Having problems with Comcast cable? Had a terrible customer service experience with the cable company? Want to air your frustrations to the world (and with Comcast, possibly)? Then check out the Comcast Must Die blog hosted at Blogspot.

There’s a great post that contains a chat log between a customer and a Comcast customer support person. Plus, the site’s author, Bob Garfield, says he will host a podcast on December 11th, which will feature callers and hopefully, a Comcast executive to answer all our questions. I haven’t seen any specific details about it so far, but it seems kind of interesting.

Garfield encourages comments and he even tells them to include their Comcast account numbers when leaving comments because he said Comcast will call them back.

I don’t know about that, but I personally wouldn’t give out my account number on the Internet for all to see. Garfield says it’s ok, since there’s nothing personal about it, but I’m still not convinced.

If you like Comcast, you might want to check out the Comcast Rocks blog, started by a Comcast employee.

Over at TechCrunch, a guest post written by Dan Ackerman Greenberg is stirring up some animosity over YouTube spamming. Greenberg wrote a story called “The Secret Strategies Behind Many ‘Viral’ Videos”, where he talks about how his viral video marketing company, The Comotion Group, helps makes YouTube videos viral.

Greenberg starts out the piece:

Have you ever watched a video with 100,000 views on YouTube and thought to yourself: “How the hell did that video get so many views?” Chances are pretty good that this didn’t happen naturally, but rather that some company worked hard to make it happen – some company like mine.

And then he details some secrets like:

1. Not all viral videos are what they seem
2. Content is NOT King
3. Core Strategy: Getting onto the “Most Viewed” page
4. Title Optimization
5. Thumbnail Optimization
6. Commenting: Having a conversation with yourself
7. Releasing all videos simultaneously
8. Strategic Tagging: Leading viewers down the rabbit hole
9. Metrics/Tracking: How we measure effectiveness

Commenters were hating on this post saying how this is just spamming. Even Michael Arrington said he was “disgusted” by this post.

Technorati Tags: YouTube, TechCrunch, viral videos,

Bonus: Read the follow-up article by Greenberg where he says that some of the original flavor of the post was lost due to TechCrunch’s editing of the story.

According to Infonetics Research, worldwide sales of video-enabled cell phones will double by 2010 with video subscribers  growing to 58.6 million. Sales will also grow to about $125 billion by 2010 from nearly $58 billion last year.

North America is lagging other worldwide regions. However, Europe, the Middle East, and Africa are leading regions for mobile video service revenue last year with 42% of the worldwide total.

Technorati Tags: mobile, cell, video phone, mobile TV, mobile video

According to an AP story, TV networks are streaming millions of TV shows over the Internet, with “Heroes” and “Jericho” the two top shows. ABC won’t say what their most popular streamed shows are, but bets are “Grey’s Anatomy” is number 1 for them.

Some quick facts from the story:

• NBC has streamed 5 million individual episodes of its shows.
• ABC streamed more than 2.5 million in the first two weeks of the new season.
• ABC says the average age of its online viewers is 29; for television viewers, it’s 46.
• NBC said it has hit the “5 million mark in total downloads” with “Heroes” accounting for about half of the downloads.

None of the top four networks say how many people watch their shows online, however and Nielsen is still about 18 months away from launching an online TV measurement system. So the next big thing is by checking total web site traffic.

Visitors to ABC.com jumped 224 percent between August and September, to 181 million, according to Nielsen/NetRatings. NBC went up 30 percent while CBS was up 3 percent.

Technorati Tags: Hollywood, Nielsen, ratings, ABC, CBS, NBC, streaming, downloads

According to a survey by the Consumer Electronics Association, 22% of people with analog TV sets plan to “do nothing” when local broadcast stations switch entirely to digital signals in February 2009. The breakdown:

• 22% said they would subscribe to a cable or satellite service

• 33% said they would use a government-issued $40 coupon to purchase a digital-to-analog converter box

• 23% plan to purchase a new digital television set.

• 22% said they would do nothing

The CEA estimates that come Feb. 17, 2009, between 22 million and 28 million TV sets will need to continue receiving broadcast TV signals.

Many industry people are worried that U.S. consumers won’t be ready for the switch With over 20 million analog sets still in use today, there will be a big need to distribute digital-to-analog converter to continue to watch TV on their old sets.

However a massive public awareness campaign will start next year in a variety of media.

Technorati Tags: CEA, TV, digital, HDTV