I’ve been seeing this Blog Council announcement pop up in just about every feed today, and frankly the first thing that popped into my head was an old webring I was a part of when I was a Diaryland blogger in the late 90s of the same name. As such, scanning through the hundreds of feeds, it didn’t catch that it was an actual relevant story until I saw it pop up on Techmeme earlier this evening.

So I dutifully clicked over, checked out the Blog Council website, and read the press release to see what the hubbub was all about:

The Blog Council exists as a forum for executives to meet one another in a private, vendor-free environment and share tactics, offer advice based on past experience, and develop standards-based best practices as a model for other corporate blogs.

The Blog Council will be hosting the first private sharing, learning, and community event exclusively for bloggers from major corporations.  This is your event.  No vendors, no small businesses, no critics, no judging.  One day.  Deep topics. Very little PowerPoint. Lots of discussions. Rich networking. And a delicious dinner.

I scanned over the article and thought to myself: “Where’s the beef?”  I couldn’t find why this particular blog and community with very scant posting history made front page news on most blogs today as I scanned the rest of the posting. I read some of the other blog reactions (where the idea was largely panned by most) I had marked in the feed reader earlier in the day, and then flipped back to the original blog post.

“Oh, now I get the big deal,” I thought as I re-read the first paragraph: “Founding members include [bloggers from]: AccuQuote, Cisco Systems, The Coca-Cola Company, Dell, Gemstar-TV Guide, General Motors, Kaiser Permanente, Microsoft, Nokia, SAP, and Wells Fargo.”

So basically, the big corporations are just now starting to realize exactly how obsolete they are becoming in the new social space that is the Internet.  They are starting to get the (correct) impression that bigger is not always better.  They’re starting to realize that the millions of dollars they spend on massive international video and print branding campaigns are just as effective as Google’s decision to create a solid service and a colorful logo instead of marketing themselves in the traditional sense.

This strange new world confuses and frightens them. And in typical old guard fashion, rather than consulting an expert, they create a committee, give it an important sounding name, set meeting dates for the committee, and will end up spending most of their efforts coming up with new ways to explain why the old ways of doing things work best.

I worked at Nokia towards the end of the last boom-bust cycle.  My experience there is what actually compelled me to leave the big corporate structure and work exclusively at small startups and new media organizations.  New ideas were regularly quashed and shelved. Office politics was prevalent. And the meetings: I spent, on average, four hours a day in a meeting of some sort.  We had meetings about meetings.  We had impromptu meetings about those meetings.  I was hired as a coder and software engineer, but I soon found out my actual job function was to perform well in meetings.

So indeed, this is another panning of the Blog Council.  Not a single corporation from the list of founding members is the maintainer of a blog or New Media presence that I’d consider to be “doing it right.”  I think of Yahoo, Brightcove, Southwest Airlines and Google as examples of effective and proper usage of blogs.  The blogs engage the readers and the pundits and they aren’t singular points of contact for the company. They don’t seem to be constantly mired in PR and Legal clearances (though they may be, they successfully dodge the appearance of such).

Perhaps those folks should be the experts consulted for this blog meeting to end all blog meetings.  Otherwise, it will be more of the same from the world where Office Space would be funny if it didn’t ring so true.

Having already worked with Maven on the Internet TV platform’s recently launched advertising network, Scripps will now be looking to Maven to power its Internet TV offering for its catalog of shows from HGTV, Food Network, DIY Network, Recipezaar, Fine Living and Great American Country. Why not take advantage of the efforts it has already made with Maven for advertising purposes?

With Scripps having spun off part of its media empire to concentrate on its web efforts, it’s clear that the company is looking to monetize its television content on the web. What I find particularly interesting about Scripps’ host of lifestyle brands is its potential for interactive syndication over the web.

A majority of Scripps’ programming can be integrated into online communities with a strong, niche user base that can take advantage of the feedback opportunities that a focus on lifestyle brands affords them. Having acquired Pickle and launched Rate My Room, it’s clear that Scripps would like to further grow its web presence, and extended syndication options through Maven will work for Scripps’ distribution needs across its varied online properties.

And with more major networks and content providers signing up with Maven, it appears to be stealing some market share away from Brightcove. With clients such as FOX, Maven has offered distribution and a video at network that Scripps is clearly taking advantage of on both ends of the spectrum.

The buzzillionth acquisition announcement in the past three days (I know what you’re thinking): Revolution Health has acquired HealthTalk for an undisclosed amount. HealthTalk specializes in providing online resources for health-related topics. It offers a network of blogs, community submissions, podcasts and editorials for the purpose of giving you information that you’re looking for.

With a good-sized user base and monthly activity, HealthTalk’s management team comprises of a handful of executives that previously worked on OnHealth Network, which was acquired by WebMD in 2000, as Seattle PI reports. Revolution Health, which launched earlier this year as the brainchild of AOL co-founder Steve Case, has been moving rather swiftly in an effort to take on its competitors, like WebMD. 

The online health sector has also seen a good amount of growth this year, with niche search engines like Kosmix cropping up for an aggregated set of online health resources. Larger networks like AOL have been improving their health portals as well. Google is gearing up to offer a bit of direct competition to Revolution Health with its upcoming digital answer to storing health records.

 To put the icing on the cake of today’s announcement, Revolution Health has also made a strategic investment in SparkPeople, another health website based in Cincinnati. With an earlier acquisition of CarePages, Revolution Health is making some swift moves, indeed.

My things, which launched an anonymous quiz tool last month to help you avoid buying a crappy gift for your loved ones, has launched a new initiative specific to the tracing stolen valuables. The company that grew from Trace, the international database of stolen valuables, is combining its two main components to provide an improved search tool powered by LTU Technologies.

With the recent expansion of upgraded visual search, LTU will be giving up very necessary data for MyThings customers. In using MyThings, you’re granted the ability to use a web-based tool to keep track of the items you own–from receipt tracking to simply cataloging all of your jewelry, MyThings has extended this service to included resources for recycling, selling items on eBay, finding accessories, leveraging the community to value your antiques, and repairing existing items. So when you have an itemized list of your own valuables, and one happens to get stolen, the cooperative measures taken by LTU, law enforcement and MyThings could help you get your items back. It also keeps stolen items from being resold in the trade market (legitimate trade market, that is).

It’s obvious that a tool such as this needs to be greatly effective in terms of its search capability. It’s also clear that MyThings is looking to find other consumer-based ways in which to offer its services to a larger audience. Having been borne of Trace, MyThings has already begun leaning more towards the social end. The MyThings GiftList quiz speaks to the social end of its website, which can be used for search purposes in another capacity–from wish lists to recommendations.

There are a handful of feed readers out there that let you custom your feed experience: pulling particular feeds based on keyword, actively searching feeds of your choice as you surf the web, etc. And while it has become rather standard for you to have a feed reader, like Bloglines, that shows you the feeds you’d like to read and gives you certain customized options for the organization of your feeds, there aren’t many that give custom options beyond this.

favorit-mashup-editor.pngFav.or.it is hoping to do so with its feed reader, incorporating a set of new options for its feed Slices tool. Already having launched a highly custom feed reader, fav.or.it also has some helpful interactive search and social tools included in its service. You may recall that feed slices can be created by choosing the keywords for your interests, and creating a separate feed that’s narrowed down to your personal focus.

Now you can mashup these feed slices to incorporate multiple feeds for an even more customized experience. The new mashup editor is in AJAX, which makes for faster customization. Select multiple blogs, keywords, dates and other parameters for the tailoring of your slices. As with all slices, your mashup slice will appear as its own feed within fav.or.it, complete with interactive options for viewing and leaving comments. They can be shared with others as well. For more info, check the video below.

Kaltura, the collaborative tool for creating multimedia videos, has launched its second Facebook application. The latest is called Group Albums, and it follows the video greeting application first released by Kaltura. What I like about Group Albums is the very direct manner in which this application uses the Facebook population and brings users together for something they spend a good amount of time already doing on the popular social network–sharing pictures.Say I have photos from our last ski trip. I can create an album with this application, and invite you to add your photos and videos from the ski trip as well. Kaltura will keep track of those that have been invited to individual albums, and you can even “nudge” them in order to send a “friendly” reminder for them to upload some photos.The reason I like this application specifically for Facebook is because it furthers the relationships and continuity of personal connections based on images. This is something that Facebook already does to a large extent. If you upload a photo of me from your birthday party and add a tag, then the photo will show up when others browse through images of myself. Group Albums builds on this concept by creating a central tool for the direct inclusion of photos from multiple users for a single album. I’m actually surprised that Group Albums wasn’t the first Facebook application that it launched.kaltura-group-albums-s2.pngOther tools included in this application include editing options for uploaded images, that let you add stickers, text, etc., and the ability to add a sound track to your album. While you can import pictures from your Facebook account as well as upload images from your computer, images can only be added one at a time, which can be very time consuming. So while I do like Kaltura from a conceptual level, but the time required for creating an album could be a huge hindrance for practicality reasons.

Additionally, there doesn’t seem to be any integration with your Kaltura account, so group albums created on Facebook won’t appear with content you have on Kaltura. Likewise, the majority of Kaltura’s collaboration tools won’t be found on its Facebook applications.

A well linked to post over the weekend was Andrew Miller’s notes on a Google Apps presentation. The main presenter was Scott Johnston, former VP of Product Development at JotSpot - one of my favorite Web Office apps that was acquired just over a year ago by Google, but has yet to be turned into a Google Apps product. Well apparently JotSpot is being integrated, according to Miller’s notes.

JotSpot is/was a very flexible wiki-based product, which had spreadsheeting and other office functionality. Miller reported that it will spawn “Google Sites” in 2008, which “will expand upon the Google Page Creator already offered within Apps.” It will be based on JotSpot collaboration tools and will allow businesses to set up intranets, project management tracking, customer extranets, and “any number of custom sites based on multi-user collaboration.”

This sounds like an ambitious product and one that may potentially crack open a lucrative market in businesses: intranets and extranets.

For a long time the cash cow of large and complex CMS (content management systems) like Interwoven and Vignette, intranets have been crying out for a web-based collaboration makeover. Blogs, wikis, start pages have all been tried before, but all fell short due to security and workflow issues. So on the one hand you had too much complexity (Vignette et al), but on the other too much simplicity (blogs, wikis).

Perhaps JotSpot is the product that can bridge the gap; and be the foundation of a true collaborative intranet. They certainly have the product and brainpower behind it to pull off that vision.

I’m only speculating at this point, as we know virtually nothing about what Google is hatching - other than what Andrew reported. But it’s very tempting to think that Google can ’solve’ the long-standing corporate intranet problem!

[via readwriteweb]

Finally, Google’s thinking about making its Street Views map completely anonymous, to protect the privacy of people that show up in the photographs. For its Europe Street Views version, Google will be modifying all photos to ensure that faces and license plates are not visible. It may do the same with the US version, which launched months before Street Views in Europe.

So what took so long? Privacy advocates were all over Street Views when it first came about. And while Google made a few concessions to appease those with privacy concerns by offering to alter images upon request, it looks like Google may finally be doing the right thing when it comes to these Street Views maps.

This could be in part because of the increased amount of pressure being placed on Google as it expands globally. Other countries are far more strict about privacy standards than the US. Thankfully, Google’s announced that it will be thinking about making changes accordingly to the US version as it takes these steps for meeting privacy standards across the world. This will be something that other services, like EveryScape, will have to keep in mind for their own expansion as well.

A possible downfall of modified street views images–getting slightly less funny pictures to poke fun at. What do you think: good for Google, or waste of time?

[via infoworld]

Ah, Microsoft. Always late to the game. Maybe it’s a part of their strategy: wait until Google (Picasa Web Albums) and Yahoo (Flickr) establish solid market positions, and then develop or buy an (usually inferior) product of their own and try to corner those remaining 10% of users.

This time, they’ve acquired WebFives (previously Vizrea), a photo/video/audio sharing site primarily aimed at mobiles, specifically Nokia devices. In typical Microsoft fashion, they’re promptly shutting down the service (current users have 30 days to download their content) which will probably reemerge later as a Microsoft branded product.

Here’s an excerpt from the letter that Mike Toutonghi had recently sent to all Webfives users:

“In November of 2007, we reached an agreement with Microsoft, wherein Microsoft has acquired all rights to WebFives technology, patents pending, trademarks, and software to incorporate into its products and services over time. In order to make our wind down process as easy as possible for our users, Microsoft has agreed to provide us with a license to continue operating WebFives until the end of the year, giving you time to copy any information you would like to keep to your own PCs or another service prior to the end of the year.“

Just what the users wanted to hear, I guess.

[via ZDNet]

It was announced on Friday that AOL, formerly America Online, has stopped selling online videos, and, instead, have teamed up with Amazon’s Unbox service.

Just over a year old, it seems that AOL wants to shift all of its focus to the advertising business model, so has decided to remove its self from the competitive online video sales game all together. As of Friday, the AOL Video page instead displayed an ad for Amazon Unbox, the mega-retailer’s digital download service, and directed consumers to go there for their purchases.

Amazon will share a portion of the revenues with AOL, but no numbers were disclosed. Also unknown was if the video segment of AOL had performed to expectations or not.

This is the second major coup for Amazon in the video war as of late. Back in September it was NBC who left Apple’s iTunes Store to join with Amazon. Apparently Amazon isn’t happy with just shipping millions of boxes a day any more.

(via AP)