TechnoCloud

Like Elvis, Bob Dylan seems to have no limit to the number of Greatest Hits variations he can release. I can remember as a child listening to my parent’s Dylan compilation in the car some 20+ years ago and the old master is at it again with a single CD or ‘deluxe’ version with 3 CD Digipack no less.

Passing over the fact that most of the old favourites are there yet again, a piece of viral marketing for the album caught my eye.

The viral, also available as a Facebook application, allows you to create your own version of the famous ‘Subterranean Homesick Blues’ video where Dylan nonchalantly holds up lyric cards. In a neat piece of creative you can add your own lyrics to the cards and watch Dylan flick through them followed by a plug for the album.

You can share it via Facebook, email the website version to a friend (with the classic subject line ‘Bob Dylan has a message for you’ or embed it on your blog or social network after the slightly annoying step of having to provide a url and email address.

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Great reminder of some of the video gems to be found in user generated content, starring a highly creative street performer in Germany using a combination of skis and bottles filled to various levels…

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Interesting to see that BBC News is trialing the use of a Flash player which will allow users to embed video clips into their web pages (T&Cs plus code for the video below here). So, in the spirit of a trial, let’s give it a go using a report on the current UK alternatives to the ‘i-Hype-Phone’.

Easy to do for anyone familiar with embedding code and works fine for me in Wordpress and on MySpace. Work OK for you?

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Another oh-so-handy reference list from the recently list obsessed Mashable, profiling the increasing ‘How to’ video niche.

While YouTube and its many clones try to be all things to all people, these How To sites are proving that there is a market for niche video communities. The best of these sites are more focused, easier to navigate and are proving themselves able to co-exist alongside the traffic phenomenon that is YouTube.

This trend carries over to the series of niche social networks that cater to every topic from the environment, to pets, to writing and everything in between, some more successfully than others, alongside the traffic giants of MySpace, Facebook and Bebo.

Let me be (ahem, among) the first to categorise this sector: social nicheworking. Let’s see how well that phrase catches on…

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Every now and then you stumble upon (literally) a piece of content on YouTube whereby the term ‘user-generated content’ just doesn’t cut it.

Step forward OneManSho, who manages to cram an incredible 200 impressions into just over a quarter of an hour. What’s even more impressive, is that most of them are actualy pretty good.

It reminded me of the crammer’s favourite the Reduced Shakespeare Company which squeezes all of Shakespeare’s 37 plays into just over an hour and a half.

All-in-all, an enjoyable global audition which will surely lead to him moving to other platforms - the other video sharing sites will no doubt be on the poach and he would be a surefire hit a the Edinburgh Fringe (although he may have to pad it out a half hour!).

We keep reading about the ‘MySpace-made-us’ musicians (cue Lily Allen, Artic Monkeys), how long until we see the YouTube etc. comedians as a fixture on our big screens?

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MTV parent Viacom is allowing web users to embed videos from a number of MTV sites, including Pimp My Ride, into their web spaces. This comes at a time when Viacom requested the removal of 100k+ clips from YouTube.

While this move shows Viacom’s desire to control the source of their content on the web, they are prepared to let users consume it at least partly on their own terms, whether embedded on a blog or in their social networking space. With the content contained in their player, they can potentially place advertising around the player or within the content to monetise their content in this space.

Check out our example below to see it in action.

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Could Joost be the future of television? This venture, formerly known as the Venice Project has Janus Friis and Niklas Zennström behind it. These are the people who brought you Kazaa and then Skype. Read more here.

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After Bill Gates’ explained his view on DRM to a group of bloggers, Steve Jobs has set out his vision for a DRMless world. At first sight it might seem that they’re both saying the same thing - i.e. that as content distributors, they perceive DRM to be an impediment to progress and not in the interests of the consumer. However, this interview with Bill Gates suggests that their positions are more divergent. To be fair, the interview with Bill Gates was over a year ago and it’s possible that in the intervening period Microsoft’s experience with Zune have left him with a slightly different feeling.

Anti DRM groups, such as Defective By Design have taken the views expressed by Jobs and Gates as support for their position. For another view on what’s happening in the music industry with regards to DRM, read this, which is written from a pro-DRM stance.

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Google have used their blog to reveal more about the proposed direction and integration of YouTube and Google Video.

Far from killing the golden goose that is YouTube’s audience, YouTube is to remain its own identity, but with increasing use of Google’s monetisation tools. YouTube delivers the traffic, Google monetises it.

Naturally, Google Video will start including more results from YouTube, although Google will retain its catchall independence by adding as many sources of video as possible. How long before video is added to the hallowed homepage tabs in the UK along with images, groups, news, etc.? (Update: it is already in the US)

Interestingly with video content proving increasingly pervasive online, Google Adsense are running an Adsense video test as it attempts along with many others to find the sweet spot in terms of monetising video often played outside the host site through embedded media players such as YouTube’s.

More about this on the Adsense blog.

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Another online conversion tool has launched - Hey!Watch.  Unlike Zamzar, this tool is video only, but they’ve used RSS and a RESTful API to provide automation capability.

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