Will e-readers force me to doo-doo away with my favorite pastime?

With all the talk of e-readers and iPads being the savior for the print industry, I started to wonder: What does this mean for me? How will it affect my everyday life?
  And I realized something of major importance. I'm not going to go into (much) detail, but I enjoy some good, solid reading material when I am in the can. In fact, it's where I get most of my magazine reading done. This popped into my head: When I spend late nights on the couch posting items to Mediaweek.com with my Macbook on my lap, I often have to bring it over to the kitchen table to give my legs some respite. The damned thing gets hot after a while. Like singeing-skin hot. Now, I don't have an iPad yet, but I can only imagine that the back of it gets hot after a while of being on. And given that when I read magazines on the can, I rest them on my lap … you get the point.
  Maybe I'll be proven wrong in the coming months.

—Posted by Will Levith

Intel courts March Madness man-taskers

Not sure what's worse here: a newly coined term, "man-tasking," to describe men's voracious cross-platform media usage during March Madness, or Intel's music-video homage to it. It's a disorder, not a skill, right? The clip, dubbed "The Ultimate Man-Tasker" (posted after the jump), is aimed at the mad sports fanatic who "streams sports online, watches multiple games on TV at the same time, tracks scores, follows brackets all while managing several fantasy teams," according to the marketer. If I live to be 1,000 years old, I will never understand this. You with me, girls? Little wonder I don't work for Intel, which is pushing its "all-new 2010 Core processor family" so guys can spend untold hours immersed in college basketball. (Spoiler alert: The Kentucky Wildcats take it all!) There's even a "Boss Button" so men doesn't get busted while man-tasking at work. And for guys who aren't sure they qualify, Intel has a handy Cosmo-style quiz ("Are You a Man-tasker?") that asks such pertinent questions as, "Does your significant other nag you about your combined Internet, video game, mobile phone and TV usage at home?" The only fitting reply: What significant other?

—Posted by T.L. Stanley

Twitter won't let Corey Haim rest in peace

So I was watching Larry King on CNN last night, at my wife’s request. She wanted to see Corey Feldman and Nicole Eggert talk about Corey Haim’s death. First things first: my condolences to Haim's family and friends. I actually thought Feldman and Eggert were quite genuine in their grief, which stood in stark contrast to the vapid shout outs Haim was pulling down on Twitter. Here are a few “tweets”, mostly from the Hollywood community: “Rip Corey Haim ‘Childhood Hero’” - Ashton Kutcher. Apparently, Ashton was the first Twitterer to have a million followers. Congrats, big fan of your work. “RIP Cory Haim…you were my first crush!” - Tamera Mowry (Sister, Sister). Well, you misspelled his name for starters. Surely his family is glad to know he was your first crush. “So sad!  God bless!!!” - Khloe Kardashian. Nice subtle touch with all those !!!s? Thank God one of the most questionable celebrities ever has this global digital forum at her disposal. “Tiger Woods, Corey Haim, Eric Massa, Glenn Beck – definitely not balanced guys.” I challenge you to find any purpose whatsoever in that statement. And… “Would be so ironic if a vampire killed Corey Haim.” Is that supposed to be funny? “Share and discover what’s happening right now, anywhere in the World.” That’s Twitter’s tagline.  It really should be something like “If you can’t hear yourself talk, at least you can see yourself talk.”

—Posted by Craig Russell

Hey, Cablevision, thanks for nothing. ... We enjoyed the Oscars online just fine

It's amazing—even in settling its retransmission consent dispute with ABC's New York flagship WABC last night, Cablevision found a way to screw over its customers, by not alerting them of the settlement. Apparently, some subscribers got a few e-mails during the day, including one sent after 5 p.m. informing them that on-demand movies would be free (would've been nice to know that earlier in the day, huh?). At 8:30 p.m., when the 82nd Academy Awards started on ABC and there was still no signal, my wife and I shut off the TV and turned to the Internet to satisfy our Hollywood jones. Actually, we scored big time, thanks to Sky TV HD out of England, which offered a live feed of the awards (with only the "voice of God" announcements at the Kodak Theater inaudible). During the commercial breaks, sponsor Moët and a handful of Euro-centric advertisers (Alfa Romeo, Citroën and some British car service called 118 that appropriated the Ghostbusters theme song) filled the first minute, and the rest was filled by commentary provided by a Sky hostess and three 30-something guests. They were actually pretty insightful and a tad snarky. For example, they interpreted Mo'nique's odd speech as code for some behind-the-scenes wrangling for her nomination (if she was going to thank very few people, they observed, why would one of them be her lawyer?). Sadly, just after the best actor award was handed out, we lost the free feed. Since Cablevision never let us know that WABC was back on, we trawled around online for another simulcast, finding a Spanish-language backhaul of TNT's Latin American feed, which was irritating because the last three speeches were dubbed by live translation. But perhaps the final straw was the sponsor at the bottom of the screen as we watched: Cablevision's Optimum Triple Play. You wasted your money on that one, Jimmy Dolan: The only people watching TNT's feed were pissed-off Cablevision subscribers like us!

—Posted by Michael Bürgi

Why I'm hooked on an Internet wine show

I stumbled upon Gary Vaynerchuk's "most passionate" Internet wine program, aka The Thunder Show, thanks to a TiVo suggestion a few months back. I've been a proud member of Vayner Nation ever since.
  A little background: Vaynerchuk entered the wine world when his father Sasha brought him into the family business, a retail shop in Springfield, N.J. (originally Shopper's Discount Liquors, now aptly named Wine Library). The younger Vaynerchuk recognized an untapped potential in the vast wine community. Taking full advantage of the Facebook/YouTube generation, he launched Wine Library TV in 2006.
  I'm sure many of you are like me regarding wine. I barely touched the stuff in college or even post-college. My vino intake has been pretty much limited to my thirties. While I'm still an advanced novice, my interest continues to grow. Five years ago, I certainly wouldn't have trekked up to the Whole Foods on West 98th Street to find a bottle of Croatian wine. That's what Vaynerchuk is hoping for. Getting his viewers to expand their palette.

Open letter to Mr. Zucker and Mr. Ebersol

Congratulations, gentlemen, on a very successful Winter Olympics so far. It must be gratifying to see such high ratings after the rough couple of years NBC has endured. Even today, not much delivers like a big event on network TV.
  However, as I'm sure you've heard, you guys have been taking a lot of heat online, particularly on social platforms like Facebook and Twitter, about how so much of your coverage is tape delayed. And compared to the Summer Olympics in 2008, NBC is streaming far, far less live on the Web—400 hours of just curling and hockey this year, versus 2,200 hours in Beijing. Some people see that as pretty lame, especially since there are numerous ways to find out Olympic results before they air in prime time. I'm talking about new-media innovations such as the Internet. Or ESPN. Or radio.
  Now, I get it. Why mess with what's working? You're ratings are kicking ass. Who cares about a few complainers, even if they are complaining (and mocking you) on your own Web site? So what if most sports fans knew that skier Lindsey Vonn had won gold by the time you guys went on the air last night? They still watched, right? Here's the thing, though. You guys haven't exactly been hitting it out of the park lately in terms of PR. There was some Jay Leno/Conan O'Brien thing in the paper recently. Dick, I believe your quote about Conan was particularly noteworthy. I'm hear to tell you that that chicken-hearted quip didn't exactly endear you to Team Coco. However, I'm proposing a way you can turn you PR mess around.

Post-Van Natta, what's next for MySpace?

One of the more anticipated panel sessions at the IAB's upcoming annual meeting in Carlsbad, Calif., was going to be the one called "All Together Now! The Next Wave Integration of Social Entertainment" on Feb. 22. It was to include none other than MySpace CEO Owen Van Natta, along with former top MTV digital sales exec Nada Stirratt, whom Van Natta brought on to serve as MySpace's chief revenue officer last year. That session got a whole lot more interesting once it was announced that Van Natta was leaving MySpace after just 10 months on the job. That's if it still happens. (Van Natta's name was quickly dropped from the agenda on Thursday.)

Free is free, however you want to look at it

I'm right now listening to Radiohead's In Rainbows and reminiscing about when I downloaded it for "free." (I actually decided to pay two or three pounds for it.) What a concept that was! And then, of course, came the backlash from the industry, musicians and critics. "It's setting a dangerous precedent," some said. "Free is the end of the record industry," said others. But all the while, I felt it was a good idea. I also remember, around the same time, Paste magazine copycatting by doing its own pay-what-you-want for a yearlong magazine subscription (I ended up paying $1, I think; I didn't renew after the year). Sure, the "free" idea isn't all that novel. Hulu and Pandora have been doing it for years now (with obvious setbacks—ad breaks—for users), as has just about every major industry for as long as I can remember. Think about the "Buy one, get one free" deals you hear about all the time from restaurants. Or even the free deli-tray giveaways at the supermarket. (I always loved those as a kid.) The reason for those is obvious: You take one bite of the free aged Boar's Head cheddar, and you just have to buy a half-pound. I say free is good. Keep it coming.

—Posted by Will Levith

You tweet your way, and we'll tweet ours

I guess success breeds envy. What's with rival media outlets constantly feeling the need to take potshots at us? Following the likes of MediaPost, Jack Myers (whom I don't even consider a competitor) and others, the latest to take a swipe is PaidContent's Rafat Ali. Now, I have a lot of respect for PaidContent. Those guys do a pretty solid job covering a lot of space in a nimble, attitudinal fashion. But my respect drops when I see Rafat tweeting: "has @MediaweekDotCom laid off all journos & handed over its twitter feed to an intern? read the feed, judge for yourself..." Hey, Rafat, worry about your own operation. Clearly, we haven't laid off all our "journos," since your "journos" regularly riff (feel free to substitute a "p" for the two "f"s) off our coverage of the media … though the polite word for it is "aggregating." Second, and this is a more personal choice that I know is the exception to a lot of new journalism, I don't feel like I need to tweet everything I do professionally. Just because you do doesn't make you any better or smarter than me, or any of Mediaweek's "journos." Lastly, what's wrong with a little attitude? Mediaweek's Web editor is in charge of populating our Twitter feed, and has a little fun with it. I have no problem with his Twitter m.o., and it's helped boost our Web presence. Your site is full of attitude as well, as are all of our competitors' Web efforts. So, why don't you and your capable staff go back to doing your jobs and stop judging others? It would be grandly appreciated, Rafat. Cheers.

—Posted by Michael Bürgi

What the iPad really needs is an iPad iPad

There's been quite a bit of speculation about whether Apple's newly launched iPad will be successful. There was quite a bit of the same surrounding the launch of the iPod, the iPhone, the iPod touch and just about every other "i" product Apple's ever launched. But everything they do seems to turn to gold in the end.  
  Still, I'm skeptical about the iPad for one reason: durability. It's super thin, it's super cool—yes, we know that. But what happens if the guy next to you on the train gets pissed off while playing a videogame on it and breaks it over his leg? The splintering shards could cut you up pretty bad. And what if you're staring over somebody's shoulder while they're trying to read an e-newspaper, and in a fit of rage, they whack you over the head with it? That could seriously hurt. And God forbid someone should rest it on his lap for too long. Remember that fellow with the exploding iPod? You get my drift.
  That is why I propose that Apple create the iPad iPad, which will be a pad you can drape over your lap so you don't singe your essentials. It will also lessen the blow, if someone were to thwack you with the system.  
  Not a bad idea, no?

—Posted by Will Levith