• Don't Move! That TV is Following You
    Gesture-based interfaces are the kind of cool technology that engages the user in specific circumstances, but still leaves us wondering about its general utility. Tom Cruise's in-air swiping maneuvers for navigating screens in Minority Report look neat as all get-out, but how long will most of us be able to keep our arms suspended in air all day just to move to the next screen. Gesture-based interfaces have a tendency to exchange engagement for gross inefficiencies. It is hard to beat the amount of virtual real estate you can cover with an inch of mouse movement.
  • Hurry, More Ads Before We Spoil Them
    For about a year now comScore has been calling for more ads in online video. At last year's OMMA Video conference in New York, their analyst Tania Yuki first laid out the notion that her colleague Dan Piech advanced at last week's OMMA Video show in San Francisco: the ad load online is but a fraction of what viewers are accustomed to on TV. Worse, the growth in video streaming has so outpaced the rise in digital video ad spend, that the revenue realized per video has declined. As Piech outlined, the $324 billion in video advertising in 2006 was …
  • Snookivision: 'Jersey Shore' Crushes MTV Online Viewing Records
    Is the hit MTV series "Jersey Shore" experiencing the same breakaway success online it enjoys on cable? Fuggedaboutit! MTV reports that after dropping two new episodes of the reality TV series on-air last week, the online video views went ballistic. More than 1.6 million unique visitors hit Snooki and friends in a single week, the best results ever for an MTV series. The viewers gobbled down streams like they were free canole, 15 million streams in a week. The next best week of streaming tied to an MTV show had been 12.3 million views off of the 2010 Video Music …
  • No Funt-Factor: Jamba Loses Its Juice
    Last year Jamba Juice got its berries in a bunch over fast food outlets horning in on its smoothies market. So they fought back with a clever and very well-made commercial satire of a cheeseburger-flavored smoothie. You know the angle here. We don't try to make hamburgers, so why are they trying to make smoothies? Well this year the line has changed as Jamba Juice itself has discovered that expanding the menu might attract new customers. Okay we're all diversifying, now. This time, oatmeal is the battle ground.
  • Are Apps the New Music Video?
    When MTV launched oh so many years ago, the genuine revolution in music creation and consumption opened with the Buggles' catchy and clever "Video Killed the Radio Star." The self-styled launch of a new model for music video apps arrived this week with a much less promising ante -- the Black-Eyed Peas' BEP360. I admit that I am the last one to criticize anyone's musical taste. My family complains regularly that I have to revise the playlist on the iPod that runs through the car stereo, "because the Keith Richards' guitar opening to 'Street Fighting Man' stopped being cool fifty …
  • Beyond Black Mesa: Fan Filmmaking Done Right
    If you've ever played and loved the greatest PC game series of all time Half-Life (go on, get out of here world of Warcraft nerds!) then take 12 minutes out of your life to watch the newly-released "Beyond Black Mesa" short. Fan filmmaker extraordinaire Brian Curtin and producer-writer Matthew Hall have captured the look and sounds, even the camera conventions, of the first-person shooter. Better, they have wrapped around it a mini-adventure that represents the best of fan fiction: it adds perspective and communicates a fan's passion for the original. It is a short burst of very well-orchestrated action that …
  • Will They Pay Per View?
    UStream has evolved quickly into a familiar brand to video junkies and jockeys looking for the one of the quickest, cheapest, easiest ways to get their video online in real-time. Just about anyone can turn a cam onto an event and broadcast it live, and for free, through the service. Until now this has been a hoot and a great resource for us all, but someone has to make some serious money off of all this bandwidth and streaming. The company launched a business-oriented platform called Watershed to service those who want to pay for advanced services and even insert …
  • We Want to Help ... No, No, Wait
    Video health information site HealthGuru.com is boasting meteoric growth in 2010. The Health information site is a pure video experience, which is exceptional in a category like health where the torrent of detailed data usually requires tons of text. In this case we have snippets of advice, facts, symptom run-downs, treatment options, etc. from health professionals and a lot of doctors with stethoscopes looped around their necks as a visual cue of their professional stature. The site says it has increased its video views 261% in 2010. Its YouTube channel is one point of distribution, but the company syndicates …
  • 'Conditions and Enforceable Commitments": FCC Hearts the Web
    Whatever you think of the FCC approval of the Comcast-NBC merger, it seems to be giving a big wet kiss to the online video industry. In approving the marriage, the FCC defined "conditions and enforceable commitments" that Comcast/NBC universal had to abide, and the Commission went out of its way to acknowledge and include digital distribution and emerging online video business models.
  • Hulu's First Original Show Revives TV's 'LOP' Age
    The rumored original programming from TV repurposer Hulu popped online yesterday. "The Morning After" is a clips compilation of the previous night or weekend's TV highlights. Two talking heads call out their favorite bits not only from TV but occasionally from Web videos as well. Funny or Die is mentioned in the first episode. Generally, however, the material available on Hulu itself seems to be in featured rotation, such as "SNL" clips, "Glee" and highlights of the Golden Globes. I don't want to pile on, but I'm going to pile on.
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