Lunch with the greatest podcaster of our generation? Why not. He tweeted. “Lunch at Ironworks.” Leo Laporte and his entourage and some fans are in Austin for SXSW.  It’s Leo’s first.  He’s already boggled at the myriad of events and choices.  What party to go to?  What panel? Leo will be tricasting his “This Week in Google” (TWIG) and “This Week in Tech” (TWIT) from TexasCoworking at 200 E Sixth Street in Austin, TX on Saturday, March 13, 2010 and Sunday, March 14, both at 5 pm CST.  Texas Coworking provided the equipment and space and both SiliconAngle (Mark “Rizzn” Hopkins and Michael Sean Wright) and NewTek Tricaster provided expertise, production and equipment for this event and their

When asked the biggest challenges in online video advertising this year, top executives at media agencies like Starcom and MediaVest say they're most eager to target audiences better and to access more sophisticated data around viewership. At last week's 4A's conference in San Francisco that drew top brass at ad agencies and brands, Daisy Whitney caught up with MediaVest's President Donna Speciale, Starcom USA CEO Lisa Donohue and 4A's Managing Director Harold Geller. Here's what they had to say about hurdles in Web video in 2010 in this week's New Media Minute.

Are you working on a new community with big time bells and whistles that caters to a niche that you just know has been waiting for a place to call home? If so, I encourage you to push ahead full steam. But, let me caution you first. Your new community, no matter how great will not change habits. What I mean by this is you will not be able to stop potential members from posting on Facebook or twitter or their favorite Ning community.  If you are assuming that your new community will become the new gathering place for those belonging to the niche, I think you will be disappointed. Can you make it a great destination with robust content and interesting discussions? Absolutely. I know from experience what that kind of commitment can do

I have been using Pandora's online stream music service off and on for several years. What got me more interested lately was it being one of the many services on my Roku video streaming box, which my wife and I use mostly for watching movies from Netflix's "watch instantly" queue. As I investigated the service more, I came to understand exactly the challenge of what it takes to be truly multi-platform in the current era. It isn't just about having both Web and mobile phone versions of your service, but how you have to go deep into a lot of different devices to appeal to your customers. The cool thing about Pandora isn't that you can create your own custom radio station that will try to find music based on a particular artist or

First of all, yes, it is a slow news day. Typically, I don’t take my news queues from Techcrunch, particularly when it has to do with pop-culture reporting. Still, a post there regarding an odd choice by new-Twitterer Conan O’Brien is worthy of note. Conan O’Brien, as you know, was forced out of late night television some time back. We talked here a bit about the prospect of him taking his act online, but we were thinking in terms of an online video show. As it turns out, he’s decided to simply take his act to Twitter. Since then, he hasn’t followed anyone back, despite having amassed well north of half a million followers in a few short days … that is until today. About two hours ago, Conan said: “I've decided to follow so

Update: Cisco Announces upgrade but no set top box and no telepresence. Three out of five of this report announced by Cisco. Reactions were not that favorable. Update (March 8 2010): Cisco's Future Is Already Here -- Looks like Verizon, Juniper Networks, NEC, and Finistar are demonstrating trials on the eve of Cisco's big announcement reported by FierceTelcom, Information Week, and released by Verizon today. The announcement came as Cisco was preparing a major announcement for Tuesday, believed to be its entry in the 100G race. Google has already said it plans to test 100G networks in selected regions. You can take the 100G piece out of the Cisco equation and the notion that Verizon will be standing with Cisco at their podium.

Media agencies and brands are hungry for data - they want better data that they can use to target their potential customers. That's why I took a detailed look in this week's New Media Minute at a data-driven deal and a new research tool and explains why they matter in the online video business. They include the Quantcast-MTV pair-up and Visible Measures' introduction of its new Trends tool. Check out this week's episode for the scoop.

Following an Italian court ruling earlier this week, Google is facing the prospect of having to check Italian sourced videos before they are posted, to make sure they don't violate Italian privacy laws. That's a daunting task. One potential way around this problem is to do what it did in South Korea last year. A new law forced Google to collect the real names of Koreans uploading videos or commenting online. On the day the law came into effect, Google simply switched off the comments and blocked the ability for people to upload videos to its Korean YouTube site. Koreans were still allowed to upload video to YouTube sites in neighboring countries. It was neat sidestep of its legal obligations. Run for the border... Courts only have ju

Earlier today, Skype and Samsung announced that the free VoIP app would be available on the company’s new Samsung LED 7000 and 8000 series models, due to ship within a couple months. The TV set continues to be the home’s convergence point for the technologies we early adopters have all been using for years. Internet video, time-shifting, gaming, music and more have been available on console gaming platforms as well as cable set-top boxes for a few years now. The last piece of the puzzle unavailable to all but the most adventurous of set-top box hackers continues to be voice connectivity. These units are shipping now to Korea (US availability coming soon, is the closest answer I can get). Users will still have to buy a FREETALK TV Cam

Why do Internet users continually resist paid content on a systematic basis? Keep in mind that many current Internet business models were built on the premise, (create the content and they will come). We have all seen the sterling examples of this model with Google, Facebook, MySpace, Hulu, YouTube, along with a host of others, including news organizations betting on ad supported revenues to make a profit. While this model worked for some businesses, it has not for others. Relying solely on ad supported revenues is a weak model, as the Broadcast TV Industry found out the hard way. Historically, news organizations relied heavily on paper subscription models supplemented with ad revenues to make their profits. Linear TV models like CNN and