A lot has already been said about the enhanced version of the Youtube APIs and their threat to “traditional video platforms”. See refs below as well as Youtube’s own take.

In a quick summary, Youtube now allows developers to integrate with their encoding and video delivery platform, including without the “chrome” i.e. in a non-Youtube branded player! This super-syndication of Youtube content, should, in theory allow Youtube videos to fit nicely into business, without the feeling “there’s an amateur video stuck on our expensive website”.

However, it remains to me, only a 1-way commercial deal, because anyone using the Youtube system will end up with Youtube ads (you can’t put your own in) and all videos uploaded are also now in the Youtube ecosystem, enlarging it still further.

Even so, for us at Twofour, it’s a long-awaited opportunity to allow our media publishing system to publish our clients’ content direct to Youtube – an “upload once, publish everywhere” philosophy that’s at the heart of what we do.

CRUD is Create, Read, Upload and Delete - just in case you were getting it muddled up with the more frequent British use of the term crud - an unpleasantly dirty or messy substance

http://www.thestandard.com/news/2008/03/12/youtube-offers-new-services-third-parties-big-win-youtube

http://newteevee.com/2008/03/12/youtube-apis/

http://www.techcrunch.com/2008/03/12/youtube-the-platform/

Last Friday I was at a thankfully excellent conference by the UK’s Guardian newspaper. After the usual, entertaining MySpace and Google/Youtube keynotes, I really enjoyed a presentation by Suranga Chandratillake, CEO/founder, Blinkx. As well as having something like 148 slides, which kept the A/V operators on their toes, it was a terrific history lesson on radio (aka “the newspaper that comes through the wall”), TV and now the internet. Alluding to an exciting new product, it did encourage me to drop by their rather nifty search engine. While there, I stumbled across a product I’d not heard of before Blinkx AdHoc - could this be, what Suranga was hinting about (or more likely has it been out for ages and I haven’t visited the site for months?)

Rather like video Adsense, it allows you to wrap or overlay video ads around your own videos that are hosted externally. You just drop the embed code into Blinkx and it returns revised embed code complete with ads. In theory… Sadly it doesn’t work with WordPress. I’ll see if I can put it somewhere else.

Last week of February 2008, pondering corporate mission, vision and strategy I woke up to see a lorry outside my hotel window. Written in huge letters on it - Passionate about Laundry.

Passionate. About Laundry. Well I suppose its good that they are. But then again, in the streaming industry, so are a lot of us. The following was compiled in 2 minutes from a quick search:

• We are passionate about video on the internet.
• passionate about exploring the latest technologies
• Joe XYZ first became passionate for streaming back in 1995
• Are you passionate about JavaScript and CSS?
• why Troy is so passionate about streaming broadband
• We are passionate about video on the internet.

I was thinking, maybe I’m not passionate about streaming really. Its pretty useful. But I prefer skiing.

The webteam at the European Parliament surprised a lot of us with this video of creative genius promoting their annual prize. As they say on their website, the Sakharov Prize for Freedom of Thought honour[s] individuals or organisations for their efforts on behalf of human rights and fundamental freedoms and against oppression and injustice.

Frankly, I don’t believe you’ll find a video like this on any other Parliament’s website - so how did they manage to blow the “stuffy civil servant” stereotype so far out of the water? I reckon its a “management thing” and the next time I go to Brussels, I’ll have a word with them and report back!

See the 2007 prize winner here.

News Year’s Resolution 1 - done! Only a couple of years too late.