60Frames is a syndication network that the writer’s on strike could take advantage of (probably). While this isn’t stated explicitly on 60Frames website, there’s no better time to get some out-of-work writers to help it create content. What 60Frames does is offer a “studio” of sorts where artists can create and publish their original content. So far 60Frames has received $3.5 million from Spot Runner and United Talent Agency (UTA).So in keeping up this trend of bringing old media structures into new media realms, 60Frames is in fact adopting the same model that MyDamnChannel and National Banana have used. That means more merging of Hollywood with the Internet. It’s all fun and games now, but soon there will be more regulation, rules, and all sorts of downers that will all but ruin the current experience.

Oh, I’m getting ahead of myself. Let’s enjoy the freedom that currently is.

I already mentioned that 60Frames is bringing in some traditional media business tactics into the realm of web distribution, and I meant it. While the exact business model for 60Frames has not entirely been revealed, there will be ads, and the revenue generated from said ads will be split with the artists themselves. Looking at 60Frames’ website, there are three prongs to the company’s attack: go after the artists, go after the distributors, and go after the advertisers. That means you’ll find 60Frames content spread all over the web, across various video-sharing networks and probably applications, too.

It’s a necessary tactic for online media these days, and one that is taken seriously when it comes to video. One technical weak spot at the moment for 60Frames is in the area of their embed options on its videos. It lacks a one-click copy option and to embed a smaller size requires mental math and manual editing of the code.

Apparently video is the end-all, be-all when it comes to the opportunistic methods of media moguls, media mogul wannabes, and anyone else halfway interested in online media for the intention of making moolah. Since the perfect formula has yet to emerge, be prepared to see a lot more networks like 60Frames pop up, especially with the current television economy (meaning, it sucks). Everyone’s turning to the Internet for just about everything, and that includes entertainment.

Instead of wading through mounds of user-generated crap, why not tune into something professionally created? Sure, there’s Hulu, but they’ll eventually run out of scripted material, and considering the increasing ways in which device makers are hoping to bring my Internet content to my HDTV, the market has only begun to get things cracking. So far 60Frames has a few featured programs, including PhakeIt, Cockpit (by Big Fantastic, the team that produced Prom Queen for Michael Eisner’s start-up, Vuguru.), and Erik the Librarian. See, you’re intrigued already.

Two recent updates for The Weather Channel incite a few larger questions regarding the company’s direction for 2008. First up, a new mapplet for Google Maps makes weather conditions more readily available on a map. Secondly, The Weather Channel has been chosen as Google’s exclusive provider for supplying weather conditions, forecasts and radar for Google Earth.

Looking back at what The Weather Channel has been up to lately, it’s rather evident that the weather resource is looking to quickly expand its reach across the web. From MySpace to the iPhone, AdMob, and video across multiple networks, The Weather Channel has been very busy.

And this isn’t the first time that the Weather Channel has worked with Google. It had already worked with Google Earth to create a layer on the satellite map service. The new mapplet gives you more customization options, which should be good for Googly map lovers out there. As Centernetworks noted, the questions looming for the Weather Channel concerns its relationship with its other partners, which includes Microsoft for its mapping technology.

Will the Weather Channel be shifting gears and teaming up with Google for its mapping technologies as well? Google has been working hard to get its maps in as many places as possible, from your mobile to your car. So Google Maps may be hoping to use this existing partnership with The Weather Channel to get its foot in the door in order to push its technology for use on The Weather Channel’s own website.

 Things aren’t looking very stellar for LGBT social network PlanetOut. The company is looking for a way out itself, and is “exploring strategic alternatives.” Read between the lines, and that means that PlanetOut is looking to sell. Having already sold off part of its company, RSVP Vacations, PlanetOut was hoping to trim down and focus on its core business. However, this tactic doesn’t seem to be working for the resuscitation of the company overall, and it looks like the end is very near.

PlanetOut has brought in Allen & Co. for the process of seeking its alternatives, but the company has also warned that it may not be successful in its exploration of a sale. PlanetOut’s revenue has dropped significantly, and this really may be the end for PlanetOut. While MTV Networks takes on LGBT networks to expand its collection of niche sites, it’s not surprisingly becoming more difficult for other stand alone sites to continue down the path to success.

While there have been a good amount of funding and acquisition announcements in the past year and a half, there has also been a lot of trimming down of staff and portfolios as previous acquisitions and developments within larger companies are reevaluated for monetary contribution, growth potential, and overall success rate. This is in part due to advancements in technology that sometimes render a particular acquisition defunct, and in part due to ever-changing trends with our evolution of Internet culture.

[via paidcontent]

Ohloh is taking its tracking and ranking tools and opening it up to teams that would like to do the same for their own developers. The open source directory already offers rankings of the nation’s top open source coders, but now you’ll be able to let other developers use its technology in order to track their own open source team of coders, reports VentureBeat. Access the new tools from Ohloh Labs here.It’s a useful tool that many may want to employ for their own purposes, but it’s also a tool that some would liken to Slife, when compared directly to tools designed for tracking work within a team environment. As Ohloh explains, Ohloh will release Ohcount, which is a command line tool and library that counts up lines of source code and subsequently analyzes the language of that source code. The lines of code contributed by a single developer are counted by Ohcount, so you can see the performance of each developer, and you can track their progress. Ohcount supports 35 languages, including C/C++, Java, Ruby, HTML and XML.

The new tracking tools may be specifically helpful for teams with multiple developers, not in a competitive sense but in a collective sense, granting an insightful look at the overall standing of a team, which often reflects on a project better than looking at a single coder’s stats. Ohloh will be releasing additional tools for this new open source tool for developers to take advantage of, eventually offering all of its technology to the open source community.

Stock-market video blog Wallstrip is losing its face. Show host Lindsay Campbell is leaving Wallstrip, but she’s not going far. With Wallstrip having been acquired by CBS last year, Campbell is officially an employee of CBS. And Campbell is staying with her parent company, possibly to do her own show. Was Campbell a primary reason for CBS taking on Wallstrip in the first place?According to Silicon Alley Insider, that’s exactly what’s going on here. One of the reasons CBS acquired Wallstrip was to secure Campbell’s participation in future projects. Wallstrip founder Howard Lindzon has confirmed Campbell’s departure on his blog, and has also named Julie Alexandria as Campbell’s successor. If you’ve watched the Wallstrip show, you may have noticed that Julie Alexandria has in fact been a guest host for the show, so she’s already familiar with the crew and process. For the most part, there’s no doubt that Alexandria will be able to hold her own in filling Campbell’s shoes.

What’s equally important to look at here is CBS’s long-term plans for its Internet properties, and its distributed content. In addition to the acquisition of Last.fm around the same time as Wallstrip, CBS has also added to its Internet radio efforts and is experimenting with free wi-fi in certain regions of Manhattan. Is CBS developing a more inclusive and better-competing Internet hub for media distribution, with an emphasis on for-web content? That would be an interesting development to follow.

Seekler the lists and review site that consists of wiki-like contributions from its users, has launched its public beta and has added a few changes to the site according to its private beta testing. We first mentioned Seekler here, and I got a chance to dig deeper into the site’s private beta, offering a fuller review here. Many of the changes that Seekler has made since I last took a look in fact were in regards to some of my suggestions.Seekler now enables you to add descriptions for the lists you create, as well as tags. In an effort to keep Seekler simple in design and navigation, the description and tags are collapsible according to your personal preferences. This was a pretty important distinction for Seekler, as the inclusion of tags and descriptions lets users know that Seekler isn’t just a site for creating “top 10 lists.”

Other new features include the ability to control the number of items viewed on a page, and an associated URL button beside list descriptions in order to access outside information (i.e. a link to a movie trailer on the IMDB page for a film on your list). Another interesting improvement made to Seekler is the inclusion of lists that are found on third-party sites. This is a feature often found on other review sites that are typically specific to product reviews.

It’s this weighted crowd-sourcing approach that validates the information found on the primary site, by incorporating content found from elsewhere on the web, that’s been created by an authority on a particular subject. Combine this with user-generated content and Seekler’s wiki-like approach, and you’ve got a site that’s looking to incorporate as much content as possible in an easily searchable manner for visitors and contributors.

With the rising efforts for user-generated search engines, semantic search and Wikia’s own entrant into search engine territory, it’s difficult to imagine an aggregating resource tool that doesn’t apply all of these tools in order to make it searchable and easy to use for contributors. I still wouldn’t mind seeing the inclusion of multimedia as supplements for the online resource, as well as some additional automated tools for gathering, organizing and recommending information as well.

Just a scant seventeen hours ago, Ars Technica leveled a number of accusations at the new caretakers for the Twitter-like service Jaiku. They alleged that “Google has allowed Jaiku to languish” and described a “backlash from frustrated users who are beginning to mass-migrate to Twitter.”  There have also been other reports of many third-party Jaiku client applications that haven’t been able to access Jaiku at all during the past week, and for the brief periods when the servers don’t return 504 gateway errors, the access to the servers are so slow as to be unusable.We’re taking Ars Technica’s word for it, frankly, because none of us here at Mashable are active Jaiku users (and I think Pete may be the only one around here with an actual account). Still, something has to be said for the new caretakers for the service - they apparently pay attention to the blogosphere. They posted just a bit ago on the official blog a response that doesn’t exactly answer everyone’s questions, but does let everyone know that Jaiku survived the merger into Google.

First, we know the Jaiku site is currently not as responsive as it should be. The issue is that users (some of them spammers) are starting to add new feeds to their accounts at a more rapid pace, so we’re working on cleaning up the database to get the site back to its normal level of responsiveness. We should have everything sorted out soon; in the meantime, thanks for your patience.

Second, I know you’re all excited to hear what’s next for Jaiku and what we’ve been working on since joining Google. To be honest, a lot of our time in the early going was spent on getting to know Google. And, of course, a little R&R during the holidays. But we’ve also been working hard on the next steps for Jaiku, and are already making progress on what I think are some cool new ways to help you stay connected with the people you care about. We can’t share any of the specifics right now, but stay tuned.

So there you have it.  We’re sorry, we’re working on it, and some new stuff is coming down the pike we think you’ll like.  If they every open back up to allow registrations from the public, then Twitter users should feel right at home.

CNet has made a few changes lately, skimming down some portions of its portfolio in order to refocus on its core competencies, while also adding in new video features and making additional acquisitions as well. Despite the changes the company has had, its shareholders seem to think differently about the direction in which the company should go. Just days after a consortium of investors led by Jana Partners, with a 21% stake in CNet, appeared to want to take over the company’s board of directors, Jana Partners in fact upped its voting stock from 8.1% to 10.5% in CNet.

While CNet seemed to want to fight the consortium’s attempt to take over the board of directors, this recent change in fact gives Jana more decision power and proposed some extra seats on the board in the process. While the stock was acquired by Jana in the open market, CNet still appears to be opposed to Jana taking more control in the board room.

Is CNet slowly being forced into the direction its stockholders wants it to go? Will Jana and the other investors get their board room shuffle? As Stan mentioned a couple of days ago, the eventual direction of CNet can be determined by its current board, or its stockholders, and neither group may fully rectify CNet’s situation.

[via Pulse 2.0]

When we first heard of Cisco’s plans to create software for companies to build their own interactive social networks, we weren’t exactly sure what that entailed from a product standpoint. While Cisco’s interest in the social networking market was clear, the company’s entrance into new waters was one filled with questions. A new report from CNet via the Wall Street Journal today has shed some more light on Cisco’s plans.

The new software is called Eos, which stands for Entertainment operating system. It will let companies build online communities for niche groups, but more specifically it will help the companies monitor the community members’ interaction with each other as well as the content. It sounds a little bit like spying, but it’s really just market research. It’s the type of tools that software developers are beginning to include in their network-creation services as a standard when larger media companies are a target demographic. These are the companies that will spend money on creating social tools designed for consumer use, with a niche approach that is more able to pull data from a loyal and heavily engaged user.

This approach to social networking is very specific to brands, and incorporates some better potential for advertising as well. Having acquired Five Across as well as the important portions of the company that operated Tribe, Cisco has gone to the experienced pros in order to ensure its infrastructure. Having inherited a client with the social network for the National Hockey League with the acquisition of Five Across, Cisco will be testing its software with the NHL. Given Cisco’s experience on the infrastructure gear end, the company has seen how media has shaped the world of devices.

So I’m wondering if this will be a big enough benefit to help Cisco on its new journey into the world of social networking. I’m also wondering if Cisco will be integrating the two ends of its business spectrum, and will that in fact help ease some of the tension we’re seeing between content providers and service providers given the usage patterns that have developed thanks to media-sharing networks that have grown a significant amount in the past few years.

I’ve been on something of a web app kick lately.  I really like the idea of creating,editing, and sharing documents and computing power “in the cloud”, accessible by whomever you want from wherever you want on whatever system you have handy.

The field of web-based productivity is growing by leaps and bounds, and seems to be on the brink of becoming mainstream and ubiquitous.  That’s good news for mobile workers like me, who can never be completely sure where, or on what kind of computer, we may need to access our files. 2007 has been a good year, with great strides in core productivity apps like word processors and presentation software, and some interesting developments in specialized areas like collaborative brainstorming and todo list management.

Because I love you, lifehack readers, here are 11 of the best web apps released in 2007!

• 
  bubbl.us: Flash-based mindmap creator  bubbl.us allows you to quickly and easily make effective, attractive mindmaps that can be exported as images or as HTML outlines, or shared with others who can add new items or draw new connections between existing ones.
•  
  Buzzword: I’ve raved about Buzzword before, but it bears repeating: this online word processor is both gorgeous and a joy to use. Running in Flash, as you’d expect of an Adobe product, Buzzword works well and has a pretty full set of features already, and promises off-line functionality and PDF export in the near future.
• 
  Empressr: Another Flash-based app, Empressr allows users to create and share slideshows using text, images, videos (including webcam captures created on the fly), and other rich media.  Presentations can be shared on the Empressr site and can also be embedded in users’ own pages.
• 
  Highrise: From the good folks at 37signals comes Highrise, an enterprise-grade contact manager and customer relations manager.  37signals sets the standard for web 2.0 apps, so you know it’s good: clean design, a highly functional interface, and interconnectivity with other 37signals apps.
• 
  Jott: A combination of speech recognition and live workers backs this “note to self” service, allowing Jott to produce remarkably accurate transcriptions of your spoken messages.  Originally Jott simply recorded your message, transcribed it, and sent it to you to someone in your contact list, but their new Jott Links service connects up with various web services allowing you to post to blogs, add appointments to your online calendar, tweet with twitter, and add todos to your todo list.
• 
  Mint: Online money management made almost frighteningly easy, Mint allows users to add all their bank accounts, credit cards, stock trading accounts, and other financial information into a simple, clean view.  Although some have raised concerns about the security of all this sensitive information, Mint’s model was impressive enough to garner the TechCrunch40 Top Company Award (and $50,000 seed money).
• 
  Nozbe:Modeled on David Allan’s “Getting Things Done” approach, Nozbe aims to be the ultimate GTD app. With easy-to-add next actions associated with contexts and projects, Nozbe comes pretty close!
• 
  Sandy: Sandy is a virtual assistant centered on your email.  You email Sandy with (almost) natural language statements, like “Remind me to call John Smith at 8am tomorrow”, and Sandy emails you a reminder at 8am tomorrow to call John Smith. Coupled with Jott, Sandy is a really exciting service!
• 
  Scrybe: The much-anticipated release of Scrybe left some feeling let down, but hype aside, Scrybe could well become the online calendar of choice.  Flash-based Scrybe uses a natural-language parser similar to Sandy’s, allowing new entries to be created quickly and easily.  The developers say they’re hard at work on integrating Scrybe with Outlook, which would make Scrybe a hard one to beat.
• 
  Todoist: Billing itself as “useful, fast and easy to use”, Todoist can be nothing more than a todo list — you start typing into the text box, select a due date, hit enter, and move onto the next.  With a little specialized syntax, though, you can format lists, search for multiple criteria, manage your lists from Gmail, and integrate with external services like Launchy and QuickSilver.
• 
  Vitalist: Another contender for the GTD app, Vitalist also offers next actions, projects, and contexts (unlike Nozbe, you can create your own contexts), as well as a virtual “tickler file” and a mobile-optimized version. GTD apps are a highly personal product — one person’s way of getting things done might be nothing but a series of obstacles for another — so it’s good to see so much competition and innovation in this space.

While not all of these are necessarily the best in their class, they do compare favorably with more established apps like Basecamp for project management, Remember the Milk for todo lists, and Google Calendar for scheduling.  Some, like Sandy and Jott, essentially create new classes — try explaining to your grandmother just what, exactly, Sandy does!

What excites me is that these represent only the first, or in some cases the second, step for web-based applications.  Any of these apps will help you be more productive, but imagine them integrated and refined 5 years from now — using Jott to call Sandy to schedule a payment in Mint and placing a todo in Todoist telling you to call in three days to make sure the payment is received. Maybe it won’t be these apps or these companies, but if not, the ones that follow will have the creators of the apps above to thank for blazing the trail.

So, what have I missed? What else came out this year that’s exciting you? What rounds out this list to an even dozen? And what have I included that’s old news around your neck of the woods? Let me know in the comments!