Archive for the 'Channels' Category
Reality Digital announced the closing of $6.3 million in its Series B round of venture funding from OpenView Venture Partners. The company provides an on-demand platform that enables businesses to add video sharing, social media and networking features, as well as business tools to their digital media initiatives. The flagship product, Reality Digital Opus, applies a software-as-a-service (SaaS) delivery model that can be rapidly launched as either a brand new Web environment, or within an existing Web domain to allow users to upload, manage and share digital video, audio and images online. Reality Digital customers include some of the leading players in media, publishing, and online entertainment, including MTV Networks, ITV Local and Lonely Planet.
Today, Vonage founder Jeff Pulver throws his hat into the ring with PrimeTimeRewind.tv. Like the others, PrimeTimeRewind.tv attempts to put a consistent skin on what is fast becoming a disjointed experience. Pulver’s contribution to this user-interface challenge is to turn the TV Guide into an interactive video cube. When you go to PrimeTimeRewind.tv, you are presented with a cube filled with video thumbnails on each face. Spin the cube horizontally and each face shows the Web video offerings of a different TV network (ABC, CBS, NBC, FOX, TNT and USA). Rotate it vertically and each face shows a different category (action, comedy, reality, drama). Click on any one thumbnail and you are taken to another page in which the full player opens up.
More details via: Tech Crunch
By using a methodology that analyzes in fine detail 17 key Web site variables, the VideoBloom VIEW Index tracks, for example: placement of video within the Web site, the Web video formats used, the uses of online videos, and if there is an Internet video center. VideoBloom VIEW then offers analysis of these trends along groupings of companies.
VideoBloom breaks down its results into three main percentages that indicate organizations’ use of video on their main Web sites. For example, in February 2008, the VIEW main index for the 30 Dow Jones companies was 13-93-7, which indicates that 13% of the companies had video on their home page, 93% had video on their site, and 7% didn’t use video at all. As more and more companies discover the effectiveness of Web video, this information will become an invaluable resource and window into online video’s evolution.
How would you like to be handed this IT project: create a website that will present 2,200 hours of live, interactive video, plus integrated broadcast coverage. The site will have huge spikes of traffic, and operate under worldwide scrutiny, so it has to be designed for performance. It has to be done in the next 150 days; no schedule extensions are possible. And it must deliver a brilliant user experience.
It’s the job in front of developers for the NBC Summer Olympics website, which also will offer expert commentary and sports biographies and permit users to share links to favorite event videos.
More via: CIO: Computer World
Dailymotion will begin hosting host an exclusive premiere episode of My Damn Channel’s newest web series, Bedtime Stories. Written and co-directed by Steve Kerper. In addition to the exclusive Bedtime Stories premiere, Dailymotion will now feature My Damn Channel’s original comedy and music videos including Horrible People, a soap opera with an evil, comedic twist written and directed by A. D. Miles (Wet Hot American Summer); Cookin’ with Coolio, a production of Dead Crow Pictures featuring hip-hop star Coolio creating his favorite funkalicious dishes and Wainy Days, an hilarious, fictionalized account of comedian David Wain’s (The State, Reno 911) search for romance. My Damn Channel artists also include Harry Shearer, Andy Milonakis, Big Fat Brain (You Suck at Photoshop) and Don Was.
During the 78th Intl. Motor Show in Geneva, Peugeot unveiled it’s new video streaming website based on the white-label solutions offered by Kewego. In addition to the French version, Peugeot Web TV is also available in English, Spanish, and German. Beyond advertising films, visitors will find automotive tests, crash tests, as well as updated information on the group. By launching Peugeot Web TV, the brand seeks to take advantage of audio-visual technology to better communicate with Internet users and highlight its know-how and products.
The left nav. scrolling Flash interface is pretty slick!
Brightcove has announced support for the AdSense for video beta program, Google’s contextual advertising technology for online video. Brightcove’s support of the AdSense for video beta program hope to unlock a powerful economic proposition for the Web’s top media publishers. Serving ads based on both the content of an Internet video and the context of a web page, AdSense for video beta gives media publishers the additional ability to target tailored in-stream overlay ads from Google’s large base of advertisers. Publishers and content providers can control which videos get which ads and when the ads play in each video.
The founders and creators of TVtrip.com felt a site putting all the hotel information in one place, combined with unbiased videos of the hotel and its surroundings, would be appealing and relevant in this YouTube era.
Like many popular video websites, TVtrip.com uses Flash technology to integrate video clips of the hotels into its web pages from XML feeds. This accounts for the TVtrip Player’s speed, interactivity, functionality and usability. The player also allows for the integration of useful features like the on-screen Hotel Information, Check Rates and Reviews, which can be clicked at anytime, while hotel videos are being viewed. They may be right.
As reported on eFlux Media:
Applying the well-known saying: buy or you’ll be bought, Yahoo Inc. got back to business Tuesday after rejecting on Monday, Microsoft’s $44.6-billion takeover bid and announced it had purchased a broadband video start-up, Maven Networks Inc., for $160 million. Six-year-old Maven Networks, in Cambridge, Mass. include customers as CBS Sports, Sony BMG and TV Guide and is specialized in helping Web sites show online video and insert advertisements in those clips. This will expand Yahoo’s existing relationships with web publishers. In fact, Calif.-based Yahoo is not at its first acquisition of this kind. It is already known that Yahoo also bought firms like BlueLithium and Right Media Inc., also online advertising networks.
Whew.. that was a nice — quick — ride!
Caroline McCarthy at cNet reports that NBC’s Local Media Division has acquired LX Networks, the New York-based start-up that produces videos for the Web about high-end entertainment and culture centered around New York and Los Angeles. NBC’s New York affiliate, WNBC, has been broadcasting a limited number of LX.tv videos — namely its “OpenHouseNYC” real-estate series, and the “1st Look” restaurant and bar preview show — since last year.
LX’s slick LX.tv channel was founded in 2006 by former MTV executives Morgan Hertzan and Joseph Varet, originally known as Code.tv, and features high-quality production with professional anchors.. many of whom are MTV Networks veterans. Geared toward young professionals with a taste for luxury and a good dose of social energy, financial terms were not disclosed.
