media

It's awards season in the U.S., with the focus primarily on the upcoming Oscars and Sunday night's Grammys.

Last year, I wrote about how the Oscars missed an opportunity to use hashtags the right way on TV, and I look forward to seeing if the organizers learned anything from this year's Grammys. (Note: CNET parent company CBS owns the broadcasting rights to the Grammys, but I am writing this unprompted and on my own).

Here are six things the Grammys did right on social this year -- plus one they didn't -- and what folks … Read more

Now that Facebook is not merely woven into the social fabric but actually constitutes it, we've become used to it being the forum for indiscretions.

Normally, though, it's teachers being amusing about their little pupils, or fugitives teasing cops.

One rarely hears of accountants posting that their clients are ugly, inefficient, or numerically challenged.

And one certainly hasn't heard of an ob-gyn complaining that a patient is always late.

As KMOV-TV reveals it, Dr. Amy Dunbar of St. Louis' Mercy Hospital ran out of mercy for a patient whose time-consciousness allegedly rivaled that of a singing, stomping diva.… Read more

File converters have become pretty ubiquitous, as there are lots of different formats that work better in some contexts than others. Although converters with lots of options can be nice, we tend to favor the simple ones that cut right to the chase. Unfortunately, MediaConvert is a little too simple; its bare-bones interface leaves users guessing, and we're still not sure if we converted any files.

Most file converters follow the same basic conventions: choose the file you want to convert, select the output format and location, and the program does its thing. This is not the case with … Read more

Twitter said today that it has begun slowly rolling out the ability to search for tweets older than a week.

In a blog post, the social-networking giant said it plans to enable users to find more than just the most recent tweets.

The announcement is the second this week aimed at letting users surface more content on Twitter. Yesterday, the company rolled out updates to its iOS and Android apps, as well as to mobile.twitter.com, designed to streamline the discovery process on Twitter.

Twitter has streamlined its mobile apps to make it easier to find any kind of content, and has added a search button to iOS that can be used anywhere in its mobile apps.

The social-networking giant said today that it is updating its iOS and Android apps, as well as its mobile.twitter.com offering, in an attempt to make it easier for users to find the things they're looking for. The update is the latest in a string of tweaks Twitter has made in recent months presumably aimed at improving users' content discovery experience.

Perhaps the most important … Read more

"Talk is cheap," except when it really isn't.

U.S. media conglomerate Liberty Global announced last night that it would acquire Virgin Media [PDF] for $23.3 billion, a figure that will likely send shivers down the spine of media rival News Corp. chief executive Rupert Murdoch.

The announcement came just hours after Dell, with the help of Silver Lake and Microsoft, paid more than $24 billion to pull out of the stock market.

Following the handshake on the deal, Liberty Global is already touting the deal as the creation of the "world's … Read more

Several U.S. media outlets experienced a massive wave of cyberattacks allegedly coming from the Chinese military over the last few months. While some newspapers have claimed that their networks are now safe, the Wall Street Journal may still be a victim of the online onslaught.

The newspaper's owner Rupert Murdock tweeted today, "Chinese still hacking us, or were over weekend."

Chinese still hacking us, or were over weekend.

The Wall Street Journal confirmed last week that it had been the target of cyberattacks in recent months because of its coverage … Read more

Twitter CEO Dick Costolo said that the social-networking giant won't "make the kind of sacrifices" necessary to be allowed to work in China and Iran.

In an interview with the The Wall Street Journal published today, Costolo addressed the question of whether Twitter would like to be available in China and Iran by replying that the company is not willing to filter out the kind of politically sensitive material that government officials in those two countries would require in order to be allowed to function there.

Costolo also said a Twitter IPO is "not necessarily inevitable&… Read more

Twitter said today that it has bought Bluefin Labs, a company specializing in social TV analytics.

The deal, first reported by Business Insider, would give Twitter the inside scoop on information such as which Super Bowl commercials drove the social conversation. It would likely also help Twitter become more of a media company as it tries to bolster its advertising revenue by working hand-in-hand with brands and with TV networks.

In its blog post today, Twitter said, "We believe that Bluefin's data science capabilities and social TV expertise will help us create innovative new ad products and consumer … Read more