by Ron Miller

When Old Media Meets New Media...

Ellen DeGeneres announced this week, she was starting a record label and her first signee would a 12 year old named Greyson Chance, whose claim to fame is he made this video of himself playing Lady Gaga's Paparazzi on the piano. Kid's got a pretty good voice, but so do a lot of kids, right?

Now this is where the old media-new media 1-2 punch comes into play. Before he appeared on Ellen, according to published reports, 10,000 people had viewed his video. Not bad for a 12 year old, you might say and you would be right, but after he appeared there, the number shot up to over 30 million views. 

That's astounding traction, enough so that Ellen was willing to take that new media star, who got a push on old media and sign him to an old fashioned recording contract.  

Sometimes people get lucky and things go viral. Nobody knows the magic formula or it wouldn't be the internet equivalent of catching lightning in a bottle, but one thing is certain. If you get the power of old media--in this case a popular TV talk show host--and you mix it with new media on YouTube, and it all goes right, you could really be an overnight sensation.  

Record companies aren't big money opportunities they were in the 70s and 80s, but when you set one up with Ellen's star power, the reach of her TV show (and now her American Idol gig), you suddenly have a very powerful media cocktail.

Related articles by Zemanta

• DeGeneres starts record label (news.bbc.co.uk)
• Ellen DeGeneres Signs Internet Sensation Greyson Chance To New Label (mtv.com)

Competitors Dismiss Apple At Their Own Peril

Image by Getty Images via @daylife

Those who think Google has surpassed Apple technologically fail to understand it's more than an open versus proprietary argument for most consumers. People are dismissing Apple's considerable market power a little too easily.

Read my full commentary on DaniWeb.

Google Bloodies Apple on the Tech Playground

Image by ericskiff via Flickr

Google went after Apple with both guns this week at Google I/O ending any illusion the two companies remained on friendly terms. Google taunted Apple with its open source offerings, and wasted no opportunity to make fun of Apple's proprietary platform. It occurred to me that the two companies had ventured into a playground fight and this week Google threw a punch and bloodied Apple.

Read my full commentary on DaniWeb.

Who Gives a Crap About the Hotmail Refresh?

Image by Oran Viriyincy via Flickr

Microsoft is releasing a new version of Hotmail this week and the technology press is gushing as though it actually matters. By next week, it will all be forgotten and people still will be ignoring Hotmail just as before.

Read my full commentary on DaniWeb.

Poll: What email service do you use?

My colleague, Mitch Wagner, wrote an article today citing reputable statistics that Yahoo! and Hotmail were far more popular than Gmail. I had an exchange with Mitch in which I told him I knew nobody with an active Hotmail account and only one person with a Yahoo one. His experience was similar.

So I decided to ask. Please answer the poll below and I'll report back next week.

New iPhone technology lets you pay Visa bill from App

Visa has come out with a hardware/software combination to provide credit card payment functionality on your iPhone. This looks a little kludgy to me as currently implemented. Also seems a bit too easy to hack or steal, but this is clearly the future of payments. You can see its current implementation in this YouTube video.

Are we witnessing the end of ECM as we've known it?

Image by centralasian via Flickr

With the rise of SharePoint, open source and cloud alternatives, is the age of the 1990s monolithic enterprise content management system coming to a close?

It just might be.

Read my full commentary on FierceContentManagement

In honor of YouTube's 5th Birthday: A History of YouTube

It is mind boggling to me that YouTube is only five years old. When I saw people on Twitter this morning wishing YouTube a happy 5th birthday, I thought maybe they had gotten it wrong, but in fact YouTube did start a mere five years ago today. I guess what makes it so difficult to believe is how entrenched YouTube is in the internet experience. It's hard to imagine that such an important site has only existed for 5 years. It just goes to show how quickly things change in the internet age, a lesson Facebook might be wise to keep in mind.

In honor of YouTube's birthday, I'm embedding a YouTube video called The History of YouTube. Happy Birthday, YouTube, what a simple yet amazing idea.

Office 2010 Online and Google Docs Really are Different

Image by Emilie Ogez via Flickr

Office 2010 Online and Google Docs really are different. The two companies are sniping at each other about their cloud offerings, but they serve different audiences.

Read my full commentary on DaniWeb.

The Automaticity of Digital Living

Image by Chrissy Downunder via Flickr

The automaticity of digital living...This is really a word that psychologists use for automatic behaviors. It occurred to me that we are living our digital lives in public and we give very little thought to it, yet just five years ago, this wasn't even thinkable to most of us.

Read my commentary on DaniWeb.