Media Bites-May 21 2010

Checking in at Starbucks, the gym, office max, train stations, a tapas bar in Buenos Aires-what is all this about. It's free and fun foursquare my friends, and here's a primer on what it is and how it works:

Foursquare is a hybrid of friend finder, social media application and a city guide. It allows you to check in anywhere in the world, give comments about what you're doing and give tips about your location ( 'be sure to try the crab legs', 'this place has the worst bathrooms', )

Win points and badges by checking in at new and interesting places-you can even become the Mayor by having the most checkins at one of your locations. Download the app to your IPhone, Blackberry and Android.

Link it to your Twitter and Facebook streams and now your family, friends and enemies will know where you are every minute of the day.

http://foursquare.com/

Media Bites-May 15 2010

Remember when Saturday afternoon cartoons were all about 'Tom & Jerry', 'Tennessee Tuxedo' & 'The Smurfs?' Starting in the fall of 2010, the joint partnership between Hasbro and Discovery (The Hub) will be cracking open the vault to relaunch some of the best 1980's animation.

According to CEO Margaret Loesch "We think if we come in and really focus on the 6- to 12-year-old demo as our prime target, it's a relatively underserved audience where there's a lot of opportunity to do a lot more. Cartoon Network and Nickelodeon are doing a great job now, but the audience is starting to age up"

Media Bites-May 7 2010

I was convinced that there was almost no creativity left in radio-until stumbling upon this gem that's running in Amsterdam:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qdCVHNkMqfo

Hear an ad on the air, hold your land line phone up to it, get connected to the advertiser.

While I find the technology innovative and interesting, wouldn't it make more sense to be able to hold your smart phone up, have it navigate to the web site and make a reservation-then send you an app download? Now if it can do that, when can I get started using it?

Media Bites May 4 2010

TV Everywhere & Anywhere continues:

In the quest to get your entertainment ( not news, my print friends) where ever and whenever you want it, DISH Network will open up a beta web portal this summer to offer premium content. According to Multichannel News, Comcast is the only distributor to offer the service through Fancast Xfinity Video (http://www.comcast.net/on-demand-online/)-viewers can watch their favorite shows from HBO, Starz, TNT, TBS, A&E, History, CBS and AMC.

Time Warner Cable, Verizon FIOS and DirectTV are all at various launch stages. Additionally, HBO (owned by Time Warner) recently introduced HBOgo and MobiTV (http://www.mobitv.com/) has been in the game for a while now. Yup, I've already downloaded both HBO and MobiTV apps to my IPhone.

However, here's the frustrating part: Lets say I want to catch the latest episode of 'True Blood' on my Macbook. Whoops, can't do that. My cable provider is Time Warner and they haven't rolled out that product yet. OK, no worries. I'll go to HBOgo and catch it there. Blocked there as well as they have a limited number of distributors signed up and their parent company isn't one of them.

I see TONS of opportunity for media business start ups to get every distribution company, networks, programmers, marketers and tech pros on the same page so the consumer can benefit. I'll say it again with gusto: one access point, one fee, multiple devices. Hey, maybe my business partner and I could develop something........