Motionbox, the New York-based video sharing site which has a subscription model, has gotten a third venture round of $6 million, Jason Kincaid of TechCrunch reported tonight.  Along with the investment is a management shake-up with Chris O'Brien assuming the title of Chairman and Josh Grotstein becoming CEO.  A little over a year ago, Chris spoke with Beet.TV about his [...]

In what might be the biggest breakthrough for Panache, a Los Angeles-based video ad insertion company,  MTV has agreed to deploy its program across its sites.  I interviewed Panache CEO Steve Robinson at Streaming Media East this past May in New York.  I've republished the interview here. Here is the company press release. -- Andy Plesser, Executive Producer

Thomson Reuters' metadata generation service Calais will now allow users to automatically integrate their content with Linked Data assets like Wikipedia, the company announced today on their blog. "With 9,000 of you processing 1+ million documents a day, it was time to take Calais to the next level," Krista Thomas writes. Andy interviewed Thomson Reuters Vice President of Solutions Tom [...]

Video SEO EveryZing will power search and discovery for Revision3, the digital web studio created by Kevin Rose and Jay Adelson, the company announced today. Andy interviewed CEO Tom Wilde in the Beet offices last month about the company's speech-to-text technology, which creates rich, searchable metadata for videos.  "Depending on the type of content we're processing, we can either go [...]

WASHINGTON, D.C.  On Sunday night at American University, YouTube recognized the five finalists and winner in the Project Report competition, a new journalism award for short video documentaries. Co-sponsored by the Pulitzer Center, the assignment was for "non-professional" video journalists to report on underreported communities. I had a chance on Monday to speak with the winner Arturo Perez Jr, an [...]

We were pleased to read this past weekend in The Wall Street Journal that our friends at Iron Horse Vineyards were cited by Dorothy Gaiter and John Brecher as one of the two best U.S. sparkling wine makers. The story is a guide to buying domestic "Champagne" or sparkling wine to celebrate Tuesday's Inauguration of Barack Obama. Another fan of Iron [...]

Digital studio Eqal, the brains behind LonelyGirl15, Kate Modern, and LG15: The Resistance, has teamed up with CBS to create a new, multi-platform show called Harper's Island, which will premier online March 18 and on TV April 9. I discussed the role of interactivity in online video with Eqal CEO Miles Beckett in August, before the launch of LG15, and [...]

WASHINGTON, D.C. - At the Google offices in Washington, D.C yesterday, Andy interviewed YouTube's Head of News and Politics Steve Grove about the site's new Congressional Web pages. There are separate pages for the House and for the Senate, and the offices of all senators and representatives can start their own channels. Andy blogged about this yesterday, when the pages [...]

WASHINGTON, D.C. --  YouTube has just launched a site for all members of the U.S. Congress.  The New York Times reported on the development today.   I am at the Google offices in Washington where I just interviewed Steve Grove who heads politics and news for YouTube.  We spoke about a number of subjects including the new congressional channels. We will [...]

WASHINGTON, D.C. -- A five-minute film titled "Abilities" about a California community for disabled adults by San Francisco filmmaker Arturo Perez, Jr, has been selected as the winner of Project Report, an award from YouTube and the Pulitzer Center for best video journalism from non-professional journalists.  The winner was announced earlier this evening in Washington, D.C.  The winner gets a [...]

Accurate monitoring of online video consumption across multiple platforms is not an easy task. But for publishers and advertisers hoping to make a business of this, complete metrics is essential.  Nielsen Online is developing new system to track online video consumption on multiple sites by identifying the distinct "audio signature file" which is specific to particular shows. Last month, I [...]

Surely one of the big stories at CES has been the introduction of the Palm Pre, a new smartphone.  Earlier today, CNET announced that the device has won the "best of show" for CES 2009.We've embedded a CNET video rave review and a demonstration of the new hand-held by Kent German, mobile phone editor.Here is the video of Palm CEO [...]

Armed with her Flip phone as usual, Kara Swisher caught up with Yahoo CEO Jerry Yang and President Sue Decker on camera at CES today. Jerry's not very happy to see her at first, but he cheers up later in the video when she lets him plug Yahoo's internet-linked Connected TV. When we had Kara over to the Beet offices [...]

Jimmy Fallon won't go on the air as NBC Late Night Host until March 2, but he's been building an online presence through his video blog, www.latenightwithjimmyfallon.com, since early December. In his most recent video, he's goofing around at the CES conference -- a logical stomping grounds for a videoblogger trying to build a fanbase online. Fallon will also perform [...]

Google's web browser Chrome left beta last month, but Google isn't done improving it yet. Jonathan Skillings at CNET News.com reports today that it has introduced the following new features: • New version of WebKit. • Form autocomplete. • Import bookmarks from Google Bookmarks. • New network code. • New window frames on Windows XP and Vista. I interviewed VP of Search Product and User Experience [...]

YouTube has been encouraging aspiring video journalists to post videos to Project Report, a YouTube channel which is part of the expanding role of media and journalism on the mega video sharing site.  The channel is also a revenue generated for YouTube with marquis sponsorships from Sony VAIO and Intel.With the assistance of the Pulitzer Center, YouTube has been running [...]

During the Inauguration of Barack Obama on Tuesday, Jan. 20, CNN.com Live users will be able to update their own Facebook status directly from the CNN.com Live player; and also see status updates from their friends and other Facebook users on CNN.com Live. On Facebook, the status updates for those using CNN.com Live will be published in their News Feed [...]

Boxee, the social media center that brings online video to the living room TV, has opened its alpha to all Mac, Ubuntu, and Apple TV users and added the BBC iPlayer and Joost to its library, the company announced from CES today. It has moved its Windows version into private alpha and will be releasing thousands of invites a week. [...]

Comedy site JibJab has raised $7.5 million in Series C funding from investors including Overbrook Entertainment and Sony Pictures, Jason Kincaid at TechCrunch reported. Andy interviewed JibJab CEO Greg Spiridellis at the TimeWarner Politics '08 Summit in October about politics and comedy on the web, and I republished the interview today. We previously interviewed JibJab about their "Starring You" ecards and [...]

With the 2009 CES International conference kicking off tomorrow, everyone in the tech world is in--or watching--Las Vegas. The conference may be smaller than last year, but the media is just as eager to see what gadget goodies the tech companies have in store. In this video, CNET News.com Executive Editor Tom Merritt reviews the NVIDIA GeForce 3D Vision gaming [...]