July 10, 2009
Statue of Liberty replica decapitated on YouTube
A disturbing YouTube video dated July Fourth showing a gloved hand sawing off the head of the statue of Liberty with slogans "We don't want your freedom" and "Death to America" flashing on the screen, was anonymously e-mailed to the Daily News and Ryan earlier this week. CNN reports.
July 8, 2009
Michael Jackson Funeral Live Streams, By the Numbers
Michael Jackson’s memorial held today at the Staples Center in Los Angeles turned out to be one of the biggest online events ever, according to various sources, reports GigaOM.
Akamai says that it was the second-largest day in terms of total traffic on its network. Akamai delivered more than 2,185,000 live and on-demand streams in both the Flash and Windows Media formats.
There were 3,924,370 visitors per minute as of 1 pm EST and an average of more than 3.3 million visitors per minute overall.
More stats on GigaOM. Via The New York Times.
How can YouTube survive?
It's wildly popular - and thought to be losing hundreds of millions of dollars a year. Now questions are being asked about the future of YouTube. Rhodri Marsden investigates a mystery of digital-age 'freeconomics' for London's Independent.
[via Mediabistro]
July 7, 2009
Where to Watch the Michael Jackson Memorial Service
Check out where to watch the Michael Jackson Memorial Service on NewTeeVee.
One option, go to CNN.om Live .
3 offers free Sky TV on the Sony Ericsson W995
3 is offering its customers a saving of £5 a month when they purchase the Sony Ericsson W995. With exclusive access to Sky Mobile TV, customers of 3 will have access to live sports coverage as well as Sky Sports 1, 2, 3, Xtra and Sky Sports News. For the non sports fan, there will also be instant access to Sky Sports News.
[via Mobile Choice]
Rise of Web Video, Beyond 2-Minute Clips
New Web habits, aided by the screen-filling video that faster Internet access allows, are now debunking the rule "keep it short", reports The New York Times.
... While online video is not going to replace television anytime soon, it is now decidedly mainstream. About 150 million Internet users in the United States watch about 14.5 billion videos a month, according to the measurement firm comScore, or an average of 97 videos per viewer. Although the Web lacks a standard for video measurement, comScore says average video durations have risen slowly but surely in the past year, to an average of 3.4 minutes in March.
These figures are reflective of the US market. It woud be interesting to compare with Europe and Asia. One of the most popular illegal hosting video sites, Megavideo - one of the 100 most visited websites - cuts viewers off after 72 minutes, suggesting they either wait 50 minutes to continue viewing, or pay for an uninterrupted subscription service.
ABC Arrives on Hulu
Monday was the official kick-off for the content partnership between Hulu and Disney, with "Grey's Anatomy" coming to the online streaming site. PCWorld reports.
... With ABC's arrival, Hulu now has content from all the major U.S. television networks except CBS, which has its own online streaming site, TV.com.
Read full article.
July 6, 2009
Sarah Palin's Resignation speech
[via boingboing. And read great coverage and commentaries on The Huffington Post]
July 3, 2009
Microsoft offending puke ad
Microsoft has yanked a controversial ad for its Internet Explorer 8 browser - which features a woman vomiting several times - after an outcry among users.
What on earth where they thinking?
[via stuff]
July 2, 2009
Innocents accused of net piracy
Some 20 net users have come forward claiming they have been wrongly accused of illegally sharing video games, reports the BBC.
Some 6,000 letters have been sent out by law firm ACS Law, on behalf of firms such as Reality Pump and Topware Interactive, who are the copyright owners of video games Two Worlds and Dream Pinball respectively.
Read full article.
Michael Jackson Funeral to be live streamed
As the world pays tribute to the King of Pop, Music Celebrity will be streaming Michael Jackson's funeral live. So far the family has not confirmed definite plans about where and when.
July 1, 2009
Joost bows to YouTube, gives up consumer video
Joost, the third major creation by Niklas Zennström and Janus Friis, the duo that also founded Kazaa and Skype, announced Tuesday that it will dump its consumer-video service and will now focus on building "white label" video platforms for "cable and satellite providers, broadcasters and video aggregators." The move marks the end of Joost as a YouTube and Hulu competitor.
[via News.com]
June 30, 2009
The Pirate Bay Will Close Its Tracker and Remove Torrents
Alongside the news that The Pirate Bay will sell shares on the Swedish stock market come some other significant changes. The site itself will decentralize and stop hosting and tracking torrents. Instead, The Pirate Bay will use a third party tracker and torrent hosting service to serve its users.
[via Torrent Freak]
The Pirate Bay Sold To Software Company, Goes Legal
According to gaming company Global Gaming Factory X, it is in the the process of acquiring The Pirate Bay for $7.8m (SEK 60 million). The acquisition is scheduled to be completed by August and will see the site launch new business models to compensate content providers and copyright owners.
[via Torrent Freak]
New Formats Give Online Video Ads Potential
From AdAge:
But with the TV-upfront market frozen and advertisers looking for lower-cost means to reach consumers, a push is on to try formats that could finally realize some of the potential of online video with targeted ads that engage with real interactivity.
Read AdAge write-up of of some of the latest efforts to reinvent online video ads.
Tremor Media has rolled out a host of ad units called vChoice that bring interactivity into the player.
Hulu pioneered the choose-your-own pre-roll "ad selector" unit, which allows users to choose an ad, including a long-form movie trailer in exchange for an ad-free episode.
YouTube introduced its own variation on choose-your-own-ads just last week.
"Engagement" pricing models where the advertiser pays for a specific action, rather than an impression.
June 29, 2009
Google News Opens the Floodgates to YouTube Publishers
Last month, Google News began including videos from a variety of news organizations, such that some stories on the aggregator now include related videos from YouTube that are embedded side-by-side with links to news articles. Mashable reports.
Automated Legal Threats Turn Piracy Into Profit
Piracy watchdog Nexicon has found the ultimate way to turn piracy into profit for the fresh copyright holders added to their clientele. They offer alleged file-sharers the chance to settle for $10 per downloaded song or an equal amount for a pirated movie. If you decide not to settle, they promise to bankrupt you in court. TorrentFreak reports.
Read full article.
YouTube launches Reporters' Center to help you report the News
YouTube is helping the enormous community of citizen reporters on YouTube with a new resource to help them learn more about how to report the news.
YouTube Reporters' Center features some of the nation's top journalists sharing instructional videos with tips and advice for better reporting.
In their own words:
Learn how to prepare for an interview from CBS News' Katie Couric; how to be an investigative reporter from the legendary Washington Post journalist Bob Woodward, or why it's important for citizens to participate in the news-gathering process from Arianna Huffington.
And definitely don't miss out on New York Times columnist Nicholas Kristof's video on how to report from a crisis area without getting shot.
In addition, you can also learn practical and ethical tips, like how to fact check your stories, avoid breaking the law while reporting, and adhere to journalistic principles.
[via YouTube Blog]
Michael Jackson Flashmob tributes
In Paris, London, Vienna and New York, hundreds gathered to pay homage to Michael Jackson. All theses videos on YouTube are titled Mass Moonwalk, but it's mostly music. In most videos the crowd is focusing their cameraphones on something we can't see, probably someone moonwalking.
Pirate Bay founders launch beta of The Video Bay, a streaming video site
Users can share video clips here without having to fear concerns they may be removed over copyright claims, as with the current dominant video-sharing service, YouTube.
[via boingboing]
June 27, 2009
Pirate Bay judge ruled unbiased
The judge in the Pirate Bay case, Tomas Norström, was not biased, reports News.com.
The accusations were based on Norström's membership in organizations such as the Swedish Copyright Association, which counts among its members lawyers who represented the plaintiffs during The Pirate Bay trial.
The court ascertained that such memberships do demonstrate a commitment to intellectual property issues, which could be considered by some to be in the interest of the plaintiffs. But it also pointed out that rights-holders' rights are protected by the Constitution, and so cannot be considered a conflict of interest if a judge endorses the principles behind copyright laws.
... On April 17, the four defendants were found guilty of having made 33 copyright-protected files accessible for illegal file-sharing via the Piratebay.org Web site and were sentenced to one year in jail.
They were also ordered to pay a total of 30 million Swedish kronor ($3.8 million) in damages to copyright holders, among them a number of American media giants.
TV Everywhere wants commercials everywhere too
One perk to watching TV shows online is that there are few commercials. On Hulu, you usually have to sit through only a handful of spots from a single sponsor in a 30-minute show. It's great for viewers, but it's another reason why the site isn't making any money. The LA Times reports.
... Once Comcast and Time Warner take the plunge, Hulu and other sites will likely feel they have a greenlight to jump on board as well. The reality is that the only way content online works economically for big media is either with a pay wall (good luck) or more ads. While it's true that some advertisers pay a premium to be a sole sponsor of a show online, that money alone is probably not significant enough to solve the problem of -- to overuse NBC Universal chief Jeff Zucker's quote -- trading analog dollars for digital dimes.
June 26, 2009
CNN: We Don’t Need YouTube and Twitter to Tell Us What’s Going on in Iran–We’ve Got iReport
CNN's iReport is the news service’s attempt to create its own user-generated news hub. It’s supposed be to be able attract eyeballs on its own and in some cases, feed the Web site and the cable channel with free content donated by viewers. Peter Kafka reports for All Things Digital.
To date, 150 of the Iran-related iReports have been vetted and verified by CNN producers for use on CNN air or online–something the likes of YouTube or Flickr just aren’t equipped to do given their lack of newsgathering infrastructure.” (Yesterday CNN told me it added another 399 Iran-related iReports, and that seven had made it onto air. Presumably those numbers are still increasing.)
CNN producers have contacted the people who sent in all of the Iran-related iReports it has featured on the network and at least verified that they are who they say they are. That in itself seems worthwhile, and maybe even worth bragging about.
Related: - Unverifiable Citizens' Journalism in Iran
YouTube Mobile Uploads Up 400% Since iPhone 3GS Launch
YouTube reports that in the six days since the iPhone 3GS was released last week, the number of mobile uploads has increased by a whopping 400%. For a single phone model to have such a major impact on the site is simply phenomenal. [via TechCrunch]
YouTube also attributes part of the growth to a streamlined upload flow (note how easy it is to upload a video from your iPhone to the site), as well as its improved sharing capabilities (you can now syndicate your videos to services like Facebook and Twitter).
Michael Jackson dies leaving legacy of award-winning music
June 25, 2009
Cable Grabs the Web Remote
Several major cable networks and subscription-TV providers are readying systems that will let only paying subscribers watch cable shows on the Web, part of an effort to counter the growing amount of free TV shows available online. The WSJ reports.
While limited, the new tests represent part of an industry-wide push to preserve and possibly expand the cable-TV business's lucrative subscription model in a digital world. The move also come as media companies are struggling to make money from online video.
... Cable operators have chafed as cable networks have posted some of their programming online. The new systems would allow networks to put more programming online without enticing viewers to cancel cable-TV subscriptions.
Read full artice.
June 23, 2009
Make Videos for Nonprofits Via YouTube Video Volunteer
YouTube is appealing to your inner filmmaker in an effort to get the word out about certain charitable organizations. AppScout reports.
Video Volunteers is YouTube's version of a new platform that Google has launched called All for Good, which helps match citizens with volunteer opportunities in their local communities.
Built in partnership with the White House, All for Good is sort of like a Craigslist for community service. But you don't just have to show up at your local soup kitchen or animal shelter to give back -- volunteering in the 21st century can be done entirely online.
[via YouTube Blog]
June 22, 2009
French TV fiction suffers at U.S. dominance
French fictional programs took just 13 of the top 100 most-watched shows for 2008, while U.S. imports monopolized the list with 57 spots.
This marks a major shift from 2005 when French fiction took 56 of the same 100 spots and U.S. shows just four.
Read full article in The Hollywood Reporter.
Iran bans prayers for 'Angel of Freedom' Neda Agha Soltan
This video or group may contain content that is inappropriate for some users, as flagged by YouTube's user community.
Iran's regime has issued a ban on memorials for a young woman whose death has become the focal point of protests against the clerical regime. The Telegraph reports.
Graphic scenes show Neda – her name means "the call" – walking with her father among demonstrators, then separately when she was shot as well as attempts to save her life.
Some online posts speculated the image would rank alongside that of the unnamed man standing in front of a tank in Beijing's Tiananmen Square in 1989 and the summary execution of a Vietnamese Communist prisoner by Colonel Nugyen Ngoc Loan in 1968.
Footage was posted on YouTube, Twitter and Facebook and was viewed by tens of thousands. Messages of sympathy and outrage flooded the internet following the posting of the videos.
The Iranian authorities have now sent out a circular to mosques banning collective prayers for the woman.
New service tracks online interest in TV shows
Web site creation service Wetpaint has launched a measurement system that tracks fan interest in popular TV shows, reports Reuters.
... There are existing ways to measure a brand's online popularity, including BuzzMetrics from Nielsen, the parent company of The Hollywood Reporter. Fandex is billed as the first system built specifically around providing an apples-to-apples comparison of TV series interest among social media networks.
Hide My Ass gets around region-restricted videos
Hide My Ass, another proxy and privacy tool to surf the Web anonymously, or in other words, watch Weeds and other favorite TV shows on YouTube even if you live outside the US.
Unlike HotSpot Shield, there is no client application to download, just type in a URL.
Related: - How to Watch Hulu Around the World
June 21, 2009
Iran Election Crisis: 10 Incredible YouTube Videos
Thousands of Iran-related videos are being uploaded to YouTube every day, revealing first-hand accounts of the crisis to the world. Some are incredible, some are eye-opening, and other shock you to your very core. Mashable has included ten of these incredible videos, in a chronological order that helps provide context to the crisis in Iran. Be prepared, for these videos can evoke some very strong emotions.
Watch here.
