AOL has selected online video platform Brightcove to begin delivering its video content across the AOL Network in early 2009, the company announced today. This will be the first implementation of Brightcove 3 by a major search portal. This is another big get for the company; last week, The New York Times announced that it is using Brightcove as its [...]

Parents in search of on-demand, long-form videos for kids can now access them for free online using Blinkx Remote for Kids, which launched today. The search engine makes it easy to find kid-friendly TV offerings across the Internet, such as "Spider-Man" and "Dennis the Menace." The new service from video search engine Blinkx will help broaden the site's audience, CEO [...]

Microsoft and Akamai Technologies will release a beta version of a high-definition video solution for PCs in early 2009, the companies announced today. Both companies are introducing new streaming technologies to make the new service possible.  More details will be discussed later this morning when Microsoft Director of Media and Advertising Evangelism Eric Schmidt speaks at the Beet.TV Online Video Roundtable [...]

(The conference ended at noon. Please see our more recent post about the conference to watch the on-demand videos.) Industry leaders from Yahoo!, YouTube, MySpace, AOL, Microsoft, The Washington Post, Dow Jones, CNN, msnbc.com and several emerging new companies are gathering for the big online video summit tomorrow, 10/28, at the msnbc.com digital cafe at 30 Rock.  It's going to a [...]

Video on most news sites is presented in either a video gallery, where numerous videos are displayed, or as a single player placed on an article page.  The New York Times has broken ground by creating a sort of "contextual" video player which displays multiple clips related to the subject of the story, on the page where the text article [...]

Barack Obama has been more challenging to characterize from a comedic standpoint than McCain, according to JibJab CEO Gregg Spiridellis. Spiridellis spoke on a panel at the TimeWarner Politics 08 Summit last week about politics and comedy on the web. JibJab had the first online video political comedy hit way back in 2004 with "This Land" -- a mash-up of [...]

The New York Times has launched a new HD-format video player with a 16:9 wide-screen frame. Other new features include a redesigned video library, a "Most Viewed" rank, and tools to share videos to social sites like Facebook and Digg. The new video player is from Brightcove, the Boston-based video services company.  Previously, The Times streamed its video using The FeedRoom.  [...]

The how-to video site Howcast has raised $2 million in additional first-round funding from private individuals, bringing its total to $10 million, Camille Ricketts at VentureBeat reports. Andy interviewed co-founders Jason Liebman and David Blackman earlier this year, a month or so after the company launched. I republished the video above. In her piece, Ricketts breaks down the competition [...]

The impact of online video on the 2008 presidential campaign will be sorted out by political scientists, historians, media pundits and consultants over the months and years ahead, but political strategist and former Edwards campaign senior advisor Joe Trippi tells Beet.TV that the Obama-financed "1984" video effectively crippled Hillary Clinton's hopes. The mash-up of an old Apple commercial, "smashing the [...]

Good video journalism can come in different forms, from capturing an instantaneous moment in a war or distilling a difficult concept, according to John Roberts, anchor of CNN's American Morning. The veteran journalist was formerly with CBS News. Andy interviewed Roberts at the TimeWarner Politics '08 Summit last week, where Roberts moderated a panel titled "Puppet Masters and Policy Maestros: Analyzing [...]

We are producing a live show of our online video industry summit on Tuesday, October 28 from 9-noon EDT, from the msnbc.com digital cafe at 30 Rockefeller Plaza, headquarters of NBC. CNET News.com Dan Farber and TechCrunch co-editor Erick Schonfeld will join me in moderating in-depth discussions on technology, monetization and the changing role of video in journalism and entertainment. [...]

MySpace has launched several major initiatives this election season to get younger voters involved in the political process. It formed MyDebates.org in partnership with the Commission on Presidential Debates, conducted a poll with NBC News and the Wall Street Journal Online geared toward younger voters, and is working with major voter registration groups like Rock the Vote. The MyDebates tools allow [...]

Video publishing platform Blip.tv has closed its second round of funding, led by Bain Capital Ventures, the company announced today. Blip focuses on independent niche publishers and has seen rapid expansion, serving over 51 million video views in September--250 percent more than September of 2007, the company said. Blip distributes more than 37,000 shows that are actively updated, including Beet.tv. With [...]

YouTube has premiered its first full-length studio film, "The Princess of Nebraska," by Wayne Wang and has garnered some 160,000 views since Friday night and a positive review in today's New York Times by movie critic A.O. Scott. Scott remarks that viewing the film in full-screen mode allows viewers to appreciate the "cinematic qualities" of the film.  The film is on [...]

The Wall Street Journal publishes 25-30 videos a day, and the majority of them are produced by the paper's reporters, according to Deputy Managing Editor Alan Murray. As part of a strategy to integrate online video with the reporting, The Journal trains reporters on a regular basis in New York and San Francisco to use Sony HDR-HC9 cameras. This is [...]

Third party presidential candidate Ralph Nader isn't getting much television exposure, but he has 2 percent support of likley voters according to yesterday's Reuters/C-SPAN/Zogby poll.  Could it be that alternative media, including online video shows, might be helping his cause? Wouldn't it be ironic if the Obama Girl herself is helping him? Recently Barely Political, an online political humor site, produced [...]

Eat the Press editor Rachel Sklar will be leaving The Huffington Post after the election to work on her book, according to a report on Gawker today. Andy interviewed Sklar at the TimeWarner Politics 08 summit earlier this week about online video at The Huffington Post and expansions underway at the site. Andy asked Sklar if the site's current soaring traffic [...]

Yahoo service BuzzTracker's "Most Blogged" feature, which tracks the most linked-to blog posts on the Internet, has been incorporated into the Beta version of the Yahoo News page, Yahoo News General Manager Alan Warms says in this interview. Yahoo acquired BuzzTracker last year, which Warms founded, and is tracking posts from 90,000 blogs with its algorithmic technology. The general release [...]

Blaise Zerega, the veteran magazine editor who left Conde Nast's Portfolio earlier this month, has joined FORA.tv as President and COO, William Randolph Hearst III, lead investor and vice chairman of the board announced today. In a statement, he said: “Blaise is a proven executive with a wealth of experience in both traditional ad-based media and online. His energy, strategic plan, [...]

CNN anchor Wolf Blitzer told Andy at the TimeWarner Politics 08 Summit that he keeps his opinions out of The Situation Room. "I'm sort of an old-school, serious, hard news reporter who likes to do the news in a responsible way and not necessarily showcase my opinion, but to try to get some information out of the guests or out [...]