Great Write-Up on Video Sites

Sorry for the being out of communication the last few days, everyone. Work has been overwhelming my time, and things are looking good. The more people I speak with about the project, the better I feel about its chances for success. Now it comes down to building the platform, which should start in the next week or so. Can't wait.

If you missed it, ReadWriteWeb did a great comparison write-up of the big video sites, minus CutCaster, which is coming soon. You can find it here.

Meeting with the Designer

Had a good meeting with Justin and Bastien tonight. Bastien is very good and has helped us hone our strategy and our target audience. Justin, of course, couldn't keep his red eyes open after working his 30th consecutive day of 15 hours and almost fell asleep in his drink. hahah. Stop falling asleep at the table, bro.

The logo and site design should be done by the end of the month. I'm looking forward to that being complete.

Walmart Announces New Movie Download Service

Welcome to the game, Walmart. It seems inevitable and defensible to me that Walmart, after contributing yet another bilious drop in the mass-corporate slopbucket, would react in a backlashing manner to the many online video downloading services eating away at their DVD sales bottom line, cry about it, and start such a service of their own. It was announced today that they are moving into the movie and television download business, and I think it is a wise and long overdue moment for them. Ultimately, I think it will be healthy for the market, as customers will get acclimated to buying and viewing their content online.

A nice bonus for Walmart is the fact that they got every major studio to sign onto the deal. Walt Disney, Warner Brothers, Sony, Universal, Paramount, and 20th Century Fox are all on board. Caveat Emptor, however: Walmart is not the first to get all these big fish in the same boat; CinemaNow and Movielink have similiar deals and should be shaking in their boots now that Walmart will begin to feed its insatiable appetite. It is also notable that Walmart is the first big brand name to do so behind Apple's iTunes. Now all they have to do is make sure their browser's technical hiccups get fixed. Seems like a pre-alpha release to me.

Design Time

Meeting with our designer, Bastien from Freeset.com, tonight to go over some logo designs and come up with a final product which you will be able to see at www.cutcaster.com. Bastien has been doing some pretty outstanding work with his human locator project, a motion tracking audio-video system designed specifically for advertisers. Awesome stuff.

Jonathon A., find his website here, is supposed to send me the "coming soon" webpage template as well tonight, so that page should be up in the next two days or so. And then it is off to the races.

Decisions... Decisions...

Seems like the last few months I have had to turn down a number of different job opportunities, decisions that have confounded me and forced me to focus and choose what I want truly to do over the next few years. Under alternate circumstances, I would have taken a harder look at the opportunities, or even have taken the best offer, but, for some reason, my heart and desire are aligned to do this, and I cannot wait to see Cutcaster grow!

Here it is:

This is the third time I have been approached by this "Brokerage House X." Ill say X to protect the innocent. I've told them twice that I am not interested because I am pursuing this outside idea. Company X offered me the chance to continue trading stocks which i really like, in addition to supporting my video marketplace start-up which is really heating up. I wouldn't have to hide around at work and sneak hourly into conference rooms to make calls during the day. It sounds almost too good to be true and probably is. Who knows?

I've told Justin and we are both going to sleep on it tonight but I'm confident I know my decision. And with that, I'm off to count some sheep.

Welcome to CutCaster!

Justin and I will be updating this blog to keep you all informed about the details of building the business/online video marketplace, tell you what we like and don't like about online video, and seek to communicate with people who share a similiar passion for online video, as well as the players who are revolutionizing the media landscape. Please stay in touch and get your content ready!