Posts Tagged ‘Television’

 

Three New Social Sites Worth Your Time and (maybe) Money

Monday, October 15th, 2012

Within the bevy of startups, here are a few gems we’ve seen that caught our eye recently.

YourSports

YourSports takes the premise that since sports are an inheritanly social activity, having a social network specificially dedicated to your sports is long overdue.

In short: think of YourSports as a Facebook account for the sporty-minded.

From the YourSports main page  “Throughout our lives, we play sports. We coach on teams. We attend games. We passionately root for AND against teams. YourSports lets you represent that online, connecting you to the sports news, people, and teams that matter most: your own.”

To learn more about YourSports, check out this article on Tech Crunch.

Zindigo

If you…

1. Like to shop.

2. Get complimented for your runway-worthy shopping savvy.

3. Need some extra cash.

Then you might be the perfect candidate for Zindigo. Zindigo promises to be “the world’s largest boutique” bringing the power of social media users to the the fashion world.

For a spin on how Zindigo works, we turn to  who wrote this Mashable post:

“Consumers open their own shops as business pages on Facebook. They can stock their shops with wares from more than 80 apparel and accessories designers, including Kara Ross, Erickson Beamon and Isabella Fiore, and they will receive a 40% commission on every sale.”

 For the fashion-conscious with a large social media following, this could provide a nice residual income stream.

FancyHands

If you need an extra hand to make a reservation, compare prices for a TV, or get tickets for an event, then you might enjoy FancyHands 

For a small monthly fee, you’re allotted a certain number of requests from the FancyHands staff.

What can you ask for? Here’s some current requests from the FancyHands site…

+Amazon has this Fujitsu Scan Snap for $418, can you find it for cheaper anywhere? Online or in New York.

+Call TD Bank and ask how many checks I can use for free on a standard personal account (I don’t want any more fees!

+Schedule a haircut with Julia at Lovemore and Do on Sunday, anytime between 6 and 10pm.

+Can you find out where are my friend registered for wedding gifts? Her name is [redacted] and she’ll be married in Chicago on the 4th of July.

Fancy.

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Cable, Netflix, Hulu and Now YouTube

Saturday, August 11th, 2012

We knew the day would come.

The day when cable and satellite TV were not our only choices.

Netflix started it’s digital distribution of video content in 1999, growing steadily for many years. Recently consumers grew cold with price hikes and poor selection. I’m still digging it… for the most part.

While Hulu and Hulu Plus compete fiercely with Netflix, the amazingly priced Amazon Prime account (shakes out to less than $7/month plus a lot of free as a bonus).

And over the past year, YouTube’s presence has steadily gained traction as a serious contender to play (and often produce) high-quality video content.

Until recently, YouTube had only a handful of webisode offerings, but just this past week Forbes reported a new series by Warner Brothers titled “H+ The Digital Series” run exclusively on the YouTube platform.

By Mark Nye

So why on YouTube and why now?

From Forbes:

What’s always been missing is a genre of movie that is good enough, well enough produced, smart enough and of the times to make Web TV more than a distraction, to create an artistic base so that it can grow.

Creator John Cabrera tries to put it in context. When I asked him had Web TV as an original content format begun to take off, he responded:

“We haven’t gotten there yet but we’re closer than we’ve ever been. Where we are now has little to do with the content. It’s the hardware that’s holding it back. If you had YouTube or Hulu on the remote control, letting you find the content from your couch then you’d see it really take off. As this happens we will see the massive shift we’ve been talking about for ten years.”

In other words, as soon as regular flatscreens and outdated console TV’s are replaced by the ever growing web-based streaming capable TV, the studios will begin producing programs geared for online consumption.

Time for an upgrade?

 

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