Rojo

Video search engines haven’t found their place in the world quite yet, but after what happened with web search it’d be stupid to count them out. Now AT&T, after securing the exclusive license to use technology from the stealthy startup Divvio for the consumer market, is launching one of its own.

AT&T is calling its video search site VideoCrawler, and expects to open it up to the public in a week or so. For now, if you’d like to try out the site for yourself, AT&T provided a user name and password that NewTeeVee readers are free to use. Username: mediorite; password: beta0529.

Today we spoke with the executive director of business development at AT&T, Jim Stapleton, whose division is also developing the 3D web browser Pogo. He gave us an extensive demo of the site, focusing on the interface, which is what AT&T built.

First, the positives: I like the interface. AT&T built the equivalent of an AJAX start page for video, with modules for a search box, a player, search results list, playlists, etc., that can be moved around and minimized. That way users can organize the product to best fit whatever they want to do with it. The player itself is nice because it’s consistent, launching any type of embeddable media from within. I’m a little unclear on what’s included in the index, so as you guys play around with Videocrawler, please be sure to report back with what you turn up. For instance, I couldn’t find premium ABC content (the kind that launches in the Move player), but I could find Lost podcasts direct from the ABC site, which as far as I can tell aren’t usually embeddable off-site.

So far it isn’t evident to me that VideoCrawler’s results are markedly better than other video search engines. According to Divvio’s site, the company’s differentiating technology includes: the meta media player, continuous verification of broken links, ability to search for specific rich-media attributes, and easy addition of new sites to Divvio’s index. We don’t see any mention of speech recognition or other alternative search methods, but we’ll follow up with Divvio (whose CEO, Hossein Eslambolchi, used to be CTO and CIO of AT&T) to find out more about their approach.

Stapleton says VideoCrawler accesses more than 300 million pieces of content from 3,300 different sites, but in addition to video that also includes other rich media like slide shows, Internet radio and ringtones. For context, competitor Truveo says it has more than 100 million videos in its index.

VideoCrawler is making what I feel are some mistakes: It ranks videos by how many views they’ve had on its own site, not the larger web — a big blow to relevancy. When I brought this up to Stapleton, he responded by saying that, “We’re assuming that the user community of VideoCrawler will be representative of the broader Internet.” And instead of giving users direct URLs to share, it gives users a link to a VideoCrawler page with the video embedded. I worry that this speaks to a focus on building a destination rather than a tool for users. Stapleton’s defense: “This is a banner advertising-driven revenue model.”

I don’t see that VideoCrawler is different enough from the competition to really stand out. Apparently even Divvio felt the same way, because if it saw such a big opportunity for consumer video search why wouldn’t it have addressed that market itself? But I do like that we’re starting to come closer to a universal online video player. One way or another, let me know what you think.

ABC.com Viewers Mostly Women; it must be the McDreamy effect — a whopping 85 percent of the network site’s overall audience is female. (Silicon Alley Insider)

Comcast Invests in Cartiza Networks; amount of seed investment in the developer of WiMax equipment for mobile broadband data, video and voice services not disclosed. (Multichannel News)

IPTV Companies Alice, Kassena Bought; France’s Iliad, owners of Europe’s biggest IPTV provider, Free, to buy rival Alice from Italia Telecom for $1.6 billion. Elsewhere, Espial is buying Kassena for just $6.1 million (all stock), a huge loss since Kassena had raised $70 million in funding. (Iliad: Variety); Kassena: VentureBeat)

Amazing Ball Girl Catch is a Fake; vid was an unused ad for Gatorade that got posted, received 3.5 million views (our question: who thought this was real?). (LA Times)

Mystery Over MovieBeam Asset Sale; anonymous letter filed with the bankruptcy court says Movie Gallery’s sale of the set-top service’s physical assets to a British Virgin Islands company was way undervalued. (Video Business)

Hearst-Argyle Hires New Digital Exec; Roger Keating was formerly with Time Warner Cable. (Broadcasting & Cable)

If you wanted to keep your obsession with hyperactive YouTube phenomeon “Fred” a secret, you’re in for some bad news. A federal judge yesterday ordered that records of every video watched on YouTube be handed over to Viacom as part of its ongoing $1 billion copyright infringement lawsuit against Google.

According to the ruling:

The motion to compel production of all data from the Logging database concerning each time a YouTube video has been viewed on the YouTube website or through embedding on a third-party website is granted.

In case you were wondering::

Defendants’ “Logging” database contains, for each instance a video is watched, the unique “login ID” of the user who watched it, the time when the user started to watch the video, the internet protocol address other devices connected to the internet use to identify the user’s computer (“IP address”), and the identifier for the video.

The Electronic Frontier Foundation is up in arms over the ruling and has a breakdown of how this decision may actually violate federal law.

The court dismissed Google’s argument that handing over the data would violate its user’s privacy concerns, saying “But defendants cite no authority barring them from disclosing such information in civil discovery proceedings, and their privacy concerns are speculative.”

Over at TechCrunch, Michael Arrington writes that there’s only one use for all this data Viacom is to receive: to sue individual users (or at least threaten to) who have watched copyrighted material on YouTube.

The ruling was made over Google’s objections, and hopefully Google will take all necessary action to challenge the order (or potentially face class action lawsuits).

But it wasn’t a total loss for Google yesterday. The judge ruled that the company did not have to hand over YouTube’s source code. The company can rest easy that no one else will build a YouTube clone.

We’ve been following the unveiling of Strike.TV, the consortium of more than 40 online shows coming from Hollywood guild members that was inspired by the writers’ strike. Tonight Variety has some more details on the site, which is set to launch Friday, but only with a “sizzle reel,” followed by actual content in about a month.

The line-up is definitely intriguing, but the whole effort makes me wish I’d parked myself by a picket line during the strike preaching the gospel of the Internet. Apparently all it took to get the gang on board was a day-long seminar about “how relatively cheap and easy it is to produce high-def Internet vids, now that high-def cameras and sophisticated editing software is widely available and affordable.” Well duh! We could write that seminar in our sleep.

The other thing I find interesting is how low-budget the project (which will donate its first three months’ revenue) is. Since participants are paying the bills for what they create, apparently the site launch cost “less than $10,000.”

Without further ado, here’s some of the initial lineup, courtesy of Variety:

- “Global Warming,” starring “Saturday Night Live’s” Kirsten Wiig and “Daily Show’s” Aasif Mandvi;
- “Unknown Sender,” penned by Steven de Souza and starring Timothy Dalton and Joanne Whalley;
- “House Poor,” created by “Office” writer-producer Lester Lewis;
- “The Challenge,” starring Bob Newhart and penned by sitcom vet Lloyd Garver;
- “Five or Die,” written and directed by horror movie vet Tom Holland;
- “John’s Hand,” starring Garret Dillahunt and Kali Rocha.

More than 40 shows in total! Man, there are just too many Internet series to keep track of these days. Look for us to filter through the bunch and showcase some of the best ones at NewTeeVee Station.

The Atlantic Monthly recently asked the question “Is Google Making Us Stupid?” I can’t answer that (I couldn’t finish reading the article), but I’d like to ask a parallel question: Is YouTube killing video originality?

The promise of web video was that cheap cameras, easy editing software and free online distribution would open up new vistas of creativity. The Hollywood gatekeepers would be tossed out and the masses would finally get to express themselves.

So what happened? Because it seems like we’re just seeing the same things, over and over.

Gabe and Max’s Internet Thing is a fantastic spoof of cheesy infomercials. But it was followed by Master the Internet, which is not. Now we have Kanye West doing another version of a hammy infauxmercial for hawking vodka.

Noah takes a picture of himself everyday, so Olde English spoofed the idea with a guy taking a picture of himself every day as his life deteriorates. Matthew Harding dances around the world, and now there’s a video of a guy dancing around Los Angeles… as his life deteriorates.

The Shining becomes a comedy, Back to the Future becomes Brokeback to the Future, and Batman fights not only himself, but also Hellboy.

Dora the Explorer gets yelled at over the phone by Alec Baldwin; a fast-food worker gets hit on by Demetri.

Need I go on?

Some of these are parodies; some are just recycling the same ideas. Some are actually quite funny; others are just…bad.

So why drag YouTube into all this? Well, because of its size, mostly.

There have always been spoofs and “borrowing” from existing sources. That isn’t changing with the web, it’s just becoming faster and easier, which is spawning more of it.

Parodying or revisiting a popular gag works because the audience already has a certain level of familiarity with it. People have seen infomercials, they know Back to the Future, or they were forwarded the picture-a-day. It’s much easier to attract eyeballs when people recognize the source material. It’s a lot harder when they have to learn something new, and who has patience online?

To be fair, thanks to YouTube, more people are creating and watching video than ever before — and that’s good. The issue becomes when people start creating for the playcounts. What’s the fastest way to rack up a million plays on YouTube, land an agent and get on Oprah? It’s not by making something new.

Paul Proulx’s montages are on the surface simply mashups of film clips, but the way in which he’s constructed these odes to late 20th-century film show an attention to detail beyond the amateur. At what point does expressing your love of movies become its own act of creativity? Read what Steve Bryant thinks, and chime in with your thoughts!

Elsewhere online, there are bears getting their freak on in the woods, and self-playing robot bands. Another exciting day of oddities brought to you by the Station!

Roku, the maker of the $99 Netflix streaming set-top box, has told Forbes that it will be updating its software later this year to let the device stream video from other “big name” providers.

While Roku didn’t name names, YouTube obviously springs to mind. The video-sharing site has done deals to get its content on devices like the Apple TV, HP MediaSmart Connect, and Sony and Panasonic TVs.

The bigger question is what does Roku’s news mean for Verismo, the other $99 set-top box (which also streams YouTube content). Roku’s already been flying off the store shelves (though with no hard numbers, we don’t know how many units that actually is), so does even Verismo stand a chance?

For that matter, what will this mean for the ZvBox. Sure the Zv turns your TV into a remote computer desktop and lets you watch any web video. But if all you want to do is watch video why shell out $499 for a Zv when you can get the Roku for $400 less?

The set-top space is changing by the day, with new players coming in and existing players mixing things up. If Roku is any indication, We’ll be updating our Set-Top Box scorecard a lot this year (and driving my wife crazy with all the new boxes under the TV).

Have you no loyalty, Will Ferrell? While Funny or Die toils along, branching into video games to show that it’s stronger than just your wit alone, you’re off gallivanting on iBeatYou, online video home of new mom Jessica Alba and that traitor Baron Davis (see our initial review of the site).

Ferrell showed up on iBeatYou last week with costar John C. Reilly on the set of their movie Step Brothers. They announced a staring contest, which they are currently winning, though it only has five entrants.

So what’s going on? Is there a celebrity video site roll-up in the in the works?