NBC, News Corp. Team Up for YouTube Rival

News Corp. and NBC Universal will launch a video-streaming Web site this year to challenge Google's YouTube.
Ben Ames, IDG News Service

Thursday, March 22, 2007 11:00 AM PDT
Source: http://www.pcworld.com/article/id,130074-c,video/article.html

News Corp। and NBC Universal will challenge Google Inc।'s YouTube for online eyeballs and advertising dollars by launching a video-streaming Web site by the third quarter, News Corp. announced Thursday.Through a promotion deal with AOL LLC, Microsoft Corp.'s MSN, MySpace and Yahoo Inc., the new site will reach 65 million viewers, accounting for 96 percent of U.S. unique online users on a monthly basis, the company said.

To keep those viewers, NBC and News Corp। will offer free viewing of TV episodes by supporting the business with advertising by Cadbury Schweppes PLC, Cisco Systems Inc., Esurance Inc., Intel Corp. and General Motors Corp. The partners will also try to create an interactive Web community by inviting users to create personalized video playlists, mashups, online communities and a video-search function.

NBC and News Corp। could also use the site as a virtual channel some day, licensing and producing original programming in addition to the standard network fare including programs like "Heroes," "24," "My Name is Earl," "Saturday Night Live," "The Simpsons" and "Prison Break."

In contrast to the amateur clips available on YouTube, the new site will give consumers professionally produced video, said News Corp। President Peter Chernin in a statement. The site will offer a library of premium content from a dozen networks and two film studios. The partners have not announced the site's name or management, but said that its transitional leader will be George Kliavkoff, who is currently NBC Universal's chief digital officer.

Rather than pull viewers away from its partner portals like AOL, the site will feed its video to them। That design will allow viewers to play videos without leaving AOL's site or even opening additional Web browser windows, according to a statement by AOL spokeswoman Anne Bentley.

AOL also played down the brewing rivalry with YouTube, saying that YouTube owner Google also holds a five percent stake in AOL। So both companies will benefit as AOL draws a portion of the advertising revenue generated by the new site, Bentley said.

Likewise, MSN parent Microsoft said the new site could create a major new revenue stream through advertising dollars।

"Our investments in MSN Video and SoapBox over the past couple of years have shown us that video is an amazing driver of user engagement and excitement, both for consumers and for advertisers," said Kevin Johnson, president of Microsoft's platform and services division, in a release.

Firefox Hit by Fewer Flaws Than IE in 2006

According to Symantec, Mozilla's Firefox suffered from 26 percent fewer vulnerabilities in the second half of 2006.
Gregg Keizer, Computerworld
Wednesday, March 21, 2007 01:00 AM PDT


Mozilla Corp.'s Firefox suffered from 26 percent fewer vulnerabilities in the second half of 2006 than Microsoft Corp.'s Internet Explorer, a security company's research said Monday.
According to Symantec's tally, 40 Firefox vulnerabilities were disclosed between August and December 2006; Internet Explorer (IE), meanwhile, was hit with 54 bugs. Opera and Safari -- the browser Apple Inc. bundles with Mac OS X -- had four flaws each.

For all of 2006, however, the numbers were nearly neck and neck: Firefox was nailed by 87 flaws during the 12 months, IE by 92. The trend line also put Firefox in the better light. The open-source browser had 15 percent fewer vulnerabilities in the second half of the year compared to the first, while IE's total increased 42 percent during the period.

"Internet Explorer was particularly affected by concerted efforts to 'fuzz' the browser for new vulnerabilities," said the Symantec report, which cited July's 'Month of Browser Bugs' project as a big contributor. "The majority reported affected Internet Explorer or Windows components accessible through the browser," Symantec said.

To add insult to injury to IE, Mozilla developers patched Firefox five times faster than did Microsoft's. On average, Firefox had an attack exposure window -- the amount of time between the disclosure of a bug and when it was patched -- of just two days based on a sample set of 26 flaws. By comparison, Microsoft took an average of 10 days to patch the sample 15 vulnerabilities. Both vendors' attack windows were a day longer in the second half of the year than in the first six months.

"Web browsers continue to be the big exploit area," said Vincent Weafer, senior director of Symantec's security response team "And they will increasingly be more important as more data reside on the back end, as Web applications become more popular."

The most recent data pegged IE's market share at 79.1 percent and Firefox's at 14.2 percent. Safari and Opera came in third and fourth, respectively, with 4.9 percent and 0.79 percent.
Symantec's twice-annual Internet security threat report can be found on the Cupertino, Calif., company's Web site.

For more enterprise computing news, visit Computerworld.
Story copyright © 2007 Computerworld Inc. All rights reserved.