[TV] Craig Ferguson on Voting

Image by Getty Images via Daylife We don't get The Late Late Show here - for some reason no one has opted to pick up this particular show for syndication / redistribution. I can't see why they don't try it out given we've already syndicated all the other big late night shows unless the big folks at our corporate TV offices think Filipinos can't handle Craig Ferguson's accent, hehe.

Sadly, I wouldn't put it past them to think precisely that.

Anyway, with the US Presidential Campaign in full swing, the news is just saturated with stories about Obama, McCain and Palin. Sadly, Biden is too boring to catch the attention of the voracious media, hehe. Politics is always one of the regular staples of the late night television world and in this next video, Craig Ferguson has a lot to say about the candidates and about our responsibility to vote in itself.

Frankly, I'm impressed and all the more I wish they brought this show to Philippine television screens sooner rather than later.


#18 - Craig Ferguson, "If you don't vote, you're a moron"

[Google] GooTube Plans

In November of last year, Google completed its acquisition of the amazingly popular video sharing site YouTube, a move that had everyone wondering what would happen given Google already had a rival video search service called Google Video. At the onset of the acquisition, Google stated that YouTube would remain an independent subsidiary of the company.

Today in their official blog, Google has finally announced more information about their plans for the two video services.

In a nutshell, Google Video will focus more and more on helping you search for video content as opposed to becoming a community, something similar to how Yahoo! Video works today, I would assume. The immediate plans are to add the YouTube videos to Google Video's search index but clicking on such videos will bring you to the YouTube website to view the clip.

They also briefly discussed the business side of things, mentioning plans to further monetize YouTube especially when it launches internationally, based on the statement. They also made reference to the on-going AdSense video testing as part of those monetization plans.

Frankly, I'm excited about how Google is handling YouTube. Instead of eating up the site as a lot of people feared, they're building on the success of the site and integrating new ways of monetizing it.

I guess for now all we can do is continue to stay tuned.

[The Web] The Force on Google Video

Star Wars Fan Films, sometimes known as Warsies in fan circles have been around for quite some time. There have been all sorts ranging from the comical to the hard core.

Recently we've been going over a number of the lightsaber battle videos on Google Video and felt that a few of them were really, really good and deserved some mention here on the Guide.

Today we're featuring the films created by a particular groups of friends. There's no sense of plot here - it's just a good hard lightsaber fight, the kind you really want to see in the movies. It's not all elaborate swordplay - it often involves a lot of brutal, physical action that would definitely make sense in a real fight.

Enjoy!

[The Web] MySpace Sued

Social Networking site MySpace, and its parent company the News Corporation has recently been sued by the Universal Music Group as of Friday, November 17.

Of course the case is related to the thousands of unlicensed songs and videos uploaded by users to the site pretty much daily which are in violation of international copyright laws. The lawsuit calls Rupert Murdoch's MySpace a "vast virtual warehouse" of pirated works. It's a pretty big lawsuit given they're demanding $150,000 US per song or video uploaded to the site given they claim the site also benefits by selling advertising related to the illegal content.

Many analysts see this case as a sort of test of the laws related to online content in preparation for much bigger cases like those potentially against sites like YouTube, for which it has also been reported that Google has earmarked $200 million US from the $1.6 billion paid for the acquisition just for potential copyright cases.

The laws are pretty generous, when you get down to it. While sites cannot be penalized immediately for user-uploaded content, they are responsible for policing these activities and likewise removing content reported or discovered by the license owner. Thus this lawsuit is pushing that MySpace has not done enough to protect UMG's material especially those already tagged and reported.

Frankly, we at the Guide feel this case, while important for the rest of the user-uploaded content industry, will take a long time to resolve itself sufficiently. This will be good for everyone in the long run given site owners will be working on better ways of protecting copyright and everyone gets what they deserve.

We're most interested to see how Google plans to insert stronger copyright controls into YouTube and even their original video sharing and searching site Google Video. Given their reputation for innovation and creativity, we feel that Google will be the ones to take the most significant steps towards revising how web portals and video sharing sites will handle user-generated content.

[Google] Aggressive Moves in Video

Being a member of the GooglePress Group distribution list, yesterday started out interesting enough with the successive announcements related to the deals signed by Google with content providers Sony BMG Music Entertainment and Warner Music Group to distribute their video content through a shared ad revenue scheme of sorts. Then of course the big bomb hit when they announced the planned $1.65 Billion acquisition of YouTube within the year.

The best thing about this move is their announcement to retain the existing YouTube brand along with their existing team, which is somewhat similar to the acquisition of blogging service LiveJournal by fellow blogging company Six Apart some time back, which felt more like a friend merging of companies rather than one larger company consuming the other.

Of course this leaves Google with two main issues - one to turn YouTube into a solid revenue generating enterprise while at the same time dealing with the potential copyright issues plagued by all video sharing sites today. With a combined majority market share between YouTube and Google Video, interested groups are certainly going to pay notice to the new video giant.

Of course while the lawyers start working on the fine print and dotting all their "I's" and crossing their "T's", the rest of the world is left to just enjoy the wave of media coverage and support from the global internet community.

[Google] YouTube for Sale?

Media buzz in recent days has been talking about a number of Google actions, one of the more notable ones being talks of Google considering buying out YouTube, although for how much exactly is anyone's guess. Current reports tag the price at a total value of $1.6 Billion in a mixed assortment of cash, stock and other assets. While Google is one of the first companies to get associated with an actual price tag, other companies like Yahoo! and Microsoft have also been reported to be visiting the video sharing company.

Why buy YouTube? That is definitely an interesting question. Let's face it - YouTube is a free service without an actual revenue model at this point. All they do is host videos to make it easier for people to share it across the web. They've had a few spats related to copyright concerns because of the material being uploaded but there hasn't been much else about that. They do control majority of the video sharing market with about 46% market share with MySpace following with about 21.2% and Google Video trailing third with 11%.

Some reports about the proposed acquisition theorize this may partly be in a response of Ruport Murdoch's purchase of the social networking site MySpace, another site that did not have a real revenue model which is now being valued at over $2 billion.

We have to go back to Google's core business, which is search and context-driven advertising. The biggest bet is combining YouTube's market share with Google's expertise in the online advertising arena does present a good way for YouTube to become highly lucrative. Then again, a lot of what Google does may not seem immediately profitable such as the rapid release of so many products over recent months, but hints at a greater strategy beyond all this.

An office associate of mine referred to this kind of thinking as "pull accounting" where you focus more on thinking of other ways of bringing revenue in despite initial capital expenditure as opposed to "push accounting" where one attempts to push costs away by relying on a more conservative growth strategy.

[US Politics] Clinton on Fox News Sunday

The blogosphere is ablaze with discussions about former president Bill Clinton's interview with Chris Wallace on Fox News Sunday this week. You definitely can't blame them (heck, myself included) - it was a very interesting, if not entertaining interview.

FOX News of course is known for its highly conservative stance on a lot of issues with a large number of their programs more of opinion shows rather than just factual news reports as what CNN focuses on. Although I am not a US resident, I suppose you could say that I'm more of a liberal in terms of my beliefs so that should give you an idea where this brief entry is going to go. Needless to say, I've never been a fan of the network and their take on the world.

You can read the official transcript of the interview on the FOX News website or view the video embeds using the links to Google Video below. I can't guarantee the videos will always play - given this is FOX material, they have every right to have the videos pulled from Google Video as they're requested of YouTube recently. Then again, if you keep searching for [Bill Clinton Fox News], you're bound to find a copy of the interview.

I really enjoyed watching it - it's nice to see a Democrat willing to challenge FOX News and put them in their in their place, so to speak, given the network's penchant for their highly pro-GOP reporting and interviews. I would have liked it even more if the interview was with someone as feisty as Bill O'Reilly, but then I guess Chris Wallace will have to do for now.

Bill Clinton/Fox News (Chris Wallace Interview) Pt. 1
Bill Clinton/Fox News (Chris Wallace Interview) Pt. 2

note: I tried embedding the videos but the players don't seem to work in the Blogger beta environment for some reason. So instead, I've placed the links to the videos themselves. Enjoy!

[The Web] Video Top Ten

CNet is a favorite source of tech news and information for me whether from their official news sources or from their many tech blogs.

I chanced upon a recent blog entry on CNet that talked about services that attempt to rank the top videos being linked to or posted across the blogosphere.

Of the two services mainly discussed, I found myself partial to the Viral Video Chart, which relies primarily on the number of video links rather than requiring a user pool to vote for the best videos (which is the method other ranking services are using). This makes their approach similar to Google, in a way.

You can filter your results to display the top ranked videos for today, the week or the month, which is pretty convenient for now. Hopefull more options will be made available in the future like user feedback, tagging or other avenues for interaction.

So far, the service only draws upon videos from YouTube, MySpace, and Google Video, but I wouldn't be surprised if this expands later on, should the site gain popularity.