Someone recently asked me who can beat me in AIM Fight.
The answer is that it depends on the day of the week and the time of day.
My personal network is pretty big and diverse, has been built over many years, and is a reflection of all that I do in my life: owning a sports team, being a parent, working at AOL, and supporting various community and charitable organizations. My network is deep
I went to three games at the MCI Arena this weekend
I work in a media company and I own a sports team, so I have a fairly unique perspective when it comes to how the media industry covers the sports industry. I was surprised a couple weeks ago to find out that the relationship between the two is blurring the traditional lines between editorial content (i.e. news) and advertising. The Washington Post noted in a recent article that three of the four major DC-area TV stations are now airing sports "news" programs about the Washington Redskins that are produced, directed, and paid for by … the Redskins. Similarly, Redskins owner Dan Snyder recently confirmed his purchase of three local radio stations that will air the team’s games and other Redskins programming next season. Many people used to say that the Internet would quickly blur the lines between paid content and objective news/information, but I think it’s happening even faster in the offline world.
On Friday we made an announcement that has been a long time in coming: a coast-to-coast broadband network for our members — easy high-speed access at a reasonable price. Along with the launch of AOL.com last year and our strong focus on video and audio search and content, this announcement adds one of the final pieces to our strategy to make AOL synonymous with the high-speed Internet. It’s great news for our members, but it’s also great news for our business. Broadband users do more and spend more time online, and the vast majority of visitors to the AOL.com portal are already accessing it over broadband connections. This announcement will help lock in our existing membership as long-term broadband subscribers and will help encourage our users to spend even more time using our properties.
The Today show last week had an interesting segment on happiness that started me thinking about what makes people happy. All of the people interviewed by Matt Lauer said similar things about what makes people happy: relationships, community, self-expression, giving back, pursuing a higher calling. As I was listening to them, it became clear that everything they were discussing has been enhanced by the Internet.
The Today show last week had an interesting segment on happiness that started me thinking about what makes people happy. All of the people interviewed by Matt Lauer said similar things about what makes people happy: relationships, community, self-expression, giving back, pursuing a higher calling. As I was listening to them, it became clear that everything they were discussing has been enhanced by the Internet.To wit, here are four reasons that the Internet has helped make people happier:* Relationships and community. The more relationships you have and the more communities you participate in, the happier you are. And more than anything else, the Internet enhances the power of connection. It helps you stay in touch with distant friends and family, make new friends around the world, and create broad communities of people with similar interests or bonds through areas like AOL Hometown, Craiglist, AIM, eBay, or MySpace. * Giving back. People who show their gratitude and give back to the world around them are happiest. Over the past few years, the Internet has become the leading vehicle for people to make contributions, of money and time, to improve the world around them. When Hurricane Katrina hit, online users donated hundreds of millions of dollars in just days to help, and private donations for the Asian tsunami — mostly given online — rivaled those of governments. And Network for Good connects people with the charities they want to support, and charities with the donors and volunteers they need. * Pursue a higher calling. Whether your calling is religious, political, scientific, professional, academic, or philosophical, the Web is the perfect enabler. Find people who share your interest, build a community, track down the answers, and keep your friends and family — new and old — informed of your progress. * Express yourself. We all want our voices to be heard, and the Internet is the largest microphone ever invented. From personal Web pages to blogs, social networking communities, photo sharing sites, and podcasts…. they are all new and wonderful tools that give every person the ability to share their uniqueness with the rest of the world.USA Today had another interesting perspective on what made people happy a couple years ago.
Earlier this week I visited Bell Labs in New Jersey and got a tour from Bell Lab’s new President, Dr. Jeong Kim, a good friend and a partner in my sports teams. He was previously CEO of Lucent’s optical computing division and came into this new position nine months ago. (Bell Labs is a part of the Lucent corporation now).
Earlier this week I visited Bell Labs in New Jersey and got a tour from Bell Lab’s new President, Dr. Jeong Kim, a good friend and a partner in my sports teams. He was previously CEO of Lucent’s optical computing division and came into this new position nine months ago. (Bell Labs is a part of the Lucent corporation now).
We toured Bell Labs and went for a walk with their archivist through their in-house museum, and it was like a walk through the history of modern technology. Among other amazing accomplishments, we saw the history of the telephone, the fax machine, the commercial space business, and the first intercontinental phone cable. And it should have come as little surprise, as Bell Labs has been the home of no fewer than six Nobel Prize winners. We also looked to the future, and we talked about nanotechnology applications; smell-sensing ID systems (I kid you not); a clean room in which crystals were being made; new techniques in security and encryption; high-speed wireless platform architectures; and video search algorithms. Bell Labs houses some of the smartest people in the world — more than 1500 PhDs — and they have generated an average of one patent a day, every day, since 1925. It was really an amazing opportunity to take a look back, as well as explore the future with some world class thinkers.
Mario Lemieux, one of the greatest hockey players of all time, retired this week. Despite chronic back problems and a battle with Hodgkin’s disease, he won two Stanley Cups and led Team Canada to a gold medal at the 2002 Olympics. Even though I feared playing against him, I will miss watching him skate.
It’s been a big week for the online music business with the announcement that the sale of legal music downloads passed the $1 billion milestone in 2005. For all the hype, however, we should still put the online music business in context. It’s still a small part of the overall business, just 6% of total sales for 2005. And the gains in online sales have not matched the decline in traditional CDs and other recorded music, as the overall industry has fallen from $39.7 billion in 2000 to under $31 billion last year. But the staggering growth rate, in which online music sales tripled from the prior year, have given hope to the recording industry that it’s finally turned the corner into the new digital world.
My television habits have changed dramatically over the past few years. I don’t watch live TV anymore, except for sports or the occasional news channel. Sometimes I watch programs on my Tivo instead. But the way I watch most hot episodic television, like the OC, a show my daughter loves, is on DVD.
My television habits have changed dramatically over the past few years. I don’t watch live TV anymore, except for sports or the occasional news channel. Sometimes I watch programs on my Tivo instead. But the way I watch most hot episodic television, like the OC, a show my daughter loves, is on DVD. That same behavior shift is happening everywhere. Over time, the TV universe has fragmented into smaller and smaller pieces as people have moved away from the major broadcast networks. Cable may have launched that revolution, but it’s rapidly being supplemented by an explosion of new technologies like DVDs, satellite, Tivo, video-on-demand, and video over portable devices. For the first time ever, viewers are now in charge of what they see and when they see it, and not a handful of big network programming executives. And the impact of that shift can be seen in the numbers. Off the ten highest-rated programs ever tracked by Nielsen, not one took place in the last ten years, and all but two took place more than 20 years ago. Consumers may be watching the same thing, but they’re watching it at different times, and in different places.What’s the next frontier in this shift? IPTV — or TV over the Internet. What we’re doing with Warner Brothers to make classic episodes available for free online through In2TV, and the announcement we made with Intel about how we plan to bring our content into the living room over their chips, are just the beginning. The original TV universe had 3 channels. Cable expanded that universe to 300 channels. But when you let consumers choose what they want to see, when they want to see it and on what device, the options become nearly limitless.
Check out this New York Times article about CES
