I worked as the director of new media -- briefly -- for a network that built its content around teen-created media.

We took in content from across the country, repackaged it into shows and offered the service to cable companies. It was successful in the way the company's that go out of business are successful.

I never understood why we were a cable company first -- an argument I made on a daily basis to people who didn't quite understand what I was talking about. If we're only, I said, we're on television.

I was right. I know I was right. More importantly, Comcast -- the company we had our arrangement with -- just said I was right.

“The growth (in online video) usage is phenomenal… what people are finding as they’re using more high bandwidth intensive applications, having a meg or half a meg of downspeed doesn’t cut it.”

Turns out the more video content hitting the Internet, the more people are looking to watch video through their computers. The article goes on to say that the days of acquisition are over (except for maybe sports programming). The future is creating high-end services for those who turn to the Web for their entertainment services.

All of this is particularly troubling for Comcast because the FCC just ruled that it has been illegally tampering with data streams. In other words, if you were using too much bandwidth -- without warning -- you could find your InterWebs not working so well.

With phone and Web services driving growth, you should expect to see more wrangling by Comcast as it attempts to capitalize on the quickly expanding digital markets.

The measure of a successful technology product is oftentimes the number of applications developed for it.

This is not a tried-and-true method, but it's a good eyeball test. Computer that have lots of software applications, game consoles that have lots of games and mobile phones that have lots of neat tools are oftentimes the ones that give you the most value.

It's why we buy them.

Apple has a different approach. Mac-aholics will buy the latest gadget or gizmo regardless of applications because that's what junkies do. They need more. The iPhone, though, is getting some tracking from the mobile developer market -- maybe more traction than other phones. There are currently 1,001 software applications available for the iPhone.

This is a really big deal for two reason: people love their Macs (see above) and they love to build applications, something they don't normally get to do with Apple products.

Not all applications are created equal; however, Apple's brand is build upon personal communication and that means many of the best applications are being developed around that, which should make most folks happy (since only a few of us really want to have spreadsheets and document editing on their phones).

I giggle when people tell me that someday computers are going to run everything.

Someday?

There's a computer out for just about everything now. I've seen refrigerators with computers in them (for tracking your food with RFID, not surfing the Web). The next battleground appears to be with low-cost, high-end computers that are meant for running home and mobile entertainment systems.

Sony and Microsoft have already started battling with their current-generation game systems. But the fight is spreading and per usual, Apple has the coolest entry: I've seen the Mac Air up close, and while I despise everything the company "stands" for, I have to say it was pretty spectacular.

Dell, too, has jumped into the market as well announcing its mini-computer.

"With this box, Dell brings solid price, performance and interesting styling that isn't out of place in a living room or family room," said Olds. "For most people, this won't be their only computer, but it may become the most used computer since it is really designed to become an entertainment hub."

There's no more Scrabble on Facebook.

Strike that. There's no more Scarbulous, the software application that had become all the rage on the social networking site, much to the dismay of Haboro, makers of the eponymous word game.

The great and powerful toy-makers sent a cease-and-desist letter to the game's developers and then had Facebook disable the application.

It's a win-win for everyone. Okay, it's a win for Hasboro.

Well…

Seems the folks at Hasboro didn't get the memo that Facebook is a platform with millions of users, which means that any software developer in the world -- that's the big place just across the United State's border -- can create applications that are instantly available to the millions of Facebook users.

In this case, though, the application was created by two college students who, as it turns out, really like playing Scrabble and couldn't do it through Facebook. So they did what people do these days: they built an application.

Initially, it didn't have much traction; however, it turns out lots of people like Scabble. According to our never-wrong sources at Wikipedia, Scrabulous had 500,000 people playing each day.

Scrabble, on the other hand, has 2,000 registered users.

So maybe it wasn't the brightest idea to shutter a service -- even one that is most likely stomping on your trademark -- just to prove a point. I don't want to tell the toy-making overlords how to run their kingdom, but upsetting one-half million of your fans -- who are playing a game you made -- may be a bad way to bring back the Fun.

By the way, you can still play Scrabulous elsewhere.

Generation X has officially grown up, and Nick at Nite hopes to lure them to its viewing audience. Nickelodeon, which was born in 1979, is reaching for nightime viewers around its own age.

Many of us who grew up with You can't do that on Television and Double Dare have families of our own now, but that doesn't mean we've lost any appeal to Nick's marketers.

To attract the 25 to 40-year-old audience, Nick has dumped older classics such as Murphy Brown and is now revamping its nightly schedule with original programs such as Glenn Martin D.D.S, an animated comedy series about dentist who travels cross country with his family.

It’s a chance to connect to the second generation of Nick viewers, said Cyma Zarghami, the president of the MTV Networks (Viacom) Nickelodeon Kids and Family group. A round of network research this year estimated that 39 percent of parents watched Nickelodeon when they were growing up.

  Former DIsney CEO Michael Eisner is among the marketers pushing the new programs, including Glenn Martin D.D.S. He failed to find a niche with his old pals at the Disney Channel, but is already making his mark at Nick. At first glance, Glenn Martin DDS has a similar appearance to the hit shows on Cartoon Network's hit Robot Chicken on Adult Swim.

The program was inspired, in part, by a Swiss mountain dog kept by Thomas O. Staggs, the chief financial officer of Disney. The dog is the funniest-looking dog I’ve ever seen, Mr. Eisner said in a telephone interview. Every time I see him, I tell him his dog’s going to be a star.

Mr. Eisner asked Mr. Staggs to send him a picture of the dog, and the animal’s likeness will be evident in the show, which is scheduled to premiere next summer. Mr. Eisner said the show was inspired by the idea of a comedic look at what it’s like to see America.

Nick at Nite has also revived recently cancelled comedies. Currently, it's highest -rated show is  "The George Lopez Show", which ABC cancelled in  2007. Nick at Nite is also developing newer spinoffs of classic game shows, such as "My Family has got GUTS!", a revised version of the 90's action game show "GUTS",which was basicically a teenager's version of American Gladiators. They will also debut their first primetime family movie "Gym Teache/"

Personally, I understand the need to test new products, but  think Nick should focus on a central theme  for its nightly programming . As a 27-year old, I fall right into the middle of their new target market, and when it's 10 p.m. and  I crash on the couch and turn on TBS or Cartoon Network to watch Family Guy , I don't want it interrupted by a different genre, such as an extreme sports game show or full-length family movie. But maybe that's just me.

Most of you don't know who Julia Allison is. That's not entirely a bad thing; however, the idea of Allison has turned the blogosphere upside down after Wired magazine editor Chris Anderson -- who continues to make baffling decisions -- commissioned a profile of her.

Allison is "Internet famous", which is just south of being the Center Square in terms of the real world. Her shtick: pout around boys until they write about her or inject herself into situations where people begin to assume she belongs.

I witnessed her childish behavior at this year's SXSW Interactive conference where an audience member, she made such a ruckus that moderator Heather Gold finally had to call her up on the panel just to keep her quiet (and Gold then rather smartly dismantled Allison to the point where, growing uncomfortable, I had to leave).

Anderson's poor decision and Allison's vacuous fame (she is once again claiming that she wants to get back to writing, the very claim she made four months ago before this profile, at SXSW) has many in the social media sphere scratching their heads about this new "Internet-fame" monster. Some are perplexed by the weirdness of someone who would continually bully her way into situations and then complain about it, while others hope that nobody takes Wired's take to heart and actually tries to use this type of marketing to promote anything of consequence.

All of which begs one question: is the promotion of a non-brand (Allison) a business model in the 2.0 world?

My gut says no. There isn't a person in the technology world that I know (and the world is way too big to know everyone) who takes anything she does seriously. It's more side-show than sensible.  Those people tend to hang on but my sense is it gets much more difficult for them as time goes by.

Then again, the Web has opened up new opportunities -- a reality-television type experience we haven't seen before.

Paying for things is for suckers. Okay, that's not entirely true. But paying for traditional services when you can get a cheaper deal thanks to emerging technologies is a much better idea.

In my home, I haven't paid for cable in nearly a year, but I still watch cable thanks to Hulu.com, a streaming video service (with commercials) and most networks, which stream their shows (with commercials) on their site. With two cables, I hooked up a spare computer to my television -- and bingo, no more cable bill.

The same holds true for my telephone. It's true I spend way too much on my cell phone -- what with all the data plans and anytime minutes -- but for my home phone, I use Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP) services that let me use the Internet to make calls.

Vonage (you know the commercials) is one of the most recognizable names in the business, but recently it's been as much bad news as good thanks to some debt refinancing and a potential shift in upper management.

But the company is trying to use the Web for what the Web does best: follow you anywhere. Think of their MyVonage service, which creates a virtual home phone that follows you anywhere as the one number to rule them all. The service lets people consolidate their phone lines into one and offers conference calling and recording for just $35 per month.

That's not bad a deal for those who have work that requires mobility, conferences and the occasional recording.

For most people though price should be enough of a reason to switch from traditional phone companies to VoIP services, particularly now that the president signed a law that will make it much easier for 911 services to sync with these networks.

Keep your friends close, your enemies closer and your former workers the closest.

A group of  Googles former leaders,including Anna Patterson ,and Russell Power,  have teamed together to produce, Cuil, pronounced "Cuil" a new search engine that claims to use better search methods, including a larger search index. An excerpt from the New York Times article explains:

Mr. Costello, a former researcher at Stanford, said that with 120 billion Web pages, Cuil’s search index is larger than any other.
The company uses a form of data mining to group Web pages by content, which makes the search engine more efficient, he said. Instead of showing results as short snippets of text and images with links, it displays longer entries and uses more pictures. It also provides tools to help users further refine their queries.

The key question is whether or not users will bother to sift through the pictures and refine their searches manually. Analyst Danny Sullivan, an analyst from Search Engine Land  expects moderate results from  the SE under development. He calls the extra photos and longer entries as "extra junk". He may be right, but as Ebay has shown, there's some truth to the saying that one man's trash is another man's treasure.

Despite Cuil's impressive core of leaders, it still has a steep hill to climb before it can challenge Google's perch atop the search engine leaders. Last month, Google already 61.5% of all search queries, compared to 20.9 percent for Yahoo and 9.2 percent for Microsoft.

It's too early to tell if Cuil can shake up the search engine landscape, but with the right amount of innovation, it might emerge as a viable contendor to the current group of leaders. I'll be testing and experimenting with the new engine over the next few days and post a review later this week.