Earlier this week I sat down with Redlasso CEO Kenyon Hayward for an update on the Redlasso business and the company’s ongoing negotiating process with big media networks. There’s much to write about on that front, but since I won’t get to that today, I thought in the meantime I’d share a bizarre coincidence I encountered while testing out the Redlasso service.

Redlasso uses several tools for video search on its site, including meta data search, closed caption service and phonetic word recognition. I tried searching for WiMAX clips first, but didn’t get anywhere except some phonetic results that didn’t actually have anything to do with WiMAX. So then I searched on Comcast. Several hits came back, and I clicked on a clip from ESPN. Interestingly, a DTV transition ad came up. It hadn’t occurred to me that commercials would be in the mix, but of course that makes sense.

However, the exceedingly weird moment came when I realized who was starring in the Comcast ad. Standing in front of me on the computer screen was a guy I went to college with. Actually, it was the guy I performed with in our school’s production of Carousel. That performance as Julie was one of my last hurrahs in the theater world, but “Billy” has gone on to Broadway, print ads, and apparently Comcast DTV commercials.

What a strange, strange and small world.

Whether or not you believe Hulu can “kick YouTube’s ass,” the folks behind the Web video venture are certainly doing more than a few things right. I got hooked on Hulu when it was still in beta, checking out a few 30 Rock episodes and some of the Scrubs shows I’d missed. But I admit my usage of the site has fallen off. (Largely because when I’m on my computer I get too distracted by all things work.) Now Hulu has a new campaign going that may just suck me back in.

“Hulu Days of Summer” launches a premiere program every weekday through mid-August. So far, Hulu’s put out Lost in Translation (great movie), a Three Stooges collection, Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, and today’s debut, a long line-up of NOVA shows. I know the gimmick sounds pretty standard, but Hulu’s adding a twist: a Hulu Days of Summer Widget along with an RSS feed. Brilliant move for the all the Web entertainment sites that track this kind of thing.

I also found myself receptive to Hulu’s news because in came in an email update that apparently I opted in for. This may be the first time Hulu’s sent something to me, or it may be the folks there just do it so rarely I’ve forgotten other missives. In any case, since I hadn’t heard from Hulu lately, I was interested to see what they had to say. Other recent updates: The Daily Show and The Colbert Report are up on Hulu now, and Hulu has highlights of the NBA championship series. (Sorry Lakers fans…)

There’s been a lot of WiMAX chatter the last couple of months. For example, the major announcement in May of new financial backers for a US network (Comcast, Time Warner Cable, Google, Intel and Bright House). And yesterday came the much lower-profile, but still highly-important news of the first successful round of WiMAX certifications by the WiMAX Forum. Certification means interoperability, which is critical for any large-scale deployment.

Amid the flurry of recent WiMAX coverage, it’s been difficult to pin down the important facts for Joe Q. Public. After all, what normal person really is interested in spectrum frequencies? 700 MHz or 2.5 GHz - who cares as long as it means high-speed wireless Internet access?

Here are some of the important conclusions I’ve arrived at, several with the help of Paul Kapustka’s “Game On, WiMAX!” report. This is what consumers in the US should be interested in and what WiMAX has going for it.

What should matter to consumers:

• Per-use payment options - No requirement to pay a WiMAX monthly service fee if you’re only going to connect once or twice a month
• Handsets don’t have to be subsidized, meaning you’ll be able to buy anything WiMAX-certified at retail and automatically have Internet access
• The new Clearwire service will use mobile WiMAX instead of fixed WiMAX, which means you can literally stay connected while moving at high speed down a highway (Side note: Interestingly, I heard major pessimism around mobile WiMAX from one large industry analyst firm earlier this year. Premature reaction?)
• Nationwide network - before the new investors got on board, it wasn’t clear if WiMAX could scale beyond a few metro areas; now a nationwide build-out is assumed
• “[Some] observers see WiMAX silicon getting small and cheap enough to find its way into a wide range of consumer gear, such as digital cameras — which might also have their broadband connectivity built into the purchase price, like Amazon’s Kindle book reader.” -Sidecut Reports

What WiMAX has going for it: (more…)

I took my first trip over to the new Comcast HQ yesterday for a meeting and was duly impressed. Smack in the middle of Philadelphia, the site is nothing like Verizon’s HQ, a sprawling campus in Basking Ridge. Instead, the building goes straight up; a little cafe with water fountains sprinkling the landscape outside. Indoors there are wildly impressive views on the upper floors, all reached by banks of elevators providing express routes to different levels in the tower. (My ears popped on the way up.)

Most impressive, however, was the IMAX theater environment in the lobby reception area. A massive wall of wood panels transforms into a screen for moonscapes, falling water, home-run hits, staged vignettes, and more. Add in the stereo sound and it’s quite a showstopper. Highly appropriate for a cable company making its living off premium television services. Can I have it installed in my home, please? Just don’t tell me the monthly fee.

I finally ordered a carrying case for my Flip Ultra after months of having it ride around in my purse with its velvet bag sliding off. It arrived two days ago and I have mixed reports. First, I’m regretting a bit the girly choice I made with the pink color. Second, I was very disappointed when I first opened it up by how hard and bulky it is. I wanted something that would fit in my bag more easily, but the soft case on Amazon got really bad reviews. Luckily, the case is growing on me. I can squeeze it into my bag and it does protect the Flip well. I’ll just have to see how well it wears.

The successor to Pure Digital’s Flip Ultra has now officially been announced. The new Flip Mino is on sale at the company’s site, on Amazon and at Walmart.com.

As a happy owner of the Flip Ultra, I immediately started reviewing the specs to see if I should give in and upgrade. The biggest reason I could find would be to get the improved microphone. Audio quality is the Ultra’s weakest point. But on another issue, I’m very glad to have the earlier Flip version. The Flip Mino has a non-removable lithium ion battery. One of the best things about the Ultra is never having to wait for it to charge. As long as I have a spare set of AA batteries, I have power. Not so with the Mino. That’s a feature I don’t think I’m willing to give up.

As for other changes, the Mino now supports the Mac without additional software, and its USB stick pops out of the top rather than the side which causes my Ultra to block valuable laptop real estate. It looks like the USB stick still comes out of the middle of the Mino, which is a little annoying because it means the bottom of the camera can’t rest flat on a table surface. Fairly minor issue, but I’m a little surprised it wasn’t fixed.

All in all, the fact that the Mino is smaller than the Ultra, has a better mic and directly supports Macs means it will probably be the choice for most newcomers to Flip. For me, I’m happy with my Ultra. In fact, I just bought a new case for it. Pics to come.

Now that Time Warner Cable is testing a bill-by-the-byte approach for Internet access, it’d be nice to have a simple way to measure individual Internet use. We’re taught to track the upload and download speeds provided by ISPs, but exact measurements there are hardly necessary. If my downloads are moving more slowly than usual, I know without testing that I’m not reaching my promised 6-Mbps mark.

On the other hand, I don’t want to guesstimate how much I’ve downloaded in a month if I’m going to be billed a dollar every gigabyte I exceed my limit by, particularly because I’m not the only one in my household using the Internet connection.

Time Warner is apparently planning to put a “gas gauge” on its website so subscribers can tell how much of their download and upload allotments they’ve used up. (Something akin to TWC’s DVR storage gauge shown right?) But why are ISPs waiting until after they’ve instituted metered billing? Why not give users an easy way to measure now so we can get smart about how we use our bandwidth? Such a move might even help the ISPs by reducing strain on their networks from users willing to be a little more conscious of their Internet habits.

There are options available for measuring Internet usage today, like Hagel Technologies’ DU Meter software. But in my opinion, tools like this should be freely available from every ISP. Particularly if more operators plan to follow Time Warner’s lead in the future.

I’ve heard a lot on “advanced advertising” in my day job recently, so when the opportunity came up to talk with Revision3 CEO Jim Louderback (formerly of PC Magazine) about their deal with VideoClix, I could hardly turn it down. VideoClix does pop-up content for Internet video, (think an online, ad-driven version of MTV’s pop-up video) and Revision3 is now planning to use VideoClix in some of its online shows, starting with a premier VideoClix-enabled episode of Diggnation.

Since advertisers have been slobbering over the idea of interactive advertising for a decade or more, I was anxious to hear how well VideoClix is working for Revision3. Disappointingly, there’s no answer on that yet. Not only is Revision3 not releasing specifics on that front (not surprising with only one VideoClix-enabled show up), but it turns out VideoClix, at this point, is just a piece of spaghetti that Revision3 is throwing at the proverbial wall. According to Louderback, Revision3 is a leader in product placement, online video sponsorships and is even part of Google’s early-stage Adsense-for-video program. In other words, while the company definitely likes VideoClix, Revision3 is hardly betting the farm on it. The company is really just trying something new and hoping it makes some money.

As a consumer, I haven’t remotely made up my mind about VideoClix either. The Diggnation demo is very cool, but in a novelty kind of way, not an I-want-this-on-all-my-TV-shows kind of way. I can see an ongoing appeal for non-fiction shows like Diggnation, but I think I’d find the feature highly irritating while watching, for instance, Battlestar Galactica. I really don’t want to know that I can get Starbuck’s boots at LL Bean. (My suspension of disbelief is stretched far enough with BSG, thank you…)

Despite not giving me any reason to believe that VideoClix is the one great answer to the problem of monetizing Internet video, Louderback did provide some heartening stats on Internet advertising in general. For example, viewers of Revision3 shows have very high unaided recall rates of sponsored products and companies. And, according to Louderback, 48% of viewers have purchased a product or service from one of Revision3’s sponsors.

In addition, without being able to provide any details, Revision3 is apparently pretty happy with VideoClix. The company was planning one VideoClix-enabled show monthly, but is now thinking of upping that number.

So has the Internet finally made interactive television advertising possible? It’s not clear. The answer is probably yes for certain kinds of entertainment and no for others. Sometimes interactivity is good. And sometimes I just want to watch my TV… even on the Internet.