Todays best video clips

Tribune Pondering Sale of Tribune Media Services Units
Media conglomerate Tribune is pondering a sale of its Tribune Media Services businesses, which provide online TV listings and also produce and aggregate news and entertainment content, the Chicago Tribune reported. At least two suitors have expressed interest in the TV listings businesses, sources with knowledge of discussions told the Tribune.

Murdoch: YouTube Helps More than Hurts
Murdoch told the audience he didn’t sue YouTube because it provided promotion for shows like the Simpsons. And Hulu, said Murdoch, was a way for News Corp to control its copyrights. Murdoch expressed interested in online alternatives to broadcast television and traditional film releases, but said he still expects television to be “central.” Releasing movies only online? — he said that’s possible, but hasn’t been tried yet

Iger: Nets Should Embrace VOD
The Walt Disney Co. CEO Robert Iger told an audience at an industry conference Wednesday that programming networks need to embrace video on demand to survive in the changing media landscape. Iger, speaking at the Sanford Bernstein Strategic Decisions Conference in New York, said that many programmers have been reluctant to provide compelling content to the VOD platform “until the opportunity becomes really obvious.”But he said the viewing habits of younger viewers will force content providers to allow more of their content to appear on the platform.

“Everybody will get there. I can’t tell you when,” Iger said. “I actually believe that consumers, particularly young consumers, are going to be much less tolerant of accessing or getting programming in a linear form on a traditional network and much more demanding of the product they get in a video-on-demand form, meaning individually.”

IndieFlix Introduces CrowdSourced Film Festivals
ImdieFlix, a marketplace for independent films, has launched MyFestival, a new streaming video site that will let film festivals crowdsource the movie selection process. MyFestival is making its debut in conjunction with the Seattle International Film Festival (SIFF), which is taking place from May 22 to June 15.

Death knell for television as we know it
Japanese television technology that will give viewers access to high-speed broadcasts over the internet could render conventional television obsolete and transform the media landscape within years, analysts have predicted.The country's electronics and telecommunications industries are developing a technological standard for a new "internet television" set, which will let users browse websites and watch streaming programs at the touch of a remote control.

Best Practices: Online Video Improves Journalism
Al Morning, of Poynter Online, has published a great interview on their site with The Washington Post’s video journalist and documentary filmmaker, Travis Fox. Travis discusses how the medium of online video helps to better tell the story and goes on to discuss some best practices that he follows when it comes to producing online video, including a discussion regarding ideal length for journalistic video stories.

New Research - 1 Billion Online Video Users by 2013
A new study from ABI Research forecasts the number of viewers who access video via the Web to nearly quadruple in the next few years, reaching at least one billion in 2013.

Redlasso Refuses to Cease and Desist
In a letter to be delivered today at 5:00 PM ET to legal counsel for five broadcast content providers, Redlasso (www.redlasso.com) has said it will continue to make its site available for use by bloggers providing social commentary on newsworthy events as it continues to work towards cooperative, mutually beneficial arrangements with those and other content providers. Redlasso also announced that Michael Jordan, former Westinghouse Corporation and CBS chief executive, and one of the nation’s best-known CEOs, has joined the company as a senior advisor. Among his responsibilities will be serving as chief liaison to the networks for Redlasso, as well as providing strategic counsel to the management team.

TiVo’s Profit Quadruples to $3.6M on Lower Costs
Some cable systems are starting to complain that too many of the programs they pay for are being given away on the Web for free.

Tribune Pondering Sale of Tribune Media Services Units
Media conglomerate Tribune (NYSE: TXA) is pondering a sale of its Tribune Media Services businesses, which provide online TV listings and also produce and aggregate news and entertainment content, the Chicago Tribune reported.

Revision3 bought down by MediaDefender
Revision3 CEO Jim Louderback said MediaDefender, an ArtistDirect subsidiary formed to fight peer-to-peer piracy, caused the Web video studio’s server and site to shut down over the Memorial Day weekend

Don't Mess With Google
The search giant fired back at Viacom Inc. (NYSE: VIA), which filed a copyright infringement lawsuit against it last year, by claiming that Viacom was jeopardizing the free exchange of information across the entire Web."By seeking to make carriers and hosting providers liable for internet communications, Viacom's complaint threatens the way hundreds of millions of people legitimately exchange information, news, entertainment, and political and artistic expression," Google stated.

State of the Internet (release)
Akamai observed that from a global perspective, South Korea had the highest measured levels of “high broadband” (>5 Mbps) connectivity. In the United States, Delaware topped the list, with over 60% of connections to Akamai occurring at 5 Mbps or greater. At the other end of the bandwidth spectrum, Rwanda and the Solomon Islands topped the list of slowest countries, with 95% or more of the connections to Akamai from both countries occurring at below 256 Kbps. In the United States, Washington State and Virginia turned in the highest percentages of sub-256 Kbps connections. However, in contrast to the international measurements, these states only saw 21% and 18% of connections below 256 Kbps respectively.

Mark Cuban: All Your Videos Belong to Us
Addressable set top boxes. Encoded Triggers. Video Hot Spots. Video Quality. Broadcast costs per user rather than unicast. All the features that have been promised as part of internet video and TV for years are finally starting to happen for real on your HDTV. While internet video is looking for a box to replace the set top box, Digital Cable is looking for ways to completely remove the set top box. The excitement in video over the next 5 years is not going to happen on the Net. Deal with it people. As exciting as people watching 10 minute videos on Youtube is. As exciting as the growth patterns for those videos are, digital video is no longer limited to the internet. While Google and others are searching for ways to monetize video, its already happening on your HDTV. Which also means that for video content producers, the money will be where the money is right now. On TV rather than the net.

Death to the Set-Top! Long Live the Set-Top!
Some folks missed the real implication of the Sony agreement, anyway. It had less to do with removing set-tops from the equation, and much more to do with the fact that Sony and the cable industry have, at last, found common ground on the sticky two-way issue.With so much weight behind tru2way now from the consumer electronics industry and some top MSOs, that means the FCC may look more favorably upon tru2way as the method to open up the retail market for cable boxes and nifty digital TVs, and, therefore, may opt not to saddle MSOs with a competing platform called DCR+, which now appears to be the one that's dying a slow and almost certain death. That sound you hear is a collective sigh coming from the cable industry's video engineers. The prospect of supporting DCR+ is one monster headache they'd just assume to avoid.

Viral video cashing in or selling out?
Depending on how you look at it, product placements in viral videos are either a benefit to video makers and brand owners or simply a sad development

TiVo Service Will Deliver Selections of TV Critic
Television viewers have been reading the recommendations of local critics for years. Soon a subset of TiVo users will be able to automatically record a critic’s picks of The Chicago Tribune. TiVo, a leading maker of digital video recorders, is expected to announce on Wednesday a partnership with The Tribune that will deliver the recommendations of Maureen Ryan, the TV critic for The Tribune, straight to the TVs of users who sign up for the service.

New York Times to go programmable with API
The goal, according to Aron Pilhofer, editor of interactive news, is to "make the NYTprogrammable. Everything we produce should be organized data."Once the API is complete, the Times' internal developers will use it to build platforms to organize all the structured data such as events listings, restaurants reviews, recipes, etc. They will offer a key to programmers, developers and others who are interested in mashing-up various data sets on the site. "The plan is definitely to open [the code] up," Frons said. "How far we don't know."

AT&T VRADs in CT Need Landowner Approval
The Connecticut DPUC yesterday ruled that AT&T must get the permission of abutting landowners and municipalities before it can install utility boxes for its U-verse VDSL/IPTV service. The large VRAD cabinets have been a sore spot for a growing number of communities, who consider them property value killers.

New YouTube numbers
Forbes says YouTube will make $200 million this year and $350 million in 2009. For reference, that’s about twice the number we’ve printed here — some $70 million to $90 million — and had corroborated by other sources.Forbes says YouTube homepage ads cost $175,000 a day, plus a commitment to spend $50,000 more in ads on Google or YouTube. That’s a bit different from what TVWeek reported in January (a $100,000-per-day flat fee plus a $100,000 incremental spend on Google and YouTube within 90 days.) Branded channels cost $200,000, according to Forbes (TVWeek had said $250,000 across Google and YouTube, $100,000 of which must be on YouTube).

Amazon Launching Pay-Per-View Streaming Next Week
Word that Amazon will be launching a pay-per-view streaming service next week. Amazon, of course, already has a pay-per-view rental/download service -- the pretty-much-ignored Unbox -- so unclear what exactly they'll be rolling out. Sadly, Walt Mossberg, who's already seen the service, presumably under NDA, didn't bother to talk about it.

MediaDefender Takes Down Revision3?
Online video studio Revision3 suffered web site outages over the long weekend and extending to Tuesday that it is now blaming on the anti-piracy outfit MediaDefender. Rev3 CEO Jim Louderback posted a long and well-written account of the events on the company blog this morning. Rev3 operates a BitTorrent tracking server to distribute high-quality downloads of its shows.

That's it folks

Today's best video clips 27 May 2008 2nd edition

Cable firms in pact to allow TVs that don't need set-top boxes

Consumers will be able to buy digital televisions that allow them to receive cable service without a set-top box under an agreement announced Tuesday between Sony Corp. and six of the biggest U.S. cable operators. Industry leaders said that by eliminating the box, cable companies can simplify installation and reduce costs, while consumers will have one less component to worry about in home theater systems.

Sony Electronics and Major U.S. Cable Operators negotiate natonal two way play
Sony Electronics and major cable operators which together pass over 105 million U.S. homes have negotiated and signed an agreement that will enable consumers to purchase innovative “two-way” digital televisions and other devices that can receive interactive digital and high-definition video services without a set-top box, Sony and the National Cable & Telecommunications Association (NCTA) announced today. The terms of the agreement are embodied in a binding Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) negotiated by Sony Electronics and the six largest cable companies – Comcast, Time Warner Cable, Cox, Charter, Cablevision and Bright House Networks – which serve more than 82 percent of all U.S. cable subscribers.

Measuring Online Engagement Seen as Key to Boosting Ad Dollars

Online video sites and services like Break.com and Blip.tv are in the early stages of striking partnerships with Web analytics firms to offer more detailed information on how long consumers watch online video.That type of data can help sites develop a means to measure “engagement,” an increasingly sought-after measure of how much attention advertising gets. Advertisers say they are keen for more data on how long Web viewers stay tuned in to a video, whether they fast-forward and when they stop watching.

Verizon Offers Starz Broadband Video Service
Verizon announced on Tuesday a multi-year deal to offer Starz Play, a broadband video service from the Liberty Media unit, to its 8.5 million broadband subscribers. The $5.99 per month Starz Play service will offer both live Starz programming, and downloads of 2,500 movies and videos such as "Spider-Man 3" and "Ratatouille" for unlimited viewing for as long as a subscription is current. The deal will also see Verizon offer Starz products to its FiOS TV, FiOS Internet and DSL subscribers.

Cable firms in pact to allow TVs that don't need set-top boxes

Consumers will be able to buy digital televisions that allow them to receive cable service without a set-top box under an agreement announced Tuesday between Sony Corp. and six of the biggest U.S. cable operators. Industry leaders said that by eliminating the box, cable companies can simplify installation and reduce costs, while consumers will have one less component to worry about in home theater systems.

Viacom Ups Ante In YouTube Copyright Spat: Google More Than A Mere Enabler
Google is getting a lot of attention for claiming in its latest court brief (.pdf) that Viacom's lawsuit against YouTube "threatens the way hundreds of millions of people legitimately exchange information, news, entertainment, and political and artistic expression." The rhetoric headlines a familiar legal argument, that the DMCA protects YouTube's right to host copyrighted content from third parties without fear of liability.

Google Says Viacom “Threatens” Expression

In papers filed in U.S. District Court in Manhattan late Friday, YouTube owner Google said Viacom’s $1 billion copyright lawsuit threatens the very way hundreds of millions of people exchange information over the Internet. According to the Associated Press, Google said that YouTube “goes far beyond its legal obligations in assisting content owners to protect their works.” Google went on to say that Viacom’s seeking to hold carriers and hosting providers liable for online communications “threatens the way hundreds of millions of people legitimately exchange information, news, entertainment and political and artistic expression.”

NBCU Completes Stake Buy In India's NDTV; Option To Increase To 50 Percent
NBC Universal has completed its stake buy in India's TV conglomerate NDTV Networks, the companies have informed the local stock exhange. NBCU has taken an indirect stake in 26 percent of NDTV Networks PLC for $150 million. More importantly - NBCU has the option, in two years, to increase their stake in the holding company to 50 percent, with the NDTV group holding an equal 50 percent stake.

More Than One Billion Users Will View Online Video in 2013
Sparked by increasing broadband penetration and rising connection speeds available to a growing percentage of the world’s population, over-the-top video has seen phenomenal growth in very recent years. A new study from ABI Research forecasts the number of viewers who access video via the Web to nearly quadruple in the next few years, reaching at least one billion in 2013.

Broadcast networks under siege
IT seems much longer than four years ago that NBC marketed the blazes out of a miniseries called "10.5." A disaster epic about a series of giant earthquakes on the West Coast, "10.5" was a silly hunk of overripe cheese ("a four-hour tour de force of lameness," in the words of critic Tim Goodman). But the 2004 "event" movie was also emblematic of a then-cherished network tradition, the sweeps ratings period, when stations banged the drums for all sorts of specials and stunts crafted as viewer bait. Like the networks themselves, though, the quarterly sweeps -- which some stations still use to set local ad rates -- have fallen on hard times. For the May sweep that ended last Wednesday, NBC couldn't be bothered to make the earth move. Among the network's prime-time offerings as the period drew to a close: repeats of "The Office," "Law & Order: SVU" and "Most Outrageous Moments."

ABC Shows Top BitTorrent Downloads
ABC programs accounted for four of the top five BitTorrent TV downloads for the week ending May 19, according to an analysis for NewTeeVee by Big Champagne. Fox’s “Prison Break” took the fifth slot.

Watch Out Time Warner, Cablevision: Verizon Takes on NY

Verizon just took a big step closer to getting a license to wire all five boroughs of New York City for its FiOS TV network. Today New York City's Franchise and Concession Review Committee voted unanimously to allow Verizon to proceed. The next step is approval from the Mayor's office and the New York State Public Service Commission--both should be easy checkoffs. After that, the real work begins for Verizon. Residents are concentrated in New York City, meaning many potential customers, but each building presents an engineering challenge, as does the city's aging infrastructure itself. "If we are successful in the last steps of the approval process, we will deliver on our promise to begin offering FiOS TV in parts of each of the five boroughs later this year,” said Monica Azare, Verizon senior vice president for New York and Connecticut.

That's it folks

Memorial Weekend roundup

CDN Pricing Stable In Q1: Drop In Price Only at top levels

At the Streaming Media East show, Dan Rayburn published his CDN pricing for Q1 in a session entitled "CDN Pricing: The Going Rate For Video Delivery". You can download the slides from the presentation here and here is a summary of prices from his survey

Cable Networks Put More Content Online

IFC is making a bet that people are hungry for online video with their lunch. The network’s two-month-old Lunchbox is a daily Web show of independent-culture news and entertainment that premieres new episodes each day at noon. The two- to five-minute programs are hosted by different IFC Web personalities each day, and themed around topics like music and films that are near and dear to IFC’s audience base.

Joost developing a web service
Joost, the peer-to-peer Web TV service that was supposed to take the world by storm, is close to launching its second act. Its much more modest ambition: Staying relevant.

Viacom cool on Joost
On Joost: Viacom was an original investor in the much-hyped video service from the founders of Skype. Is the service where he thought it would be? ”We come at Joost or other platforms from the point of view that we cannot predict—nor did we in that case or any other case—predict which ones are going to be hugely successful, moderately successful, which won’t work. ... We root for all the distribution platforms because the more of them there are, the more exposure our content has.” As for Joost, says Dauman, “They’ve been trying different things. They’ve been tweaking the model but we’ve certainly been happy with the relationship.” But will Viacom take part in the start-up’s second round? Doesn’t sound like it. Dauman: “We did receive equity in connection with our original deal and we’re happy where we are. … I don’t think it’s fair to them for me to comment.

Showstash hit with $2.7 m piracy damages
A federal judge in Los Angeles this week ordered a website that posts links to pirated films on third-party sites to pay $2.7 million in damages to studio members of the Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA). The ruling against Showstash.com follows a similar $1.3 million judgment issued on May 7 against Cinematube.net; the sites are also prohibited from engaging in any other activity that would infringe the studios' copyrights.

Web Video Chases Monetization (extract one)
It seems sage since the sheer size of the market—10 billion streams per month and $1 billion in Web video ad revenue forecast to grow to an estimated $12 billion in 2012—suggests that there is a lot of upside to finding breakout ways to inject messaging into this medium. Making money against that burgeoning market seems to rest in two areas: the receptiveness to messaging and the acquisition, measurement and monetization of meaningful audiences in terms of both qualification and reach.

A report conducted last June by the Online Publishers Association shows that, so far, people seem pretty opened to messaging in Web video, at least if it’s not too intrusive or totally out of left field. Of the respondents, 80 percent had seen advertising in online video, with 52 percent taking some sort of action, ranging from seeking more information to actually making a purchase. In a 2007 study, Doubleclick found that the clickthrough rates on video ads were markedly higher for static image spots. Sound and motion online seem to draw a deeper connection and engagement with users/viewers.

Web Video Chases Monetization (extract two)
VideoEgg CEO and co-founder Matt Sanchez has led the commercialization of the overlay concept of video advertising and is now rolling out the next generation of video messaging in a product called Ad Frame. To Sanchez, the challenge going forward in a world where users are in control, disruptive media is flawed and fragmentation is rife—look at any 17-year-old’s MySpace page and there are probably dozens of video links—is creating accountable rich media for advertisers.

That accountability, said Sanchez, means that buying page views on a cost-per-thousand basis needs to be replaced by a cost-per-engagement metric that kicks in only when a video is clicked on or rolled over.

“The page view doesn’t make sense anymore because they don’t have a consistent value, where cost per engagement is a clear signal from the users that they’re interested,” said Sanchez.



BitTorrent Teams Up With Orb
Popular peer-to-peer network BitTorrent is continuing efforts to grow its reach by signing a partnership agreement with Orb Networks. The agreement bundles BitTorrent’s P2P software with that of Orb’s, which allows users to stream their music, movies or other media to their PCs, phones and other devices.

Of Dogs And Men On New WE TV Site

WE TV is refreshing its Web site, switching from a promotional site for its channel content to more of a social contact and lifestyles site.

Under the umbrella of www.wetv.com, the network is launching secondary destinations for the different stages in a woman’s life: as a single, preparing for marriage, expecting a baby and as a mom. The niche areas will contain new Web-only content, such as original Web series and other short-form programming.Other content areas will mine topics such as pets and food.

P2P: Friend of Carriers, Savior of Online Video
Over the past two months, peer-to-peer (P2P) networking has gone from the source of all evil to being a miracle cure for distributing video if a panel of speakers at Streaming Media East are to be believed. It won't be IPTV, but P2PTV, if service providers and P2P companies can cooperate together.

Today's best video clips 26 May 2008

Akimbo, online video delivery company, throws in towel for good
We’re hearing that Akimbo, the San Mateo, Calif. video set-top box company that raised millions of dollars in fresh funding less than three months ago to make a fresh start in a new direction, has just thrown in the towel anyway.In February, Akimbo brought in a new management team, $8 million in fresh funding [Update: Apparently, the company only raised $4M; the original announcement of $8 million had been a targeted amount, but it only ever raised $4M] and refashioned its technology to help video publishers deliver their own video online. It also wanted to help publishers monetize the video, by offering them ways to charge for pay-per-minute content, run advertising and subscriptions.

Google: White Space Broadband Inevitable says Page
Microsoft, Google and Dell have formed the backbone of a six-partner coalition named the Wireless Innovation Alliance. Their goal is to use the so-called unlicensed "white space" spectrum -- partially freed by the migration to digital television -- to offer un-served consumers inexpensive Internet access via the airwaves (with these companies obviously providing the hardware, software and most importantly to Google: ads).

However, tests at the FCC haven't gone well, with an initial round of testing showing the device couldn't cleanly avoid nearby signals, and a second round suffering from power problems. That isn't stopping Google co-founder Larry Page from sharing his vision of "Wi-Fi on steroids" as part of a discussion this week at the New America Foundation (see video). The Google blog suggests Page believes it's inevitable:

Insatiable Demand for Bandwidth and Need for ‘F...
Broadband access networks are undergoing a change in terms of architecture and the applications and services being run on them. This change will have fundamental implications on the way access networks and associated business models are viewed. Service providers must consider network architectures that can address the challenges posed by the changing trends in end-user broadband usage.

Mobile TV using indoor wireless

While many mobile network operators (MNOs) are planning to use a combination of 3G and dedicated mobile broadcasting networks to deliver mobile TV and video services, they must not overlook emerging alternatives, according to a new report, Critical Ingredients of Mobile TV: femtocells and sideloading, published by Analysys Mason.

Many MNOs already offer TV and video services over their 3G networks. Concerns over capacity and quality of service are driving MNOs to combine 3G networks with dedicated mobile broadcasting networks (such as DVB-H and MediaFLO). However, these are not the only ways of delivering mobile TV content. Indoor wireless systems (such as femtocells and WLAN) and sideloading (where content is transferred from a PC or other device to memory in a mobile handset) are important delivery mechanisms with valuable benefits.

Welcome to Las Vegas - Home of the technology superpower you've never heard of
Drive a couple of blocks past the Loose Caboose and the Carburetor Shop on E. Sahara Avenue in Las Vegas, and you'll find one of the world's leading technology companies. The name of the company - Switch Communications - will go unrecognized by almost all of you. That's because it has operated in near total secrecy for the last few years. Switch has preferred to keep its gold mine a need-to-know type of affair. "Pay no attention to the secure fortress in the strip mall."

A few months ago, word of Switch's apparently fantastic operations started to reach my in-box. Most of the people who visited the Switch facility were bound by non-disclosure agreements, but that failed to stop them from leaking out a few choice details. "This is the most advanced computing center in the world," I was told. "It's like the internet superhighway wrapped up in one package. All the heavies are there."

BitTorrent’s Achilles’ Heel
The popular BitTorrent web site Mininova was sued by the Dutch anti-piracy organization BREIN this week in a bid to get Mininova to filter unlicensed content. The organization has had some success in the past against Edonkey and BitTorrent web sites, so there is at least a possibility that Mininova will be forced to either take down most of its torrent files or shut down completely. Either way, it would be a big blow for the BitTorrent community. Since launching in early 2005, Mininova has quickly become one of the biggest BitTorent directories, with almost 5 billion torrent downloads to date.

Championship Gaming Series Launches YouTube Channel
Worldwide gaming league Championship Gaming Series is launching its official YouTube channel. The channel will offer high-quality content from CGS' pro gaming broadcasts to YouTube's audience, Online Media Daily learned Thursday. Ad-supported content from CGS will be uploaded to a dedicated partner channel, the league plans to announce during the L.A. Games Conference on Friday.

Measuring Online Engagement Seen as Key to Boos...
Online video sites and services like Break.com and Blip.tv are in the early stages of striking partnerships with Web analytics firms to offer more detailed information on how long consumers watch online video. That type of data can help sites develop a means to measure “engagement,” an increasingly sought-after measure of how much attention advertising gets. Advertisers say they are keen for more data on how long Web viewers stay tuned in to a video, whether they fast-forward and when they stop watching. These efforts to apply more detailed metrics to online video probably will accelerate the flow of advertising dollars into the growing online video business, media agency and video Web site executives said. Also, these initiatives are yet another sign of the maturation of the Web video economy, as online video advertising moves beyond the experimental phase

Dan Raeburn summarises CDN challenges
Dan spoke about this years SME conference, some of the challenges facing CDN's, how to monetize content issues facing Creatives

Microsoft spiffs up Mediaroom developers’ kit
Microsoft this week released a beta version of its Microsoft Mediaroom Presentation Framework to the 150 software developers that are part of the Microsoft program, allowing them to now directly import Web Services content into IPTV applications

That's it folks

Today's best video clips -22 May 2008

ABC Adds Video Goodies
ABC.com, which claims the top spot among network video Websites (according to Nielsen), is adding still more viewer-friendly features to its online player. Not only is video now available in full-screen format, in high def, and with closed captioning, ABC is the first network site to include an embedding function. Following the lead of sites like Huluis a pretty big first for a major network, but it seems like an obvious step -- whatever helps snag viewers to play ads is a good thing.

Akamai Stock Hammered After Downgrade
Shares of Akamai Technologies Inc. fell as much as 8.6 percent this morning, after investors took one analyst's advice to sell.

Akamai stock was down $2.77 (7%) to $36.50 in early afternoon trading after Goldman Sachs & Co. analyst Derek Bingham downgraded the company based on its valuation and increasing competition in the content delivery network (CDN) market. Earlier, the stock hit an intra-day low of $35.88. "Beyond valuation, we are also concerned about intensifying competition as private entrants proliferate and selected large network operators begin to eye the space," Bingham writes.

CDN Wrap: Deluxe NYC Edition
Mirror Image announced it has added Adobe Systems Inc. 's Flash Media Server 3 to its network, joining the legion of CDNs jumping on the FMS 3 bandwagon. While the company has offered Windows-based streaming for some time, Mirror Image director of marketing Marty Hayward says the ability to stream via Flash has become increasingly important to the company's customer base. Select customer trials of Flash-based streaming are underway now, and the company expects to make the offering generally available by late June.

SME Observations: AT&T, P2P; Ads, Ads, Everywhere
Anecdotal evidence suggests that the companies in attendance are getting serious about exploring new ad formats and ad models, or at least learning about them. Breakout sessions revolving around advertising -- and there were plenty of them -- were mostly full, as content owners (presumably) and service providers scout out how they're going to monetize the gobs and gobs of video content they're streaming to end users.

Media Pass buys Gigant
MediaPass, a Santa Monica, CA-based online media and music services firm, has bought out Gigantic Entertainment, a video production firm headed by director Kevin Kerslake, with the idea that the merged company will develop series for mobile and broadband distribution, reports Variety.

Brightcove Gets New Funding For Japan Subsidiary; Includes Dentsu
Brightcove, the online video services company which has been quiet for some time now, has launched a new Japanese company Brightcove KK in which it owns a majority. The funding was led by Dentsu, J-Stream, previous investor Transcosmos, and Cyber Communications, with money pitched in by Brightcove as well, for a total of about $4.9 million in the new company.

Bit Torrrent links up with Orb
Popular peer-to-peer network BitTorrent is continuing efforts to grow its reach by signing a partnership agreement with Orb Networks. The agreement bundles BitTorrent’s P2P software with that of Orb’s, which allows users to stream their music, movies or other media to their PCs, phones and other devices.

BitTorrent, Orb Networks to Bundle P2P, Place-shifting Software
- Time Warner's AOL on Thursday announced the launch of new video portal sites in Canada, India and Taiwan,

Today's best video clips 21 May 2008

Moblyng Gets $5.7M to Bring Flash to Phones
Moblyng, which was formerly known as Fliptrack, just raised $5.7 million to translate Flash content from the Web into videos or stills that can be viewed on most cell phones. As a transcoding junkie, I thought this was cool — until I realized that the company will use its translation prowess to allow you to scrape your “photo bling” from MySpace, Friendster and Facebook (only via the Moblyng Mobile slide show Facebook app) and render it fit for viewing on a WAP page on a cell phone.

Flip Video's new Flip Minos spotted in catalog
Flip Video may not have officially revealed any new products yet, but a new simple video camcorder from the company has been spotted on Wednesday in a B&H print catalog. While not much is known about the new camera, its $180 retail price suggests it will be the company's flagship offering, and will be available in black or white.

Hulu expands its distribution network
So where can you find Hulu? You can already stream our videos on AOL, Comcast, MSN, MySpace and Yahoo. And starting today, Hulu is also available through TV.com, home to millions of TV fans who connect through their favorite shows.

You'll also find Hulu videos on great sites like these in coming weeks:

• TV Guide, the Web site for the iconic TV brand name -- and home to one of the web's leading TV fan sites.
• Break.com, a leading video destination site for guys.
• Zap2it, a leading TV, movie and entertainment community.
• BuddyTV, a leading TV fan site that is host to forums, news, spoilers and interviews.
• Flixster, the largest movie community on the web, where users can rate, share, review and discover films they love.

CBS Audience Network adds more retro programming
Looks like offering old episodes of Star Trek and MacGyver proved successful: CBS Interactive announced this week that it has added a selection of new "classic TV" content to its CBS Audience Network of online video partners.Full episodes and clips of select seasons from Twin Peaks, Beverly Hills: 90210, The Love Boat, Family Ties, and Perry Mason are now available on CBS' 300-plus partner sites, which include downloadable video service Joost, AOL and its newly acquired social network Bebo, video-sharing site Veoh, and a few hardware partners like Slingbox. CBS has also added more seasons of MacGyver, The Twilight Zone, and Hawaii Five-O to complement what it first started offering in February.

Outsourcing hits Madison Avenue
Outsourcing has hit Madison Avenue. Until recently, Web ads were produced mostly by creative types in downtown lofts in places like New York City or San Francisco. But big marketers are now increasingly shipping off that work to little-known businesses in places like Costa Rica and Bulgaria.

TurnHere Launches Travel-Themed Video Network
TurnHere unveiled a new Web video network, TurnHereTravel.tv, dedicated to traveling. The main site launches with a collection of feature clips from Hawaii and China, among others.

Is the CDN market a bubble?
In a panel yesterday, experts in public and private equity discussed whether or not the current content delivery network (CDN) market is a bubble. The verdict? It depends on who you ask. Ray Conley, a CFA at Palo Alto Investors, wasn't optimistic about the state of the CDN industry, saying, "There are too many of them and most won't survive." He added that the amount of money going into the CDN space "is the function of too many VCs with too much money." Not surprisingly, Panther Express Inc. founder Kevin Ryan disagreed, citing the size of the market and the growing opportunity in it. "This is a billion dollar industry, and it's growing 25 percent per year." Despite that opportunity, he points out that there are only two companies -- Akamai Technologies Inc. and Limelight Networks Inc. - making more than $100 million per year.

Video: What Do Web Shows Cost?
What does it really cost to produce a Web video series? $200 per minute or $2000? Or maybe $20,000? Daisy Whitney's "New Media Minute" gives you the low-down.

Reddit Users Get Their Own TV Show
PBS is partnering with social news service Reddit to pilot a television series called YourWeek that combines user-submitted video segments and in-studio commentary.

BBFC Launches Download Classification Scheme in Partnership with the Home Entertainment Industry (Release)
The BBFC’s widely recognised and trusted classification system is moving to the world of downloadable films, programmes and video games. The BBFC has worked closely with the home entertainment industry to develop this voluntary regulatory scheme that will bring the benefits of the DVD classification system to the world of downloads and the internet. Walt Disney Studios Home Entertainment Europe, Warner Bros. and 20th Century Fox have signed up and other key industry players, who have been involved in the development of BBFC.online, are poised to join the scheme.

Launched today, BBFC.online – as the new service is called – has been designed to give consumers the assurance they seek when choosing new media content. The scheme will see the BBFC’s famous ‘black card’, category symbols and Consumer Advice appearing on a wide range of ‘new media’ content, including video-on-demand and streamed video which is offered to the public through websites, set-top boxes and portable media devices.

There is currently little independent classification of downloadable or streaming video content, either on the internet or delivered by video-on-demand services and via set-top-boxes. This is in spite of independent research that indicates that 63 per cent of adults (74 per cent of parents) are concerned about downloading video material which does not come with independent content advice and labelling. In addition, 84 per cent of adults (91 per cent of parents) want to see BBFC film and DVD classification on downloadable/streaming films and other digital audiovisual content.

BBFC.online has been developed over the last 18 months, in close partnership with the video and new media industries and the British Video Association. There are already some 700 videos with ‘online certificates’ and this is likely to rise to about 1000 by the end of the month.

Howcast Adds Distribution Partners
The how-to video company Howcast expanded its reach today via distribution deals with AOL, Metacafe, Bebo and Blip.tv. Under the new deals, Howcast’s user-generated, how-to videos will be available to those sites. Howcast said the deals expand its reach to more than 87 million online viewers. AOL and Bebo are displaying Howcast content using Howcast's customizable player with content targeted for the audience of those sites.

Video Execs: We Love H.264
Industry executives foresee wide-scale adoption of H.264 as the standard for high-quality video, but say there's always innovation on the horizon

Time Warner Officially Announces Plan To Separate Time Warner Cable; Will Get $9.25 Billion Dividend
This had been coming for awhile: Time Warner has officially announced plans to separate its Time Warner Cable unit, a chunk of which already trades independently.

Perfecting Online Video Ad Tactics
"Getting Beyond Pre-Roll" was one of the more challenging panel sessions held at the Online Publishers Association Europe conference last week in London.

Google to have video sorted in next 12 months
Henrique de Castro, head of European sales for Google, stressed the enormous growth in the online video audience recently, but acknowledged that video search has a long way to go in helping audiences get what they want out of it. Mr. de Castro predicted that proper video search would be "sorted" [out] in the next 12 to 24 months, however.

Cable, satellite get rotten grades
If you thought that U.S. consumers hold the federal government in the lowest regard, think again and look no further than the latest American Customer Satisfaction Index. Another poor showing in the annual survey for cable and satellite TV companies Tuesday led some experts to warn that sector players better get their act together amid a weak economy and heated competition -- or risk losing out longer-term.The picture is not pretty," said Sanford Bernstein analyst Craig Moffett. "The pay TV group is, overall, a disaster, ranking worse on average than the IRS." Moffett warned that while "it was good enough to be the 'best of the bad' " among TV distributors in the past, that's no good anymore amid heated competition from telecom firms, video games, online video and the like.

"Weak customer satisfaction -- for the whole industry -- is an enormous Achilles heel for pay TV and perhaps more than any other factor threatens the foundation of the pay TV model," Moffett said.

That's it folks

Today's best video clips 20 May 2008

Party's Over, Bloggers: CBS, NBC, Fox Threaten Free Clip Service Redlasso
Redlasso, a TV clip service favored by bloggers everywhere, is being threatened with legal action by three of the major media conglomerates: Fox (NWS), CBS (CBS) and NBC (GE). The three companies have sent the Web firm a cease-and-desist letter for recording television and distributing it without their permission, and are giving them until May 29 to stop or get hauled into court. What's Redlasso? It's hard to imagine media and political blogs like Huffington Post, Perez Hilton or Hot Air without it. The company records live TV and allows users to search for clips, grab them and embed them on their own sites. It's pretty sweet! It's also a version of what Sling Media is trying to do -- except Sling is going through the laborious process of getting the networks, producers and the countless other rights holders to give it permission.

Netflix to Sell a Device for Instantly Watching Movies on TV Sets
Netflix, which pioneered the business of offering DVD movie rentals by mail, is now offering its 8.2 million subscribers an option to watch movies easily on their televisions without involving the post office.

Roku Device Streams Netflix Movies to TV
OpenTV (NASD: OPTV), a provider of interactive TV software and services, said on Tuesday that NBC Universal (NYSE: GE) has signed a deal to use its OpenTV Participate solution to power and manage its interactive TV applications across Web, mobile and set-top box platforms. The deal follows a successful test of OpenTV's system on a series of interactive TV application's for "Heroes" by NBC.com.

YouTomb Tracks Video Takedowns
YouTomb is a new service that monitors and tracks videos being taken down off YouTube because of copyright violations. The cleverly named site that was created by the MIT student organization MIT Free Culture scans YouTube to see both who issued a copyright violation complaint, and how long the video in question was up before it was taken down.

Hulu Leads Network Sites, Adds Partners
Hulu just broke into the top 10 of all online video sites, according to Nielsen’s April measure. The site, which has only been public for two months, is now seeing more than 63 million streams and 2.4 million users per month, with each user viewing more than two hours of video. That beats out all network TV sites — including Hulu’s parents, FOX and NBC.

New Beta Program for Live Flash Streaming Platform
Mirror Image Internet, a leading provider of content delivery solutions powered by a patented global network, today announced a beta program for its live Flash® streaming solution.

Current TV: Ad Revenue Drops At Al Gore's Network; Losses Widen En Route To IPO
Not the trend you want to be showing as you work towards an IPO: In its Q1 ended March 31, Current TV had ad revenue of just $2.5 million, a decline from $2.64 million in the year-ago quarter, according to an amended S-1 filing. Total revenue for the quarter was up 23 percent, helped by growth in distribution revenue. Ultimately though, the Al Gore-backed cable network needs to show improvement on the ad side

Userplane Gets Into Video Hosting

Userplane, the company behind Webchat and a number of other online communication services, has introduced a new video app dubbed “Mediaplayer”. The free white-label app will allow web publishers to add hosted video uploads to their sites under an ad-supported model.

Mediaplayer users will be able to upload videos as large as 100MB, and there is no limit on the amount of upload or streaming bandwidth they can consume. For the time being, all ad revenue from Mediaplayer will go to Userplane, but Michael Jones, the company’s CEO, says that they hope to introduce the revenue sharing model seen on their other apps in the near future. The current version of the app is restricted to video only, but the next release will feature Minichat, allowing users to chat while they watch clips.

Where Are the YouTube Ads?
Are the YouTube ads missing because advertisers aren’t buying? Or is there a technical glitch prohibiting them?

Russian Portal Yandex To Do US IPO, Seeking $1.5-$2 Billion: Report
This should make for some fun S-1 reading when it comes out: Yandex, the dominant Russian portal/search engine plans to do a US IPO, according to Reuters. The report says the company will seek to raise $1.5-$2 billion via the offering (likely on the NASDAQ), at a total valuation of $5 billion. For 2007 Yandex's revenue was up 130 percent to $167 million from $73 million in the year-ago period.

Netflix launches $99 settopbox
Working with a small Silicon Valley company, Netflix will begin marketing a $99 device on Tuesday that will allow customers to play thousands of movies and shows on their televisions instantly, for no charge beyond their normal subscription fee.

NBCU Digital Chief: Apple Moving in the Right Direction

NBC Universal chief digital officer George Kliavkoff says that Apple Inc. is "moving in the right direction" by offering variable pricing for iTunes downloads. Kliavkoff, who's in charge of NBC's digital media strategy, applauded the news that Apple had negotiated a variable pricing deal with Home Box Office Inc. last week. The HBO deal came about after NBC pulled content from iTunes because Apple failed to reach an agreement for variable pricing. Kliavkoff says Apple's stance on pricing went against every other distribution deal it had with partners. "It's the content owner that sets the wholesale price, and then the retailer decides what the price is to the consumer," Kliavkoff says. "On every distribution deal, with every partner except one, we've been able to set the wholesale price."

Popjax Launches Branded Video Trivia Games With Heavy Metal Rockers Avenged Sevenfold
Two of the most popular things to do on the Web are play games and watch videos. Popjax, a startup backed by Shasta Ventures and Draper Fisher Jurvetson, combines the to to create a new form of casual game: video trivia. The company creates mashups of its own trivia questions with embedded videos from YouTube.

Semantic Video Search Indexing
Semantic video indexing is the process of automatically detecting the presence of semantic concepts in a video stream. This incredible session (my personal favorite), titled, “Semantic Video indexing,” was presented at the 2008 Video...

Comcast's Fancast.com Adds "South Park," Other Viacom Shows
Comcast (NASD: CMCSA) announced on Monday that it has added full-length streaming episodes of Viacom-owned programs including "South Park," "The Daily Show" and "The Colbert Report" to the offering at its Fancast.com service.

That's it folks

Adobe's wake up call to the FCC (and the world)

Let us hope the wise men and women of the Federal Communications Commission are on Adobe's press release list. Adobe late last week unveiled the beta version of its latest Flash player, code named Astro. The much anticipated player exploits a new P2P technology which enables very fast, secure bit transfers at a fraction of the bandwidth of traditional protocols. Known as Real Time Media Flow Protocol (RTMFP) it has been described (correctly) as a stunning piece of engineering and has been developed from a technology Adobe picked up when it bought a small development firm two years ago called Amicima. (Adobe must surely be the smartest acquirer of technology -- it bought the Flash technology when it acquired Macromedia for a cool $3.4 billion in 2005).
Bottom line is video (and audio) can be served direct from the browser using Astro, meaning the need for any special client software disappears. And because the bandwidth requirement is minimal the need for a centrally managed delivery system also disappears.
The implications of this truly game changing release are now being digested. Already there are predictions that it spells the death of the CDN industry --or at least the radical transformation of Akamai et al to glorified ISPs. And without the need for client software to broadcast video and voice the business model for any client based players looks much less compelling.
Brand strength and distribution may keep them relevant but even for the mighty such as You Tube and Skype, Adobe's Flash 10 player is a major business model threat.
Yahoo once was the directory for text based content but lost its crown when Google arrived with a search engine which meant you did not need to post your content any more to a centralized library to have it read.
Will Astro do the same to sites like YouTube now that you don't need its base technology to broadcast your video? Ditto Skype. Why be locked down to a proprietary system when VoIP telephony is available direct form the browser.
While this may sound overstated Flash already enjoys major distribution strength and a simple upgrade of the current Flash player to version 10 Astro would instantly establish a major P2P platform. Open the player to outside programmers and it is not hard to envisage a very different delivery and application technology and industry architecture to now.
If CDN's are no longer needed then ISP's once again will be asked to pick up the load --often with networks not built to handle large amounts of uplink traffic-- a problem Comcast has run into with the FCC after it tried to manage P2P traffic to avoid congestion.
For the regulators this is a technology which underlines just how important P2P technology is to the future of the Internet. Unless you live under a rock everyone knows there is train crash coming with predictions the Internet will grow nearly 50 times over the next 7 years fueled by the demand for video.
Smart file sharing P2P technologies are going to be critical if theInternet is not to become an unusable swamp as video floods the routers and pipes of the web. Which is why the FCC's review of Comcast's traffic management practices is now emerging as a seminal judgment for the U.S. regulator.
Finding the balance between net neutrality and congestion is a pragmatic issue and the risk is the FCC in its attempt to "regulate" a solution could stifle the very technology which offers most hope for "decongesting" the Internet. Wisdom suggests if the FCC does not have an answer then maybe it is better just saying nothing and let the market sort it out.

Tom

Today's best video clips 19 May 2008

Worth noting: Web Video attracts $217 million investment; P2P in Flash 10 Beta - a YouTube, Skype killer; U-verse offers dual HD streams

Investors Target Web Video
This time, will it be different for investors who come to Hollywood seeking riches by creating content? Venture capitalists with long, successful records are pouring money into content, betting that the Web video economy will change the rules that for decades have made show business an effective mechanism for separating outsiders from their money. With a checkered history of investment failures, Hollywood and the venture capitalists who rule Silicon Valley, Boston and New York have never been the best of friends. Investors historically have been reluctant to pour money into a hit-driven entertainment business. Internet video has become the bridge between the two worlds. Venture capitalists poured $461 million into online video services and software companies last year in 68 deals in the United States. In the first three months of this year, they’ve already funneled $217 million into such ventures, according to Dow Jones VentureSource.

Adobe Introduces P2P and VoIP
Today Adobe announced the public beta of a new Flash Player that is going to change the way we all use the Internet. More importantly, the new player changes the economics of the Internet. Interestingly the two really key features are not getting much play in the news yet as people have focused on the new graphics capabilities. But graphics is not what is really interesting here.

P2P in Flash 10 Beta - a YouTube, Skype killer
The inclusion of p2p in the Flash 10 beta threatens to bring down everyone from YouTube to Skype. Using P2P, Flash sites will be able to serve higher quality video than YouTube at a fraction of the cost. Meanwhile, the combination of the Speex audio codec and the Real Time Media Flow Protocol (RTMFP) will enable sites to seamlessly integrate VoIP without requiring a Skype install. The impact of this change is hard to fathom. We’re talking about a fundamental shift in what is possible on the Internet, with Flash demolishing almost all barriers to integrating P2P on any site.

Flash P2P: Now That’s Disruptive
The reason we should pay attention to this product is Adobe’s distribution strength. The company can easily upgrade its Flash clients and instantly become owner of one of the largest P2P services. What that means is that now anyone can contemplate a Joost-like service that works within a browser. Using AIR to extend those P2P abilities to the desktop would be fairly easy as well. Ironically, both Joost and Jaman have spent considerable time, money and attention doing this. The early version of Flash is rather simple, but it does offer a way to lower bandwidth costs while still delivering high-quality video. In addition, companies like Tokbox (our story) and Woome (NTV story) can add more functionality, such as cheaper, live video-voice service, without spending too much money.

Lieberman protests YouTube's alleged terrorist video
Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee Chairman Joe Lieberman, ID-Conn., Monday called on Google to remove Internet video content produced by terrorist organizations such as Al-Qaeda. The videos – readily available on YouTube –show assassinations, deaths of U.S. soldiers and civilians, weapons training, incendiary speeches by al-Qaeda leadership, and other material intended to encourage violence against the West.

The videos are branded with Al-Qaeda logos – a practice detailed in a recent bipartisan Committee staff report entitled “Violent Islamist Extremism, the Internet, and the Homegrown Terrorist Threat.” These production logos are easily recognizable, making it easy for Google to remove them from its Internet sites. Lieberman called on Google to enforce its own community standards against videos that show gratuitous violence or people getting “hurt, attacked, or humiliated.”

Video view numbers are still misleading
On Wednesday, online video analytics company TubeMogul will be releasing its study of what counts as a view across a dozen video sites. The basic finding is that with only a few exceptions, all a view means is that a video begins to play. Notice how I didn't say it means "someone began watching" -- watching has nothing to do with it. On YouTube, AOL Video, MySpace Video, Yahoo Video, Veoh and Revver, a view is counted as soon a video begins, meaning tick marks are handed out even if viewers didn't watch a single second. It doesn't matter if your video is two minutes or two hours -- if it started playing, it was viewed.

Telecom Giants See a Savior in Video
As the dinosaur wireline businesses creep toward extinction, telecom companies like AT&T and Verizon are getting a big boost from an unlikely offering: video. Ten years ago, it would've been hard to believe that a phone company would find a savior in video, but as the fierce competition between AT&T, Verizon and cable operators heats to a boil, it seems the telecom companies' best defense is business diversity.

Fancast.com to Stream Additional Programming from MTV Networks and BET Networks (Release)
Comcast Corp.today announced that Fancast will have access to an expanded library of full length programming from MTV Networks (MTVN) and BET Networks (BETN), including episodes of COMEDY CENTRAL’s “South Park,” “The Daily Show with Jon Stewart” and “The Colbert Report.” Fancast will also stream exclusive MTVN and BETN stunts monthly, including content like advance looks at the series premiere of VH1’s “Brooke Hogan Knows Best” and Nickelodeon’s new “The Naked Brothers Band” TV movie titled, “Polar Bears.” The new agreement expands on the existing deal, announced in January, under which MTVN and BETN provide Fancast with more than 50 hours of full length episodes and 150 short form clips each month from their brands, which include MTV, Nickelodeon, VH1 and BET. As part of the agreement, Comcast’s video on demand customers will receive more high and standard definition content from MTVN and BETN.

U-verse offers dual HD streams
Though I've been unable to get official launch plans out of AT&T yet, our users are reporting that the telco is now offering dual-HD streams in a number of U-Verse markets.

Fox to Launch Online Ad Network in Latin America
The new “Worthnet.Fox” network will be anchored by News Corp.’s Fox International Channels. Participants include Web sites for The Wall Street Journal, Barron’s and MarketWatch.

Ad Network JellyCloud Takes $6 Million Of $11.5 Million First Round
yCloud, a company that promises better performance for online ads via targeting, has called down $6 million of an $11.5 million first round, reports peHUB. The round, led by Softbank America, U.S. Venture Partners, Crosslink Capital and Sand Hill Capital, was first announced back in April. Basically, the company is yet another ad network

Univision to Offer VOD Content
Spanish-language broadcast network Univision will offer more than 1,000 hours of video-on-demand content through its distribution partners, the company announced at the Cable Show in New Orleans.

After Forays With ABC and HBO, a Video Blogger Returns to Video Blogging
Now Ms. Congdon, feeling a little burned by big media, is back blogging and hosting and producing. Working with the independent production studio Media Rights Capital, she is reintroducing herself on “Sometimes Daily,” an irregular look at life through Ms. Congdon’s eyes.

Millenials media habits
Motorola, Inc. (NYSE: MOT) today announced the initial results of a new study on the influence and behaviors of the Millennial generation (young adults ages 16-27) regarding consumer technology decisions and rich media consumption habits. Motorola’s study among 1,000 young adults found that Millennials are not only looking for more rich media, they are also greatly influencing the buying decisions for the services and technologies in the home and on the go.The study, commissioned by Motorola’s Home & Networks Mobility group, explores how the preferences and habits of today’s Millennials are shaping the future of content consumption. By understanding the interests of end users, Motorola will better help cable operators and service providers customize their offerings to accelerate the delivery of personalized media experiences to their current and future customers.

9 Video Marketing & Advertising Services for SMBs
With the online video advertising market booming a long list of services are coming forward and offering you a variety of solutions for online video marketing and online video advertising. These companies offer affordable solutions that work great for small and medium sized-businesses (SMBs). Here are some highlights of both existing and recently announced video advertising service providers aiming to take your advertising online, over the airwaves, digital signage and even onto mobile phones and devices.

FiOS Puts ON Networks' Web Shows on TV
Online video studio ON Networks’ shows will now be available on traditional television sets, under a deal the Web shop inked a deal with Verizon’s FiOS TV service

Truveo Developer Challenge Offers $100,000 in Prizes for New Video Search
TopCoder(R), Inc., the leader in online programming competition, skills assessment and competitive software development, today announced the Truveo Developer Challenge. With a prize pool of $100,000, developers will compete to build customized applications that use Truveo's open API for video search available at developer.truveo.com. Truveo is the world's leading video search engine with an index containing over 170 million videos that is continuously updated, cleaned and expanded to include the latest videos from the most popular video destinations on the Web. Competition details are available at www.topcoder.com/truveo and Truveo can be accessed at www.truveo.com.

Dailymotion Execs Get Joost
In hopes of jump-starting its floundering video business and attracting new viewers, former next-big-thing Joost added two new programming executives to its management team. The company announced today that Danny Passman and John Schultz, both formerly of Dailymotion , have joined the Joost team as global head of programming strategy and director of programming strategy, respectively. Prior to working at Dailymotion, the tag team worked in series development and production at MTV Networks.

Video: The Top 10 -- plus 1 -- funniest YouTube
With still more than six months to go until the presidential election, most of us likely will be enduring a slew of serious, straight-laced political television ads until November. But as the first presidential race to take place in the new Web 2.0 world, we can find on YouTube a wide variety of political parodies and funny videos created by supporters – and detractors – of the three remaining candidates. So to offset some of the summer doldrums that could be setting in early this year due to the seemingly endless search for the Democratic nominee, Computerworld combed through YouTube’s archives to unearth the funniest and most clever videos focused on the presidential candidates.

That's it folks!