Archive for the ‘Web 2.0’ Category

Online Video Not Just for National Elections

Tuesday, September 2nd, 2008

The Shulman for Congress campaign (yes, there is life outside of national politics, too) has shown that online video isn’t just for the likes of Obama, McCain, Clinton and Paris Hilton. Lesser known politicians with tech savvy staffers have shown their willingness to dabble in the medium as well.

Dennis Shulman, the Democratic candidate in the 5th Congressional District of New Jersey, launched a parody of NBC’s “The Office” to highlight the ties between the oil industry and current Congressman, Scott Garrett.

In addition to the video, the campaign has also launched a website, “Oilmen for Garrett” to support the video.

The true test will be whether or not the video is effective at all. While the 5th district is made up of the northern most edge of New Jersey, and nearly 650,000 residents, the two-week old video only has about 5,500 views.

Court Holds Up DMCA for Veoh

Thursday, August 28th, 2008

Too much legalese to get in to. Bottom line: Court says that Veoh - and presumably other video sharing sites - are protected under the DMCA provided they make a reasonable attempt to remove copyrighted content.

Peter Kafka at Alley Insider has the deets and the full court doc.

Interesting to Peter, and to me as well, that the court is getting into the distinctions between what a platform “can” do and what it was “designed” to do. I didn’t see the Napster vs. Veoh comparison coming at all. Have enough legal content, and the law gives you a pass on the copyrighted stuff as long as you make an attempt to monitor and remove it. Good deal.

Boston Symphony Goes Pop for Online Video

Wednesday, August 20th, 2008

The Boston Symphony Orchestra (BSO) has been using online video and social media platforms to directly reach local members and BSO enthusiasts, as well as the growing global audience interested in staying connected to BSO content and activities.

Building off the success of Boston Pops TV, the BSO and PermissionTV are expanding their work together. TanglewoodWebTV.org is helping to extend the summer by featuring Tanglewood summer concert series on the Web for the next several months. New content being offered includes award-winning performances renowned composer Elliott Carter and, behind-the-scenes footage, conductor lessons and other web only content.

Oh, and Go Red Sox!

Experts Agree: Olympic Online Video Isn’t Up For Any Medals

Monday, August 11th, 2008

We said so. Seems like most people agree. Check the comments from Chris Albrecht’s piece this morning.

I tried to watch a few live streams and was only able to after telling the player that I had a different cable provider. The content was of fair quality, a bit stuttery, and overall, very difficult to navigate. I just wanted to watch some women’s team archery, damnit!

Andy Plesser, over at Beet.TV, seems impressed with the stats that Neilsen put out, though. To each their own, but I’m still disappointed so far. I’m with Chris. The navigation is a little clunky, and I’d really like to have set up Miro to download the events I wanted while I was at work or sleeping and watch at my leisure. When I went to the “Longform Rewind” page, and selected the RSS feed, I was greeting with a “Sorry, the requested page is unavailable” message. Bummer.

But to Andy’s point, there’s myriad videos to choose from, and probably satisfies most people’s needs. Damn us nitpicky bloggers.

RIP Isaac Hayes

Sunday, August 10th, 2008

What’s that got to do with online video? At least Comedy Central makes “The Death of Chef” availble to post here straight from their site.

We’ll Always Have Paris

Wednesday, August 6th, 2008

The gift that keeps on giving. In reponse to John McCain’s ad, comparing Barack Obama’s celebrity status to the celebutards, Paris Hilton shot back with this video on FunnyOrDie.

See more funny videos at Funny or Die

And continuing to show how 1.0 the McCain camp is, despite using Blip.TV’s player, they have chosen not to allow you to embed their campaign commercials directly from their site. I had to head over to Blip.TV to find it. I’d love to know why, other than to prevent people like us from posting and trashing their commericals.

John McCain’s “Celebrity” ad, though, is currently sitting at #2 on the Viral Video Chart.

Weekend Pick: Batman & Kyle

Friday, August 1st, 2008

The first guy you know. The second, maybe not. Yes, I admit it, I haven’t seen the new Batman flick yet. I hate sitting in crowded theaters. I’m an audio and video snob, and proud to admit it. If I can’t sit in the sweet spot, I don’t want to be there. Rather stay home and fire up the DVD player.

But alas, now that the crowds have died down, I’m heading to the dark, cool sanctity of the movies this weekend.

Now about this Kyle guy. Kyle Piccolo is the “Comic Shop Therapist” who helps people wrap their heads around their mutant super powers. The connection? OVW fave video producers, For Your Imagination, created six episodes of Kyle Piccolo to promote the new Bat-movie. If you think you’ve got some mutant powers and aren’t sure how to cope with them, Kyle is your man.

Ed note: I’m not a comic book geek. Not that there’s anything wrong with that. FYI just continues to crank out great web-based content.

Bruuuuuuuuuuuuce!!!!

Thursday, July 31st, 2008

No real reason to post this other than The Star Ledger, New Jersey’s main newspaper, posted it with their review of Bruce Springsteen’s show on Monday night.

OVW is headed to Giant Stadium tonight with our cohorts from MediaPost to catch The Boss in action.

Bruce Springsteen performs Out in the Street

Actually, this does support Gannett’s investment in Mogulus, and shows how online video is changing the newspaper, and overall publishing, industries. No matter how good a writer you are, no music review compares to hearing the music for yourself.

One-Fifth of US Watching Online

Wednesday, July 30th, 2008

Integrated Media Measurement, Inc. (IMMI) has issued a report showing that up to 20% of episodic content viewing occurs online, depending on the genre of the content and the amount of time the show has been on the air. In a some cases i is higher than DVR viewing of the broadcast content.

Download the full report.

Some of the more striking data shows that online viewing is flat out replacing TV, not just catching shows you missed or clips that you wanted to watch again. Another key difference showed that white, affluent, well educated, working women aged 25 to 44 were the dominant viewers of online TV content, compared to the male 18-25 demo that is typically associated with online video. To me, this signals the shift away from the UGC fad into higher quality, professionally produced content.

Moolah for Moglus

Tuesday, July 29th, 2008

Video streaming platform Mogulus has received an investment from Gannett, estimated to be around $10 million, according to TechCrunch.

Here’s the full profile on Mogulus on Techrunch’s CrunchBase. But the person who can explain it best would be OVW’s own Ben Homer.

I’m sure when he digs himself out from all that money, he can shed more light on the deal.

Ben Adds: CEO Max Haot breaks it down better than I could. And Mogulus is hiring.