Boxee was already gaining great publicity and plaudits for being one of the most promising. But at the recent Consumer Electronics Show, the company behind the platform added new content providers to its line-up, making it an even more intriguing and useful prospect.

In case you haven’t heard of it by now, Boxee is a free, open-source piece of software that allows PC users to access all their Web video from one central location. It can also be used when your PC or Mac is connected to a TV, with all operations possible via a remote control.

Work In Progress

Boxee works as a cross-platform media center that pulls content from a number of sources and allows its users to view it all from one central location. It also has many social networking functions which allow content to be shared or recommended.

Boxee is still a work in progress but has moved from beta to open alpha for both Mac and Linux users. The Windows version of the software is still in closed, invite-only alpha but the invite-only prohibition should change early in 2009.

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The Internet has allowed citizen journalism to really come into its own in recent years, and Web video is a big part of that trend. Footage of the Oscar Grant shooting filmed by people on their mobile phones and uploaded to YouTube could actually help bring justice.

Citizen Journalism

A lot has been said about citizen journalism over the past few years. While the old guard and organizations who rely on a kind of monopoly on news may not be fans, the rest of us appreciate being able to get a different side of the story from people actually at the scene.

Citizen journalism isn’t limited just to video of course. Sites such as Twitter are updated on a regular basis with people’s first hand accounts of breaking news stories. But seeing video footage taken from someone on the scene of a news event takes some beating.

Oscar Grant Shooting

And so it has proved in the case of Oscar Grant, a 22-year-old Californian who was shot dead by police in the early hours of the morning on New Year’s Day.

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In order to make money on YouTube, the solution is very simple: advertising. But for professional content creators, this doesn’t just mean advertising on your own uploaded clips but also on the clips using your copyright-protected videos.

Everyone knows that a lot of the videos on YouTube contain copyrighted clips which the uploader hasn’t asked for permission to use. Music videos, clips of TV shows and movies, and the like are a big part of YouTube’s content, and many of them are breaking copyright laws.

Video ID System

In late 2007, YouTube introduced its Video ID system, enabling copyright holders to easily identify clips infringing on its rights. They then have three options: blocking, tracking, and monetizing, all of which are pretty self-explanatory.

When the system was first unveiled, most short-term thinking copyright holders immediately issued DMCA takedown notices to have the infringing content removed from the site. Which is clearly the obvious thing to do when trying to protect your intellectual property rights on the Wild West that is the Internet.

But the third option, that to monetize the infringing clip, is gaining support from some more forward-thinking companies. And they’re making a tidy sum of money as a result of their more open-minded approach.

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Web video has obviously been a favorite of PC users browsing the Internet for some time now. But the medium is now starting to be delivered through other devices, with televisions themselves the latest carriers.

Most of us have a PC hooked up to the Internet. And it’s on that that we watch homemade video clips on YouTube, television episodes on Hulu, or BBC iPlayer, and movies through torrents.

Set-Top Boxes

The last couple of years has seen various companies try to bring Web video to other parts of the living room via set-top boxes such as Apple TV, VUDU, and Roku. But none have really caught in a big way despite showing promise.

There just seems to be a lack of public interest in buying yet another device in order to watch television content. Which leaves one solution: integrate the Web video delivery system into the TV itself.

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No-one could have missed the events currently taking place in Israel and Palestine as the IDF (Israel Defence Forces) invade the Gaza Strip in order to go after Hamas. But should the whole sorry mess be broadcast on YouTube?

Happy War (Christmas Is Over)

It seemed as soon as Christmas was over, Israeli forces launched air strikes on the Gaza Strip in an effort to knock out Hamas, the political party which holds majority rule on the council of the Palestinian National Authority.

Obviously, that’s not the full story. Depending on which side you believe, Hamas is more a terrorist organization intent on destroying Israel than any sort of legitimate political party. Regardless of the truth, war is never welcome.

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