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New Media News Every Morning

Lycos Cinema relaunches, offers VOD

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Lycos, Inc. has relaunched its cinema service, adding video on demand rentals to its existing ad-supported community. With the new Lycos Cinema, users now have the option of watching and interacting around premium rentals and free VOD ad-supported film and episodic television titles. Lycos’s patent-pending synchronous Watch and Interact technology now enables multiple users to view the same video at the same time with anyone, anywhere, and anytime.

The new Lycos Cinema player utilizes the latest in Flash Media Serving Technology, employing MPEG-4 to deliver H.264 streams, to provide higher video quality and offering better security for content partners.

I almost forgot about Lycos until today when I got the word about this relaunched service. It’s a good service to offer, but a very tight venture to maneuver.

Originally posted on May 5, 2008 @ 2:01 pm

Blinkx partners with Hearst Digital’s Handbag.com to showcase lifestyle content

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Blinkx has forged a partnership with Hearst Digital, the commercial aggregator of all of the National Magazine’s online properties, including Handbag.com. Under the terms of the agreement, Handbag.com’s women’s lifestyle video content is now fully searchable and playable at www.blinkx.com. Leveraging its unique ad platform, blinkx will also place contextually relevant advertising against the footage, and will share resulting advertising revenue with Hearst Digital.

Originally posted on April 30, 2008 @ 10:00 am

Gotuit launches tools for broadband video monetization

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Gotuit announced the launch of Gotuit VideoMarker Pro, an application for publishers to package and present their broadband video libraries with a new level of rich video metadata that drives greater traffic, longer session times, and superior monetization.

Gotuit VideoMarker Pro is used by broadband publishers to author metadata describing each scene within the source video, without requiring any clipping or video editing. Each scene is defined with a Title, Description, Time In, Time Out, Thumbnail, and any Attributes which can be customized by the publisher. Scenes can be referenced in any number of Playlists allowing publishers to offer multiple paths through the library for viewers to personalize their experience.

Video unleashed with Gotuit metadata enjoys increased traffic as publishers can now syndicate much more detailed feeds into popular search engines. With each scene inside each video defined, the amount of indexed information grows by orders of magnitude.

Originally posted on April 29, 2008 @ 11:04 am

ClipBlast unveils Playbox video distribution

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ClipBlast! unveiled ClipBlast! Playbox, a detached, cross-platform viewer frame that can play video from sources across the web. ClipBlast!’s patent-pending Playbox technology gives viewers a universal way to search, discover, watch and interact with video, while offering video content providers new audiences and new revenue opportunities.

Playbox can be launched from a web page by clicking on text and image links. When launched, Playbox “floats” on top of the page, and can be dragged and positioned as the viewer chooses. As Playbox is launched, users can watch, save and send videos; expand to full screen; see other video recommendations; and continue to scroll through web page content while the video plays – without ever leaving the site.

For web site publishers, Playbox provides the freedom and flexibility to deliver video on-site, without being constrained by video players or formats. Publishers of social networks, blogs and message boards can provide a video experience that increases visitor engagement and improves monetization. For content providers, Playbox – in combination with ClipBlast!’s Intelligent Index – provides a seamless platform from which to distribute and syndicate video throughout the web.

Major television producers like CBS, ESPN, BBC, HBO, Comedy Central, AMC, PBS, Turner Classic Movies, IFC and National Geographic stand to benefit from Playbox by gaining broader distribution of their programming, as do video hosting platforms such as YouTube, Blip.tv, Metacafe, Veoh, Daily Motion and ClipSyndicate. These and thousands of other video content providers are automatically Playbox-compliant.

Originally posted on April 28, 2008 @ 10:24 am