New

Good Luck!

We have been trying for over an hour starting at 6:20am.  I am sure Apple knew there was going to be high demand for pre-orders, however, they just cannot seem to keep their site functioning.  I made it to the final order screen, only to be denied when I hit the order button, and returned to the “We will be back shortly” screen.  FRUSTRATING on so many different levels

Update : 8:32

Site still not functioning properly

Update : 9:46

PATHETIC – Apple’s Website is incapable of taking any orders, and AT&T’s site is unavailable altogether

Update : 1:02pm

Forget it….  does not appear that Apple can get their site together enough to take any orders.  Nearly 6 hours and nothing but error messages, and cannot complete your request errors…

I wonder if Apple will change the ship dates to later than June 24th like they did with the ipad

Update 5:19 – No luck… Reports out that ATT has compromised user data yet again.

FCC Chairman

FCC chairman Julius Genachowski announced today an FCC backed effort to increase the speed of Internet access in the US to 100Mbps and higher.  The initiative was dubbed “100 Squared” and would provide 100Mbps to 100 million homes in the use by 2020.

Wall Street Journal

There is a lot of discussion and examples about how every single day, someone, somewhere is discussing something important to you and your business; your brand, your executives, your products, your competitors, your industry. Are they hyping-up your company, building buzz for your products? Or, are they criticizing you, complaining to others about your products or services.  A great brand can take years and millions of dollars to build, and it should be the asset you hold most indispensable to your success.

So why after all that investment, do you fail to monitor your business activities online?

I know the information overload is overwhelming for companies and staff to keep up with, however,  if you are going to invest in it, also plan for the unexpected things people do.

Fox News has many online initiatives ongoing, one of which allows users to post comments online, and have them displayed in the lower third of the current program.

This is a great example of poor community management and allowing something inexplicable to be shown to millions of viewers online.

I am interested in how this will affect FOX.  Will the groundswell produce outrage at their irresponsibility to put procedures in place to avoid these types of mistakes?  Or is this something that will pass.  Surely, someone has to be accountable for any social / new media initiatives, good AND bad.

We are currently at the New Tee Vee Live conference in San Francisco. Watch live!

NextGen will be one of the sponsors at the next Capital Cabal DC Networking Event on November 11th at 5:30pm at Gua Rapo’s Arlington VA.

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Since 2005 The Capital Cabal has produced a monthly networking event where D.C. area “new media” professionals gather to meet, share war stories, swap schemes, hire talented professionals, schmooze, invest, find investments, kick-off a job search or just relax with other digerati. We average over 100 Internet and business savvy attendees from government agencies, political organizations, web-based businesses, advertising agencies, PR firms, not-for-profit organizations, associations and the private sector.

We look forward to meeting you and discussing your new and social media needs!

Flickr, a leading photo sharing and social media site, has announced they now have had 3 billion photos uploaded to its service.  It has shown a 50% growth rate from nearly a year ago announcing its 2 billionth photo uploaded.

Although impressive, Flickr is still lagging behind the #1 photo sharing site: Facebook.  Facebook announced last month its 10 billionth member photo.

Flickr, acquired by Yahoo in 2005 for 35 million, has proven itself one of the finest acquisitions made in the Web 2.0 era.  Youtube was acquired by google for 1.6 billion and Facebook received a 15 billion valuation from Microsoft when it purchased a $240 million dollar stake in the company.

With all the chatter over the past weeks about the decline and fall of the economy, and how it will affect emerging web20/Social Media technologies, I did a quick check on Alexa to see how the top ten social media sites are faring.  I was a little surprised that some of the “hot” tools like twitter, digg, delicious etc. were not there, but, here they are non the less.  I did try to stick to social/new media sites and did leave out the big boys (google, yahoo, live, etc) because their global top 5 rankings remains unchallenged.  I wil try to put together a larger list of social media sites and their rankings shortly.

 

#1. Youtube – The holder of the #3 spot globally and #4 ranking in the US.  Youtube has seen a 6% drop in reach over the past 3 months while seeing their page views increase slightly by 2%.  It is estimated that approximately 489,059 sites link to youtube.co

 

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#2. Facebook – Facebook currently holds the #5 spot globally as well as in the US.  Face book clearly is still gaining traction and has a 17% in growth in reach over the last three months while seeing slowdown in pageviews(down 7%) Facebook has about 155,220 sites that link to it.

 

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#3 MySpace – Myspace is ranked #7 globally and #3 within the US.  Myspace has seen an 11% decline in reach over the past 3 months as well as a decline in pageviews of 9%.  Myspace currently has about 335,770 sites linking to it.

 

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#4. Wikipedia.org – Wikipedia is currently ranked #8 globally as well as #8 in the US.  Wikipedia has seen a 12% decline over the past 3 months as well as a decline in pageviews at about 7%.  Wikipedia has 364,081 sites linking to it.

 

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#5. Blogger.com – blooger is a google property and has a global ranking of #9 and a US ranking of #12.  They have seen a 10% decrease in reach over the past 3 months with an increase in pageviews of 3%

 

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#6. Hi5.com – Hi5 is based out of San Francisco and has a global ranking of #16 and a US ranking of #70.  The interesting thing to note here is although they are a US based company their top ranking comes from  Indonesia at #2.  Hi5 has seen a 4% drop in global reach and a 8% drop in pageviews.

 

 

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#7. Wordpress.com – Wordpress has a global ranking of #28 and a US ranking of #23.  Wordpress has seen an increase in reach of 1% and an increase in pageviews of 3%.  There are 135,535 sites that link to wordpress.com.

 

 

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#8. Flickr.com – Canadian based flickr.com ranks #31 globally and #19 in the US.  Reach has remained unchanged over the past 3 months, while pageviews decreased 5%.  Flickr has seen a ranking increase of +5 over the past 3 months. Flickr has 236,171 sites that link to it.

 

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#9. Craigslist.org - craigslist has a global ranking of #38 and a US ranking of #11.  92% of their traffic is from the US.  Craigslist has seen a 3% drop in reach and an increase of 2% in pageviews and increase of +2 in rankings.  There are 9,587 links to craigslist.

 

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#10. Friendster.com – Friendster has a global rank of #39 and a US rank of #151.  Here is another site that is based in the US but has the largest audience from Indonesia(38%) vs a US audience of 7.1%  Friendster has seen a decrease in reach of 9%, a decrease in page rank -1, and an increase in pageviews of 5%.

One of the most frequent questions I get asked from clients, as well as friends and family is which technology do you use at home for video?  Of course, as with most people I have cable TV with DVR (actually I use Direct TV) and a standard DVD player.  I also have Blu-Ray DVD and a couple of HDTV’s. But the appliance I really enjoy and use the most is Apple’s most highly underrated product, the Apple TV.

As an early adopter of new technologies, I purchased the Apple TV the first day it went on sale.  The Apple TV(version 1.0) was highly anticipated and had extremely high expectations from analysts and media professionals.  The reviews were less than impressive.  Since then, Apple has released a new version(2.0) and has quietly been gaining some momentum.

With the new release, Apple has – which may be – the most under appreciated product of the past 10 years. Intended for the “great room” or living room, and connected to an HDTV, the apple TV delivers content from an Itunes account wirelessly.  It can connect to your computers itunes account or operate largely on its own. With a broadband connection, you can rent movies, buy movies, tv shows and music, view youtube videos, access your photos on your computer as well as your mobile me and flickr accounts,and view itunes podcasts.

Here are my Top 5 Reasons (in no particular order!)

1. Rent Movies – Renting movies on the Apple TV is instant gratification at its finest!  No pre ordering movies from your que on netflix or blockbuster, no running to the store to find out the title you are looking for is sold out, and no hassles having to return the movie.  Simply point and click and the movie is ready for viewing.  There is in my opinion, a downside, and that is once you have rented a movie and pressed the play button, you have 24 hours to view it.  I think I am more psychologically opposed to this than anything else.  Remember the “Video Store” days with VHS?  It was always a return by COB the next day… It then turned into 3 day and 5 day rentals.  I think apple would be wise to take this approach in the future.
2. Missed TV shows – Ok, I know I have a “season pass” on my dvr, but then again there are times that I forget to program a new season, or missed a new show that everyone is raving about.  Sure, I could maybe watch them on Hulu.com or any other video site, but then again, the convenience of watching it in the den on my TV makes all the difference in the world.  
3. I have a Digital Library! – After years of VHS tapes and DVD’s I am literally running out of space for my video content.  I have boxes of VHS tapes that we never watch in the basement.  Now, I can store all my purchased TV shows and Movies and have them organized and backed up through itunes.  Our family movies are now backed up as well without having to burn countless DVD’s!!
4. Photos – You can now view your photos from your computer, Flickr, or .mac galleries and it couldn’t be simpler.  Simply use the apple remote to set up your accounts and you can view your public photos and movies.  Within the photo settings area you can choose from a number of slideshow options, accompanying music, repeat and shuffle.  You can even use the contents of your .mac gallery, or flickr album as the Apple TV’s screensaver.  This is great when you have guests over… You can set your galleries up to specific music to play while guests chat.
5. Podcasts and Youtube –  Although I love the industry and can not get enough of the amazing content people are creating online, I can only take so much while sitting in front of the computer.  The Apple TV gives me an option of viewing the latest podcasts and youtube content while relaxing in the den.

Apple has a number of announcements today, including the new 13 and 15 inch macbook.  The new Macbooks are available today.

Included are :

Precision aluminum unibody enclosure.
From one solid piece of aluminum comes a MacBook that’s thin and light, beautifully streamlined, and durable.

Ultrathin 13.3-inch LED-backlit display.
Seamless glass and instant full screen brightness make everything you see flat-out spectacular. Including the display itself.

Up to 5x faster NVIDIA graphics performance.
Advanced NVIDIA integrated graphics provide more responsive gameplay and more realistic 3D environments.

All-new, smooth glass Multi-Touch trackpad.
It’s redesigned with even more room for even more gestures. Now the entire glass trackpad is also the button, so it’s clickable everywhere.

Display
13.3-inch (diagonal) LED-backlit glossy widescreen display with support for millions of colors
Supported resolutions: 1280 by 800 (native), 1152 by 720, 1024 by 640, and 800 by 500 pixels at 16:10 aspect ratio; 1024 by 768, 800 by 600, and 640 by 480 pixels at 4:3 aspect ratio; 720 by 480 pixels at 3:2 aspect ratio

Graphics and video support
NVIDIA GeForce 9400M graphics processor with 256MB of DDR3 SDRAM shared with main memory3
Extended desktop and video mirroring: Simultaneously supports full native resolution on the built-in display and up to 2560 by 1600 pixels on an external display, both at millions of colors
Built-in iSight camera

Mini DisplayPort

Input
Multi-Touch trackpad for precise cursor control; supports two-finger scrolling, pinch, rotate, three-finger swipe, four-finger swipe, tap, double-tap, and drag capabilities
2.0GHz MacBook

Built-in full-size keyboard with 78 (U.S.) or 79 (ISO) keys, including 12 function keys and 4 arrow keys (inverted “T” arrangement)
2.4GHz MacBook

Built-in full-size illuminated keyboard with 78 (U.S.) or 79 (ISO) keys, including 12 function keys and 4 arrow keys (inverted “T” arrangement)

processor and memory

2.0GHz or 2.4GHz Intel Core 2 Duo processor with 3MB on-chip shared L2 cache running 1:1 with processor speed
1066MHz frontside bus
2GB (two 1GB SO-DIMMs) of 1066MHz DDR3 SDRAM; two SO-DIMM slots support up to 4GB

Storage

2.0GHz MacBook
160GB 5400-rpm Serial ATA hard disk drive4
Optional 250GB or 320GB 5400-rpm hard drive or 128GB solid-state drive4

2.4GHz MacBook
250GB 5400-rpm Serial ATA hard disk drive4
Optional 320GB 5400-rpm hard drive or 128GB solid-state drive4
Optical drive

8x slot-loading SuperDrive (DVD±R DL/DVD±RW/CD-RW)

Maximum write: 8x DVD-R, DVD+R; 4x DVD-R DL (double layer), DVD+R DL (double layer), DVD-RW, DVD+RW; 24x CD-R; 10x CD-RW

Maximum read: 8x DVD-R, DVD+R, DVD-ROM; 6x DVD-ROM (double layer DVD-9), DVD-R DL (double layer), DVD+R DL (double layer), DVD-RW, and DVD+RW; 24x CD

Battery – 5hrs

Over 54,000 users voted for 11 of the 16 winners of the Garmin T3 Gadget awards unveiled October 9th in London. That many voters is a pretty good indicator of this years gadgets vs. being picked by a pool of editorial writers. Apple had an impressive showing with 4 of the 16 awards this year.

Gadget of the Year

Apple iPod Touch 32GB

Best Music Gadget

Apple iPod Touch 32 GB

Best Imaging Gadget

Nikon D60

Drop Dead Gorgeous Award

Audi R8

Best New Media Innovation

BBC iPlayer

Best Gaming Gadget

Wii Fit

Toy of the Year

Guitar Hero 3

Commuter Gadget of the Year

Apple iPhone

The Gadget Candy Award

Apple Macbook Air

Retailer of the Year

Dixons.co.uk

Gadget You Can’t Live Without

TomTom Go 930

Innovation of the Year

Sony XEL-1 OLED TV

Green Gadget of the Year

Honda Civic Hybrid

Home Gadget of the Year

Sky HD