Hollywood2020

NATL. GEO EXPOSES HUMAN RIGHTS VIOLATION VIA SATELLITE

Hail the power of technology blogged by Joyce Schwarz @ www.hollywood2020.blogs.com. According to Reuters and National Geo reports .....Satellite images confirm reports earlier this year of burned villages, forced relocations and other human rights abuses in Myanmar, scientists said on Friday.

Satellite images of human rights violations in Myanmar (formerly called Burma) according to Reuters and National Geo.

Reuters reports, "The American Association for the Advancement of Science said the high-resolution photographs taken by commercial satellites document a growing military presence at 25 sites across eastern Myanmar, matching eyewitness reports.
"We found evidence of 18 villages that essentially disappeared," AAAS researcher Lars Bromley said in an interview.

News reports say that Myanmar, formerly Burma, is suffering its worst unrest since a 1988 rebellion by students and monks.

MONITORING VIA SATELLITE:
How is all of this possible? Turns out that Bromley's group got grant funding from Open Society Institute and MacArthur Foundation to book satellite time over Myanmar and to buy archived images. Then they scroll inch by inch to compare what has been destroyed or if a certain forest still exists etc. Because of cloud cover it's tough to find out what's happening via even those views.

All I can say is hurrah to the power of technology and human ingenuity to do this. What's up with television, radio, cell phones, email, text messaging and Internet from Myanmar (formerly Burma) -- let me find out and get back to you on that js.

ONLINE VIDEO SKYROCKETS ACCORDING TO COMSCORE

VIDEORAMA --online video skyrocketed so that according to Comscore.com more than 126 million Americans viewed online streaming video in March. That seems almost impossible --by Joyce Schwarz, blogging at www.hollywood2020.blogs.com. But they back it up with these figures:

comScore Video Metrix rankings for March 2007, showing Google Sites as the top U.S. streaming video property with 57.4 million unique people streaming (“streamers”) and 1.2 billion video streams initiated.  YouTube.com drove the lion’s share of the video streaming activity at the Google Sites property with 53.5 million unique streamers and 1.1 billion streams initiated.

My guestimate-- and I have not called Comscore on this -- is that there MUST be duplication between the 57.4 milliion uniques on the Google sites and the other 'streamers' on Fox and Yahoo etc. I cannot understand how Comscore could determine that these are different people /users/streamers. Figuring that there are only 300 million people in the USA?  Let me do some more research on this and get back to you -- here are some more of their comments:

In total, more than 126 million Americans viewed online streaming video in March.  Google Sites also captured the largest streaming video audience with more than 57 million unique streamers, followed by Fox Interactive Media with 47.4 million and Yahoo!

Other notable findings from March 2007 include:

• Five out of every seven U.S. Internet users (71.4 percent) streamed video online.
• Three out of every ten (30.1 percent) of U.S. Internet users streamed video on YouTube.com.
• The average online video viewer consumed 55 video streams, or nearly two per day, during the month.
• Online viewers watched an average of 145 minutes of online video in March 2007.

Top U.S. Online Streaming Video Properties

March 2007

Source: comScore Video Metrix

Property                      Unique Video           Reach (%) Among Total
                             Streamers (000)         U.S. Internet Users

Total Internet                   126,635                     71.4%

Google Sites                      57,376                     32.3%

Fox Interactive Media             47,446                     26.7%

Yahoo! Sites                      34,532                     19.5%

Time Warner Network               28,945                     16.3%

Viacom Digital                    20,245                     11.4%

Microsoft Sites                   17,933                     10.1%

Sony Online                       11,956                      6.7%

Disney Online                      9,801                      5.5%

ESPN                               8,603                      4.9%

ABC.com                            7,033                      4.0%

GOOGLE CAPTURES MORE THAN 3/4 OF ALL SEARCHES!

Google handled more than 3/4 of all searches in the USA in March...amazing huh? At least according to www.hitwise.com. Here are the details straight from the Hitwise press release...blogged by Joyce Schwarz @ www.hollywood2020.blogs.com.

Google Accounted For 64 Percent Of All

U.S.

Searches In March 2007
Google Search Market Share Up 10 Percent Year-Over-Year

NEW YORK, NY – April 11, 2007 – Hitwise, the leading online competitive intelligence service, today announced that the Google accounted for 64 percent of all US searches in the for the four weeks ending March 31, 2007. Yahoo! Search, MSN Search and Ask.com each received 22, 9 and 3 percent respectively. The remaining 48 search engines in the Hitwise Search Engine Analysis Tool accounted for 5 percent of

U.S.

searches.

Percentage of US Searches Among Leading Search Engine Providers
Domain	Mar-07	Feb-07	Mar-06
www.google.com	64.13%	63.90%	58.33%
search.yahoo.com	21.26%	21.47%	22.30%
search.msn.com	9.15%*	9.30%*	13.09%
www.ask.com	3.48%	3.52%	3.99%
Note: Data is based on four week rolling periods (ending 3/31/07; 2/24/07; 4/1/2006) from a sample of 10 million US Internet users. * - includes executed searches on Live.com and MSN Search
Source: Hitwise

HAWAII EARTHQUAKE VIDEO -- WHERE DO YOU FIND IT ONLINE - NOT ON GOOGLE VIDEO OR EVEN YOUTUBE ???

BILLIONS OF DOLLARS EXCHANGING hands for videos online ...so Hollywood2020.blogs.com wanted to see what we could find on the major video sites for video of HAWAII EARTHQUAKE...we entered those words in quotes on GOOGLE VIDEO and this is what we found...don't bother clicking on it-- it doesn't even work-- and what is that ELMO in the photo?

Hawaii 6.6 Earthquake Video During Home Video!!! Home Video of Hawaii 6.6 Earthquake on 10-15-2006 48 sec - Oct 15, 2006 (Don't click-- doesn't work and what does Elmo know about the Hawaii earthquake anyway??) Amazingly this is the only response we got from Google Video for searching "Hawaii Earthquake" 12 hours after the event. SO WE HEADED OVER TO YOUTUBE.com -- certainly some amateur videographers sent in their videos right? RESULTS FROM YOUTUBE.COM ---nothing! Video results for '"Hawaii earthquake"' No Videos found for '"Hawaii earthquake"' What if your family's there now and you want to see some video? Well by coincidence, we clicked on WTAP.com the NBC station in it appears both of these cities: Parkersburg, West Virginia / Marietta, Ohio And we find that WTAP has a station-sponsored trip on the BIG ISLAND right now.... Their site at WTAP says: Kirk Greenfield, WTAP's Chief Meteorologist, says he, his wife and their travelling companions are "OK" after this morning's earthquake off the big island of Hawaii. IT GOES ON TO EXPLAIN:Greenfield is part of a station-sponsored trip to Hawaii, which includes approximately 40 people mostly from the Mid-Ohio Valley. The group left last week and is expected to return home this coming Friday. The best that KTAP.com can offer us is this info: Greenfield has checked in with the station and WTAP may have a phone interview with him for its WTAP News at Eleven broadcast on Sunday night or for Daybreak, Monday morning. THEN KTAP SAYS: You can watch the latest video from Hawaii on wtap.com. Click on the AP online network link. (We surfed around the WTAP TV site and could not find the AP online network link anywhere???? What about an NBC feed? I know there's an NBC affiliate in Honolulu -- I even worked with them at one time??? NOPE...nothing there... AT ABC Ch 12 in Michigan (MICHIGAN -- the second most recent report listed on Google News (NEWS now-- NOT GOOGLE VIDEO) -- they refer us to an AP video icon again- - we found a link and clicked and right again... it didn't play at all-- black screen and said stopped) We just tried again and it said "THE END" before it got started.... AT CNN.com we found videos from KTTV ( I think that is an LA station -- a FOX station???? LA -- not Honolulu??) we were not registered for CNN Pipeline (premium broadband so we could not try it for free without registering-- to continue we'd have to pay..and even to see it we had to fill out a big form...give us a break-- how about some free video for those wanting to see earthquake footage -- like a public service -- so we could no see live CNN -- YES, we had turned on the TV -- we had tried that earlier and saw nothing during a 10 minute channel surfing....Earlier on one of the LA network stations we had seen some news from Hawaii so we knew the stations there were working to some extent -- and what about all that 'user-generated video' we hear about? LAST CHANCE -- we'll go check out Hawaii TV and see if we can find them online?? AT KHNL we found this user-generated report with a slide show -- yep slides, not video??Damage Report : User Submitted Information plus Image Slide Show Reports are coming in from all over the islands.  Send us updates at: [email protected] Click here for more information. More >> WE SAW NO VIDEO from this NBC station... OVER AT KITV -- we were excited-- LIVE VIDEO -- we dragged the logo saying SOME NERVES frazzled to our 'playlist' and clicked and clicked and clicked...nothing...we checked -- pop-ups okay - nada.....so we gave up..... So much for that $1.5 BILLION GOOGLE/YOUTUBE deal.... Techcrunch » Blog Archive » YouTube’s Magic Number - $1.5 Billion Techcrunch » Blog Archive » Completely Unsubstantiated Google/YouTube Rumor ... I suspect they are working very, very hard to get deals in place as soon as ... www.techcrunch.com/2006/09/21/youtubes-magic-number-15-billion/ - 98k - Cached - BOTTOMLINE here's what we found on Google Video: go ahead and click-- you'll find what we found nothing about Hawaii's Earthquake on youtube.com ?????? nothing on google video either????? UPDATE -- Yahoo!/CBS TV Free, Ad-Supported News imediaconnection.com has a story by my colleague Roger Park about a new Yahoo/CBS local news deal...Here's how that article starts --"Yahoo! Inc. and CBS Television Stations are teaming up for an exclusive video syndication agreement in which local news video from 16 of CBS's owned stations will be made available on Yahoo"--perhaps by the time of the next major earthquake -- Hollywood2020.blogs.com will be able to find a local station covering news -- online in real time....?? Joyce Schwarz, JCOM, emerging media & entertainment analyst/consultant, www.joycecom.com.

VIDEO GAMES IN EDUCATION:SCHOOL GOES VIRTUAL

posted by Joyce Schwarz, JCOM, www.joycecom.com, and blogging at www.hollywood2020.blogs.com -- talking about video games as education and delving into the future of virtual worlds and other immersive environments for learning. The essence and what's new in this video is the idea of adapting commercial games and AAA publishers to adapt their games for educational purposes or at least make them available for adapting for in-classroom or on the edge of the classroom. The above video is courtesy of Orange County (CA) Department of Ecucation 22 min 12 sec - Apr 17, 2006 auto-posted on this blog courtesy of a link from Google Video.Games in Education video created by Mark Wagner and Michael Guerena of the Orange County (CA) Department of Education's Educational Technology group. Permission via Wagner and Guarena to post for educational purposes.

In doing a search for what's hot in video and virtual worlds for educational purposes, Hollywood2020.blogs.com, blogger Joyce Schwarz, JCOM, emerging entertainment analyst/consultant came across this video done by the ed-tech dept of OC's Dept of Education. The discussion (which is a little bit too many talking heads for our taste-- but it's academic I guess). includes talk about games as homework, games as group collaboration & more. Neverwinternights includes tools for modifying the game for educational purposes -- that's an off-the-shelf game according to this video. COLONIAL WILLIAMSBURG: The video talks about Colonial Williamsburg who has a terrific education department-- Blogger Joyce Schwarz was very impressed with their CD ROM's and their DVDs prepared for educational purposes. They also have an ongoing PBS TV show and of course they tie-in to the Colonial Williamsburg real world re-creation which is part theme park and part museum. If you have not been there-- head there with your kids on your next vacation. OC COMMUNITY COLLEGES MULTIMEDIA PROGRAM: . Hollywood2020.blogs.com blogger Joyce Schwarz was especially interested in the OC Educational technology program because 10 years ago, Schwarz served as the industry advisor and co-creator of the Fullerton College multimedia retraining program and was a co-writer on the State of California grant for retraining of unemployed engineers and others in the OC area into the multimedia arena. AUGMENTED REALITY GAMES USED FOR EDUCATION: In the video posted on www.hollywood2020.blogs.com, Dr. James Gee from the University of Wisconsin talks about the value of augmented reality gaming systems. Where basically another screen is put on top of the real world and enables students/trainees etc to learn by exploring the new 'augmented reality'. A point that Gee makes is that students -- especially girls have to feel that tech is just a part of everyday-- that it's not hard and that it is simply another way of learning. In other words, wearing goggles or using a computer is just as simple as reading a bookjs

MTV AND ATOM ENTERTAINMENT -- the $200 MILLION MASH-UP?

MTV IS BUYING ATOM FILMS for $200 MILLION....what a mash-up that will be....here's an excerpt from the story on adotas.com: Viacom’s MTV Networks has announced its intent to purchase Atom Entertainment, an online entertainment company whose holdings include the Atom Films indie film site, a user-generated video site, and two online casual gaming sites.

MTV SHELLING OUT $200 MILLION for ATOM....

MTV is shelling out $200 million for Atom, which makes its money through ads, subscriptions and game sales. MTV has been buying up online entertainment sites as of late, including last year’s purchase of IFILM–another ad-supported video site–for $49 million.

Atomfilms.com home page as of August 11, 2006 -- how will MTV change the look?

CHARLIE ROSE WORLD TRADE CENTER MOVIE INTERVIEW LINK

GREAT NEWS an amazing 620 episodes of PBS favorite CHARLIE ROSE are available on GOOGLE VIDEO AND IT LOOKS LIKE THEY ARE FREE COURTESY OF HP! ...I just found it. And it is the easiest video ever to use. Click and it starts-- no buffering, no sputtering EXCELLENT QUALITY -- look at this link to the interview about the WORLD TRADE CENTER movie:

Charlie Rose - "World Trade Center"

Segment 1: A look at the film "World Trade Center" with director Oliver Stone, and stars Nicolas Cage and Michael Peña. Segment 2: Actor Toni Collette  ...

Free Today - Charlie Rose Inc. - 57 min - Aug 3, 2006 NOTE FREE courtesy of:

www.hp.com/personalagain The computer is personal again. To find out how, visit HP now.   Watch their ad

BLOGGER NOTE  -- for some reason this is the most amazing experience -- as far as I know Charlie Rose videotapes have not been available previously. AND THE QUALITY IS AMAZING! Thanks to HP for making these free!

Google Video: Advertising Sponsorship Digital-Lifestyles.Info, UK - Jul 26, 2006... Google Video. ... It is interesting to note that the cost from Google, in this case ... is significantly less than the price when purchased from Charlie Rose's own site ... (BLOGGER NOTE THIS STORY EXPLAINS THIS NEW TYPE OF UNDERWRITING SPONSORSHIP IN DETAIL).

AOL VIDEO PORTAL SET TO LAUNCH -- AOL TO COMPETE WITH YOUTUBE & MORE?

AOL TO COMPETE WITH YOUTUBE.com say the reports on Google and across the blogosphere. Suddenly, AOL is hot again. This post by blogger Joyce Schwarz, author/analyst and emerging entertainment consultant consolidates some of these posts and looks at AOL's ammunition for what may be it's fight for it's life for the next decade!

FIRST SEE OUR POST YESTERDAY ABOUT MYSPACE/YOUTUBE capturing lots of eyeballs: YOUTUBE VS MYSPACE: ALEXA SAYS YOU TUBE WINNING! MORE ADS TO COME TO YOUTUBE VIA DOUBLECLICK?

THEN LOOK AT GOOGLE LINKS to get overview(or just jump to our excerpts below)
www.aolvideo.com as of 8/1/06 -- new portal to go up on 8/2/06 or by Friday according to news reports.

AOL to launch beta video site this week Ars Technica
AOL Revamps Video Site, Enables UGM iMedia Connection
AOL to Launch Free Video-Sharing Portal TechNewsWorld
Search Engine Journal - InternetNews.com - all 166 related »

WHY AOL MAY BE ABLE TO PULL OFF THIS NEW VIDEO PORTAL/COMMUNITY! (points made in articles and blogger opinion below)

1) Launch of AOL UNCUT using Video Egg technology (see links) AOL UnCut &Video Egg--any video may be embedded into another website via a code snippet (enables a P2P variation that could be VERY popular. Links: http://uncutvideo.aol.com/Browse.do?pid=CVN&type=CATEGORY&value=Art+%26+Animation .

Sample page at AOLuncut

2) AOL content deals especially the Warner Bros deal--- Landmark content and original programming agreements that exemplify how AOL is creating a new model for television distribution, such as the Warner Bros. "In2TV" offering, the first on-demand Broadband Television Network

3) Launch of of AIM Pages (to compete with Myspace?)

4) Going outside of AOL's WALLED GARDEN FINALLY -- What impressed some reviewers was that AOL's video search let users find what they wanted, even if it meant sending viewers outside of AOL to watch it. AOL Video can be found at www.aolvideo.com 

5) AOL's acquisition of TRUVEO -- and building a new search engine, built using Singingfish's and Truveo's technology, will track down video results other search engines cannot through its "Visual Crawling" capability. Users can also find video through the site's programming guide. 

6) INTERACTIVE PROGRAM GUIDE -- AOL seems to have learned from AOLTV and it's TIVO/Brightcove deals that this is the last real estate available in a brand agnostic consumer base -- beachfront real estate -- that's what a good IPG is in my opinion--they say they will offer .interactive programming guides (IPG) that brings together free and download-to-own video content from across broadcast and cable television and the Web and organizes it into new, branded video-on-demand channels.

7) AOL VIDEO PORTAL PORTS TO ANYWHERE/ANYTHING? (OKAY AOL ANYWHERE didn't exactly click with the populace) but here's a second chance to stay top of mind -- AOL Video is built on an open technology platform and architecture that will enable AOL to extend the AOL Video experience across platforms and devices to make it easy for users to watch it on multiple screens, including desktops, laptops, large screens (plasma), and handheld devices.

8) AOL to serve as ASP or vendor? Master portal player? According to reports: This fall, AOL plans to make available Open APIs that will enable developers to incorporate AOL’s leading Video Search results into third-party user experiences, as well as other tools that will enable developers and consumers to incorporate features from the AOL Video portal for other websites. In addition, AOL is working with PC OEMs and broadband service providers to develop co-branded versions of the AOL Video portal.

9) The launch of TMZ.com, the AOL-Telepictures new, on-demand entertainment news network This gives AOL a Muse-type database that can be a) syndicated b) monetized with subscriptions (ie alerts etc) and also freedom from Time-Warner sources to do their own thing in the Entertainment arena.(Did you catch you uncovered the Mel Gibson REAL story -- that was TMZ.com!

10) The investments and/or acquisitions of Truveo, Lightening Cast, Singing Fish and Brightcove all provide a good infrastructure and technology for this next-generation Video Portal/search model. The AOL/Google deal certainly puts AOL top of mind with that major player.

AND LAST BUT NOT LEAST -- AOL & TIVO -- AND THE FAILURE OF AOLTV -- AOL could have learned from this -- especially great was AOL's IPG (interactive program guide). The venture went bust in 2001 but it was not without its fans.

MORE ON AOL LATER -- AOL execs will be speaking at Building Blocks (www.digitalhollywood.com) in San Jose later this month. This blogger will be on hand and will be moderating a panel on next-generation search -- very appropriate to our topic here. So we'll provide an update of what we hear and see in the next two weeks.