Obama College Photos To Go On Display (video)

[via The Huffington Post]

TubeMogul to Serve Up Free Video Stats

Web video metrics firm TubeMogul today Wednesday version 2.0 of its analytics package that will bring better statistics for publishers on 15 top video sharing sites, including DailyMotion, Blip.tv, Break.com, and MetaCafe. Mashable reports.

Publishers on those sites will now be able to get detailed, and standardized data about how users are viewing and engaging with their videos.

By integrating their InPlay technology with outside services TubeMogul is now able to standardize the collection of metrics about how many people are watching videos, for how long, and from where. Many of the more advanced metrics offered by the company’s software were previously only available to customers who hosted their own video, but the new integrations make detailed viewership stats more universally available to publishers.

Illegal downloads soar as hard times bite

Hundreds of thousands more Australians have turned to illegal download sites in the past year to save money on movies, music, software and TV shows during the economic downturn, new figures show. The Sydney Morning Herald reports.

Total visits by Australians to BitTorrent websites including Mininova, The Pirate Bay, isoHunt, TorrentReactor and Torrentz grew from 785,000 in April last year to 1,049,000 in April this year, Nielsen says. This is a year-on-year increase of 33.6 per cent.

The figures, which do not include peer-to-peer software such as Limewire, are in line with a Newspoll survey of 700 Australians in April, which found almost two-thirds of respondents said they were more tempted to buy or obtain pirated products in tough financial times.

Twitter has plans for a TV series

Twitter -- the Web-site that poses the eternal question: "What are you doing?" - has plans for a TV series, according to Swamp Politics.

The social-networking service is teaming with Reveille productions and Brillsteen Entertainment to create an unscripted series based on the site, which invited 140-character postings from all.

The idea is to put Twitter on the trail of celebrities in a competitive situation.

Pirate Bay: In search of an unbiased judge

The search for unbiased judges in the high-profile Pirate Bay case in Sweden seems never-ending, reports News.com.

Fnding legal authorities who are not connected to the people involved in the case is apparently difficult in a country that counts only 9 million inhabitants.

Shortly after the verdict was delivered in mid-April, sentencing the four defendants to jail for one year for having assisted in making 33 copyright-protected files available for distribution, Judge Tomas Norström was accused of having a conflict of interest.

... Court President Fredrik Wersäll appointed Judge Ulrika Ihrfeldt to investigate the conflict of interest. But shortly afterward, Ihrfeldt revealed that she also had been a member of the Swedish Copyright Association and was removed from the case.

Read full article.

Warner Bros. bites into iPhone apps

Warner Bros. Digital Entertainment wants a bite of Apple's App business. The studio is positioning itself as a major distributor of applications for the iPhone and iPod Touch. Variety reports.

Warner Digital Distribution director of worldwide marketing Stephanie Bohn says apps represent a profitable and fast-growing business, noting that Morgan Stanley is predicting it could reach $1 billion in sales in 2009.

...Though the studio has released several higher-profile apps tied to "Terminator Salvation" and other major film and DVD releases, it's also working with developers on a much broader range of game, comic book and entertainment apps that aren't tied to Warner properties.

Warner has developed and released about 15 apps so far and is planning to have a total of 40 out by the end of the year. Some will come from its theatrical unit and Warner Interactive, others by outside developers.

Warner is not alone among studios developing apps around film properties.

Paramount just released "Star Trek" comic book apps with iVerse, in addition to its "Top Gun" and other movie-related game apps.

Sony has an "Angels and Demons" game app called Illuminati, and Disney put out a Fairies game app last year tied to its DVD premiere release, "Tinker Bell."

Read full article.

YouTube: 20 Hours of Video Uploaded Every Minute!

In mid-2007, six hours of video were uploaded to YouTube every minute. Then it grew to eight hours per minute, then 10, then 13. In January of this year, it became 15 hours of video uploaded every minute, the equivalent of Hollywood releasing over 86,000 new full-length movies into theaters each week.

Now, 20 hours of video are uploaded to YouTube every minute.

[via YouTube's official blog]

Filibuster-buster!

Republicans want to stop the global warming bill - 900 pages with thousands of amendments - and want everything to be read aloud on the floor of the house. Democrats in the House Energy and Commerce Committee hired a speed reader and tried him out. [via The Rachel Maddow Show]

Hulu's first live concert could be tip of the iceberg for TV

Hulu will offer a live stream of a Dave Matthews Band concert on June 1—the first of its kind for the popular TV streaming site. If it becomes a trend, cable providers may have reason to worry. For now, though, most TV viewing is still done in front of the ol' boob tube.

[via arstechnica]

U.S. Government Channel Launches on YouTube

The State Department, NASA, the FBI, the White House, and the CDC are among launch partners for a new Government YouTube Channel.

"We've seen a lot of interaction between citizens and the federal government on YouTube, and we're proud to launch this new channel with the GSA to make it even easier," said Steve Grove, Head of News and Politics at YouTube. "This is a great development towards making our government more open, transparent, and accessible to the people."

Press release.

Potential Supreme Court Nominees Targeted in YouTube Attack Ads

According to ABA Journal, some conservative groups aren’t waiting for President Obama to announce his choice to fill the seat of retiring Justice David H. Souter. They are taking aim at three potential Supreme Court nominees in attack ads posted on YouTube.

The Judicial Confirmation Network has posted the videos on a website called Obama’s Frontrunners, the DC Dicta blog reports.

... Supreme Court practitioner Thomas Goldstein, who created SCOTUSblog, told the Tribune that the Internet and blogs have helped distribute information about the possible nominees. "The downside is that there is an equal leveling effect in which totally idiotic wing nuts can go off—that's true on both the far left and far right."img alt="quotesmarksleft.jpg" src="http://www.textually.org/textually/archives/images/set3/quotesmarksleft.jpg" width="20" height="15" />

Motion-Activated Theater Seats for launch of new "Terminator"

Today, May 21, moviegoers at the Theatres at Mall of America in Bloomington, Minn. will feel like they are living the action on the screen as they view the new feature film “Terminator Salvation” from their own motion-activated seat.

Mall of America will be the first theater in the state and the fourth in the nation to feature this thrilling new dimension in movie viewing.

Moviegoers will encounter gripping explosions and suspenseful fight scenes as each seat moves “in perfect sync” with the onscreen action; creating an unmatched immersive experience.

[Press release via CoolestGadgets]

Hollywood launches action against European TV website

Two of Hollywood's most powerful studios are suing European web video startup Zattoo, amid claims that it is illegally profiting from broadcasting their movies online. The Guardian reports.

Lawyers for Universal and Warner Bros claim that the Swiss website - which rebroadcasts a number of television stations live online - is adding advertising to films that are shown on German TV via its peer-to-peer online service.

Zattoo has responded by saying that the adverts in question are merely those shown on TV by the German broadcasters ARD and ZDF, and that it is operating legally under a licensing deal with the two companies. However, a court in Hamburg has ordered Zattoo to stop showing streams for the two stations until the case is resolved.

The site rebroadcasts a number of stations live online - either from stations with public service funding, or through licensing deals. It currently shows channels from broadcasters including the BBC, Eurosport, MTV Germany and Al Jazeera and boasts more than 4m users worldwide.

Read full article.

TV in your Tub

Spotted on TechGadget News, a Tub TV. How cool is that?

YouTube in talks to offer full versions of British-owned shows

With news emerging that Hulu, the American free online video-on-demand service backed by News Corp, NBC Universal and Disney, is in similar negotiations and gearing up for a September British launch, the race is on to dominate British online TV market. The Telegraph reports.

According to a senior TV executive close to the negotiations, The Telegraph understands that any deal ITV or Channel 4 could strike with YouTube, would not be mutually exclusive, allowing both parties’ content to be broadcast across the two online platforms.

Currently Google-owned YouTube officially only shows clips of these stations’ content.

... Additionally CBS-owned TV.com, which offers a rival VoD service to Hulu in America, is also said to be competing in similar negotiations.

Read full article.

New DVD technology packs 2,000 movies on one disc

Scientists unveiled new DVD technology on Wednesday that stores data in five dimensions, making it possible to pack more than 2,000 movies onto a single disc. [via Physorg.com]

A team of researchers at the Swinburne University of Technology in Melbourne, Australia, used nanotechnology to boost the storage potential nearly 10,000-fold compared to standard DVDs, according to a study published in the peer-reviewed journal Nature.

YouTube Ordered to Pay $1.6M to ASCAP

A district judge has ordered YouTube to pay $1.61 million in royalties to U.S. songwriters, and $70,000 per month going forward. Techdirt reports via NewTeeVee.

Songwriters, like everyone else, want a piece of YouTube; for instance the co-writer of Rick Astley’s “Never Gonna Give You Up” recently claimed he’s been exploited by the “rickrolling” phenomenon, only earning £11 from Google for his trouble.

The particulars of the fee are only temporary as YouTube and ASCAP go to trial over blanket licenses for ASCAP’s songs in a case brought last May.

Tiki Bar TV Tests The Pay-To-Watch Webisode Model

Four-year-old online video show Tiki Bar TV just rolled out a $49 annual “membership” option that lets viewers download higher-quality episodes of the show (in HD and Dolby 5.1 Surround Sound). Paidcontent.org reports.

This comes less than a week after Martha Stewart Living Omnimedia announced that it would start charging viewers for access to vintage Martha Stewart show clips; like MSLO, Tiki Bar is hoping to find the ideal combination of ad-supported and subscription-based content, since non-paying users will still be able to view all five seasons of the show (complete with banner ads) on the site.

Artists Don’t Want Pirate Fans to be Disconnected

Last week, a group of music and other entertainment industry representatives urged the UK government to consider drafting legislation that would force ISPs to disconnect alleged pirates. This proposal now faces opposition from an unexpected corner as a coalition of top artists has spoken out against it, saying that disconnecting their fans is the wrong path to take.

[via torrentfreak]

YouTube in TIME's 'top tech failures

Time has published a feature on the '10 biggest tech failures of the last decade' and has included YouTube in the list. TechRadar reports.

Adding the world's most popular video-upload site as one of the major tech flops of the last 10 years is something of a surprise, but the feature points to the website's lack of financial success as one of the reasons it has been included.

"Credit Suisse estimated that YouTube will lose $470 million this year primarily due to the costs of the storage and bandwidth required to run the website.

"The same analyst said that YouTube will bring in $240 million this year, but that is only up 20% from 2008. If this analysis is even close to correct, YouTube would have to triple its revenue to break even."

The damning diatribe concludes with: "YouTube is big, but that has not made it a success."

Other tech travesties included on the list are the original Palm Pilot, the Segway and, unsurprisingly, HD DVD.

Video explains fair use for video

Making a video and hoping not to get sued? Check out American University's Center for Social Media Code of Best Practices in Fair Use for Online Video, now with video explanation.

[via boingboing]

Obama's Speech at Notre Dame University Commencement

[via The Huffington Post]

Michelle Obama Commencement Speech at UC

Michelle Obama's Commencement Speech At University Of California. [via The Huffington Post]

Martha Stewart To Begin Testing Paid Videos Online

From WWD via The Huffington Post.

Martha Stewart is about to try something most magazine publishers have yet to attempt: charging for online videos.

Next month, Stewart will begin testing consumers' appetite to pay for videos, which will come from archives that are not yet available online. The videos can be purchased at marthastewart.com and then downloaded onto a computer, iPod or mobile phone.

Back to sidereel.com - but I did try

How disappointing! I'm in New York and trying to watch the season finale of "House" which aired earlier this week on my computer. But Amazon won't accept my payment, because my address on file is Switzerland? Surely my IP address today is an American one since I'm connecting from my hotel.

Back to sidereel.com and it's not because I didn't try and was willing to pay. Actually it's 10 am. I'm going shopping instead.

CBS: Making Money From Mobile Apps

MocoNews @ EconSM:

CBSi has an app for TV.com, not to mention music apps for Last.fm and third-parties like AOL—but are users flocking to them? Are advertisers?

MocoNews' Staci D. Kramer got the scoop from Zander Lurie, CBSI’s CFO, about whether its mobile app business is booming.

Are you generating a profit on mobile? “We are, but it’s not as ad-driven as our online business. We have carrier relationships that pay well, and a lead-generation deal with iTunes.”

What are the user stats?: “We’ve had over 1 million downloads of our TV.com app, and we’re seeing 5 to 10 times the level of engagement (time spent) from the app than on the site.”

Facebook On the Verge of Being a Top 10 Video Site

According to ComScore stats, Facebook is very nearly a top 10 U.S. video site. It’s in slot No. 11, just behind Disney.

[via GigaOM]

President Speaks at Arizona State University Commencement

President Obama Speaks at Arizona State University Commencement - May 13, 2009.

Read: Obama turns controversy into jokes, lesson at commencement.

Google News adds YouTube news videos

Google News is now integrating YouTube news videos into its front-page results. YouTube icons now appear next to video results under the aggregated news topic. Nearly 14 million unique visitors access Google News monthly, according to Compete.com, so providing this video discovery mechanism to such a large audience could boost YouTube's views even more.

[via FierceOnline Video]

RealNetworks Sues Studios on Antitrust Grounds

Escalating its already simmering court battle with Hollywood, Real Networks has sued the six major Hollywood movie studios and the DVD Copy Control Association, a cross-industry consortium, in federal court in northern California.

[Techmeme via Bits Blog]