The Yahoo! Video Blog has announced a variety of updates to the Yahoo! Video site.
Here’s what’s new:

• Widescreen videos: Yahoo! Video supports a 16:9 cinematastic player that‚Äôs far ahead of what most sites are offering. And the video looks great.
• More content: Yahoo! Video now aggregates the whole spectrum of video found throughout Yahoo!, including music, movies, TV, news and sports.
• Bigger files: The max file size has been raised to 150 megabytes, so you can upload longer or higher quality video.
• An expanded browsing experience: Discover more video through networks, playlists, and related videos.
• More sharing: Embed individual videos on your blog or site, or create your own curated video experience with embeddable playlists.
• More in-depth profiles: Your profile page now says a lot more about you. Pick your own nickname, fill the page with your favorite playlists and videos, add contacts and fans, and read and write comments.

Video snacking – watching short, on demand Internet video over your lunch hour.

Lunch Is The New Prime Time

Nielsen has released new research that identifies “video snacking” as a real trend.

Internet video viewing peaks during lunchtime hours on weekdays:

• Streaming activity at the top network TV Web sites peaks during the weekday lunchtime hours of 12 p.m. ‚Äì 2 p.m.
• At consumer generated media Web sites, the most popular time for viewing was during late night hours on the weekend, between 11 p.m. and 6 a.m.

Mainstream Television Is The Preferred Video Snack

“These results indicate that the largest appetite for streaming broadcast content is during the noontime hours, when viewers take a break from work to catch up on the shows they enjoy,” said Pond. “Primetime visitors to network Web sites primarily enhance their TV viewing experience with features like online voting, Web-only promotions and other program specific content, although there is some interest in streaming network content during the evening as well.”

While Nielsen attributes the fact that people prefer mainstream TV for video snacking to the enhanced TV viewing experience, there’s a better explanation: a lot of companies block YouTube from their networks, and people don’t want to get caught watching Chris Crocker, Perez Hilton or Hot For Words at their desks.

A new report from Nielsen on Internet video habits reveals gender differences in Internet video viewing: men like it short and sweet (YouTube), while women like to take their time and enjoy longer shows (network sites).

Women Watch More Network TV Online; Men Watch More Consumer-Generated Media

Video streams at broadcast network TV Web sites were nearly two times more likely to be viewed by women age 18-34 than men, who accounted for 22 percent and 12 percent of streams, respectively.

For the top four Consumer Generated Media Web sites, streams were two and a half times more likely to be viewed by men 18-34 than women, who accounted for 27 percent and 11 percent of streams, respectively.

It’s too early to know if this represents a long-term trend, or if this is more a reflection of the fact that so many podcasts and YouTube videos primarily target mens’ interests.

Forgive the pun, but we have a love/hate relationship with February 14. For some people, Valentine’s Day it is an agonizing “holiday” of choosing the right romantic gift, that conveys the right message.

It can be even more traumatic to see everyone around you starry-eyed with love, when you find yourself, through circumstance or choice, alone on Valentine’s Day.

And the co opting of an ancient pagan holiday (or the saint’s day of an ancient Christian martyr, depending on your POV) as one more occasion to feed the consumption economy, and hop up our kids on sugar…. well it just makes some of us cranky.

And why do we reserve all this sugar and lingerie for just one day? Shouldn’t we make a point of expressing our love and appreciation all year long?

So, with that half-cynical, half-romantic mindset, we bring you a smattering of the thousands of Valentine-related podcasts that were published this week. Here’s some of the things that caught our attention:

• For a short, simple sonnet by the poet Edna St. Vincent Millay, check out “What Lips My Lips Have Kissed,” a live reading by Cyn.
• Podshow podsafe music maven Anji Bee has made a Valentine Special edition of her Chillcast, “a 60 minute mix of songs in the key of love.”
• For something distinctly less romantic and chilled, Truthseekerscast has the first of a two part frank discussion of sex (and about our societal attitudes toward sex) that, according to host Dani Cutler, “could cause blindness and hairy palms.” Definitely not safe for work, nor for listening with your offspring.
• The lifestyle podcast network, Personal Life Media focuses on personal relationships all year ’round, and their Valentine-time offerings maintain that focus. Hard to single out just a few, but the spicy titles include “On the Minds of Men: Sparking Up Your Love Life,” and “Tantra and Kama Sutra: The Heart and Breath of Tantra.”
• In Valentine video offerings, environmental video podcast ZapRoot! has a funny/practical/naughty Valentine’s Day Special, in which recommendations range from fair trade chocolate and eco-tourist hotels, to recycled-rubber and pthalate-free sex toys and eco-porn (which I hadn’t previously known existed!).Comedy video creators PandaSmash have another poetic Valentine offering, “The Break Up Poem,” in which they highlight the differences among sonnets, limericks, haiku, beatnik poetry, slam and feminist poetry. Pretty silly.

Did you create a Valentine-themed podcast? An anti-Valentine-themed podcast? Please let us know in the comments.

And Happy Valentine’s Day.

People working in new media are starting to try out the Apple TV update, and most are giving it rave reviews.

We published an in-depth Apple TV review and walkthrough yesterday, and gave Apple TV 2 a “B”. We like the new movie features, but the podcast support is confusing and makes it hard to find and watch video podcasts.
We may tough to please, though, because many podcasters are giving the device unqualified praise:

• Indiefeed publisher and ADM head Chris MacDonald says “Apple TV may very well revolutionize the way we consume (and track!!) downloadable RSS media.”
• ScreenCastsOnline‘s Don McAllister calls Apple TV 2 a “game changer”. “Apple TV Take 2 removes the need for the convoluted and confusing subscription mechanism for accessing podcast content. Apple TV Take 2 transforms podcasting into an on demand streaming content delivery service in one fell swoop. If you thought Podcasts were cool before, Apple TV Take 2 has just raised the bar and could be a major turning point for independent content producers.”
• Podcasting pioneer and author Paul Colligan calls Apple TV 2 a “game changer”, too. “With this gorgeous box, I can watch whatever Podcast I want (as long as it is in the iTunes directory) and the word subscription isn‚Äôt anywhere to be found. Apple TV is now a video on demand service where you simply pick your favorite Podcasts and play and/or download them on demand.”
• Geek Brief‘s Cali Lewis calls Apple TV “a gift to podcasters and our viewers and listeners. With this update, Apple accomplished something they‚Äôll probably never promote. They created the closest thing I‚Äôve seen to a grandmother computer.”

Have you tried out the new Apple TV? What do you think of it?

According to a new new NYU research report – Does Chatter Matter? – user-generated content, including blogs and social networking sites, should be considered an important tool for promoting music and predicting sales.

Researchers looked at the usefulness of user-generated content in predicting sales in the music industry. They tracked the changes in online chatter for a sample of 108 albums for four weeks before and after their release dates.

They found:

• the volume of blog posts about an album is positively correlated with future sales
• greater increases in an artist‚Äôs Myspace friends week over week have a weaker correlation to higher future sales
• traditional factors are still relevant ‚Äì albums released by major labels and albums with a number of reviews from mainstream sources like Rolling Stone also tended to have higher future sales

“The results of this study suggest that user-generated content should be considered seriously by record labels,” note the report authors.

This echoes something we’ve said for several years: the music industry should take audio podcasts and other user-generated content seriously. The people creating podcasts other Internet media are some of music’s biggest fans and are influencers, too.

In other words, a little love for podcasters could go a long way.

Video blog/video conversation site Seesmic is announcing tomorrow that it has raised $6 million in funding.

The investment is lead by Atomico Рan investment group founded by Niklas Zennström and Janus Friis. The complete list of investors is:

• Michael Arrington – Founder, TechCrunch
• Steve Case – Co-Founder and former CEO and Chairman, AOL
• Jeff Clavier – Managing Partner, SoftTech VC
• Ron Conway – Early investor, Google
• Steve Garfield – Pioneering video blogger
• Dan Gillmor – Director, Knight Center for Digital Media Entrepreneurship
• Reid Hoffman – Founder, LinkedIn
• Michael Parekh – Managing Director, Goldman Sachs
• Mark Pincus – Co-Founder and former Chairman and CEO, SupportSoft
• Ariel Poler – Founder and former CEO, IPRO and Topica
• Jeff Pulver – Chairman and Founder, Pulver.com
• Martin Varsavsky – Founder, FON

Seesmic founder Loic Le Meur says the investment “will enable us to launch a site built by and for our community, incorporating the products and features they’ve told us they want through their Seesmic conversations.”

In our testing of the alpha version of Seesmic, we’ve found it to be an interesting new service that trivializes making Internet video. And the fact that it does make creating Internet video so trivial leads to new types of video consumption and conversations.

Note: This news was embargoed until tomorrow, but leaked earlier today at Valleywag.

Apple yesterday released the delayed “Take Two” interface for Apple TV. We’ve gone through the update process and tested it out, and here’s our thoughts on the new functionality and interface, with an emphasis on social media.

The update process is painless. Navigate to Settings and choose Update Software, and Apple TV will take care of the rest. The total time for the update, including the download and install was around twenty minutes.

The Interface

The interface, as shown above, has been streamlined, and it is easy to get around. The main categories appear in the left column, and then options or categories appear in the right column.

There are six main categories:

• Movies
• TV Shows
• Music
• Podcasts
• Photos
• YouTube

In addition, a Settings option lets you configure your Apple TV.

Three of the categories focus on buying or renting content from the Apple Store: Movies, TV Shows & Music. The remaining three are focused on your media or social media: Podcasts, Photos & YouTube.

Let’s take a look at each of these options.

There’s no official announcement from Apple on this yet, but we learned via Twitter that the delayed update to Apple TV, Apple TV Take 2, is now available.

The update greatly expands the capabilities of the device, and repositions Apple TV from being just an iTunes peripheral to being an Internet peripheral for your TV.

New features include:

• HD/Standard Def movie rentals
• Purchase and download videos from the iTunes Store directly from your TV
• Flickr/.Mac photo browsing
• Browse and subscribe to podcasts from your TV

This update is free to all Apple TV owners.

Update: Here’s our Updated Apple TV Review.

Apple today released Aperture 2, the second generation of its Photoshop alternative.

Aperture 2 adds over 100 new features, including:

• A streamlined user interface;
• New imaging tools for highlight recovery, color vibrancy, local contrast definition, soft-edged retouching, vignetting and RAW fine-tuning;
• Directly post portfolios on the .Mac Web Gallery;
• Export photos to Flickr, SmugMug, Gallery, Zenfolio, or Picasa.
• Sync directly to iPhone, iPod, or Apple TV.
• Show the location of your photos on Google Maps if your camera embeds GPS data.
• Access your entire iPhoto library, directly in Aperture 2.

Aperture also has a new lower price – $199. This could put a lot of pressure on Adobe.