Microsoft's Chief Research at Strategy Officer Craig Mundie, Google CEO Eric Schmidt and 20 others have been named to the President’s Council of Advisors on Science and Technology (PCAST), the White House just announced. Last September at MIT, I sat down with Mundie for a chat about the future of multi-media computing and other topics including computing scenarios in the world's [...]

LAS VEGAS -- Avid, which has been the industry standard for television and film editing for some time, is becomingly increasingly agnostic.  At NAB last week, the company raised some eyebrows with its announced integration with arch rival, Apple's Final Cut Pro. Moreover, the company is allowing editing and project management work to be done on the desktop, not exclusively the company's [...]

LAS VEGAS -- We have heard really good things about Market7, a new San Francisco-based start-up that provides video collaboration and project management services via the Web. Earlier this week, we caught up with  CEO Seth Kenvin on the floor of the NAB convention where his company announced the integration with Apple's Final Cut Pro and Adobe's Premiere.The product  allows for [...]

National Pubic Radio has had the highest ratings period in its history, some 20.5 million weekly listeners for its news programming, according to a report by Arbitron published last month in the Washington Post.  This number does not include digital consumption including podcasts and audio streaming.Earlier this month at NPR headquarters in Washington, I sat down with Vivian Schiller, [...]

With 1000 videos in the archives and more than three million video streams viewed since Beet.TV launched three years ago, I am mighty proud of our progress.  Our audience is fascinating — from software developers in Israel to media executives in New York to urban music innovators — and Beet.TV has become a valued destination. Every day, visitors come to [...]

LAS VEGAS --  HD video is becoming a larger part of the online video ecosystem with nearly a third of computer users viewing HD content.  Revenue around this content will reach $2.2 million by 2012, this according to a new industry study by IDC, commissioned by Akamai.Earlier this week at the NAB convention we spoke with Suzanne Johnson from Akamai.  [...]

Big trial gets underway on Friday (4.24) in San Francisco about the DVD-ripping program from RealNetworks called RealDVD.  Hollywood is not too pleased with the $30 program which allows you to rip and save unlimited number of DVD's to a PC. The program is unavailable, but we had an opportunity to tape an interview and demo  with RealNetwork's Jeff Chasen in [...]

LAS VEGAS -- The integration of video production elements is becoming more important as publishers seek to increase productivity and save cost.  Interesting news about how Adobe's editing software will now be integrated into Brightcove's production platform.Not sure if this will boost use of Premiere vs. Apple's Final Cut Pro in the competition for desktop editing, but one thing is [...]

LAS VEGAS  -- Live television delivery to mobile devices is a big focus of working groups and exhibitors here at the annual NAB convention, according to Chris Brown, the NAB executive in charge of the show. While broadband and wireless companies can stream video to mobile devices, broadcasters are not yet capable.Chris says he expects this to change and that it [...]

It's great to see that Zadi Diaz, co-creator of Epic Fu, has landed a sponsorship deal with Puma. At SXSW, we spoke with her about the tough time for independent video content creators getting revenue there days.  We are pleased to to see she is making some good progress.  The sponsorship was sold by Blip.tv, which provides services to the show.  Some [...]

Robert Metcalfe, the inventor of Ethernet, the standard for connecting computers in a network, says that the promise of video is to limit the need of physical meeting which means less travel and greater energy conservation. In this interview done in 2006 at MIT, he told me that this could be a "huge benefit to all mankind."Recently Metcalfe, a partner in [...]

Visitors to video sites now exceeds users of Web-based e-mail, according to a report released today by The Nielsen Company.  The study reports on monthly unique visits to various Web sites and online applications. Nielsen released a report which tracks Web use in the U.S. since 2003.  The numbers combine home and work use.   Search sites remain the most [...]

LAS VEGAS --- In an effort to deliver the same experience for HD online video streams for consumers with different bandwidth connections, the industry is embracing a technology called "adaptive streaming."   Here at the annual NAB conference, Microsoft released its product called Smooth Streaming. On Monday at the Microsoft booth on the convention floor, Beet.TV caught up with Steve Sklepowich for [...]

LAS VEGAS -- We read the coverage about Adobe's Flash coming to television sets, which is an important development.  But this Flash content will only play on new television sets with new chips.  It will take quite some time.  Some of it is here already with the new Intel/Yahoo! collaboration, as we reported recently. For us, the big news is a [...]

While an entire industry has been created to measure the impact of conventional advertising on brand perception and purchasing, there is very little methodology around the impact of online video advertising. Vizu provides publishers and marketers with information on how ads are effecting brand "lift."  I spoke with Dan Beltramo, CEO last month at the Beet.TV Online Video Roundtable at the [...]

Out  in Mountain View today, RJ Pittman and his crew unveiled the latest developments in image search. Michael Arrington has been live blogging about it. We interviewed RJ in July about the future of image search.  Looks like the future is here. -- Andy Plesser, Executive Producer

thePlatform, the white label video services company owned by Comcast, has announced it is has new customer in 4Kids.TV. Seems like the Seattle-based company has made something of specialty in streaming online video content for kids.  The company says that 8 percent of its streams is for youth-oriented sites. Last month at the Beet.TV Online Video Roundtable, I caught up with Marty [...]

Stay tuned to Beet.TV over the course of the week as we will be doing a number of interviews from the floor of the Las Vegas Convention Center at the annual NAB convention. I won't be there, but our West Coast producer Jeff Brooks will be on the scene.Should be some very cool things to see including Disney's 3-D animation efforts, [...]

Great to see the success and recognition for CHOW, the San Francisco-based foodie site created on a shoestring  by Jane Goldman as a print publication back in 1997 then sold to CNET in 2006 when it launched online. The site has been nominated for a National Magazine Award in the online category where it is up against Time, Business Week, New [...]

Conde Nast, which had organized most of its content on big, themed portals, has created new Web sites for most of its individual titles.  This is part of the transition from CondeNet to the new entity Conde Nast Digital, which was announced in January. Video is a big part, and the company is now streaming nearly 5 million views a month, [...]