Mark 'Rizzn' Hopkins
Latest from Mark 'Rizzn' Hopkins
How Did Hulu Become Conflated with Success?
Saul Hansell over at the New York Times Bits Blog has written an editorial that talks endlessly about how great Hulu is and how stupid all the people like me were when we talked it down. I call it an editorial because there’s no way you can say this represents anything close to unbiased reporting ...
Why is Google Launching an Operating System?
A lot of people are focusing on the Microsoft / Google battle that’s coming up with the impending and recently announced launch of Chrome OS. I’m tempted to rant about how irritating it is that they chose to line it up with the Chrome browser name (I wrote several editorials when Chrome launched berating bloggers ...
Google Finally Puts the Blogosphere’s Beta Tired Tropes to Pasture
Back in April, there was apparently a lull in the news cycle, and the tech blogosphere trotted out one of dead horses it likes to flog on a rotating basis. Something in me triggered the last time we all felt the need to weigh in on the topic, and I exploded all over my blog ...
The Pirate Bay Acquisition Sounding More Like Wishful Thinking
I remember the first time a company of mine was under scrutiny for acquisition. I had a handshake and an agreement we were moving forward with an acquisition as well as a lucrative dollar amount. I was young and inexperienced – far too young to know the nuance of a deal. I told everyone I ...
Is Amazon Winning the Tax War with the States?
The initiative dubbed the “Amazon Tax” in many states around the US is meeting with defeat, much to the delight of affiliate marketers everywhere. Andy Beal reports today at Marketing Pilgrim about Governors Arnold Schwarzenegger and Linda Lingle’s vetoes of the taxes that would be levied on those who choose to sell others products through ...
Chegg: Netflix for Books (Just like the library!)
Chegg, the web startup centered around renting college textbooks to students, received a nice write-up in the New York Times this weekend as a company making money in the midst of a down economy. They do so by correcting gross inefficiencies in the textbook business. The textbook business is one of the few aspects of ...
More Affiliates Head Off to War With States
We’ve talked about Amazon’s desire to influence legislation with their decision that’s cut off all affiliates in North Carolina from their Amazon affiliate accounts due to an impending bill to tax sales made over the internet. Those that said this was going to be a limited and ineffective phenomenon have been proven wrong as the ...
Be Your Own Darn Editor: News in the Twitter-era [New Media Minute]
Twitter has gotten a lot of kudos for how it became a communications channel for the Iran election protests especially when traditional news outlets failed, but a recent study from Zogby found that only 4% of Americans would turn to Twitter for news. Is it reliable and how are TV networks like CNN dealing with ...
What’s Really Going On with The Pirate Bay? [Round-Up/Analysis]
The big news today is that Swedish BitTorrent tracker The Pirate Bay has agreed to sell to software firm Global Gaming Factory X AB. The pricetag is around 60 million SEK, or $7.8 million. There’s been a good bit of investigation through each site’s personal sources going on around the blogosphere, but it’s pretty clear ...
Observations from Outside the Echo Chamber, Year 2 [#wcdfw09]
[Editor’s Note: This is part two of an annual editorial series started in March of 2008. See the post: Observations from Outside the Echo Chamber at Mashable for part one. – mrh] During last year’s Wordcamp Dallas, I came away from the event with a completely different perspective on what was going on with relationship ...
