Andy Plesser

The annual New York French film festival got underway in New York last night and we had the extraordinary good fortune to catch up with the great French film director Claude Lelouch, best known for his 1966 Academy Award-winning "A Man and A Woman."  We found a short clip from the film on YouTube and […]

The ungating of NYTimes.com in September has lead to a dramatic increase in traffic from Google search, according an interview with David Eun, Google’s Vice President of Content Partnerships in next week’s edition of The Deal.  Eun tells tells the weekly that ungating at the Times and the Financial Times has greatly increased traffic from […]

Portfolio’s Lloyd Grove just published an extensive interview with TechCrunch’s Michael Arrington.  He holds no punches, calls Barry Diller a "wounded animal" and Gawker Media’s Nick Denton, "a total dick."  Here’s what else he says about Denton: "I think he’s amoral. I don’t think he has any sense of right and wrong, and he’ll do […]

There’s been a good bit of anticipation about the Adobe Media Player (AMP), the application that will allow users to download videos to a desktop environment.  Up until now, virtually all Flash video files are streamed and watched in a browser. Over the next few weeks, video publishers, including Beet.TV, will launch branded "channels" using […]

I caught up with Robert Scoble on Monday morning in San Francisco at the Adobe Engage conference.  Robert covered live with his Nokia and streamed it via his QIK connection.  I ask him about preparations for FastCompany.tv and its launch on March 3.  He explained that the show will have two production tracks:  a live […]

XDrive, AOL’s online storage site for saving large files, is getting 2 million uploads a day, many of them videos, Robert Blatt, Vice President and General Manager of Personal Media at AOL, told me on Monday at the Adobe Engage conference in San Francisco.  The fast-growing service provides consumers with 5GB of free storage space […]

Not sure if he’s slimmed down for another run for the presidency (probably not) or he’s decided to shape up for the upcoming IPO of Current TV, or he’s just made a personal health decision.   Whatever the reason, I’d say he’s gone down about three suit sizes — and looks terrific. I saw him this […]

While the development of independent and niche publishers has been pervasive with some taking the editorial mantel of expertise and influence from mainstream media, the financial prospects of power bloggers are not at all clear, says Jason Pontin, editor and publisher MIT’s Technology Review.  Jason was the longtime editor of Red Herring which chronicled the […]

In its first introduction of a consumer technology solution, The New York Times Company has launched the beta version of  ShifD.  The application, which is accessible on the Web, various mobile devices and on the desktop of Adobe Air, allows users to save links, notes and places.  Users can update and retrieve data through all […]

Andrew Heyward, former president of CBS News, shares his view of the the essential value television news, the role of journalists and how online consumption patterns are changing the ecosystem of television news. This is an extremely insightful interview. I hope you find it valuable and share it with your colleagues. Andrew is a consultant […]

In a major development in the way advertisers pay for advertising in video ads, VideoEgg has launched a new performance-based advertising system called AdFrames. One of the first advertisers to sign on is Microsoft, which is advertising new features in Office 2007.  Instead of paying publishers for the number of views, Microsoft is paying VideoEgg […]

In what may well be a landmark development for the monetization of online video, Google  has launched a program to provide video publishers and video services companies with overlay advertisements. Publishers are paid on cost-per thousand impressions basis, or CPM.  The CPM paid to specific publishers will be established through an automated auction process.  A […]

This is not fair, nor does it make a lot of sense.  Advertisers pay for ads on videos as they would banner ads, on an impression basis. If you watch a video or surf a web page with an ad banner, it’s pretty much the same. Advertisers pay publishers a certain amount for a thousand […]

Dan Farber, the veteran technology journalist who has built ZDNet, a CNET Networks unit,  into a potent blogging network, has been tapped to take over as Editor in Chief of of CNET News.com.  Dan made the announcement in his blog a few minutes ago.    Michael Arrington at TechCrunch has more information and POV. He […]

ImageSpan, a Sausalito-based start-up which provides rights management and payment systems for online video publishers, has received angel funding from top angel investors Alan Patricof and his new venture fund, Greycroft Partners, along with Ron Conway’s Angel Investors. VentureBeat reported this today, adding that the amount of the angel round was not disclosed. For publishers […]

We are impressed with the new HD platform for clips on Dailymotion, the fast-growing video sharing site in France.  HD was introduced to the site today. While some publishers and video sharing sites are presenting video in high quality Flash, most provide a lower resolution on the embed, the file used by bloggers and social […]

In November, Yahoo! quietly introduced clickable pre-roll ad units with a "call to action," meaning visitors who watch a video, see a pre-roll ad and are encouraged to click on the ad to find more information. Rebecca Paoletti, Director of Video Sales Strategy told me on Friday that some of these new units are getting […]

Gary Vaynerchuk, host of the wildly successful daily online show Wine Library TV, which has some 60,000 viewers, with traffic that greatly exceeds industry Goliath, the Wine Spectator, came by the Beet.TV studios the other night for some wine tasting basics. Smelling the wine is key — as is swishing it like “mouthwash.”  Well, the […]

Vator.tv is a place where entrepreneurs pitch business ideas, in short videos, to potential investors.  Since its launch last summer, it has had over a thousand companies around the world participate through slick and funky video uploads. We reported recently that the company has closed on a second round of early stage funding. There’s a […]

Increasingly, video content is being downloaded to a variety devices including computers, mobile devices, phones, game consoles and television set-top boxes. Managing advertising insertions across these different downladable media is critical as most video consumption is and will be ad supported.  Kiptronic is one of handful of emerging companies who are creating ad management systems […]