Digital Media

NEW YORK--According to former Vice President Al Gore, the importance of sustainability doesn't just apply to the environment. It also is key to the future of advertising.

"It really comes out of the environment, but in my opinion the key theme of this century really is sustainability," Gore said. "This theme of environmental sustainability has become a part of our culture, it's a part of our discourse, and I'm very optimistic that it will soon be a part of our policy."

Addressing the crowd of advertisers and online-media types at the Digital Content NewFront event put on by Digitas on Wednesday, Gore was speaking not as a "recovering politician" or a green-tech evangelist, but as the co-founder of Current Media, the experimental cable news channel that relies heavily on user-created content for both editorial and advertisements.

It's about time for our old views of advertising to die, he said.

"In the 20th century, the advertising model was based on the same principles that the Industrial Revolution was based on: scale," Gore said. "It was big, it was blunt, very expensive, and very intrusive, and audiences have now begun to resist that old advertising model even as the environment in which it is presented changes a great deal. The new model is very different because the media landscape is completely different."

More than half of the advertisements on Current are called "VCAMs," or "viewer-created advertising messages," Gore said. These are videos selected out of user submissions for brands interested in advertising on Current; the winner is paid by the advertiser, though it costs significantly less than the production budget of a traditional TV ad, and the winner receives an additional payment if the advertiser wants to use it outside of Current.

It's a model not unlike the wildly successful T-shirt company Threadless, which gets thousands of design submissions and gives a cash prize to the ones that it subsequently prints and sells.

Gore showed off a series of VCAMs proudly, as though they were home videos of his kids: One of them, created by two 24-year-olds, was a Mountain Dew ad about aspiring to be a professional hide-and-seek player. Another, created by a 29-year-old, was a T-Mobile ad showing people excitedly attempting to get picked for a "fave five" as though it were a dodgeball team. Gore mentioned another that was created by a 17-year-old who subsequently received a $50,000 check when the advertiser wanted to use it outside of Current.

There are problems, obviously, which some of the audience members brought up in questions. There are plenty of brands that wouldn't get aspiring filmmakers quite as jazzed as the car and gadget companies whose ads Gore showed off. And while the Flip-camera-toting young adults responsible for Current's VCAMs have the pluck and the free time to run around making commercials, it's easy to theorize that it would be tougher for a network with an older audience to pull it off.

Then there's the fact that while Current has been way ahead of the curve on some digital trends--displaying live Twitter messages onscreen, for example--it's still not a huge media powerhouse. The company canceled its scheduled initial public offering earlier this year, citing the bleak economic climate.

Gore, however, had an example of successful "sustainable advertising" beyond Current. What we can look at, he said, is his old job: politics.

"The most powerful new brand that we've all seen unveiled over the last two years is (Barack Obama)," Gore said, showing a slide of the "O" sunrise logo that became so well known during Obama's successful presidential campaign. "And what is it about this brand that made it so incredibly successful? It was all about empowerment, it was all about involving people to help deliver the message. It was very tuned into the new technologies and how people use them."

Just as the Obama campaign made efficient use of inexpensive marketing and publicity tools on the Web, Gore believes that the digital age has made it possible for high-quality ads to be ubiquitous, rather than just at the one time of the year when people get really pumped about what commercials will be on TV.

"During the Super Bowl, people leave during the game rather than the ads. They want to see the ads because they know something extra has gone into Super Bowl ads," Gore said. "(But) it's not sustainable to have that kind of ad budget and that kind of focused creativity that you find on those ads completely ubiquitous throughout the television year."

At the end of his talk, the former vice president was left speechless when one audience member asked him if he believed that the problem of carbon emissions could be solved by 2029 through the use of technology coming from UFOs.

"No," he said after a long pause. "I do not."

Oh, it was merely a bit of fun while such media hogs as Ashton Kutcher and CNN were doing it.

But once Oprah became a participant, you knew that Twitter had reached the upper echelons of politics and society.

So please salute Sarah Palin, who has climbed into the Twittering branches and begun to chirp.

Only around 718,000 followers to go before she catches Oprah.

(Credit: CC ASecondHandConjecture/Flickr)

Codename AKGovSarahPalin, the governor of Alaska has already used the microblogging service to complain about her staff being misquoted by the iniquitous sleight of word peddled by the Associated Press.

She has already amassed more than 7,000 followers. But far more significant is the joy of examining whose words she has decided to revere with her own technological tiptoeing.

While she bestowed her first follow on the firmly conservative and entertaining Drudge Report, Governor Palin is also following California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger, though one can hardly imagine they see even eye-to-thigh on some issues.

While she will naturally hang on every word of conservative charmer Bill O'Reilly, she is also following CNN Breaking News and those somewhat sniffy radicals David Gregory of NBC and ABC's George Stephanopoulos.

One can only imagine the varying degrees of entertaining discourse that will pass across the governor's Twitter page in the days and weeks to come. Thankfully, we are sure to be warned quickly should Russian planes decide to come flying toward us.

She is unquestionably one to be watched in the future. And to be followed, of course.

Political site The Huffington Post has reportedly received a $15 million third round of funding, according to the Times UK.

That funding round brings The Huffington Post up to $40 million in raised capital, giving it an estimated valuation of $100 million, says a report in PaidContent.org

The Huffington Post anticipates using the proceeds to help fund its expansion, which will include offering local news and investigative journalism, according to the Times UK site.

Oak Investment Partners participated in this latest round. In previous rounds, SoftBank Capital and Greycroft Partners have provided investments.

Update at 5:55 a.m. PDT: Additional TV stations airing the debate live have been added.

This is Hulu's new election hub.

(Credit: Hulu)

Last year, it was all about "remixing" debate footage. But this year, it's about seeing it live.

Video content hub Hulu has secured the rights to stream the remaining two presidential debates live on the Web. The next debate is set for Tuesday night.

The news was first reported by PaidContent that Hulu has launched Election '08 hub for the live debate, as well as past election-related footage. That includes footage from political satire talk shows The Daily Show and The Colbert Report, the only two MTV Networks shows currently on Hulu.

This is the first-ever live broadcast for Hulu, a joint venture between NBC Universal and News Corp.

Cable channel Current, co-founded by former Vice President Al Gore, is streaming all presidential debates live on the Web as part of its "Hack the Debate" partnership with Twitter.

Most major television broadcasters and news channels are airing the debate live, of course, including ABC, CBS, CNBC, CNN, Fox, Fox News, MSNBC, NBC, PBS, and Telemundo.

Hulu will also, according to PaidContent, also be the venue for the debut of Crawford, a documentary about the town best known for President Bush's ranch.

Joost, the video content site that everyone thought would be a runaway success, began offering live TV for the first time this past spring, starting with the NCAA "March Madness" basketball tournament.

The new Yahoo News beta.

(Credit: Yahoo)

Yahoo News has realized that there's a lot of information out there on the Web and that people just don't have time for all of it. That's why the new opt-in beta of a revamped Yahoo News, which went live on Thursday, tries to cut to the chase.

"Essentially, we've found that news consumers want only the first few paragraphs of a news story, and then they move on," an e-mail from Yahoo representatives explained. "Given the short attention span of today's audience, we modified the site to present only the first five paragraphs, and we're now offering relevant links to other stories much higher on the page."

The interface of the new Yahoo News is also wider, fitting in more without the need to start scrolling. And in anticipation of the upcoming election, Yahoo has enhanced its "political dashboard" for 2008 election news headlines and poll tracking. As with many current politics sites, the centerpiece is a red-and-blue electoral college map--and Yahoo users can create their own scenarios. The latest update allows a given candidate's poll performance to be tracked over time.

In February, Yahoo debuted its Buzz social news site, which propels the most popular headlines to the main Yahoo News page. The main Yahoo News site has more than 40 million users, the company said.

This post was updated to clarify what's new with the Political Dashboard.

Continuing our special Web coverage of the 2008 presidential election, CBSNews.com and CNET are once again teaming up to offer special online programming for the debates, starting with Friday night's showdown between John McCain and Barack Obama in Oxford, Miss.

Be sure to tune into this CBS News link not only to watch the 90-minute debate live, beginning at 9 p.m. EDT, but also for follow-up live network coverage and then an exclusive Web-only show featuring Katie Couric and the CBS News political team.

On the Webcast, slated to begin at 11 p.m. EDT, Couric will talk with special guests and undecided voters, and the political team will answer viewer questions. You can submit questions now, or during the live debate coverage.

Later, we'll post the full Webcast, and will also offer audio and video debate coverage for download via iTunes.

And come back for the vice presidential debate on October 2, the second presidential debate on October 7, and the third presidential debate on October 15. All start at 9 p.m. EDT and will be followed by Webcasts with Couric and company.

Google has elevated the profile of its attempt to make videos searchable through speech recognition technology, a move that portends a potentially more financially successful YouTube division.

The speech recognition technology was used in an online application that let people search political speeches launched in July, and now the Gaudi (Google Audio Indexing) project has an official interface at Google Labs.

Google Audio Indexing (Gaudi) lets people use a text search of some YouTube videos. (Click to enlarge.)

(Credit: Google)

The site's search box has instructions: "Search what the politicians are saying." The search results are presented next to a YouTube video player, and clicking each result sets the player to show the part of the video where the words were spoken. It doesn't just show speeches--a search for "bridge to nowhere" also returned the "Real Mavericks" ad from the John McCain-Sarah Palin campaign.

Extracting words from videos could make it easier for Google to determine what content is in the video and therefore what ads are most appropriate to show next to them. Making money from YouTube is a top priority this year.

Speech-to-text conversion also could help Google blend relevant videos into search results. Currently, the best way to understand what's in a video is by examining the accompanying metadata, such as titles and captions, but that's often much narrower than what's spoken.

And with Google's translation work, it's possible that the company could transcribe videos' text into other languages.

Clearly, Google has big ambitions for the audio recognition technology. "The aim of Google Audio Indexing on Google Labs is broader (than that of the and the Google Elections Video Search gadget), and the U.S. election is just a first step. We see it as an experiment platform where we can learn what features make the best user experience for people looking for spoken content on the Web," the company said in a frequently-asked-questions page about the Google Audio Indexing project.

Google is beginning with political information because it's trying to become a prominent part of the democratic process and because political speeches receive a lot of attention, the company said. Also, presumably because politicians generally don't mumble as much as the rest of us, the speech recognition technology performs better, Google said.

(Via Google Operating System.)