en-us http://www.keithwatanabe.net/index.php Keith Watanabe's Website http://www.keithwatanabe.net/blogs/2007/7/23/bf50430a429378b4086c5418b380f028.html Mon, 23 Jul 2007 10:53:09 -0600 http://www.keithwatanabe.net/blogs/2007/7/23/bf50430a429378b4086c5418b380f028.html http://www.keithwatanabe.net/blogs/2007/11/24/2035859394f824ec8fb565964edfa81f.html
The interface is REALLY rough. First, there's too much "back-and-forth" web 1.0 action. Not enough dynamic pieces to make it convenient. The worst part is the whole lack of caching content on the browser side, which in turn makes the constant page reloading effort a real hassle. Say you're watching a large video and suddenly you press a link thinking that you might be able to interact in an AJAX manner. Chances are that you'll be sent to another page and you'll be forced to reload the whole video from start. That's terrible and a real pain.

Similarly, another problem I found was that the file I was watching stopped abruptly when there clearly was another 7 minutes of watching time left. I couldn't tell if the reason why it stopped was because of my stupid router shutting down or if the content was misread in terms of time. But it was quite annoying to say the least. I know YouTube has similar problems from time-to-time but the browser side caching of their content helps alleviate part of this problem, allowing me to reload the page and try to watch a clip again.

Another terrible feature in terms of the interface is the way-too-sensitive playlist sidebar. It's embedded in a frame. But you just need to click once on an image to get a video to play inside the player. Sounds nice, until you realize that you've accidentally started up a video and are forced to reload your previous video from scratch again. There's no way to lock this interface down so that you can just view the video you want.

The layout looks nice, but I don't see anything special. It's prettier in some ways than YouTube in terms of the colors, but truthfully, I find the interface to really downgrade my experience.

One feature that seems nice is that you can download videos straight to your PC....if you're willing to install their player. I find this to be a travesty. Only Macs and Windows users can employ this feature. I run Ubuntu and Fedora (although I have a Windows based PC as well), but why would I want to install yet another crappy player? I was pretty reluctant to install Amazon's player for their unbox software. I also got AOL's version and I'm suspicious of it. Why not just let users download the damn files as .avi's? I mean, if you're already going to allow users to download them, just go all the way. They did provide an option for iPod formatted files, but after I grabbed the file, it turned out unreadable. Very sad.

There were a few videos that I found that were not on YouTube. I won't say what they were (NOT pr0n!!!!) but it makes me believe that the lifespan of such a site will be short as big media companies will more than likely set their targets on them once they dispense of other players.

If this site/company wants to succeed against youtube, they need to focus on user experience. Anyone these days can create another youtube, but few can transform the experience into a more successful one for people. That factor is what will keep YouTube ahead of the competition. ]]> Sat, 24 Nov 2007 12:46:21 -0700 http://www.keithwatanabe.net/blogs/2007/11/24/2035859394f824ec8fb565964edfa81f.html http://www.keithwatanabe.net/blogs/2008/1/6/9d096f3f25edeab3997c3c1c577a8775.html
I totally forgot about that situation, tried going to sleep (failed), and woke up intending to watch youtube. Then youtube started freezing as did other video sites. And then I tried playing other video files. Originally, I was going to blog that the problem was the nvidia driver, but I realized/remembered (faintly) that mplayer had bogged down and probably was still running. I rebooted my machine to clear the problem and now everything is working again.

The worst part was that I spent several sleepy/waking hours trying to figure out what the hell was going on. What a waste of time!!!!]]> Sun, 06 Jan 2008 16:44:56 -0700 http://www.keithwatanabe.net/blogs/2008/1/6/9d096f3f25edeab3997c3c1c577a8775.html http://www.keithwatanabe.net/blogs/2008/2/4/f1c22feea27dbbe450503b724cd1176b.html youtube videos or peruse numerous news articles. While the production value of the new wave of media is no way near the level of what Hollywood and big budget companies can produce, I love the things being put out by independent people, using sheer creativity over the traditional boardroom writing of Hollywood. If not that then I go for the plethora of news out there, which even as enormous as it is, I find still limited in quantity.

Sometimes, I wonder though if my viewing habits are far worse than my parents' or my friends who are addicted to TV. While the information I glean is more useful to me or vested in what I find interesting, the amount of time I spend consuming information far exceeds the amount my mom does. I was thinking of how TV shows are not on demand, but scheduled. So you can pattern your sleeping habits or viewing habits based on what's on (unless you use devices like TiVo). Internet technology though is completely on demand, which means an infinite amount of consumption.

But truthfully, the stuff on the net is the best stuff out there. It's raw and unimposing, just waiting to be grabbed by active viewers who search for these bits of data.]]> Mon, 04 Feb 2008 10:18:47 -0700 http://www.keithwatanabe.net/blogs/2008/2/4/f1c22feea27dbbe450503b724cd1176b.html http://www.keithwatanabe.net/blogs/2008/2/21/b53cc211f38065ead13b3b8d4c9318c0.html earlier article, many large companies are starting to pair up with smaller startups, giving them seed money to avoid a YouTube/Google dominated media online monopoly. Rupert Murdoch was probably one of the smartest in this by buying Myspace. He understood that he could simply start his own internet company up. Instead, he went after a company with a huge market share to broadcast his TV. And it makes tons of sense because it's all about advertisement dollars that News Corp can control without catering to Google, Yahoo, or other online advertisement markets.

I took a brief look at Myspace's TV section and noticed that I couldn't watch a thing. Well, unfortunately being in Japan prevents you from seeing such things. But I did spot numerous TV shows both new and old. And NBC recently announced how old episodes of the A-Team (and another show I can't remember) will be viewable online.

You see the thing is that old video footage is great. It honestly cost nothing to produce compared to say making another version of James Cameron's Titanic. The only things you have to do is transfer it to a digital medium, get advertisers, splice in the commercials at appropriate moments (where they traditionally were) and broadcast them via one of these smaller companies. Then people can watch it on demand and the companies can earn their share of the profit from advertisement in unavoidable commercials (AOL Video does this).

What has this to do with Japan? Well, Japan is notoriously slow when it comes to, well, almost anything. The ultra conservative culture has cost them the inability to take control of the web. Now, companies from the US and other markets are setting up camps out here and importing their form of internet here. TV is no different, if not worse.

Japan's TV market, from what I understand, is a little different from the US market (I don't know any other markets for that matter). Here, as I've been told, the TV broadcasters are the producers of their own content, unlike cable networks in the states, which often would license content out. This gives the broadcasters an immense amount of power in retaining their rights and quite often these people are extremely reluctant to part with their content. Also, when it comes to DVDs or obtaining old shows, you'll see ridiculous numbers such as 10000-en (around $100) for a crap video. My favorite TV series, Densha Otoko, which was only 15 episodes goes for I believe almost 30000-en (a little under $300)! Ask any Japanese and they'll tell you that they won't waste a dime on these shows.

Japanese broadcasters also license a good deal of international and especially Hollywood content out frequently. You can see American TV shows and movies out here on TV stations. Quite often you might even here of frequent visits by stars here. My friends are more willing to pick up copies of 24, for example, compared to watching any TV drama out here.

However, interestingly enough, Japanese TV broadcasters make ZERO profit from their websites. While there exist some little flash tidbits and ads on their websites to inform people of upcoming shows, these websites serve little purpose outside of being purely informational. Compare that to companies like CNN or NBC who are licensing their content or partnering up with sites and making some additional cash through revenue sharing.

That's not to say that TV isn't completely ignored here. But there's something missing that the broadcasters aren't seeing. I think it's going to take a massive move where other companies like NBC, TIme-Warner/AOL, CBS, etc. can demonstrate huge profits and success online before Japanese companies make a move.

However, I see a far more vast problem. Despite calls for the removal of copyrighted video on sites like YouTube, many TV shows, anime and whatnot are still uploaded quite frequently to these sites. It's very likely that YouTube/Google may move ahead into the realm of TV out here since there are no threats like Veoh, AOL Video, Myspace, etc. that these Japanese broadcasters can turn to. Add to the fact that Apple's iTunes is highly popular and selling videos from all major movie and TV distributors, it'll only be a matter of time before they'll localize their content for the Japanese market. Then only two major players would exist out here, leaving the Japanese companies, once again, twiddling their thumbs.

Yes, I am calling out the Japanese broadcasters. Matter of fact, I'm calling them stupid for not reacting and not treating the internet more seriously. Go to YouTube, for instance, and check out some Japanese videos. Many of the videos are simply copied from TV and uploaded unceremoniously. More than that, they become extremely popular with the international market, something clearly that Japan desperately needs to count on in terms of expanding growth of their TV and movie sectors. The West has fetishized the Japanese market so long, praising their idols, music, anime and variety shows without the Japanese market really realizing what an effect that could potentially have in the west. Take this blog from Asami Yuma as an example. In it, she herself just realizes that someone had uploaded an old video of her. She calls YouTube amazing in being able to find any kind of content.

The thing people in Japan (at least in terms of newspapers and broadcasters) seem to be oblivious of is that the old media is going to die in the next 5-10 years. Completely. Newspapers make little sense because it's a waste of paper and their news is ancient. Magazines have little relevancy outside of pictures. And TV will slowly move away from the crap that these companies produce and move into privatized sectors as more people realize that they can create their own content with just a webcam/camcorder and an internet connection to YouTube. Look at this video for example. Here's a Japanese blogger who has received an incredible amount of hits for putting up what I would call a novel, mediocre video blog.

Reality TV is slowly becoming excerpts of people's lives through viral injection. It's far easier to watch 1-5 minutes clips than wasting time, being stranded/enslaved to a 20+ minutes of commercials during a 1 hour period. Why would people require broadcasters any longer when they can find content that follows non-linear, non-formulaic formats that intrigue and compel rather than dull and insult our intelligence?

They say that Video Killed the Radio Star. Well, Internet and online video will kill broadcasters if they don't react. The US market has quickly started to smarten up. But I don't think Japan realizes that they need to smarten up far faster before their demise at the hands of independent creators.]]> Thu, 21 Feb 2008 08:20:05 -0700 http://www.keithwatanabe.net/blogs/2008/2/21/b53cc211f38065ead13b3b8d4c9318c0.html http://www.keithwatanabe.net/blogs/2008/3/16/421e724bf4afaa8f5999e0f6a273a492.html TechCrunch has a post about Flickr doing video. I recently did a small report for my company and tracked some of the latest online video sites. The number came out to be roughly 24-25 sites where people could upload content. This was out of about 100 sites that I reviewed online. Now, Flickr wants to enter a dense game.

Certainly, Flickr can use their brand name and their user base along with some spiffy technology to add another dimension to their brand name. However, this is the key point where I have a huge problem with Yahoo. Yahoo already possesses a few video properties including Yahoo Live, Video and some of their partnerships to broadcast video via the Yahoo name.

Adding video to Flickr seems to come into conflict with these ideas!

There was a letter sent out a while back regarding the numerous redundant properties that Yahoo has. When Yahoo terminated Photos, I thought it was a great thing because they could utilize the better product of Flickr and eliminate brand conflicts (even though I ended up just ditching both entirely and moving to shareapic). Now, we might be seeing another situation where there's no brand unification, no vision of how to leverage the Yahoo brand with Flickr and vice versa.

It seems, according to the post, that there might be an intent to differentiate it from YouTube. Well, they have to certainly do more than differentiate itself from YouTube, but Yahoo's own Live and Video as well as the other 100 sites or so that have some form of video related content!

If Flickr intends to move in this direction of adding video related content, my hope/advice to them is that they do not attempt to cross paths in the viral video space. YouTube dominates and there are numerous other sites which already has the traffic and content available. Video editing might be the way to go, but I would advise Yahoo to allow Flickr to be able to access content from their existing online video to create more of a themed cohesion between brands. Call it "Yahoo Media" to not confuse users and to unify the products together.]]> Sun, 16 Mar 2008 09:51:21 -0600 http://www.keithwatanabe.net/blogs/2008/3/16/421e724bf4afaa8f5999e0f6a273a492.html http://www.keithwatanabe.net/blogs/2008/5/2/42cd33cee1cbdac3dc71ab06cb17e0f1.html Fri, 02 May 2008 15:44:14 -0600 http://www.keithwatanabe.net/blogs/2008/5/2/42cd33cee1cbdac3dc71ab06cb17e0f1.html http://www.keithwatanabe.net/blogs/2008/7/3/ef5e419d2756d9e63d8b079e75dd7cb8.html
I urge everyone to stop viewing any of Viacom's products. That company has done more damage to the world with their crappy MTV compared with any other media industry. Heck, the makers of South Park had even stated in one of their episodes how MTV is solely responsible for damaging most of America (or in my opinion the entire world). In a way that is ironic considering that Comedy Central is the parent company for both networks. But that just goes to show how it's all inside jobs.

Well, the American justice system is just so damaged when it comes to copyright and intellectual property. Funny how a company like MTV or VH1 can hold something with the words "intellectual" and manage to get away with major lawsuits.

Maybe someone should sue the US government and WTO to force everyone to change the entire notion of "intellectual property" to just assets. If that were the case, I think people would have a better chance of arguing how most things cannot be protected since there's very little academic stimulation involved in all this.

Going back, I really hope that Google fights this case. I hope even further that someone investigates the judge and finds out how much he was bribed behind the scenes by Viacom. This is just plain wrong and it affects people not just in the US but around the world.

For myself, I don't have problem of Viacom shutting down entirely if one day people stop purchasing their goods, clicking on ads or draining them of resources after pirating their stuff. I want them to go out of business. I want all those people to lose their jobs and think even harder about being overly greedy. I shed zero sympathy for any of the staff members. As long as they support that fascist company, to me they are nothing more than Nazi soldiers obeying an order for the simple sake of money.]]> Thu, 03 Jul 2008 08:00:35 -0600 http://www.keithwatanabe.net/blogs/2008/7/3/ef5e419d2756d9e63d8b079e75dd7cb8.html http://www.keithwatanabe.net/blogs/2008/7/3/f184fe13e9a66b149ce015da08a47103.html
All musicians know that they are enslaved to Big Media. In their case, they have little to no alternatives. But for them it's like their next hit of crack (which I think the Big Media companies support anyway in a literal sense to keep most of these artists stupid and weak; I mean, I've heard stories in Japan how many puppet artists are drugged up to keep them under control and it's no secret about the so called sex-drugs-and rock n roll lifestyles of celebrities that demand these people in needing money which screws up their lives). Also, people working for companies who build their own tools end up losing their inventions once they sign contracts with non-compete clauses and company ownership clauses. Then you get the medical profession which is completely hampered by patent disputes, preventing more companies from coming out with vaccines. A while back Intel's former CEO had criticized medicine with this argument.

Copyright and intellectual property were supposedly used to allow people to take ownership of what they create back in the day when kings ruled the land. Individuals, not mega corporations. But what we're seeing in the global economy (especially American politics) is the return to feudalism, where we're simply enslaved again to the owners that we work for.

Right now, over at TechCrunch, I see a lot of spammers, people who fear their activities with YouTube, and those even supporting the notion of copyright and the judge's decision in NY over this. However, I find it ironic that because of so-called copyright infringement technology like YouTube that, for instance, Japanese game shows had become so popular, it's now going to be produced in America. So without YouTube, these Japanese game shows would be hidden gems in Japan, while Hollywood runs around producing another creative-less crappy reality show. And isn't even further ironic that it's Hollywood literally copying the format (more or less) from another source? Are the Japanese studios going to receive proper compensation or even recognition for this? Or remember that horrid movie Stealth? That was a blatant ripoff of Macross the Movie. I don't recall seeing any credits being given to the makers of Macross. Or lets go to movies like Lost in Translation or Babel. It's known the shots of Japan in those movies were taken in gorilla-style because obtaining a proper license to film in Japan is quite difficult. So those activities in themselves are considered illegal, yet they're being perpetrated by the same industry which is 1) breaching users' privacy unlawfully; 2) suing users for perceived violations of law.

The world really needs to re-examine the whole issue of copyright, patents and intellectual property. I'm not talking about the constitutionality of them. I'm talking about the real purpose of them in the first place. In reality, artists, engineers, scientists, etc. are not the ones being protected by the law. The firms are using these people as puppets to protect their own interest. But individuals are losing out at every turn as well as society.

Personally, I would like the world/court systems to at the very least:

• Demolish the usage of the word "intellectual." You can't call what Britney Spears, Paris Hilton, Justin Timberlake, or MTV put out "intellectual." Call it a cold hearted asset because that's the only thing the court is protecting. Something intellectual means something smart from someone talented and smart; not a tool, not a puppet. In this case, it doesn't insult a truly talented person's intelligence when their capabilities are not protected by a court system, but some figure head for these capitalist machines.
• Don't ever associate copyright protection, etc. with individuals. These days individuals aren't the ones being protected. Just the lawyers and companies. People cannot use this argument anymore because it just isn't true.
• Make it illegal for companies to use the defense of protecting their artists' property. Companies can only say that they are protecting their assets because individuals in the post-feudal world basically have no rights without being subordinated to a large company to pay them off for pennies.

For myself, I don't want to be driven into fear of my activities online. I fully support Google/YouTube on what they've done. From a cultural point of view, the presence of viral video/music sites like YouTube has allowed more cultures to interact and be appreciated, even at the expense of large companies like Viacom. This case is unfair for the legally uploaded videos and users who employ YouTube for their own benefit. Also, this situation is global since people all around the world participate in these activities.

I hope that the judge realizes that what he's done is perpetuate favoritism for one company whose sole purpose this entire time is to simply benefit their shareholders and executives. And I'm not talking about Google/YouTube. I doubt that this judge realizes anything except the money that Viacom is handing him in the back parking lot to make these decisions. But that's the US court system these days.]]> Thu, 03 Jul 2008 18:18:10 -0600 http://www.keithwatanabe.net/blogs/2008/7/3/f184fe13e9a66b149ce015da08a47103.html http://www.keithwatanabe.net/blogs/2008/7/3/0f2c4d265e6c6efdd07a1121e3f2bac6.html

• No longer go to any movies in theaters
• Stop watching TV permanently
• Never to purchase another album again
• Never to click on an ad related to media promotions
• Inform my friends, family and acquaintances to do similar actions whenever possible
• Support only independent artists, movies and labels.

Fortunately, I've been doing almost 100% of these actions. But I will urge people to do the same in order to put dents in Big Media's profits whenever possible.]]> Thu, 03 Jul 2008 20:09:11 -0600 http://www.keithwatanabe.net/blogs/2008/7/3/0f2c4d265e6c6efdd07a1121e3f2bac6.html http://www.keithwatanabe.net/blogs/2008/7/3/08e61e65af13f8bda35db0720e23c734.html
First, I think that Google/YouTube should create a new sector for employment within their company. For artists, they ought to hire them full time for the rate of a good junior to senior level engineer. Say between $40k - $120k/year. Many artists complain that the biggest problem in file sharing is how artists get swindled by the recording industries and "need to put food on the table for their kids." Well, in the case of people like Scott Wieland, or Lars Ulrich, their kids must be pretty obese by now with all the millions their parents make. And in many of these artists' cases, most of the money goes to luxury goods and bad drug habits. So if someone pay them a reasonable rate like a full time employee, then they'll benefit without becoming mentally fucked up like Britney Spears, Paris Hilton or Tom Cruise (I blame the money not Scientology for this one). I mean, if really all these people want is food, shelter, water and transportation, that salary range is quite good in fact! Besides, do we want another MTV creating yet more generations of skanks, drug induced losers and poor role models for our kids?

The thing with the recording companies traditionally been the whole issue of mass producing and marketing their artists. These days anyone can honestly mass produce their own stuff. Just go to iTunes, or some other online distributor. So the real big issue is marketing. The videos, branding, interviews, etc. We already cut cost down tremendously in this schema by eliminating the need to physically produce goods (which has been said to be one of the largest cost).

Well, videos are great but I think they mostly send the wrong message regardless. When you see hip hop videos, they tell you to be a slut, stupid or dress in a certain way (hence being a conformists). Rock videos glorify sex, drugs and rock n roll. Pop music simply induces stupidity and besides those so-called artists are just puppets propped up in front of a mic so that some puppetmaster in the background can vicariously use them for their own incapabilities.

So that leaves branding and promotion. Well, branding is bullshit most of the time because marketing is telling us to buy something that is really worse than it is. Or they're telling us that without something, we suck. So I think branding can be eliminated from the equation.

That leaves promotion to improve distribution sales for the artists as well as the management aspects for venues. Unfortunately, venues are typically run by a different mafia (i.e. Ticketmaster or the Yak in .jp). So we have to avoid that. But most management are just leeches in all of this anyway. And if an artists does not want to perform, they either are 1) closet artists that really should be sharing their music with friends; or 2) fakes because they don't care about their fans.

As a result, the real thing in the end is the promotion aspect that would be in the hands of Google/YouTube.

So here's where everything comes together for Google/YouTube. The problem with music is that it's all trend based. As I mentioned, labels don't really support their artists. It's like a guy who is 60 years old, been a veteran at software engineering but only knows COBOL. Now and then, these veterans have their comebacks (Y2K bug, Rolling Stones), but most companies and labels prefer keeping them in their pastures or moving them to a different role (management, producers, etc.).

The truth is that the labels should never stop supporting their artists. So if we end the whole notion of the "in-artists" and create the "intern," "junior," "mid-career," "senior," and "lead" type of artists just as we have created for engineers and similar positions, then the game changes entirely. And if we promote these artists in a similar way, say veterans with their larger catalogs can be in the forefront to represent certain categories of music or headlining shows while younger people are proving themselves in learning the business, we might create a new, less vicious model of handling the music business.

But alas! I still have yet to reveal the model of making money for Google/YouTube. I mentioned before about how music (and other digital goods) is priced at an inequitable level because of the way supply and demand works in the electronic/online world. So if Google sets up a "credit" account where users can employ different methods for compensating artists, then that's where Google can earn their money.

Here's some possibilities:

• Charge as you go. .02 cents/song for a full download. Video requires .10 cents/viewing or .20 cents/download.
• Users must click on ads.
• Users get credits for spreading the music/video to other friends
• Users receive viewing credits for actions performed (creating Google Application spreadsheets, signing up with orkut, sending out an email from GMail)
• Users receive credits for performing some exchange service for the artists (e.g. building a fan page, signing up with a fan site, etc.)

The thing is that none of this has to be directly monetary. We're seeing online games do creative campaigning for giving users credits who don't have money. Eventually, these actions convert into something between businesses (partnerships, revenue sharing, traffic sharing, etc.)

I think one problem that needs to be resolved is that artists have to become multi-millionaires with these excessive lifestyles. I don't think it's fair that a guy like Tom Cruise can earn $25 mil + 20% gross at the box office for doing so little. Or watching some jerk like Vince Neil tell everyone that living like a rebel is great then become a fat slob with numerous personal problems with drugs, alcohol, etc. Sure there's an artistic glory to it, but is this for everyone? Why is it that some fake artists with no talent like Jennifer Lopez make tons of cash for shaking her phat ass, but hard working artists like Fernando Miyata get little recognition (until recently)?

I think giving these artists fair compensation with stable jobs (not treating like session players) is a great thing. I don't like the idea of a middle man still, but the recording industry is just too ruthless and handles their people worse than cannibalism. At least this model seems fair at the surface, except for the ruling elite. But those people already made their money and maybe it's time to send a message to them as well.

]]> Thu, 03 Jul 2008 21:27:35 -0600 http://www.keithwatanabe.net/blogs/2008/7/3/08e61e65af13f8bda35db0720e23c734.html http://www.keithwatanabe.net/blogs/2008/8/5/f05b7c3bfdeea3713a6a904574a3075e.html
In short, even a dominant company like Google with their internet properties can still have short comings, allowing for more competitors to enter into these territories by virtue of opportunity.

But that's the core point in all this. The constant openings of opportunity permit the internet to continue having an incredible amount of competition. Despite the fact that the US and most of the world are experiencing a downturn economy, the guarantee of opportunities and future goldmines will push tech (most notably) as the industry to stick with.]]> Tue, 05 Aug 2008 20:11:10 -0600 http://www.keithwatanabe.net/blogs/2008/8/5/f05b7c3bfdeea3713a6a904574a3075e.html