I fail to understand what this achieves for hulu and their partners. The advertising is integrated into the media, so I view it whether I watch it at hulu.com or via boxee. When I tell people why I canceled my cable and where/how I watch my TV now, the message is always a combination of hulu and boxee so it’s not as the hulu’s brand takes a hit. If anything it is enhanced because it’s basically my sole source of TV broadcasts.
Have these people not heard that iTunes now sells music DRM free today in spite of a history of the music industry trying to protect and control the distribution and consumption of its content?
When will they learn that the methods of distribution and consumption are now among the least significant factor. Rather they should be looking to every distribution channel possible (within reason) to reach as many people as they can.
It’s unfortunate that if this stands it renders boxee basically impotent in the near term for my purposes. Hulu on my appleTV is basically my only use for boxee. Now I need to go get a piece of hardware that can run an internet browser that I can hook up to my TV via HDMI.
Avner, I think what you and your team have created has great potential and I hope you find a way to help these old media companies see that their participation in…heck their endorsement of boxee is in their own best interests.
Originally posted as a comment by turbobrown on boxee blog using Disqus.
Categories: Uncategorized
I came across The 12 for 12K Challenge this morning and wanted to share it with you. A group of folks have volunteered their time and resources to spread the word about one charity each month this year with the goal of raising $12,000 for the charity during their designated month. The concept is simple in that if 1200 people give $10 in a given month they’ll have reached their goal.
This month’s charity is Stop the Silence an organization that works with children worldwide who have been victims of sexual abuse. Money donated to Stop the Silence helps pay for medical and psychiatric treatment, social services, special education, and legal and judicial and incarceration costs.
I know times are tight for many in this economy, but I think we could all find a way to cut $10 of spending in our budgets each month in order to make a small difference in the lives of children in great need. Will you join me in giving ten dollars each month for the next eleven months?
Categories: Uncategorized
Our economy today is faltering for so many reasons that many people smarter than I have analyzed and explained, and I have no idea what the right decision is to stem the recession and prevent a depression. I do, however, believe that no amount of money can reverse the methods of doing business that caused this crisis in the first place, methods will most likely perpetuate themselves into the future. We’ve arrived here because corporations drive consumers to consume even more of what they don’t need so that their stockholders get richer. (I certainly believe that I and my fellow consumers share in the fault by buying into their empty messages.) This incessant driving has paid off making those at the top extremely wealthy, giving others incentive to follow in their footsteps. Without a fundamental change to this model we will find ourselves in this same position again in the future.
I believe that the necessary fundamental change is to restructure the way profits are distributed. What if every company, not out of any obligation but out of civic duty, comitted to donating some significant percentage of their profits year over year to charitable causes. I wonder how much different the board meetings would look and how businesses’ decision making processes would be changed if they knew that the impact of their decisions determined, for example, how many homes in some 3rd world country received fresh water that quarter. I know many organizations already participate in socially responsible activities and charitable giving and I’m all for that, but I’m talking about taking this to the next level. What if each of us sacrificed a little bit of affluence and comfort to insure that we were taking care of our neighbor. How could this be a bad thing?
In days when we are reading about a former executive doing what I consider to be the criminal activity of spending upwards of one million dollars to refurbish his executive office as his company disappeared from existence, I think we need to look at the brand of captilism we’ve become. We now live in a society where our kids grow up thinking it is better to have a multi-room multi-million dollar “crib” than it is to insure that their fellow man on any continent has three square meals and a safe place to rest. A society where we glorify the lives of do-nothing celebutantes instead of making hero’s out of the people who sacrifice and spend their lives doing things to make this world a better place. It’s time for us to change what we work for and value, and what those whoe come after us will work for and value.
Maybe it’s time to form a new stock exchange, a Benevolent Market, where only companies that commit to donating 25% or more of their profits to charitable organizations can be traded. I’d rather put my money in that kind of market and support companies with that kind of commitment to making this world a better place for all of its inhabitants. I wonder how much better you would feel as an employee in the standard issue grey cube of one of these corporations knowing that your work wasn’t just making your executives richer, but that it was also helping to fund the research that will eventually find the cure for AIDS. I wonder if books would be cooked in a way that guaranteed the mortgaging of a company’s future, Enron style, if that also meant that the corporation’s ability to help sustain an inner city hospital would go down with it.
I guess this probably smells like socialism, but the beauty is it’s self-imposed. Maybe the exchange would have some branch of the SEC to insure that the criteria of giving was met but otherwise businesses would be free to give to the charities of their choice. The day-to-day grind of business becomes about more than empire building, it would be about the outcomes of what the chosen charities would be able to do with all the hard work that the employees put in to allow the company to earn more and therefore give more. It’s time to stem the tide of greed in our economy before the market is no longer able to correct itself of all the lies and deceptions that have forged stock prices. It’s time to start evaluating ways to enter into the business of social responsibility.
Is it possible?
Categories: Uncategorized
Tagged: business, charity, economy, social responsibility
