BudTV has got a reprieve, and I must admit that on first reading about it being saved from the ashes, and having its lease extended to next year, my first response was: Why?

The site, an attempt to create a Funny or Die-style comedy video destination, was so painfully lame — despite the estimated $20-million that went into setting it up and getting various artists to create content for it.

For this reason, I thought it would be better to euthanize it, and put it out of its (and our) misery.

That was my first reaction. But Chris Albrecht at NewTeeVee has managed to convince me that BudTV should live on to fight another day.

BlogTV.ca, the video streaming experiment from Alliance Atlantis launched with much fanfare in March (well, a big fancy party at least).

And now it’s getting the chop… so let’s have another party.

I don’t want to spend a huge amount of time on it, because frankly it isn’t worth it, but I thought I should take note of the fact that it’s gone, and about time too.

Not so long ago, Amanda Congdon split from Rocketboom, and the news of the separation was the biggest news in the blogosphere.

It was all over Techmeme for days, as everyone pored over her blog posts and comments by Rocketboom founder Andrew Baron.

For those who have forgotten, Amanda co-created or co-owned or was hired to front (depending on whom you believe) Rocketboom before leaving over a row with Baron.

Now, there are reports that she has parted company with ABC — where she was doing occasional video reports — and there has been barely a peep. Why? Hard to say, really. 

Odeo (formerly known as Sonic Mountain) has acquired FireAnt – a podcast and Vodcast directory. TechCrunch reports the acquisition to be worth $400,000.

Acquiring Technology – Not Users

By purchasing FireAnt, Odeo has gained the FireAnt desktop media player for Windows and Mac, as well as FireAnt’s database of feeds and metadata.

However, in terms of users FireAnt is thin on the ground with a very low Alexa rank of 245,000 which I estimate to be anywhere between 5000 – 20,000 visitors a month.

Wallstrip is a site which produces short online video pieces covering stocks. Born of the blogosphere, it’s a fascinating and unusual business, so we thought we’d take an in depth look at it.

Wallstrip is a company founded by a venture capitalist who says he never intended to run it as a long-term business. It was funded with seed capital and sold less than a year later, so the company fairly screams “test project”. 

The fact that it was sold to CBS for $5M (as reported by Techcrunch) a mere nine months after launch proves that the test was successful.

Investor/advisor Fred Wilson reports that he met founder Howard Lindzon on blogs, and Howard told me that he met the show’s producers Adam Elend and Jeff Marks the same way. 

Fred, Brad Feld and others invested $600,000 and the production team was sent off with a mandate to produce a short video every business day for less than $1000, and to cover high-flying stocks with humor.

Interviews conducted: Howard Lindzon, founder and Adam Elend, founder/producer.

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.

One of the hardest things to find when it comes to video or audio podcasts is free music. It’s almost the holy grail for regular podcasters who don’t want to repeat the same tunes and background music again and again.

Most audio available online is currently copyright protected, and most of the rest is illegal. But it is possible to find and gain access to music that is free to download and distribute. This article is designed to help you with that goal.