What if a mystery TV series let you decide to follow one character’s story to the end, or jump between characters as the action unfolds? That’s the idea behind Mosaic, a 3-year, $20 million project by the acclaimed director of Traffic and Ocean’s 11, Steven Soderbergh. Today, HBO launches the Mosaic app for iOS and Apple TV that allows viewers to decide the viewing order of… Read More
Category: Media
Vidrovr raises $1.25M to bring smarter video search to publishers
As video becomes increasingly important to the media business (to the point where it’s become a cliché), a startup called Vidrovr aims to help publishers find the most relevant videos to go along with their content. So if I’m writing an article about, say, controversial comments from a tech CEO, I could use Vidrovr to search for footage of other times that the CEO discussed the… Read More
Netflix’s first Mark Millar project is a comic called ‘The Magic Order’
Netflix is launching its first project with Wanted creator Mark Millar, since acquiring Millarworld, the publishing company he owns and operates with Lucy Millar. The plan is to develop TV, films and even kids’ shows based on Millarworld properties, but the first thing Netflix will release from the team is actually a comic, to be sold both in digital and print formats, called… Read More
Amazon launches Alexa-less Fire TV Stick for international users of its Prime video service
We’re approaching one year since Amazon expanded its Prime video service to over 200 countries internationally, and today the company is doubling down on that global audience with the introduction of a ‘Basic Edition’ of its popular Fire TV Stick that ships to over 100 countries. The company unveiled a much-improved second-generation version of the product in September, adding… Read More
Google is surfacing Texas shooter misinformation in search results — thanks also to Twitter
Google has once again been called out for algorithmically encouraging the spread of dubious, politically charged speculation and misinformation around a topical news event. Read More
View More Google is surfacing Texas shooter misinformation in search results — thanks also to TwitterCovert influence is the new money laundering
As more media companies realize Russia bought advertising space or promoted news stories — fake and otherwise — on their platforms, covert influence has become the new money laundering. Both activities hide below the surface of legitimate enterprises, cast a shadow of disrepute on those very enterprises and can be neutralized through transparency and accountability. Read More
Original Content podcast: We have mixed feelings about ‘Stranger Things 2’
Stranger Things 2 (as Netflix and the Duffer Brothers are calling the second season of their hit show) has been out for a full week, so some serious fans have already watched all nine episodes.
That includes TechCrunch’s Darrell Etherington and Anthony Ha, who have been bingeing the show all week. On the latest episode of the Original Content podcast, we discuss our feelings about the… Read More
Over 15 Million watched the ‘Stranger Things 2’ premiere by its third day on Netflix
Netflix definitely has a hit show on its hands with the recent release of Stranger Things 2. According to new data this week from Nielsen, which only recently began measuring subscription video on demand services, 361,000 viewers binged their way through the entire second season of Stranger Things 2 – that’s 9 straight episodes – within the first day it was… Read More
After Gothamist archives disappear, heroic coders build tool to recover articles
/https%3A%2F%2Fblueprint-api-production.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fuploads%2Fcard%2Fimage%2F640558%2F0ad3b697-c9b4-4c9e-83d5-e39745e8e847.jpg)
When every one of the articles that had ever been published by Gothamist, DNAinfo, and their many sister sites disappeared on Friday night, many people expected the worst.
Thousands of articles from writers were suddenly gone. Those journalists, laid off as part of the sudden closing of the publications, also didn’t have the clips integral to getting a new job.
That sent two coders into action. Hours later, they had built a web-based tool that allowed any journalist to search for their byline and grab their articles based on caches from Google’s AMP web pages.
🚨🚨🚨🚨 @xn9q8h and i wrote a tool that retrieves Gothamist articles from AMP caches! 🚨🚨🚨🚨 https://t.co/tPMBGMVFSk pic.twitter.com/blzWcSLbvf
— 😈 (@turtlekiosk) November 3, 2017 Read more…
More about Media, Journalism, Gothamist, Business, and Media Industry
View More After Gothamist archives disappear, heroic coders build tool to recover articlesLocal news sites DNAinfo and Gothamist shut down
DNAinfo and Gothamist have both shut down, a week after reporters and editors at the local news sites unionized. Their archives seem to have disappeared — if you visit either front page, or any article, you’re redirected to a letter from CEO Joe Ricketts (pictured above), who trots out some growth numbers before saying: But DNAinfo is, at the end of the day, a business, and… Read More
Tosca Musk raises $4.75M for Passionflix, a streaming service that’s all about romance
We’ve seen streaming services emerge around art movies, horror movies and comedy (R.I.P. Seeso) — so why not romance? That’s the thinking behind Passionflix, a startup that’s announcing that it’s raised $4.75 million in seed funding. It’s not like romantic comedies are missing from theaters, or from Netflix, but Passionflix co-founder Tosca Musk (she’s… Read More
‘Thor: Ragnarok’ takes us to a weirder, goofier corner of the Marvel Universe
The posters and trailers for Thor: Ragnarok promised something different — a movie that’s a little more psychedelic than your typical Marvel film, a little more retro, while taking itself a lot less seriously. Ragnarok mostly delivers on that promise. The film, which officially opens tomorrow in the U.S., is directed by Taika Waititi, best known for the comedies What We Do In… Read More