Tuesday Evening Links

Gabble is a new site from Hewlett-Packard that lets people post videos online. But unlike Google’s YouTube service, which is geared to sharing with the masses, only people invited to your Gabble group can view your videos.

How long can the videos be?
Recorded videos (with your webcam) can be up to 2 minutes long. Uploaded videos are limited to 100Mb, but not limited by duration.

Can I send videos to people who aren't on Gabble yet?
Yep. You can send a direct video message to someone just by entering their email address. Your friend will be sent an email with a link that takes them to a page where they can watch your video.

A trio of long-time media executives are building a computer system to allow newspapers and magazines to charge for online access, including an all-you-can-read subscription that would allow access to multiple publications, the executives said on Tuesday.
Their company, Journalism Online Inc., aims to supply publishers with ready-made tools to charge Internet fees, an idea that has gained sudden currency as advertising revenue plummets, but whose prospects of success are doubted by many media analysts.

As the company envisions the system, a non-paying reader on a magazine or newspaper site would reach a certain point and see a page asking for payment — the Journalism Online system, operating within the publication’s Web site. But a reader who wanted a subscription to multiple sites would go directly to the new company’s own site.

He said that for the unlimited subscriptions, “we’re playing with a figure of $15 a month.”

The company also plans to negotiate licensing and royalty fees with search engines and news aggregators for the use of the publications’ work, and has retained Mr. Boies’ law firm, Boies Schiller & Flexner, for that work.

But AT&T's exclusive deal to carry the iPhone in the U.S. expires next year, according to people familiar with the matter, and Mr. Stephenson is now in discussions with Apple Inc. to get an extension until 2011.

An Apple spokeswoman declined to comment, saying only, "We have a great relationship with AT&T."

Mr. Stephenson declined to discuss the terms of AT&T's agreement with Apple -- only saying it is a multi-year deal. The company has said it added 4.3 million iPhone subscribers in the second half of 2008 -- about 40% of whom were new to AT&T.