Freyburg

Mashable gets it exactly right. The Streamy Awards are an annual event meant to celebrate the best in web video, but this year they did so with a crude, juvenile ceremony, for which they soon apologized. More to the point, the entire exercise heralded web series done by B-list celebrities and wannabe types who haven’t made it into Hollywood’s inner sanctum (but surely desire to, more than anything.)

As Mashable points out, all of this entirely misses the point. Media has become democratized, with the ability to mount a compelling, great looking production within the reach of anyone with a laptop, a DSLR or higher-end camcorder, and talent. But for some reason a lot of the web video world’s supposed luminaries want nothing more than the supposed legitimacy of recognition from old media. That doesn’t make a lot of sense to me, and in the end it’s really a fool’s game. Why jump onto a sinking ship?

Not as random a collection of words as you’d think at first glance. Scott Rosenberg of Salon fame has a post up on Silicon Alley Insider where he relates the excitement of Big Media over the incoming iPad as parallel to their clueless exuberance over CD-ROMs in the early 90′s. The web showed up soon afterward and the CD-ROM became a historical curiosity.

It turns out that nothing can compete with people connecting with each other around common interests. While the iPad will likely have some of those features, the Big Media hope of creating new walled gardens through apps is likely just that, a hope. Personally I would but a New York TImes or Wired app, provided the price was cheap enough and it took advantage of the platform in ways I couldn’t experience with any other medium. BUt I think there wil likely be quite a few misfires as big media outlets try, and fail, to turn back the clock.

Does that mean the end of the Ipad? I don’t think so. The tablet form factor is advantageous not just for reading media but a host of other applications, including ones we haven’t yet come up with.

Vancouver Sun tech reporter Gillian Shaw interviewed myself and several other technology enthusiasts on the day of the Apple iPad announcement, and you can check out my thoughts online on her blog (as well as in yesterday’s dead tree version of the Vancouver Sun.) Techvibes.com also reposted “The iPad cometh“. Neat!

For the second time, the NYT is thinking about instituting a paywall. My personal feeling is that it’ll be slow suicide, but maybe the brain trust at the Gray Lady knows something I don’t. Apple’s new tablet might be a revolutionary product that heralds a new media delivery system, and in the process makes the NYT “app” worth both paying for and subscribing to. And if I had to pick a paper I’d pay to read, the Times would definitely be the top contender. But….it all smacks of desperation and futility. Matthew Ingram, who recently left the Globe and Mail to become a senior writer at GigaOm (itself formed by former BusinessWeek reporter Om Malik) has written an interesting post about the NYT paywall. Check it out.

Well, no surprise there. But many a year has been pegged as “the year we (fill in the blank)” in the sci-fi realm, and as we reach those years we’re filled with a crashing sense of disappointment. Here’s some of the best sci-fi years and how they actually panned out.

They don’t make local news openers like this anymore, and I’m torn as to whether that’s a good or bad thing.

In addition to coddling a dead language and being pretty damned bitter about their lost colonial empire and handy defeat at the hands of the Nazis, France can now add “hatred of the future” to their long list of missteps. French president Nicolas Sarkozy wants to tax Google and other new media giants in order to help struggling print and other media companies. Well, pleut moi un rivoire, Nicolai, if those businesses are failing there’s likely a very good reason for their downward spiral, such as lack of a 21st century business model.

Simply put, it’s a lot smarter than American news outlets, and comes close to rivalling the BBC World Service in quality. I’ve personally found that I’m getting more and more of my news from Al Jazeera English, particularly their iPhone app, which lets me watch a live stream of the channel from anywhere I’d like, as well as using Livestation on my PC.

But don’t take my word for it, read Robert D. Kaplan’s article in the Atlantic. Kaplan not only points out that Al Jazeera English has the hustle for scoops that other international news gatherers seem to lack, they’re also a unique window into the attitudes of the developing world’s emerging middle class.

In my capacity as a tech reporter for Techvibes.com, sometimes I get to check out some neat new tech, like these Sony E-Readers (the Reader Touch and Reader Pocket, in point of fact.) They don’t have a wifi or 3g connection, but they can read any format and can “borrow” e-books from the library.

This video illustrates the changing trends in social media that are driving people away from the old mass media and towards social, personalized content. Some pretty impressive stats in here.