Why does Hollywood continue to use the Internet as another form of syndication? The primary functionality of ABC.com, CBS.com and the like is a simple play, stop, rewind. The same can be said, honestly, of more web-friendly programming like Funny or Die and Hulu. Yes there is hot-or-not or blogging Web 2.0 functionality built into these but it’s still basically a video player. A video player. Something that plays videos. Hmmm. Not the best use of a computer. There’s a lot more buttons on a computer than play, stop and rewind.

Google is trying something interesting by utilizing the tiny microphones on your computer to overhear what’s playing on the TV, transcribe it, source it, and then spoon feed relevant content to your browser window. A valiant effort. RIT student Nate Wolf sent me think link describing Google application for a patent on “ambient audio.” Interesting. A little creepy but interesting. Although I guess I would do everything I could to disable it from happening but, still, it’s understandable.

If I was a TV Network executive I would create and produce programs from scratch with the knowledge that people will be watching my show and surfing the Internet at the same time. In fact more than 100 million people do this in the U.S. alone. Maybe a lot of people would watch television more often.