As we noted earlier, the 2008 Paralympic Summer Games in Beijing held their official opener on Saturday. The next week and a half will bring roughly 4,000 athletes from 150 countries into one athletic village, challenging one another for hundreds of medals gold, silver and bronze in nearly two dozen sports. With that in mind, if you’re keen on taking in the views and the news as they come from the Chinese capital, here are a few places to stay abreast and in tune.

While the NBCOlympics.com isn’t playing host to events scheduled through the 17th of the month, when the Paralympic games officially wrap up, the NBC Universal Sports website is, according to Alan Schwarz of The New York Times’ Rings blog, slated to present 50 hours of live coverage, as well as on-demand footage. In order to watch live coverage, viewers in the US will be required to schedule their days to an early morning routine, seeing as how many events will take place as early as 5 AM ET.

So far, two videos are presented in the Universal Sports archive: one for the opening ceremony held Saturday; the other a highlight reel of the ceremony plus coverage of a portion of Day 1 events. As for software compatibility, video is not presented in Silverlight, nor Flash, but in Windows Media format. Mac users can view coverage through a browser plugin called Flip4Mac. Personal experience shows this option to stutter and flicker at points, but it is a mostly decent delivery.

Another way to watch the Paralympic games up close is through ParalympicSportTV. This is done through Narrowstep, and while video detail isn’t particularly outstanding, the channel is tagged with the IPC (International Paralympic Committee) label, an association which might be of interest to some. If you have trouble viewing content at the main ParalympicSportTV page, an archive has also been established on YouTube. Nearly three dozen clips have been added to the collection so far.

Want extra reading material to go with the IPC’s coverage? The committee president, Sir Philip Craven, has gone ahead and created a blog, to which he has posted daily items for a short time. The broader Paralympic.org website is home to a good amount of news and resource information, too.

Across the Atlantic, the BBC offers a page within its Sport section devoted to Paralympic happenings. Of course, there’s ample focus on competitors from Team Great Britain, but according to BBC News, live streams are being offered “for six hours a day through the red button.” Quite thorough, I think. That is in addition to evening showings on BBC2 and via the BBC’s iPlayer service.

Lastly, being an American, I think it behooves me to briefly mention the U.S. Paralympics Team website, which is just chock-full of material to pore over. It last links to news stories, video clips, photo galleries, event results, and even a link to Universal Sports’s Paralympic coverage. Plus, if what you see gets you interested enough to take part in paralympic game play yourself, you can head over to its event page to see if something is happening in your area in the near future.

—Related Articles at Mashable! - The Social Networking Blog:Silverlight Battling Flash AND JavaScript For Long-Term LegitimacyMashable/Chi.mp Web 2.0 Expo Party: Recap, Reviews, and PicturesBlogTalk 2008 Discount For Mashable ReadersOnline Competition Timeline Outline:The Daily Poll: Is Microsoft-Yahoo Inevitable?Get Your Startup on Mashable (If You’re in a SummerMash City)Odnoklassniki.ru Set To Top $30 Million In Revenue

Some of the first-day statistics are in for JibJab’s video ditty for the 2008 U.S. presidential campaign. And a number of figures, when placed side by side, are pretty interesting. It turns out that among the third-party channels utilized to spread the jingle far and wide, none other than Microsoft’s MSN Video site charted some 870,000 views, effectively landing it at #1. The industry giant YouTube netting just over 100k, placing it third, where it sat behind MySpace TV’s view count of 255k plus by the 24th hour.

This afternoon, those three channels report views of 907k, 157k, and 267k, respectively.

Where MSN Video failed to muster a good amount of momentum, however, is in user response. While YouTube and MySpace have seen thousands of viewer comment posts combined, Microsoft is largely barren, with a mere 6 to name currently. Peculiar? Oddities on the Web are known to surface, so this may well be MSN’s lucky day. More to the point, JibJab is showing a healthy start in its move toward matching or perhaps even surpassing the benchmark previously set by 2004’s famous “This Land is Your Land.”

Of course, ample time has not yet passed to offer a sensible prediction on the matter. We’ll have to revisit the comparison if and when a substantive trend arises.

—Related Articles at Mashable! - The Social Networking Blog:JibJab Takes $3 Million in Fresh FundingJibJab’s Hilarious Video Greeting CardsMake Your Own JibJab MoviesBrain Dead Republicans & Zombie Democrats Duke it Out on JibJabJibJab Debuts its Election Video Carnival for 2008In Case You’re Still Not Ready for Valentines Day… JibJab and FaceSpaceImeem Gets Full Length Horror Film: Debuts Next Week

My second visit to SXSW is now over and it was great. Met a ton of great people and thanks to everyone for saying hi and appreciate all of the great feedback over the past week. Tomorrow we return to normal coverage and bid Austin and the birds adieu.

• Schwag Giveaway - Gary V’s Sweat, Facebook Tshirts, Seesmic Stickers and More
• Hats Off To The Twitter Team
• Hey Far Away Haters, Here’s Why I Enjoy SXSW
• Video Interview - Kyte.TV Explains The Difference With Seesmic, Qik and Flixwagon
• The (Apparently) Two Sides of Mark Zuckerberg
• Panel Recap: Good Analytics Can Get You Booty
• Startup Pricing Suggestions - Reduce And Raise
• Facebook Garage Live Blogging w/Mark Zuckerberg
• Kyte Pulls a Twitter
• Viddler Dinner Recap: Lots of Celebs and Kevin Rose / Gary V Are CN Fans!
• Stickam Demo Video
• The Ninja Accepts
• Web Awards Winners
• Exclusive: Bitstrips Demo Video - Launching Today
• Keynote: Mark Zuckerberg - Live Notes Plus Post-Keynote Crowd Reactions
• Contextual Web Session Recap
• The SXSW Bag, "We Waste Paper"

Check out the printer we used for our business cards:

Gigya is announcing the public launch of its "widget distribution network" today. This is great news considering that widget ads was one of my 2008 predictions. There’s no reason that advertising widgets can’t take over the ad market this year as long as they get the needed distribution. Gigya is trying to help that by allowing advertisers and brands to use their network to push out their widgets.

One of the reasons why I believe widgets are left behind is because they don’t drive as many visitors to the brand web site. This is always a big push for brands - now they are slowly starting to realize that its about brand interaction - who cares where that interaction happens.

The key for growth and acceptance lies in two areas: payout/money and analytics. The more money that’s paid out to the publishers obviously the higher acceptance there will be. But for advertisers and brands, the ability to report back to management about the effectiveness about the widgets will be key.

Kristen has some additional information taking a look at other widget ad players.

Please visit our sponsor and support CenterNetworks!

InfoSpace, (NASDAQ:INSP) makers of the Dogpile and WebFetch search engines, has announced its priorities for 2008. The full memo is below but it boils down to three things: reduce costs, increase traffic and expand the network. I always wonder why the items listed below weren’t done last year, and the year before that, etc. Now they have determined that they need to increase traffic?

Naturally the first thought for "reducing costs" is a workforce reduction. There is no mention of this in the notes below. The company is also looking to increase the traffic to it’s own search properties including Dogpile. I used Dogpile a bit back in say 1999, didn’t even realize they were still around. The last bit is that they want to work on increasing the white label solutions the company provides. This could be their best option instead of attempting to compete with the likes of Google and smaller player Yahoo. 

Here’s the full list of InfoSpace’s strategic priorities:

• Realigning the Company’s operating structure: As part of the Company’s effort to balance its operating structure with the new needs of its business, InfoSpace expects to reduce costs by approximately $7 million to $9 million and as a result will have cash severance charges of approximately $7 million to $8 million reflected in the fourth quarter of 2007.
• Increasing traffic on InfoSpace’s owned and operated search engines: InfoSpace’s online search assets are differentiated by the Company’s metasearch technology and include its award-winning branded websites such as Dogpile.com, which recently ranked highest in customer satisfaction among search engines for the second consecutive year. Additionally, the Company has long-term agreements with both Google and Yahoo! to deliver their search results and text-based advertising listings to its network of metasearch properties and affiliates through 2011. Through significant product enhancements and new direct-to-consumer marketing efforts, the Company expects to increase traffic on its owned search sites.
• Expanding InfoSpace’s distribution network: InfoSpace currently benefits from a solid distribution network with over 100 private label partners, including 6 new deals signed in the fourth quarter. In 2008, the Company expects to further expand its distribution network by attracting new distribution partners and broadening its product set to include a new portal product and other value added offerings.

Last year I listed 23 people I would like to meet in 2007. I met a good bunch of them which was awesome, some for just a handshake, some for more lengthy conversations. I’ve decided to continue this list with another 23 people I’d like to meet in 2008. Some names are the same as I still am interested in a face-to-face discussion. I hope to meet a lot more CN readers this year, I enjoy the conversations with each and every one of you.

Here are the lists from 2007 and for 2008:

Ya’all know I love ya - I tried to pick a cross-section of people who could help create a better CN by meeting with them. I look forward to meeting everyone at the conferences and meetups in 2008.

It’s that time of the year — prediction time. Most of the blogger heavyweights have listed their predictions and I thought I’d share mine after being pinged by James Thomas. I have decided to offer some predictions that might be considered a bit non-traditional. With that said, here are some of my thoughts for 2008:

Time Wasters Will Be Replaced With Time Savers

What the F is up with time wasters lately? It seems every meetup or party I attend, someone pitches some sort of time waster. I think what we will see in 2008 is a resurgence of time savers, similar to the Web 1.0 boom in that apps will actually be useful for us and increase productivity. The net result will be more time offline actually socializing with our friends in real life.

More Startups Close Doors But More Open Overall

Starting a Web business will remain very inexpensive in 2008 and that will mean more will dive head first. We will see lots of failures but overall we will see growth in total. Entrepreneurs will utilize the Yahoo theory of throw 10 things at the wall and see which one of the ten sticks.

Widget Advertising Will Take Off

Advertisers have continued to push the traditional banner ad for nearly a decade. Widgets offer way more interactivity and presence on a blog or Web site and advertisers will realize that widgets are the future of advertising. The other added benefit of widgets is to the site/blog visitor they don’t appear as advertisements and visitors might actually interact with the widget more than with any traditional advertising. It will be considered a way that companies can "join the conversation".

RSS Advertising Will Take Off

There are a couple of ad firms that currently support ads inside feeds (FeedBurner and Pheedo come to mind). As feeds continue their push to replace the traditional content, ad firms will realize the power of the feed and will begin to offer RSS solutions to capitalize on the potential revenue from the ads.

Bloggers Will Be Held Accountable For Their Actions

IndustryGirl touched on this in her prediction post. This past year we’ve started to see blogger reputations in various categories (no matter how large or small) taking hits for the practices employed by that blog. In 2008 we will see bloggers who treat their userbase poorly and act as bullies lose traffic and presence. I can only hope that those blogs who bully users and content providers are kicked to the curb. If anything can ruin blogging as a job for all of us and push people to "old media", it’s the actions of a few bad apples.

RSS/Feed Metrics/Analytics Will Actually Mean Something

It’s important to remember why we haven’t seen any improvement in metrics and analytics in years, and it’s simple - because it’s all about the benjamins. I am very hopeful that we will see some real metrics for RSS feeds, as you know I believe the traditional subscriber metric is dead — just as dead as the hit was in 1997. I’d be all over getting some panel discussions together about feed metrics and analytics so we can actually make some strides towards industry adoption of actual feed metrics. (and yes, we need an overhaul on Web metrics in general but I have beat that dead horse enough this year)

Apple Lives Large Early, Dives Late

Apple (NASDAQ: AAPL) is living the highlife now with stock prices hovering at $200/share. Products are beautiful, talent is strong, tech bloggers and early adopters loving Apple. We have started to see a small ripple in the Apple armor with posts such as Dave Winer’s about his hard dive fiasco. Negative reports will continue to increase in number throughout 2008 and another tech manufacturer will step up their game and begin to erode Apple’s market share. Who will it be? I am not sure but I could see Sony playing a role. Apple will counter with lower prices.

Agree? Disagree? Leave your thoughts in the comments - I am very interested in feedback!