Best Western has announced a new YouTube channel and a contest – the Worst Summer Job Ever:

The “Worst Summer Job Ever” contest is a unique way to grant a well-deserved vacation to young folks working in those “offbeat” summer jobs that they will laugh about later. Now through August 17, entrants—from teens to college students—are encouraged to submit short videos of their worst summer job experiences.

The grand prize winner will receive a vacation courtesy of Best Western, including roundtrip airfare for two, a $1,000 Best Western travel card for hotel accommodations and a $100 prepaid gas card.

While the contest sounds like fun, Best Western’s YouTube channel is a great example of bad corporate new media. The videos they’ve posted are uniformly terrible, like this one below:

Best Western’s New Media Epic Fail

According to Best Western, their YouTube channel is aimed at Gen-X and Gen-Y audiences, but they seem confused about what content to put on the site:

Best Western TV will also feature videos from exclusive Best Western partners including NASCAR, Harley-Davidson, the American Automobile Association (AAA) and World Vision, the global child sponsorship organization through which Best Western hotel owners and employees provide monetary donations to pay for food, healthcare and education to children in impoverished communities around the globe.

Here’s the sort of thing that Best Western wants Gen-Xers and Gen-Yers to watch on YouTube:

Yep – annoying advertising. This is exactly the sort of thing people go to YouTube to avoid.

As a result, they’ve racked up a whopping 80 views in three weeks.

If Gen-Xers and Gen-Yers wanted to watch Best Western ads, they’d be watching old movies on late-night TV, not surfing YouTube.

This isn’t a new media plan – it’s shoveling content onto YouTube and undermining your brand in the process.

The Olympics are traditionally one of the biggest events in television, and the 2008 Beijing Olympics is sure to carry on this tradition.

However, people’s attention is moving from broadcast television to on-demand Internet television. The Olympics, with all the restrictions it has placed on Internet viewers, risks losing the attention of the online audience.

Here are some of the many restrictions that you face if you want to follow the Olympics online:

• The Olympics and its partners are restricting what you can watch online – the Olympic’s media partners, like NBC, are restricting what you can watch online, because they make more money on broadcast TV than online TV.
• The Olympics and its partners restrict where you can watch – For example, there’s a YouTube Olympic channel, but you’re probably banned from watching it, based on where you live.
• The Olympics and its partners restrict how you can watch – NBC has a snazzy Beijing Olympics site, but it’s being used as a tool to push Microsoft’s Silverlight technology. That means you’ll probably have to install new software to be able to use the site. Otherwise, you’ll see something like this:
  
• The Olympics and its partners restrict who you can watch – the BBC, CBC and others have extensive coverage, but you probably can’t watch it because of exclusive media deals.
• The Olympics has banned new media style coverage – back in February, we reported that the Olympics had banned podcasting, video podcasting and other forms of citizen media from the 2008 Beijing Olympics. I’d like to subscribe to my favorite athletes and get coverage of the event in their voices – but that’s going to have to wait for a future Olympiad.

There are ways around many of these limitations, using proxies for foreign sites, for example. Silicon Valley Insider has a good rundown of these options, which they characterize as “convoluted.” Most people will watch something else onine, instead.

This is a premier international event, but the Olympics has severely handicapped coverage on the world’s international network – the Internet.

RawVoice‘s Angelo Mandato has released a new free WordPress plug-in designed to help you promote your blog and podcast.

Subscribe Sidebar displays subscription icons with links in the WordPress sidebar. The plugin detects the presence of the Podpress podcasting plug-in and can display the Podpress podcast feed, if configured.

Subscribe Sidebar options:

• RSS 2 Feed
• Atom Feed
• Podpress podcast Feed
• Add to Google Reader/Homepage
• Add to My Yahoo
• Add to iTunes
• Add to Zune
• Follow on Twitter

According to the latest MusicWatch consumer surveys from The NPD Group, Apple is again the top music retailer in the US.

The five leading music retailers in the U.S. for the first half of 2008 (January through June, based on purchases of CDs and a-la-carte digital music downloads) are:

1. iTunes
2. Wal-Mart (Walmart, Walmart.com, Walmart Music Downloads)
3. Best Buy (Best Buy, Bestbuy.com, Best Buy Digital Music Store)
4. Amazon (Amazon.com, AmazonMP3.com)
5. Target (Target and Target.com)

NPD’s data reflects the ongoing consumer shift from physical CDs to digital music, as iTunes maintained their leadership position reached earlier this year. Amazon rose from fifth place to fourth primarily for two reasons: first, online CD sales have seen less erosion than CD sales at brick-and-mortar stores; and second, Amazon launched its digital music store, Amazon.mp3, last year.

“We expect Apple will consolidate its lead in the retail music market, as CD sales continue to slow,” said Russ Crupnick, entertainment industry analyst for The NPD Group. “Amazon’s CD buyers tend to be older, so they haven’t abandoned the CD format to the extent seen in the average music buyer. Plus Amazon’s successful introduction of its digital download store will help the company improve its position in the future.”

Rocketboom has announced a big distribution and advertising deal with Sony Pictures, giving the daily video blog exposure and promotion across all of Sony’s IP universe: via PS/3, Bravia TV and Crackle.

We talked with Rocketboom creator Andrew Michael Baron, shown right with host Joanne Colan, about the deal.

“Over the past couple of years, for Rocketboom, we have wondered whether to consider taking on outside investment, outright sale, or some other means of monetizing the brand,” explains Baron. “Part of the terms of the Sony deal are that Sony pays Rocketboom up front, and Rocketboom makes more if Sony happens to make more as a result of their affiliation with us.”

Baron tempers his excitement over the announcement with some concerns. “Of course you worry about the culture class, the big vs small.”

Specifics On The Sony Deal

“Sony will handle all our advertising – if you want to advertise with Rocketboom, talk to Sony. It’s a ‘7-figure’ deal that will last ‘for a couple of years, most likely’,” explains Baron. “Sony sees our vision and knows how we want to grow Rocketboom.”

“This takes care of the whole advertising question. We tried and [were not entirely happy with] BlipTV, Federated Media, the do-it-yourself route…” explains Baron. “Our expertise is in the studio and now we can focus on that.”

Andrew says he has some benchmarks in place, so that “if Sony doesn’t end up performing, RB can back out of the dea.l”

Why wait so long to partner with big business?

The split between former Rocketboom host Amanda Congdon and Baron, back in summer 2006, was only resolved earlier this year, according to Baron. Until this was resolved, Rocketboom could not take on investors, enter into partnerships, nor look at acquisitions.

However, says Baron, “It gave me the opportunity to sit back and observe” what was going on in the industry, and look at which business models and which partnerships and which acquisitions worked… and which ones did not.

“Others have the idea right, to seize the opportunity to start new businesses, make new partnerships, forge new networks. It helps to pave the way and create the space, which helps to support other creators who might not be as savvy…”

“Other people [like Next New Networks with their $25million investment] grew too big, too quickly. This business [internet media] is not Tech 2.0. You don’t have to race to be first.”

“Their problem was building something too early, that was too big, and too scattered,” adds Baron. “They had okay stuff — a cartoon show, and a car show, and a show about making special effects. But you can’t leverage the audience from any one of those to watch any of the others. Creating good content can be so expensive, and the ad revenue to support that wasn’t there yet. It was too early.”

Make magazine has announced a new project a new national public television series, Make: television, coming in January, 2009, and is looking for Makers to submit projects to be featured on the show:

Each week, Make: television will showcase the best projects from Makers who submit their videos, a segment of the show we call Maker Channel.

This segment features the videos made by Makers themselves – a showcase of the “best of the best” of YouTube-style videos. We think this is a great way to see the people behind the projects and we feel it’s important to give a little control of the show back to the viewer. To do this, we need your help!

If you’ve built something inspired, useful, imaginative, ingenious, or just plain clever, share your genius with the world. Produce a one to three minute long video that shows the best thing that you’ve made and send it to us. If it’s really good, we’ll use it on Maker Channel and you’ll revel in glory and admiration, plus you’ll receive a gift certificate to the Maker Shed and a subscription to Make: magazine.

This looks like this will be an interesting Internet media/public television hybrid.

Details at the MAKE: Television & project submissions page.

This is an example of the work of video vigilante Jimmy Justice, a video blogger and “cop-arazzi” that films New York law enforcement officers breaking the law and then posts his films online.

Justice is featured in a Washington Post article that looks at the effects omnipresent video cameras are having on law enforcement.

Justice is using in-your-face citizen media as a tool to crusade against what he sees as the city’s double standard on parking; police rigidly enforce traffic rules while routinely breaking them.

“I’m using a video camera as a weapon,” explains Justice. “I believe a video does not lie.”

Justice challenges all residents of New York to be ready for action.

“I think everyone should get a video camera. Or, if you have to get a new cellphone, get one with a video function.” If you catch law enforcement officers breaking the law, “send it in to your local authorities. Or post it on YouTube or other video-sharing sites.”

This video demos VisionAire – new technology that lets you interact with projections, Minority Report-style.

While this is just a demo, it’s easy to see how this concept will change computing, presentations and videos. Video podcasters doing new presentations, for example, could directly interact with their visuals, both streamlining the production process and making it more visually interesting for viewers.

The technology, from digital design firm Obscura Digital, uses a multi-touch framework that senses where your hands are and combines that with a Musion 3D holographic presentation system.

Kaltura, a company that creates open source Internet video software, has released an Interactive Video Plugin for WordPress.

Features:

• Embed videos, photos, sounds and remixes to any blog post.
• Edit and remix videos using an online full-featured video editor.
• Easily import video, photos, audio etc from across the web with upload/import tool.
• Allow readers and subscribers to add video and audio comments.
• Manage and track interactive videos through the management console
• Complete administrative capabilities – you decide who can add and edit videos
• Integration to the post wyswyg editor.
• Installation takes 4 steps and a few minutes.

Kaltura requires WordPress 2.5 or higher.

At the Digital Watch blog, Steven Lin has posted an interesting article looking at Why Podcasting Never Killed the Radio Star in China:

Three years ago, an article from Time magazine changed my life. “Will Podcasting Kill the Radio Star?”The idea of a automatically-downloaded multi-media feed changing the new media landscape blew my mind. In the evening of December 2004, I was only a college student.

As a teenager who speaks with strong Southern Chinese accent, I could have never imagined that some day tens of thousands of people would listen to audio programs produced me.

Six months later, Antiwave (??) was launched by my friend Randy Jiang and me. Randy had been a DJ for Tianjin Radio Station for eight years and still has countless fans in the city. Even so, he was shocked by the number of unique visitors from all over the world to this Chinese podcast in the Day 1 – more than 10,000.

In the same year, Antiwave won the Global Best Podcast award from Deutsche Welle. And the logo with a reversed “?” (anti-) character has been printed on lots of newspapers, magazines, and TV networks – from Phoenix TV, CCTV to BBC and CNN. Antiwave has been a media babe for years and made a successful business cooperation with Cisco for its global “Human Network” campaign.

But you know what, even being called as a “podcast pioneer”, I have to admit, podcasting has never successfully killed a radio star in China. Ladies and gentlemen, in fact, it’s somewhere far from the goal.

The inconvenient truth: Antiwave is still the only Chinese podcast people can remember even three years after its debut.

Lin goes on to offer four reasons why he thinks podcasting hasn’t taken off in China as he expected: