WebTV - more of it

Found this little interesting bit on a comment posted by a reader on CNet - uvu.com. This was in relation to an article on CNet about former Disney executive, Howard Eisner's investment in a brace of new media companies, Veoh and Vuguru. Veoh is an older investment and is an online video company, and Vuguru is a video production company which will, on 2 April 2007, launch 80 ninety second (thats right, 90 second) episodes of a series titled Prom Queen, aimed at teenage ladies. This moves more and more into the WebTV space of Web 2.0. And uvu.com, according to this reader, is better than the lot. However, I am not sure how he knows this, because according to the website nothing is available yet for download. Vapourware?.... I will keep looking back and see if the player actually materializes for download. I also read an article on Total Content + Media, which goes back to November 2006 about an Ofcom report which shows how broadband has affected out lives. 30 to 40% of Europeans watch less traditional TV, and around 30% read less national newsprint. Between 50 and 60% of broadband users have downloaded TV programs from the Internet. 73% of young people (70% in China) have watched videos made by others over the Internet.

WebTV and online videos are invading our lives in many ways. The comment in one report of creating a 'snack culture' certainly seems appropriate, doesn't it? We browse little snippets all over the web, rather than sitting for the full hour and a half watching that old movie on the telly, or like me, you sit 'watching' it whilst working on your laptop. Listen to most parts, and watching snippets,more likely! Drives my wife mad. :-)

Had been a little busy as of late. Decided to give Famster.com a try, given that the Nel family is spread out across South Africa, the US of A, Canada and Ireland. It is still in its infancy and I am awaiting the input of the rest of the Nel clan, but it is on Famster. It uses a Flash Player interface and is a bit slow from Ireland, which is a bit of a concern given that it probably doesn't yet have a large customer base. However, I found the interface relatively easy to use and to set up. Haven't yet used the full spectrum of utilities, but it seems to be easy to use and upload. I uploaded 2 videos and 21 photos with no major issues. It still seems to have some minor bugs, but when I loaded it tonight, all seemed fine. Now I am just waiting for the rest of the clan to use it to see how it pans out, then I will put some content into the public area. It allows you to wall off some content and to make other public. Nice feature.

On LinkedIn today someone asked a question about Twitter. I was delighted that I knew about it and could provide some feedback. I use both LinkedIn and Plaxo to keep track of my network and address book online.

There is just so much out there, what will survive and what will become the next big thing? Don't we all wish we had that answer?!?!? We are suffering severe information overload. How do we filter it? Read that it is estimated that there are 100 million blogs out there. How will we ever find relevant information? Googling it just doesn't seem sufficient. There are some new technologies and sites that claim to provide more relevant search results that good old Google. I still have to finish reporting on the 25 start-ups that started this Blog, but finding simpler search tools and reporting back will be next on my list.