TubeMogul has released a free report entitled Web Video Marketing – Best Practices. The report starts out with some various statistics supporting the claims that online video is essentially where its at right now. If you have current ad representation for your video content, this is a great report to forward on to them for source material in your media kit.

Essentially what TubeMogul does is allow you to, for free, follow the trend of your online videos, as well as upload your videos to many different video sharing sites simultaneously, including YouTube, Revver, MetaCafe, MySpace, BrightCove, Yahoo, and AOL. Additionally, they’ll aggregate and graph your stats for you across all the sites with which you choose to distribute your video with. It is the stat-tracking and aggregation of data expertise at TubeMogul that really played into provision of valuable data released in this report.

The juicy bits come in the disclosure of a “Secret Formula” for the success of an online video, expressed “mathematically” by the equation:

.5C + .15M + .20T + .15P = Success.

Here’s what it means:

50% C = Content and Production.

15% M = Metadata.

20% T = Thumbnail.

15% P = Promotion.

Full story via Mashable

To prepare for the site launch, 16 Comedy Central writers and video encoders have worked two shifts a day on the project since June, according to the report. Erik Flannigan, executive vice president for digital media at MTV Networks, the Viacom unit that includes Comedy Central, said one particular challenge for the site was designing ads to satisfy advertisers without turning off viewers. The site will include a database of clips searchable by both date and topic. More via CNN Money

This year’s Fierce 15 IPTV Innovators are small telcos, the majority with 30,000 lines or fewer, that have deployed IPTV via fiber-to-the-home or hybrid copper/fiber systems. Many of the innovators have been among the first to employ MPEG-4 or its Microsoft counterpart in order to deliver high-definition channels to cutting-edge set-tops. They have broken ground with shared headends, brokered programming deals with multinational media conglomerates and field tested untried technology.

A lot of these companies are legacy community phone companies, some more than 100 year old, yet they were out of the gate with IPTV before the Big Bells–Verizon and AT&T. FierceIPTV conferred with several telecom industry executives in the compilation of the list, which was not meant to be comprehensive, but rather a snapshot of the diversity, history and flexibility of some of the most enduring businesses in the United States.

And so the “Aha Hammer” finally drops.. Google has admitted it will integrate the YouTube platform their AdSense unit in order to raise awareness and revenues for themselves all players going forward.

“Video units” will display two different kinds of advertising, both pegged to the content of the site and the subject matter of the video itself. The resulting revenue will be split three ways, with the site owner, content owner and Google all taking a slice.

The two types of ads to be displayed within Google’s new video units are a banner ad that will sit on top of the player at all times, and a so-called overlay ad, which will pop up after the video has been playing for 10 seconds. The bulk of the ads will generate revenue based on how many user clicks they accrue.

We’re not surprised.

The OMMA conference [Video] roundtable on “content costs and creation” hit on a key topic for web video producers and distributors: How much does it cost to make Web video, and how much money can you make from it?

Next New Networks CEO Herb Scannell argued that Internet video only works if it’s dirt cheap or less. Scannell, who spent more than two decades at Viacom’s cable channels, scoffed at the notion that web video could be made profitably for 10% of conventional TV programming budgets: $50,000 for an hour of web video, he argued, was still much too high. Instead, he said, he was looking for programming that costs “hundreds of dollars a minute.” More from the Alley Insider..

The CDS implementation of Adobe Flash Media Server 3 will offer the full benefits of Adobe Flash technology including improved performance for faster user response and increased streaming protection to ensure that valuable content is better protected as it is delivered to viewers. The CDS platform provides additional benefits for the hosting and distribution of Flash Player compatible video content and services including content and service routing, dynamic hierarchical caching, load balancing, failover protection, IP multicast extensions, unified management tools, and end-to-end quality-of-service (QoS) support.

While you might be excused for thinking that Hulu is a developer focused on delivering complete end-to-end solutions within the wimax technology or an interior district of Terengganu, Malaysia.. it’s the new official name for that long-awaited joint venture video portal from News Corp. and NBC Universal.

According to this post on AdWeek:

The site will allow fans to stream episodes of NBC series such as The Office and Friday Night Lights, along with the soon-to-launch remake of The Bionic Woman. Meanwhile, Fox is planning to offer on-demand episodes of staples like The Simpsons and Mad TV as well as premiering shows such as the New Orleans-set cop drama K-Ville. In addition to Hulu.com, the sweeping venture will see these series distributed across the biggest sites on the Web, including AOL, MSN, MySpace and Yahoo!.

Why is Hulu the new venture’s name? According to a note posted on the site by newly installed CEO Jason Kilar, it’s meant to connote fun and simplicity. “Objectively, Hulu is short, easy to spell, easy to pronounce and rhymes with itself,” he wrote. “Subjectively, Hulu strikes us as an inherently fun name, one that captures the spirit of the service we’re building. Our hope is that Hulu will embody our (admittedly ambitious) never-ending mission, which is to help you find and enjoy the world’s premiere content when, where and how you want it.”

Apply Here for beta access, full launch due in October.

Not to be outdone by Silverlight, Adobe has announced a beta version of its Flash player with the ability to play high-definition video. The new player adds support for H.264 – as used in the Blu-ray and HD DVD standards – plus High Efficiency AAC audio.

The company’s Premiere Pro and After Effects software for content creators already supports H.264 encoding, and support for the standard will also be added to Adobe’s AIR platform for rich Internet applications. Get the beta Flash Player here. The final release is expected during the next few months.

We’re coming to this a bit late.. the SuperNova 2007 event was held last month to explore “Business, technology, and social interactions”.

“Intelligence is moving to the edges, through networked computers, empowered users, fluid digital content, distributed work teams, and powerful communications devices. At the same time, new opportunities are emerging through social software, pervasive wireless networking, massively multi-player virtual worlds, and distributed e-commerce, among other trends.”

Whew, we double dare ya to chant that one 3x fast..

The presentation from John Hagel who is billed as a ‘renowned strategy consultant and author, who recently joined Deloitte and Touche, where he will head a new Silicon Valley research institute’ is def. worth watching.

via: Bubble Generation

Who’s Your Daddy announced that the company has launched a media partnership with RawVegas.TV a channel that provides 100% original Internet video content reflecting the uninhibited “anything goes” spirit of Las Vegas, while capturing the essence of Who’s Your Daddy. Popular television shows on the site feature UFC fighters, nightclub promoters, professional poker players and a wide variety of influential and well-known people from various industries, sports and entertainment venues.

After 11 years, Slate has decided to become a parent. So, light up a cigar and say hello to Slate V.

That’s “V” as in video, not the Roman numeral for “5.” The new video magazine will deliver original features, compelling documentary segments, and buzz-worthy video clips culled from the far reaches of the Web.

On the site you’ll find familiar Slate franchises such as “Explainer,” “Dear Prudence,” “Damned Spot,” and “Ad Report Card”—now in living color!—alongside newly created segments about politics, culture, business, technology, and [oh soooo much] more.

We’re in the mood to paaaaaartay

In an industry just beginning to understand how to slam video down broadband pipes to achieve new, improved television experiences, there’s still advertising and revenue requirements to meet, still a few speed bumps before reaching the new media ecosystem. Huge growth is anticipated. IPTV households are expected to grow worldwide from around seven million to 48 million between now and 2019 – a 60 per cent annual growth rate over five years, according to market researcher Infonetics.

So when will the revolution be televised?
What are the programming and business forces needed for escape velocity?

Check-out this new book to get the full skinny!

via: Silicon Networks

National Lampoon has decided to expand its stake in the Web video market, the company already produces feature films and short video content on AOL Video and Brightcove, which runs Nationallampoon.com and TogaTV.com.

“Everything we develop or produce today, whether it’s audio for the radio network or video or film, has an online component,” said National Lampoon Chief Executive Daniel Laikin.

Talk about a real “Animal House” video portal..!!

via: Switched.com

Tubearoo is building a network of internet video, social networking and people-powered websites, which currently consists of Tubearoo.com, Shoutwire.com and Tubearoo.cn. Catering to Chinese speaking internet users who wish to view, upload and share video, revenue from online video in China is expected to rise 580 per cent by 2010, according to this article.

The Amazing Boobkini is getting a pretty good rise out of us already

Here’s a super-slick app. we just noticed via TechCrunch:

“Cozmo.Tv wants to create a TV 2.0 by changing the way you consume online video from a random walk to personalized content. Next week at Always On, they will officially announce the new embeddable video widget they’ve been working on for the past couple of months. The widget functions like an online TV, streaming channels of personalized video content based on the initial preferences set by the widget publisher and the preferences of the viewer.

Publishers seed their widget with the initial channels by adding explicit RSS feeds to video sites or keyword searches run on Cozmo’s video index. Basing channels off of feeds means that a widget can be set up and forgotten, adding content to its channels as new shows appear in the feed. At launch the indexed sites will include videos from YouTube and Blip.tv, but will expand to include Google Video, MySpace, Brightcove, and Break.com.

We’re gonna give that one a go for sure!

Here’s a standard for wannbe streaming portals to look at up to!

Hat-tip to Steve Garfield’s Off on a Tangent

Manify.net has been doing some great work helping folks to get into the web video streaming game. We came across this post about how they even include Creative Commons tagging for their uploads.

Chances are, you’ve noticed the CC – and maybe even know what it means. But for most casual users of the Uploader, the deftault share and share alike license is just fine. But if you haven’t dug deeper – you should. Magnify.net provides a whole array of license options (courtesy of the folks at Creative Commons) that allows you to define with great specificity the rights you are willing to share, and the rights you want to retain.

Gotta love the opening line of their company page

The Magnify team is a growing band of media makers, code wranglers, and web evangelists who are committed to making video a team sport.

Hats off to Steve, Simon and crew!

Via: Steve Garfield

In short, it enables paid Skype-to-Skype voice and video calls. You can charge other people for calling you either a one-off fee or by the minute. Conversely, if you are the caller, you can call experts who charge for their services, and you can then pay the fee and access the expertise that the other call party provides.

When you call someone who is a Skype Prime call provider, and you both have the new version of Skype, the provider can initiate what we call a “payment request”. That is, all calls start as free, but you can then switch to the paid calling, charging either by the minute or a one-off fixed fee. The call then proceeds as a paid Skype Prime call and your Skype Credit is deducted by the appropriate amount that then goes to the receiver’s account. The provider does not get the call fees directly as Skype Credit — rather, they go into a special holding “box”. The provider then receives the revenue via PayPal.

Another way how Skype Prime is “more than a phone” is that you can also have paid video calls. This has not really been possible previously in the regular phone system. Since we first launched the free Skype Video feature, we have received many moving stories about how it has really made a difference, for example from family members living on different continents who have been able to see each other’s faces again after being separated for years. We believe that Video coupled with Prime will similarly boost many services that were previously unfeasible.

This could well spawn a whole new meaning to the call-girls industry!

Via: Feld Toughts

Jeff Han is a research scientist for NYU’s Courant Institute of Mathematical Sciences. Here at TED he demonstrates — for the first time publicly — his intuitive, “interface-free,” touch-driven computer screen, which can be manipulated intuitively with the fingertips, and responds to varying levels of pressure. Steve Jobs.. take notes..

Damn.. we’re def. gonna get one of those units for the home-office!

The Okinawa Churaumi Aquarium is the biggest fish tank in the whole world with a plaque from Guinness to prove it. They also have three whale sharks, the largest and one of the rarest fish species known to man, in that gigantic ocean zoo!

Check out this quick video [.wmv], to get an idea of how massive that aquaruim really is with 7,500 tons of water behind 5ft thick acrylic glass wall.

Thank Tokyo Mango for the tip.

Doc Searls talks about two of the competing metaphors that exist on the Internet – the static Web vs. the dynamic Web – at an NPR session today. QT Here.

We were hoping he’d pull a Doc Vader move with that fan in the foreground.. lol

Via: Andy Carvin’s Waste of Bandwidth

Last Wednesday, Michael Wesch posted this five-minute clip, set to techno music, to help explain Web 2.0. As part of an article that is intended to appear in a journal of anthropology, Wesch created the video to appear on the publication’s Web site. “I was trying to explain this stuff in the traditional paper format, and I thought, ‘This is ironic,’ I can illustrate this much better in a video.”

The difference between HTML and XML, the formation of blogs and the nonlinear quality of digital text are topics addressed in Wesch’s piece. The title, “The Machine is Us/ing Us,” is a reference to a point made in the video — that we are teaching our computer new ideas every time we click on a link. As Wesch says: “The more we are aware of the machine, the better we can make it serve us.” And as he writes in the video, “Digital text is no longer just linking information. The Web is no longer just linking information. The Web is linking people.”

Via: Inside Higher Ed.

Hey Ze Man.. Congrats on making it to the reeeeeally big show!

We saw the news on Steve Garfields site last week and thought it was an early April fools trick. We’ve been loyal Sports Racers since even before the full-time March 2006 launch.. all the best in yer new digs. Don’t forget us little people sleeping under your bed who loved you long-time!

Last summer, Sharon Sheinwold, a partner at United Talent Agency, arrived at zefrank.com via scobleizer.com and spent the next three days “getting lost” in the site. Soon after, she and U.T.A. owner Nick Stevens flew out to New York to meet Ze Frank in person.

The power meeting went down at the East Village eatery Zum Schneider on Sept. 10. During the courtship, Mr. Frank was struck by Mr. Stevens’ energy as well as his language. “He was like, ‘We’ll do this, we’ll do that, we’ll pump that area.’ And I was like, ‘Wait, did you just say you’ll ‘pump that area’?” said Mr. Frank. “In a way, it was my best expectation of Hollywood. In and of itself, it was such a creative statement, I definitely felt like I could work with this guy.”

Full article Here.

Guitar World has complied a list of the 100 Greatest Guitar Solos. Over the last few days Howard Stern has been playing clips from the list. CityRags found listening to these great classics such a moving experience, they even took it one step further and dug up a video link for each of the top 20! Listen And Watch the musical genius that made these classics famous!

1. Stairway To Heaven – Jimmy Page
2. Eruption – Edward Van Halen
3. Freebird -Collins/Rossington
4. Comfortably Numb – David Gilmour
5. All Along The Watchtower – Jimi Hendrix
6. November Rain – Slash
7. One – Kirk Hammet/Metallica
8. Hotel California – Don Felder/Joe Walsh
9. Crazy Train – Randy Rhoads
10. Crossroads – Eric Clapton
11. Voodo Chile – Jimi Hendrix
12. Johnny B. Goode – Chuck Berry
13. Texas Flood – Stevie Ray Vaughan
14. Layla – Clapton/Allman
15. Floods – Dimebag Darrel
16. Heartbreaker – Jimmy Page
17. Cliffs Of Dover – Eric Johnson
18. Little Wing – Jimi Hendrix
19. Highway Star – Ritchie Blackmore
20. Bohemian Rhapsody – Brian May

The grand prize winners in the Avid 30-Second Spot contest have been announced and the winner in the Professional’s Choice category was In the Halls of Avid, One is Many by Aaron Osborne. This spot was shot in HD with the HVX200 and put together using Avid Xpress Pro and Adobe After Effects. The winner in the People’s Choice category was CaveMan by Bob Chambers. It was shot with the Sony WS790 and created with Avid Media Composer Adrenaline and Digidesign Pro Tools. See all the entries Here.

Via: DV Guru.

This documentary film on Lenny Bruce, the godfather of stand-up shock comedy, is available in full via YouTube! While potentially not safe for the conservative types it’s a detailed look – with narration by Robert DeNiro – at the legendary rise and fall of fame and fortune of a true pioneer.