Times Online reports that YouTube has agreed to pay royalties to UK artists for songs used in videos uploaded on the site. An agreement was ironed between YouTube and royalty-collecting society MCPS-PRS Alliance. The agreement calls for the video-sharing site to pay an undisclosed flat fee to license more than ten million pieces of music. The agreement means that YouTube video clips will no longer infringe on copyright in UK.
AOL Latino, the bilingual portal for U.S. Hispanics, announced the Top 3 finalists of Fashionista, the online reality design contest sponsored by Mercury Milan, which features fashion contenders competing to be the next top Latino designer. As part of the finale, AOL Latino will debut three webisodes tomorrow showcasing the finalists – Vicky Mendez, Anna Fong and Claudia Diaz – as they design outfits for a runway show.
As part of the finale, show host Daniela Torres outlines the tasks and explains the judging process. The finalists are driven around New York City in Mercury Milan vehicles as they purchase the materials needed for their designs. They are then taken to a special location to create their dresses and prepare for a runway show. Each task will be judged by a panel of experts including People en Español Fashion Director Kika Rocha, celebrity jewelry company executive Fabiola Beracasa and New York Fashion expert/designer Gustavo Arango. The panel focused on the contestant’s creativity and originality as well as how well they integrated multiple fabrics and materials. After three tasks, the panel will select the winner.
With the aim of curbing illegal and immoral Internet use, China will be launching its virtual cops onto people’s computer screens, the Associated Press reports.
The virtual male and female officers will give text warnings while moving across the screen by foot, motorcycle or car. Web surfers needing help will be redirected to the Beijing Public Security Ministry. Initially, the virtual cops will patrol only the top portals but will be everywhere by the end of the year.
The program is set to start on September 1.
Jaiku, a microblogging platform for lifestreaming, announced that it has added Jabber-based instant messaging capabilities to interact with the service and provide a new way for people to communicate and share content.
Jaiku also lets users choose and receive pre-determined web feeds from their friends online activities via IM, for example, flickr photos from some contacts, updates from specific blogs, Last.fm recently played tracks from others, etc.
Jaiku allows anyone to easily post and discover new content in Jaiku’s online community. It goes several steps further than other presence applications by allowing readers to add comments to individual posts and also allowing anyone to create, join and participate in topic related channels.
Third party developers have also extended Jaiku’s functionality for all major mobile and desktop platforms. Mobile users can access Jaiku via m.jaiku.com.
Remember when former Amazon executive Jason Kilar joined NBC Universal / News Corp to head an unnamed online video venture that is said to be the next big YouTube rival?
The unnamed video site is not unnamed anymore. Kilar has finally broken the silence and announced the coming of Hulu.com. Hu-what?
Hulu.com is NBC and News Corp’s “ambitious” venture into the world of online video programming which is set to go on beta this coming October. For now, they have announced the name. “Why Hulu?,” Kilar said in the site’s first official release, “Objectively, Hulu is short, easy to spell, easy to pronounce, and rhymes with itself. Subjectively, Hulu strikes us as an inherently fun name, one that captures the spirit of the service we’re building. Our hope is that Hulu will embody our (admittedly ambitious) never-ending mission, which is to help you find and enjoy the world’s premier content when, where and how you want it.”
Much is still unknown, but at the moment, Hulu.com is accepting sign ups for the site’s private beta. And if the images that adorn the site’s splash page could speak for itself, we can perhaps expect videos (full-length, I hope) from among the latest TV programs today such as Heroes, Family Guy, Friday Night Lights, Simpsons, and K-Ville, among others.
In spite of Kilar’s explanation, I still wonder how the name “hulu” materialized and how “it captures the spirt of the service”. But HU am I to judge? HU knows, HULU could be the next household name in the online video world — this I’ve got to see. (After all, HUever questioned why Google was named such?)
Update. Interestingly, Michael Arrington did a little investigation on the term “hulu” and got these findings. Hmm. Rename, quick.
Online photo and video sharing site Photobucket reaches 50 million users today, as announced on the website’s blog.
Founded in 2003 and recently acquired by Fox Interactive July of this year, this Denver-based startup is among the leading sites that allows for uploading, sharing, searching, and embedding photos, videos, and graphics.
Once a simple online platform for photo storage, Photobucket has indeed evolved to a full-blown one-stop photo (and video) shop with its huge online database of stocked photos and videos, as well as an online store where you can request to have your photos printed on shirts, mugs, calendars, stickers, posters and more.
To celebrate this milestone, Photobucket is giving away 10 free 4×6 prints to members as a gesture of thanks. All you have to do is to visit their online store, pick the photos you want printed out, and fill up information for shipping payments purposes.
YouTube inks deal with MCPS-PRS Alliance, a UK-based music community of over 50,000 composers, songwriters and publishers, whose database is now bursting with about 10 million music pieces for both personal and business-related purposes.
This agreement to license MCPS-PRS music files to YouTube is said to be the first of its kind. There was no disclosure as to how much the amount of the deal is.
The deal is just one of YouTube’s initiatives to address the ongoing concerns about illegal music distribution online. YouTube pays a flat rate, and the music alliance comes up with a way to share revenues to its members according to, say, the number of times their music is played on the site. With this latest development, it won’t be a surprise to see more video and music sharing sites to follow suit.
REELcomp positions itself as the “first core board sport video-sharing site of its kind.” It will begin accepting footage of skateboarding, snowboarding, and surfing.
REELcomp knows that there are many talented die-hard athletes that remain unexposed because of the challenges of becoming noticed in today’s busy industry. That’s why the goal is to create a site completely content based, which will be showcasing new talent and sport progression. The competition gives skaters, snowboarders, and surfers the chance to be seen and rewarded for their skills, almost immediately.
Users can load endless clips of their board sports and starting September 2, 2007, users will vote a new winner twice a month. The winner takes home $1000 cash and secures a spot in the “sweet sixteen” Final Bracket, which will result in a grand prize vacation for a finalist in all three sports.
Finding an interesting niche with significant number of readers is a popular trend now in Internet marketing. REELcomp’s focus on board sports is on the right track. Here’s a video clip of the top surfing video:
Aimed to add group chat functionality as feature in some of its leading products, Microsoft has agreed to acquire a leading group chat solutions provider, Parlano. However, financial terms of the acquisition were not announced but the deal is expected to be completed in the fourth quarter of 2007.
The group chat functionality will be added as a new feature of Microsoft(R) Office Communications Server and Microsoft Office
Communicator, Microsoft’s server and client software for presence, instant messaging, conferencing and VoIP.
“Parlano’s expertise and technology, added to Microsoft’s unified communications offering, will deliver customers the most complete presence, instant messaging and group chat solution on the market,” said Gurdeep Singh Pall, corporate vice president of the Unified Communications Group at Microsoft.
Farecast.com announced the beta version of Farecast Hotels Search. Farecast customers can now shop for both airline tickets and hotel rooms anywhere in thousands of cities worldwide. With Farecast Hotels, Farecast introduces Hotel Rate Key, an innovative new hotel pricing technology that empowers consumers to know where to stay by indicating if the current rate for a hotel is a deal, or not a deal. The beta launch of Farecast Hotels is an important next step in the evolution of Farecast to bring transparency and help consumers buy with confidence in another critical category of travel.
Farecast’s Hotel Rate Key helps consumers know at a glance if the current rate for a hotel is a deal or not a deal. The initial beta version will utilize historical rates and offer Hotel Rate Keys for over 5,000 hotels in 30 major cities across the country for up to 90 days in the future. Farecast builds the unbiased Hotel Rate Key entirely on science, not marketing.
