DanLin.net

Amber MacArthur from Citytv’s Webnation V2 abruptly left the Canadian television network after her show was canceled earlier today.

She sent this email to her fellow Roger’s colleagues to announce the news
——-

Hi everyone,

Today was my last day at Citytv (was a surprise to me too!). I just found out this afternoon that Rogers has pulled the plug on our show, Webnation V2, because they do not have the budget or commitment to see it through. It’s been a wild ride. Since hosting tech and web shows is what I do, naturally there is no home for me at Citytv.

Thank you to Andrew, Brian, Chris, Sheldon, Dan, Jason, Vik, and everyone else who knew the show was a success and who believe in the future of new media news (ironically, we just found out that we won the Top New Podcast Award for 2007 on iTunes). Go team.

Much thanks as well to the CNI gang and to everyone else in the newsroom who kept me sane over the past year and a half. Also, since everyone forgets the camera department, a big shout-out to you boys and girl!

As for my next steps, I will find a new home for the show and keep on reporting on the ever-changing web-front.

See you online.

——

I guess this is a perfect opportunity for Revision3 to snatch up yet another TechTV alum into their burgeoning online media network.

If the title of this post rings a bell, you need to watch this video….

This reminds me that its time again to do taxes….

Still looking for that Hulu invite? They decided to offer 2500 public invites through selected blogs. Get them while you can. They are going fast…

TechCrunch - Already ran out
GigaOm - 1766 left as of posting
ReadWriteWeb - 2207 left as of posting
Ars Technica - All 2500 still available as of posting

The above list ranks the mega bloggers in order of douchbaggy-ness.

Update: Mashable also was graced with their very own 2500 invites.

I watched a 43 minute episode of Ghost Hunters on Hulu the other day. It was a great show and the video quality was decent but the commercials are a million times worst than regular television. It starts out with a sponsorship drop saying that the show was brought with ‘limited interruptions’ by the advertiser. The truth is, the interruptions are unbearable. They are 5 minute long commercials that you can’t skip. That can be fine if the commercials are engaging and have a good variety of content but that is definitely not the case.

Throughout the 43 minute show, the same 5 minute commercial played 5 times. That’s 25 minutes worth of commercials with 43 minutes of content where usually only 17 minutes would play on regular TV. The fact that you had to sit through the same 5 minutes 5 times is enough to make you want to pull that ethernet plug out of your computer. On top of that, they cut into the shows at random moments. If this is how they are going to deliver their content online, it is going to discourage a lot of viewers.

It is possible that the networks don’t really want hulu to be as successful as it promises to be due to the lucrative contract they have with satellite and cable providers. But that’s just not the way to launch a product that has so much promise just to be sabotaged by its creator.

Today I got my hulu.com invite to the private beta. it is pretty nice. i will do a full review of it later but for now, please enjoy the movie Sideways

Not into wine?

How about Weekend at Bernies?