• Friday Found Objects: Playboy Cyber-Girl of the Year, Cool Shoes, and Another Hulu Web Original
    Like old VHS tapes, things do pile up here in the VidBlog during a week covering the latest news, marketing models and new releases. Here are just a few things we didn't get to this week.
  • No One-Webisode Wonder: Goodnight Burbank Goes Long Form for Hulu
    I admit to losing track of the great Web original series, Goodnight Burbank. These comedy shorts, set in a fictional local TV station workplace, had been among my video podcast favorites for years even as it went in and out of season breaks. That is saying something for the Web, where much more ambitious Web series from film and TV talent usually become one-Webisode wonders everyone forgets to watch. The show has not only survived for five years (with a long hiatus in the last year) but it is coming to Hulu this week as the first Web-only scripted comedy …
  • Scientology: The Movie (No, Not That Movie!)
    We all know that Scientology has a thing for Hollywood. Its hunger for celebrity followers is as famous as that of politicians. And it has nabbed big game like Church of Scientology's most famous followers Tom Cruise and John Travolta. The Travolta co-produced disaster Battlefield Earth from 2000 adapted founder L. Ron Hubbard's sci-fi epic to the screen and earned a rightful permanent place on most lists of worst films of all time. But even after a super-sized turkey like that, these guys don't give up on their dreams of film success. The Church of Scientology recently acquired one of …
  • Amazon Opens 'Backstory' Author Interview Site
    Go ahead and call Amazon an e-retailer, but the reality is that these guys have been as much content providers as anything else for years. Or to be more precise, Amazon has understood better than anyone how a rich content experience drives sales. I go to them regularly to find information about authors and books. As a literary resource online, they are second only to Wikipedia for me. It is hard to think of another retailer that has so fully obliterated the longstanding silos between media and marketing. Kinda makes you wonder where exactly Publisher's Weekly dropped the ball on …
  • Not Your Father's Moviefone: AOL Struggles to Touch Up Old Brand on iPad
    In recent months it took some controversy dust ups to remind us that that AOL's Moviefone film listings site and trailer park still existed. There was a controversial exchange between the film site's editors and sister AOL site Tech Crunch, in which the editor seemed a bit too protective of the movie studios. And then more recently a memo leaked from that same editor, who was caught offering some of the freelance writers AOL just fired the opportunity to write for the site for free. The editor got sacked.
  • Random Acts Of Watching: Roku, Facebook And Crackle News
    As the news cycles wind down for Easter weekend and this Good Friday, I found myself picking up a bunch of small stories just in the normal course of my video voyages consumption.
  • Cultivating the Inner Child: Video Aims to Spark Agency Creatives
    Most agency-produced digital video projects are designed to serve clients. But the new Be Infectious three-minute spot from Integer Group was made to recruit people to the agency and inspire the company's own people. Created for Integer by Rascals & Rogues, the video is a celebration of childlike creative energy and enthusiasm backed by a borderline cheesy narrative celebrating your, our (maybe not their) madcap inner genius and drive to create. "The truth is," the makers argue at the YouTube page. "Creative people are different. And most of us have known it all our lives. It hasn't always made us …
  • Netflix Looking to Tinker with Pricing Tiers, More Personalized Accounts
    I know people who share single Netflix accounts across households, even states. One teenager told me recently that her longtime ex-boyfriend and members of his family still use her mother's login to access the service. You have to wonder whether Netflix is even bothering to monitor this kind of homegrown account piracy. I wonder what that recommendation queue and viewing history must look like. With several families making choices across multiple households on a single account, Netflix's signature recommendation engine gets blown to hell, I imagine.
  • President Obama Comes to Facebook TV
    Less than a year into its video streaming project, Facebook Live is building up a notable library of streams it has produced both on location and within its own studios. This Wednesday it nabs the best get yet - President Barack Obama, who will convene a town hall meeting over the service at 1:45 PST.
  • Waiting for Chaplin: Google Brings Video Doodle to Home Page
    It goes without saying that any homage to Charlie Chaplin is going to come at the expense of those daring to mimic him. Robert Downey Jr.'s astonishingly good bio-pic version notwithstanding, most imitations feel feeble against Chaplin's epic talent. But Google's Doodle team gave it a shot on Friday. After increasingly more elaborate animations and interactive doodads gracing the Google homepage, the group tasked with humanizing the Google brand on the search engine home page posted a full video to commemorate Chaplin's 122nd birthday.
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