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When MTV began in the early 80s its edgy counter culture appeal helped build its foundation. When YouTube took off and became a household word, it too benefited heavily from its alternative, under-produced content (which was arguably similar in form to what MTV aired decades earlier).  Across the board in media and entertainment, from websites like MySpace to Indie Music production back to Facebook online, appealing to the fringe, to a smaller group, focusing on a niche of “hip and cool” has often helped push companies forward.

That narrow focus is doubly beneficial.  It helps keep a company off the radar of bigger competitors and it helps them build a loyal, dedicated fan base from which to expand.  But as companies grow in appeal and audience, they all face one of the most difficult challenges in marketing: bridging the gap between counter-culture edge (and niche market focus) to mainstream popularity and an expanding sphere of influence.

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Just when it seems everyone is getting into Internet video, in a reverse twist, Sony is backing out; at least with regard to their strategy.

Last year, Sony bought video sharing site Grouper for a crisp $65m.  It was to by Sony’s portal for sharing video, Sony’s clone of YouTube.  ….now, the towels been thrown in and the fight called.  Instead of trying to compete with established players, Sony will rebrand the property and redeploy it toward a new end: video creation.

Henceforward Grouper will be called Crackle.  And lest there be any doubt about a change of direction, there is the official pronouncement of its demise from Josh Felser, a founder of Grouper and the man in charge of Crackle.  He said unequivocally, “User Generated content is dead to us. … We are definitely leaving video sharing and focusing on emerging talent.”  Crackle will help to finance, promote and syndicate the work of Internet video auteurs.

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A search on Google for “collected quotations” turns up almost two million results.  The word “quotations” alone on Yahoo yields more than fifty four million.

Collected quotations can be a guilty pleasure. Sometimes they’re funny, sometimes insightful, and whether they take the form of witty maxim, or biting aphorism, somehow, thoughts condensed and cropped to a few sentences or a quick phrase somehow seem more articulate and more informative.  

The following recent turns of phrase from executives and founders may not make their speakers look like geniuses but in short sound-byte format they make for interesting capsules of information and a fascinating barometer of current events in media, entertainment and technology:

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Late last night fans gathered in Fairbanks Alaska for the 102nd annual Midnight Sun baseball game. There, under the near all-day sun of the summer solstice, baseball rang in the start of summer. Summer brings baseball, and with baseball comes statistics. It’s a sport that records and tracks everything. In the same spirit, though unrelated to baseball, here are a few interesting recent stats from the media and entertainment world:

    Apple is now the 3rd largest retailer of music in the United States. The Top 3 according to NPD Group are: Wal-Mart (15.8%), Best Buy (13.8%), Apple (10%), Amazon (6.7%)

    72% of US online adults now listen to audio on their home computers according to a CEA survey.  But only 9% of the same survey respondents connect their PC to home audio systems.

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As some readers have noticed, our web hosting service has had some outages this week that have caused the Metue site to be down for a few hours during the middle of the day. They were apparently having electrical power management issues in their data-center. We are told the issues are resolved but needless to say, this was cause for concern and we are proactively looking to insure it can’t happen.

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Last week in response to Microsoft’s Surface Computing initiative, I haphazardly speculated on Metue about some of the future applications we might see from both Microsoft and other firms developing bleeding–edge user interfaces.  Turns out, (even though my ideas weren’t too creative a leap) some of them ideas may be closer to reality than I’d have thought.

Mary Jo Foley of ZDNet earlier today wrote that Microsoft is moving forward with an effort to develop customized Windows platforms for different rooms of the home.  A kitchen focused software package seems to be the first area of focus.  She wasn’t able to get on-the-record comments from Microsoft but presumably, application layers focused on other household needs will follow too.   Maybe, not far off,  the alarm clock I dreamed about may be available.  Hopefully, I’ll have a choice of an Apple iClock   that’ll wake me with iTunes and give me a visual display of my voicemail, but a Windows Vista based model might be ok too ….. who knows. 

IMAGINE:  You open the fridge and you’re out of milk.  Rather than writing down a list, with your finger as a pen, you write the word “Milk” on a touch-sensitive area of our refrigerator.  An integrated computer recognizes the word and wirelessly it adds milk to an electronic grocery list on your computer.  Later, thanks to that list, Milk is delivered with your next online grocery order.  Or maybe, when in your car, you touch the paper thin screen on your dash and your Grocery List is available for review (because your car’s computer downloaded from your home PC, syncing lists you preset to make mobile).  Or maybe, the list is loaded to data on your mobile phone?

IMAGINE: You are watching TV.  You pick up a remote control to change the channel but instead of pushing buttons, a gyroscope in the remote recognizes the motions of your hand and translates those movements into actions on the screen.  Move your hand up, the channel goes up.  Move it left, the volume goes down.  And so on.  Imagine, touch a small screen on that remote, where the buttons should be,  and the movements of your finger act like a stylus to aid in navigation.  You can check your email overlaid over the commercial break in your favorite show.  You can look at the pictures a friend forwarded from a party last night.  …. Imagine. 

IMAGINE: Your alarm clock goes off in the morning playing music you preselected from your iTunes library.  You reach over to touch its screen (instead of slamming the snooze button).  On contact, the alarm goes off and the ten inch diagonal screen changes to show your email inbox, or an interface to iTunes…or your daily to do list.…imagine.

These kinds of dreams, and a whole lot more, aren’t far off from a technological standpoint. The gyroscopic motion-sensing technologies, for example, already exist commercially in the Nintendo Wii or in computer mice from Gyration.  The technology for ultra-thin displays has seen recent major developments and is being refined.  Touch screens are improving dramatically.  Even voice-based interaction is improving in leaps and bounds.

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