I haven’t weighed in on the drama that is TechCrunch nowadays (I’d recommend reading a great interview with Rafat Ali on the subject). However, I’m surprised no one has mentioned Jason Calacanis as a perfect solution to AOL’s dilemma of how to replace someone as polarizing as Michael Arrington. Not that Jason would re-join AOL [...]
Los Angeles-based MySpace and Palo Alto-based Auditude had some big news today, inking a deal with MTV Networks to basically allow MTV to insert ads into “borrowed” content. That is, if a MySpace user decides to upload a video copied from or otherwise taken from MTV without their permission, Auditude’s software detects that content and [...]
Wired has the great story of Comcast giving away free cable TV service to people who (still) don’t have cable or satellite TV. Which reminds me of many years ago, shortly out of college, when I moved into a condo, and never bothered to hook up cable — the local cable installer stopped by my [...]
There’s been a “meme” — a running theme through many blogs lately — about the role of public relations in the world of blogging. Nicole Jordan — who, here in Los Angeles, is well known for her work organizing networking events–and is the PR person behind some of the higher visibility firms here — weighed [...]
I was browsing the Los Angeles Times’ interview with Demand Media’s Richard Rosenblatt today, and was amused to read this snippet from their article: Outside Santa Monica’s dot-com circuit, the name Richard Rosenblatt doesn’t mean much. He’s one of those guys who buys and sells empty websites. We ran an interview with Richard back in [...]
The Los Angeles Times said yesterday that it is cutting 250 people, including 150 news staff, and is reducing news pages as it attempts to cut costs. Times Editor Russ Stanton put it best: Thanks to the Internet, we have more readers for our great journalism than at any time in our history. But also [...]
One of the great things about covering Southern California’s technology industry, is it’s refreshing not to be stuck in what feels like an echo chamber in the national technology news sector. One thing I notice about the many technology news blogs covering Silicon Valley or the technology industry in general, is that there are some [...]
I’ve noticed an alarming trend (at least to me) lately, which is the number of folks who have been approaching me offering “pay for play” on their startups or events. Pay-for-play — for those not familiar with it — is the use of either advertising dollars or outright payments to get positive writeups or mentions [...]
I got this very amusing email from the San Jose Mercury News today, promoting their new “e-Edition” (demo here) — an online version of their “dead tree” newspaper — complete with paper layout, photos, advertisements, frozen as they were in the print edition. I seriously wonder how a paper — which lives in the ultra-competitive [...]
The Los Angeles times just posted a piece speculating that more Web start-ups are on the rocks as investors are becoming more cautious. The problem is, it’s very difficult to figure out if a company is having problems raising cash because the economy, or because investors are just not interested in their company. It’s much [...]
Thoughts and commentary from Benjamin F. Kuo, publisher of socalTECH.com.
