With every New Year comes new resolutions. Jonas Buntenbruch is a designer with a pretty hefty goal for 2008. Jonas will complete and post a new design everyday for 366 days straight (remember it’s a leap year). He set a time limit of 30 – 60 minutes for each day’s design and mediums can range from “scrap and sketches to photos, typographic experiments and random creative masturbation.” It is pretty much like an online sketchbook, open for all to see and comment on. I especially like his January 5th photomanipulation pictured below.

Good luck Jonas, I hope you make it through the whole year!

While there is nothing quite like Napster anymore for free music, AlbumBase.com certainly was close. The site was like a P2P network except instead of downloading questionable software and hosting the files on your own computer/Internet connection you would upload full albums to various gray-market file hosting sites like Rapidshare.com and then send the link to AlbumBase.com. AlbumBase acted as a middle man letting you search their database of links that would take you off site to download a complete album. The community really blossomed for the couple of years I have been using it. And the devoted fans constantly keep the selection of music up to date, they had pretty much everything I was looking for all the time.

But on November 7th, the site went dead. Eliot Van Buskirk of Wired reported on a rumor that the RIAA/FBI was responsible for the 404’d site but none of the rumors were ever confirmed. Calls to the Seattle police, the Seattle FBI department, the IFPI, the RIAA, and the BPI (the IP address of AlbumBase’s web server puts it in Great Britain) to try to figure out what exactly is going on turned up nothing. It’s a sad, sad day for mooching-music lovers like myself. Now what will I do?

Oh wait, AlbumHunt.com does pretty much the same thing and has an extensive collection of links already. Never mind, the beat goes on. Piracy never dies.

The popular online web magazine, A List Apart, conducted a survey of web professionals in April 2007 via their website. This week they finally released the results in a massive, though well designed, 80+ page PDF.

Being the first major survey of the web industry, I, and many others I’m sure, was anxious to see how I stacked up. The survey focused on the core areas of classification (gender, ethnicity, location etc.), education, work and job titles, and money. There are too many findings to even begin listing here but the PDF does a great job at explaining their conclusions with many, many graphs. Speaking of data, A List Apart is giving away all of the anonymized raw data for people to dig through and reach their own conclusions.

I can’t wait to see the results from the next survey to compare the changes in the industry from this year.

MediaDefender is a company that provides services for large media companies in an effort to stifle peer-to-peer and BitTorrent transfers. The main method used by MediaDefender is to flood the network with fake files of the alleged copyrighted work making a downloaded version worthless to the downloadee as well as wasting their time and bandwidth.

In February, MediaDefender launched a fake video sharing site called Miivi.com. The site was created solely to trap users who uploaded copyrighted material of MediaDefenders clients. Once the news leaked of MediaDefenders honeypot project, Miivi.com was shut down and displays a placeholder page to this day.

On September 14th, internal e-mails of the company were leaked onto BitTorrent by a group called MediaDefender Defenders. The e-mails include various FTP and database logins as well as lists of their decoy/entrapment trackers, decoy strategies, the effectiveness of their fake torrents (in many cases with a breakdown of success, title specific), high and low priority sites, .torrent watchlists, and information on their monitoring of competitors. There was even reaction to TorrentFreak breaking the news about MiiVi.

From: Ben Grodsky
Sent: Tue 03-Jul-07 20:19
To: MIIVI; Randy Saaf; Octavio Herrera; Steve Lyons
Subject: MiiVi got Dugg

Looks like the domain transfer has screwed us over:
http://torrentfreak.com/anti-piracy-gang-launches-their-own
-video-download-site-to-trap-people/
http://digg.com/users/AcePup/news/dugg

-Ben

This is really fucked.
Let’s pull miivi offline.

The 700Mb worth of e-mails were acquired by guessing the password to a Gmail account used as a backup for the company e-mails.

With MediaDefender’s internal e-mails spread out all over the Internet, groups of peer-to-peer loyalists poured over every detail. With various servers exposed MediaDefender Defenders managed to leak the source code of the anti-piracy tool used by MediaDefender to spread their fake files across many peer-to-peer networks. This is a huge blow to the company’s efforts to protect the intellectual property of large media companies as p2p hosts can fortify their systems against floods of fake media and torrent files.

This is a firm warning to any other p2p media protection companies. If you mess with the technologically savy peer to peer groups be prepared for some harsh retaliation. I still believe that there is no effective way to fight piracy on the Internet once it is leaked. Fighting the pirates will only make them multiply and mock you like the Pirate Bay is doing tight now.

I have previously discussed how the current InVideo ads on YouTube will ultimately fail. What can Google do to turn the most popular video distribution hub on the net into a money maker like text ads? Here are a few of my own ideas.

Related Video Clicks

Create a cost per click model on the recommended videos users face at the end of a clip and right side viewer. Mixing in a few relevant videos from sponsors ensures YouTube has the viewers full attention since they initiated the action rather than having the ad forced upon them. By charging advertisers for every click that comes off of other videos, similar to links from sponsored ads on AdSense, Google can leverage what they know best: connecting people with the content they are looking for. While any advertiser can post their own clip now, Google could offer more specific statistics and demographics such as how long people watched the video, age and gender breakdown of viewers, and even what keywords or actions brought the user to the video. All of this information will help advertisers hone their message for their specific audience.

Video Owner Controls Ads

The overlay ads currently in use by YouTube would be more effective if it wasn’t competing with the content. If publishers who wanted to monetize their content had more control over the ad insertion, than everyone would be a winner. For example, someone who does a weekly video blog might design their show to have a commercial break in the middle. The vlogger would mark where the commercial break is and Youtube could automatically splice in a dynamic ad on playback to fit the desired duration of their inventory. The content of the ad can be determined by a multitude of different information on the page including the title and description of the clip, user comments, tags, and even an audio to text conversion. Google would already be interested in transcribing audio in order to add to their huge search database so they can better index video contnet (Remember they did this with Google Video when it first launched). Different positions could be awarded different impression and click through rates. A quick ad in front, say less than 5 seconds, might be worth the least amount. An ad inserted at the end would be worth slightly more while the most coveted ad space would be in the middle of the clip where the user is the most engaged. Google limits the number of ad units that appear on a web page which could be applied to video based on length.

The YouTube AdSense model could go beyond click throughs and instead focus more on actions. For instance, clicking an ad would take the user to the advertisers web page. If the user clicked on another targeted area of that web page, the video owner who reffered the viewer to the advertiser could earn a little bit more money. These actions could be more than just clicking through to a web page, including subscribing to a channel, watching another video, or even leaving a comment! There are many interactions that occur on YouTube that Google can track and profit on.

Who Says It Has To Be Ads?

Content creators go to YouTube because that is where all the people are. Offering premium services is another route YouTube could take, appealing to the more serious video producers. Such perks to being a paid member might include offering your content in a higher quality, download options, highlighted attention in search results/related videos, or click through ads at the tail end of a video. People are desperate to stand out in the massive video community, so much so they would be willing to pay for special benefits similiar to Pro accounts on Flickr. Imagine a small movie maker is trying to sell his movie by soliciting the trailer on YouTube. At the end of a trailer could be a special interactive insert that would take the viewer to the movie makers store to buy the DVD or subscribe to the RSS feed for further updates. Google would then take a small fee for connecting a publisher with an audience member via an action.

In conclusion, there are many ways YouTube could be transformed from a money bleeder to a money maker. The online video site isn’t a colossal hit because it mimics television, but because it offers something different to the viewer. The InVideo ads are just a copy-cat idea from a current trend currently being exploited on regular TV channels. By focusing more on the unique strengths of online video, (interactivity, more precise feedback, and greater control of the user experience), YouTube could begin roping the advertisers in and paving the way for another high-flying success like AdSense.

Google announced what everyone expected with the addition of video advertisements to YouTube appropriately called InVideo ads earlier this week. The blogosphere has mixed results about the new feature; publishers are eager to make money off of their video offerings and users want a clean, uninterrupted experience.

Fortunately YouTube has decided against pre or post-roll ads citing evidence that viewers just don’t respond. Instead, as the name implies, the ads pop up in-video and only take up the bottom 20% of the player screen. Clicking on the ad will pause the video and open another mini video player inside the one you are watching. Ad metrics are based on the percentage of the ad you get through and if you should leave within the first 15 seconds that doesn’t count as an impression.

Many think video ads will be another big business for Google but video ads are a far different beast compared to text ads. For one, InVideo ads are only shown on the content of trusted partners for obvious legal reasons. Unlike text ads that require no screening process, video owners must have all of the legal clearances to engage in commercial activity. This bottleneck greatly reduces the potential pool of advertisers unlike the ubiquity and ease of AdSense.

Second, in order to prevent “saturation” or dampening the user experience, video ads will have to be deliberately limited. Text ad units are splattered across the web on millions of blogs taking advantage of the Long Tail of niche content. While this means higher costs per click and per thousand impressions the amount of ad inventory is inherently limited.

Finally, ads that pop up in the middle of video, even if for a brief 10 seconds, are distracting. Text ads are successful because they blend in with the content; obvious to the reader when they need them and not a distraction when they are uninterested. Watching video is a concentrative task. Anything that intrudes on the message, stealing the users attention, takes them away from the story and lowers the experience. Think about how annoying it is at a public theater when someone is talking next to you or a cell phone goes off. TBS has been running ads like YouTube’s in the middle of shows like Everybody Loves Raymond however Youtube has a leg up by giving the viewer the freedom to close the ad display right away. See an InVideo ad in action.

Ads in the middle of YouTube videos may be all the buzz now but I feel those enthusiastic of the new feature will eventually grow tired of it like the rest of us. YouTube user fardousha sums it up best with the following comment…

If ads invade youtube, i will desert it.
What attracted me in the first place is ads free quality time. Long story short, it ain’t a good idea.

There is already a Firefox extension called TubeStop to stop YouTube ads from even showing up, protecting the users patience as they take in all that YouTube has to offer. There is only a certain amount of aggravation one can take in regards to advertising and InVideo ads certainly cross that threshold. This is why the YouTube ad experiment will ultimately be a failure.

While we are still on the topic of the power in YouTube, one of my favorite video mash-ups has catapulted its creator to success. The Skeletor Show is a simple remix of old He-Man episodes redubbed and edited in a comedic way (as if the original He-Man cartoons weren’t funny enough). Take a look at the trailer for a better idea…

The Skeletor Show was created by Daniel Geduld, originally from Indiana but he later moved to Los Angeles in hopes of some kind of acting career. As you might imagine, he didn’t get hired for very much and used his free time and voice-over talent to remix Skeletor. Apparently it was time well spent as CNN recently ran an article about him where he is now making a living doing other voice over work. In the credits of each show Daniel added his e-mail address along with the line “Please hire me” and as the show took off, via several popular blogging mentions, sites like Heavy.com came a knocking.

I was shocked to see The Skeletor Show mentioned on CNN. I don’t recall how I stumbled onto it but it was one of the only YouTube series I actually subscribed to and checked for updates. There hasn’t been a new episode in nearly four months, a bittersweet triumph of Daniel’s new found lack of free time. But this is just another example of how a new medium is creating opportunities for up and coming amateurs to be seen by the world. I wonder where we will see Mr. Geduld next.

The be all and end all of Bittorrent sites (pre-PiateBay.org that is), SuperNova.org, has been relaunched thanks to the happy Sweedish pirates over at The Pirate Bay. Besides offering yet another site to grab your warez, the members responsible for the reincarnation have a message for the “non-internet loving companies” out there:

This is how it works. Whatever you sink, we build back up. Whomever you sue, ten new pirates are recruited. Wherever you go, we are already ahead of you. You are the past and the forgotten, we are the internet and the future.

Yarr! Those pirates are bold!

October 15th is Blog Action Day where bloggers across the globe will focus on one specific topic – the environment. Every blogger will post about the environment in their own way and relating to their own topic. This is all in hopes that the focused mass commotion will start the ball rolling towards a better environment for the future.

How do you participate? Simple. Just register your blog at BlogActionDay.org and write up an entry about the environment on October 15th. If you want to do more you can donate your blog’s earnings for that day or promote the event with their banners. Check out everyone that is participating and I hope that you add your blog to the list.

I just finished participating in the first Jason Calacanis and Friends live show on Operator 11. You’ve probably seen UStream.tv and Stickam.com for streaming live video and heard about Talkshoe.com for live audio casts; Well Operator 11 is like both of those things combined and it makes for a whole lot of fun.

If you ever wanted to have your own show live with user participation, than Operator 11 is the way to go. The Flash controls are intuitive and the quality isn’t too bad. As the director you can determine who is live and it lets you switch to different people with a click of the button. Participants can request they be put on camera via a simple button which shakes their video on the directors screen. Everyone in the live area can participate in the text chat that also gets displayed across the bottom of the video screen so people on the outside of the studio can see what the comments from the peanut gallery too. Other cool features include drag and drop video sources which let you switch to lpre-recorded clips and the whole show is recorded, saved and viewable to anyone who wasn’t there during the live recording.

Back to the CalacanisCast, things were going smooth at first and then Jason managed to crash the servers causing everyone to go into a spin-off room. After that, mayhem ensued and Jason began playing clips live off of YouTube and switching to shots of his dog Toro. Other highlights included Jay Adelson, CEO of Digg.com, and Robert Scoble who did a mighty fine Steve Ballmer impression (check the video at -21:15). I even got to say a few words but I was feeling shy in front of all the A-List bloggers; Afterall I am a nobody in the blogging world just like everyone else.

At the end of it all I had a lot of fun interacting with a bunch of different people from all over the world live and with video and sound. Operator 11 is sure to take off once more people start playing around with it. If you do go over and sign up add me as a friend and let’s get together and chat face to face sometime.

Check me out at -11:50, before the show ends.

Learn more about Operator 11.