Media

Amanda Congdon calls herself a blogger, and after her arrival on the scene as the face of Rocketboom, it's easy to understand why she'd say that.

But when she left Rocketboom and subsequently began video blogging for ABCNews.com, she changed status, whether she believes it or not.

That's why there's a bit of a kerfuffle going on right now in light of revelations that even as she has been producing stories for ABCNews.com, she has also been performing in infomercials for DuPont, one of the largest companies in the world.

Asked about the apparent … Read more

Hey, students, here's a chance to legally get some money to help pay back those college loans. Just make a little movie. And that's literally "little," as the video must be made and seen on a cell phone. And it can't be more than 30 seconds long.

It's the second year for the Ithaca College Annual Cellflix Fest. All rules and entry info can be found on the Cellflix Web site. High school and college students are eligible, with two prizes for $5,000 each. No loans? That'll buy some pretty stunning tech … Read more

VoiceThread is a photo sharing tool that launched earlier this month. It lets users upload photos from their hard drive or Flickr, and add voice and text annotations to each slide. These 'VoiceBooks' can be embedded in blogs, Web sites, or MySpace profiles. Other users can comment on each slide, with up to 28 comments per picture. The service is selling itself as a voice forum tool.

The VoiceBook creation process is handled entirely within one window, without the need to refresh or hop pages. It's pretty user-friendly, and adding photos is incredibly easy. In just a few minutes, … Read more

Agents from U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement served a search warrant on YouTube and Hotmail as authorities looked into alleged death threats made against a potential witness in a drug case, according to a report.

A man arrested in May 2005 for allegedly trying to sneak 50 pounds of cocaine into the U.S. is suspected of sending death threats to his brother via YouTube, according to the online news site eWeek.

The suspect's brother is cooperating with U.S. authorities, eWeek said, citing a copy of one of the search warrants. The suspect allegedly sent the threats … Read more

YouTube has launched the first ever YouTube Awards with 70 videos in seven categories. This week viewers can vote to pick their favorites of 2006. It's kind of like the Oscars, but for user-generated video clips such as Lonelygirl15 and Ask a Ninja. As of right now, there's nothing on the awards page but a bunch of comments from confused users who have made their way to the site to find nothing to vote on. Digging deeper, clicking on playlist shows a full listing of clips. We're assuming there will be a voting system similar to the … Read more

Traditional media needs to evolve or they will become dinosaurs, blogger and author Arianna Huffington said in a keynote speech at the Online Media, Marketing and Advertising conference in Hollywood on Monday.

The New York Times partially gets that message, she says. For instance, the newspaper has a service that allows Internet users to customize their views of the online version of the newspaper. But then it charges for premium content. "Content online has to be free," she says. "Unless it's porn or financial news, don't charge for it."

She also complained that news … Read more

Justin.tv-- the live helmet-video blogging site we wrote about last month--went live this morning. The site combines a live video feed, public chat room, and head blogger Justin Kan's daily schedule--which loosely resembles a content programming guide. Entertaining bits of content are archived for later viewing, complete with a blog post with context for what's going on. The entire production is run through Kan's backpack, which holds a laptop hooked up to an EV-DO card.

Chatters can discuss what's happening on the show with other viewers (using Lingr, the live updating chat service … Read more

A Seattle Web entrepreneur was visiting a knickknack store in Hong Kong and came across an old leather-bound journal with photos of young men and writings in Chinese. It looked like a school yearbook from the 1940s. He bought it for a minimal sum, scanned the pages and posted them onto the Web, inviting people to comment on the images.

"Perhaps together we can discover (or perhaps imagine) the story behind the owner of this almost lost journal," wrote Hillel Cooperman, who created the Web site and is a founder of Web services company JacksonFish.com.

News of … Read more

Friendster founder Jonathan Abrams has released a new Web site in "gamma" called Socializr.

Friendster, which just patented another networking technology to bolster profitability, is credited with sparking the social networking craze among Internet users.

Abrams' Socializr, meanwhile, offers online tools for event planning.

Users can send personal messages or invitations, post public invites or notes on forums, design invitations and upload photos for albums, in addition to creating personal or company profiles.

Socializr, it seems, is very into keeping a sense of humor about itself. According to Socializr's site, the company motto is "Don't … Read more