JoostTeam

Next Tuesday, the eyes of the United States – and likely the world – will be on Washington, DC, as Barack Obama takes the oath of office to become the 44th President of the United States. Attendance is likely to dwarf any presidential inauguration in history – with estimates currentlypredicting at least one million people at the event. Regardless of the attendance, one thing is for sure: with nearly ubiquitous access to cameras and video equipment, this will be the most well-documented inauguration, ever. Now, the Microsoft Photosynth team has announced that they will be making the event even more memorable – by creating a three-dimensional “synth” of the inauguration from your photos.

Source: readwriteweb

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• Watch the Presidential Inauguration in Silverlight – as selected by the Inaugural Committee

Al Jazeera’s senior Washington correspondent, Rob Reynolds, will again be hosting a live chat with Livestation viewers, this time about the inauguration of Barack Obama.

The last time Rob engaged in real time chat with Al Jazeera viewers was in the run up to the election, which saw Obama beat McCain. A lot has happened since then, and Rob will be online in the Al Jazeera English chat room in the Livestation player from 21:00 GMT on Thursday 15 January to discuss those developments.

Livestation viewers will get the chance to ask one of the most informed journalists about their hopes for the Obama presidency, the legacy of George Bush, the role of the US in the world, and the current crisis in Gaza.

As Rob will only be able to answer a handful of questions in the hour, viewers have been asked to think through questions in advance and to use the ’set alias’ tab in the Livestation player chat panel to set their name and location – anonymous comments are less likely to be answered.

The latest version of the Livestation player is available on the Livestation website. Rob and his producers will be there waiting for any viewers who want to take part at 21:00 GMT on Thursday 15 January.

US Presidential Inauguration
The inauguration of Barack Obama and his move to the White House is set to be one of the biggest political spectacles the US has seen in years. Find out more about the coverage provided by Livestation’s partner channels

I was sent this interesting contest today. I am not paid to put it here… I only thought it was cool and might interest some of you guys:

Current TV is all about viewer created content, and VCAMs offer opportunities for viewers to create advertisements for network sponsors. Anyone can participate in the assignments and if their ad is selected to air on Current, they’ll earn $2500.

This is a great opportunity for anyone interested in growing their portfolio and a chance to earn meaningful cash, and would love to invite your readers to participate. Read more…

Googlesystem report that YouTube added a new feature for video creators: annotations. “Video Annotations are a new way for you to add interactive commentary to your videos. Use them to add background information about the video, create stories with multiple possibilities (viewers click to choose the next scene) or link to related YouTube videos, channels, or search results from within a video.”

You can add annotations by going to the list of uploaded videos and clicking on “Edit annotations” or by visiting one of your videos while you are logged in. There are three types of annotations that can be added while playing the video: speech bubbles, notes and spotlights, as you can see in the screenshot above. Read more…

Image via Wikipedia

NewTeeVee is reporting that someone new has stepped up to pay Veoh’s bandwidth bills as it figures out its business. The Internet video portal and software maker is announcing today it has raised $30 million from Intel Capital, Adobe Systems Inc., and Gordon Crawford, senior vice president of Capital Research Global Investors.

Veoh now has $69.5 million in total investment from these three plus previous investors Shelter Capital, Spark Capital, Goldman Sachs, Michael Eisner’s Tornante Company, Time Warner Investments and Jonathan Dolgen. The Los Angeles-based company reports 28 million viewers per month, spending an average of more than 100 minutes per month.

Read more…

Silicon Alley Insider is reporting that Joost is nearing a beta testing stage of it’s new Web Based interface with embedded video playback.

If rumors are true it is expected that users will need to install a small footprint client on their Mac/PC (possibly a browser plugin) to carry those special Joost peer-to-peer packets… so forget about a nice and easy Flash based Joost player. No word yet on Linux support… but if previous conversations with Joost are an indication I would not hold my breath here.

I have not gotten any confirmation that this rumor is true or not but it does make sens given what was said over the last few months.

Hal Schechner, the original founder of now Joost own OnTheToob has been busy working over at Joost for the past few months. Hal has been so busy that his site has fallen into obsolecense given the lack of updates. One might expect to see features similar to OTT and way beyound to make up this future Joost web site.

I am looking forward to get an early invite to this new Beta Web site (hint, hint Joost) and report on it here!

TOKYO (Reuters) – Web giant Google Inc (GOOG.O: Quote, Profile, Research) is developing televisions that display Internet content such as photos and videos together with Matsushita Electric Industrial Co Ltd’s (6752.T: Quote, Profile, Research) Panasonic unit.

The TVs, to be launched this spring, will allow users to directly browse and access videos from YouTube, a video-sharing Web site owned by Google, and view Picasa Web Albums, a free online photo-sharing service from Google, Panasonic said in a statement on Monday.

“Panasonic’s cooperation with YouTube and Google’s Picasa Web Albums exemplifies our commitment to leading the natural evolution of the Internet and extending it to the High Definition television,” Panasonic Consumer Electronics Company’s Vice President Merwan Mereby said in the statement.

The news sent the shares of Matsushita higher right after the market open, but they shed 1.8 percent to 2,150 yen by 0108 GMT to underperform a 0.7 percent fall in the benchmark Nikkei average .N225.

Late last year, Matsushita, the world’s top plasma TV maker, said it would take control of a liquid crystal display joint venture and may build a new factory, marking a major shift in its strategy for the flat panel TV market.

Matsushita has until now invested aggressively in plasma displays in the belief that it was the most cost-effective technology for flat TVs bigger than 37-inches, while procuring LCD panels to make TVs for the smaller sets.

Source TechCrunch:

Joost CEO Mike Volpi just suggested on stage at Web 2.0 that Joost is working on a browser-based version of its peer-to-peer Internet TV service. “At some point, when we can deliver the quality that Joost is known for, we will deliver an in-browser experience,” he told the audience here. I got up and asked him if he faces any legacy issues, since Joost is based on a peer-to-peer client that must currently be downloaded. His answer was that it is possible to separate the file-sharing from the viewing experience and that in fact Joost is working on just such a browser-based solution. It’s not clear whether people would still need to download a separate piece of software to do the P2P file-streaming or whether that could just be a browser plug-in. But with in-browser Flash video about to get a whole lot better over the next few months, Joost will have to respond with it’s own browser-based expereince.

Wired Compiler blog also echo this in the following post:

Right now, Joost runs on the Windows and Mac desktop as a stand-alone client. A member of the audience asked if a browser-based Joost experience was a possibility down the road.

Volpi says they’re is working on it, and that Joost will run in the browser “not too far in the distant future.”

A few months ago, Google announced the initial development of a highly complicated technology platform — content identification tools for YouTube. Today, they are pleased to launch, in beta form, YouTube Video Identification.

Video Identification is the next step in a long list of content policies and tools that Google have provided copyright owners so that they can more easily identify their content and manage how it is made available on YouTube.

Video Identification joins the following policies and tools:

• strict repeat-infringer policy, which has been in place since our launch, terminates accounts of repeat infringers based on DMCA notices.
• a unique “hash” of every video removed for copyright infringement is taken and block re-upload of that exact video file prospectively.
• require a 10-minute limit on the length of content uploaded to the site.
• provide content owners with an electronic notification and takedown tool, to help them more easily identify their material and notify us to take it down with the click of a mouse.
• publish copyright tips for users in plain English and clear, prominent messaging at the time of user upload.

Like many of these other policies and tools, Video Identification goes above and beyond our legal responsibilities. It will help copyright holders identify their works on YouTube, and choose what they want done with their videos: whether to block, promote, or even—if a copyright holder chooses to license their content to appear on the site—monetize their videos. In implementing this technology, we are committed to supporting new forms of original creativity, protecting fair use, and providing a seamless user experience—all while we help rights owners easily manage their content. Stay tuned … and for more information, check out YouTube Video Identification page.

Source Googleblog

Google released a new type of ad / content channel: “video units.” Basically you get the chance to embed certain YouTube videos into your website via some snippet, either by picking from an available channel (or feeding Google your preferred categories and keywords), or by allowing Google to automatically target the content to your site. Then, above the video there will be a graphic AdSense banner ad, and in the video itself, different text banners will be displayed during playback. Right now, Google says video units are only available for the US. Check your Google AdSense -> AdSense Setup tab to see if they’re included for you. If you decide to include video units on your site and visitors click on the ads in them, 3 parties make money: 1) you as webmaster who provides the channel space, 2) the video creator, 3) Google.

Ads are best when they’re not annoying, yet the video is wrapped in two big ad areas fighting for attention, both using transitionals to show different ad segments; this is a far step from the minimalist ad approaches of Google’s past, and much less obtrusive than the old, more tasteful YouTube ads we saw (which were only showing one ad into the 15th second of the video).

Via blogoscoped