Monday, October 23, 2006

Profiles in Mentorship, Part 1


G. Kwame Scruggs and Michael Meade
October 2, 2006
Alchemy Inc., Akron, Ohio
A Youand Documentary (07:56)

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"The final frontier may be human relationships, one person to another." -- Buzz Aldrin, Astronaut

Tuesday, October 10, 2006

The Hollywood Reporter: Google buys YouTube

Oct. 10, 2006

YouTube founders discuss meaning of big deal

By Andrew Wallenstein

From offices above a pizza parlor in San Mateo, Calif., YouTube founders Chad Hurley and Steve Chen birthed a video-sharing Web site that has made a huge mark in the Internet and entertainment world after barely a year in operation. On the day Google announced its $1.65 billion acquisition of YouTube, Hurley and Chen spoke with The Hollywood Reporter digital media editor Andrew Wallenstein about what the deal means for the exploding world of Internet video.

The Hollywood Reporter: How long did this take to come together?

Chad Hurley: Throughout the course of developing this company, there's been a lot of interest. Really, in the last week or so, we saw the possibilities of combining forces with Google. What really helped accelerate discussions was the opportunity to operate independently. It will allow me and Steve to sharpen our focus for our community and for our partners (and) to have the resources and experience of Google with us.

THR: What is the reporting structure between YouTube and Google?

Hurley: Over the coming weeks and months, integration teams will sort out the exact details of how it's going to work. But Steve and I are going to continue to do our thing and operate the company.

Steve Chen: We're really excited. Listening to the folks from Google and their vision of how we'll interoperate with Google ... they don't want to stop our momentum. They want us to continue to excel in the things we're doing.

THR: What should content companies take away from this deal and the content deals you announced?

Hurley: We're committed to building a new market for content owners, with Sony BMG and Universal Music leveraging the same technologies as Warner Music Group. There are new ways to leverage user-generated content that never existed before. CBS will be the first network to start testing some of these tools that we're releasing by the end of the year. What's also exciting with CBS is that they're developing three specific feeds on a daily basis -- entertainment, news and sports. People have the ability to go to a CBS channel on a site, a daily feed. I think it's something your users are going to benefit from.

THR: Are there more content deals to come?

Hurley: This is just the beginning. We're going to have more resources to accelerate these discussions. We are a relatively small company now, and we have the opportunity to really move forward with a lot of these partnerships. We'll move quicker on these deals and focus on the tools we're building. Google will have more opportunity to monetize their content in an effective way.

THR: Companies that didn't acquire you, will that affect future relations with them?

Hurley: I don't know about those companies specifically. What allowed us to (work with) Google was (that) we shared a similar vision ... and there was the opportunity to remain independent.

THR: Was maintaining independence of primary importance to you?

Hurley: Steve and I have really enjoyed the opportunity to define this new market and build a product for our partners. Now with our relationship with Google, we'll continue to do that for years to come.


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"The final frontier may be human relationships, one person to another." -- Buzz Aldrin, Astronaut

Saturday, October 07, 2006

Short Films, Symbolic, Subversive and Silent

Adam L. Weintraub
Published: October 7, 2006

Scratched, battered, mottled and sometimes blurred, most of the Saul Levine films showing in the Views From the Avant-Garde series, as part of the New York Film Festival, look as if the artist had dragged them across cement before sharing them with the world. The films have been gathered together in the program “Saul Levine: Notes From the Underground,” a title that plays on twinned ideas: the underlying sense of protest and subversion that animates the work, as well as its historic, symbolic and sometimes even physical place in the larger culture. These are films that proudly sing the subterranean blues. (Read more.)


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"The final frontier may be human relationships, one person to another." -- Buzz Aldrin, Astronaut