LOS ANGELES -- BitGravity, the new Burlingame-based content delivery network, has a focus on the quality live video streaming market.  The company has signed some impressive companies including Revision3 which uses the solution to stream diggnation and other programming. I interviewed company president Perry Wu at the AlwaysOn conference earlier this month. For more information about BitGravity, check out this interview with [...]

As time-shifting viewing habits of cable TV by consumers increases, there is a big challenge for the cable operators and advertisers to effectively insert relevant advertising. BlackArrow, a San Mateo-based company, apparently has a solution.  The company has  been heavily funded by some key strategic investors including Cisco, Comcast, Intel and top  VC's  Mayfield and  Polaris.  Larry Kramer, funder of [...]

LOS ANGELES--JibJab Media, widely known for its political parody This Land, created the first viral Web video way back in 2000.  Having established a recognized online brand, the company has evolved into a subscription business with customized e-cards and other forms form branded mash-ups. Evidently people are willing to pay for the service. JibJab's Sendables product lets subscribers  insert themselves [...]

LOS ANGELES--The multimedia "playable" search engine Seeqpod has attracted 5.5 million unique monthly users over the past year, according to internal numbers provided to Beet.TV. Through affiliates and an API, that number will likely double this year, a company spokesperson told us. The search engine technology was developed at the Lawrence Berkeley National Labs.  It was initially created as a [...]

Seesmic, the new company headed by French blogger Loic Le Meur,  provides a technology for threaded video comments on various blog platforms, is up and running on MovableType blogs.  Plans are underway to integrate Seesmic into TypePad blogs, also a SixApart platform.  I've reposted my interview from May 7 with Seesmic evangelist Cathy Brooks.  Cathy talks about Seesmic and the [...]

LOS ANGELES -- Quincy "QD3" Jones III, has evolved his music production business QD3 to focus on online video.  He told Beet.TV he plans to bring the company's collection of 3000 hours of video documentary footage of urban performers to the Web later this year.  He sees a business opportunity in mash-ups, where his firm is paid for usage. I caught [...]

There might be a record number of video cameras in Beijing this summer, but the vamped up restrictions on digital rights the International Olympic Committee announced earlier this week will leave squadrons of TV teams and citizens journalists with a lot less to cover. NBC paid a record $894 million for rights to broadcast the games and understandably wants to [...]

msnbc.com and NBC News have expanded its relationship with MySpace with a new initiative to find "citizen" journalists from MySpace to cover the presidential conventions. MSNBC on-air talent, along with MySpace executives will select the journalists.  The judges are Joe Scarborough, Mika Brzezinski and Willie Geist from MSNBC’s “Morning Joe” program, along with Tom Anderson, President and co-founder of MySpace, and [...]

While the vast majority of online video advertising is inserted into streaming Flash videos viewed in a Web browser, this inevitably will change as more video will consumed via download. Although paid downloads have become a big business, thanks largely to Apple's iTunes, advertiser-supported downloaded videos are only now beginning to emerge.  Big hurdles exist: The biggest issue is how to [...]

Kosmix, the search engine designed to organize pages around specific interests including health, travel and automobiles, can now be configured to personalize search on any topic.  The few functionality was reported this morning by Mark Hendrickson at TechCrunch. Earlier this month, I interviewed Kosmix co-founder Anand Rajaraman.  He spoke in general terms about the new usability of the service which is [...]

Vint Cerf, a computer scientist who is most often called the "father of the Internet," says that the popularity and demand for online video will mean that the distribution will eventually be done "in download mode," not streaming, which is pervasive today. Cerf is Vice President and Chief Internet Evangelist for Google.  I interviewed him today at the Personal Democracy Forum [...]

NEW YORK -- Earlier today at the Personal Democracy Forum, we spoke with Stanford law professor Lawrence Lessig.  Lessig is spending a great deal of time on congressional reform movement called Change Congress, an organization he co-founded with Joe Trippi. Handling the interview was our colleague Caroline McCarthy of CNET News.com who filed a story earlier in the day on Lessig's [...]

CULVER CITY, CA -- The success of digital entertainment will result from true interoperability between consumer devices, says Mitch Singer, Chief Technology Officer of Sony Pictures.Earlier this month I visited him on on the Sony lot.  He is among a group of entertainment executives and academics who are working to create new standards in downloadable media.  He says it is [...]

Rich widgets for consumer smart phones will represent a significant new platform in the digital advertising world and one worthy of VC investment, according Tim Chang, a partner with Norwest Partners, a top-tier venture capital firm in Palo Alto.  He is looking to invest in this area along with analytics companies which track engagement of media consumption through hyper syndication. I [...]

It's been a year since Vator.tv launched.  The company was co-founded by former Marketwatch columnists Bambi Francisco and backed by Peter (PayPal co-founder) Thiel and others prominent investors. Bambi's co-founder is Cyril Brignone. Initially a place for aspiring entrepreneurs to pitch business ideas to potential investors, it is transitioning into an online video news platform about innovation.  The social network of [...]

BEVERLY HILLS -- The OVGuide indexes and highlights some 1800 episodic online video programs.  It is powered by a staff of editors and a video search technology.  While it has operated largely under the radar, it has become quite popular.  According to Chad Cooper, editorial content manager of OVGuide, the site will have 10 million uniques this month. (These are [...]

In a remarkable reflection of how the creative process of video production is changing the advertising agency world, Rob Schwartz, the top creative officer at TBWA/Chiat Day in Los Angeles, told me he is going to buy Flip cameras for everyone in the art and creative department at his agency's  LA office. The office is one of the most creative and [...]

HOLLYWOOD -- Here on Wednesday night at the Henry Fonda Theater, YouTube co-founder Chad Hurley kicked off YouTube's debut of a new showcase for long and short-form films.   Beet.TV was on the scene. The YouTube Screening Room has attracted several highly regarded filmmakers -- and not just for the online exposure of the mega video sharing site, but for the improved [...]

MySpaceTV tonight introduced a Flash-based "carousel" of related videos displayed across the top of the MySpaceTV redesigned home page.  When logged in, members find unviewed videos from friends' feeds or subscriptions. Giving such a prime location to showcase video is part of the big site redesign and reflects the major efforts surrounding video including the introduction of a new player. Online [...]

Just read that Joshua Schachter, founder of Del.i.cio.us whose company was acquired by Yahoo! in 2005, has departed the company, TechCrunch is reporting tonight. I've reposted my interview with Joshua that I did on the MIT campus in September of 2006 when he received MIT's Technology Review Innovator of the Year.  (Separately, I produced a video documentary about Joshua, for [...]