Shelly’s Blog

Last week, three of the nation’s largest cable companies quietly pulled the plug on a joint cell-phone venture with Sprint Nextel Corp., called Pivot. The goal of this service offering was to help the cablers compete with the Telco Triple Play (Video, Voice & Data). In theory, a Quadruple Play (Video, Voice, Data plus a Continue Reading →

“They’ll be tried as adults for kidnapping (a first degree felony) and battery,” said Chip Thullbery, a spokesman for the Polk County state attorney. Three of them will also be charged with tampering with a witness. If convicted, they could be sentenced to life in prison.   This story has been all over the news Continue Reading →

The National Association of Broadcasters (NAB) held their annual convention in Las Vegas this week and, aside from the usual angst about the digital transition next February, there was a moderate buzz about mobile TV.   In his opening keynote address, David K. Rehr, president of the NAB, opined about a time, in the very Continue Reading →

You walk into a retail store a few blocks from home and see something you’ve been eying for a while on sale. You pick it up, talk to the salesperson, put it down, walk around, think. When the salesperson is not looking, you text the UPC code to 262966, that spells “Amazon” on your mobile Continue Reading →

Children born in America this year will be the first true Digital Natives of the Information Age. They will grow up in a time when all of their telecommunications tools: video, voice and data are based completely upon digital technology. It is an interesting historical footnote, to be sure. But it made me wonder: What Continue Reading →

The reason for the threat of InfoWar, according to a representative of the Island, is that the United States is not negotiating fairly in a dispute over Internet gambling. Apparently, we owe Antigua $21 million dollars and they really want the money. If they don’t get it, they will tighten-up our debt by stealing music, Continue Reading →

If she had a “type,” he’d be it. Tall, like her. Dark hair, broad shouldered, well dressed and well teched. It looked like he hadn’t shaved for a couple of days, but any uptown girl could tell that this was just additional proof of a refined fashion sense. Continue Reading →

By now, everyone has heard about Oprah Winfrey’s webcast debacle earlier this week. Oprah, the smartest, richest, most successful person in the television business, decided to do a webcast. She promoted it as only she can. To execute, her people assembled the absolute best practices organizations available anywhere. They used the best online distribution platform: Continue Reading →

THE OSCARS telecast averaged an 18.7 rating and a 29 share. That’s TV-Geek-Speak for the lowest ratings since 1974, about 32 million viewers – a 20% drop from last year. Some pundits are blaming the dismal ratings on the dark nature of the top films. Best picture, “No Country for Old Men” focused on a Continue Reading →

Scott Boyarsky, Director of Program Management at the Walt Disney Internet Group called me to chat about an extraordinary website called newsclipper.org. It’s extraordinary for a bunch of reasons (which I shall explain) but the most interesting part of our conversation centered around a simple, unavoidable truth: newsclipper.org does exactly what you or I might Continue Reading →