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Jupitermedia CEO Alan Meckler is one of the most intriguing and successful entrepreneurs in the new media space. His firm recently acquired Mediabistro the journalism blog, networking/jobs and training site, for $23 million.

I sat down with him yesterday, after his panel at the paidContent conference, to have a wider ranging chat about the conference business, the Mediabistro acquisition and some reflections on his past 15 years and current acquisition strategy.

He told me that a big part of the value proposition in Mediabistro is its job boards and online training -- two key areas of expansion at Jupitermedia.

You can grab the embed code of my interview right here.

-- Andy Plesser

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Rob Norman is the head of online advertising buying for the entire WPP network, a job of vast responsibility and influence.

I interviewed him at the paidContent conference in Manhattan today where he was a panelist.  Rob has a lot to say about online video advertising and the range of environments for ads and related CPM's. 

He is keen on video in applications, including Facebook and sees this is a big opportunity.  He is enthusiastic about VideoEgg, in which WPP has an investment.  There is a story about this topic in ClickZ.

-- Andy Plesser

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Last night I was at the opening night reception of the paidContent one-day conference about the future of business media.  The reception was at the Frank Gehry-designed IAC headquarters in the Manhattan.

Rafat told me that the future of buisness video will involve more story telling and investigative pieces.  We agree.

I just got back from the conference at the Waldorf.  It was extremely informative.  David has been furiously editing segments which we will be posting shortly.   Check paidContent for updates on the conference, including confirmation from IDG that The Industry Standard will be relaunched in December as an online "community."  The Silicon Alley Insider has some good coverage.

Grab this video of my chat with Rafat.

-- Andy Plesser

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Erick Shonfeld reports on TechCrunch that Fora.TV, the "thinking person's YouTube," has raised additional seed money from original investor William Randolph Hearst III along with a new investor in Adobe.  And, the company is poised to raise $5 million in  series A venture round within 90 days, founder Brian Gruber tells Erick. 

The company posts long-form speeches from high-level academic and institutional conferences.  The business model is channel sponsorships.  The audiences are small, but authoritative and desirable by marketers seeking to reach influencers. 

In some ways, this high end, niche programming model is like Beet.TV.  In fact we have similar web traffic, according to this graph from Alexa I've pasted below.  (Not sure about video streams over at Fora, but Beet.TV is streaming and downloading about 150,000 per month.)

A few weeks back, we visited to Fora.TV and interviewed Brian Gruber.  I've reposted the interview above. 

Congrats Brian on the new funding, the sponsorship with Pfizer and continued success.

Please see my interview with Will Hearst about his views on online video and investment in the space.

You can find this interview with Brian above.

Andy

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Executives from Microsoft are in Rwanda today for an an international meeting on fostering technology adoption in Africa.  There was report on these efforts this morning on NPR's Marketplace.

The effort from Microsoft is part of a global initiative to bring technology to students around the world.  The program is called "Unlimited Potential."

Beet.TV was up in Redmond a few weeks back where we met with Lauren Woodman, Senior Director of Government & Education Engagement Programs.

She told us about the initiative and shared with a video from Thailand about how a multiple mouse set-up can maximize the  use of one computer in a classroom.

Grab the embed code of this interview here.

-- Andy Plesser

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Al Gore's Current TV is creating some very good content, but its efforts to generated user generated video has faltered and monthly unique visitors are only 152,000 per month.

Nonetheless, one investor in Current, Los Angeles magnate Ronald W. Bunkle, is quoted in today's New York Times stating Current has a valuation of $2 billion.

Good reporting by new media beat reporter Brian Stelter.  I happened to interview Brian last week. He told me about his amazing journey from college blogger to staff New York Times reporter. He also offers advice on successful blogging.  Don't miss this one.  My interview is posted above.  You can grab the code here.

-- Andy Plesser

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The Akamai showcase site for HD online videos from several customers including the BBC, MTV, the NBA and others has just gone live. 

The images that load to the home page are in very high quality Flash.  To see the HD videos, you need to select either 1280 X 720 or 1920 X 1080.  The files, which are under 120 MB, download locally and are played in Quicktime or Windows Media.

On my Verizon Fios connection, the videos downloaded quickly.  If you have a slower connection or a computer with little video processing power, be patient.  My colleague Liz Gannes, editor at NewTeeVee noted the low bandwidth message displayed on her Mac, but that the files downloaded and they looked "stunning."

Earlier this week, I met with Brad Rinklin, head of marketing at Akamai.  Brad is excited about the new service but acknowledges that the prices for streaming in HD will considerably more, given the sizes of the files that are as much as 20 times bigger than conventional ones.

He believes that content owners will profit in presenting HD content when there is  an adequate advertising-supported CPM, or subscription model.

He told me that P2P distribution will part of the HD video ecosystem in the future and RedSwoosh, a recent Akamai acquisition will loom large in this.

We shall see how this plays out.

--- Andy Plesser

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Revision3's Diggnation has a large following.  Like most episodic Web video shows, most of the clips are consumed via downloads, mostly through iTunes.  Recently, the company has has introduced a Flash player with shareable embed code and it has done very well, Jim Louderback, CEO of Revision3 told me.

Here's my second interview with Jim. It's an informative overview of his company and this particular moment in time for Web video.  You can find the embed code for this clip right here.

-- Andy Plesser

LA Times Has Great Round-up Piece on Web Video

Check out David Sarno's feature in today's Los Angeles Times on the state of Web video, primarily in the entertainment space.  Below is the montage from today's paper.

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October being Breast Cancer Awareness Month, we figured it would be a good plan to produce and stream videos about the disease including clips about screening, genetics and therapies.   

These videos are beginning of a new medical channel dedicated to women's health.  We're still working out the format/branding, but we have already published several interviews with leading physicians and geneticists in Manhattan.

You can find our first show, Understanding Breast Cancer, right here.  You can subscribe via RSS and as a Podcast. We will be adding segments on an ongoing basis. 

These medical stories won't be part of the Beet.TV main digital media channel.  But, from time to time, we will post videos here about digital imaging, which leads me to my wife Kathy.   

She is an extraordinarily accomplished radiologist in private practice in New York.  Her specialty is women's imaging and she is deeply involved with advanced technologies including MRI (magnetic resonance imaging), digital mammography and ultrasound.   

In this clip, you will find Kathy with her giant MRI magnet along with a demonstration of the images of breast cancer it renders.

-- Andy Plesser 

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Extend Media is the company that has implemented the backend technology for Fanfare, the music and video portal from SanDisk.  The site interfaces with a simple, inexpensive USB device that takes videos from the computer and allows them to be plugged into a TV set.

Like iTunes and AppleTV, the new service will provide a way to download and play videos to a television set.  (Fanfare does not yet work on Mac OS, but will shortly, I am told.)

There is a thorough and fairly positive review of the device and service just published in Business Week.

Keith Kocho, founder of Extend Media was in the Beet.TV studios earlier this week. He expressed his admiration for Apple's accomplishments but says that AppleTV has not succeeded as a convergence device.  Plus, he calls it too expensive.   

The little USB device from ScanDisk costs under $150 and is simple to use -- and travel with.  I guess the big question is how much content will be available through the Fanfare portal. 

Grab my interview with Keith here.