The first edition of Technorati’s Daily Vlog rolled-out today with highlights of the hot sites, videos, photos, and games showing you what the world LIVE web is abuzz about at any given moment in time.
Amazing idea.. somebody should tell RocketBoom to think about doing something like this..?!?
Kevin Sites in the Hot Zone is guerilla news reporting with a mission to cover every armed conflict in the world within one year, and in doing so to provide a clear idea of the combatants, victims, causes, and costs of each of these struggles - and their global impact. Using the latest technology, including high-definition digital cameras and satellite modems, Kevin delivers content including text, photography, video, audio, and interactive chat - all available on one website. Check it out!
TechCrunch got a sneak peek at a video sharing site called Viddler:
The company has focused on making the video publishing experience compelling and enabling discussion, tagging and sharing tied to particular moments in time. It’s a good looking system with smart features and a viable business model.
Company lead Robert Sandie lives today in Bethlehem, PA but has a background managing Adobe flash servers for enterprise clients. The distributed team is made up of designers Andrew Smith and Chris Tingom in Arizona and developers Lukasz Hankus and Kasper Cecek in Poland. The vision for the product is deeply inspired by Flickr and it shows. The business model, for one thing, will be driven not by pageviews and advertising but by subscription for premium features. The premium features will be announced later, but they look good.
Considering the crew they’ve assembled.. this one could be interesting!
One might be tempted to dismiss Stickam at first glance as just a video-enabled Myspace clone for emo teens with webcams; but looking past that you’ll find a fairly robust and platform-independent Flash-based webcam broadcast and videoconferencing app. There’s a profile page with an embedabble Flash viewer, a full screen personal conference popup with privacy options, group video chat rooms, and hosted galleries for photo, video and audio content. If you can catch the Pissed-Off Caveman online.. it’s a webcam pointed at a decked-out Robot Chimpanzee Head.
Via: MetaFilter
As websites created by amateurs remake the entertainment landscape, unknown directors, writers and producers are being catapulted into positions of enormous influence. Each week, about a half-million people download a comedic video podcast featuring a former paralegal. A video by a 30-year-old comedian from Cleveland has now been watched by almost 30 million people, roughly the audience for an average “American Idol” episode. The most popular contributor to the photo site Flickr.com just got a contract to shoot a Toyota ad campaign.
While online stardom can sometimes be fleeting, and some measures of audience size are subject to debate, a look at the rising stars in this world shows how the path to entertainment success is being redefined. Traditional media companies and marketers are already in pursuit of some of these new faces.
Via: WSJ
Current.tv is hosting a contest themed Seeds of Tolerance. In partnership with the Third Millennium Foundation, Current TV is offering the chance for you to make a difference and earn $100,000. Between now and August 15, submit a video on the theme of tolerance?any form of tolerance. Whatever story you want to tell, and however you want to tell it..
The grand prize creator will receive $100,000 cash, and $15,000 to a relevant charity of their choice. Two runners-up will receive $10,000, and be aired on Current TV, in 28 million homes across the country.
WeatherBug has launched its own video sharing community that allows any citizen meteorologist to upload their own reports and/or severe weather videos. This is a natural extension of what the company has been doing for years with photos. All videos can be rated and you don’t need to use the desktop product to participate or watch vids. There are additional features, including professionally produced content, on the broader video site.
Via: Micro Persuasion
We saw this yesterday but didn’t get a chance to take a test-drive;
Dabble uses the many different social gestures people make to express how they feel about media, to find better matches in our search results. If people play with media in playlists, sharing their collections with others, and tell us how it?s useful to them, we can take that information and show better lists of media.
Steve Garfield posted his review, check-out the Vlog Soup 16 playlist.
The makers of Blinkx have created a new site - SelfcastTV.com - to allow quick sharing and downloading of mobile videos online. It boasts a simple registration process, 3-step upload system, and UK-specific operation. Upload happens straight from a mobile by MMS’ing a standard number. SelfcastTV users can also create their own channel to select and view their favourite videos and can even use the MovieMode feature to combine their selected footage into one continuous video.
Via: TechDigest
The RocketBoom saga is spreading - predictably - across the web like wildfire. While we don’t pretend to have any insider scoop on what’s going on.. it would seem that speculation is the the point. Lets face it folks, if it walks like a duck and talks like a duck then it’s prolly gonna quack! Remember, this is the same cheeky crew that carved new turf by putting their ad op. on ebay for the highest bidder.. slick move.
Lets boldy suggest now that this little exercise in gaming the wagging tongues, you’d think that some would know better, will end up with the founders kiss and make-up program live from the west coast sponsored by any big brand white knight in shining Gucchi sunglasses.
All the chattering classes are driving brand recognition and no doubt new traffic to see what all the fuss is about. However, the Sr. industry watchers like Terry Heaton and Mike Davidson for example have posted more grounded opinions on this one. So begins the dog days of summer.
Meanwhile here’s Amanda Replacement via the OfficePirates.. 
