This week we’re trying something new with the format of the Weekly Wrapup. Instead of listing all of the posts we published over the past week, we’ll filter them so you just get the best posts. The idea is that this will make good weekend reading, because it’ll be highlighting the best content of the week from Read/WriteWeb and our network blogs. Let us know if this format works for you.
Note that you can subscribe to the Weekly Wrapups, either via the special RSS feed or by email.
Online Video Week
This week we focused on online video and here were our top posts:
Adobe Brings HD TV Quality to Web Video
This week Adobe launched a new version of their near ubiquitous Flash Player. Nicknamed “Moviestar”, the new version of Flash Player 9 features HD Television quality. It includes H.264 standard video support – the same standard deployed in Blu-Ray and HD-DVD high definition video players. Also added to the mix is High Efficiency AAC (HE-AAC) audio support and “hardware accelerated, multi-core enhanced full screen video playback”.
There were a lot of great comments on our post — also if you’re technically inclined I recommend you read Adobe engineer Tinic Uro’s post detailing the nitty gritty.
Video Ads
Another big piece of online video news this week: Google launched YouTube Video Ads. Josh Catone asked whether AdSense for Video will be far behind? In related news, Adotube launched a Video Ad network.
Best Video Aggregators
For an in-depth look at video aggregation sites, check out Josh Catone’s guide to finding the best videos. Video aggregation sites attempt to figure out the best videos each day from across the online videosphere. Also check out our picks for Top 10 Video Search Engines. Or if you just want to know what the most popular online videos are, this list of the Top 10 YouTube Videos of All Time is a good start!
Web Products
This week’s Web Product of the Week is Should Do This, a new site from Robot Co-op that aggregates user submitted suggestions on any topic. Like other Robot Co-op sites, Should Do This is dead simple. Users enter suggestions into two text boxes in the form of “BLANK should BLANK,” – e.g. “MySpace should release an API”. Users can then agree or disagree with suggestions, vote on how likely they are to actually happen, vote on when they might happen, and leave comments or reasons why something should or shouldn’t be done. The site has a similar look and feel to Robot Co-op’s other products, such as 43 Things.
You can find many other startup profiles in our Startups category.
Analysis
Where is the Web Headed?
The Digestion Phase is a new term coined by Alex Iskold, to describe a period of time for us to reflect, to integrate, and to understand recent technologies and how they fit together. Alex noted that we are in one right now in relation to Web technologies. He says “it is the outcome of this phase that will decide if we continue to slide or if we rebound and start climbing back up. The deciding factor will be the true value of the technologies that we created.”
Does the Internet Matter in Election Politics?
So asked Josh Catone, in a post that pondered what might it look like if web 2.0 picked the president? Judging by MySpace friends and YouTube channel views, America is preparing for a showdown of Barack Obama (Democrat) and Ron Paul (Republican). But all of the latest polling data concludes that neither Paul nor Obama are the presumptive nominees for their respective parties. So we shouldn’t look at web popularity to predict election outcomes, even though the Internet is a powerful tool for politicians.
You can find more R/WW analysis posts here.
R/WW Network Blogs
Check out a wrap of the week’s Digital Lifestyle news on last100. Here’s their top story:
Leave your laptop behind with iPhone Web apps
Dan Langendorf writes“This past weekend I realized I do most of what I want on the Web with my iPhone. I don’t mean editing web pages, updating blog posts, downloading photos and such, but for the basics of checking email, updating Facebook and Twitter accounts, sending instant messages, reading RSS feeds, making a list, taking a quick picture and emailing it to my flickr account, and listening to music or a book, I’m covered.” He then goes on to outline some of his favorite iPhone social and productivity apps.
Alt Video Search Engines
Our other network blog AltSearchEngines focused on video search engines this week. It began Monday with the Top 10 Alternative Video Search Engines, followed on Wednesday with a Debate on Video Search with search engines Dabble and ClipBlast!. The week ended with an in-depth
look at Search Engine of the Day Fooooo, a new Japanese video search engine.
Poll
Our poll this week asked: Where Do You Predominantly Watch or Download Online Video? Here are the results:
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YouTube 66% (233 votes)
News websites 1% (4 votes)
Cable or network TV sites 2% (7 votes)
Yahoo 3% (11 votes)
MySpace 0% (1 votes)
Google Video 5% (17 votes)
AOL Video 1% (2 votes)
MSN Video or Soapbox 0% (0 votes)
iTunes 3% (9 votes)
Metacafe 0% (0 votes)
Grouper 0% (1 votes)
StumbleVideo 1% (2 votes)
Digg 3% (9 votes)
Photobucket 0% (1 votes)
WebShots (CNET) 0% (0 votes)
iFilm 1% (2 votes)
DailyMotion 3% (10 votes)
Other (please comment) 13% (46 votes)
—
So YouTube dominates the online video space – no surprises there, although I thought some of the newer startups might fare better with R/WW readers.
That’s a wrap for another week! Enjoy your weekend everyone.
