Over the last 30 years, capturing memories on film has gone from being a rarity to something that everyone does on a regular basis.

If the popularity of sites like YouTube tell us one thing, it’s how popular, and populist, capturing and sharing ordinary events on camera has become.

One of the main problems associated with that sheer amount of footage which is taken though, is once a new format, or way of filming emerges, what then becomes of your old footage?

Two well-known media companies have chosen technology by Maven Networks, a private company founded in 2002, to launch new online video offerings.

Sony BMG Music Entertainment and FT.com (Financial Times) are on the verge of launching new consumer online video offerings built on the Maven Internet TV Platform.

Sony BMG will use the Maven technology to syndicate its Musicbox video content to hundreds of web sites throughout 19 European countries. The Maven Internet TV Platform will automatically deliver content in each market’s native language and monetize content through interactive advertising.

Original Digital Inc announced that it would be supplying on-demand video, audio and user generated content capabilities to the virtual world of Second Life.

Second Life users who are also referred as “Residents” will now be able to integrate streaming video and music in their virtual worlds for a richer multimedia experience.

Use of images and videos are not new to the world of Second Life however with the inclusion of on-demand capabilities, one will be privy to a more flexible platform.

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Google have added the ability to upload videos to Blogger, their free blogging service. The additional feature to the service was added as part of a series of updates last week.

These were mainly to resolve a technical problem with the blog publishing and hosting service. 

Publishers who use Blogger had been experiencing trouble performing various editing and posting operations last Monday and Tuesday. Google was quick to notice and repair this issue, as it was no longer a concern by Wednesday.

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2 Months ago I first heard about WiTV - A new Joost contender that offered a couple of cool features including integration with Apple products and being browser based (no software installation needed).

Now I’ve managed to get some more information on these features including some pretty screenshots.

I’m Impressed!

Just take a look at the screenshots and features below and you can see how WiTV is going to give the likes of Joost, BabelGum and VeohTV a serious run for their money.

Channel Selector

A fluid bottom scrollbar for selecting the various channels available complete with thumbnails for each channel.

Joost users have expressed concerns over the video quality and bandwidth requirements of the free P2P online television application.

To investigate these complaints the Joost team has done some testing and compared Joost to both Apple iTunes and DivX Stage6 videos.

According to their findings, the bit rate of Joost videos equals out to only half that of the same videos available from DivX or iTunes.

To make matters even worse, it was reported that the resolution of Joost does not even measure up to the standard definition video that cable companies provide.

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These days, the technology is there for anyone and everyone to run their own live video channel. Using a variety of services and websites, it’s possible to be your own broadcaster.

Just over a month ago I, Robin Good, decided to test a new grassroots live video format by utilizing the zero footprint and zero cost technologies available to anyone wanting to start a live video news channel.

The idea was one of leveraging the latest live video streaming technology to create an experimental grassroots independent news channel that would broadcast news from all of the major cities around the world. 

I made a call to volunteer newscasters and then went about putting it into practice.

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