We’ve been covering the activities of IpTV Evangelist for some time now. Company founder Gilbert Hammer has had many of his views on the world of IpTV highlighted here on WebTVWire.

Gilbert has always been passionate about IpTV and the different ways that the technology of Web television are evolving. So it’s an obvious next step for IpTVe to become a service for media companies to utilise.

The last few weeks have seen a rash of opinions being expressed over the ability of YouTube ever making money. The question remains whether the site is a money making machine in waiting or just a financial black hole for Google.

Google CEO Eric Schmidt has already admitted the problems the company faces in making any money from the site, no matter how many millions of page views it receives, and how large a proportion of Web video that the site accounts for.

Kill Or Cure?

This lead CNET’s Don Reisinger to ask the question that dared not be asked: whether Google should just cut their losses and kill the site, despite the pain of losing that $1.65 billion investment it ploughed in just two years ago.

Since then we have seen the debate rage on, and some movement on Google’s part to at least experiment with different ways to make some money from YouTube.

Brightcove is an Internet TV platform and network which allows both established media companies and singular individuals to produce and publish video online and then make ad revenue from the resulting content.

It is now in the process of changing its service from the ground up, with Brightcove 3, a completely rebuilt service now going in to private beta before a full release in the autumn.

Although webcams aren’t suitable for making high quality videos for sharing on sites such as YouTube, DailyMotion and Metacafe, they are perfect for having video chats.

Whether you use Skype, MSN Messenger, Yahoo! or AIM, a webcam can turn instant messaging from a boring text driven conversation tool in to a way to communicate using video as the medium of choice.

Logitech QuickCam Deluxe

One of the best selling webcams currently on the market is the Logitech QuickCam Deluxe For Notebooks, selling for just $39.99 on Amazon.com at the moment.

YouTube has just unveiled two new improvements to the service, an increase in file size from 100Mbs to 1024Mbs, and the ability to add annotations to videos using YouTube Annotations.

The file size increase would be more important were the 10 minute limit lifted along with it but for now, that isn’t the case. However, the massive jump in size possible does mean high resolution video now has a chance to shine.

I think we’ll see more and more people going the hi-res route now, and as Broadband speeds continue to improve, that trend is sure to continue.

Video transcoding is fine so long as the technology and profiles used stay the same long enough for companies utilising them to keep on top of their needs.

However, a lot of companies want to be able to encode their back catalogue to support new profiles, which can be a tiresome and long-winded task.

Encoding Profiles

I’ve talked to a lot of companies recently about their video transcoding needs and most are eager to support an increased number of encoding profiles.

But as their video library grows, they foresee challenges in encoding their back catalogue to support new profiles while keeping up with transcoding their daily ingest.

Screenflow is by far my favourite screencasting tool, of which you can read my gushing review in this post. But like every application or piece of software known to man, it can sometimes go wrong.

Twittered

Yesterday I was whining on Twitter about how I’d had the tiniest little problem with my Screenflow.

In short, I’d had a couple of shots where a tiny pixel had attached itself to a particular type of cursor. The type of thing that you would never even notice if the footage weren’t super-magnified. Not a biggy.

Within a few minutes, Vara had picked up on my tweet, replied to me and asked if I’d like to submit a support email. Which was awesome - I see Twitter used and abused in a lot of ways, and it’s great to see it being used so pro-actively by a developer to monitor and respond to feedback.