Off on vacation, back July 12

Off on vacation, back Monday July 12.

Facebook movie trailer: The Social Network

Spotted on gadgettell, the trailer for The Social Network a movie about Facebook's co-founder, Mark Zuckerberg.

The movie will be released in theaters in October.

YouTube Streams 14.6B Videos, 100 Videos Viewed per User

According to comScore, YouTube users watched 14.6 billion videos for the month of May, an all-time high for the Website, accounting for 43.1 percent of all videos viewed online. eWeek reports.

Overall, 183 million U.S. Internet users watched some 34 billion videos for the month, an average of 186 videos per viewer. That's a jump from April, when U.S. users watched 180 million videos.

When people weren't watching videos on YouTube, they were watching them on Hulu (1.2 billion videos), Microsoft Sites (642 million videos), Vevo (430 million videos) and YouTube court buddy Viacom Digital (347 million videos).

Read full article and comScore press release.

RSA Animate - The Secret Powers of Time

A fabulous presentation by Professor Philip Zimbardo conveying how our individual perspectives of time affect our work, health and well-being. And how the Internet is re-wiring our brain.

BBC Trust approves Project Canvas

The BBC has been given the go-ahead for a project which could kick-start demand for internet TV.

Project Canvas is a partnership between the BBC, ITV, BT, Five, Channel 4 and TalkTalk to develop a so-called Internet Protocol Television standard. The service will see a range of set-top boxes available to access on-demand TV services such as iPlayer and ITVplayer.

Read full article.

YouTube Videos Now Have A Vuvuzela Button

In the spirit of the World Cup, Google has added a Vuvuzela button to YouTube vidoes. Click on the football icon!

[via Gizmodo]

Get ready for Skype on your TV

Get ready for Skype on your TV. The company has launched an SDK that will allow third-party developers to integrate support for the company's voice and video chat services into their own products. arstechnica reports.

... The benefit for Skype is obvious, because the company makes most of its money selling telecom services on top of its network. Allowing third-party developers to integrate Skype into a wide range of other hardware and software products will expand the audience, thus increasing the size of Skype's potential customer base.

Read full article.

US pirate hunters target movies

An organisation set up in the US to track down and punish illegal file-sharers is coming under increasing scrutiny from civil liberty groups. The BBC reports.

The US Copyright Group (USCG) has been working on behalf of a range of movie makers, most notably those behind box office hit The Hurt Locker.

It has pledged to target 150,000 illegal downloaders in coming months.

But civil rights groups have questioned its motives.

Read full article.

Related:

-- Is your IP address on This "Hurt Locker" Hit List

-- "Hurt Locker" file sharers ordered to pay $1,500

-- Hurt Locker downloaders, you've been sued

-- TorrentFreak on Hurt Locker's upcoming massive lawsuit against pirates

-- Hurt Locker Producers Take Up Arms Against Pirates

Judge Sides With Google in Viacom Video Suit

In a major victory for Google in its battle with media companies, a federal judge in New York on Wednesday threw out Viacom’s $1 billion copyright infringement lawsuit against Google’s YouTube, the No. 1 Internet video-sharing site. The New York Times.

The ruling in the closely watched case could have major implications for the scores of Internet sites, like YouTube and Facebook, that are largely built with content uploaded by their users.

Read full article.

Rumblefish to sell songs for use in YouTube videos

Music Licensing store Rumblefish Inc. is giving YouTube uploaders a way to add songs to their videos without infringing on copyrights - by selling the licensed songs for $1.99 at its new website, FriendlyMusic.com.

[via Google News]

Feds won't get involved in "three strikes," website blocking

White House intellectual property "czar" Victoria A. Espinel's Joint Strategic Plan, published yesterday the Joint Strategic Plan (PDF).

Rightsholders who hoped the federal government would start running "three strikes" Internet copyright tribunals or start ordering ISPs to block websites were disappointed.

Today, the Internet allows for a person who illegally 'camcords' a film at a movie theater in Moscow to distribute a bootleg copy across the globe with the push of a button," the plan warns. "These thieves impose substantial costs. They depress investment in technologies needed to meet global challenges.

Read full article in arstechnica.

Releasing the Joint Strategic Plan to Combat Intellectual Property Theft (The White House Blog)

White House Unveils Intellectual Property Enforcement Plan (B&C)

Releasing the Joint Strategic Plan to Combat Intellectual Property Theft (The White House Blog)

US targeting foreign pirate websites

The United States will pursue foreign websites that pirate American music and movies as part of a new strategy to stop sales of counterfeit and pirated goods at home and abroad, US Vice President Joe Biden said, reports Reuters.

Biden said the United States would exert more pressure on foreign governments to shut down the sites by "being as public as we possibly can" about illegal activity.

Biden did not mention any foreign websites by name. A recent USTR report said China's top internet search firm, Baidu, was associated with between 50 per cent and 75 per cent of illegal music downloads in China.

Read full article.

Hollywood faces new piracy threat

Movie fans downloading free pirated films are no longer Hollywood's worst nightmare, but that's only because of a newer menace: cheap, and equally illegal, subscription services, reports Reuters.

Foreign, often mob-run, businesses aggregate illegally obtained movies into "cyberlockers" similar to Internet storage sites used by individual consumers to squirrel away pirated video. But the for-profit version of this phenomenon has spawned an array of sophisticated and seemingly reputable sites selling unlimited digital movie files for as little as $5 a month.

"Cyberlockers now represent the preferred method by which consumers are enjoying pirated content," Paramount Pictures chief operating officer Fred Huntsberry said Monday.

Read full article.

The article doesn't specify, but video sharing sites (offering streaming videos) are also qualified as cyberlockers.

Related:

-- Why and how TV viewers are resorting to watching tv shows on illegal video sharing sites.

-- Hollywood whining about illegal streaming again

-- Embedded code of US TV series on video sharing sites spreads

-- Watching TV Series Online actually does come with a price

-- Watching TV Series Online - The price to pay

-- US TV series become outdoor entertainment for South Korean youth

-- TV sets a turn-off for South Korea's youth

-- Korea in the Grip of U.S. TV Series Fever

-- America lags behind Europe and S Korea in watching TV Online

-- With the rise of laptops, college students begin to deem TVs obsolete

-- Seeking options for watching TV online (legally) from Europe

-- Who's Killing TV?

-- Online TV viewing 'on the rise'

-- Threat for Big Media: Guerrilla Video Sites

-- Forget YouTube: Go To These Sites If You Want Hard Core Copyright Infringing Content

On Web Video, Captions Are Coming Slowly

Closed-captioning is mandatory on television, but not for TV programs on the Internet. And that has turned Web sites like ABC.com into battlegrounds for advocates like Ms. Matlin, who have spoken up on the lack of captions on sites like CNN.com and services like Netflix.

[via The New York Times]

Italian priest develops iMass app

An Italian priest has developed an app that will let priests celebrate Mass with an iPad on the altar instead of the regular Roman missal.

[via The Telegraph]

Sony Web TVs Let Buyers Create Their Own Channels

Over the next few months, Sony Corp. and its competitors will introduce a new generation of Web- connected televisions -- and services that will stream movies, TV shows, and music over the Internet and onto those sets. Bloomberg reports.

The idea is to make it easier for consumers to bypass cable and effectively create their own personal TV channels. That may sound a lot like what many people already are doing by tapping into YouTube, Hulu, and other entertainment websites.

What’s different is that Sony and the other manufacturers are hoping to go after advertising dollars as well as subscription revenue and pay-per-view fees, Bloomberg Businessweek reports in its June 21 issue.

Read full article.

Google adds a basic video-editing system to YouTube

In a significant philosophical shift, Google has added a basic video-editing system to YouTube, giving a new creative aspect to the video-sharing site. CNET reports.

The YouTube Video Editor allows you to trim videos and combine multiple videos into a single composite.

Read full article.

Scientists: 'Monkeys like TV'

Scientists in Japan have published a new study which they say proves that monkeys like watching television. ModernGhana reports.

A three-year-old male rhesus macaque enjoyed a video of a circus elephant, giraffe and tiger performing, according to scientists from Kyoto's Primate Research Institute.

Scientists used a technique called near-infrared spectroscopy to examine various aspects of the blood flow to the brain of the monkey while it was watching the television images.

The study found that when the monkey was witnessing the acrobatic performances of circus animals on a television screen, the frontal lobe area of its brain became vigorously active.

The activity in such an area was significant in reflecting the monkey's pleasure, as the human equivalent is a neurological area associated with triggering delight in a baby when it sees the smile of its mother.

The study, published in Frontiers in Behavioral Neuroscience, the Swiss online scientific journal, reflects the latest parallels between the physiological make-up of monkeys and humans.

Read full article.

Measurement of neuronal activity in a macaque monkey in response to animate images using near-infrared spectroscopy (pdf)

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What is Google TV?

Your TV is no longer just about TV.

[via Gizmodo]

Singapore Gets Wired for Speed

Singapore could soon be the first country blanketed with a fiber optic infrastructure so fast that it would enable the contents of a DVD to be downloaded in only a few seconds.

[via The New York Times]

YouTube launches News Feed

YouTube will launch a new feature called the YouTube News Feed, which will highlight breaking news videos on YouTube. Cyberjournalist reports.

According to Steve Grove Head of News & Politics and YouTube:

We’ll be working with the University of California at Berkeley’s Graduate School of Journalism to track news as it breaks on YouTube. The news feed will provide a stream of breaking news videos on YouTube, with a focus on strong visuals, non-traditional sources and the very latest uploads: videos like this natural gas well explosion in North Texas, this citizen’s election fraud investigation in New Jersey, this activist’s painful run-in with the sharp end of a fisherman’s hook in the Mediterranean sea, or even this run-away elephant in Zurich, Switzerland.

You’ll find the feed on CitizenTube, our news and politics blog at citizentube.com; you can also follow it via our twitter account, @citizentube.

Apple tweaks iOS rules for developers, but still no Flash

According to CNET, Apple has slightly revised the rules. Currently the rules read:

Unless otherwise approved by Apple in writing, no interpreted code may be downloaded or used in an Application except for code that is interpreted and run by Apple's Documented APIs and built-in interpreter(s). Notwithstanding the foregoing, with Apple's prior written consent, an Application may use embedded interpreted code in a limited way if such use is solely for providing minor features or functionality that are consistent with the intended and advertised purpose of the Application.

While that still excludes Flash, it does allow, with Apple's express written permission, for the use of reusable code engines or libraries that many iPhone and iPad games use.

What prompted the change? It's not entirely clear, but it's probably to encourage and not restrict further development of iPhone and iPad games, which have proven extremely popular in the App Store.

Read full article.

YouTube videos to be shown at Guggenheim

The Guggenheim Museum in New York, one of the world's most famous art galleries, will use YouTube to find 20 videos for an exhibition of creative art. [via The Telegraph]

The showcase of video art, to be held every two years starting this October, will vet films submitted through YouTube Play and draw up a shortlist of 200 entries, to be displayed on the site.

The final 20 videos will be selected by a committee of artists, designers and filmmakers over the course of four months and be on display at the New York gallery for four days.

They will also be shown at its sister museums in Bilbao, Berlin and Venice at a later date.

YouTube Play. A Biennial of Creative Video

iPad app library passes 10,000 milestone

Apple's iTunes App Store now lists more than 10,000 universal and iPad specific apps, with nearly 1,000 more being added every week, reports Apple Insider.

... The growth of the iPad apps library has outpaced the original iPhone App Store, which took almost five months to reach the 10,000 app milestone in 2008.

Turkish president uses Twitter to condemn YouTube ban

Turkish President Abdullah Gul as used his Twitter account to condemn the country's ban on YouTube and some Google services and says officials will look at ways of reopening access, reports The Guardian.

Courts have blocked access to YouTube since 2008 after Greek users posted videos alleging that Ataturk was homosexual.

Last week Turkey extended the ban to some Google pages using the same internet protocol addresses as YouTube.

Read full article.

Accused of file-sharing? The EFF can point you to help

If you're one of the 14,000+ US citizens targeted by the US Copyright Group for allegedly sharing movies with BitTorrent, The Electronic Frontier Foundation is helping those in this situation by organizing willing groups of local lawyers around the country.

The EFF made that list public today; if you need help, this is a good place to start. Be aware, though, that the lawyers aren't offering free services.

[via arstechnica]

Songs of Innocence: accused P2P users speak out

Some large percentage of those targeted in the recent wave of P2P movie lawsuits are no doubt liable for their piratical behavior. But those who "didn't do it" face an agonizing choice—pay $1,500 to $2,500 to settle the lawsuits brought by Dunlap, Grubb, & Weaver, or pay even more money for a lawyer to plead their innocence.

[via arstechnica]

Related:

-- Is Your IP Address on this Hurt Locker Hit List?

-- "Hurt Locker" file sharers ordered to pay $1,500

-- Hurt Locker downloaders, you've been sued

-- TorrentFreak on Hurt Locker's upcoming massive lawsuit against pirates

-- Hurt Locker Producers Take Up Arms Against Pirates

FBI investigating iPad security breach

The Federal Bureau of Investigation says it has opened a criminal probe into the security breach that exposed the e-mail addresses of thousands of iPad owners.

AT&T on Wednesday acknowledged a security breach that exposed the e-mail addresses of some 114,000 high-profile users of the Apple iPad.

[via USA Today]

Watching World Cup online at work could mean a £1000 penalty

Workers who watch the World Cup in the office could land their boss with a fine of up to £1,000 ($1,475), experts warned yesterday, reports The Daily Mail.

A TV Licence is required to watch live football even on a computer.

You do not need a licence to watch TV repeats on a computer, but you do need one if you are using it for live television, such as the World Cup games via the BBC and ITV websites.

So workers who are watching the action in an office that does not have a TV, and therefore probably does not have a TV licence, could land there company with a hefty fine.

Read full article.