YouTube and Profit Models

There is speculation that YouTube may post a profit for the first time this year. I think I know how they are doing it, without having to resort to any sort of analytics or research: they do it by showing a 30 second commercial in front of a 10 second video. Now, I don’t mind the idea of YouTube showing ads. What irks me is the length of the ad is frequently longer then the video I’m about to watch. Just show ads that are shorter then the video being requested – and I’d guess since most videos are longer than 30 seconds, this wouldn’t be a problem.

Apple TV

I have to disagree with John Sircusa on the new AppleTV – I think it is a device that fits my needs perfectly right now, apart from one small flaw. It probably fits a lot of other people’s media needs as well. Right now, I have a laptop hooked up to our television. We use a web browser to get to Netflix, we use iTunes to listen to music and podcasts, and we use VLC or XBMC (depending on our mood) to watch movies and TV shows we’ve ripped from our DVD collection, and finally we use DVD player to watch the Netflix discs that come in the mail.

The AppleTV solves all those use cases, other than the DVDs that come in the mail, and puts a simple remote in our hands. I’m honestly not sure what we’ll do with the physical disks once I get an AppleTV (which, at some point, I will), but everything else gets easy. And it’s not a laptop or a Mac Mini or a linux box to patch, update or mess with. It’s really a device. And it’s small, and it’s quiet. So it gets the wife’s nod of approval.

I think Apple could have a real winner on their hands.

Locking Out AdobePDFViewer.plugin

Today, Adobe Acrobat Reader asked again to install the security update. I let it, thinking it would fail in the same place. No! This time, no problems at all. Of course, it installed the AdobePDFViewer for all my browsers. Time to roll up my sleves and put a stop to this, once and for all:

sudo rm -rf /Library/Internet\ Plug-Ins/AdobePDFViewer.plugin
sudo touch /Library/Internet\ Plug-Ins/AdobePDFViewer.plugin
sudo chflags schg /Library/Internet\ Plug-Ins/AdobePDFViewer.plugin

As fair warning: that last line means it’s VERY hard to ever do anything to the file again. Even root can’t directly remove the file. However, this means Adobe’s shitty installer can’t remove it either.

Adobe Reader Updater

It’s hard to understand how little I like Adobe Reader. Once again I needed to use it today to fill out a form that refused to display in anything else – and after downloading and installing it, it told me that it wanted to update based on “customer issues and security vulnerabilities”. The copy I just downloaded. Not 10 minutes ago. Why can’t they post the most current version?

So, the install starts, but stalls when it gets here:

It throws up a window in the background – that I can’t make active – telling me that the Adobe PDF Viewer Plugin isn’t installed in Safari:

First off, I don’t want Reader to supplant the PDF viewer in OSX – especially in Safari. Apple’s done a nice job implementing their PDF viewer, and I don’t want to override it. Second – I can’t install the security update. I can’t click Cancel or Continue on the Repair Setup window, and I can’t click Cancel on the Adobe Reader Updater window. Adobe – this is why Mac users hate you.

More Thoughts On The News Media

It’s foolish to think that times aren’t changing. Why can’t the traditional media outlets accept that? More to the point, why are the newspapers hanging onto their outdated model? It is really that they are too scared to move? Too short sighted? Perhaps not.

It’s more likely that they have missed the memo: the delivery of news is changing. The content isn’t. To look at it another way, the cable news networks aren’t complaining about how the Internet is killing their business model. They are “broadcasting” their content online all the time, often linked to AP wire stories or simply transcripts of their video feeds. They show their local ads, as they would on local television, to the internet at large. (I’m sure their advertisers hate that. All those extra eyeballs…)

So what’s wrong with the newspaper? Why can’t they adapt? Broadcasting text across the Internet is what the World Wide Web was originally built for. There aren’t the costs of publication and distribution in physical forms. So why is this so hard for them? That they can’t make money when they are showing a whole bunch of ads on every page – even the navigation pages that are devoid of article content? That they can’t make money when doing that – and further breaking up articles to run on multiple pages to force even more ad views?

They seem to have a rather strong sense of contempt for their readers. They never recovered from that little incident in 1990 when CNN lucked into a live video feed of the first Persian Gulf war. They never bothered to change anything about their business model, and 10 years later, when the Internet really took off, they ignored it. Now, 20 years after they lost the fight, they are complaining that people are linking to their content.

Get real. Savvy consumers of the news now live in RSS readers where blogs (like this one) get equal time with twitter bots and Facebook status updates. Most savvy consumers now digest hundreds of news articles every day. Adapt or die.