News and Information

For the past several weeks, we have been uploading hundreds of our videos to CrunchBase, the TechCrunch database of the 6000 or more companies the influential tech blog follows.  There is no financial arrangement here, and this is not an exclusive arrangement by any means, but it is an extremely valuable way to expand attention […]

We are impressed this morning with the way live video feeds of tropical storm Hanna have been integrated by Gannett’s USA Today and other Gannett television properties.  The video interface is from Mogulus, the Manhattan start-up which was recently funded by Gannett.

Congratulations to Walt Mossberg, veteran Wall Street Journal reporter, who was just named by Vanity Fair as one of the top most powerful people in the world.  He comes in at number 100; Vladmir Putin comes in at number 1. 

Viewing of live online video streams of Hurricane Gustav has reached a record 1.4 million  streams since midnight, as of 4 p.m. EDT, a CNN spokesperson has told Beet.TV.  This sets a record for the most live video streams in one day at CNN.

The Washington Post has begun streaming live video via mobile phones to the newspaper’s site using Comet Technologies.  The first implementation has come from Ed O’Keefe, reporting live from the floor of the Democratic National Convention in Denver.

Last night House Speaker Nancy Pelosi answered questions about Congress, the economy, and marijuana legalization–posed not by journalists and pundits, but by contributors to online communities iReport.com and Digg.com. The interview is one of the ways CNN is adding the “voice of real people on the ground” to their election coverage, according to CNN.com Senior […]

Blog coverage of the DNC is high with a record 120 blogs credentialed to cover the convention. CNET reporter Kara Tsuboi goes behind the scene in the “Big Tent,” a sort of giant blogger lounge sponsored by Google, YouTube and Digg.  I’ve posted Kara’s report here.

Although the Olympics ended this weekend, much of the online material from the Games will continue to be available through December 31 on NBCOlympics.com, a site hosted by Microsoft’s MSN, Beet.TV has learned.

Fora.tv, the San Francisco-based, high-brow content site, has an agreement with Georgetown University to host and distribute speeches and conferences from the University. This adds to Fora’s alliances with The Aspen Institute, The New Republic, The Brookings Institution and others.

In what we consider a milestone in the syndication of live online video news, CNN has introduced a widget for its live streaming service.

The campaign videos of presumptive Republican Presidential candidate Senator John McCain, are being hosted on Blip.tv, the small New York-based video publishing site, Beet.TV has confirmed.

As network television has largely abandoned live coverage of the national political conventions, the online media world is expanding coverage and resources.

The Web site of the campaign of Barack Obama had 3.3 million unique visitors in June, double the 1.6 million uniques for the John McCain site.  Time spent per visit on the Obama campaign was over 11 minutes vs. 5:30 minutes on the McCain site, Nielsen Online has told Beet.TV

CNET News.com, now part of CBS, and CBS News are collaborating on the coverage of the Democratic and Republican national conventions.  Three News.com staffers, Declan McCullagh, Stephanie Condon, and Kara Tsuboi, will be covering, writes News.com editor Dan Farber today.

On Thursday, August 7, Reuters correspondent Margarita Antidze was the first to report on the escalating fighting in the South Ossetian town of Megvrekisi. The news organization was quick to mobilize print and video reporters the region.  The first video segments appeared on the world’s television stations and online the next day.  

CNN has has long been a trendsetter in video journalism newsgathering and distribution methods.  Yesterday, CNN announced that is would assign journalists to 10 cities across the United States to work in mini-bureaus with not much more than a camera, a laptop and an Internet connection.

Technology spending might not suffer along with the rest of the economy, a new study by The Consumer Electronics Association and CNET shows. The CEA-CNET Consumer Sentiment Indexes, launched today, map consumer sentiment about technology and the broader economy. Many consumers spent their economic stimulus checks on items like computers, televisions and wireless phones, which […]

The office of Britain’s Prime Minister has launched a online video channel called Number 10 to provide speeches, media events and archives.  We’ve embedded a segment below.

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.

Watching the ghastly war unfold this weekend in Georgia between Georgian and Russian troops over the breakaway region of Ossetia, we found Reuters reports to be widely used online including by the The Wall Street Journal and the New York Times.