.

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20101123/qotd-twitter-trumps-tv-says-twitter-guy-linking-to-tv-site/feed/ 0 http://allthingsd.com/20101026/qotd-google-ceo-apologizes-for-street-view-quip/ http://allthingsd.com/20101026/qotd-google-ceo-apologizes-for-street-view-quip/#comments Tue, 26 Oct 2010 16:54:27 +0000 John Paczkowski http://digitaldaily.allthingsd.com/?p=51357 Apologies from Google CEO Eric Schmidt are as rare as Bing bookmarks at Google HQ, so consider the one offered below– for his cavalier suggestion that folks worried about Google Street View invading their privacy should “just move”–something of a milestone.

“As you can see from the unedited interview, my comments were made during a fairly long back and forth on privacy. I clearly misspoke. If you are worried about Street View and want your house removed please contact Google and we will remove it.”

– Google CEO Eric Schmidt on his suggestion that folks concerned about the company’s Street View service “just move“

PREVIOUSLY:

• Google CEO’s Advice to the Street-View Shy: The Video
• Schmidt: Don’t Like Google Street View Photographing Your House? Then Move.

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20101026/qotd-google-ceo-apologizes-for-street-view-quip/feed/ 0 http://allthingsd.com/20101025/schmidt-dont-like-google-street-view-photographing-your-house-then-move/ http://allthingsd.com/20101025/schmidt-dont-like-google-street-view-photographing-your-house-then-move/#comments Mon, 25 Oct 2010 10:00:29 +0000 John Paczkowski http://digitaldaily.allthingsd.com/?p=51231 UPDATE:

• Google CEO’s Advice to the Street-View Shy: The Video
• Google CEO Apologizes For Street View Quip

“The problem with Google is that Eric Schmidt is creepy….The industry is filled with eccentric CEOs–billionaires who, say, wear a wardrobe that consists of nothing but identical black shirts and Levi’s 501 jeans, or who dress as a samurai warrior, including swords, at their home. But Schmidt doesn’t seem eccentric (or at least not merely so). He seems creepy.”

– John Gruber, Daring Fireball

Google CEO Eric Schmidt says the company’s “policy is to get right up to the creepy line and not cross it.” And while that may be true of Google, it’s clearly not true of Schmidt, who lately has been happily high stepping across the creepy line like the grand marshal of the Tone-Deaf Technocrat Parade.

In the past year alone he has:

• Addressed criticisms of Google’s stance on privacy by saying, “If you have something that you don’t want anyone to know, maybe you shouldn’t be doing it in the first place.”
• Claimed people want Google to “tell them what they should be doing next.”
• Said of Google, “We know where you are. We know where you’ve been. We can more or less know what you’re thinking about.”
• Said this: “One day we had a conversation where we figured we could just try to predict the stock market. And then we decided it was illegal. So we stopped doing that.”
• Suggested name changes to protect adults from the Web’s record of their youthful indiscretions.
• Said this: “What we’re really doing is building an augmented version of humanity, building computers to help humans do the things they don’t do well better.”

Nice selection of remarks with which to begin a Bartlett’s Unsettling Quotations From Powerful CEOs, right?

And Schmidt’s far from done. Appearing on CNN’s “Parker Spitzer” program last week, he said that people who don’t like Google’s Street View cars taking pictures of their homes and businesses “can just move” afterward to protect their privacy. Ironically, he said this on the very day that Google admitted those cars captured more than just fragments of personal payload data.

Interestingly, CNN has since edited that quote out of Schmidt’s segment. Did Google ask CNN to remove it? Who knows. Perhaps the company has finally realized that Schmidt’s penchant for indulging in this sort of pedantic dorkery doesn’t do much for its public image.

Freaking people out with asinine power-tripping pronouncements might be great fun for Schmidt, but it isn’t a wise PR strategy, particularly when Google is a company about which the public and government are increasingly concerned.

Schmidt really should know this.

Actually, it’s hard to believe he doesn’t.

Which is just…creepy.

UPDATE: Here’s Google’s official comment on Schmidt’s “just move” remark as given MarketWatch: “The point Eric was making is that our Street View service provides only a static picture in time, and doesn’t provide real-time imagery or provide any information about where people are. Of course, we also allow users to request that their home be removed from Street View.”

UPDATE: CNN says Google did not ask that Schmidt’s remark be removed from the broadcast version of the show. “Producers routinely make editorial decisions about what sound bites to include in their shows,” a spokesperson told me via e-mail. “In this case, the clip was posted on cnn.com and disseminated to other media outlets and was widely available.”

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20101025/schmidt-dont-like-google-street-view-photographing-your-house-then-move/feed/ 0 http://allthingsd.com/20101007/cnn-minority-of-web-users-shares-majority-of-news/ http://allthingsd.com/20101007/cnn-minority-of-web-users-shares-majority-of-news/#comments Thu, 07 Oct 2010 19:28:21 +0000 Beth Callaghan http://voices.allthingsd.com/?p=30809 Just 27 percent of social media users account for 87 percent of shared news, according to new research from CNN. The study, which was conducted over two months and tracked 2,300 people, looked at different motivations for sharing, as well methods and content. Not surprisingly, social networks accounted for almost half (43 percent) of shared news.

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20101007/cnn-minority-of-web-users-shares-majority-of-news/feed/ 0 http://allthingsd.com/20101006/viral-video-jon-stewart-goes-sweet-on-rick-sanchez-sort-of/ http://allthingsd.com/20101006/viral-video-jon-stewart-goes-sweet-on-rick-sanchez-sort-of/#comments Wed, 06 Oct 2010 08:58:07 +0000 Kara Swisher http://kara.allthingsd.com/?p=34945

As everyone knows, the back-and-forth between Rick Sanchez and “Daily Show” mocker-in-chief Jon Stewart turned serious after some controversial remarks on a radio show from the CNN personality got him fired.

Sanchez was taking aim at Stewart when he shot himself in the foot, which is why it is so compelling to see Stewart handle the situation with admirable restraint in this video from the comedy television program.

Enjoy:

The Daily Show With Jon Stewart	Mon – Thurs 11p / 10c
Hurty Sanchez
www.thedailyshow.com
Daily Show Full Episodes Political Humor Rally to Restore Sanity

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20101006/viral-video-jon-stewart-goes-sweet-on-rick-sanchez-sort-of/feed/ 0 http://allthingsd.com/20100831/craigslist-ceo-seeking-anderson-cooper-type-for-non-trashing-and-maybe-coffee/ http://allthingsd.com/20100831/craigslist-ceo-seeking-anderson-cooper-type-for-non-trashing-and-maybe-coffee/#comments Tue, 31 Aug 2010 12:15:45 +0000 Kara Swisher http://kara.allthingsd.com/?p=33122

Craiglist CEO Jim Buckmaster let one fly yesterday at CNN reporter Amber Lyon for a report on child sex trafficking she did that focused on the role played by the online-classified giant.

It included using a May interview with Craigslist founder Craig Newmark that Buckmaster characterized as an ambush, and he accused Lyon of “mischaracterizing your stunt as a serious interview on this subject.”

He ended by noting that if “[CNN anchor] Anderson Cooper would like to come out to SF and sit with us for an interview worthy of CNN’s viewers, we’ll consider it.”

But Lyon’s bio on the CNN site told a different story:

“Lyon also investigated the sex trafficking of minors on Craigslist. In a CNN exclusive, Lyon brought her findings to the ‘Craig’ in Craigslist, founder Craig Newmark. Her interview left Newmark speechless.”

Actually, Newmark wasn’t exactly speechless, as you can see from the video below–he just declined to answer and was silent, which is quite typical of him.

Nonetheless, San Francisco-based Craigslist has been under serious fire of late from state attorneys general nationwide who are seeking to get Craigslist to voluntarily take down its “adult services” section, which is lucrative, but which they allege is a thinly veiled venue for prostitution.

Today, the Boston Globe posted a tough editorial supporting a voluntary takedown, noting:

“While Craigslist should be lauded for having in place stronger safeguards than many other websites–and the classifieds sections of some newspapers and magazines–the site is, at the end of the day, profiting off of prostitution.”

Ouch.

Currently, the company says it now screens every adult ad before it goes up, which Lyon alleged was not being done effectively.

More to come, obviously, but here’s an open invite for Buckmaster to do a video with BoomTown, although I am nowhere near as glam as Cooper.

Until then, here is one of the CNN videos by Lyon:

And here is the Buckmaster blog:

For Amber Lyon, CNN

I see you’ve now gotten around to requesting an interview with me or a company spokesperson, 90 days after you ambushed our namesake and founder, Craig Newmark, following his May 20th talk on veteran’s affairs and other issues unrelated to craigslist, at a conference in Washington.

You knew Craig was not in management or a company spokesperson, but setting CNN’s ethical code aside, you sidestepped company channels in favor of ambushing our semi-retired founder, complete with a misleading “set up” for your surprise questions. Now that CNN has aired your highly misleading piece dozens of times, mischaracterizing your stunt as a serious interview on this subject, and you’ve updated your “bio” to showcase this rare jewel of investigative journalism, you’re ready to try actually interviewing the company itself on this subject.

There is a class of “journalists” known for gratuitously trashing respected organizations and individuals, ignoring readily available facts in favor of rank sensationalism and self-promotion. They work for tabloid media. Your stunt has veteran news pros we know recoiling in journalistic horror, some of them chalking it up to a decline in CNN’s standards, which is unfortunate.

Seeing how you’ve pinned your career hopes on butchering this story, I’ll have to pass. If Anderson Cooper would like to come out to SF and sit with us for an interview worthy of CNN’s viewers, we’ll consider it.

Jim Buckmaster
CEO, craigslist

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20100831/craigslist-ceo-seeking-anderson-cooper-type-for-non-trashing-and-maybe-coffee/feed/ 1 http://allthingsd.com/20100513/lets-try-this-again-how-much-web-video-is-really-ipad-ready/ http://allthingsd.com/20100513/lets-try-this-again-how-much-web-video-is-really-ipad-ready/#comments Thu, 13 May 2010 11:00:55 +0000 Peter Kafka http://mediamemo.allthingsd.com/?p=19411 Steve Jobs says there’s no reason to cling to Flash video on the Web, because most Web video also works on the H.264/HTML5 standard he’s supporting.

But Adobe (ADBE) says the majority of the Web’s video uses its Flash standard. And if you surf the Web via Apple’s (AAPL) iPad, you’ll quickly find clips that don’t work on the Flash-free device. Instead of video, you’ll confront the dreaded blue box.

So who’s right? Depends, of course, on whom you ask. But the answer is probably somewhere in the middle.

Earlier this month, Encoding.com said that 66 percent of the videos it processes are in iPad-friendly H.264, adding that this number reflects the wider Web. But MeFeedia, a video search engine, which says it catalogs millions of videos from 30,000 sources, pegs the H.264 universe at a much lower number, 26 percent of all clips.

The two data sets aren’t necessarily at odds. Encoding.com is looking at clips it has been paid to…encode. while MeFeedia is looking at a wider range of clips, including lots of old ones that publishers either don’t want to re-encode or haven’t gotten around to re-encoding yet.

And it’s a perfectly rational decision for some publishers with big video archives–say, the New York Times (NYT)–to encode only their newer clips in H.264 for now. Because the new clips are probably responsible for the majority of their views.

It’s also worth noting that MeFeedia says it is tracking videos around the world. So its numbers are skewed by giant video sites like China’s Youku.com and Tudou.com, which are all-Flash.

Still, the H.264 cohort is growing. MeFeedia says that when it did the same tally in January, it found just 10 percent of clips in H.264. Easy enough to explain the jump as an “iPad effect.” And MeFeedia CEO Frank Sinton says that he has seen many publishers move aggressively to make their stuff iPad-ready: He cites Break, Vimeo, CNN and DailyMotion, among others.

No Flash Lego speed design from Tony Gil on Vimeo.

[Image credit: Tony Gil]

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