Web/Tech

Click To Play Vuze, the P2P high resolution video platform has reached 4 million monthly registered users, of which half watch videos on the desktop application daily, Jim Diaz, head of strategy for the Palo Alto-based start-up told me today. I caught up with Jim at the AlwaysOn conference in Manhattan. I asked him how […]

Click To Play I visited Steven Levy at his Newsweek office in midtown Manhattan today to get the lowdown on the new MacBook Air.  Steven has one of a handful of review units provided to big foot tech journalists. Steven gave the new computer a mixed review on newsweek.com and in the Washington Post, which […]

Results from a year-long study on high-tech electricity meters in the Seattle area has found smart grid technology performed as intended, saving consumers about 10 percent on their bills while easing strain on the power grid, reports Martin LaMonica on CNET News.com Here in Manhattan, the networked lighting and shades in the new New York […]

Click To Play Moving big video files around the net is an expensive proposition for online video publishers.  Some giants like Google and Microsoft have their own network of servers around the globe.  Most publishers of online video buy services from companies called Content Delivery Networks (CDN’s) including Akamai and Limelight. BitTorrent, the San Francisco-based […]

Motionbox, the New York-based video sharing site that has differentiated itself by offering users the ability to edit and view specific segments within long uploads, has a new, unique monetizaton scheme:  The company has just launched a subscription service that allows viewers to upload an unlimited amount of high quality files and share them with […]

Click To Play JumpTV, the Toronto-based company, provides live streams of some 300 ethnic television shows from 75 nations. Expats, immigrants and foreign language speakers subscribe to the programming which is delivered to the PC. It is also a huge distributor of online sports streaming, providing some 200 sports programs from 30 nations. With this […]

In uploading files to YouTube, there has been very little control over the selection of the opening still image, which is also the thumbnail image used in indexes on YouTube and various search engines.  It is a critical picture. The selection of this important image is automated. Now, uploaders can select from three different images […]

Click To Play Sometime next month, Microsoft will release a new video conferencing camera called RoundTable. It has five little camera, six microphones and works with Live Meeting.  It looks like a droid out a sci-fi film — and seems to be quite "smart" in following speakers and their movements, as you’ll see in our […]

Click To Play One of the first applications of Silverlight, the new plug-in multimedia program from Microsoft, will be a "software plus Web services" platform called Popfly.  It allows consumers to create multimedia mash-ups without needing to know code.   Users integrate a thin desktop application with various Microsoft web services and other sources including Flickr, […]

Click To Play In Australia today, Paul Twomey, CEO of ICANN declared that virtual worlds are the future of global commerce.   Today’s New York Times reports how a "virtual" fashion world is taking  shape in Second Life. Above is my interview with professor Eric Johnson of the Tuck School of Business at Dartmouth.  Dr. Johnson […]

Click To Play We just heard that NewTeeVee, the fast-growing and influential offshoot of GigaOM that covers the online video space, is coming to New York City for a screening/mixer event.  Sources tell Beet.TV it will be September 24 at a cool loft space on 10th Avenue.  Details to follow.  But, if you’re in the […]

Click To Play Video on mobile handsets will take off with the upcoming initiatives from Adobe.  Called Adobe Flash Lite, Flash videos will be published and viewed on a number of mobile devices.  To further extend the reach of Flash viewing, phones will have chips that allow them show these files. On2 Technologies, whose encoding […]

Beet.TV’s star video producer David Kavanaugh is in Redmond this week to document what’s happening at Microsoft and what it all means to us.  Stay tuned for our video segments about Microsoft which will begin on Wednesday. I’m in Vieques, an island nine miles off the eastern coast of Puerto Rico.  Kathy and I have […]

Click To Play We’ve been impressed with Maven Networks, the Boston-based company that provides video publishing and content management platform for larger content video producers including Hearst Magazines, TV Guide and 20th Century Fox.  Today, it inked a deal with a big Canadian producer of broadband content. Maven is providing a two part solution: one […]

Click To Play The business of delivering video files quickly and efficiently to users is made possible by Content Delivery Network (CDN) companies. The big players are Akamai and Limelight. But there are many emerging players, plus big, established companies moving into the space including VeriSign and Level 3. Level 3 is a big Internet […]

Click To Play Earlier today, Akamai announced a new initiative to offer live video support for Flash video playback. The giant content distribution network (CDN) company said the new initiative supports On2 Technologies VP6 Codec used in Adobe’s latest Flash Player. This is another indication of the imminent proliferation of live streaming Flash video. At […]

Smilebox is a company that provides consumers the tools to create personalized electronic greeting cards. It has aggreements with Hallmark and others and has become a major player in this industry. Just last month, the company announced plans to offer users the opportunity to integrate video into greeting cards, making them truly multimedia. Above is […]

Click To Play View a transcript of this interview Podcasts are up tenfold in 2006 over 2005, according to a new research report from Forester Research’s Brian Haven.    The new report finds that 10 percent of individuals online in North American download a podcast at least once a month. That’s up from 1 percent […]

View a transcript of this interview The Flash video ecosystem has has become the most widely deployed platform for streaming video on the Web.  Video sharing sites, news organizations, governments, institutions and many others use the platform.  Most of Adobe’s installed base, some 80 percent, are using Flash 8 and/or 9.  Beginning this year, Flash […]

Click To Play View a transcript of this interview Here the second interview with Dmitry Shapiro, the founder and CEO of Veoh, a popular video sharing site. The site provides both streaming Flash video and large downloadable files distributed via a peer-to-peer network. One major differentiator of Veoh is that it provides a downloadable application […]