Webshots, a leading photo-sharing community today launched video sharing capabilities, letting users combine still and video images with text in publicly shared albums.

According to Webshots, their video boasts a 50-percent larger viewing area and nearly 3-times the bitrate of other video sites and gives users free hosting of 100 five-minute video clips, plus an accumulated 10 video clips for every month of membership. Webshots premium members will receive hosting of 250 10-minute clips, plus 25 video for every month of membership.

“As video capabilities become a ubiquitous feature of digital cameras and camera phones, Webshots users expressed a desire to share short video clips alongside the still photos and text of the events they were documenting,” said Martin Green, senior vice president of community, CNET Networks. “Webshots’ integrated sharing of still and video images lets users tell their stories dynamically to friends and family, or connect with others who share their interests.”

The service appears to be having technical issues still, with some requests returning error messages.

CBS has found that offering video downloads increases the audiences for their TV shows.

A poll taken by CBS found that over half of the users who streamed CBS shows on the Web had never seen the shows before on TV. According to CBS, the new users then became fans of those shows.

“We’re looking at this as a key change in direction for us now and looking at our programming as dual distribution programming–over the air and on the Internet,” said CBS Corp. research chief David Poltrack.

The CBS poll reinforces the trend towards free, ad supported video downloads and podcasts of television content.

via TV.com

Mad because you bought a Zune and found out Microsoft doesn’t support podcasts?

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FeedYourZune is a free, full-featured RSS reader and podcast media player. It requires Windows XP or 2000.
Features:

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Nielsen Media Research has begun gathering information on usage of Apple’s iPod, and has found that most iPod owners spend far more time on it listening to music or audio podcasts than they do using it to watch TV or movies.

Nielsen monitored a panel of 400 iPod users in the U.S. from Oct. 1-27 as part of its new initiative, Anywhere Anytime Media Measurement, or A2M2, which aims to measure audiences on myriad emerging digital platforms. They found that less than 1% of content items played by iPod users on either iTunes or the device itself were videos.

Podcast Ready, creators of portable podcast management software, and Wolverine Data, have partnered to offer Podcast Ready’s myPodder software preloaded on the Wolverine ESP, Wolverine MVP and Wolverine FlashPro.

Wolverine makes portable storage devices/media players, targetting the pro photography market.

The new Wolverine ESP features a 3.6-inch TFT LCD display and the ability to store and view 60,000 digital photos, play 240 hours of video and 40,000 songs, plus the capability to record television programs and FM radio all in a 5.3″x2.8″x0.9″ footprint that weighs 10.2 ounces.

Denver International Airport (DIA) has announced a new service, Sights and Sounds, that offers “podcasts” and videos that highlight interesting aspects of Denver International Airport and also provide useful information for travelers.

While the DIA describes the service as a podcast, it doesn’t appear to be offering a podcast feed at this time.

One of the initial videos takes a look at the  (MPG), the crew that keeps runways free of foreign objects.

PodJournals has announced the beta release of its social podcasting service, as well as client software for Mac OS X 10.4 (Tiger) or higher.

According to the company, their service is designed to make the podcast the new center of the social networking experience.

“Podcasting has traditionally been a static, top-down medium, but we see that it will be a dynamic social experience,” said PodJournals President Steven Schuldt, “We let you do more than just easily create and subscribe to podcasts, we let you create dynamic public and private ‘friendcasts’ which give you the audio and video you’re most interested in via a single podcast.”

MySpace has joined YouTube, introducing tools for copyright holders to make it easy for them to remove material that they allege is unauthorized. The tool is being tested with FOX and MLB Advanced Media and will be expanded to include other verified copyright holders.

The new tool will allow copyright holders to digitally flag any user-posted video containing content that they own and allege is unauthorized. MySpace will promptly remove all videos flagged by a copyright holder.

In addition, MySpace has implemented a proprietary system to block videos that are removed at the request of a copyright owner from being re-uploaded to the site by other users.

The MPAA has filed a lawsuit in federal court in New York, Paramount Pictures v. Load ‘N Go Video, suing a small business for loading DVDs onto personal media players (e.g., iPod Video) on behalf of customers.

Load ‘N Go sells both DVDs and iPods and will load purchased DVDs onto iPods for customers who purchase both. The company then sends the iPod and the original DVDs to the customer. The movie studios’ suit claims that this is illegal, because ripping a DVD (i.e., decrypting it and making a copy) is illegal under the DMCA. The suit also claims that this constitutes copyright infringement.

The Load ‘N’ Go site is currently disabled, noting “We Will Be Back Shortly!”

Podcaster Steve Eley (Escape Pod) has introduced a new site, PodDisc that offers CD duplication and sales services for podcasters wanting to make money off of their podcast archives.

Podcasters can supply PodDisc with content, cover art and a description, and PodDisc will create discs and sell them via an online store. You set the price you want to sell the disc at, and PodDisc takes $3 of the sale to cover their costs.

There’s a one-time $20 setup fee per disc.

PodDisc takes all major credit cards and PayPal,and can ship worldwide.

Details are available at the PodDisc site.