Microformats: The Future of Microcasting?

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I’ve been around long enough to come from the cable TV daze when narrowcasting was a revolution. When I was at USA Network, MTV, CNN, ESPN etc were breakthroughs as channels for what we now call vertical audiences. I like to call the web’s quantum leap into far more finely defined audiences “microcasting.”

Technorati‘s Chairman, Peter Hirshberg (shown here) thinks that the organized tag technology called Microformats will provide important accessbility to the millions of video clips on the web… via tagged indexing. As you might expect, there’s a video clip to explain it.

What do you think?

Al Gore Attacks Big Media & Gets Funnier

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I was pleased to see that the Associated Press reported today from the Edinburgh International Television Festival that Al Gore told it like it is (IMHO) about the damage that big media is doing to democracy. (I can’t help but wonder if you have to NOT be a candidate in order to talk truth to power?)

I also recently watched the TED video of Mr. Gore which was apparently a follow up (2nd appearance) to the “Inconvenient Truth” presentation he does in the movie of that name. I’ve never seen Gore this funny. He can actually be entertaining!

FYI, there’s also an entertaining interaction between Gore and none other than Tony Robbins in the Tony Robbins TED video. More on the free TED videos below.

Blogumentary, Video & Article Show Why WE ARE the Internet

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I guess it was just a natural progression… Blogs, to viral movies about blogs, to blog posts about bloggie videos… The Lulu.TV video site is not bad either. And there’s more!

But if you really want to understand why we are the Internet, I highly recommend Kevin Kelly’s We Are the Web from Wired, August 2005. Seriously.

The Future of YouTube and User-Generated and/or Consumer-Supplied Video

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It’s only postage stamp-sized video, but I don’t think you’ll find a better informed discussion of the state of “user-generated” and/or “consumer-supplied” video vs. professionally-produced and/or commercial video… and their emerging business/advertising models.

This is a session from the expensive AlwaysOn Stanford Summit; but on the Web, of course, it’s free. This session is preceptively moderated by Kara Swisher, staff reporter at the Wall Street Journal. It features YouTube (“100 million video clips/day”) CEO and co-founder Chad Hurley; the articulate & provocative Michael Robertson, founder of MP3.com; as well as reps from Sony and Yahoo.
Watch the session video now

Google’s Matt Cutts uses Video to Reveal New Google “Webmaster Tools”

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Google’s most visible blogger, information insider and upbeat educator, Matt Cutts has turned to video to explain neat new webmaster resources and tools that were announced at the recent SES (Search Engine Strategies) conference. Google Video even helped facilitate me posting this clip here. Watch and learn.

Note: this is just one in a recent series of informative Matt Cutts videos. More useful search engine marketing tips from the Google Source here. (For those new to Google Video, note the menu of videos down the right column.)

Awesome TED Videos for Free

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I have fond inspirational memories of attending Richard Saul Wurman’s TED (Technology Entertainment Design) conferences in Monterey in the ’90s. Now you can taste some of this inspiration with short videos that have been posted free online. A remarkable opportunity.

I’m grateful to David Pogue of the New York Times for pointing these out in his blog: “These 18-minute talks–the first batch included Al Gore, Tony Robbins, and me (blush)–generated an incredible response, as well they should. To see them in person, you would have had to pay $4500 and flown out to Monterey, CA in February–IF you could get a ticket. (The TED conference sells out a year in advance.)… These are amazing, profound, funny, attitude-changing presentations, and I highly recommend that you take the time to watch ‘em.”

Watch the TEDTalks
(You can even subscribe to them via iTunes and put them, audio or video, on your iPod or other MP3 player.)

Bush & Blair: Like a Couple of guys at a convention…

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Now that TV is no longer limited to a few networks, video continues to open new doors of perception. Most recently, this little unedited clip of a chat between George W. Bush and Tony Blair at the G8 conference where the normally controlled Bush got caught being himself (including the four letter explitive). Don’t they seem to be just two guys at a convention discussing the fate of our world? Only these are the heads of state who are really pulling the strings! (1 minute 31 seconds)

Bush: “See the irony is what they need to do is get Syria to get Hezbollah to stop doing this shit, and it’s over.” Hunh? Er, I mean, no problem. Eh? 😉

MySpace: The Newcomer Takes Charge at #1

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Rarely do you see a new media property grow right past the biggest players in the game, but in the US market (at least?), the teen sensation MySpace is now bigger than Google and Yahoo with “a market share figure of 4.5% of all the US Internet visits for the week ending July 8, 2006” according to a Hitwise report reported on by TechCrunch.

Hey, MySpace is so hot, just for the experience, I created my own MySpace page. It’s nice making new friends. Wanna be one? 😉

TV on the Web Works Better Than TV on TV

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Reuters reports that Disney says ABC free web TV a hit with consumers. Perhaps more significant than the 11 million program-views (like web pageviews) is the fact that there was better commercial recall (in fact, twice as much recall) for the same programs when shown FREE on the web, as is typical for broadcast television.

The revolution continues…

Web Video Trailblazer (Ze Frank) shows the web video his way

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Things I like: originality, humor, the energy to commit to produce a web video five days a week (!), the ability to produce a daily web video that’s actually entertaining, humor, digital media pioneers.

See embedded video below and lotz of other entertaining stuff and an original site at: ZeFrank.com. Thanks to the NYTimes for exposing this guy to me (and us).