Andy Plesser

Co-founders Jason Liebman and Daniel Blackman, along with other Google alumni, have raised $8 million and launched HowCast a  new  company that produces and distributes "how to videos" on a range of topics.  Recently, Beet.TV visited Jason and Daniel for a tour of their Manhattan offices and to talk about the sector and progress at […]

Google News, the aggregation platform for news from thousands of news sources, has a short shelf life. After news stories are posted, they expire after 30 days. However, all these stories, plus millions of older articles never posted, reside on Google News Archives.  Last summer, Google announced plans to archive major news sources.  It recently […]

"Don’t be concerned with a host, narration or music, just get close to what’s going on," saysAlbert Maysles a giant in the world of documentary filmmaking. His career has spanned 50 years.  Some know him for his documentary of the Rolling Stones "Gimme Shelter" and others for his "Salesman."  His work has had an immense […]

Flash, the ubiquitous Web plug-in that has driven the success of YouTube and the vast majority of online video has one big limitation: its files are not protected from being saved, mashed or republished.  Apple’s QuickTime and Microsoft’s Windows Media Player have robust security protocols. Since Flash has been mostly streamed and not downloaded — […]

Finally wrapping up our extensive coverage of SXSW.  Here’s our interview with Felicia Day, producer of "The Guild" the successful online video series.  It grabbed top honors for new video series at SXSW. My colleague Daisy Whitney interviewed the actress at the show. Here is our interview, a joint production of TV Week and Beet.TV. […]

There’s been quite a lot of buzz over the last day over the licensing of Adobe’s Flash Lite 3 to competitor Microsoft for use in mobile handsets running the new Silverlight multimedia platform. While the Adobe software enables viewing of Flash video players on phones, the immediate value of Flash Lite to Silverlight is its […]

We read with interest ZDNet’s Larry Dignan’s take on the unlikely announcement that Microsoft’s Silverlight will run on Adobe’s new mobile Flash platform called Flash Light 3.  From our standpoint, Adobe’s new Flash player for the phone is pretty awesome.  We got this demo earlier this month with Rhett Woods at the Adobe offices in […]

The collapse of Bear Stearns, one of the world’s largest financial institutions is shocking. We don’t yet know the ramifications.  Last June, I interviewed John Vogel, real estate industry expert and a professor at the Tuck School of Business at Dartmouth.  Vogel  explains the  roots of this mess and explains the  role of Bear Stearns. […]

Click to play I had a chance to catch up with Jon Fine, media columnist for Business Week earlier this week at the McGraw Hill Media Summit.  I asked Jon about his takeaway from the conference.  He says that the success of digital media remains elusive.  He points to the relatively modest revenue of Gawker […]

Kevin Ryan, former CEO of DoubleClick, has been busy these days creating a number of businesses including one of our favorite blogs, the Silicon Alley Insider. Much more under the radar screen is a content delivery network (CDN) called Panther Express.  Kevin stopped by the Beet.TV studios recently to share a little update.  He told […]

Kent Nichols, co-creator of the web video sensation "Ask a Ninja," has just been tapped to co-write the remake of the schlock classic Attack of the Killer Tomatoes. My colleague Daisy Whitney of TV Week spoke with Kent about the project earlier this week at SXSW in Austin. It’s very exciting to see how online […]

Here’s a quick clip of ABC News president David Westin, a panelist at the McGraw Hill Media Summit.  He was on a panel which explored the value of broadcast journalism in the new media landscape.  Yes, he agrees a certain amount of news has become a "commodity."  But Westin addresses the value of enterprise reporting […]

Last night at the McGraw Hill Media Summit, I attended a private dinner where I had the good fortune to catch up with John Byrne, Business Week’s Executive Editor. I asked John about his intrepid technology columnist Sarah Lacy, who created a quite firestorm among the digerati in Austin on Sunday at SXSW with her […]

Long providing an opportunity for viewers to send in videos, text messages, camera phone videos, comments and photos through an area called iReport, CNN.com has launched a true consumer generated news portal.  It has its own url as ireport.com This is completely different from what iReport had been, which had solicited contributed content, then edited […]

With the acquisition of Club Penquin last year, the Walt Disney Company is making a significant entrance into social media.  This morning at the opening session of the McGraw Hill Media Summit, Robert Iger, President and CEO of Disney spoke of Penguin Club and his igloo, a location he has staked out in the virtual […]

CNN, long an innovator in utilizing new technology to record and transmit video reports from remote and dangerous locations, made news gathering history last night when it used Skype to get a live transmission of CNN Legal Analyst Jeffrey Toobin who was in Hawaii with no access to a satellite upload location. Toobin was a […]

Here is my colleague Daisy Whitney at SXSW, the big interactive/arts confab still underway in Austin.  It is surely the meeting place for folks on cutting edge of social network applications and new media. Case in point, Daisy is interviews Steve Garfield who is one of the leading thinkers and innovators in video blogging.  He […]

The Associated Press, the world’s largest news organization, has recently launched a significant presence on YouTube with its own channel. Editors are uploading about 250 videos a week, Beet.TV has learned.  The AP began uploading these videos over the past month or so.  The uploaded videos are both edited reports and clips of raw footage.  […]

Caroline McCarthy, who covers social media for CNET News.com is at SXSW, the giant Web/music/digital conference still underway in Austin.    I interviewed her yesterday from my office in New York.  I asked her questions on her mobile phone and she replied via a live Mogulus connection.  (Hey, it’s not ABC News Nightline, but it […]

Here is Daisy Whitney, reporter for TV Week interviewing Joseph Weisenthal of paidContent about the fun and frustration of covering SXSW.  This interview streamed live earlier today from the show in Austin.  And, Joe interviews Daisy, too! Editor’s Note:  This is unedited! So be patient as Daisy begins her interview about 15 seconds into the […]