Last September saw Apple and NBC acrimoniously split over their joint deal to distribute NBC programmes through iTunes.

At the time, NBC blamed Apple for not introducing tougher anti-piracy measures such as DRM, and also not being willing to raise the prices. Basically, it got greedy.

Since then, a lot has happened, with NBC first doing a deal with Amazon to see its programmes distributed via the Unbox service, but how successful that move has been is unclear.

Hulu

Then NBC jointly launched Hulu along with News Corp. as a way to combat piracy – the idea being that if viewers can watch shows legally, they are less likely to turn to YouTube and the like.

However, neither deal has taken away from the fact that iTunes is still a lucrative way of distributing programmes, and it seems that NBC now wants back in.

Live video seems to be more in demand now than ever. With YouTube promising live streaming in the near future, and companies such as Justin.tv and Mogulus increasing in popularity.

I wrote about Livestation back in September of last year. At the time, the service was a newly launched online television service in private beta which followed in the footsteps of Joost and Babelgum.

However it did have one clear advantage in that it offered ‘live’ radio/TV streams from popular broadcasters such as the BBC.

Live, Not On Demand

Where all of the competition offers ‘on-demand’ content that can be paused and played back at any time, Livestation takes the old-school route (similar to traditional television) in providing live video and audio content for its users.

Now, along with a redesigned look (and logo), Livestation has made a smart move in announcing that it will further differentiate its service from others by moving into the niche category of live news. 

Last year saw YouTube integrated in to Google Earth, allowing surfers to watch videos tagged with the locations they are viewing on the Google application.

Now, YouTube has also been integrated in to Google Maps, and this has a much more commercial side to it, not on Google’s part, but for businesses in the US.

The feature was announced on the official Google Maps blog, and the example they used to showcase the new integration is a small bakery in San Francisco (as seen below).

Ashley Highfield, BBC future media and technology director, and the man who has made the BBC iPlayer so successful in such a short space of time, has quit to become CEO of the Kangaroo project instead.

The Kangaroo project, first announced last November, is a joint collaboration between the BBC, ITV and Channel 4 to build an online TV platform for the UK similar to the US only Hulu.

iPlayer Massively Successful

The fact that Highfield will be overseeing its development and launch should be a positive sign, because the iPlayer has gained a massive amount of viewers since its relaunch at Christmas.

When Mogulus launched properly last November after spending a few months in beta, it enabled anyone and everyone to become television channel owners, and broadcasters.

Amongst the features that Mogulus offered straight away were the ability to stream 24/7, and adding TV like special effects, and all this for free.

However, one thing which was missing was the ability to replay live broadcasts as and when you wanted, meaning if you weren’t online at the time of the streaming, then too bad.

When Flickr introduced the ability to share videos as well as photos last week, some were keen on the move, and some were not so keen. Now, some in the latter are vehemently voicing their opinions over the move to rival YouTube.

It seems your average Flickr user sees themselves as a little bit different to the bods who populate YouTube, and leave dumb comments all over the place. Some would say they’re stuck, some would use the word purist.

Either way, the stuck up purists aren’t happy with the people in charge of Flickr, not liking the direction the site is going in, or the way the new video option was implemented.

I didn’t see this one coming at all, in fact I thought Demonoid was dead and buried. But no, six months to the day after it disappeared, the Demonoid BitTorrent tracker and site is back.

The trouble for the popular BitTorrent tracker began last June when a Dutch anti-piracy outfit put pressure on the site’s ISP. This lead to it being moved from Holland to Canada, presumed to be a safe haven.

Unfortunately for Demonoid, the CRIA (Canadian Recording Industry Association) got the site pulled by its ISP. After attempting to get past the problem by just blocking all incoming traffic from Canada, the site finally went offline, supposedly for good on November 9th.