From the monthly archives:

December 2009

Hulu Releases Happy Year-End Stats

by Michelle Lentz on December 30, 2009

It’s the end of the year and everyone who is happy is releasing their stats. Those that aren’t happy, well, not so much. Hulu is getting into the stats game with a Thank You blog post letting us all know that TV-via-PC is very much here to stay.

Let’s start with some of the more useful, business-related stats.

  • According to comScore, monthly users of Hulu grew to over 43 million, a 95 percent increase over this time last year.
  • Hulu doubled their content in the last year, now offering 14,000 hours of content. Last year they offered 5,600 and I still depended on them.
  • Here’s an advertising tidbit for you: The number of advertisers/marketers using Hulu has also more than doubled, growing from 166 to 408.
  • Embeds are up too. Over 6.4 million Hulu players were embedded, which is a 237% jump.

Now for some of the more entertaining factoids:

We like comedies, as evidenced by four of the five most popular shows this year: Saturday Night Live, Family Guy, The Office, The Simpsons, and Naruto Shippuden. In line with that, the most popular clip of the year was an SNL Digital Short: Motherlover. Also in that vein, the most popular full episode was Family Guy’s “Stew-Roids.”

Have you switched over to your PC yet for video? By the numbers, it looks like more and more of us have.

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Cheers!
Tweet Michelle @writetechnology, send her technology news at michelle[at]writetech[dot]net, visit her wine blog when you’re thirsty, and drop by her day job.

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Evernote Breaks the Two Million User Mark

by Michelle Lentz on December 30, 2009

by Michelle Lentz

Mashable is reporting that Evernote has smashed the two million mark. Over two million people are using Evernote for everything from note taking to photo albums to just about anything else.

It took the company only 7 months to reach the two million mark – they broke one million users back in May. This means it took Evernote half the time to grow from 1 to 2 million, which is a great sign for the health of the note-taking service.

Here are some of the stats released by Evernote today:

I fully admit that, having been Beta testing the now-released Android app for Evernote and using it on my iPhone-turned-iPod Touch, I actually fall into the 2% of users who have logged via 5 different platforms.I think it’s great how Evernote has embraced mobile – you’ll notice they have an app for every major platform out there, including iPhone, Android, Palm Pre, WinMo, and Blackberry.

I personally swear by Evernote and tend to take all my conference related notes directly into the program. After the Social Media World Forum, I was even able to integrate all the slide presentations and then share my notes with the world. Granted, I caved and upgraded to the Premium version at some point, thus cementing my relationship with the company. But the fact that I can take notes on my phone or my Netbook and have those notes waiting for me at home on my Mac makes me very happy.

So congratulations to Evernote!

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Cheers!
Tweet Michelle @writetechnology, send her technology news at michelle[at]writetech[dot]net, visit her wine blog when you’re thirsty, and drop by her day job.

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Apple, HP Turn to Mobile Devices for Future Economies

by Kristen Nicole on December 30, 2009

There’s a lot of trademarking going on lately. Between Apple’s iSlate and iGuide, and HP’s Zeen and Airlife, it’s relatively obvious that efforts towards making new and sexy mobile devices is a focus for both of these companies. Apple already has a dominating presence in the mobile device arena, and it’s been this way for quite a few years now. Having established those standards, however, the rest of the world has been steadily trying to catch up.

What will happen in the next year or so will be full of wonder and excitement, as more manufacturers look to create their own mobile devices featuring innovative designs, new options for integrated communication functionality, and associated networks and cloud-based services to make the operation of your new mobile device a thoughtless activity.

Appealing to consumer convenience, businesses are finding themselves anxious to monetize the mobile industry. A new long tail has been created, with revenue opportunities coming from mobile application platforms, virtual goods, the localization of contextually shared content and search-turned-recommendations based on the aforementioned revenue streams.

Creating mobile extensions of nearly everything we already do on a daily basis can be big business, especially when it comes to the centralization of services into a single device. This lends itself to a necessity for the centralization of other things, such as finances, mobile access to the Internet, and a desire for improved mobile technology overall. The rapid expansion of money-making opportunities gives several businesses a strong desire to enter the market early and strong. This is evidenced by both Apple and HP more recently, with Google, T-Mobile, Verizon and Microsoft being heavily involved in pushing these trends as well.

For consumers, I still think a major concern will revolve around the privacy factor. The ability for any of these major companies to monopolize the industry or even the information you need for personal purposes is imminent, especially as many consumers find the upcoming services to be rather cnonvenient. Personal mobile devices are certainly the way of the future, and a new economy will rise along with them.

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Google Labs Makes Trip Planning More Social

by Kristen Nicole on December 29, 2009

Google Labs has been toying around with Google Maps a lot lately, especially with its City Tours option it rolled out a few months back. New updates to the City Tours, however, make them far more social and even easier for you to plan a trip.

The City Tours, which is still in testing mode as a Google Labs feature, can now be imported from your My Map option. If you’ve marked your own Google Map according to attractions you found interesting in a city, that’s helpful to Google and other Map users. By importing your own tour, Google can make it available to others that may find your trip plan of interest. In this case, a public map can be imported from City Tours by another user, giving them your trekked route as a recommendation to try out for themselves. If you’d rather not share your entire city tour, you can import your marked maps just for your own trip-planning purposes.

Additionally, City Tours has complete walking directions, giving details beyond estimated travel time based on distance between attractions. Google now provides complete pedestrian routing information for the entire imported tour, including road types, bridges and bodies of water. This really integrates the standard Google Maps walking directions into the City Tours Labs feature, taking it one step closer to becoming a full-fledged and official app.

As far as trip-planning goes, however, the improved City Tours and its ongoing integration with regular Google Maps features makes it an intruging experiment and tool. This is even more pronounced now that Google has made City Tours more social in their ability to be made public and imported by other users. The company’s interest in maps has also been emphasized thanks to its mobile Android platform, increasing the need for map features and enhancements, with easy-to-usefunctions that can accommodate a traveler on the go.

Having just been to Hawaii to visit 7 cities on 3 islands during a cruise, I readily await the future of Google Mobile apps for trip planning. You never really know what you’ll want to do on a trip until you get there. Having a mobile tool to help plan a trip in just a few clicks receives a lot of stress from the trip-planning process.

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My Can’t-Live-Without Travel Gadgets of 2009

by Michelle Lentz on December 29, 2009

by Michelle Lentz

For me, 2009 was the Year of the Suitcase. I traveled more, for both business and pleasure, than I ever have before. That trend looks like it will continue into 2010, which is pretty exciting. In fact, my 2010 kicks off next week with a trip to Las Vegas for CES 2010, where I’ll probably find new gadgets to lust after. Until then, however, I’m thrilled with several of the gadgets that have gotten me through the last year of travel. Some of them aren’t as new as they possibly could be, and some of them are pretty basic, but they all serve their purpose.

Amazon Kindle 2: I pre-ordered this last February. It was my first big gadget purchase of the year and I don’t regret it for a second. Sure, I occasionally lose a lot of patience with Amazon, considering that it won’t read the ePub format. I am a big proponent of ereaders, Kindle or otherwise, and evangelize them to everyone. See me in an airport and want to play with my Kindle? No problem. It has made traveling a lot easier (I used to pack tons of books and now I just pack the Kindle) and I still end up reading myself to sleep by the light of a booklight attached to the Kindle cover.


Sennheiser PXC 250 Noise Canceling Headphones: There are probably better options out there, but these Sennheisers fold up rather small and slip into my purse or briefcase. They block out just about everything, which makes flying so much easier. They’re also a whole lot cheaper now than when I purchased them, currently coming in at $62.66.

Luggage Scale: Without fail, I tend to both overpack for a trip and shop once I arrive. This means I’m always checking one bag, despite the ridiculous fees. To keep myself on the safe side of 50 pounds, I rely 100% on a portable digital luggage scale. These things retail for around $13 and have routinely saved me on excess fees and helped control my overpacking and shopping urges.

Wine Diapers / Wine Skins: Being a wine blogger, I can’t seem to travel anywhere without a bottle of wine, and I also tend to buy wine where ever I end up. This means that I not only need to pack the 750 ml of liquid in my checked luggage, but I need to keep it from breaking and turning a white designer sweater pink en route. I’ve been testing out the Wine Diaper, which works well and has the benefit of being reusable, but I rather prefer the Wine Skin.

Dell Mini: I ordered the Dell Mini 10v rather cheap (<$200) from the Dell Outlet. Not only that, I was able to score a pink one, which I quickly outfitted with a pink mouse and pink USB stick. I purposely bought a lower-end Mini, the 10v, which has the VGA port. Why? Because when I present at conferences, I need it to be as easy as possible with a low-barrier for whomever is setting me up / letting me use the equipment. The Mini 10 (no V) includes fancy items such as GPS and an internal TV tuner. I loaded up the Mini 10v with Windows 7, Word and Powerpoint, Thunderbird, Acrobat, and Firefox. With just that amount, it’s perfect for presentations, email, and surfing. However, a few weeks ago I had to write an RFP while traveling. Don’t buy a 10-inch netbook for your primary machine if you need to write anything more intensive than a basic blog post. At that point, the 10-inch screen is a hindrance. But for travel and presentations, the machine is a dream.

Virgin Mobile Broadband2Go: To complement the Mini 10V, I also picked up the Virgin Mobile Broadband2Go stick. After doing some price comparisons, it seemed the best option. Most of the places I go actually have wireless. However, occasionally the broadband or wireless in a hotel will be ridiculously expensive or just a poor connection. Sometimes I even find myself at conferences where I don’t have wireless available in the sessions rooms. Remarkable, but true. To combat this sometimes-but-not-always problem, I went with the pay-as-you-go option. I tried it out for the first time last week in Key West and it worked beautifully. I was able to do everything from surf the Web to uploading files. I bought a $20 card, which got me 250 MB (the equivalent of 2 hrs browsing, 1 hour web video, or 25,000 emails).  It was a leisure trip, so I wasn’t online much, but I still have about 150 MB left. The catch is that your data allowance expires anywhere from 10-30 days after purchase, depending on how much you buy. But if you buy strategically (in my case, before every trip), it shouldn’t be an issue. The initial hardware purchase will set you back $99 and there is a lot of freedom in being able to get online anywhere, anytime.

Motorola Droid: I realize I just got my hands on this in November, but it’s quickly become a huge part of my life. Now that I have service everywhere I go (unlike my last two years with AT&T), I am constantly tweeting, texting and emailing. I realize that might not be a good thing, but my ability to be connected has greatly increased. The keyboard makes everything easy for me and I have no problem finding free apps I like and need from the Android Marketplace. I can’t say that the Droid has changed the way I communicate. But it enhances my communications and allows me to communicate in ways I couldn’t with my iPhone.

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Cheers!
Tweet Michelle @writetechnology, send her technology news at michelle[at]writetech[dot]net, visit her wine blog when you’re thirsty, and drop by her day job.

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