Social search engine Mahalo is prepped to launch a daily video blog podcast, The Mahalo Daily (ok, not a very original title, but we’re more focused on the content). Hosted by Veronica Belmont, the show’s content will cover every topic under the sun, just like Mahalo.

Until the show’s official launch on Monday, November 5th, this trailer was released to pique some interest.

Does anyone use twitter more than Mahalo founder, Jason Calacanis? By the way, Jason, you should have hit up the Cupping Room for breakfast.

PermissionTV has launched a new channel for the Boston Pops. The first ever online video portal for a symphony, BostonPops.TV will bring a the Boston Symphony Orchestra to a worldwide audience.

The channel features complete concerts as well as behind the scenes features and interviews with composer Keith Lockhart and many of the musicians. It’s a great use of the medium, and offers a chance to expand the pops audience as well as sell a few more CDs.

London based The JD Project recently launched WeDigTV, an online video portal aimed at forging what they call TV2, a “whole new genre in visual entertainment.” And near-HD interactive video is nothing to sneeze at.

The JD Project started as an agency called Jaildog, which won a BIMA award for its Who Wants to Be a Millionaire site for AOL back in 2004.

Above: WeDigTV Program Guide

Since rebranding, the company has focused its efforts on becoming a new kind of entertainment company, partnering with content producers including Freemantle and Endemol to create a more engaging video experience for viewers with an understanding of how valuable that can be to advertisers.

The WeDigTV lineup includes 8 channels so far, offering users a chance to compete in games like Who Wants to Be a Millionaire and The Price is Right for free ad-supported or for cash prizes by purchasing credits.

Above: Who Wants to be a Millionaire Fullscreen

Because of the engagement this drives, the company has been able to offer what it calls long-play interactive video ads, 40-second mid-roll spots with an interactive component, an example of which can be found here.

The browser based player is very smooth, another in the line of video portals distributed across BitGravity’s CDN. It is very similar in appearance to Joost.

While I’m personally not a big game show fan, the high quality, ease of use and interactivity of WeDigTV did suck me in and it shows the potential of these kinds of applications.

NBCSports.com appears ready to make moves. For years NBC has been behind the pack in online sports coverage, but recently they have cut a number of deals to make NBCSports.com more of a destination for original online programming.

In March, NBCSports.com partnered with Sports Illustrated to share video, photos and articles. And this week NBC announced plans to stream the NYC marathon and a far broader partnership with MSNBC.com, in which they will combine content, advertising and sponsorship sales.

Continue Reading at Tilzy.TV

If you can’t make it, or weren’t one of the first 400 people to RSVP, you won’t be attending tonight’s NY Video Meetup. But that doesn’t mean you have to miss out on the fun.

At 7pm, tune in to the live stream of the event and don’t miss a minute! (Unless you are at the Black Crowes concert, that is.)

OVW friend Steve Hall of AdRants rants pretty hard about NBC’s new layover promo spots during Heroes.

So this is what it’s come to, people. The nets aren’t going to take any more of our ad skipping shit and they’re now going to bombard us not only with annoying in-program promotions but with annoying, unskippable in-program ad banners. Apparently taking a cue from YouTube’s video advertising efforts, NBC is going to get is ad revenue no matter what it takes.

Steve is 110% on the money here. The more audiences try to avoid ads, the harder the networks need to try to make sure people see them. Like it or not, the networks are winning, and are going to continue to win. Why? Because the alternative is a lack of good shows. No revenue = no production budget. Actors will need to be paid less, production quality will need to go down, or we need to pony up something in the value exchange. That goes for online and off. If you tune in, someone is going to try and advertise to you before you tune out.

We know you don’t like commercials. We know you don’t like ads. We know you don’t want to pay. Will someone please tell me - or anyone in the industry - what you are willing give up in exchange for free programming?

….isn’t much yet. The early panels are pretty sparsely attended - maybe 25 people.

One interesting speaker, though, Dennis Miller from Spark Capital, who has invested in companies such as Veoh, New Next Networks and The Platform, believes that the online video space is moving in the right direction.

When asked about a critical inflection point, he said that he believed it was still a few years off, signaled by the 2nd tier of sites - beyond the portals and major video players - starting to make significant money.

I find myself in the camp of the annoyed web surfer this morning, and it is directly related to online video.

We’ve been critical of sites that abuse the pre-roll format, calling them out for poor ad management practices and poor user experiences, and today is no different.

TheStreet.com, a leading provider of financial, investment and business news, offers a wealth of great video content (nice early morning pun). However, they are abusing the ad-to-content ratio, which is particularly annoying when trying to get a few quick financial news stories to start my day.

TheStreet.com is running pre-roll and post-roll around every story, for a total of one-minute of advertising against three minutes of content. While this would almost be tolerable if you were watching one clip and could essentially ignore the post-roll, they are doing it on all clips, resulting in an “Ad->Content->Ad->Ad->Content->Ad” experience for the user. The majority of the ads are :30s as well. Simply horrific. And what’s with the “Skip Ad” button that appears for the last 3 seconds of an ad? Useless.

Frequency capping is an issue for TheStreet.com as well, but one that I blame less on the publishers directly and more on the the video ecosystem. There aren’t enough pre-roll advertisers to enable ad rotation and frequency capping, and selling sponsorships around certain content doesn’t help that situation either.

Lastly, dayparting. Does anyone really need the first ad of the day to be for Viagra? I’m sipping my first cup of coffee. 30 seconds of a baby boomer jug band singing about their hard-ons is a little hard to take (oh boy, the puns today!). Again, a lot of this issue has to do with the lack of advertisers in the pre-roll game. But as we’ve said before, there is a lot of opportunity for early adopters to jump in to a very uncluttered advertising landscape.

So, TheStreet.com, I’m trying to catch a few quick financial news stories. You’ve got great content. Reconsider your monetization and inventory management strategies. Help prove the value of your content and pre-roll advertising, rather than driving CPMs down with an over abundance of cheap(er) inventory.

BrightSpot Media, an emerging interactive video advertising network, today announced that it will surpass one million video ads served before the month is through.

Brightspot.TV’s model allows users to spend a time watching and interacting with commercials they find relevant and entertaining to earn subscriptions to other services, such as Gamefly, Napster, MLB.com, and XM Canada.

BrightSpot.TV has grown exponentially since the first registered member signed on in October 2006. Highlights of the past year include:

* Reach nearly 4,000,000 consumers
* 200,000+ streaming videos ads viewed per month
* Nearly 3,000,000 market research questions answered
* 40+ advertisers

(image credit: AP)