Quickly uploading, transferring downloading large video files through the Beet.TV virtual private network (VPN) to my New York apartment has gotten incredibly fast with my new fiber optics connection from Verizon FiOS.  As The New York Times reports, I am among the first to get the super fast service at home in Manhattan, and I'm not too proud to "brag" [...]

TheWashingtonPost.com broke its own traffic record in September, receiving nearly 12 million unique visitors and surpassing USAToday.com to become the second largest newspaper site on the web, according to numbers released by Nielsen today. The New York Times holds the number one spot. The heated election season and economic turmoil have both played a role in the soaring traffic; political traffic [...]

Adobe Flash Player 10 is now available for free download, the company announced today. Andy interviewed Jim Guerard, VP of Adobe Dynamic Media, in Palo Alto this summer about the second beta version of the player; I republished the interview above. The player will offer native 3D transformation and animation and advanced audio processing, among other improvements. Liz Gannes at [...]

CNN has planned an online experience that complements rather than reproduces the televised broadcast of the presidential debates, according to Alex Wellen, Deputy Political Director of CNNPolitics.com. As more and more viewers are watching the broadcast with their laptops close at hand, real-time reactions from CNN analysts, the People Meter, and scorecards have become an important soundboard for the candidates' [...]

NEW YORK -- YouTube and PBS have put in place a joint program to solicit, organize, stream and broadcast user-generated video from polling places around the nation on election day, November 4.  The program is called "Video Your Vote." According to Steve Grove, head of news and politics at YouTube, the effort is aimed to "increase the transparency" of the voting process, [...]

Big media companies need to stop imitating traditional television formats in online video, according to BuzzMachine's Jeff Jarvis. There's no reason to do stand-ups and b-roll when the Internet provides the opportunity to reinvent the entire format, he says. "I think in four years from now we'll see utterly different video online," he told Andy in an interview at the TimeWarner [...]

The theme of women in power has played a central role in media coverage this election, according to Rachel Sklar, editor of The Huffington Post's Eat The Press page. Sklar spoke on a panel at the TimeWarner Politics 08 Summit today called "Playing Politics with Gender - Media, Candidates, and the Majority Vote." Sklar has followed stories about Sarah Palin, Hillary Clinton, and [...]

When a candidate says something that is incorrect, pointing it out to the viewers isn't partisan, according to Campbell Brown, anchor of CNN's Campbell Brown: Election Center. "If I don't [point it out to my viewers], I'm insulting their intelligence, and I'm not comfortable with myself, because I'm ignoring something that is clearly factual and is staring me in the [...]

Personal finance web application Mint, last year's TechCrunch40 winner, leaves beta today with a slew of new features under its belt, including investment tracking and flexible budget sheets, Jason Kincaid at TechCrunch reports. He writes that Mint registrations have gone up 100 percent over the last few weeks due to the financial crisis. I was excited to read that Mint [...]

Jeremy Allaire, Brightcove Chairman and CEO, visited Beet.TV recently to demonstrate the new platform.  It uses a new kind of dynamic delivery which adjusts the bitrate to the viewers' bandwidth.    Brightcove 3 has enhanced workflow functionality, which is appealing to big publishers.We understand that some big publishers will announce using the platform over the next few days. The new solution provides [...]

The authoring tools for Microsoft's Silverlight, the new rich-media Web plug-in,  will soon be available for those working on Macs and on open source programs.  The software giant hopes to accelerate the use of Silverlight on different operating systems through the funding of a project to be undertaken by Soyatec, a France-based IT solutions provider and Eclipse Foundation member.  The [...]

Video streaming solution DigiMeld will broadcast PublicScope Film's "The Third Jihad" online at 2 p.m. today, at the same time as the film's theatrical release, the company announced. I interviewed DigiMeld Executive Chairman Alex Mashisky last week about how the company's recent launch of SuperStream grid streaming technology, which allows online video to reach large audiences in real time and [...]

Barack Obama and John McCain weren't the only ones battling it out during Tuesday's town hall-style debate: CNN Digital Network vied with msnbc.com and other major players for the most unique visitors. CNN came out on top, the company announced today, generating 8.3 million uniques and 67 million total minutes spent on the site. CNN based the numbers on Nielsen [...]

TechCrunch50 runner-up FitBit, a fitness and sleep cycle tracking device that will go on sale next year for $99, has raised $2 million from True Ventures, SoftTech VC and several angel investors, Mark Hendrickson at TechCrunch reports today. This appears to be the first round of institutional funding for the company, according to Hendrickson. I interviewed FitBit CEO James Park after [...]

Zoho Mail came out of private beta today with some impressive features already lined up: The service has an iPhone app and an offline mode. Gmail still doesn't have offline support, prompting Read Write Web's Richard MacManus to write: "Innovative web office start-up Zoho has beaten Google to the punch again." Stan Schroeder at Mashable describes Zoho as "a sleek, [...]

Create-your-own-social-network platform Ning announced today that over 30 OpenSocial applications will be available for its 500,000 online communities. OpenSocial applications, developed by Google, work across social networks like Friendster, Hi5, and MySpace.  Ning hopes to double the number of its OpenSocial applications within six months, Vasanth Sridharan at Silicon Alley Insider reports. It also want to integrate with Facebook's platform. [...]

Competition is growing in the enterprise Twitter market: Austin-based start-up QikCom, which announced its closed beta launch today, adds some fresh ideas to the concept that won competitor Yammer the top prize at TechCrunch50. Present.ly, a third company in the enterprise micro-blogging space, launched a week after Yammer's win last month. Erick Schonfeld at TechCrunch has the story today on [...]

User-generated content plays a central role in National Geographic's dynamic multimedia platform, Senior VP for online content development Rob Covey told me at the Omma Global conference last month. Users can now share their own videos on the user-generated video hub Everyday Explorers, built with online community builder KickApps and recently launched in beta. Covey gave a presentation at the conference [...]

The New York Times announced today that it has launched a new widescreen video player, a redesigned video library and a "most viewed" feature. Brightcove 3, the new Brightcove technology, powers the player. Video and Television Editorial Director Ann Derry, who Andy recently interviewed at The New York Times building, says the new player will have a black background, a 16:9 [...]

People-powered news site Newsvine has seen enormous growth since its acquisition by msnbc.com last year, receiving 963 percent more registrations and 269 percent more unique visitors, msnbc.com has told Beet.TV. I interviewed CEO Mike Davidson about the Seattle-based social news platform at the Omma Global conference last month. Newsvine aggregates stories from both large media organizations and individual contributors around the [...]