UK’s BBC Worldwide, Channel 4 and ITV plan to launch a new video-on-demand service, Kangaroo, offering more than 10,000 hours of TV programming. The project aims to be a “rich entertainment site”, where consumers can catch up with recently aired shows and older archive programming.

In a joint statement, the partners said Kangaroo “will work independently as an aggregator of both joint venture partners and third-party content”.

The service will initially be available via the web, with shows available either streamed or to download. The Kangaroo media player will “build on the experience” of the broadcasters’ existing media players, ITV.com, 4oD and the BBC iPlayer.

That doesn’t bode well for the service, as the proliferation of proprietary players has been a barrier to adoption for mainstream Internet video offerings.

“The joint service venture has the potential to become an important shop window for UK broadcaster content and a free destination for viewers,” said Michael Grade, the executive chairman of ITV.

In order to do this, though, the organizations will have to provide enough content, on multiple platforms, to give users a compelling reason to install and try the custom player.

via Guardian

This video offers a short tutorial on using the free Audacity audio editor for creating audio podcasts.

Remember commercials?

Those things you used to have to watch, before you got a TiVo and/or you started subscribing to one of the 25,000+ free video podcasts and/or you started losing hours of your life surfing YouTube?

Microsoft, NBC Universal and GE apparently think that you really miss the little buggers, so much so that they’ve invested in a new Internet video startup, Firebrand, that offers nothing but commercials, all the time.

Yep – 24/7 commercials. If you like, you can register at the site and make playlists and favorites. You can even embed videos in your site….so you can add advertisements to your site and not get paid for it. Here’s an example:

We won’t be doing that again…..

This is the second part of our look at The Secrets Of Viral Video Hits. The articles provide an alternative to the view, promoted by Dan Ackerman Greenberg at TechCrunch, that the secret to success with Internet videos is “clandestine marketing.”

In part one, Kent Nichols from Ask A Ninja and Andrew Michael Baron of Rocketboom offered their thoughts on creating a viral video hit.

In this part, we’ve got two more viral video experts: Tim Street, the creator of French Maid TV, and Hayden Black, creator of Goodnight Burbank, the show that USA Today called “better than 99% of the stuff on TV,” and the new series Abigails X-Rated Teen Diary. They discuss how sex, spectacle and social networking can help make a video go viral.

Here’s what Nichols and Street had to say about Greenberg’s article and about creating viral video hits……

TechCrunch published a controversial piece of linkbait over the Thanksgiving holiday on the “secret” strategies behind successful viral videos. The essay, by Dan Ackerman Greenberg, suggested that the days of indie video podcasts like Ask A Ninja becoming viral hits through hard work and creativity are gone.

“The Wild West days of Lonely Girl and Ask A Ninja are over,” writes Greenberg. “You simply can‚Äôt expect to post great videos on YouTube and have them go viral on their own.”

Instead, Greenberg argues that the secret of successful Internet videos is “clandestine marketing”:

• Using fake headlines;
• Sending videos, unsolicited, to mailing lists;
• Paying bloggers to pimp the video; and
• Creating multiple fake forum user accounts to hype the video.

We characterize the TechCrunch piece as linkbait because both Greenberg and Mike Arrington, the article’s publisher, have tried to distance themselves it. Arrington, after featuring the article on his site, now says “frankly I‚Äôm disgusted by this.” Greenberg claims that his article was mangled in editing, and that he doesn’t really use all the strategies that he said he uses in the original article.

Because TechCrunch’s viral video secrets article seems to be as much about spamming and linkbaiting as it is about creating viral videos, we thought we’d offer an alternate view – this time from actual viral video experts.

While TechCrunch relied on Greenberg, a guy who says “I can‚Äôt reveal our clients‚Äô names and I can‚Äôt link to the videos we‚Äôve worked on,” we talked to people with solid viral video credentials. People like:

• Andrew Michael Baron – few people have done more to pioneer indie Internet video than Baron, the creator of a little show called Rocketboom.
• Tim Street – creator of French Maid TV and a member of the Association for Downloadable Media advisory board. When it comes to viral video success, French Maid TV’s cup runneth over. The latest episode, How To Share Photos, has racked up over 3.5 million views at YouTube alone. Ooh la la!
• Hayden Black – creator of the hit online series Goodnight Burbank, the show that USA Today called “better than 99% of the stuff on TV,” and Abigails X-Rated Teen Diary, in which he portrays a 13 year-old middle school girl.
• Kent Nichols – creator, along with Douglas Sarine, of the viral video hit to slay all viral video hits, Ask A Ninja. Episodes of Ask A Ninja frequently get more than a million views on YouTube alone.

Here’s what these viral video experts had to say about Greenberg’s article and the real “secrets” of creating viral video hits……

The Taipei Times reports that YouTube is censoring its site in Taiwan by removing music videos that are degrading to women:

YouTube decided on Thursday to remove a series of music videos degrading Taiwanese women after angry reports from the Taiwanese public and media.

Over the past months, a YouTube user who dubbed himself “Handsome Hong Kong Guy” (ȶôÊ∏ØÂ∏•Âì•) had uploaded a series of music videos titled “Dirty Ditty” (Á≤óÂè£Ê≠å) on the YouTube Web site.

The music videos of several well-known Taiwanese folk songs included lyrics that had been changed to make derogatory comments about Taiwanese women.

Although YouTube declined to respond when asked whether the videos in question had been removed, users found that while searches for “Handsome Hong Kong Guy” or “Dirty Ditty” displayed results, but further attempts to access the contents loaded messages indicating that the videos have been removed due to violations of the site’s terms of use.

In July of this year, YouTube also removed videos featuring someone singing songs degrading to Korean women.

We can empathize with the desire to remove content that is degrading to women from YouTube. But when you start censoring the site, where do you stop?

If you took away all the booty rap videos, misognystic comedians, tits videos, hot chicks doing stupid sh*t, and Miss Teen USA, you might not be left with much more than the likes of this video:

Need something interesting to refill and refresh your iPod/Zune/portable media player.

DJ Spooky has posted an very cool, socially conscious mix tape, Ghost World, that explores the idea of a digital Africa.

You can preview it below and get the full scoop at Spooky’s site.

Here’s what DJ Spooky has to say about the mix tape:

“Brian Eno once famously remarked that the problem with computers is that there isn’t enough Africa in them. I kind of think that its the opposite: they’re bringing the ideals of Africa: after all, computers are about connectivity, shareware, a sense of global discussion about topics and issues, the relentless density of info overload, and above all the willingness to engage and discuss it all Рthat’s something you could find on any street corner in Africa.

I just wanted to highlight the point: Digital Africa is here, and has been here for a while. This isn’t “retro” Рit’s about the future.

The “Ghost World” mix is all about the multiple rhythms and languages of Africa, but it makes no attempt to give you everything Рit’s from my record collection. That’s why the “story” of the mix is about: polyrhythm, multiplex reality. There’s even more current material like the Kuduru sounds of Luanda (who says Techno doesn’t exist in Africa!?) and old school hip hop like Zimbabwe Legit from the early 90’s of classic “conscious” school hip hop. Yes there’s material from Akon, but he gets mixed with Nelson Mandela, or MC Solaar, but I looked for material of his that combined with jazz, so Ron Carter’s brilliant bass playing worked out with that. There’s even material from my favorite South African composer, Abdullah Ibrahim or vocal outtakes from David Byrne and Brian Eno’s “My Life in The Bush of Ghosts” and various guest appearances by African dictator Idi Amin or the former President of Nigeria, Olusegun Obasanjo talking about democracy in Nigeria.”

DJ-1800, a professional DJ music mixing application for the Mac, has been updated.

v3.0 adds pitch lock and automatic BPM calculation. In addition, v3.0 enables lets you plug in an iPod and go – immediately making the music on your iPod available to mix and play.

Other new features:

• Support for new controllers, including the PCDJ DAC-3
• New Setup Assistant
• Universal Binary for native Intel support

Pricing and Availability:

The full version of v3.0 retails at $80. Users who have previously bought DJ-1800 can upgrade to version 3 of the software for $20. A demo version is available for download at the site.

via Synthtopia DJ-1800

TechCrunch published a guest essay over the holiday on the secret strategies behind successful “viral videos”.

The essay, by Dan Ackerman Greenberg, is the most interesting thing I’ve seen on TechCrunch in ages. The essay is also a real linkbaiter – suggesting that the days of video podcasts like Ask A Ninja becoming viral hits through hard work and creativity are over.

“Over the past year, I have run clandestine marketing campaigns meant to ensure that promotional videos become truly viral,” writes Greenberg. “In this post, I will share some of the techniques I use to do my job: to get at least 100,000 people to watch my clients‚Äô ‚Äúviral‚Äù videos.”

“The Wild West days of Lonely Girl and Ask A Ninja are over. You simply can‚Äôt expect to post great videos on YouTube and have them go viral on their own, even if you think you have the best videos ever. These days, achieving true virality takes serious creativity, some luck, and a lot of hard work.”

Greenberg goes on to give a short sales job on his company and to suggest that the quality of your content isn’t as important as tricking the system to get views.

Greenbergs “Secrets” of Viral Videos

He offers several suggestions for wannabee viral videos:

• Make it short: 15-30 seconds is ideal; break down long stories into bite-sized clips
• Design for remixing: create a video that is simple enough to be remixed over and over again by others. Ex: ‚ÄúDramatic Hamster‚Äù
• Don‚Äôt make an outright ad: if a video feels like an ad, viewers won‚Äôt share it unless it‚Äôs really amazing. Ex: Sony Bravia
• Make it shocking: give a viewer no choice but to investigate further. Ex: ‚ÄúUFO Haiti‚Äù
• Use fake headlines: make the viewer say, ‚ÄúHoly shit, did that actually happen?!‚Äù Ex: ‚ÄúStolen Nascar‚Äù
• Appeal to sex: if all else fails, hire the most attractive women available to be in the video. Ex: ‚ÄúYoga 4 Dudes‚Äù

Greenberg also explains his strategies for getting videos onto the YouTube “Most Viewed” page. Many will view some of Greenberg’s strategies to be lying and cheating:

• Blogs: We reach out to individuals who run relevant blogs and actually pay them to post our embedded videos. Sounds a little bit like cheating/PayPerPost, but it‚Äôs effective and it‚Äôs not against any rules.
• Forums: We start new threads and embed our videos. Sometimes, this means kickstarting the conversations by setting up multiple accounts on each forum and posting back and forth between a few different users. Yes, it‚Äôs tedious and time-consuming, but if we get enough people working on it, it can have a tremendous effect.
• MySpace: Plenty of users allow you to embed YouTube videos right in the comments section of their MySpace pages. We take advantage of this.
• Facebook: Share, share, share. We‚Äôve taken Dave McClure‚Äôs advice and built a sizeable presence on Facebook, so sharing a video with our entire friends list can have a real impact. Other ideas include creating an event that announces the video launch and inviting friends, writing a note and tagging friends, or posting the video on Facebook Video with a link back to the original YouTube video.
• Email lists: Send the video to an email list. Depending on the size of the list (and the recipients‚Äô willingness to receive links to YouTube videos), this can be a very effective strategy.
• Friends: Make sure everyone we know watches the video and try to get them to email it out to their friends, or at least share it on Facebook.

Greenberg also notes that you should optimize titles and thumbnails to get the most views.

The TechCrunch article basically advocates deceiving people and gaming the system to achieve viral video success. The article begs the question: how much of TechCrunch’s own success is due to working the system?

Take Aways

Greenberg’s theme – that good content won’t give video producers viral success, only a concerted viral campaign will – is likely to rub a lot of people the wrong way. Also, his focus, on promoting short, one and two-off videos of mediocre quality, risks being counterproductive if applied to longer-form videos where you want to grow an audience of regular viewers.

Nevertheless, none of Greenberg’s techniques are especially secret, so it’s important for anyone hoping to compete for attention in places like YouTube to understand that you’re not just competing against other creative people, you’re competing against cynical people trying to game the system for cash.

No matter what you think of Greenberg’s views, they are part of the landscape of Internet video. No matter what you think of Greenberg’s techniques, they are tools that Internet video producers need to be aware of, and choose to use or not use wisely.

This year, the folks at Podcasting News are thankful to be spending the (U.S.) Thanksgiving day holed up in the Podcasting News “Test Kitchens” (right) with only the little podcasters (above) and a giant turkey to keep us company.

Whereas many years, we are either entertaining our large extended family, or biding our time waiting to eat at some other relative’s house, this year, it’s just the nuclear family. We are looking forward to the leisurely “fancy” cooking (fancy cake, right) one can do when it’s a smaller group.

To get some inspiration for the cooking we asked our foodie/podcasting friend, Anne Bramley, about what her Thanksgiving would be like this year, and she said:

“My holiday entertaining plans involve sharing an intimate, stress-free, non-traveling family meal filled with foods inspired by British and American food history: turkey with cider gravy, cranberries slow roasted with brandy, bread pudding jazzed up with pumpkin and maybe another side dish or two.

We always keep it very simple and keep the number of dishes to a minimum to be able to focus on the fun of cooking our favorite foods and the pleasure of spending time together in the kitchen. And then there’s the week of leftovers we can live on [afterward].”

Anne also recently posted two podcasts with autumn celebrations in mind: one EatFeed on perry (pear cider), “which we always have on our Thanksgiving table as a nod to old traditions,” she says, and one Amuse-Bouche on “what is American food?” with the editor of the Oxford Companion to Food and Drink.