Hunter Weeks and his friend Josh Caldwell quit their cushy 9 to 5 job so that they could follow their dream, which was to get a sense of America and today’s American Dream. The way Hunter and Josh planned to accomplishing their dream was to travel across the U.S. (from Seattle to Boston), but instead of walking, driving, or flying, they decided to do this journey on a Segway.

Hunter and Josh did this journey with very little money and because of this they struggled. But this didn’t stop them from them reaching their dream, they kept at it and figured things out on a shoe string budget. They turned their weaknesses into strengths by leveraging the media, which allowed them to get press in outlets such Wired, LA Times, Washington Post, The Pheonix, CNet, Boston Globe, and the Denver Post. Instead of complaining and making excuses these two individuals accomplished their dream while becoming somewhat famous.

Via QuickSprout

A startup officially debuting at the Embedded Systems Conference in Boston next week claims it has software that can significantly improve the quality of Web video across a range of devices from cellphones to servers and digital TVs. Ipera Technology Inc. aims to license its algorithms which run on ARM and x86 processors.

The startup conducted the first demos of the software a few weeks ago and is now ready to ship the code. Ipera charges a flat licensing fee, non-recurring engineering fees if users need customization of the code and a royalty based on the type and volume sales of the product using it.

The code has been optimized for an ARM 926EJS for use enhancing video playback in devices such as cellphones and digital cameras. It can provide enhancements to quarter VGA resolution video on handsets running on a 150 MHz or slower processor. It can also run on an ARM7-class CPU for lower-end feature phones.

More info via EE Times

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.

Fred Wilson posted Here that Howard Lindzon got on a plane, went to NYC, hired a couple of awesome video producers named Adam and Jeff and a wonderful host named Lindsay. He set out to make a funny short video about Wall Street five days a week for less than $1000 per show. Adam and Jeff figured out how to do that and they’ve been online every work day since October 16th of last year. 10-months later = $5 Million deal..!!
Congrats are certainly in order..

This is the guide for what you need to do before you go on your trip, how to capture and document it, and then, how to share it via the net.

Meanwhile, there’s a few thousand more examples to watch on the tube

Ok.. we’re outta here.. cya sometime in August..

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.

The new RealPlayer, due at the end of June, will seek to regain popularity as the best and most useful media player on the Internet. It’s great news for Real, and great news for consumers. Real have said they believe their software is operating within the law, but video providers may not agree.
[No kidding.. ya think? -- eds]

RealNetworks are billing it as “the first media player to make it one-click simple to download online videos from thousands of Web sites”, allowing you to save most types of video that haven’t been marked as copyright or non-downloadable to your computer, and then burn them to CD as a with the free Real Player and by sharing the video links with friends as is more commonly done.

It’s too early to know if action will be taken, but chances are that the legal implications are under discussion by multiple parties in multiple companies as we speak, and if it’s planned, we’ll all know soon enough.

via: IT Wire

The Pixelodeon event will feature keynote addresses from speakers bridging the divide between traditional media and new media, and those dealing with issues such as copyright and file sharing. Two dozen curators, including notable new media content creators Amanda Congdon of ABC News, Veronica Belmont of C|Net, and Bre Pettis of Make Magazine, selected videos from the Internet to illustrate themes for one-hour theater screenings starting at 12PM until 6PM each day.

“The current media landscape is changing so fast that these up-and-coming creators have a chance to help define its new foundations,” said Ryanne Hodson, co-founder of Pixelodeon, as she announced speakers, curators, and a line-up of over 300 videos for Pixelodeon’s first annual Web video screening festival to be held at the American Film Institute in Los Angeles, California on June 9-10.

L.A. We Love It..

via: Social Computing Magazine

A new lightweight camcorder designed for easy video uploads is coming from RCA, the Small Wonder weighs about 5 ounces and operates without tapes, discs, cumbersome batteries or complicated instructions.

The camcorder has a built-in Memory Manager video sharing application that lets users save, compress, edit, e-mail and upload video files, or select any paused frame and save it as a .JPG or .BMP image.

To promote the new camcorder, RCA is sponsoring a Wonder Woofs contest for dog owners. Bark for your dinner!

via: Killer App.

Microsoft has outlined its vision for the web at its Mix 07 event in Las Vegas. In his keynote speech, the corporation’s chief software architect Ray Ozzie summarised his vision for the future of the Microsoft-powered internet. He gave further details on Microsoft Silverlight, the corporation’s answer to the well-established Flash tech for web video delivery.

Ozzie said it will “change the game” for web video before introducing Silverlight Streaming. This free service will store and stream video clips into Web pages.. astounding!

via: Tech UK

The WebVideo Summit will feature 80 speakers with “breaking news, new companies, hot products, video screenings and special events, the conference will force video professionals to re-think the way they approach Web video projects, as well as re-invent themselves to adapt in this rapidly-changing medium. Addressing opportunities and challenges by featuring insights and real-world success stories from 15 award-winning video creators, attendees will gain an insider’s access to strategies and techniques that they will be able to apply to their craft immediately. The end result will be that all attendees go home ready to address today’s challenges with new ideas. The event is shaping up to be the premier event focused on the creation and delivery of video on the Net.”

We wonder what Jeremy thinks about their choice of words..

“To clarify.. we acquired Marratech’s software, not the company.”

According to this article on Mercury News: “As a company, we thrive on casual interactions and spontaneous collaboration,” Douglas Merrill, Google’s vice president of engineering, wrote in the blog post. “So we’re excited about acquiring Marratech’s video conferencing software, which will enable from-the-desktop participation for Googlers in videoconference meetings wherever there’s an Internet connection.” Marratech is owned by Swedish mutual funds, employees, and founders. Google said Marratech’s research and development team will remain in Sweden.

Smart money bets they’ll bolt this into YouTube

Ooooh.. this could lead to all kinds of interesting trouble:

Darejunkies.com is a social networking video community, where you can express your inner-most desires, fears, and boundaries by shooting and posting videos of yourself, and your friends. Pick a challenge from the Challenge List. Challenge yourself or somebody else. Shoot it. Post it. Then over the next month, members will vote on it. The 10 most popular challenge videos will split a $10,000 cash prize each 30-Days!

Via: Online Video Contests.

“Dabble’s index of over 10 million videos (now growing at 2.5 million NEW videos a month) means users only have to visit one destination to search for video and other rich media. Dabble doesn’t directly host any media; the search engine keeps track of the bookmarks, or links, to wherever the media is stored on the web along with all the rest of the essential details about the media. Dabble users add to this details and notes, correct mistakes and share what’s valuable to them about the media.”

We posted about the companies custom playlists back in July 2006.

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

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

California’s prison system has been condemned in a 400 page report that to this day has been basically concealed from the public. The Full Disclosure Network presents this ten minute video presentation featuring Joe Gunn, Executive Director of Corrections Independent Review Panel told FDN host Leslie Dutton the prison system was in “chaos, a disaster and total disarray”. This is the second in a series of FDN video news covering the ongoing crisis in California’s jail and prison system.

Surfed over to the Pulver site to sse if there was any video up from the VON show and noticed this little ‘gem’ above claimed 1st prize – and a cool 25k – for their Network 2 Contest.. who knew?!? In all fairness it was better than the only clip we could find so far from the spring 2007 event.. Yikes.

Great resource for all you down south blues fans. We came across this one-on-one video interview with Pockey Lafarge and knew you’d be swinging..!!

If you’ve spent hours trying to find a simple and free FLV file converter, then you’ve probably pulled out most of your hair already. The Internet is littered with products that claim to convert FLV files for free, but invariably come with nasty surprises attached, or insist you pay up for something that you probably feel you shouldn’t. Well there is a solution and Alex Klive over at WorldTV.com is gonna show you how to do it.. step-by-step.

Don’t forget to check-out his groovy Internet TV Charts while you’re there!

Ben Waggoner is program manger for video encoding at Microsoft and has posted a detailed article to help you get the best out the companies latest encoder tools.

Windows Media Video has been a leading web video format for many years, but good hands-on information for how to get the best results out of it hasn’t always been easy to come by. Also, Windows Media has an enormous breadth of ways it’s used, scaling from mobile phones to the PC to CE devices like the Xbox 360. This article strives to codify the best practices to get the optimum Windows Media encode, whatever the source and delivery environment.

Note, this presentation last year includes .PDF and Audio stream as well.

VitalStream has been selected by Saatchi & Saatchi to power Flash video streaming for a new online community designed to facilitate interaction among Toyota hybrid drivers and promote the benefits of Toyota’s Hybrid Synergy Drive technology. VitalStream’s Streaming Service for Flash enables Web surfers to submit videos in most formats, including Windows Media, Quicktime, MPEG, DV and 3GP converts the video clips to Flash 8 and streams them on Toyota’s site.

Cuts.com opened up private testing access for its new video editing and remixing service which allows users to pull online video from sites like YouTube and Myspace and edit mash-ups to create your own directors cut. Their browser-based software interface can add captions and preset sound effects and enable looped sections of video and the edited versions can then be edited again and again by other users. WebTVWire got an invite to try out their beta trial and posted more details Here.

LiveDigital has unveiled their concept of personal Internet broadcasting with the release of its user generated channel and video programming platform, allowing any user to design, program, and brand their own Internet channel importing high-quality content. Each month, LiveDigital will have a Sweeps period, and split advertising revenues among the top 25 channels. The user-driven advertising and revenue sharing contest, which is set to launch on Feb. 1st, will give channel producers the chance to compete for $25,000 in cash.

It’s easy to get caught up in all the latest and greatest technology. New camcorders with better image quality, faster computers, more advanced software, and the list goes on and on. With the seemingly unending advancement of video technology, you might start to feel pressure to keep up with all of these new toys. Chuck Peters reflects on what makes a pro a pro and challenges producers to shift the focus of their minds to think less like technicians and more like artists and to invest in their talent, not just their equipment. Need inspiration.. watch The Recital.

The Wisest Investment You Can Make is In Yourself.

Via: DVguru.

If you had 15 seconds to tell the world whatever you want to, what would you say? Well, now’s your chance to be seen and heard on national television, courtesy of CBS Interactive. Post your 15-second video on YouTube, and CBS Interactive will select one to be broadcast on TV! The first selection will air on Sunday, February 4, 2007.

Via: Off on aTangent.

For nearly 50 years, Jonas Mekas has lugged his camera around New York, creating short films about himself and his friends. While most of those friends — Andy Warhol, Stan Brakhage, Allen Ginsberg — have departed for that rent-controlled loft in the sky, Mekas continues to create and innovate.

On Jan. 1, a week after his 85th birthday, Mekas launches a yearlong film-a-day series. He’ll post a new poetic short at his his website each afternoon until the end of 2007. The videos are intended to be viewed on portable video players, and each download is free on the first day of release. That Mekas is still on the cutting edge of filmmaking should surprise no one. He’s been called, alternately, the godfather and midwife of the American indie scene.

Mekas launched New York’s first theater dedicated to independent movies, started an influential film theory magazine and became the city’s most famous film diarist, logging tens of thousands of hours of footage of New York’s explosively creative ’60s and ’70s underground. “Shoot all scriptwriters,” he wrote in his popular, long-running Village Voice column, “and we may yet have a rebirth of American cinema.”

Via: Wired.

PhilTube is a viral marketing stunt/video blog in the style of “The Office”. The site, which is styled to look just like YouTube, is an absolute hoot. It’s the brainchild of PGM Artists, a video production firm run by Phil McyIntre. The HuffPo has more.

There’s an eclectic range of videos up on their site, but this one is funny. It’s about an office worker (Phil) who holds all his calls, including ad exec cum talk show host Donny Deutsch, to make sure he gets his daily vlogging in.

Via: Micropersuasion.com

The landmark announcement on October 9 that Google would aquire Youtube for $1.6bn in stock has rocked the internet video world. Predictably there has been alot of discussion about the deal – ALOT – but how does one decide if they paid too much..?!? When the rumors started swirling around, thanks to a post on TechCrunch, we came across this cool little app., according to it’s calculation indeed Google seems to have paid about 6x more than it should have. Then again everyone thought Microsoft paid way too much for Hotmail back in the day.. but now the companies book value shows it to be worth several times more.

Time will tell but this much is clear now; internet video has finally hit main-stream and we are def. in the early stages of bubble 2.0 so best cash-out while you still can. Wonder how long it will take to incorporate other product into the GooTube platform..

Sorry for the post lag – we needed some offline rehab time to ‘breathe’

The first edition of Technorati’s Daily Vlog rolled-out today with highlights of the hot sites, videos, photos, and games showing you what the world LIVE web is abuzz about at any given moment in time.

Amazing idea.. somebody should tell RocketBoom to think about doing something like this..?!?

Kevin Sites in the Hot Zone is guerilla news reporting with a mission to cover every armed conflict in the world within one year, and in doing so to provide a clear idea of the combatants, victims, causes, and costs of each of these struggles – and their global impact. Using the latest technology, including high-definition digital cameras and satellite modems, Kevin delivers content including text, photography, video, audio, and interactive chat – all available on one website. Check it out!