The clash of these two titans continue. After Viacom demanded that YouTube remove all the content it owns from the site just last month, it has come out swinging again. This time Viacom has filed a copyright lawsuit against Google, the owner of YouTube, for a $1 billion compensation.
This is the first time any media company has launched a frontal attack against Google and it would interesting to see the outcome of this development.
The era of YouTube has already had an indelible influence on politics. Just ask George Allen. This fact is not lost on the 2008 Whitehouse aspirants either. This presidential campaign will probably be the first one where webvideos will play a prominent part.
With the exception of Rudy Giuliani and to some extent Sen. Brownback, all the front runners have a video section on their campaign websites. Both Democratic and Republican Candidates are unanimous in their choice of YouTube . Also Sen. Obama and Sen. Brownback atleast one thing in common - both use Brightcove to host their video/s.
* - DEMOCRATIC Candidates - *
Barack Obama
Hillary Clinton
John Edwards
Bill Richardson
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
*- REPUBLICAN Candidates-*
John McCain This is probably the best of the bunch. A very slick site in monochromatic tones and extensive use of web videos.
Mitt Romney
Sam Brownback - The only video on the site - announcing his candidacy.
On a related note - There is now an interactive web-video forum called Fora.tv, dedicated to the topics of current Political, Social and Cultural issues. This is a very interesting effort by founder & CEO Brian Gruber. The site features various channels, with content derived from sources such as Brookings Institution, Hoover Institution, Cato institute and C-SPAN to name the few.
This is past-post update.
In my earlier post, I had profiled two travel websites - Travelistic and TurnHere. (TurnHere has since morphed from an exclusive travel video site to a professional internet video service provider that now caters to a wide variety of businesses).
Recently I chanced upon another interesting travel video site called the GeoBeats. Geobeats hosts free professionally produced short videos on international destinations, highlighting its history, culture, cuisine, shopping, nightlife and other aspects of interest. These short videos usually feature a host who gives a guided tour of the place.
Geobeats also provides its own convenient downloadable video player that has all the videos from the site. All you have to do is just select the destination and the topic to be visually transported to that exotic place.
Featured video of the day - "Jail Hotel" in Lucerne, Switzerland.
Other useful video resources are the websites of popular travel channels on TV such as Lonely Planet and National Geographic.
* Lonely planet has a dedicated video site that features video clips from its own shows and also allows the users to upload their videos into any of its six channels.
* National Geographic has a video section with clips exclusively from its own TV shows. Check out the tab under "People and Places" for high quality videos from places both ancient and modern.
For many more video sites - Click Here
Just weeks after Viacom had spurned YouTube (covered in my earlier post), it has decided to partner with Joost. Under this deal, Viacom will provide Joost with content from MTV shows, BET networks and Paramount Pictures.
Joost which was initially code-named "The Venice Project", is the brainchild of the founders of Skype. It is a new P2P internet Television platform, that will offer several channels of free broadcast quality interactive video programming.
The users will be able to watch the streaming videos without having to download any files to their computer. Joost however is still under limited beta testing and will be available to the general public in the near future.
It is no secret that Ford has stumbled badly in the market for last couple of years. Now with the change at its helm it seems poised for a turnaround. Internally it has adopted a strategy dubbed the "Way Forward plan" and for the public, a marketing platform called the "Bold Moves".
A very interesting and fascinating aspect of this "Bold Moves" initiative is an ongoing online video documentary of its public introspection, its current status and future plans. To quote from its website, these episodes will contain "candid interviews from Ford executives, employees, industry experts and even Ford detractors, Bold Moves approaches each segment from every angle and keeps asking the question: Will Ford succeed?"
New episodes will be posted weekly which will document Ford's progress and transformation.
On a related topic I came across a video website for Auto enthusiasts called the WebridesTV.
This site features an impressive collection of professional and user generated video clips of cars and related to cars. Models profiled range from the antiques to the hotrods including this million dollar car -
Click Here for more video sites.
Viacom after demanding that YouTube remove over 100,000 unauthorized video clips earlier this month, has decided to jump into the fray itself. Viacom which owns MTV networks and Paramount movie studios has announced that it will make available video clips of the content that it owns on its MTV-owned sites like this one.
Moreover like with Youtube, bloggers and myspace users will soon be able to embed these videos into their webpages. The company plans to invest more heavily in new networks and digital properties.
After relinquishing its online video rental venture to Netflix, Walmart is at it again. Following the footsteps of Netflix, Walmart has launched a Video Download (Beta) Service.
It seems Walmart has managed to rope-in all the major studios and therefore has a huge collection of movies. The movies can cost anywhere from approx. $10 to $20, tv shows will cost $1.99 an episode. These downloaded movies can also be viewed on select portable players.
However it cannot be viewed on iPods and also the service does not work with Firefox browser.
Here is a interview with Kevin Swint of Walmart's digital download division - from Bambi's blog
Sundance - one of the prestigious and largest independent cinema film festival is going on right now in Utah. There is a video blog of the film festival on YouTube - link to Sundance Channel.
There are also plenty of video clips of indie films at the festival on their own website - Sundance.org
*Referenced from Frank Barnako's post on his Media Blog.
Today Hillary Clinton announced her much anticipated bid to become the first woman president of USA. The video announcement was posted on her official website and is succinctly titled "I'M IN". - Video Link here
Alan Gore may have "invented" the internet, but the 2008 presidential hopefuls seem to have truly embraced it, especially to deliver their video campaigns.
In keeping with the times, Barack Obama recently announced his decision to form a Presidential exploratory committee in a video on his website. John Edwards on his website outlines the agenda of his campaign in the video titled "Tommorrow Begins Today" and Tom Vilsack presents his opinion in a series of videos on his vlog hosted on blip.tv.
Well the inevitable is here - Starting this week, Netflix will have an option to show movies and TV episodes over the internet. This will be called the "Watch Now" feature and will be available to subscribers at no extra charge.
Read the rest of the details here - Netflix Press Release
Vongo and Movielink are the other two services that offer online movie delivery.
If you are a casual wine drinker like me, then very likely you buy the same Merlot or Chardonnay everytime, because it works for you. However if once in a while you would like to try something different but not sure what to look for or where, then Wineass would be a good place to start.
This tongue-in-cheek website offers video podcast reviews of inexpensive wine. The reviews are funny but relevant (for eg. the wines are rated for their "Body", "Grip", "Wank" and "Snoot").
If your interest in the world of wines run deeper and you aspire to become a sommelier but have not yet mastered the art of opening a bubbly, then Wineloverspage has the video clip to show you how. It also has other wine related information like cooking and painting with wine.
Continuing on the topic of watching online videos on TV - yesterday Sony announced at CES in Las Vegas, the first of its kind TV feature called "BRAVIA Internet Video Link".
This feature is expected to debut in most its new television sets and will allow access to internet video content (including HD content), from various providers such as AOL, Yahoo, Grouper as well as Sony Pictures Entertainment and Sony BMG music.
Sony's new internet video-ready tv will have the ability to receive streaming broadband video via a small optional module that can be easily attached to the back of the tv set. This module links the TV directly to the user's broadband internet service provider via an ethernet connection. The user can navigate through the video content using Sony's Xross Media Bar user interface.
Slingcatcher (see two posts down) and Sony BRAVIA will not be the only two hardware options in the future; Netgear too announced a WiFi set-top box called Digital Entertainer HD, which will direct Streaming videos from the web to the TV. For more details click here.
LX.TV defines itself as Broadband Television website for Luxury Lifestyle and Cultural programming. True to its claim, LX.TV features professionally produced short videos that cover the whole gamut of activities like Shopping, Style, workout, Nightlife, dining, arts and much more.
These videos offer an insight and information on the luxury lifestyle that can be had in the cities of Los Angeles New York, Las Vegas. Also coming soon, the cities of Miami and San Francisco will also be included.
Tastetv (which I had covered in one of my earlier post) is a similar website with videos about cuisine and lifestyle, albeit the theme of these videos is not confined any particular strata of the society.
Yesterday's post was about a web application which would allow online videos to be viewed on TV. Well coincidentally yesterday GIGAOM reported that Sling Media will debut a hardware option to do the same.
The new product will facilitate watching online videos on TV and apparently will debut at this year's CES which opens tommorrow in Las Vegas. This product called the "Slingcatcher" will be the exact opposite of a Slingbbox (also from the same company) which as you may know allows watching TV live on your Laptop. Further details are available here.
Have you ever wanted to watch online video clips on TV instead of your laptop, especially those that were TV shows to begin with.
Well now you can with a web application aptly named SOFATUBE. This utility was developed by Ottawa, Canada based company called Red Kawa. Presently using this simple application you can browse and watch videos on You Tube and Revver.
Red Kawa also offers a free personal video downloading program - Videora 2.0 . This application uses Bittorrent and RSS feeds to find and download online videos for you. They also provide a freeware to convert video files from popular formats such as .avi, .mpg etc into custom formats that allow it to be viewed on iPod, Tivo, Xbox etc. In addition they also have something called the Red Kawa Marketplace where you can find software to use and play on your video game system.
