I was just "invited" to join Microsoft’s new Soapbox, the long anticipated video portal.  It’s in Beta and not widely available to the public just yet. We just checked out the site and there are very few clips up. 

The user interface is very nice and the quality of the Flash is very good and loading time is fine. We are using the Soapbox Flash player on Beet.TV today for these clips.

I came across this clip of Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer razzing the troops up in Redmond.  He sure knows how to work a crowd!  Might need to work on his cardio — seems a bit winded.  The video is not exactly new — I believe it was scraped from YouTube. Ironic to find it posted to Soapbox?

And, here’s Bill Gate’s Comedy Clip.  It is the "most watched" clip on Soapbox at the moment.  Sure, Bill’s OK, but geez, they better open the site up to a few more uploads, don’t cha think?

— Andy Plesser 

Universal Music Sues Online Video Sites Grouper…for sharing music videos.  It’s a messy situation, for sure.  Reuters reports.

ZDNet’s Richard MacManus has a terrific round-up of online video companies.  Bookmark this one.

Amateur ‘video bloggers’ under threat from EU broadcast rules Times of London reports.

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