AFI BLOG: Media and Technology

Fortune
Why the EDS deal may prove to be a smart move - and how it fits into HP’s larger plans.
We’re sitting under a canopy of trees on the patio outside Mark Hurd’s office, and the man looks ready to hit someone. Earlier in the week, when word leaked out that Hewlett-Packard planned to buy EDS [...]

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Fortune
Those annoying set-top cable boxes may soon be a thing of the past. But, like it or not, they’ll be replaced by a different kind of device.
The announcement this week that Sony plans to work with other television makers to eliminate the need for set-top cable boxes could not have gained more affection at [...]

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San Francisco Chronicle
Libraries are overflowing with the ever-expanding trove of human knowledge, which has evolved beyond books and broadcasts into new digital formats that mutate all too frequently.
The challenges of organizing, preserving and serving up the human experience brought more than 150 academic and governmental librarians from around the world to San Francisco this [...]

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Spotlight on Digital Media
MacArthur’s President announces new grants in Digital Media and Learning.
We are pleased to announce three new grants in this second year of our program in Digital Media and Learning. The grants continue to support robust research on how young people are participating in digital media, consider the future of the public [...]

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Reuters
Second Life has been touted as a place to market real-world brands, as a teleconferencing tool, and as the future of social networking. But increasingly, Hollywood has been eying the virtual world’s potential as an inexpensive film studio.
Gossip Girl, the CW television network’s popular show about teenagers on New York’s Upper East Side, is filming [...]

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Red Herring
Amazon.com will launch a pay-per-view streaming movie service within weeks, founder and Chief Executive Jeff Bezos said Wednesday.
Speaking at the D: All Things Digital conference in Carlsbad, California, Mr. Bezos was quoted by Barron’s as saying that he is “very serious” about the music and video download business.
Mr. Bezos offered no details on the [...]

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Silicon Alley Insider
The old wisdom: YouTube (GOOG) dominates Web video but can’t make any money from it. Forbes’ wisdom: YouTube still doesn’t make much money, but a bit more than people think.
The mag says YouTube will make $200 million in revenue in 2008 and $350 million in 2009. These are unsourced numbers, but also not [...]

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The Wall Street Journal
Revised Tax Form Will Make Nonprofits Reveal More About How They Spend
Americans searching for the best places to make charitable donations are about to get more help from the federal government.
The Internal Revenue Service, the tax agency that serves as the main regulator of nonprofits, is ramping up efforts to increase charities’ [...]

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NewTeeVee
Josh Catone over at ReadWriteWeb has an interesting suggestion for Warner Bros. to get folks interested in the upcoming superhero feature, Watchmen: Take a page from Trent Reznor’s book. The Nine Inch Nails front man has been experimenting with innovative distribution and marketing schemes ever since his band said farewell to Universal Music, giving away [...]

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TechCrunch
IndieFlix, a marketplace for independent films, has launched MyFestival, a new streaming video site that will let film festivals crowdsource the movie selection process. MyFestival is making its debut in conjunction with the Seattle International Film Festival (SIFF), which is taking place from May 22 to June 15.
For MyFestival’s pilot trial at SIFF, users will [...]

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