due diligence

Codec Capers: Google Drops H.264 Support in Chrome

John Paczkowski in News on January 11, 2011 at 3:42 pm PT

Here’s one way to spur adoption of your new video codec. End your browser’s support for a widely used rival codec. That’s what Google did today, announcing that its Chrome browser will ship without native support for H.264.

Don’t Call It a "Bubble," Says Fred Wilson. But Things Are…”Troubling."

Peter Kafka in Media on November 12, 2010 at 9:48 am PT

One of tech’s most prominent investors sees “storm clouds.” But he’s not running for cover.

Voices

Welcome to the Wild West of Venture Capital

Ty McMahan, Reporter, The Wall Street Journal in News on November 11, 2010 at 8:05 am PT

Inflated valuations typically signal that a particular investment segment is overheated. Deals in the digital and social media category, for instance, are becoming so expensive for venture investors that they may invoke an unsavory label–bubble.

Google’s “Royalty-Free” WebM Video May Not Be Royalty-Free for Long

John Paczkowski in News on May 20, 2010 at 3:45 pm PT

The announcement of Google’s new WebM video format and release of the VP8 video codec as an open standard have been hailed by some as the move that will free the Web from the proprietary H.264 codec widely used for online video today. That seems ideal. But like many ideals, it may prove to be unattainable, particularly now that video standards group MPEG LA is mulling a patent pool for VP8.

Digg CEO Jay Adelson Steps Out

Peter Kafka in Media on April 5, 2010 at 11:00 am PT

Digg CEO Jay Adelson has left the company he has run for the past five years, leaving founder Kevin Rose to run the social news site in the interim.

YouTube and Viacom Find Lots of Emails, but No Smoking Gun

Peter Kafka in Media on March 18, 2010 at 7:25 pm PT

The YouTube-Viacom documents released today are chock full of interesting morsels. Feel free to ignore most of them.

The Flixster/Rotten Tomatoes/MySpace Mystery Solved: A Christmas Miracle!

Kara Swisher in News on December 24, 2009 at 1:11 pm PT

About 10 days ago, there was a post in this column titled “MySpace and News Corp. Eye Flixster (But for What?)” about interest by News Corp. and its MySpace unit in Flixster, the popular social networking site for movies. Well, BoomTown did more gumshoeing and the deal is indeed shaping up to be very complex, according to many sources I spoke with, centered on Rotten Tomatoes merging with Flixster in exchange for a stake in the combined independent company by News Corp. and a possible integration of content with MySpace.