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Yahoo will announce that it has acquired Maven Networks, a video-hosting startup, according to a report in the blog TechCrunch.

Citing three unnamed sources, TechCrunch reported that Yahoo has paid about $150 million for the start-up and will announce the deal Thursday or Friday.

Cambridge, Mass.-based Maven Neworks helps media companies present video content on their Web sites. Among the company's customers are Fox News, CBS Sports and CNET Networks, parent company of News.com.

A Yahoo spokesperson declined to comment on "rumor and speculation." Representatives from Maven could not be reached for comment.

The conversational nature of blogs allows editors to ask their readers to weigh in--even decide--issues that affect the publication. Over the Thanksgiving weekend, Michael Arrington at TechCrunch empowered his readers to determine whether the site should accept advertising from Izea. Arrington agreed to abide by the results of the poll. After 24 hours, voting concluded with just under 3,500 people taking part.

Traditional news outlets often establish a wall between the editorial and advertising departments to maintain editorial independence. In other words, the people who line up advertisements have no say in the content, and the editorial staff is completely removed from deciding which advertising clients to engage. Of course, such an arrangement is all but impossible for most blogs and other small publications. These small outlets often have a staff of one, and even with a half-dozen at the helm it may not make sense to dedicate an entire employee to handle advertising.

Video cameras acting as an express lane to YouTube are gaining in popularity. First there was the Flip, now comes the VHoldr.

(Credit: Twenty20 Corp.)

The VHoldr is smaller and pricier than the nifty Flip Video camera, but it sets itself apart by enabling hands-free operation. The VHoldr is a ruggedized, weatherproof video camera that is palm-size, but intended to be worn and not held. It's meant to capture video on the go, say, while you're speeding down a snow-covered mountain, bouncing over mountain bike trails or engaging in any other extreme sport of which you'd like to see the video footage. There's no live element to it, but the video is easily uploadable to the Web (hopefully) after editing.

There's a single button that turns the camera on and begins recording, a lens that rotates 180 degrees, and a variety of mounts for the unit. Once video has been recorded, a USB cable sends the video to a PC, where VHoldr software will allow users to edit and upload footage directly to VHoldr.com, the video-hosting site for users, or YouTube.

Founder Marc Barros created the company in a schoolwide business-plan competition he entered with two others while undergraduate students at the University of Washington. After winning third place, their company, dubbed Twenty20 , made helmet camera attachments for camcorders out of their Seattle garage, which they sold to their fellow extreme sports enthusiasts.

The latest incarnation isn't available until December, but Barros was showing it off to investors and journalists at this week's TechCrunch 40 conference, a showcase for start-ups. The new version will sell for $350 and be available through 400 retailers.

For what has seemed like nearly an eternity, online game god Raph Koster has been mum about Areae, the company he formed after leaving his previous job as chief creative officer at EverQuest and Star Wars Galaxies publisher, Sony Online Entertainment.

At conference after conference, Koster has spoken, representing Areae, but really never revealing even the slimmest of morsels, beyond an initial statement that the company was gong to "reinvent virtual worlds," about what the San Diego startup was up to.

On Tuesday, however, that finally changed when Areae unveiled some details about its product, Metaplace, at the TechCrunch 40 conference in San Francisco.

For those of us that weren't able to attend, we were left to sitting in front of a computer, hitting refresh on a browser, waiting for the Metaplace Web site to be updated to reflect the product's details.

In my case, that also meant IMing with my colleague, Rafe Needleman, who is at the conference, and who is sending me details as they emerge.

"We are re-inventing virtual worlds that stop working like AOL," Koster said, "and start working the way the Web does....You can build a massive multiplayer game in minutes there are style sheets to make building easier.

Koster said that Metaplace would allow users to employ Web 2.0 tools like tags, wikis and forums in the pursuit of quickly and easily making usable, fun virtual worlds.

"Virtual worlds have enormous potential," Koster said, "but they are obsolete, built on 20-year-old technology. We don't know what you'll do with [this], but that's the power of this new medium and that's why we're so excited."

And then he walked off the stage.

So, what we know is that Metaplace is likely some sort of virtual world construction set, that will allow people to build online games "from Tetris up to role-playing games," though without Koster telling us exactly what it is, we're still only guessing.

If that's what it is, it's not the first to come along. The Multiverse Network has already staked out a pretty impressive position in that field.

But with Koster behind the wheel, Areae is certainly going to have to be taken seriously.

On its Web site, which is now live, it says, "Build a virtual apartment and put it on your website. Work with friends to make a huge MMORPG. Share your puzzle game with friends. We have a vision: to let you build anything, and play everything, from anywhere. Eventually, anyway. We have to finish first."

It also says, "Metaplace is a next-generation virtual worlds platform designed to work the way the Web does. Instead of giant custom clients and huge downloads, Metaplace lets you play the same game on any platform that reads our open client standard. We supply a suite of tools so you can make worlds, and we host servers for you so that anyone can connect and play. And the client could be anywhere on the Web."

Now if only they would tell us what's really going on.

AOL is showing off today a new media sharing and storage service, BlueString. I snuck into the unfinished product after I got a preview, and it looks like it's going to be very straightforward and easy to use. There are several services that do what it does, but few that do it as easily.

BlueString's neat trick is that it manages to work well as both a sharing site--a good place for you to create slide shows of events that you then e-mail to your family or embed on your personal site--and a media storage service.

BlueString is a good media storage service, and it also makes it very easy to create slideshows for friends and family.

The storage back-end for BlueString is XDrive, an online storage and backup service that AOL acquired, and where AOL has clearly been testing BlueString ideas. BlueString's show creator function, for example, looks like a rebuild of a nearly identical feature in XDrive.

Getting media into BlueString is quite easy. The import dialog box allows you to select multiple files to import at once. If you're a user of AOL Pictures, files from there also automatically load into your workspace. These features are being showcased today at the TechCrunch 40 event in San Francisco. BlueString will also import from Flickr, which is great for people who miss the straightforward Yahoo Photos application recently killed in favor of the higher-concept Flickr service.

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I was very much looking forward to Yahoo's announcement Monday at the TechCrunch 40 conference. Especially after reading a report that Brad Stone of the New York Times had inadvertently gotten invited into Yahoo's new, supersecret social network, Mash (or Mosh) rumor of which had previously surfaced on the TechCrunch blog.

Yahoo will launch a curriculum helper and social network for teachers.

Yahoo will indeed demo a social network at TechCrunch 40, a spokesperson told me on the record. But not the FaceBook killer we're all waiting for. Rather, we'll see Yahoo Teachers, a site designed for grade school instructors that Yahoo has already talked about and for which there is already an official video demo. That's it. No big unveiling.

I'm not saying that Teachers won't be an important product for teachers, and, presumably, their students. The system should let teachers connect with each other to develop lesson plans, and it has a bookmark and content grabber called the Gobbler that is supposed to make it easy to create worksheets and handouts. Gobbler is rigorous about bringing content citations along with the content itself, I'm told. We don't want teachers inadvertently plagiarizing, after all. The product also has a database of state-by-state educational standards, and has tools for helping teachers make sure their lessons meet those standards.

The product will be free, and Yahoo hopes to launch it late this year or early next.

It looks promising. But I really want to hear more noise from Yahoo in the social network area.

Update: Yahoo is finally beginning to roll out Mash.

The blogosphere was in a bit of a tizzy Wednesday over problems plaguing the virtual world Second Life. The question is: Are the problems people are worked up about new, or ongoing? And does it really matter?

(Credit: CNET Networks)

The main issue raised in the original blog entry on Gamer.Blorge.com was that Second Life is experiencing six hours of downtime. To hear other blogs, like TechCrunch, position it, this is kind of a noteworthy occurrence.

The truth is that Second Life is frequently down on Wednesdays, because that's when its publisher, Linden Lab, releases updates to its client software.

And it's true that some users are upset about the downtime. But they're also upset every time the "grid" goes down for the several hours it takes to complete an upgrade. After all, there are countless virtual businesses that can't sell things, and countless people who can't get in-world to do whatever it is they want to do.

For many longtime Second Life users, the issue this raises is not about any individual shutdowns of the grid, but rather that it has to happen so frequently. The Second Life software is built in such a way that the constant bug fixes, updates and new features can really only be implemented through these periodic updates, and the unfortunate side effect is semi-regular downtime.

There's no question it's annoying. But is it news? Not really.

On the other hand, there was news out of Europe that police in Britain, Belgium and the Netherlands are looking at Second Life and trying to decide whether in-world stalking should be prosecuted as a crime.

There's no resolution to that question yet. But with all the other things going on, including allegations being investigated by German authorities of "age play" (supposed in-world sexual activity between a child avatar and an adult avatar), as well as never-ending broken features, many people seem to be deciding Second Life is doomed.

Maybe so. But maybe it's just growing pains. Or perhaps it's just the nature of Second Life: it's chaotic software with a worldwide user base that's allowed to do what it wants, and problems ensue.

And it is annoying. I can attest to that: I frequently do interviews in Second Life and it's a pain to realize that I can't do one because the grid is down for a Wednesday update. But is it news? Not especially. It's just the way it is.

TechCrunch is claiming that two unnamed sources are pointing to a MySpace acquisition of Flektor, a recently launched site for creating multimedia widgets that incorporate photos, videos, and text. The widgets can then be embedded in blogs or on MySpace profiles.

Earlier this month, it was reported that MySpace had acquired image-sharing site Photobucket after a widget-related skirmish between the two. Neither company has formally confirmed that acquisition, but sources set its financial terms at about $250 million.

For obvious reasons, the rumored Flektor acquisition is said to be much smaller--between $10 and $20 million. According to TechCrunch, MySpace has declined comment.