EchoDitto

If you have a video you want to easily upload to the internet, there’s always YouTube. It’s easy to use, send links, embed video. But if you don’t like YouTube and miss the days when Google had its own branded video player, you can still upload your video on to Google video. If you want to make some money for the video you produced, you can use Revver, Break, Metacafe, blip.tv or veoh. If you want to post video straight to your blog Wordpress has a player. If your video is just meant for friends and family, there’s no problem there either. Friendster uses Grouper’s video player, Facebook and Myspace have their own players.

While Clinton and Obama have star power and Edwards has rhetoric to be President, NM Governor Bill Richardson has a very impressive resume. Not to say that Obama, Clinton, Edwards and the rest of the Dems running for commander-in-chief don't have the experience to be president, but Richardson has some major accomplishments and he wants you to know it.

Check out this hilarious Richardson video clicking here. But again, why do politicians post their videos on YouTube? There is a call to action at the end of the video but when you click on the link, it send the viewer to YouTube and not the Bill Richardson website. All presidential campaigns (and House and Senate and Dog Catcher please check out blip.tv, revver.com and Veoh.com for ways to make your video interactive.

Last week Congress passed a emergency war spending bill that granted for President Bush's request for a $124 billion in emergency funds to continue fighting the war in Iraq. This emergency supplemental spending bill is not unusual for the ongoing war in Iraq. However, what was different, is for the first time since the war began five years ago, Congress included stipulations on the money. The biggest sticking point was Congress called for a timetable for a “phased redeployment” that would begin on October 1.

Congress passed the bill last week and the White House announced the President would veto any bill with timetables in them. The President lived up to his veto threat and vetoed the bill. After an attempted congressional veto override failed the bill is dead.

The best part of SxSW, aside from the parties and the swag, are the people you get to meet. So many people are up-and-comers or have already become icons in their specific field. Webvideo has only been around for about a year and a half, so there can’t be any “experts” yet. But there are some people out there doing really creative things and even a few of those are actually making money doing.

Speaking of creative people, two people I met at SxSW who are doing creative things with online video and making some money are Zadi Diaz and Steve Woolf. Zadi and Steve recently moved out to Los Angeles and started producing Jetset Show. Jetset is a weekly show that features trends and other fun videos aimed at a young adult audience.

A few months back I heard about The Venice Project, one more video player in the ever-growing field of video players. I’m always curious to hear why this player is different than every other player, so I signed up to become a beta tester. I was eager to download the application, until I learned there is no mac version. Who are these people who put out non-mac products? Mac users are first movers and the influentials, but I digress.

A few weeks later, I got an email, under the subject line, “We’re so Joost!” The Venice Project announced that they have changed the name of their project to Joost.

YouTube didn’t make any friends this week when it suspended countless accounts because users had links to content owned by CBS or its parent Viacom. In an effort to appease content owner and advertiser CBS/Viacom, YouTube sent out notices to users informing them that they are in violation of YouTube policy of broadcasting copyrighted materials and their accounts would be suspended. The problem was, even though users did have content owned by CBS on their YouTube accounts, they weren’t in violation of YouTube’s policy. YouTube’s policy states that the company will warn users twice before suspending their account. Unfortunately, YouTube pulled the plug after sending out only one letter.

Every 30 seconds a child dies because they contracted malaria from a mosquito bite. The United Nations Foundation, NBA Cares, the United Methodist Church and a host of organizations have banded together to see to it that families in Africa receive mosquito-repellent bed nets to protect themselves from contracting this killer disease while they sleep.

In our first major venture into webvideo, EchoDitto produced two videos on behalf of the United Nations Foundation. The first video premiered at the NBA store in New York City during the Nothing But Nets press conference.

Michael and I attended RootsCampDC this weekend. It was an amazing conference with an equally exciting vibe. The attendees were all remarkable people with great stories and experiences to share. They included 2006 campaign workers fresh off the trail, a candidate for U.S. Senate and leaders of the netroots community.

The idea of the conference was to bring these ideas together to progressive ideas to reality, and I think it really worked. The sessions I attended were filled with lively discussion and some great ideas were shared.

I’ve been down on YouTube lately. As the popularity of the site grows and as more video is added to the site, the harder it is to find the video that I’m looking for. Try typing in lonelygirl15 into YouTube’s search. Thousands of videos will appear, but the actual video of the actress playing lonelygirl15’s lead character, Bree, is buried deep down. As a matter of fact, the official lonelygirl15 website posts video the YouTube competitor revver.

YouTube is NOT a commercial application. But a fine example of a commercial application is BrightCove. This application gives site owners the ability to embed video on to their site using the BrightCove player. For commercial users, it gives advertisers the option of buying embedding pre-roll and post-roll spots and it gives users the chance to change the advertising once a program has run. Imagine a broadcast TV show without the ability to sell a different set of ads when a program was being rerun. BrightCove gives web broadcasters the opportunity to do continually sell ads on video that has previously been posted.

Election day is just 15 days away. I got my absentee ballot on Friday. I was voting for the state-wide and federal candidates, I came upon the locals candidates, the judges and propositions. I’ve got to be honest, I know nothing about the candidates running for the State Supreme Court or the court of appeals. My guess is, I bet not a lot of people know for whom they’re going to vote. But like me, they’ll head to the internet to do their research.
Direct mail guru Hal Malchow says that voters have things to worry about before they vote, so the research is usually done just prior to the election. And where is the first place they look? The candidate’s official website.