Internet TV is talked about a lot, but this week was a particularly interesting week, starting with this post from Mark Cuban, who claims that Hulu is kicking YouTube’s ass. That starts the debate about quality vs quantity, and which is better when it comes to traffic on a video site. Hulu, on the one hand, has very little traffic compared to YouTube, but ads are tightly integrated so the quality of traffic is a lot higher. However, they are still fighting ad blocking software, as Silicon Valley Insider pointed out this week.

Back on YouTube, it looks like selected full length videos are being test driven in the something they are calling the Screening Room, which may be a step toward the Hulu’s more pro-studio way of doing things.

Then over on Podcasting News, James has written a little summary of a 5 ways you can get these internet video’s back on to your TV screen.

So I don’t know if the connections I’m trying to establish here are really that tight, but connections or no connections it’s just been an interesting week to watch and read about the move toward mainstream internet TV.

Microsoft says podcasting is important for corporations, and it’s released a test version of a new podcasting tool as an add on for SharePoint. A lot of people were covering the story this week. Here’s a couple of links:

• http://blogs.zdnet.com/microsoft/?p=1436
• http://www.eweek.com/c/a/Enterprise-Apps/Microsoft-Open-Sources-Podcasting-Software/

I think its a good thing. What do you think?

I wrote a bit about my take on the podlebrety industry a few weeks ago and since them I’ve been seeing it even more. I recently saw Jessica Alba participate in a contest started on YouTube and made popular by one of the biggest YouTube stars. Now this week, Weezer has released a new video featuring all sorts of scenes from popular youtube videos. Could there be a future where YouTubes star power is even greater than that of traditional silver screen stars?

Well, the term spamcast has been around for many years (almost as long as podcast) but it hasn’t really been a huge deal… until now. Blubrry recently had to remove over 100 spamcasts from it’s directory and block some domains. These are podcasts that are created and submitted all around the Internet mainly to gain pagerank and show up in SERPS for certain terms. The creator may only spend about 20 minutes work on the podcast, and then an automated service takes over from there. Check out this post on podcasting news, and research a bit more into the companies involved if you dare.

Podiobooks is getting a bit of attention this week. I’ve heard of the site, but never explored it in depth. It is worth it. There are over 200 FREE books there in audio format. All you have to do is sign up to subscribe to any of them. Definitely go check it out!

You may be aware of my opinion of the Zune software. This week they started filling in the gap between the quality and usefulness of Windows Media Player and Zune Software. Unfortunately filling that gap will be like filling an ice cream bucked with sand, with a pair of tweezers. Anyway, here’s what they’re saying. I see nothing intersting here except for some hints that they have maybe thought about 1/10th of the places where Zune software falls very short.

Yes folks, you can now get playboy on YouTube. This is fine by me, because as we all know Playboy is tasteful in their stereotyping and degrading women. This video casting call is a perfect example:

The casting call doesn’t simply call for the girls to show off their assets (by shaking their jugs and mooning the camera) but emphaisis that Playboy is interested in getting to know you as a person (like if your a college student, a hot mom, or EVEN if you have a career… yes it could be anything). They want to know your hobbies and passions… be they shopping, cooking, wet t-shirt competitions, or sexy lingerie. And… they don’t even need you to be naked! If your hair is covering your nipples and one hand is hiding everything else you will qualify!

I know this isn’t a regular scheduled blog post… but probably very few people have even noticed that we publish posts at 12 noon on weekdays anyway so I’ll just go ahead and squeak this in. haha. Just wanted to give a shout out to IndoChino, who I noticed on TechCruch today. These guys are really giving it their all and deserve every bit of exposure they can get, so good on them!

These videos from Common Craft are always pretty good, and recently they made one for podcasting. Finally, when someone asks me what a podcast is I have something good to point them to!! Here it is:

I’ve noticed a few stories this week out on the web talking about putting ridiculous amounts of music on an iPod. Podcasting News reported that IBM has developed a chip that can hold 500,000 songs. Ya, that’s a lot, but if I listen 8 hours per day I’m going to run out of music in 12 years… and heaven forbid I have to listen to the same song twice. But not to worry, the Scottish Scientists can do better. How about… 100 Million songs [insert Dr. Evil style smirk here]. Now you can have enough music to keep you going for 100 lifetimes, all on 1 iPod. Since I plan to live 100 lifetimes, this is good news to me. I think it’s only fair that the warrenty should last as long too.

But according to the Scottish Scientists, if you plan to live more than 100 lifetimes and want to listen to non-stop music on your iPod for the entire time, your going to be out of luck. Apparently at that point we will have reached the limits of what is physically possible. We can only PREY that by the year 3000 we will have reliable and affordable wireless globally so that we don’t have to store our music on our iPods anymore.