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Dec 13, ‘07 — Intel is challenging modders to show off their creative skills in building Intel processor-based mods for an online competition. Intel delivers the unrivaled performance and energy efficient processors that modders can then build just about anything from, including an 18-wheeler Mac truck.

Get a glimpse at these creations and vote on your favorite one by visiting the Intel Modding Competition Group on Channel Intel. Check out the contest and see why modders Demand Intel.

Excerpts from IntelModder Group’s welcome message:

“Now, just join the group, upload a video of your Intel processor-based mod, and start voting! Click more to learn about the contest details.

Why submit? In addition to bragging rights, we’ll be giving away some pretty sweet prizes to the top 3 submissions.

-The Grand Prize Winner receives their choice of any Intel desktop or notebook processor, their choice of Intel motherboard, an Intel backpack stuffed with Marriott Bucks ($200), a gift certificate for Ubisoft ($50) games, specialty coffee bucks ($15), 20 free Wi-Fi sessions and 3 months free broadband TV from AT&T.

The contest requires two things:
1- Your mod needs to be based on any Intel processor and
2- You must submit a video shorter than 1 minute to the ‘mod contest site that shows the how cool your ‘mod is.

The official rules and all the details can be viewed in the Intel Modding Competition video on the site. We’re going to be running this contest through the New Year and will be accepting video submissions until 11:59:59 pm on January 14th.”

More at IntelModder Group.

HD Quality Web Video and Audio Now Available With Adobe Flash Player Update.

SAN JOSE, Calif –BUSINESS WIRE– Dec 03, ‘07 — Adobe Systems today announced the immediate availability of Adobe Flash Player 9 Update 3 software, previously code named Moviestar.

Adobe Flash Player 9 now includes H.264 standard video support, the same standard deployed in Blu-Ray and HD-DVD high definition video players, and High Efficiency AAC (HE-AAC) audio capabilities. The latest update also features hardware accelerated, multi-core enhanced, full-screen video playback for high-resolution viewing across major operating systems and browsers.

The combination of Adobe Flash Player 9 and Adobe Flash Media Server 3 (also announced today) enables the delivery of HD quality video to the broadest online audience.

H.264 support is an encoding option in Adobe Premiere Pro and Adobe After Effects software and is now integrated across the Adobe Flash family of products. Support extends to applications developed for Adobe AIR software, a cross-operating system application runtime that enables developers to use their existing skills to build and deploy rich Internet applications (RIAs) to the desktop.

Expected to be available in early 2008, Adobe Media Player, the first application from Adobe built on Adobe AIR, will leverage both H.264 video and HE-AAC audio support. Adobe Media Player takes Flash streaming video experiences outside the Web browser delivering more viewing options, such as watching videos anytime, anywhere.

Adobe Flash Player content reaches over 99 percent of Internet-enabled desktops, as well as hundreds of millions of mobile and set-top devices, enabling organizations and individuals to build and deliver rich Web video experiences that work consistently across multiple platforms. Leveraging Adobe’s Emmy Award winning Flash architecture, Adobe Flash Player can be used to view both live and on-demand media or entertainment on sites such as CBS, NBC, FoxNews Digital, PBS, MTV Networks, BBC and Hulu.

The technology also powers the video capabilities of popular social networking sites including YouTube and MySpace. With H.264 and HE-AAC support in Adobe Flash Player 9 and Adobe Flash Media Server 3, content providers can now deliver HDTV-quality streaming video on the Web.

Since H.264 and HE-AAC are open industry standards and already integrated into existing authoring and publishing workflows, content producers can leverage their existing H.264 material and seamlessly play back the native content in Adobe Flash Player. This enables publishers to encode content once and then distribute it to multiple mediums, resulting in the potential for reduced costs and time savings.

Adobe Flash Player 9 Update 3 is immediately available as a free download for Windows, Macintosh and Linux platforms from adobe.com/go/getflashplayer.

DARDENNE PRAIRIE, Missouri — For nearly a year, the families living along Waterford Crystal Drive in this bedroom community northwest of St. Louis kept the secret about the boy Megan Meyer met in September 2006 on the social-networking site MySpace.He called himself Josh Evans, and he and Meier, 13, struck up an online friendship that lasted for weeks. The boy then abruptly turned on Meier and ended it. Meier, who previously battled depression, committed suicide that night.

The secret was revealed six weeks later: Neighbor mother Lori Drew had pretended to be 16-year-old “Josh” to gain the trust of Meier, who had been fighting with Drew’s daughter, according to police records and Meier’s parents.

After their daughter’s death, Tina and Ron Meier begged other neighbors to keep the story private. Let the local police and the FBI conduct their investigations in privacy, they pleaded. But after waiting for criminal charges to be filed against Drew, neighbors learned that local and federal prosecutors could not find a statute applicable to the case.

The community’s patience dried up. Furious neighbors — and in the wake of recent media reports, an outraged public — are taking matters into their own hands. In an outburst of virtual vigilantism, readers of blogs listed the Drews’ home address, personal phone numbers, e-mail addresses and photographs of the couple.

Cyberbullying has become an increasingly creepy reality, where the anonymity of video games, message boards and other online forums offer an outlet for taunts. Yet drawing the line between conduct that is illegal and constitutionally protected free speech can be difficult.

On Wednesday, Nov 21, City officials unanimously passed a measure making online harassment a crime, days after learning that a 13-year-old girl killed herself last year after receiving cruel messages on the Internet.

The six-member Board of Aldermen made Internet harassment a misdemeanor, punishable by up to a $500 fine and 90 days in jail. Mayor Pam Fogarty said the city had proposed the measure after learning about Megan Meier’s death.

“It is our hope that by supporting one of our own in Dardenne Prairie, we can do our part to ensure this type of harassing behavior never happens again, anywhere,” Fogarty said, adding, “after all, harassment is harassment regardless of the mechanism or tool.”

The four-page measure defines both harassment and cyber-harassment, essentially making it illegal to engage in a pattern of conduct that would cause a reasonable person to suffer “substantial emotional distress,” or for an adult to contact a child under 18 in a communication causing a reasonable parent to fear for the child’s well-being.

City attorney John Young said constitutionally protected activity would be exempt. The measure would apply when one of the people communicating was in Dardenne Prairie.

City officials also passed a resolution encouraging state and federal officials to outlaw cyber-harassment and cyber-stalking. A state lawmaker has questioned how state law could be altered without running afoul of First Amendment constitutional issues guaranteeing freedom of speech.

Dardenne Prairie is an upper-middle-class enclave of about 7,400 people 35 miles northwest of St. Louis. Over the years, the flat expanse of farmland has been taken over by subdivisions, bistros and strip-mall cafes.

Targeted online advertising is set to face increased scrutiny from European Union regulators concerned about invasion of privacy, threatening the growth of a potentially big online revenue-booster for media companies. Reports, Astrid Wendlandt of Reuters.

“This is a very hot topic that can be expected to be part of our work programme next year,” Gabriele Loewnau, a senior legal adviser for the German Federal Commissioner for Data Protection, said on Friday, Nov 23. The German commissioner currently heads the European Union’s advisory body on data protection matters, the so-called Article 29 Working Party.

When an individual makes an online search or purchase, the computer can remember the entry through so-called cookies and pass on the information to advertisers.

Brussels’ heightened awareness comes as more than 13,000 Facebook users have signed a petition protesting against the networking site’s new advertising system which alerts members of friends’ purchases online. Members can opt for their transactions to be kept private but critics say the option is easily missed.

Some Facebook members have even threatened to leave, complaining the new system allowed their friends to find out what they were planning to give them for Christmas. The Facebook petition was led by the civic action group MoveOn.org.

FAST GROWING

Online advertising is the fastest-growing segment of the ad industry, gaining more than 25 percent a year, or more than five times the recent average annual growth all media included.

“Online sites have to make sure they are not intruding people’s privacy, otherwise targeted advertising will backfire,” said Vincent Bonneau from French telecoms research group Idate. More at Reuters.

Nov 25, ‘07 — Bobbie Johnson of TheGuardian writes a fine article on Video sharing website YouTube refusing to filter out threatening material, despite calls for more restrictions in the wake of the school shooting in Finland.

The article further writes, “Pekka-Eric Auvinen, 18, used YouTube to publicise his plans to attack his high school in Tuusula, hours before he killed eight people then shot himself. But Peter Fleischer, privacy counsel at Google, which bought YouTube last year, said the website was not considering passing more information to the police to avert such events. “Logistically we couldn’t do pre-screening,” he said. “We don’t want to become censors of the web.”

Vetting every video on the site would prove a technical challenge, with more than seven hours of footage uploaded to YouTube every minute.

Mr Fleischer said privacy was of paramount importance but admitted there was no blanket ban on passing on information. “If it were child pornography then we would inform the authorities immediately. In the case of somebody doing a video that looks something like hate speech, however, we would remove the account. In most of these cases we don’t report it.”

YouTube users can flag up anything of concern, particularly pornography, bullying and violence. Moderators then decide whether the material breaks YouTube’s rules and often remove offending video in minutes.” More at TheGuardian.

SINGAPORE — Nov 23, ‘07 — Singapore’s Media Development Authority, which regulates and censors media and the arts, has scored an unexpected hit on YouTube with a rap video about the city-state’s media ambitions, says Reuters.

The YouTube posting has received more than 14,600 hits — and a string of snide postings on the video site MDA Senior Management Rap. The government body aims to promote the growth of the media industry, to promote “core values” and safeguard consumer interests, its Web site says. It hopes the rap video will showcase its potential to be “a vibrant media city”.

But critics say this ambition does not rhyme with Singapore’s regular censorship of films and theatre and the many defamation lawsuits its government have launched against foreign media.

In the video, middle-aged executives are seen moving and shaking to a rap tune, mouthing lines from a corporate brochure.

“William Hung is more entertaining,” said one of the YouTube postings, referring to the goofy singer made famous in American Idol. Reuters.

ROME — The United Nations’ food aid agency has called on budding film-makers to help it raise awareness of hunger and bring the reality of abject poverty and suffering to the “YouTube” generation, Reuters reports.

The World Food Program (WFP) launched a contest on Wednesday for “edgy 30 or 60 second video(s) that will make the online community buzz about global hunger”, it said.

“For those of us doing the day-in, day-out backbreaking work of getting food to hungry people, it’s sometimes discouraging how few people understand that hunger stalks and kills a child every five seconds,” said WFP communications director Nancy Roman.

The five best films will be posted on the WFP’s YouTube site, with the overall winner receiving a trip to one of the agency’s relief operations.

Filmmakers stand a better chance of winning if they get play on blogs or networking sites like Facebook or MySpace before the competition’s July 2008 deadline, WFP said.

The agency has posted its own video at its site YouTube.com/hungerbytes, which shows footage of people in eating competitions bolting down hotdogs and plates of spaghetti, accompanied by The Beatles’ song “Piggies”.

At the end of the video, the text reads: “850 million go to bed hungry every night … Share.” More at Reuters.

BBC News is reporting on The Information Commissioner’s Office in UK warning young people about the online footprint they leave on social networking sites, such as MySpace, Facebook.

BBC News further writes, “Millions of young people could damage their future careers with the details about themselves they post on social networking websites, a watchdog warns.

The Information Commissioner’s Office found more than half of those asked made most of their information public.

Some 71% of 2,000 14 to 21-year-olds said they would not want colleges or employers to do a web search on them before they had removed some material.The commission said the young needed to be aware of their electronic footprint.

The ICO also said young people could be putting themselves at risk of identity fraud because of the material they post on social networks such as Facebook and MySpace.

ICO deputy commissioner David Smith said: “Many young people are posting content online without thinking about the electronic footprint they leave behind.

“The cost to a person’s future can be very high if something undesirable is found by the increasing number of education institutions and employers using the internet as a tool to vet potential students or employees.”

“We have to help teenagers wise up to every aspect of the internet age they’re living in. It may be fun but unfortunately it is not the safe space many think it is.”" More at BBCNews, ICO.gov.uk

Consumer demand for bandwidth could see the internet running out of capacity as early as 2010, a new study warns. US analyst firm Nemertes Research predicted a drastic slowdown as the network struggles to cope with the amount of data being carried on it.

Such gridlock would drastically affect how people use the web and could mean the next Google or YouTube simply doesn’t get off the ground, it said. The report said billions needed to be spent upgrading broadband networks.

It put the figure at around $137bn (£66bn) globally. For users, the slowdown could see a return to the bad old days of dial-up, the report predicts. “It may take more than one attempt to confirm an online purchase or it may take longer to download the latest video from YouTube,” the report cited. But it is the knock-on effect for new services that could be the real problem, report authors think. “The next Amazon, Google or YouTube might not arise, not from a lack of user demand but because of insufficient infrastructure preventing applications and companies emerging,” the report warned.

The demand for bandwidth-intensive applications shows no sign of abating. Nearly 75% of US internet users watched an average of 158 minutes of online video and viewed more than 8.3bn video streams during May, according to research by measurement firm comScore.

The financial invested required to “bridge the gap” between demand and capacity would range from $42bn to $55bn in the US, Nemertes estimates. The report is part-funded by the Internet Innovation Alliance (IIA) which campaigns for universal broadband in the US.

Los Angeles, CA — Nov 20, ‘07 – Sony BMG Music Entertainment has signed a licensing deal with Yahoo that clears the way for people to upload files with music or video content by the record company’s artists to Yahoo, the companies said Tuesday.

Financial terms of the deal were not disclosed. Like similar deals, the agreement calls for Sony BMG to receive a cut of advertising revenue, Yahoo said. The deal also covers the distribution of music videos via Yahoo player applications and widgets that computer users can place on other Web sites.

The agreement marks the first time Sunnyvale-based Yahoo has reached a deal with a major recording company over licensing content in user-created videos. Sony BMG, home to recording artists such as Britney Spears, Bruce Springsteen and Slayer, reached a similar licensing deal with Google Inc. last year. That agreement also includes Google subsidiary YouTube.

Sony BMG is a joint venture of Sony Corp. and Bertelsmann AG. The Sony BMG-Yahoo deal reflects the popularity of computer user-created videos, which often include copyrighted content.

Last month, a coalition of major media and Internet companies issued a set of guidelines requiring Web portals that host user-generated videos — as Yahoo does — to use filtering technology to block clips with unauthorized content from being posted.

Independently, Yahoo is deploying video identification and filtering technology early next year, the company said.

ROCHESTER, NY–BUSINESS WIRE–Nov 05, ‘07–According to the latest Harris Poll, the number of adults who are online at home, in the office, at school, library or other locations continues to grow at a steady rate. In the past year, the number of online users has reached an estimated 178 million, a ten percent increase.

In research among 2,062 U.S. adults surveyed by telephone in July and October, 2007, Harris Interactive found that 79 percent of adults are now online. This is a steady rise over the past few years, from 77 percent in February/April 2006, 74 percent in February/April 2005, 66 percent in the spring of 2002, 64 percent in 2001 and 57 percent in Spring of 2000. When Harris Interactive first began to track Internet use in 1995, only nine percent of adults reported they went online.

The amount of time that people are spending online has also risen. The average number of hours per week that people are spending online is now at 11 hours, up from 9 hours last year and 8 hours in 2005.

Internet Access Increases at Home and at Work

The proportion of adults who are now online at home has risen to 72 percent, up from 70 percent in 2006 and 66 percent in the spring of 2005. The percentage of those online at work has also risen, now at 37 percent, and up from 35 percent in 2006. The largest increase is among those adults who are online at a location other than their home or work as this has risen from 22 percent in 2006 to 31 percent today. It appears people who do not have access at home or work are increasingly turning to other outlets to get online. More at BusinessWire.

San Francisco, CA – October 31, 2007 – Building on the success of its industry-leading video search engine, Truveo has announced plans to expand its rapidly growing service into several major markets for online video worldwide.  As the first step of this international expansion, Truveo is unveiling video search portals for France, Germany, India, Japan, Korea, Spain, Taiwan, and the United Kingdom.  These new sites are available starting today at:

  ·         France - http://fr.truveo.com ·         Germany - http://de.truveo.com ·         India - http://in.truveo.com ·         Japan - http://jp.truveo.com ·         Korea - http://kr.truveo.com ·         Spain - http://es.truveo.com ·         Taiwan - http://tw.truveo.com ·         United Kingdom - http://uk.truveo.com  

Over the next two months, Truveo™ will continue to build on this expansion with the launch of video search sites for additional countries including Australia, Brazil, Italy, Mexico, The Netherlands, Russia and Turkey.  

The Truveo video search engine lets users search and browse through tens of millions of videos from thousands of sources across the Web.  Over the past year, Truveo’s service has experienced widespread adoption, and it currently reaches over 40 million users a month.* Truveo’s critically acclaimed flagship destination, Truveo, has received widespread praise since its August launch, establishing itself as the leader in the fast growing video search market. 

“The recent explosion of online video is a worldwide phenomenon.  All over the world, individual users as well as major media companies are making their video available on the Web,” said Timothy Tuttle, CEO and Co-Founder of Truveo and Senior Vice President of AOL Video. “Truveo’s ongoing mission is to index and organize all of the video on the Web so that users can easily find the video they want – no matter where in the world they reside.” 

With a large percentage of its traffic originating from outside of the United States, Truveo currently serves a worldwide audience. To better serve its users from around the world, each new Truveo international destination will feature popular, high-quality video of regional interest and allow users to search and discover videos in their native language. 

Truveo is a one-stop destination where consumers can search across a wide range of content from major video websites around the world.  In addition to indexing user-generated video from popular video uploading sites such as YouTube, Dailymotion, Kewego, MyVideo.de, Pandora.tv, and Tudou, Truveo also features a wide selection of high-quality, professionally produced video from many of the world’s major media brands. For example, Truveo’s video sources include: L’Equipe, Le Monde, France 24 and TF1 from France; Berlin TV, Spiegel and ZDF from Germany; NDTV, IBN Live and India Times from India; KBC from Korea; El Mundo, Telecinco and Digital+ from Spain; Taiwan Television from Taiwan; BBC, Daily Star, EuroNews, EuroSport, ITN, Skynews, The Sun, and UEFA in the United Kingdom; and thousands more. More at AOL.

New service provides safe and simple way to share personal videos via the Web – minus the advertising.

MINNEAPOLIS, October 30, 2007 – Best Buy today launched Best Buy Video Sharing, an online-based solution for customers to safely store and share home movies and videos via the Web.

Best Buy Video Sharing is a subscription-based service for users to upload their personal videos for sharing on web sites and blogs, with family and friends, or in e-mail messages. Unlike many other video sharing services, Best Buy Video Sharing allows the user to choose who can view their home videos, and enables the user to do so in an advertising-free environment.

Best Buy Video Sharing was created in partnership with Mydeo, a provider of quality streaming video hosting for home and business users. The service will be merchandised online and in Best Buy’s retail stores. Best Buy will also take a minority, equity stake in Mydeo.

“With the growing popularity of video, fueled in part by social networking sites, we’ve actually seen an increase in customer demand for alternative video sharing solutions. Many customers, particularly families with children, don’t want their personal memories available for anyone to see in the public domain nor do they want to share them in a cluttered environment that includes advertising,” said Kevin Winneroski, vice president, Best Buy. “Through Best Buy Video Sharing, customers can safely store their videos and share them only with the friends and family they choose.”

Base plans start at $6.97 for 100 minutes of video hosting and video lengths up to 30 minutes each. Customers can chose premium plans for extended video lengths, additional video storage capacity, and other sharing features. More info at Best Buy Videosharing.

October 31, ‘07 — A Web start-up, TokBox, wants to do for live video chats what YouTube did for video watching.  

Tokbox is a free service that lets you talk with your friends over live video. Here’s how it works: you sign up and we give you a link. When you want to talk with anyone, just give them the link - they click and you chat. Free video calling from any website. 

The company makes it easier for you to put your TokBox on your social network profile, blog, or personal webpage. Anyone can come to your page and see a “Push to Talk” button. They click it and connect to you in real time using live video and audio. 

TokBox features 

• Free video chat: No cost. No prepaid minutes. Really free
• No downloads: Talk through your browser. No chat client needed
• Any website: Embeddable on all websites and social networks
• Privacy control : You control who can see you and who can’t 

Several other services, including AOL’s AIM, Yahoo Messenger and Skype, allow live video chats but require that each party download the software and be online at the same time. On TokBox, if one party is not present, users can send a video mail message of up to five minutes in length that the other party can later retrieve at the site. TokBox

Oct 30, ‘07 — The Associated Press is reporting on Google is setting up a distribution network for social networking applications, adding a new twist in the Internet search leader’s brewing rivalry with rapidly maturing startup Facebook.

Although Google confirmed its plans late Tuesday, its new social networking platform won’t be unveiled until later this week. On Thursday, an alliance of companies led by Google plans to begin introducing a common set of standards to allow software developers to write programs for Google’s social network, Orkut, as well as others, including LinkedIn, hi5, Friendster, Plaxo and Ning.   

Google hopes to build a one-stop shop for software developers who create tools that make it easier to share music, pictures, video and other personal interests on social networking sites like Facebook and News Corp.’s MySpace.com. The popularity of these applications, also known as “widgets,” has grown dramatically since Facebook opened its Web site to accommodate outside developers five months ago. 

Facebook now hosts more than 8,000 widgets, helping to boost its worldwide audience to about 50 million users and elevate its market value to $15 billion after Microsoft Corp. paid $240 million for a 1.6 percent stake in the Palo Alto-based company last week. More at AP

CAMBRIDGE, Mass.–(BUSINESS WIRE)–Oct 29, ‘07–Akamai, the leading global service provider for accelerating content and applications online, today announced The HDWeb, a ‘proof-of-concept’ portal designed to showcase the experience consumers can have with high definition content online. The Website, available at TheHDWeb, showcases content from a variety of industries including music, movies, professional sports, games and news. Akamai customers are now delivering a consistent, high-definition video experience on Akamai’s uniquely distributed edge delivery platform that is specifically tuned for optimal delivery of high-definition (HD) files online. As an industry leader and pioneer in online video, Akamai has raised the bar for what a service provider must offer companies in order to deliver this content effectively and efficiently online today.  

Companies providing HD content for the initiative include Apple, BBC Motion Gallery, CBS, Gannett, MTV Networks, NBA and more. The proof-of-concept portal will serve as a temporary Internet Programming Guide to HD video on the Web and provide access to a complete HD experience. These companies understand the value that HD content brings their brand and are ahead of the curve by offering HD programming online. 

Akamai’s goal is to provide high bandwidth consumers with a superior online HD experience and highlight the content providers that are pushing the industry forward. The HDWeb portal will:  

- Bring together the most powerful brands online to showcase premium content
- Offer a glimpse into the ‘future’ of the Internet
- Engage audiences with higher quality video experiences
- Seed the market for premium content monetization strategies
- Show industry support and leadership around the move toward high-definition video  

Akamai recently outlined technical criteria for delivering HD content on the Internet. Akamai has architected its platform to comply with the following technical criteria that content owners must leverage to successfully enable an HD Web. Akamai believes that it is the first and only platform to meet these technical requirements which include offering:  

- Technology and an operational model to operate serving devices in the largest high-throughput networks around the world (servers need to be physically in the networks, as that is where the capacity lies)
- Established relationships with the largest high throughput networks
- Support for delivery, storage, and management of files greater than 2 Gigabytes
- Support of VC-1 and MPEG-4 video standards, achieving visual parity with other broadcast video networks Support for files with resolutions of 720p, 1080i and 1080p
- Client-side technology that is deeply integrated into its delivery system to be deployed as appropriate 

More info on Akamai’s High Definition solution can be found at Akamai.

BURLINGTON, Mass.–(BUSINESS WIRE)–A competition hosted by Nuance Communications, Inc. this week showed that voice commands reduce the risk of driver distractions caused by the use of mobile devices in cars. “The Amazing Race: Distracted Driving” competition took place at Conversations Mobile, a premier speech event for the mobile communications industry held in Boca Raton, Fla.

Contestants equipped with a traditional cell phone competed against a driver using Nuance speech solutions to conduct a number of mobile device-related tasks in a simulated driving environment. Speed was not the critical measurement in this race, but rather minimizing distraction and ensuring safety by allowing the driver to keep his hands on the wheel and eyes on the road. Drivers were tasked with finding a local business, sending a text message and playing a specific MP3 music selection – several of the typical distractions plaguing drivers today. For each challenge, the speech-equipped driver quickly completed the task without a single crash, while the competitors using traditional cell phones crashed multiple times without ever completing the task.

“Today, a serious traffic-safety issue is DWT: Driving While Texting,” said Steve Chambers, president, mobile and consumer services division at Nuance. “Over a trillion messages were sent worldwide last year, and the number of text messages is expected to explode to two trillion in 2008. Increasingly, these messages are being sent by drivers who put themselves and others at risk by taking their eyes off the road and hands off the wheel to manually enter text on their cell phone keypad. In fact, the number one killer of American teens on the road today isn’t alcohol-related accidents; it’s distracted driving with over 45 percent of teens reading or sending messages while driving. Nuance believes the safest option is for drivers to simply refrain from using a phone while driving, but for those who insist on using their devices, our competition showed that the hands-free, eyes-free option provided by speech is the next best alternative.”

To experience the Amazing Race, visit http://youtube.com/watch?v=3v7hpRBCW5c and more on this at BusinessWire

October 18, ‘07 — Reuters and The WSJ are reporting on a group of Media companies, Microsoft, Viacom, NBC, CBS, News Corp’s Fox and MySpace, Walt Disney Co and others, that have agreed to a set of guidelines aimed at protecting copyrights online. Notably absent is Google, which had been in discussions about possibly joining the group.

The guidelines are meant to address copyright-related issues that have flared up as user posting of content — particularly video — to the Web has boomed. The agreed-upon principles include using technology to eliminate copyright-infringing content uploaded by users to Web sites, and blocking any infringing material before it is publicly accessible, says the person familiar with the matter.

Google on Monday unveiled technology it has been testing to automate the identification of copyrighted material on its YouTube video-sharing service. It said the technology cannot yet prevent infringing content from being posted initially, though it can pull flagged content off the site “in a matter of a few minutes.”

MySpace and Sony BMG Music Entertainment sign new licensing pact. LOS ANGELES/ NEW YORK-October 16, 2007-MySpace, the world’s most popular social media network, announced today it has signed a new licensing agreement with SONY BMG MUSIC ENTERTAINMENT to enable MySpace’s 70 million U.S. monthly active users to experience streaming music videos, as well as select audio material and other content, from SONY BMG’s artists. The deal, which calls for MySpace and SONY BMG to share in sponsorship and advertising revenues, underscores both organization’s commitment to building new business models that benefit artists and consumers alike.

“MySpace has always served as a powerful promotional platform for music and we’re pleased to work with SONY BMG to take it to the next level,” said Chris DeWolfe, CEO and co-founder of MySpace. “We look forward to working with SONY BMG and the rest of the music industry to enable people to share their love of music with one another through the next generation of MySpace music services.”

Under the terms of the deal, SONY BMG will license music videos, select audio material, and other content from its extensive artist roster and will make the content available on its artists’ MySpace profile pages. MySpace and Sony BMG will share in sponsorship and advertising revenues generated from the music videos and profile pages. Additionally, MySpace will work with SONY BMG to promote the music company’s artists throughout the site.

“We are happy to be working with MySpace as we continue to develop new approaches to doing business online,” commented Thomas Hesse, President, Global Digital Business & U.S. Sales, SONY BMG MUSIC ENTERTAINMENT. “This new effort is a great way to build new audiences for our artists, bring value to fans, and offer exciting new opportunities to advertisers. We look forward to working closely with MySpace as we roll out this ambitious new project.”

With more than 7 million bands, MySpace Music empowers artists and labels to establish an interactive dialogue with their fan base by creating profiles to connect with fans via mail and blogs, post tour dates, upload music, virally share promotional widgets, and debut albums to MySpace 110 million global users.

More at SonyBMG Press

Many, many years after the first Windows Mobile Touch Screen PDAs & Smartphones became available and four months after the most hyped iPhone, Nokia finally evolves S60 with ‘Touch Interface’. 

Symbian Smartphone Show, London, UK – October 16, 2007 — Expanding the platform with intuitive touch user interface, sensor technologies and complete web video experience. As Internet is entering into the core of mobile experiences, Nokia continues to implement new innovations for S60 on Symbian OS, the market leading smartphone software, to develop the best possible mobile experiences for people.

S60 touch user interface comes with support for tactile feedback, which means that there is a physical pulse and feedback when the user taps on the screen. Existing S60 3rd Edition applications will run on touch enabled devices unmodified. Tools will be made available for developers to further optimize the touch experience of their applications.

S60 will be the first mobile software platform to deliver the complete Web video experience as Flash Video will be integrated with the Web Browser for S60. This allows people to view on the go Flash-enabled Web sites and Flash Video, such as YouTube, as they would do on their desktops.

More at Nokia Press Release

To curb video piracy and to prevent itself from copyright violation lawsuits, Google is introducing ‘YouTube Video Identification’. A YouTube page explaining video identification says, ”Thanks to the continued cooperation of content owners large and small, YouTube is able to develop, test, and implement increasingly effective content management tools. Today, we are proud to launch, in beta form, our latest innovation in online video: YouTube Video Identification.

Like our other content policies and tools, YouTube Video Identification goes well above and beyond our legal responsibilities. And like those other tools and policies, Video Identification aims for three main goals: accurate identification, choice for copyright holders, and a great user experience.”

YouTube further elaborates, “YouTube Video Identification will be available to all kinds of copyright holders all over the world, whether they want their content to appear on YouTube or not” and “No matter how accurate the tools get, it is important to remember that no technology can tell legal from infringing material without the cooperation of the content owners themselves. This means that copyright holders who want to use and help us refine our Video ID system will be providing the necessary information to help us recognize their work.”

More at YouTube

AFP is reporting on Blinkx heating up online video battle with Google. “SAN FRANCISCO (AFP) — Online video search service blinkx took on Google with the Wednesday launch of a video advertising platform to challenge one released by the Internet giant a day earlier. The blinkx AdHoc platform lets people embed ad-laced videos in their websites and then share in advertising revenues in the same way that Google’s new AdSense “video units” does.

Blinkx promises website operators half the money taken in from advertising. Google has not disclosed the percentage of revenues going to publishers. While Google provides the advertising option only with video from YouTube, which it bought last year in a 1.65-billion-dollar stock deal, blinkx offers content from varied sources including YouTube and Paris-based DailyMotion.

Blinkx has deals with more than 200 media companies to distribute copyrighted content and boasts an index of more than 14 million hours of video and audio. On Monday, San Francisco-based blinkx added French, German and Spanish content to its index to win viewers in Western Europe and wrest the spotlight from YouTube.

“The dramatic growth of online video has been driven by a global audience; individuals who are creating and distributing user-generated content,” said blinkx founder and chief executive Suranga Chandratillake. “We want to reward people for the role they played in sharing and promoting video legally on the web.”

More at AFP, Blinkx

Google is bringing the world of online video and map-making closer together by allowing users of its Google Earth software to watch and hear YouTube videos mapped to specific locations. Reuters reports, “Google is offering a new YouTube video overlay on top of its Google Earth three-dimensional visualization software, which combines satellite images, maps, terrain and buildings of the world.By allowing YouTube creators to geographically locate their videos on a map of the world, Google enables Internet users to zoom in on locations around the planet and watch YouTube tied to that place.

For example, travelers to Maui might find videos of surfing, snorkeling or exotic fish, while virtual visitors to Chamonix-Mont Blanc can watch mountaintop ski videos in the Alps.

Google Earth users can already view user-contributed photos uploaded to Panoramio, a photo-mapping service Google acquired in May. In the case of YouTube videos, video creators assign geographical information to their works — a process also known as “geo-tagging” — as they upload them to the site. Google Earth users can watch but not geo-tag videos, a Google spokeswoman said.

Virtual Earth from Microsoft and Yahoo Maps from Yahoo already offer the ability for users to annotate maps with links to Web sites, photos and videos.

But by allowing YouTube creators to tag their videos as they upload them, Google Earth could accelerate the move to tie together maps with online videos. In under two years, YouTube has emerged to become the world’s dominant video-sharing site.

More at Reuters