OPINION: Standing out12/12/2008 Paul Sweeting is editor of Content Agenda DEC. 12 | Recommendation engines have long been a feature of online retail sites, from Amazon.com to Netflix to iTunes. Yet for the most part, they’ve been regarded as a tool for customer retention and improving the user experience. Rarely have they been the focus of a competitive arms race themselves.
OPINION: DMCA redux12/5/2008 Paul Sweeting is editor of Content Agenda DEC. 5 | Blockbuster’s roll out of a set-top box for playing digitally delivered movies will inevitably draw comparisons with Netflix and its partnerships, but the two DVD retailers’ approaches to digital delivery are not the same, reflecting both their different histories and different views of life without DVDs.
OPINION: Big Blue's big box11/25/2008 Paul Sweeting is editor of Content Agenda NOV. 25 | Blockbuster’s roll out of a set-top box for playing digitally delivered movies will inevitably draw comparisons with Netflix and its partnerships, but the two DVD retailers’ approaches to digital delivery are not the same, reflecting both their different histories and different views of life without DVDs.
OPINION: Keeping downloads open11/21/2008 Paul Sweeting is editor of Content Agenda NOV. 21 | Two seemingly unrelated events last week nonetheless each reflect a telling pattern in the development of the movie download market.
OPINION: New President, new rules?11/14/2008 Paul Sweeting is editor of Content Agenda NOV. 14 | Beyond its already-historic nature, the election of Barack Obama as the 44th President of the United States presages the most sweeping changes in the laws and regulations shaping the media and technology industries in at least a decade and perhaps longer.
OPINION: Stock block11/7/2008 Paul Sweeting is editor of Content Agenda NOV. 7 | Blockbuster has never been much of a Wall Street darling. Not since the go-go years of the video rental business in the ’80s and early ’90s has it been able to capture much of a premium in its share price.
OPINION: Grab and grow10/31/2008 Paul Sweeting is editor of Content Agenda OCT. 31 | The railroads are broadband Internet connections, whether wired or wireless. Leading the land-grab right now are Netflix and CinemaNow.
OPINION: Jobs blue on Blu10/17/2008 Paul Sweeting is editor of Content Agenda OCT. 17 | It can’t have thrilled the folks at Disney, who have worked so hard to establish Blu-ray Disc as the next-generation optical disc standard, to hear their largest shareholder call the format “a bag of hurt.”
OPINION: Blu stock10/10/2008 Paul Sweeting is editor of Content Agenda OCT. 10 | With global stock markets cratering and credit markets freezing, the U.S. and much of the rest of the world appears on the brink—if not already in the midst—of a serious economic recession.
OPINION: Use of fair10/3/2008 Paul Sweeting is editor of Content Agenda OCT. 3 | In the end, I suspect, the studios felt they had no choice but to bring a lawsuit against RealNetworks in an effort to shut down sales of its RealDVD copying program.
