tumblr. - The Documentary from DaveAOK on Vimeo.

Our friend, director David Seger, finally tells the truth about our friends at Tumblr.

I started reading Ken Auletta’s wonderful books at the suggestion of my lifetime friend Nick Moy and have never been disappointed, especially as he switched his beat over towards media, my consuming interest. It’s rare to find a thorough reporter who’s also a compelling writer. So I was more than flattered when Herb suggested Ken talk to me about a future book he’s planning. Afterwards I walked him over to meet David Karp, someone who knows a lot more than I do.

As noted recently on Zeigen, Tivo Lovers, and the Tivo Blog, fans of Next New Networks can now get their Channel Frederator fix as a TiVo Season Pass. But not just Frederator — Fast Lane Daily, Indy Mogul, ThreadBanger, Pulp Secret, JETSET, VOD Cars and Veracifier have all recently launched TiVoCasts.

They’re accessible via your TiVo remote menu, or right on the TiVo website. We’ll be adding more networks over the next couple of weeks, as well as adding TiVo one-click subscribe buttons to our websites. Check it out!

Well, I’ve had my Jesus Phone for about 3 minutes and it’s already changed my life. I’ve lost 5 pounds, resolved the $3,700 discrepancy that’s been in my check book for the last 3 years and finally gotten through to Roy using the built in lawyer-to-reality converstion tool. It’s a great device. Lightweight. Slim. Arguably pretty. Well balanced. I’ve got my key stock portfolio synced to the stocks widget so that when my craptacular portfolio continues to slide, the phone can call the poor house for me.

Automatically.

I’ve got the secret RSS reader setup to download episodes of VOD Cars. I’ve got my horoscope all wired in. (Thanks, Mark) and I’m pretty sure I can use it to call my dad (on his cell, of course). I’m even blogging with it.

Yes, that’s right, fair reader. Jesus Phone can blog. I’m blogging with it right now. See how easy that virtual keyboard is to use? Feels like I’m typing nothing at all! Also, inserting images using the built in camera is a snap. Here. Take a look at this action shot from a meeting I had in my kitchen a few minutes ago:

You may think that calling the iPhone “Jesus Phone” may be marginally, if not completely, sacrilegious. Well, let me assure you that I’ve thought long and hard about this and include some helpful comparisons for you between these sons of gods.

As you can see, it’s very easy to confuse these Earth charged deities. While respect and admiration for the two is obviously deserved… worship, on the other hand, should be reserved for one of them.

In conclusion, Libya is a land of contrast.

On the eve of the arrival of my Jesus phone, I cannot help but feel a certain nostalgia for Motorola. Back when I was a wee lad, I recall my grandpa having a motorola radio in his car and office and all the trucks. Then, at some point in the early 1980s, the radio was replaced with a Motorola cell phone in his car. (The lock code was 4820 — and it took less than 1 trip to the boat to decrypt it.)

When it came time for me to start purchasing cell phones, I went the Motorola route. I had a Motorola flip phone. A MicroTAC. A MicroTAC Elite (one of my favourites). A StarTAC (with LED display). A StarTAC (with LCD display). A Razor. A black Razor. A blue Razor V3i. A red Razor V3i. A gold Razor V3i. A blue Krzr. A black Krzr. (There may have been a short lived Nokia and Sony Ericsson flirtation somewhere between StarTAC LCD and the first Razor…)

As time went on, cell phone revisions came more quickly and my desire to hack the phones to, you know, make them suck less, rose. My current phone, the black Krzr has a HEAVILY modified firmware courtesy of: Yours truly.

Tomorrow, a new dawn begins on the mobile phone landscape globally. Yes, the iPhone. Not because the phone is such a revolutionary game changing piece of hardware (although, that is part of it) but because it will, for the first time, open the Internet on hand held devices to entrepreneurs that will be unrestricted by mobile carriers. Thank you, Apple. But, with every dawn, there’s a sunset. This sunset ends my brand loyalty to Motorola. Sorry, grandpa.

Without further pontification, from the home office in West Hempstead NY, the Top Ten things I will NOT miss from the days of my Motorola Razors…

10: Always being asked if it’s “ok” to go online. Yes, for the love of God, it’s ok.

9: Always being informed, with great delay, how many bytes were transferred after going online. Why is email from Tim always 921 bytes more than Fred? Why does my phone think I care?

8: Slow to respond number entry when trying to dial. How hard is this to make work right?

7: Having to press 6 buttons to get to my inbox. Can that happen in 1 press? Maybe 2?

6: Waiting for Java. Memo to Sun: Give it up.

5: “Message Too Long! Message Truncated!” Wait, wait, wait, wait, wait…

4: WAP Decks controlled by “the man”. You don’t get to make media choices for me.

3: Expensive replacement cartridges (Oh wait, that’s what I’ll NOT miss about Gilette Razor…)

2: iTap.

1: Unbearably slow call waiting controls

Can’t wait until tomorrow…

Is there anything I really need to say here?

Today we launched an upgrade to our networks’ websites that for the first time puts them all on a shared platform with standard functionality, and gives us the ability to more easily stage and launch new features over the coming months. With the exception of JETSET, which is experimenting in its own ways (dig the MIX!), you can see the new platform in action on all of our sites, including the newly launched Indy Mogul, Veracifier, Channel Frederator, VOD Cars, ThreadBanger, Pulp Secret and Fast Lane Daily.

While you may not notice major new changes, there are a number of improvements we’re pretty excited about, including:

• a new layout to make sharing and commenting more accessible
• more emphasis on our network blogs
• support for anonymous comments + one-click commenting for logged-in viewers
• a snazzy new subscribe panel, designed by wunderkind Bobby Andersen (more on him later)
• a new flash player, with better fullscreen support and improved video quality.

Coolest thing about it for me, though? We have our own web-based admin tool, not unlike WordPress, for managing and editing all content and metadata across the networks, including video assets, blog posts, and “about” content on the sites. With a shared platform, all we have to do to customize the look and feel of each individual network site is upload a new CSS file and any images needed in the design of the page. That’s it. So almost anyone in our company can launch a new network in hours — it’s nearly as easy as launching a blog. And we can also grant our producing partners access to the networks they work on, enabling them to blog for the network, moderate comments, or publish new episodes.

We built this ourselves, since nothing out there did what we wanted — which makes me wonder, would anyone else out there like a tool like this to power your own network? That could be an interesting business for us — send me an email (tim at next new networks) if you’d like to test it out should we decide to open that up.

We hope you like the new sites — please let us know what you think, and how we can improve the experience even more. What would you like to see?

Up next, we’re planning to integrate features like browsing by tags, member profiles for viewers and contributors, an even cooler flash player, and easy ways to partner with your favorite network and get recognized for help spreading the word. Big props to everyone on our team who made this happen, especially Marc, our head of technology; Erin Flood, who kept us all in line; and the brillant team at Davidville.

I read books.

Sometimes in the interactive world and of moving pictures with sound plain old books are discounted a bit. But, I’m addicted. Good books, bad books, old books, new books.

So I’ve been a decent guinea pig for the electronic readers of the last 10 years, and I’ve finally found one that works good enough, the Sony Reader. The electronic “paper” it uses works like crazy and that’s the key. (more…)

Oooh, I love it when they like us so much.

The great Walt Mossberg just posted a column about videoblogs and independent shows on the web, finding “a Trove of Watchable Videos” beyond the big sites like YouTube. This is something important and worth nothing for me: in general, if Walt Mossberg’s writing about something, and he’s liking it, it’s going to be big. You may remember a mash note he wrote over five years ago to a little thing called the iPod.

Cutting to the heart of what, if anything, is good in a new technology as he often does (can you tell I’m a fan?), Mr. Mossberg rightly gives praise to many of Next New Networks’ favorite people currently catching the next wave, like our heroes at Blip.tv, Goodnight Burbank, and Alive in Baghdad, as well as the inimitable Josh Leo, all of whom we’re happy to call friends, and even happier to see in a Mossberg piece.

Hope you’ll keep watching, Walt, and writing. And we’re hoping to see a show from you soon, too.