The 2006 FIFA World Cup Championship was among the most watched sporting events in history and offering these games has been the “goal” for many in the online television world for quite some time. Now through a unique partnership between JumpTV, broadcaster of ethnic television over the Internet, and Telelatino, Canada’s Latino Superstation, soccer fans throughout Canada will have the ability to watch live all of the FIFA championship tournaments through 2014 on the Internet. Pursuant to the agreement, JumpTV will have the online streaming rights to broadcast all games (approximately 1,200) of FIFA championship tournaments from July 2007 through 2014 with Spanish, Italian and Portuguese voice-overs, throughout Canada.

JumpTV expects to kick-off streaming of the FIFA tournaments with selected games of the FIFA U-17 World Cup (U-17) in August 2007 which will be hosted in Korea. The U-17 will closely follow the FIFA U-20 World Cup (U-20), being hosted in Canada from June 30, 2007 through July 22, 2007. JumpTV expects to follow up with streaming selected games of the FIFA Women’s World Cup 2007 in September, hosted in China.

NBC Universal and News Corp appoints former Amazon executive Jason Kilar as CEO of the still unnamed online video venture that is said to join the growing battalion of YouTube rivals.

Kilar, 36 years old, joins NBC and News Corp starting July 9 after nearly a decade of being a key executive at Amazon.

“Jason’s product and consumer expertise in the world of e-commerce is arguably unrivaled in this business and gives him a great insight into what it takes to create a superior user interface,” Peter Chernin, President and COO of News Corp. “We already have access to world-class content and near ubiquitous distribution, and the next step is marrying it with the features and tools that will help define the ideal user experience for video content on the web. We think Jason is the ideal person to lead that effort.”

Meanwhile, this online video venture to be headed by Kilar debuts later this year and is said to surprise us with thousands of hours of full-length programming, movies and clips from various networks and film studios. Partnering with Yahoo, AOL, Microsoft, MySpace, CNet, Comcast, among others, they are said to have access to about 98% of the monthly unique users on the Internet in US alone.

A new business social networking platform, iHipo.com, was recently launched to cater to the increasing market of students and young professionals seeking careers abroad.

Combining an online job board with social networking, iHipo.com (short for International High Potentials) offers aspiring professionals with a place to find jobs abroad with its versatile job board and extensive search platform. With its dedication to empower international careers, iHipo follows an academic and internatioanal criteria as they are keen on getting graduates and professionals with high potentials to join their network.

With iHipo’s community section, users can also interact with people with the same international dreams and interests. Based in Singapore, this network of high-potentials provides global companies an efficient recruiting tool to find the best available talent to join their team.

The ancient craft of woodworking is getting a facelift Web 2.0 style through the arrival of TheWoodWhisperer.com. This site wants to take the idea of plaid flannel and graying beards whittling wood and give it a more youthful touch.

Marc Spagnuolo, also known as the Wood Whisperer, started out with a woodworking podcast which became a hit on iTunes. He morphed this popularity into a full blown Web site for the woodworking community. Features of his site include your standard chatrooms and such. He’s even added a live streaming shop webcam where people can watch him doing his craft.

Spagnuolo, as part of his site, produces his podcasts semi-monthly.

Major League Baseball put on a reminder today that the final hours are counting down for voting online for the Monster.com 2007 All-Star Game Online Ballot. Voting ends at 11:59 p.m. (EDT) tonight.

Several individual races are apparently still too close to call. One of the tightest ones seems to be Giants outfielder Barry Bonds slightly behind Alfonso Soriano for the third and final starting outfielder spot. One other one on the AL side has Detroit’s Ivan Rodriguez holds a slight lead over Jorge Posada of the New York Yankees for the starting catcher’s spot.

Following the announcement of rosters for both All-Star teams on Sunday, July 1st “fans will have the opportunity to select the final position player for each League’s 32-man roster at MLB.com. The Monster.com 2007 All-Star Final Vote will provide fans the opportunity to cast their votes from a list of five players from each League over a four-day voting period.”

Linux users will be happy to note Google launched last night a version of its Desktop software just for them. It was developed primarily at their Beijing location, according to the Google Desktop blog.

Google Desktop for Linux, which joins versions for Windows and Mac, will offer many of the same features as found in an early edition of the Windows version. It also includes the useful Quick Search Box, which can be called up by hitting Ctrl twice on your keyboard.

As Google puts it the Linux version was developed as an easier way to find something then “‘find /home/username -name ‘*.pdf’ and ‘pdftotext pdf_file_name.pdf output.txt…’” Enough said.

StumbleUpon, one of the most popular ways to discover new sites and videos on the Internet, today announced the release of a specially designed application for the Facebook Platform. The announcement came on the heels of hitting the recent milestone of two billion stumbles.

The StumbleUpon application for the Facebook Platform links users’ StumbleUpon and Facebook profiles. Now, users’ most recent “thumbs up” stumbles can be displayed right on their Facebook profile.

“The StumbleUpon application for the Facebook Platform blends discovery and social networking to create a perfect way for StumbleUpon and Facebook members to find and share new and interesting things on the Web,” said David Feller, vice president of marketing, StumbleUpon. “Finding the best sites on the Web just got easier for Facebook users.”

StumbleUpon has also unveiled a new feature within its newly redesigned user pages, called “What’s New.” Now, Stumblers can see the most recent discoveries within their network, facilitating sharing of the best sites within the StumbleUpon community.

Konnects.com has launched the first professional networking platform that enables any person or organization in the world to earn revenue by creating their own professional online social network on the Konnects platform.

Konnects is a cross between Ning and Linkedin. Anyone can setup their own Konnects powered community in minutes and generate revenue through subscriptions as well as posting their own Google ads. Users have complete control over their online community with branding and communication tools as well as detailed analytical reports on community and user activity.

“We are very excited about this launch. There isn’t a tool like Konnects in the market today and we feel there is a big need to give traditional organizations a place to stay connected online,” says Jim Crabbe, Konnects CEO.

Digg’s founder, Kevin Rose, has created a new web based sharing network called Pownce. Users can share files, messages, events, and links “really fast”. All basic features are free.

Pownce is a great way to send stuff to people you know. Add friends, then send them big files, invite them to upcoming events, share great links, and whip off a note to anyone, everyone, or just a few people.

At least to start, we’re keeping some control over registration so that we can scale the system under control. Scaling? It basically means that if a ton of people joined all at once at the beginning our site might slow down to a crawl. That would suck for everyone. So, as we get confident with the performance of the site, we’ll begin letting more and more people in.

As early as now, there are so many negative comments from readers of TechCrunch, citing it is no different from Facebook, Twitter, or from any regular email features.

I guess the big question is: Will Pownce reach the stardom enjoyed by Digg?

Eons, the 50-plus media company, today announced that presidential candidate Barack Obama has launched a presence on Eons.com’s social networking platform as part of a dialog with boomers, the most engaged and passionate Americans in our nation’s history, about the most important issues facing our nation.

Barack Obama’s presence on Eons.com is expected to leverage the power of social networks and user-generated content to connect with 50-plus Americans in a way that embraces the newest and potentially most influential political medium on the planet, the Internet. With the largest community of politically vocal and mobilized boomers on the Web, Eons is an ideal domain to host a discussion between Barack Obama and boomer voters.