video

YouTube meets Craigslist in new site

There's a new Web site called Real People Real Stuff where anyone can post a classified video. As expected, there are plenty of bad-quality clips and boring infomercial-type stuff, selling real estate, cars and even Shih Tzu puppies. But there are also some hidden gems.

For instance, some guy in Alexandria, Va., wrote a song about his company's "Dog Guard" invisible pet fence. "We keep your hound aroundddd. We keep your hound aroundddd," he croons as he strums his guitar.

In another charming and informative video, a Canadian woman illustrates the "lack of … Read more

Atari memorabilia up for auction

If you happen to be in New York today and are a fan of old video game memorabilia, then you'd better get down to Sotheby's pronto.

That's because the auction house is selling off a huge collection of vintage Atari marketing materials.

According to Gizmodo, there are "135 large file folders stuffed full of original sketches, early designs and proofs of games" like Dig Dug, Asteroids, Pong and others.

But apparently, the price is steep: somewhere in the $150,000 to $250,000 range.

BlogTV, livestream your blog

BlogTV is a new livestreaming service that's been making a splash at the Supernova conference here in San Francisco. It's the latest in several live broadcasting services that have popped up, including uStream.TV, Veodia, Mogulus, and Stickam. Like some of its competitors, BlogTV is combining live video and chat in one window, along with a way to embed the entire module on your blog or Web site. It also lets content creators team up with two Webcams at once, a solution that opens up the service for co-hosts, live interviews, or multilocation coverage.

BlogTV isn't just limited to live streams, though; users can record bits of their live broadcast and publish them in an archive. Like YouTube and other video services, users can then comment and rate clips, as well as mark them as favorites. There's also the option to subscribe to an author's channel to keep tabs on future content or see when he or she is broadcasting live. Content is split up into nine different "channels," and users have the options to sort through live and archived clips for each.

BlogTV's embeddable player isn't quite up to snuff compared with some of the other livestreaming players I've seen. While it does show you how many people are watching a program, the integrated chat is a one-way experience. You can see what others are typing, but you can't type back or see who is in the chat room. To participate, you need to venture off-site to the broadcast's page. That being said, BlogTV's chat experience is really well-done. Channel owners can give certain users operations privileges (akin to IRC), kick users, and users can chat privately with one another. There's also all sorts of emoticons and quick options to share with or invite friends to the broadcast.

BlogTV is currently relegated to your computer, although the team behind it is working on a mobile version. I'm expecting something along the lines of Kyte.TV and Veodia, although if there's one thing we've found in testing these services, mobile Webcasting can get a little tricky.

I've embedded a sample BlogTV livecasting module after the jump. Since I don't want to bore you with a CNET office cam (not to say me typing isn't exhilarating), I'm embedding a live broadcast of the Supernova conference from Nir Ofir, one of the founders of BlogTV.… Read more

Future Implications On The Digital Home: Adults Only Video Games

Each Thursday here on The Digital Home, I will be discussing a current topic of interest that may have serious implications on your home in the coming days, months or years. The topics may range from groundbreaking new products to government legislation to adults only video games -- our topic of interest today.

In a setback for Take-Two Interactive, the company's Manhunt 2 video game has been banned from sale in the UK because of its ESRB Adults Only rating. Even worse for Take-Two, Best Buy and Wal-Mart -- two significant video game retailers -- have historically banned Adults … Read more

The future of video ads: Text

I just got a very interesting demo from Adap.TV CEO Amir Ashkenazi. His company has built an online video-advertising technology that ignores one of the old maxims of advertising: that advertisements should be in the same medium as the content they are running in.

Adap.TV places text ads in videos. When a user clicks on one of these text come-ons, the video pauses and a new window opens on the ad's Web page.

It's a smart strategy, because there are a lot more text and Web ads for the system to chose from than there are … Read more

iPhone to feature special YouTube player

Apple's made it official: the iPhone will have full-blown YouTube integration. According to the iPhone Web site, the much-anticipated handset will include "a special YouTube player that you can launch right from the home screen." iPhone owners can now load and browse videos from the video-sharing site as well as e-mail them to their friends.

This comes less than a month after Steve Jobs announced that the company's Apple TV set-top box would also have built-in integration for the wildly popular YouTube.

The iPhone, as we all know by now, hits stores at 6 PM ET … Read more

AT&T launches Video Share in 3 cities

Months after it was first announced back in January of this year, AT&T has finally rolled out its Video Share service. Only available on the LG CU500V so far, this new video-calling service is the first of its kind in the country. However, it only offers one-way video streaming for now--meaning the recipient can't send any video at the same time. Hopefully AT&T will expand the service to support two-way video calling, but until then, this might prove to be an easy way to share an interesting video in real time. AT&T has … Read more

Movavi: A free and embeddable Web video converter

Movavi is a company that provides a variety of software solutions for video editing and conversion. Today they've launched a free, Web-based video conversion service that lets people change the format on video clips without installing any sort of conversion software on their computer. Users can upload up to five different video files, up to 100MB in total space, and choose from 11 popular formats for output. The main use for services like these is compatibility with portable devices, or Web services that require video clips to fall under a certain spec for playback--the iPod and upcoming iPhone included.… Read more

Cisco's CEO: Telecom was never dead.

CHICAGO--Cisco Systems CEO John Chambers disagrees with BusinessWeek's recent article that claims the telecommunications industry has risen from the dead.

In Chambers' view, the telecom market is simply entering the second phase of its life cycle--a cycle he claims to have envisioned some 15 years ago when Cisco pledged to change the way people work, live and play.

"BusinessWeek got it wrong," he said. "Telecom is not back from the dead. It's merely in phase 2 of its development. In this second phase, collaboration or sharing with a large group will change the service model … Read more

Fox teams up with Brightcove

Brightcove, an internet video company, issued a press release yesterday, detailing a new relationship with Fox to serve up their web video. Brightcove's video publishing service allows content providers to insert their own ads into video streams in exchange for a fee, paid to Brightcove. The full details on the capabilities of Brightcove's platform can be found here.

Fox plans to distribute their content on both their own website and also on some of their affiliates' sites. This will help Fox to keep a consistent experience on their own website, while also allowing them to easily push their … Read more