Infrastructure

The New York Times has launched a new HD-format video player with a 16:9 wide-screen frame. Other new features include a redesigned video library, a "Most Viewed" rank, and tools to share videos to social sites like Facebook and Digg.

Quickly uploading, transferring downloading large video files through the Beet.TV virtual private network (VPN) to my New York apartment has gotten incredibly fast with my new fiber optics connection from Verizon FiOS.  As The New York Times reports, I am among the first to get the super fast service at home in Manhattan, and I’m […]

The authoring tools for Microsoft’s Silverlight, the new rich-media Web plug-in,  will soon be available for those working on Macs and on open source programs.  The software giant hopes to accelerate the use of Silverlight on different operating systems through the funding of a project to be undertaken by Soyatec, a France-based IT solutions provider […]

ABC’s highly regarded online video player will be available for developers outside of Disney’s ABC, the network’s online video chief Albert Cheng told the Streaming Media West conference last week. CNET’s Webware contributor Dorian Benkoil has the story.

CAMBRIDGE, Mass. — Views of video clips on Metacafe have increased by 55 percent resulting from a new accelerating technology from Akamai.  On Thursday,  I visited the headquarters of Akamai for a series of interviews with Suzanne Johnson, Senior Industry Marketing Manager.

Adap.TV, the start-up which allows video producers to insert video advertising from multiple ad networks, has raised $13 million Series B funding, TechCrunch reported last night.  I interviewed founder and CEO Amir Ashkinazi in Hollywood in May. Here’s the take by Liz Gannes at NewTeeVee. I’ve republished the interview today.  Congrats, Amir. Here’s the company […]

Our colleague Chris Albrecht over at NewTeeVee has done some investigating around reports that Microsoft’s Silverlight had been tossed overboard by NBC in favor of Flash.  It’s just not the case, Microsoft and NBC tell Chris.

With 72 million video streams of NBCOlympics.com viewed through Saturday, developers at Microsoft have reason to celebrate. 

Just read Saul Hansell’s big piece in The New York Times about Verizon’s huge investment in bringing fiber optic television and Internet service to consumers around the country.  One analyst likens FiOS to a "Maserati for the price of a Volkswagen."

In what could be a watershed event for online video, Adobe Systems, the developer of the ubiquitous Flash video ecosystem, will introduce voice-to-text functionality into the workflow of Flash video production soon.  Jim Guerard, who heads all rich media at Adobe, says in this exclusive video clip, that we will see this functionality later this […]

Despite the grumblings from some media critics and bloggers over the weekend about the selective delays by NBC around the distribution of online video coverage of the Summer Olympics, the depth and quality of the online video offering is astonishing.  There is quite a lot live and mostly everything else is up on demand.

Google recently released a new set of webmaster tools which provide smaller sites the ability to optimize search and communicate with Google directly from the dashboard of a site’s hosting company.

Brightcove, the Boston-based video publishing services company, has established a separately funded Japanese unit and has landed a splashy assignment as the the video solution for gorin.jp, the exclusive provider of online coverage of the Summer Olympics.  gorin.jp is backed by the major Japanese broadcasters. Here’s the company’s press release issued this evening. For an […]

PALO ALTO — The cost of Flash servers, Adobe’s proprietary software which publishers use to stream the majority of video around the globe, has dropped in cost by some 90 percent as Adobe moves to maximize its marketshare, says Jim Guerard, who heads up the Flash business at Adobe Systems.  The initiative, announce late last […]

Google announced today that it has made its free Webmaster Tools available to qualifying hosting companies worldwide. International webmasters now have the means to make their sites–and web videos–more "Googlable." Google Webmaster tools can generate video site maps that make a site’s videos and metadata searchable in the Google Index. R.J. Pittman described how video […]