It IS 1999 again (except without the IPO’s). Here are today’s deals:

• Fox Interactive Media buy Photobucket and Flektor.
• CBS buys Last.fm.

GigaOM has the full details.

As a father I’m subjected to hours and hours of Winnie the Pooh viewing pleasure. I’ve long contended that all is not right with the furry inhabitants of the Hundred Acre Wood. Now it seems I was right. I found this article published in the Canada Medical Association Journal that confirms my suspicions.

In summary:

Pooh Bear
ADHC and OCD

Piglet
Generalised Anxiety Disorder

Rabbit

Narcissistic Personality Disorder

Owl
Reading Disorder

The gloomiest diagnosis is for poor little Roo:

We especially worry about baby Roo. It is not his impulsivity or hyperactivity that concerns us, as we feel that those are probably age appropriate. We worry about the environment in which he is developing. Roo is growing up in a single-parent household, which puts him at high risk for Poorer Outcome. We predict we will someday see a delinquent, jaded, adolescent Roo hanging out late at night at the top of the forest, the ground littered with broken bottles of extract of malt and the butts of smoked thistles.

If you haven’t read Mark Cuban (Internet/digital TV gazzillionaire) then you should definitely grab his feed. His latest post about Donald Trump is classic stuff.

Nice one Mr Cuban, I too have been wondering how a once bankrupt who managed to screw up a casino business (how can you lose money with a casino?) could be hailed as such a business leader.

Technorati Tags: mark cuban, trump

Microsoft is going to buy aQuantive for $6 billion USD. aQuantive are the parent company for the largest digital/interactive agency in the world, Avenue A | Razorfish, as well as advertising technologies Atlas and Drive Performance Media.

This is big news. I know that Microsoft use Avenue A | Razorfish for all their interactive campaigns and work, so there is obviously a long term relationship.

Read the full article on cnet.

Don’t want to go on about YouTube, but just found Motiono. I know there are a raft of new video sharing sites, however, these guys have literally copied YouTube and changed out the logo.

The SMH has an interesting article covering the first interview with YouTube founders Chad Hurley and Steve Chen for a while. Here are the key points:

• They say a video advertising platform for YouTube could be ready within the next couple of months, although may be delayed by Google’s acquisition of DoubleClick.
• They are also close to deploying tools that will provide great copyright protection to content owners, a key issues they are facing with various large companies (Viacom, English Premier League, to name but a few) trying to take them to task for copyright infringement.
• One of these is in the area of unauthorised music tracks included in video clips. They are working with Los Gatos-based Audible Magic who have a technology that can flag unauthorised music.
• YouTube made US$15 million in revenue for Google last year.

US$1.6 billion for US$15 million in revenue. That is an impressive multiple! However, they did take Google stock rather than cash for most of it I believe.

In a related article, they are taking the the US Department of Defense to task for blocking access to YouTube. They have also blocked a host of others sites including MySpace, claiming they can’t handle the bandwidth across their network. As the YouTube guys point out, errr didn’t the DoD invent the Internet? The implication is that they are really concerned about video footage from the front getting uploaded without any controls in place.

Is it just me or is this user interface really terrible? Why can’t they AJAX it and make it easier to find stuff? How could the masters of intuitive UI get this so wrong?

I’ll tell you why not? THEY JUST DON’T GET IT.

EXHIBIT A

McDonald’s UK - Make Up Your Own Mind

Supposedly the site where members of the public can ask McDonald’s anything they like about their food and business. Great, an honest open attempt to combat the negative publicity generated by movies/books such as Super Size Me and Fast Food Nation. Except, all they have delivered is a contrived and completely disingenuous PR spin vehicle.

Concept by TBWA

• Built entirely in Flash! None of the content can be indexed in search engines. Ad agencies just can’t help themselves. When will they learn that websites are not like video production.
• No RSS feeds.
• Videos on the site are not on YouTube. The only one I could find was this one.
• Content is highly suspect. You can’t honestly tell me that the top 10 questions are all nice easy ones like “whats the lowest calorie meal you offer?”. It is just a happy coincidence that the number one question helps reinforce the current campaign to convince people that there are low fat options on their menu. Whatever.

I think it was incredibly brave of McDonald’s to try to engage with the public on these issues, however, as always, the delivery is just terrible. Trying to find some middle ground between a flashy TVC style concept and consumer generated media/social networking, just misses the mark and does more harm than good. It is all or nothing I’m afraid.

Disclaimer: My company does work for McDonald’s in New Zealand and works with their above the line agency. Luckily being agency types they won’t know about my blog so hopefully this won’t get me in trouble.

Why is getting DSL broadband at home so hard? Andy has had trouble with Verizon in the US, and I’ve just ended my 10 day broadband drought after a few rounds of the “blame game”. It’s your telco, no it’s your ISP’s fault, no it’s your router. The technician calls me at 1.30pm today out of the blue just as I am going into a meeting to say he is at my house and wants to get inside to look at our internal wiring. Err, I’m at work, can we reschedule for 4pm and I’ll come home early to meet you. Nope, you need to call the freephone number and reschedule. Reschedule? I never scheduled this appointment you just turned up on YOUR schedule. After asking him that he was 100% sure that nothing was wrong at their end and he was confident that it could only be the “internal wiring” I rang to try and reschedule. Sorry, not my department and the other department has gone home call your ISP and ask them to call us so that we can call our engineering contractor. What the…? Anyway, I decided I would try plugging in the DSL modem one more time just in case, and magically it is all working now, even though nothing was wrong at their end. Here’s the thing, if it is their fault, they can’t charge you, if it is “internal wiring” they charge you a call out fee. What’s the bet they would have poked around for 10 minutes if I had been home to let them in and blame our internal wiring so they could justify the fee.

I chose not to go with Telecom for my broadband, and you can’t help but feel that they could be actively trying to make it difficult if you choose a competitor. I’m an experienced software developer who used to work for an ISP and understands how all this stuff works. How many Joe Punter’s just give up because it is too hard, and we wonder why we New Zealand has one of the lowest percentage uptake of broadband in the OECD? Mystery solved. I’m off the fence on my views regarding breaking up Telecom, let’s do it. Maybe we should just nationlise it again, they basically behave like a public sector organisation anyway.

Technorati Tags: telecom new zealand, telecon

The latest trend seems to be overwhelmed executives declaring “Email Bankruptcy” where they basically just discard all their received email and start again or just refuse to use email as a primary form of communication.

Tempting, but not exactly practical I don’t think. Email is definitely misused in certain scenarios where a non-conversational medium is not appropriate and I am a strong believer in using the phone or meeting in person (I know, how 1997) when the situation calls for a quick resolution.

Of course you could always just use Outlook and then you’ll effectively get made bankrupt at least once per year when your .PST database file gets corrupted and you lose all your emails anyway.

Read the full story on the SMH article.