Slowly but surely, the entertainment industry is grasping the fact that the Internet is the most important promotional tool they’ll ever have. Shows like South Park and Jackass already have websites on which fans can see full episodes for free; now, something similar is planned for Saturday Night Live.

According to Broadcasting & Cable, SNL executive producer Lorne Michaels and NBC are planning to develop an on-demand Web site that will feature clips from the popular show. Nothing is certain at this early stage, but it seems that they’re planning to offer clips taken from the show instead of full episodes, as well as previously unaired bloopers and rehearsal clips.

What prompted NBC to try this approach was the immense (surprise, surprise) success of SNL episodes on Hulu. However, B&C reports that monetizing this project is one of the biggest obstacles for NBC. I’d say that controlling the content yourself instead of having people share it somewhere else on their own is a good enough reward.

—Related Articles at Mashable | All That’s New on the Web:Hulu to Live Stream Presidential Debates and Offer Video ArchiveWindows Live Offers Web ID Authentication: Will this Hurt OpenID?The Daily Poll: What’s Your Level of Interest in Lifecasting?Conan O’Brien to Stream on NBC.comMTV and MySpace Launch the Media Circus DebatesApple iPod Ads Are The New HitmakersCrackle’s New Channel is a SNL Wannabe

Source:Mashable!

Live video streaming service Stickam is expanding into mobile, announcing today that users will now be able to stream videos to their account with a cell phone. Similar to services like Qik and Flixwagon – who offer mobile video streaming exclusively - the service is initially being offered with Nokia N95 and S60 series phones.

Like other Stickam videos, mobile streams can be embedded elsewhere with copy and paste code, so live streamers can place their videos on their own websites and blogs. Broadcasters will also be able to view stats like the number of people watching as well as their chat room from the Stickam Mobile application. For users looking to view Stickam mobile video streams, they can be found under a new “Mobile” section that has been added to the “Live Streams” section of the site.

The addition of live streaming by Stickam poses the age old question: is this a business or a feature? While services like Qik and Flixwagon are trying to build communities exclusively around mobile streaming video, Stickam has simply added it as a feature to what is already a relatively popular video site. Broadcasters will flow where the audience is, and for now, Stickam would appear to have a significant edge on the upstarts:

Meanwhile, if some of the bigger fish in the space like YouTube and UStream add mobile video streaming, the opportunity will get even smaller for the likes of Stickam, Qik, and Flixwagon. For its part, Stickam does offer a somewhat unique business model - the “pay-per-live” program it rolled out earlier this year.

—Related Articles at Mashable | All That’s New on the Web:Stickam’s Webcam Facebook AppStickam Launches Stickam ListingsCuStickam - Stickam Profile EditorMashMeet LA Caught on Tape!fix8 Signs Deal with StickamStickam, YouTube, SecondLife do the SundanceAT&T Video Share Marries Live Streaming with Voice Calls

Source:Mashable!

In this flurry of bad economic news it’s nice to see a project fresh with enthusiasm; a simple, cool idea (which might not even have a business plan) that might turn into a nice resource in the future.

Woices is one such project. It allows users to create and share audio snippets linked to a specific geographical location or a real world object. This, however, is where it gets interesting. I would assume that this would mean hearing what the Cathedral de Notre Dame sounds like, but Woices has a very different, slightly artistic, concept altogether. The users record words - perhaps a poem, some interesting info or advice - related to the location in question. It still sounds like a cool idea, but I see this as an unnecessary restriction; why not let people record any sound related to any location if they like?

At Woices, these audio files are called echoes, and the community is called the echosphere. You can search the echosphere through a geographically organized directory or on a map; you can also find out what the freshest and most popular echoes are.

Despite having a cool idea, Woices displays two very common flaws; first, it’s nearly empty. Yes, yes, a community doesn’t grow overnight, but the site would be so much more fun at this stage if it had at least a couple hundred (instead of a couple dozen) audio files available. Second, most of the files available are named in Spanish. It’s not a big deal since the site is available both in English and Spanish, and the default is English; again, when the community builds up, there will be more echoes from all around the world. Right now, though, it will surely drive away some frustrated users who don’t understand Spanish.

Having a community created database of audio recordings tied to certain geographical locations sounds like something that probably ought to happen, but perhaps never will; it’s one of those concepts whose success is really hard to predict. Hopefully the authors will manage to pull it off and, as they put it, make the world a more interesting place.

PermissionTV  Lets Companies Create their own YouTube-type of Video Service. Their list of clients include MGM, Bob Villa and many more well-known names in the entertainment industry. They also serves corporations, agencies, special interest groups and publishing companies. 

The “PTV” platform with customizable flash-based SmartPlayer provides a flexible way to share and manage interactive video content. It also includes useful analytics so you can measure the performance and success of videos that you’ve shared online. 

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PermissionTV also allows companies to monetize their video content with many hooks into ad servers in an easy to use interface. This means they can embed the exact type of advertisements they want in their video streams. Being able to customize the ads is important because they know their audience better than anyone. The great thing about this feature is that several different ad servers can be connected in the same stream which is unique and provides a greater variety of choices for companies.

Best of all, PTV’s SmartPlayer syndicates very well which means you can share your videos on any site, blog and social networks like MySpace and Facebook without a hitch. Also, within each video you can use features like Hotspotting which means areas within the video are highlighted for selection to trigger activities such as learning more detail or purchasing a product.

As if all that weren’t enough, PermissionTV provides a development platform for anyone interested in working with online video streaming. They call it the PermissionTV Platform Development Kit (PDK) and it can help developers create their own video players and many other aspects to the video streaming process.

PermissionTV’s white labeling video streaming solution reminds me a lot of what mZinga does with their white labeling social networking solutions. All this means giving companies the chance to create their very own service that they can customize according to their needs and their customers. These types of tools really give their users the power they need to achieve their goals and objectives online.

—Related Articles at Mashable | All That’s New on the Web:PermissionTV Gets $9M in Third Round of FundingPermissionTV Launches Platform Developer Kit, Interactive Video BrandingAppSpace, Zopa Funded, Lycos-Jubii, DoggySnaps, Energizer-MySpace, TubeBattle, Profile SN, Brightcove Partnership

Source:Mashable!

Google Knol, a fairly recent launch in a space populated by the likes of Wikipedia and Mahalo, received considerably bad press in the last several weeks. Farhad Manjoo of Slate and Harry McCracken of Technologizer are just two individuals who’ve torn into the service as of late.

So you might not think it’s worth your while. And substantively, it may not be. But can Wikipedia speak to you? Knol can. Sometimes.

If you browse Knol’s catalogue of user-submitted articles (a number of which duplicate content from Wikipedia, but that’s another item for another day), you will find that audio tracks are few and far between. Yet, when you do encounter one or two or more, as Alex Chitu of Google Operating System discovered, you’ll find that the computer-generated vocal portrayal of test on a page is surprisingly tolerable. Noticeably fake, yes, but not terrible. Here’s an example.

Where the pace of a text-to-speech rendition goes most awry is with abbreviations and acronyms and so forth. Also, the speech system doesn’t make very noticeable distinctions between paragraphs, sections, or chapters. Otherwise, it’s not half-bad.

It’s important to note that the audio is only as good as the text interpreted, both in terms of characters used as well factual content, but Google has, technically speaking, produced something here that could be quite useful down the line. Just as long as graphs and tables aren’t critical to the story.

—Related Articles at Mashable | All That’s New on the Web:Google Knol Launches; More Like Squidoo than WikipediaThe Daily Poll: Is Google Knol a Wikipedia Killer?16 More Years (at least) of Brin, Page, and Schmidt at GoogleThe Daily Poll: Which of Google’s New Products Will Be the Most Successful?Google’s Knol: Evil and Doomed.Google Knol - More Of The SameKnol Deathwatch Day 3: Splog Invasion

If you’ve heard about Berlin, Germany a lot recently, it’s because it’s a growing technology hub in Europe that many people are calling Europe’s next “Silicon Valley.” There are a lot of web companies opening offices all over Berlin, like eBay, Nokia, and Wikimedia, and they already have their own “Facebook,” the social networking site studiVZ.

Berlin is certainly Germany’s internet capital and quickly rising in the ranks as Europe’s top technology-oriented city (behind only London and Paris).

In order to attract American and global companies to Germany, Berlin Partner, a business development agency, partners with companies looking to expand to Europe and offers them reimbursement grants of up to 50% of a company’s investment.

At New York City’s Web 2.0 Expo I sat down with Alexander Kolpin of Berlin Partner to talk about why Berlin is so hot, what exactly is going on in Europe in terms of social media, and how Berlin plans to host their own European Web 2.0 Expo in October. You can watch via the embed below or download the MP4.

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—Related Articles at Mashable | All That’s New on the Web:Web 2.0 Expo Berlin 2007: 100€ Off for Mashable ReadersiPhone to Launch in Germany on T-MobileHas Google Changed the Ad Network Landscape — Again?BuzzDash Platform: Co-Branded PollsPartnersBerlin Talent Campus Partners With YouTube To Show ShortsMeebo Launches Partner Edition Rooms

Source:Mashable!

 A new report was issued today by eMarketer that showed a distinct pattern of growth in video advertising spending over the next five years, with percentage increases year over year between 5% and 12%. In dollars, they predict that video ad spending, which amounts to around $505 million this year, is expected to top $5.8 billion by the year 2013.

Rather than key in on the fact that the amount of money in the pool for producers will be increasing by a factor of fourteen, many editorialists are keying in on the fact that ad rates on a CPM are likely to decrease over time.

There was a single sentence that has been used all over the place (I first saw it at Wired today): 

Part of the pricing for professional-quality online video is based on scarcity.

Master videographer Nalts weighed in with a few pieces of advice for the people in the various parts of the online video equation (viewers, amateur creators, advertisers, online studios, and heritage media nuts). Almost all of it is indispensible, but most interesting to me is the advice he gives for producers: 

It may seem initially upsetting, but of course supply/demand will take care of things. If you attract audiences that marketers want to reach, then you’ll command a decent CPM. If not, then you’ll either have lower CPMs or no ads at all (or worst yet, Google Adwords). And for the love of video, go for non CPM revenue models like sponsorships or custom promotions. There’s a fertile market for advertisers looking to engage without paying hundreds of thousands in ad buys. Again- this has been far more profitable than checks from a YouTube partner program (which are really welcome but I could work at Taco Bell for a better hourly wage).

It’s important to note that Nalts is entrenched in the YouTube culture (but not at all ignorant of the rest of the online video world). According to the eMarketer report (and fleshed out by my own experience), there are many online publishers (Mashable included) that are spending a good deal of effort growing their online video offerings because quite simply, you can monetize it at much higher rates than the rest of the content.

The average video CPM amongst the seven Web publishers surveyed by eMarketer were about three times higher than the average display ad’s value at $43. The rest of the same publishers’ content averaged at about a $15 CPM.

Certainly CPMs will be driven down by lack of scarcity by 2013, which is the reason why now is the time to jump into video (or any time that’s sooner rather than later). The real money in video is the ability to move beyond CPM ads an into brand advertising and other forms of sponsorship. The return for both advertiser and producer tends to be a lot greater, but these relationships are generally only available for those who’ve established a track record and reputation in their content production.

—Related Articles at Mashable | All That’s New on the Web:Google Stock Price Soars at $560.70ABC’s Digital Chief Says Current Non-Hulu Strategy Is Working OKSoundExchange Extends Peace Offering to SaveNetRadio in VainWhy There Will Be Another LG15Two More Guba Executives Leave To Start a Video Site of Their OwnYouTube Delivers Option To View High(er) Definition VideoYouTube Skins - Slide.com’s SkinFlix

Source:Mashable!

While some have slammed Internet audio ads as annoying, some marketers admit that having a bit of sound can be a good way to bring readers’ attention to one ad amongst half a dozen banners. Do you like audio ads? Would you consider putting one on your site or blog? Or would you prefer using an audio ad for your online ad campaign? Below are 9 audio ad networks for websites, podcasts, and beyond.

Tell us how you feel about audio ad networks in the comments.

Podtrac

Podtrac is a popular ad network for podcasters. It basically acts as a sales representative for podcasters to advertisers. It also provides demographic analysis and targeting, third-party measurement, content ratings, planning and purchasing, creative rotation, and multiple advertising delivery options. Podtrac boasts of hundreds of top podcasts in its network including many from the iTunes Top 100 list.

Kiptronic

Kiptronic positions itself as “the first and only provider of downloadable media ad insertion to offer built-in support for DoubleClick’s DART for Publishers and Microsoft’s Atlas Publisher Suite.” It insert audio and video ads on podcasts, which work online as well as offline on iPods, smartphones, Internet-enabled TVs, game consoles, and more.

RadioTail

RadioTail is another podcast advertising network that provides podcast stats through its service called Ripple. Some of the features RadioTail provides to publishers include insertion of ads at specific times during the day, automatic insertion and rotation of ads, customized podcast statistics reporting, and more.

VoloMedia

VoloMedia boasts of some of the largest media houses as its clients, such as MSNBC, Forbes, Newsweek, Fox News, etc. VoloMedia adds ads on video and audio content online and on portable devices while providing statistics on the consumption of media. Ad targeting can be done geographically, demographically, and by time of day. It also provides publisher plugins for the iTunes Media Player and Adobe Flash to capture usage metrics.

VoodooVox

VoodooVox says phone calls are the new page views. What it does is insert short audio ads in phone calls generated by its network, which consists of hundreds of call publishers including calling card companies, 411 services, call centers, radio stations,VOIP providers, and Web applications. Each of these call publishers generate “approximately 300 million calls monthly.” According to VoodooVox, inserting audio ads in phone calls is better for the advertiser than Web banners since the ads are “delivered directly into the ears of the intended audience.”

Audio ads are something we take for granted when we call up a company’s customer service, like our mobile phone operator, bank, satellite TV service provider, etc. But can these ads can be served without interfering much on our phone experience?

NetAudioAds

NetAudioAds claims to have more than 46 million participating webpages and that seems like quite an impressive number to start with. The service’s ads are short 5 second audio ads, known as adlets, that are played whenever a visitor opens a participating webpage. Listeners can be targeted by demographic and by location. NetAudioAds also says that its ads are measurable, and audited and verified by accredited third party auditing companies. You can run the ads on your blog or on your MySpace page as well.

Google Audio Ads

According to Google Audio Ads, “22% of Internet users make purchases after searching for something they learned about on the radio,” and so it might be a nice idea to run a radio ad campaign for your online business or site. Success stories include Gifts.com, which “received 23% more visits and a 34% higher conversion rate in markets which ran radio ads.”

To learn more, simply login to your Google Adwords account and choose the audio ads tab. You can choose to run ads on 1,600 terrestrial FM and AM radio stations across the US, choose the top stations only, or choose by location or time of day. You can also search for a specialist at the Google Ad Creation Marketplace to create a custom radio ad for your campaign. 

TargetSpot

TargetSpot starts off where Google Audio Ads finishes. It lets you run audio ads, video ads, and banners across hundreds of Internet radio stations. You can select stations by location and format, and target your ads by time of the day, region, or specific market. Will running an ad on an Internet radio station be useful? TargetSpot quotes Arbitron and Edison Media Research that “33 million people tune into Internet radio each week, and the at-work audience has grown from 12% to 20% in one year.” Also, “57% of users reported listening to streaming radio while buying at a website, according to RAEL’s Radio and Internet: Powerful Compliments for Advertisers.”

LocalVocal

LocalVocal is an audio ad network that places audio ads across free directory assistance services, radio, Web telephony, IVR systems, and calling cards. Setting up an ad campaign is very easy from the LocalVocal site and can be as low as $5. You can choose to target locally or across the US and pay only when your ad is heard or when you receive leads.

—Related Articles at Mashable | All That’s New on the Web:Xanga Audio LaunchesAmazon Acquires Brilliance Audio To Widen SelectionFacebook Audio NukedPump Audio Hooks Up with Redeye DistributionGetty Images Acquires Pump AudioiStockphoto Adds Royalty-Free Music to the RosterPluggd Launches Audio Search Player on CNET

Swiss-based Dixero has announced that they have raised a new round of funding in the amount of 1.5 million Euros. This brings their total funding to 3 million Euros. Last week Dixero announced the opening of an office in Silicon Valley.

Dixero provides a way to take RSS feeds and convert them to audio so that you can listen to your favorite feeds instead of reading them in a "traditional" sense. Dixero offers three "audio personalities", Lois, Luke and Claire so that you can vary the voice that you hear for different feeds. It can help with differentiation from one feed to the next.

We’ve also reviewed BlogBard and PimpMyNews - two other feed-to-audio services. The key to these services is to make the voice as close to human as possible.

Here’s an example of the Dixero audio conversion - it sounds "computerized" (it looks like you need some sort of xml plugin - IE is asking me to install something for this to play):

Here’s the 20-second pitch Dixero provided earlier this month in Zurich:

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Vocaroo is a new startup currently in alpha-mode which allows you to record audio messages and then share them online. Vocaroo reminds me a lot of another startup we reviewed this week, 12seconds. It’s super simple to record an audio message, just click record and then speak into your microphone.

When you have completed your recording, you can either listen to it or share. The sharing option allows you to embed the recording on another site or share/email the direct link to the audio. I guess you could call Vocaroo the audio Twitter.

I’d like to see more sharing options — direct posting links to Facebook, MySpace, etc. A recording bar would help along with a mic volume level slider. And they say that they are working on a user profile which will allow you to store and manage your audio recordings. I guess right now once you record something, there’s no way to delete it.

I love simple utilities like this - and while I would add some additional functions to it, it’s important to keep it simple for maximum effectiveness. It’s the perfect tool to send a quick love note now to your sweetie.

The Vocaroo team has created a cute help page which includes nuggets like:

• If nuclear war occurs because a Vocaroo message gets lost in the ether, it’s not our fault.
• By using this service you agree that your first born child will belong to us.
• Your personal details won’t be shared, blah blah blah. Your infos are safe with us.
• Cookies: As with most sites on the internet, tasty chocolate chip cookies are stored on your computer containing login information and suchlike. Mmmm.

Here’s an example audio recording (my computer sucks for audio/video so the sound might be off):

http://vocaroo.com/?media=vRX4wt7AXLLGIBdKP

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– Free Online Budgeting Software

Email has been the primary […]SHARETHIS.addEntry({ title: “Topicr: Email, Improved. [Invites]”, url: “http://mashable.com/2008/05/28/topicr/” });

PimpMyNews has announced two product updates this morning: more available blogs and a new Twitter integration. PimpMyNews takes a feed and converts it to audio using a computerized voice. The service allows you to grab your favorite blogs and take them with you into iTunes or mp3.

Over 500,000 audio clips are available and the service has expanded to the top 1,000 blogs. PimpMyNews reports that users from over 149 countries have used the service. You can also now create a twitter message with the audio news clips you are currently listening to.

I’d link to the CenterNetworks page but there appears to be no way to do that. An embed would also be nice. Check out our interview with PimpMyNews founder John Atkinson.

Check out the printer we used for our business cards:

On May 1, Indaba Music (www.indabamusic.com) will launch their advanced online production console with integral new features for their international community of professional and amateur musicians. Using the application, musicians can access, edit and mix their music from any computer in the world. The console will now allow for mix down, where individual tracks submitted by different users are mixed together into a single file, creating a finished song ready for distribution. Other new features include looping, automated pan/volume and the ability to export session tracks and information directly to ProTools, Logic, and all other desktop audio applications. The new console builds upon the features of the existing site console, which include multi-track editing, auditions and session track contributions from multiple users, a chat window for real time communication, and the ability to save multiple mixes of the session.

Where once music creation was bounded by geography and online opportunities scarce, Indaba Music now offers a diverse community and an easy-to-use set of collaborative tools in one place. Indaba is a Zulu word that invokes the spirit of collaboration and community. It refers to a gathering or a forum for sharing ideas, and it embodies concepts that are central to the mission of Indaba Music.

Indaba Music’s additional features include public or private “Sessions” to manage new recording, mixing, or mastering projects together and a recommendation system whereby site members are suggested to other users that they may be interested in working with. As part of building a new marketplace for music creation, Indaba offers the ability to establish terms and payment for work and then to rate the experience of collaborating with other session members, forming a meaningful feedback system.