• Listening Tool – Google Reader
• Search Tools – Technorati and Google Blogsearch
• Home Base Blog – WordPress.com or WordPress.org to host your own).
• Better Reach – FeedBurner
• Social Conversation – Twitter
• Social Profile – Facebook
• Business Profile – LinkedIN
• Social Bookmarking – Del.icio.us
• Shared Documents – Google Docs
• Instant Messaging-Web Based – Meebo
• Photo Sharing – Flickr
• Video Hosting – googlevideohost.com (also YouTube)

Google Reader and the two search tools make it easy for you to set up a quick network of searches on topics, brands, company names, and whatever else you want to follow in your space. (If you didn’t get my Five Starter Moves free PDF document, drop a note in the comments, and it describes HOW). The “Shared Items” feature and the email to others feature makes this a great way to share interesting articles with others, by the way.

When I say “home base” blog, I feel that in MOST cases, making your main website a blog is preferable to something static. Why? Because it hints at recurring content. It fills search engines with things to think about.

FeedBurner can be used to improve the quality of RSS feeds, to give people more options to subscribe to your posts, and for some extra functionality.

Twitter allows for one-to-many messaging from multiple points (web, IM, 3rd party app, or mobile device). It’s also good for presence, and sharing quick status information.

Facebook actually does lots of things and is a full-featured social network, but at the baseline, fill out a personal profile with lots of information about you, and links back to your main site and/or your blog, and it will do a great job of helping people find you. Other features exist, including groups and several 3rd party applications. There’s lots to explore there.

LinkedIN is a popular site for posting a summary of your current job role and responsibilities, as well as a work history. There is now a group feature there as well, and you can use this tool extensively to reach out and meet new colleagues in your field, prospective employees, and there are all sorts of other uses for such information, if you give it some thought.

I like del.icio.us (pronounced “delicious”) for social bookmarking because it means my bookmarks are out on the web, so I can access them from anywhere. It also means that I can add tags and other metadata to the bookmarks to improve the ways I search for them.

Google Docs works as a great replacement for sharing word processing and spreadsheet functions. It’s free, secure, and makes for less file clutter, as you’re sharing a link to a shared, common document instead of sending around various versions. They also have a presentation software, though I haven’t had much experience with it just yet.

Instant messaging isn’t dead. There are still plenty of great business uses for quick one-to-one conversations. Meebo is a great tool because it lets you bridge several services at once (Desktop apps that do the same thing are Adium for the Mac and Trillian for PC) and chat with people about quick hit items.

Photo sharing and video hosting can be used in lots of ways. They make for richer interactions, add some dimension to the media you’re making with your company, and give you an opportunity to express your story in different ways than straight text.

Google has launched YouTube localized version. So now all pages and the search engine of the most popular video portal are available to Russian users in Russian. The sections ‘Recommend to watch’ and ‘In the spotlight’ have been localized, so now they are filled with movies and comments in Russian.

Before launching its localized interface YouTube concluded partnership agreements with such Russian content suppliers as 1TV, TNT, STS, 2×2, Luxe.tv, Euronews and others. STS is sure the launch of YouTube localized version might help Russia become ‘an active participant of the world video content market’. Chad Hurley, YouTube Director General and founder, hopes the service localized version to be actively used by the Russian-language audience.

In addition to concluding agreements with partners to provide the Russian-language users with ‘interesting and relevant content’ Google hopes the consumer electronics market to further develop, so that users are able to copy, watch and exchange the video content, CNews corresponded was told in Google. Google gives no details regarding its plans to develop YouTube in Russia. The company says it is not interested in simple translation of the site and its options, which might be done through localization and contextualization of the service and its options.

Representative of domestic video hostings are not concerned with YouTube localization. Askar Tuganbaev, RuTube video hosting producer, believes localization of the complicated interface might result in the Russian-language audience to increase. However, according to Mr. Tuganbaev, there are too many movies on YouTube, which are inappropriate to Russian users and might deter them. Albert Popkov, the founder of the project Odnoklassniki, which launched the video hosting Videogaga.ru, believes YouTube main competitor is the company Mail.ru. He says the recently launched project Videogaga.ru is focused on amateur video unlike YouTube, which is a search engine through the favorite types of video content.

According to Mr. Tuganbaev, RuTube and YouTube compete not in service provision and interface, but in content: RuTube users are more interested in the educational than in the entertainment content, unlike YouTube users. The finance Google is going to invest into YouTube promotion might help the Russian users to understand the project is not interesting to them, Mr. Tuganbaev concludes. Albert Popkov believes the given video service might encourage RuTube to develop more actively. Anna Artamonova, Mail.ru Vice President and Marketing Director, states YouTube is a serious competitor, ‘which should not be underestimated by local players’. However, it is unlikely to provide the Russian users with something unusual, they have not seen yet, Mrs. Artamonova concludes.

Some experts believe YouTuve has no one to compete in Runet. Anton Nosik, Director of blog service at the company Sup, states YouTube is already the leader in the Russian video hosting market, so there is no one to pretend to its place, as all Russian projects presented in the market copy YouTube interface, services and, sometimes, even its brand. Under such conditions, localization does not matter, Mr. Nosik says. The expert believes the projects existing in the Russian market will not be able to compete with YouTube even in the future, as they do nothing to develop and not to copy YouTube.

The company Google stated it was going to buy YouTube late in 2006. The portal was bought for $1.65 bln. According to unofficial data, YouTube revenue in 2006 came to $15 mln.

Although video sharing sites today provide public and private video sharing options, once private videos are uploaded to these sites, search results bring up thumbnails and video descriptions of all videos, even if the video is not viewable. With Azooca, if uploaded videos have privacy settings in place only specified users can access the video or view information about it.

“Our goal with Azooca Capture is to provide an intuitive tool that allows individuals unfamiliar with converting digital video files to an online format the ability to grasp it in minutes while offering users the power to control who, where, when and how often their videos are watched,” said Phil Hale, Chief Marketing Officer for Azooca. “Internet privacy is an important issue, and while Azooca Capture can be used to share video to the community and create a viral effect, we also make sure the videos are truly private and our video expiration feature empowers users to do this.”

No software downloads or registration is required to view or send video through Azooca Capture. However for users wishing to store converted video, Azooca Capture offers two different levels of accounts. A free account offers 250 MB of storage with video hosting for 60 days; upgraded service provides 1 gigabyte of storage space and the ability to set video expirations.

Azooca unveiled its video communications technology with the launch of the company and its signature product, Azooca Mail in June, 2007. Last month, the company launched a private label enterprise application, Azooca API, for companies and organizations, providing a painless integration of video on to their websites.

About Azooca, Inc.

Azooca, Inc. is an Internet video content service provider. With consumer-oriented video communication websites and back-end white-labeled developer applications, Azooca is forging new frontiers in video messaging technologies. Azooca, Inc. is a privately-held company headquartered in City of Industry, California.

Well, it looks as though the recording industry is making a habit of cracking down on housewives for copyright infringement.

Stephanie Lenz posted a 29-second home video of her 18-month-old son Holden on the popular video hosting site YouTube. Lenz wanted her friends and family to be able to check out her son dancing in his PJs to Prince’s ’80s hit “Let’s Go Crazy.”

A whopping 28 people had viewed the video between February and June when Lenz received an e-mail from YouTube informing her that the video had been removed from the site at the request of Universal Publishing Group, and that if she infringed on any copyrights in the future, her account would be cancelled.

The recording industry’s largest label, Universal, claims it was simply acting at the behest of one of its top artists. The artist currently known as Prince purportedly scours the Internet looking for unauthorized use of his music. Extremely protective of his intellectual property, Prince once wrote the word “Slave” on his cheek until he won back the rights to his music from another publishing company. Upon his request, Universal has asked YouTube to remove thousands of videos over the last few months that use Prince’s music without his permission.

After her video was taken down, Lenz contacted the Electronic Frontier Foundation, a cyber rights legal organization, and filed a civil lawsuit against Universal for unspecified damages. Lenz and EFF accuse the company of abusing the Digital Millennium Copyright Act by firing off countless “take down notices” to video hosting sites like YouTube that claim the company’s artists’ copyrights have been infringed upon.

Lenz also filed a “counter notice” with YouTube, and the site put her video back up about six weeks later. Unfortunately caught in the middle, video hosting Web sites like YouTube are required under the provisions of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act to take both the original take down notices and the counter notices at face-value, and to honor them.

If a person files a take down notice, that is a statement made under penalty of law that the person is the owner of a copyright that is being infringed upon. Anyone filing a false take down notice can be sued.

Likewise, if a counter notice is filed, that is a statement indicating that the counter filer disputes the assertion of the filer of the take down notice that she is the owner of the copyright.

The video hosting site is not responsible for determining who owns the copyright — it simply must honor the take down and counter notices and let the filers fight it out for themselves.

Many legal experts feel that Lenz has not infringed upon Prince’s copyright. However, those same experts believe that Universal files the take down notices to police every single use of their copyrighted work, for if they fail to do so, it will open the floodgates to massive piracy.

For many reasons, I’m thankful that the home video of me lip-synching to Billy Idol in sixth grade has been destroyed.

Reg Wydeven is a partner with the Appleton-based law firm of McCarty Law LLP. He can be reached at pcbusiness@postcrescent.com.

Source: Postcrescent

The www.aol.in/Hindi page offers four main sections: Samachar (news), Bollywood, Gossip and Kala-Sanskrithi (culture). It headlines the news that the Hindi remake of Sholay is soon to be followed with Gujarati and Sindhi versions. It even sneakily suggests the possible new dialogue: “Ketla manas hatha?,” Gujarati rendering of Gabbar Singh’s menacing “Kitne aadmi thhey?,” How many men were there?

With a canny eye for regional appeal, the Tamil portal www.aol.in/Tamil has localised the movie pages to Tamil cinema and added a section on astrology and religion. On Saturday, visitors learnt that the next vehicle of actress Tanya of Thirudi fame is a suspense thriller, Thatak, thatak while devotees are reminded that the Skanda Sashti festival begins at Palani on Sunday.

Both the language portals are linked to AOL’s main India site www.aol.in in English.

Also launched last week were eight country-specific editions of AOL’s new video search engine Truveo, for the U.S., France, Germany, Japan, Korea, Spain, Taiwan — and India. The India site (http://in.truveo.com/) offers desi-interest video clips in categories such as news, sports, entertainment, music, movies and viewers’ choice.

AOL seems to have wisely chosen not to compete with video hosting services such as Google’s ‘You Tube’ or ‘Yahoo Video’ — but instead aggregates and searches for videos based on the user’s request, trawling all such sites.

This includes the just-launched Hulu video service from the U.S.-based NBC and NewsCorp.

Top ranked at the Indian edition of Truveo are videos of the weekend premieres of the two big Diwali Hindi movie releases, Saawariya and Om Shanti Om; the successful surgery of the multi-limbed child in Bangalore and Yuvraj’s always-in-demand ‘six sixes.’

source: Hindu

The fund drive, much like drives for public TV or public radio stations … but without interruptions of “programming” Photo Sharing and Video Hosting at Photobucket … runs from October 22nd to December 22nd. At the time of this writing, there have been 12,703 donations.

While many (including yours truly) frequently use Wikipedia as a primary source of information, founder Jimmy Wales has discouraged academic use of it.

Still, if you refresh the home page of Wikipedia when you select a language, at the top it’ll have a running tab of donations, as well as comments from users who donated. Many of them credit Wikipedia for help in school.

One example was “”University would not be the same without Wikipedia.” — Anon.” and another was “”college would be impossible without wikipedia!” — katy tull.” Photo Sharing and Video Hosting at Photobucket

We Say: If you use Wikipedia, think about donating. They accept Paypal and other methods.

source: RealTechNews

For example, we like the positioning of AOL’s Truveo.  Truveo is not a video hosting/streaming site.  It is a video search/aggregator.  Truveo has two advantages…

1. It avoids the enormous bandwidth and storage costs of hosting/streaming, and
2. it aggregates videos from multiple third-party sites, thus (theoretically) enabling it to have a selection far larger than any individual site.

The former advantage should allow Truveo to have high gross margins at scale, similar to those of a regular search site.  The second advantage should give Truveo a shot at becoming a start-page for many folks who are either looking for a particular video or just want to watch some video.  Because Truveo doesn’t have to worry about hosting, transcoding, and streaming (headaches for many video storage sites), it can focus on the search and presentation experience–which, in general, has a long way to go.  And because the video world is likely to be disaggregated for many years to come, especially with the entry of Hulu, Truveo should be able to maintain a selection advantage.

Truveo does have vast and supremely powerful competition–namely YouTube, Yahoo Video, and some of the other video behemoths.  These sites are so large that they are already start pages.  Also, given how well Google understands the search-and-aggregation business, we expect that it will soon begin to convert YouTube into more of a hosting AND search site, with links to third-party video hosted elsewhere.  With only about 250,000 monthly users (per Compete), Truveo needs to skedaddle, or it, too, will be roadkill.  But video search is still a lousy experience, and there should be room for a few dedicated search/start sites to be built.

taken from alley insider

The subscription-based service will allow users to upload personal videos for sharing on Web sites and blogs or send in an e-mail.

The service was created in partnership with Mydeo, which provides streaming video hosting for home and business users. Best Buy will take a minority stake in Mydeo, but terms were undisclosed.

Plans start at $6.97 for 100 minutes of video hosting and video lengths up to 30 minutes each.
taken from businessweek