Law & Policy

As a San Jose Mercury News blog quips, it seems the "Ratio of video-sharing sites to videos approaches 1:1." AOL and CNN are joining the ranks of the many, many video-hosting sites trying to attract all those homemade videos out there." AOL is revamping its video portal to better spotlight user-produced videos, YouTube-style, the Merc says. Then there's the just-unveiled CNN Exchange, "a hub for … [Read more...] about AOL & CNN: New video hosts

Niche social-networking sites, and some not-so-niche ones, continue to open. The latest big-brand one is MTV's "Flux." As with MySpace, users will be able to customize their pages and upload video and other media, but more along the lines of Cyworld (which plans to open an English-language version in the US), they can have avatars, or online personas, represent them. "They can select a basic … [Read more...] about New social networks

There was a time (about 2.5 years ago) when you could've called it the MySpace of file-sharing, when 60 million file-sharers and millions of downloads a week seemed like mind-numbing figures. Kazaa was the king of 2nd-generation file-sharing (after Napster of the 1st generation), then was overtaken by 3rd-gen BitTorrent. But enough background! The news is, the Sydney-based company registered in … [Read more...] about Kazaa legalizes

Well, Diet Coke, anyway. This is a perfect example of the kind of subject that drives the people's Web these days, and you don't have to be an Einstein to conduct and record this scientific experiment. In other words, you can try this at home (tho' maybe not indoors): add Mentos mints to a bottle of Diet Coke and film the resulting geyser (e.g., in this video). Online law expert Michael Geist … [Read more...] about Candy + Coke = hot Web video

Actually, the question is, what's happened to hit songs and albums and box-office blockbusters? Mass-audience hits turned into hits, then "pageviews" and "unique visitors" on (now uploads to) user-aggregating Web sites in zillions of niche interest communities. Consumers are aggregated by interest not geography, and the offerings are a la carte and all about exploration and sampling and – to the … [Read more...] about What’s happened to music?