NYT printed an article today on the Lean Start-Up business model. In fact, that business model was followed by many Internet companies for some time. It allows companies to test the market quickly, find out what works and what doesn't, and build the service or technology that the customer actually wants, while eleminating any cost or investment that doesn't produce the value for their customers.

So the lean playbook advises quick development of a “minimum viable product,” designed with the smallest set of features that will please some group of customers. Then, the start-up should continually experiment by tweaking its offering, seeing how the market responds and changing the product accordingly. Facebook, the giant social network, grew that way, starting with simple messaging services and then adding other features.

I personally diagree that the term "lean start-up" is a novel term for the business model. It is a business model that doesn't require venture capital and allows companies to build with a focus on the consumer and their needs, versus building the technology that nobody wants.

So the lean playbook advises quick development of a “minimum viable product,” designed with the smallest set of features that will please some group of customers.

I prefer the term "bootstrap operation". It might take time to get the boots or straps, but the lack of overhead makes the operation agile and capable of rapid change based on marketplace feedback.

Adobe is to stop making software tools that allow Apple's iPhone and iPad to use its popular Flash technology.

The decision by Adobe reverses an earlier pledge in which it said it would help get Flash working on iPhone, iPad and iPod Touch. In mid-April, Adobe released software called Creative Suite 5 that contained translation tools that automatically turn Flash code into programs that run on the iPhone. Apple updated the terms and conditions of the license software developers must sign to create iPhone and iPad applications which in effect placed strict restrictions on what developers can use to create these applications and effectively banned them from using code translators such as Creative Suite 5.

Apple announced imminent changes to the way software development kit is used and will reject any application that didn't use the mandated tools.

Industry experts said the restrictions might be intended to stop developers re-using applications written with Adobe's Flash. Neither the iPhone nor iPad can run Flash applications.

Adobe released a software package, Creative Suite 5, on 12 April which can turn Flash code into iPhone code.

Flash programs are very widely used on the web and many games and videos are created using the software. However, under the new terms and conditions using Creative Suite 5 would lead to an application being rejected.

Adobe was prompt to display its dismay over Apple's decision to officially stop supporting Flash on iPod, iPhone and now iPad.

It looks like Apple is continuing to impose restrictions on their devices that limit both content publishers and consumers. Unlike many other ebook readers using the ePub file format, consumers will not be able to access ePub content with Apple's DRM technology on devices made by other manufacturers. And without Flash support, iPad users will not be able to access the full range of web content, including over 70% of games and 75% of video on the web. Read more

Apple’s campaign against Adobe Flash has become explicit. The company on Thursday published a website of “iPad-ready websites,” listing sites that support “the latest web standards — including HTML5, CSS3, and JavaScript.”

Clearly Apple believes Flash is an outdated standard. Apple has reportedly been urging web developers to use HTML5 for video playback rather than Flash. Noticeably, HTML5 appears 10 times on the “iPad-ready websites” page.

Websites on-board the iPad-ready boat include The New York Times, CNN, Reuters the White House and others.

While Netflix's subscriber base looks set to expand, changes at the United States Postal Service in regards with higher fees and elimination Saturday mail delivery could deliver a serious blow to the fine tuned Netflix's business model.

Netflix is in many ways the epitome of the 21st century company: It's based in Silicon Valley, it sells its services exclusively online, and it employs a hip bit of Web-speak in its name. But even as it boasts many of the trappings of a New Economy juggernaut, Netflix is still almost entirely reliant on that most 19th century of institutions: the United States Postal Service. Indeed, Netflix is the Postal Service’s biggest corporate customer. Read more

While it makes a perfect sense to charge for content, I am afraid that public is already spoiled enough and expects all content to be Free.

The Times and Sunday Times newspapers will start charging to access their websites in June, owner News International (NI) has announced. Users will pay £1 for a day's access and £2 for a week's subscription. Read more

Contrary to the claim on Apple site, I found MOV container incompatible with iPod Touch Browser. I had no problem with MOV on iPhone. They share the same OS, but browsers are different.

NEW YORK (CNNMoney.com) -- Cisco unveiled a new Internet technology Tuesday that it says will provide the ultra-fast data speeds necessary to stay ahead of users' rapidly growing online video demands.

The new technology, known as "CRS-3," is a network routing system that will be able to offer downloads of up to 322 Terabits per second, according to the company.

Translation: Well in Cisco terms, the router will be able to provide download speeds of 1 Gigabit per second for everyone in San Francisco, download the entire printed collection of the Library of Congress in 1 second and stream every movie ever created in less than 4 minutes.

Full article

Hulu's days as a free online video site could be ending soon.

Comedy Central's decision to yank two of the most popular shows on Hulu — "The Daily Show" and "The Colbert Report" — in a dispute over splitting ad revenue is the latest blow to the entertainment industry's attempts to make money off ads that run with free video.

Chase Carey, chief operating officer of Hulu co-owner News Corp., has said that the site would have to start charging for some video eventually, though he and other officials have been mum about when that would happen and what aspects would remain free.

Read more

 The Tribeca Film Festival, according to the article at NYT, has aspirations to distribute films digitally and in theaters under the Tribeca name.

An Italian court has convicted three Google executives in a trial over a video showing an autistic teenager being bullied. The video showing an autistic teenager being bullied was posted on Google Video in 2006 shortly before the firm acquired YouTube.

Prosecutors argued that Google broke Italian privacy law by not seeking the consent of all the parties involved before allowing it to go online.

Read more

The QuickTime Player for Windows makes it possible to view and listen to many different types of media, including audio and video "embedded" in web pages. Firefox and other Mozilla browser users often ask why they are told that additional plugins are needed for content that QuickTime can handle, when the QuickTime Player is already installed. In most cases, it's just a matter of enabling the QuickTime browser plugin for a particular MIME type

Read complete instructions

Contrary to the previous reports, Ferran Adria of El Buli announced that the restaurant, considered by many to be the world’s greatest, will close permanently in part after losing nearly 500,000 euros per year.

DVD sales have fallen from $12 billion in 2004 to $8.7 billion in 2009. It appears that consumers have embraced the cut-throat rates of Redbox, which poses a threat not only to Hollywood, but also to another rental darling, Netflix. Hence the inspiration and hope of online sales. "This week the Digital Entertainment Content Ecosystem (DECE), a consortium that includes five of the six big studios as well as technology firms and retailers, agreed on a format for digital films and named a single outfit to keep track of purchases," according to the Economist from January 9th, 2010. One small problem, though. DECE is not keeping Apple in the loop and trying to carve out their own way of distributing media. Needless to say, anybody who is slightly familiar with Apple, iPod or iPhone and particularly its growth with the younger segment of population should notice some very serious flaws on the behalf of big studios. It does seems that history repeats itself if one would think back to the not so recent past with the advent of copy protected CDs and various other formats to keep the music out of people's iPods.

Apple has been floating a $30 per month television subscription service. It remains unclear if it will be all-you-can-eat service or if television companies will insist on metering. It also remains unclear  if content providers who remain resistant to change will be willing to open up to a wider audience instead of making lucrative deals with service provers such as Time Warner, AT&T and Comcast.

Hard pressed to find an alternative revenue stream due to the global advertising recession and reported thirst for more venture funding, Facebook is ready to devote an entire team to Facebook Payments Operations.

The social network is seeking a "Payment Operations Strategist" to "work cross-functionally with the Product and Engineering teams to design tools and systems to serve our hundreds of millions of users and our ever-growing base of advertisers," as well as a risk management specialist to be based in its Dublin, Ireland, office to handle billing, payment, and security operations in European and Middle Eastern countries.

"Projects driven by Payment Operations team members will potentially contribute millions of dollars to Facebook's business, as well as enable the company to scale and expand its operations in the coming years," the careers site explained.

Lindsay Robertson gives a list of DOs and DONTs in online publicity. A must read. Below are my favorite DONTs.

1. FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE means FOR IMMEDIATE DELETE to any blogger with any influence. Period.

4. Don’t Lie Part 2: Stop Being Days Behind on Your Own Announcements, And Don’t Try to Cover it Up

Don’t wait on announcing new content - the blogosphere will find it on its own (we have these things called google alerts). Or worse, for the love of god, do not EVER send an email saying that something has just been posted (like a movie trailer, for example - this happens daily), when it’s actually been on the internet for more than, say, an hour. If you’re sending it to anyone with any idea what they’re doing, they saw your trailer (and, often, posted it on the blog you’re trying to court) DAYS AGO. And if for some reason they, I don’t know, took one day off from the internet and actually BELIEVE you that something is new and post it when it’s not, they will hate you and your company forever. Forever.

Faux pas revealed during the interview with an anonymous Facebook employee, such as master passwords, keeping data after it has been deleted and eye tracking are all business as usual for anybody ever involved in developing social media platforms. Yet, master password sounds really redundant since all the data is stored on the back end. Indefinitely. At least for now.

Employee: It’s really hard to judge exactly the way users are going to react. We just didn’t have a good enough beta-testing system in place. When you have a group of twenty engineers working on a project, they think it’s the most beautiful, immaculate thing in the world, and then they build it, and a project manager approves it. Initially, when that was the case, we just pushed it, and if users didn’t like it we pulled it back. That was just our philosophy, one of trial and error. Whereas now we’ve started running psychological analysis, starting to…

Rumpus: Oh really?

Employee: Fuck yeah. Are you kidding me? We do eye-tracking to see where your eyes move while you browse Facebook.

While Blockbuster stock is in jeopardy of being delisted by The New York Stock Exchange and web site 27/7WallSt.com listed Blockbuster among the 10 most likely brands to be extinct in 2010, Blockbuster has no intentions of going away quietly.

According to Home Media Magazine "Blockbuster Inc. — the venerable brand some believe to be as relevant as the pager — is about to reinvent itself as a one-stop shop for home enetertainment." Blockbuster will unveil additional Consumer Electronics partnerships, including high-definition televisions that feature an internal Blockbuster widget, which is supposed to enable consumers to rent or buy movies electronically. For example, consumers who download a Blockbuster rental will be able to pause the movie and play it later on other connected devices.

It appears that Blockbuster still doesn't understand the shifts in the technology, which enable consumer to break their dependance from the devices such as TiVo, etc. and play a movie on one single device, such as their computer or iPod for viewing on demand.