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Viacom Gets Tough With YouTube
Media giants Viacom International have finally lost patience with YouTube and demanded that they remove more than 100,000 of their video clips that have been posted up without permission.
The company – whose holdings include Paramount Pictures, MTV Networks, DreamWorks and Comedy Central – have calculated that YouTube has served up over 1.2 billion streams of its copyrighted video content.
As a result, Viacom have got out their big pointy DMCA stick and accused Google-owned YouTube of knowingly profiting from material stolen from them, as well as repeatedly breaking promises to filter out copyrighted works.
In a statement, a clearly miffed Viacom said: “Virtually every other distributor has acknowledged the fair value of entertainment content and has taken deliberate steps to concluding agreements with content providers.”
“YouTube and Google retain all of the revenue generated from this practice, without extending fair compensation to the people who have expended all of the effort and cost to create it.”
Google have said that they’ll get the material down tout de suite, although not without adding a valedictory grumble, commenting, “It is unfortunate that Viacom will no longer be able to benefit from YouTube’s passionate audience which has helped to promote many of Viacom’s shows.”
Removing Viacom’s rich portfolio of popular clips may certainly result in loss of revenue for YouTube, but some media analysts reckon it could be a lose-lose situation all round, as both parties risk naffing off consumers.
Viacom has said that although it’s still down with the idea of distributing clips online via YouTube, it’ll only do so via, “a fair and authorised distribution model.”
6 February, 2007
Giant Graphic For Australian Google Maps
A few bods in Australia got together after hearing that the Google Maps satellite which it takes images from was going to be passing over Sydney.
Their mission? To create a giant graphic, so it would be picked up and be viewable on Google Maps.
It’s not the first time anyone has thought of the idea of course (we’ve all done this at Digital-Lifestyles towers), but these characters actually got off their behinds and did it.
They started at 4am, pegging 2,500 sheets of paper in the grass of a park to form a giant eye – the pun being that Australia was also watching the world.
It appeared on the tech discussion board Slashdot, and subsequently was hit with a ton of comments accusing them of “spamming Google Maps.” You’ll know that we hate spam (natch), but we fail to see why some of the commenters are getting so irate.
As one of the comments pointed out, they don’t really have to wait for the map to appear on Google Maps – they’ve gained loads of it from the stunt alone.
Read more on their posting about it.
29 January, 2007
YouTube To Share Ad Revenue With Uploaders
Filmmakers who upload their own movies on to the video-sharing website YouTube will soon be able to enjoy some financial rewards for their efforts.
In an interview with the BBC, YouTube founder Chad Hurley announced that the company was working on a revenue-sharing mechanism designed to “reward creativity”.
Set to start rolling out in a couple of months, the deal would raise revenue to reward creative camcorder types via a mixture of adverts and short clips slipped in at the beginning of a clip.

Only folks who own the full copyright of the videos can expect to receive a wedge of the moolah, with YouTube introducing the advertising technology incrementally.
Somerfield Staff Antics on YouTube
Elsewhere, UK supermarket chain Somerfield has launched an inquiry after video clips of their staff mucking about turned up on YouTube.
Various staff members are seen larking about while wearing the store’s uniform, including a break dancing shelf stacker, an “extreme floor cleaner” crashing into a wall and a nutter hurtling down a car park slope on a shopping trolley.

Somerfield has said that they are looking into the incidents, sternly adding that they will, “take any necessary action where appropriate.”
Of course, all they’ve really done is helped publicise the clips for everyone else to enjoy – and reminded us of our equally daft antics in previous crap jobs.
Somerfield YouTube videos
29 January, 2007
Google On Course For Half Of The US Search Market
A new survey has seen Google continuing to exert its dominance on the US web search market, grabbing a huge 47.4 per cent of the sector, up 0.4 per cent during December.
Yahoo, ranked number two, also enjoyed an increase of 0.3 per cent over the same period, giving them a 28.5 per cent market share.
The figures from web audience measurement company comScore Networks revealed bad news for the third placed search engine, Microsoft, whose share dipped by 0.5 to give them just 10.5 per cent of US web searches.
Also heading downwards was InterActiveCorp’s Ask.com search engine, slipping 0.1 per cent to 5.4 per cent.
Google’s rise in the world’s largest internet market seems unstoppable, with the company notching up gains in 16 of the last 17 months.
With an estimated 6.7 billion searches by US web users in December – up one per cent from November – potential advertising revenues are immense, proving ample financial impetus for the search engine giants to embark on endless consumer-wooing feature updates for their services.
The overall US search market has ballooned by 30 per cent since December of 2005, with comScore reporting that consumers performed 3.2 billion searches on Google sites and 1.9 billion searches on Yahoo!
ComScore
[From Reuters]
16 January, 2007
Google Zeitgeist 2006 – Social Software Rules
Google have just released their top searches in 2006 for their normal search and news service.
Social software rules the roost in their standard search with BeBo beating MySpace and video sharing sites also doing very well.
We find it amazing that people use search engines to search for a site, when all they needed to do was to type .com after it to gain direct access to the site, but ho, hum. The only comfort that we can draw from this is that at least people aren’t entering in the whole domain for the search, as many used to.
What are we to think of the top search in the news – Paris Hilton? Who knows, and we guess we can’t ask her as she doesn’t call any more, after that Oscars party at Soho House in LA.
Here’s the full list …
Google.com – Top Searches in 2006
1. bebo
2. myspace
3. world cup
4. metacafe
5. radioblog
6. wikipedia
7. video
8. rebelde
9. mininova
10. wiki
Google News – Top Searches in 2006
1. paris hilton
2. orlando bloom
3. cancer
4. podcasting
5. hurricane katrina
6. bankruptcy
7. martina hingis
8. autism
9. 2006 nfl draft
10. celebrity big brother 2006
Google Zeitgeist
19 December, 2006
gPhone: Google/Orange Phone Set To Take On Apple iPhone?
According to a report in yesterday’s Observer, Google has been cosying up to mobile giants Orange with a multi-billion-dollar plan to knock out a ‘Google phone,’ offering easy Web searches on the move.
The branded Google phone is expected to be manufactured by the Taiwanese smartphone/PDA makers, HTC, and come with a screen similar in size to a video iPod.
The phone will come with optimized Google software designed to speed up the notoriously cumbersome task of surfing and searching the Web on a handheld device, and offer mobile versions of Google applications such as Google Earth, Gmail and Google Docs & Spreadsheets.
Palm Treo users will already be familiar with some of these programs with the superb Google Maps for Treo application scoring full marks in our recent review.
The Observer reported that the phone could access Google’s databases to offer a wealth of location-based searches, including personalised listings of local cinemas, restaurants and other amenities, and maps and images from Google Earth.
Rumours of the Google/Orange partnership come as expectations of an Apple iPhone announcement are reaching fever pitch, with one Website suggesting that the leaking of the story could just be a cunning ruse to steal the thunder of an imminent Apple announcement.
The future for Orange could soon be Google in your pocket (Observer)
18 December, 2006
Blogger Beta Bums Off Brixton Bloggee
Now, we understand that when you agree to install a beta product, you can expect a few glitches.
Maybe a few features won’t work, maybe a few functions won’t do what you expect, or maybe you’ll get the odd error or two.
When it’s a Google beta – a company whose innovative beta programs are often more polished than the final versions of some software products – you can usually feel pretty sure that they’re not going to foist some unfinished rubbish on you.
Well, at least that’s what we thought before trying out their dreadful Blogger beta ‘upgrade.’
Seduced by the shiny new features bigged up on the Blogger homepage, we foolishly elected to move over to the new Blogger Beta and have been struggling with it ever since.
Immediately, we were plagued with time outs, and that ruddy annoying animated exclamation mark icon that appears when Blogger’s uploading became a near permanent fixture on our screen.
Trying to upload a simple blog post seemed an impossible task, with this error being repeatedly thrown up: “Your Publish is Taking Longer than Expected. To continue waiting for it to finish, click here.”
Settings were lost. Links stopped working. The archive seemed to have disappeared altogether as all links gave ‘404’ errors (fortunately we found that the archived pages were still there, but the links had all been incorrectly set).
After several hour of fiddling about, we’ve only just got the blog working again and we’re not entirely sure how. You can see it here (or at least we hope you can).
Google’s perpetual betas
After I had a late night whinge on the urban75 bulletin board, a poster sagely observed about Google’s beta policy:
“The worst thing is that they keep their products in beta for so long. Meaning you’re never quite sure if it’s a fully working product and you can’t complain when it goes wrong. It’s a very ‘google’ thing to do too, they practically invented the idea of the never-ending beta program.”
In our experience, it felt like we were dealing with an alpha product and seeing as the process is one way, once you move to Blogger Beta you can’t switch back.
We’re sure that in the end Google will produce a nicely polished update to Blogger that consumers will love, but for now we strongly advise users to stick to the old version.
After all, life’s too short to be staring at a “Your Publish is Taking Longer than Expected” screen.
Blogger Help Group (you’ll need this)
14 November, 2006
Google: Mobile Phones Should Be Free
Google chief executive, Eric Schmidt, has chatted to Reuters about his thoughts on mobile phones, and how their ownership and usage should be free, supported of course by advertising. In his words “It just makes sense that subsidies should increase” as advertising rises on mobile phones.
He also told Reuters
Google is experimenting with delivering text, brand-image and video ads onto small-screen mobile phones. It is enjoying early success in its strategy to win phone network allies in Japan, where TV viewing and shopping on phones is advanced.
This follows the release of their second application designed specifically for mobile devices, available outside the US as well.
While hypothesising about the possible, Schmidt brought in a little reality by adding that he wasn’t aware of any effort by partners such as phone makers Nokia or Motorola or mobile operators like Vodafone to make such a radical move.
Google is finding it harder to disguise that their search business is just a ruse – they are, as we’ve said for a long time, an advertising company.
They’ve already announced solid plans to move their advertising to printed newspapers, and with this recent comment, making it clear that they’ll be moving the advertising to mobile phones as well.
Reuters coverage
13 November, 2006
Helio Drift Gets Google Maps With GPS
Google Maps for Mobile now officially supports GPS location information when used with mobile phones … well at least one of them at the moment, the Helio Drift.
We’ve been covering running Google Maps/Local on mobiles for about a year since we heard about Cristian Streng discovering that GPS was supported within its program code, back in November 2005.
Helio would broadly be called a mobile phone operator – but they specifically request, “Don’t call us a phone company”. Helio is a joint venture between SK Telecom (South Korean telco) and Earthlink (US ISP) that doesn’t have their own network, but are a 3G Mobile Virtual Network Operator (MVNO), utilising other networks. Given Koreas long lead in mobile and specifically digital networks, it’s a pretty interesting company.
Having your position automatically fed in to a mapping application brings in considerable advantages to any mapping application. When you’re in an unfamiliar city, you don’t have to struggle to find out where you actually are, then try to punch it into your phone. Then, as you make your way to your destination, your phone position is updated, giving you the assurance that you’re not walking in the opposite direction.
Other advantages for Google including the users of the service writing/blogging about the location they are in – generating more content for Google, but importantly information that is anchored to a place/location.
Google official application isn’t the only other option. There are other that currently work with GPS. MGMaps support many external GPS devices over bluetooth, and internal GPS on some phones.
It would be interesting to see what the deal between Google and Helio is, as it appears that Helio have an exclusive on this offering … at last for a while.
Helio
10 November, 2006
Camrivox First To Support Google Talk In VoIP Hardware
Camrivox are claiming to be the first company to integrate Google’s Gtalk into hardware-based VoIP products, making them the first device that supports Google Talk without a PC.
The equipment lets you setup to work with both a SIP account, as you’d expect, and a GTalk account at the same time. These features are across the whole range of Terminal Adaptors as well as their new handset, the Flexor 500 IP phone.
Commenting on the difference between Skype and GTalk, he points out that GTalk publish their information, a world away from the closed approach of Skype.
The big advantage of the Camrivox approach is to make their kit zero-configuration at the users end. The whole thing can be setup and changed simply by the operator or can be carried out by Camrivox on their behalf.
They have two TA’s, the 151 (pictured) which has support for both phone line (PSTN) and Ethernet (VoIP), letting the user chose between the ‘traditional’ phone line and VoIP. The 201 only supports VoIP.
Analysis
The GTalk inclusion is an interesting move for Camrivox. The world of VoIP is becoming increasingly crowded, so having your company’s voice heard (no pun intended), is also difficult. By implementing the GTalk support Camrivox is clearly hoping to hitch a ride on the Google coat tails and with the good looking kit that they have, it’s likely to catch peoples eyes.
GTalk hasn’t really set the VoIP world alight, with the clear current winner being Skype. That’s not to say that GTalk isn’t important, or that it won’t achieve a more significant position. The biggest winner GTalk has got is its integration into other Google products, such as its inclusion in GMail. Also as more people sign up for Google services they’ll automatically be signed up for GTalk.
Camrivox appear keen on integration with other products too, given they have just announced a deal with SalesForce.com. The integration will bring up callers information up when a VoIP call comes in via their kit.
Camrivox
8 November, 2006