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Pixelodeon celebrates indie artists and showcases online video creators

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pixelodeon.jpgPixelodeon announced speakers, curators, and a line-up of over 300 videos for its first annual screening festival to be held at the American Film Institute in Los Angeles, California on June 9-10. The event will feature keynote addresses from speakers bridging the divide between traditional media and new media, and those dealing with issues such as copyright and file sharing. Pixelodeon will also include a “DIY Theater” programmed by the public using the website wiki.

Two dozen curators, including notable new media content creators Amanda Congdon of ABC News, Veronica Belmont of C|Net, and Bre Pettis of Make Magazine, selected videos from the Internet to illustrate themes for one-hour theater screenings starting at 12pm until 6pm each day. Themes include “Mashups and Remixed Video,” “Conversations on YouTube,” and “The Politics of Technology.” Only videos that were created for the Internet were included in the selections and over two dozen countries are represented.

Speakers include Rob Schrab and Dan Harmon from Acceptable.TV, Fred Seibert from Frederator Studios, Kent Nichols and Douglas Sarine from Ask a Ninja, and Jon Phillips from Creative Commons discussing their personal views about the way the Internet has empowered independent artists and changed the landscape of media.

“Pixelodeon is here to bridge the gap between independent online creators and traditional media here in Hollywood,” said Pixelodeon co-founder Ryanne Hodson. “The current media landscape is changing so fast that these up and coming creators have a chance to help define its new foundations.” Other co-founders are new media content producers Jay Dedman, Zadi Diaz, Irina Slutsky, and Steve Woolf.

Originally posted on May 25, 2007 @ 5:00 pm

GasBuddy to hit 4 million visitors this year

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gasbuddy.jpg From a big nobody in 2000, Internet site monitoring daily gasoline prices with the help of volunteers called GasBuddy is poised to break a record of 4 million visitors this year. As the price of gasoline gets higher so is the number of visitors of gasoline-monitoring Web sites, including its competitor GasPriceWatch.

GasBuddy allegedly monitors 900,000 gas stations with the help of several thousands of registered volunteers. Knowing that most retailers increase their prices at least twice a day, the growth of these Internet sites signals the heightened concern of consumers over gasoline products.

To date, the national average price of unleaded gas is $3.22, a 13% increase from last year’s $2.86 average.

Nevertheless, some observers believe the system is far from perfect for it mainly relies on volunteers. In some cases, people can easily send bogus reports of low, low prices and mislead vigilant consumers.

According to Petroleum Marketers Association of America president Dan Gilligan, the system is a good idea but warned consumers to remember that if they drive more than 10 miles to save a nickel, they are losing money. He also said there’s no guarantee the price will be the same when they arrive.

For travelers, they simply need to send a message to [email protected] together with their Zip code and GasBuddy will quickly pinpoint the nearest, cheapest stations.

Originally posted on May 25, 2007 @ 2:42 am

Internet Pornography a G8 Priority

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g8.jpg The powerful Group of Eight (G8) shows growing concern over Internet pornography, citing that government authorities alone will not win this crucial battle.

In this regard, G8 is currently coordinating with Interpol for some time now to maximize the capabilities of its International Child Sexual Exploitation Image Database. So far, it contains more than half million images of sexually exploited children and has saved more than 500 children from sexual abuse worldwide.

“Private sector entities including Internet Service Providers, information technology professionals and financial institutions … the media, parents and educators, should be encouraged to consider what role they could play in the fight,” said a statement from G8 interior and justice ministers.

G8 is composed of Germany, the United States, Britain, France, Italy, Canada, Japan and Russia.

Originally posted on May 24, 2007 @ 12:41 pm

Facebook is now open

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facebook.jpgFacebook announced that it is opening up its platform to third-party software developers. From hereon, developers can create applications for Facebook users and even allow companies to open retail services inside, get advertisers, and take home everything.

“You can serve ads… or if you don;t want to advertise, you can just sell something. You keep all the revenue,” Mark Zuckerberg, Facebook CEO said.

The company also announced the debut of Facebook/f8, a platform that allows anyone to build applications for social computing. Beginning tonight night, Facebook said that users will be able to equip their profiles with 65 new services.

The move is seen as Facebook’s attempt to eat into MySpace territory. According to Hitwise, MySpace continued to dominate the social networking category in April 2007, with 79.7 percent of category visits. Following MySpace was Facebook with 11.47 percent of visits and Bebo with 1.28 percent of category visits. U.S. visits to MySpace increased by 70 percent from April 2006 to April 2007, while visits to Facebook were up 126 percent and visits to Bebo up 184 percent in that period.

Originally posted on May 24, 2007 @ 9:27 pm

CBS partners with community sites, social application providers

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cbs.jpgCBS Interactive announced that it is partnering with leading community-building websites and social application providers to add greater user functionality to the CBS Audience Network. The announcement includes deals with new companies as well as expanded relationships with existing CBS Audience Network partners. Through these online properties and social application providers, users can easily incorporate CBS clips into their profiles, websites, blogs, widgets, wikis, and community pages. This enables them to discover and personalize CBS content and to use it to communicate with others. At the same time, CBS gains promotional value online while learning about its audience.

“Today, we are taking the CBS Audience Network directly to the user,” said Quincy Smith, President, CBS Interactive. “In launching the CBS Audience Network we solidified our position as the most widely distributed professional content provider on the Web thanks to our great video distribution partners. We now want to empower our audience to be creative and deepen their experience with our content by allowing them to share and embed CBS-provided clips to their blogs, wikis, widgets, community sites and whatever else gets thrown our way. We are delighted to have so many quality partners — established and start ups — helping to bring CBS content to the online community.”

New online partners adding increased functionality to CBS Audience Network include: Automattic, Clearspring, DAVE Networks, Goowy Media, Meebo, MeeVee, MuseStorm, Ning, RockYou!, Slide, VideoEgg, Voxant, and vSocial. [Read more…]

Originally posted on May 24, 2007 @ 4:28 pm