New guidelines for online video advertising

May 7th, 2008

1913 advertisement for Encyclopædia Britannica, the oldest and one of the largest contemporary English encyclopedias.Image via WikipediaThe Interactive Advertising Bureau also known as (IAB) has announced the release of its Digital Video In-Stream Ad Format Guidelines.

Outlined in the guideline are the most spread and at this time most used in-stream advertising products, including linear video advertisement, non-linear video advertisement and companion advertisement.

The guidelines where created by the Interactive Advertising Bureau to meet the following needs:

• To simplify the purchase of digital video advertisement across multiple websites trough minimum common advertisement specifications for video, overlay and companion ads.
• Achieving more efficient operations through a common set of creative submission guidelines.
• Increasing consumer understanding of advertisement interactions and environments through best practice recommendations for creative development and player environments.

“Consumers have been swift to embrace the digital video experience online, and marketers have incorporated it just as rapidly into their advertising plans,” said Randall Rothenberg, president and CEO of the IAB. “With the creation and adoption of these formats and guidelines, we see no end in sight to its potential for growth.”


PodShow Is Dead; Now “Mevio”

April 25th, 2008

Adam CurryImage via WikipediaPodfather Adam Curry his child, PodShow is dead; it’s changing its name to Mevio.

According to NewTeevee the name change is due to the so-called “curse of the ‘Pod’” – the idea goes that any company which carries the name “pod” is cursed. NewTeeVee notes that fellow “pod” companies changed their name, PodZinger is called EveryZing and PodBright is changed its name to VoloMedia.

When podcasting is growing 40% year to year, though, with some surveys pegging podcasting’s growth as high as 87% year to year, it’s a mistake to pin the troubles of PodTech and PodShow on their “pod” names.

PodShow has raised and spent close to $24 million over the last couple of years, but its business case appears to be stalled with its stars pimping GoDaddy codes. That’s a problem they aren’t going to fix with a name change.

Mevio expects to be profitable by the end of the year - but I’ll be surprised if we don’t see some very high-profile defections from the “Mevio” camp before then.


A chip with 500.000 song capacity has been developed by IBM

April 12th, 2008

Apple iPod nano (third-generation), a best-selling flash-based playerImage via WikipediaAn article in a copy of the news paper Science which was published in earlier this week, a team at IBM’s research facility in San Jose, California, said they have created a new type of digital storage which would give a mobile audio device such as an iPod or MP3 player the capability to store about half a million songs - or 3,500 films. The price of such storage medium is far less to produce then the current storage mediums. Just as a point of reference, 500,000 songs are about 12 years of listening 8 hours a day.

The credit to the biggest available capacity in a mobile device is today give to iPod 160 gigabyte model. This iPod can store approximately 40.000 audio tracks.

The thoughts of a half-million song library in your pocket might be mind blowing however what might be more impressive and much more useful is enabling a new level of capabilities for mobile devices. Picture your self, caring around an office-worth of information on a device which is no bigger then a pack of chewing gum.

The devices that use this so called “racetrack” of memory technology, which uses “the spin of an electron to store data,” would require much less power to operate and is faster then a regular hard drive. These devices could operate for weeks in a row on one single battery charge.

IBM stated that the technology is currently only used in the laboratory environment, but that it expects that devices uses this new storage technology be on the market within ten years.

The Rolling Stones launched YouTube channel

April 6th, 2008

Mick Taylor (left) with Keith Richards.Image from Wikipedia

The legendary rock and roll band the Rolling Stones has launched a new channel on YouTube called the Living Legends.

Visitors of YouTube can upload video questions for the band which then on it turns will be answered by the members of the Rolling Stones.

It’s another interesting way of using the services provided by YouTube, additionally it would be interesting to see fans to make something creative with the music and videos of the Rolling .


MySpace wishes to become competitors of Apples iTunes

April 4th, 2008

MySpaceImage from WikipediaMySpace is putting all effort in to setting up a digital music shop, currently MySpace has made already deals with three of the big four music companies.

The newspaper, the New York Times reports that social network website MySpace will roll out its so called MySpace Music shop as independent joint partnership with Universal Music, Sony BMG and Warner Music Group. The forth biggest music company EMI is expected to join the group soon. The music companies will get a minority stakes in the venture and will make their complete music catalogs available

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Microsoft’s XBox 360 gets original Internet television

March 31st, 2008

Apparently somebody thought that this Xbox was a good representative for all Xbox 360s: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Xbox_360Image from WikipediaThe fight for the new generation Internet television platform has begun.

Microsoft, is looking to enlarge its offerings on its Xbox 360 console, has reached an accord to get original television shows for distribution, on their system with Hollywood movie production house the Safran Company. The company is representing clients like actor and producer Sean Combs (“Monster’s Ball”), actor and writer Nia Vardalos (“My Big Fat Greek Wedding”) and filmmakers Jason Friedberg and Aaron Seltzer (“Epic Movie”). Read the rest of this entry »

Introduction of a new video analytics tool by Yahoo

March 27th, 2008

Yahoo! Inc.Image from WikipediaA new video analytics tool was introduced by search engine giant Yahoo. This analytics tools provides owners of videos on the populair video website YouTube information on how their videos are being viewed. Read the rest of this entry »

A new beginning

March 26th, 2008

Sometimes in life you wish you could do it all over again and do it completely different. Your favorite weblog podcasterconfessions.com felt the same. Fortunately for web based applications such as blogs, content management systems starting over is easier to do then in life. With one slight press on the delete button the database, the site was deleted from the server, ready to start all over again. This time it will be done better, faster, greater…

Enjoy the fresh start.