The definitive guide to watching the Olympics online

The folks who are bringing you the Olympics online don't actually want you to watch their coverage. NBC and Microsoft are delaying the most popular events by three hours so that it won't interfere with more profitable TV broadcasts. And you'll have to download Microsoft's Silverlight browser plug-in to watch in your browser. But a bird's nest of geography and time-delay restrictions worthy of China's Communist Party government is in place. Thankfully, the anarchy of the Web offers plenty of options for having a crowd of curious coworkers surround your computer as you watch live handball, with varying degrees of expense and difficulty. Rather than being the coming-out party for Silverlight Microsoft hopes for, it may instead be the year sports fans learn a few new online-video tricks. More »

Nielsen can't make Google TV ads accountable

The last we heard from Google on TV advertising, cofounder Sergey Brin gloated that "interest" and "bookings" were up. He told us that "the remarkable thing about television advertising, is that it is almost as accountable as online advertising." I didn't believe him then. The news that Nielsen has agreed to provide Google with demographic data on television audiences makes me even more skeptical. This just shows that Google had no idea what it was getting into when it decided to try to get into selling TV ads. More »

EchoStar buys Sling Media — and a shot at the future

What does EchoStar's $380 million deal to buy Sling Media mean? In some ways, Sling's decision to sell out seems odd. Satellite TV is on the downswing, most people believe. Rupert Murdoch, after all, sold News Corp.'s stake in DirecTV, in part to raise cash to buy Dow Jones — favoring content, in other words, over distribution. But Charlie Ergen, the obstreperous entrepreneur behind EchoStar, may have a larger plan for Sling's Net-connected set-top boxes. "This is just the beginning," says Sling founder Blake Krikorian in an interview with PaidContent. He's not kidding. The rich EchoStar buy, I believe, is a move by Ergen to prepare his company for life after satellite TV. More »