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Today it was announced that FireAnt's software and technology has been acquired by Sonic Mountain, a company that also recently acquired Odeo. I’ve been asked to join the new team, serving as VP of Product Development, and will be heading up FireAnt's transition (among other projects) as we re-launch Odeo later this year.

First of all, I want to say Thank You to everyone in the videoblogging community who supported FireAnt along the way, especially Jay Dedman, Daniel Salber, Erik Radmall, and Clint Sharp, who were instrumental in launching this project. We met a lot of wonderful creative people, and made some really important lifelong friendships. It’s been an amazing privilege to contribute to this dynamic and innovative community, and especially to have been involved from such an early stage. I also want to thank Jonathan Weiss, Drew Reynaud, and Jesse Boley who continued FireAnt’s technology development over the past year, which was demo’d at Video on the Net in March 2007.

I also want to give a very special Thank You to Jen Myronuk, who devoted the past 8 months to helping FireAnt overcome some extremely difficult circumstances. Without Jen's involvement and focused determination, we could never have achieved this milestone, and I consider myself extremely lucky to be able to work with her.

When we first launched “ANTs Not TV” at Vloggercon in January 2005, there were about 20 active videobloggers – we knew each of them personally and worked with most of them to create those magical RSS feeds with enclosures. It was amazing to see all these video channels updating over time and to watch them in a unified experience. There was nothing else like it. It was clear that something powerful was happening. It was a new kind of television, and yet it was not like TV at all – it was open to anyone and the possibilities seemed endless.

And it began to spread… thanks to the many talented and creative video producers, educators, and evangelists.

While FireAnt had its share of struggles along the way as a start up, I’m encouraged that the ideas we helped pioneer have grown incredibly stronger over the past few years. This “Not TV” (now more often called “Internet TV”) is really changing the media culture, and it’s having profound social effects. The medium is enabling new voices and conversations. The playing field is being leveled – the barriers between “Internet TV” and “TV” are disintegrating.

So it’s up to us to create what we want to see and share… We don’t have to rely on Rupert Murdoch and Sumner Redstone to create our culture. Thank goodness!

I look forward to watching your videos (and subscribing!). When I get back to producing a more regular videoblog (or whatever it’s called), I hope you’ll subscribe and leave me a comment :-)

Best,
Josh

Gabe McIntyre is compiling a sort of Web 2.0 history and is asking people to describe how they learned about various Web 2.0 sites: Flickr, YouTube, Facebook, and Twitter. Was it at a conference, an e-mail, a colleague, a commercial, blog post, etc.? Here's my answers...

I first learned about Flickr sometime in 2004. I was looking for a good way to post photos from my camera phone directly onto my blog. This was still very hard to do -- in fact, if you used blogger, there was no way to post images without using another service. There were several tiny services to help people do this, but not many that supported uploads directly from the camera phone. There was buzz around the blogosphere about Flickr mostly because of this camera phone enabling functionality and automatic blog posting.

I first learned about Facebook in spring of 2005. I was at a conference at Brown University in Rhode Island. I had joined Friednster about a year before, but had gotten pretty bored with it already. At first it was funny -- the whole social networking thing, and seeing the vast amount of people you were connected with via six degree separation. Friendster really took off in a big way. I was in grad school at the time and everyone was using it, students and faculty. But then, people seemed to get bored with it all at once. I was at this conference at Brown and I was talking to a student who was telling me that everyone was now joining MySpace. I thought she was talking about MSN Spaces, which was Microsoft's recently launched Blogging platform. I was shocked -- everyone was using My Spaces?!?! No, she told me, there's all these bands on MySpace -- Its like Friendster, but its cool. Oh, and there was this other thing that everyone was joining too -- it was called The Facebook, but you needed a college .edu email address. I had recently completed my grad school study at Parsons, and still had my school's .edu email address, but The Facebook seemed like it was for people still in undergrad. I didn't join The Facebook till a year later in 2006, just to check out what was going on -- it was getting a lot of buzz as the number 2 network behind MySpace. At that time, Facebook was just now opening up to high school students. My step-sister in high school immediately added me as a friend. She remained my only friend on Facebook until they began opening the site to non-.edu email addresses.

I first learned about YouTube on the Videoblogging email list in the summer of 2005. Steve Chen, the co-founder of YouTube, joined the list and announced their early beta launch. Steve and I corresponded via email at that time. We talked about RSS syndication and I was encouraging him to allow YouTube videos to be downloaded (eg. through FireAnt). This was clearly not part of their plan -- they wanted to allow embedding but not downloading. Steve told me that there was a lot of venture capital money flowing in Silicon Valley. It was clear that they wanted to build a "Flickr for video" and the plan seemed to flip it quickly. I didn't really understand the SIlicon Valley culture being in NYC -- I had never been to the Bay Area. I was organizing a videoblogger's event and screening at the Apple store in NYC, and Steve asked me if one of his colleagues in NYC could present YouTube. I agreed to allow them to present, although some of the other videobloggers were not happy about this at the time because YouTube was apparently too "commercial." YouTube seemed to be a clone of an NYC-based site called Vimeo, which was founded by the guys who made CollegeHumor.com. YouTube was brand new, and they were trying to get people to upload videos by giving away an iPod Nano each day. By later in 2005, it was clear that YouTube had shifted focus -- they were not "Flickr for video" anymore, that was too small. They were going to be "MySpace for video"!! A lot of people think the big turning point for YouTube was the SNL "Lazy Sunday" video. I don't think that's true -- before that, YouTube was actually blocked by MySpace. MySpace users could no longer embed videos from YouTube on their profiles. YouTube's PR crew went on a rampage, and suddenly there were hundreds of articles written about how the MySpace Goliath was blocking poor little YouTube David. MySpace was super hot and any article written about MySpace was picked up and spread by the devoted users of MySpace. Suddenly all the MySpace users knew about YouTube, and a lot of them were upset. YouTube fanned these flames. Finally MySpace gave in to user demand and turned off the block -- YouTube videos could now be posted on MySpace profiles again. MySpace and YouTube were now officially linked together in people's minds. Shortly after, "Lazy Sunday" dropped and YouTube had zoomed to another level. YouTube's worth in acquisition later in 2006 was triple that of MySpace in 2005.

I first learned about Twitter in July 2006. I was at a party in SF called the "Valley Schwag Hoedown" at RubyRedLabs. The event had a "fashion show" where party-goers showed off their "schwag" (web 2.0 company t-shirts and gear). Irina Slutsky was the MC for the fashion show. I ran into Noah Glass at the party -- he was the co-founder of ODEO and Twitter. Noah told me that he and his team had created this new thing that was all about "status," i.e. what is your current mood? what are you feeling right now? what are you doing? It was all about sending/receiving updates via SMS, and they had a neat SMS interface for joining, signing up friends, etc. I thought that was cool because you could do a lot of functions all through the phone without using a website -- kind of like Dodgeball, but it was a little easier (of course you had to know all the SMS commands). Noah sent me an SMS and I responded to it, which automatically signed me up for "Twttr" and created a friend relationship between me and Noah. For the next day or so, I got dozens of SMS updates from Noah via Twttr. I signed on to the Twttr website and shut off the SMS functions. I had already been through this with Dodgeball -- it was just too annoying. I thought about Twitter and little more, and then realized all of a sudden that these guys were brilliant if they had found a way to get a fraction of a cent kickback from all those SMS messages -- it was clear that Twitter was designed to get users to send and receive a TON of SMS messages. I later learned that they don't get any money for all those messages, in fact they are paying the cell carriers for all those bulk SMS messages -- bummer.... My Twitter account remained fairly dormant until March 2007 when Twitter really took off at the SXSW conference. People were signing up and twiterring constantly. It was a great way to learn what was going on at SXSW, especially since I couldn't attend the conference this year.

Jen and I produced and edited a field report for Rocketboom about BikesAgainstBush and reacting to the recent NYTimes article on NYPD surveillance.

It was fun to collaborate on this project together and contribute to Rocketboom. Andrew Baron composed the music, which added a lot to the piece.

Jim Dwyer's article, City Police Spied Broadly Before G.O.P. Convention, in today's Sunday edition of the New York Times confirms a long-held suspicion -- Bikes Against Bush was under surveillance by law enforcement.

I'm not sure how to react at the moment, and will try to compose a more thoughtful response soon.

For those who haven't seen the videos, here is the raw, on-the-street footage of the arrest, and here is the version that aired on MSNBC's Hardball.

Here is the original prototype video of Bikes Against Bush.

Apple has probably benefited the most from DRM systems with their tightly controlled FairPlay DRM and iTunes-iPod lock-in, so its very surprising that Apple CEO, Steve Jobs, has assumed an anti-DRM stance in his recent article on the Apple website, Thoughts on Music.

Jobs basically lays out three possible futures:

1. Stay the course and continue with the "walled garden" scenarios.

2. Apple could license their FairPlay DRM technology so that other online music stores/services could sell DRM protected music for the iPod (Jobs claims Apple cannot support this scenario as it would compromise the effectiveness of FairPlay).

3. Abolish DRM.

Jobs throws his support behind Option 3, and blames the Big Four music publishers (Universal, Sony BMG, Warner, EMI) for requiring Apple to protect digital downloads with DRM, even though iTunes represents a small portion of music purchases while the much larger market of CD sales are sold without any DRM protection.

Overall, I agree with Steve Jobs. DRM is a fundamentally flawed technology and it is not what consumers actually want because, as it currently exists, it leads to lock-in and ultimately prevents consumer choice. Personally, I purchase music from eMusic because it is the only online retailer that offers music without DRM protection, so I can play the music I've legally purchased on just about any device. The only problem with eMusic is its lack of selection as they only carry a catalog of independents. Still, eMusic is the number two online music store behind iTunes since its the only other music store that supports the iPod -- even with its lack of selection.

But, there is another scenario that Jobs doesn't mention -- what is stopping Apple from supporting Microsoft's PlaysForSure DRM on the iPod so that iPod owners can use competitive online music stores that sell DRM protected music (Yahoo, Rhapsody, Napster, etc)?

If this were the case, then consumers would actually have a real choice -- the other music retailers offer much more competitive prices than the iTunes Store, and currently it is possible to play the purchased music on most other MP3 players. The only thing that prevents consumers from using these services is the simple fact that the purchased music is not compatible with the iPod, which leads the MP3 device market by a long shot.

So why was this option left out of Steve Jobs article? It could be a solution that gives consumers the choice and freedom they want in selecting both media devices and online music stores/services, while also satisfying the needs of Big Four music publishers who require some assurance of copy protection.

Is there something I'm missing? Please leave a comment and let me know.

click here to download

Jen and I went to see Al Franken perform at the Warfield Theater in San Francisco on Aug. 26. It was a benefit event for his Midwestern Values PAC organization. He performed several bits I had heard before from his radio show and also from some of his books. It was hysterical though. Afterwards, he signed autographs and spoke to people from the edge of the stage where we got to meet him briefly.

His documentary, God Spoke, is now playing in San Francisco... we'll have to see it.

You could be looking at the next senator from Minnesota.

Just received a patch to the YouTube greasemonkey script I posted a long time ago.

This one should work with the updates YouTube has made to its website.

Right-click to install User Script

Downloaded files must be renamed with a .flv file extension and played back in a Flash Video capable media player.

I just got back from SXSW in Austin, TX. I had a great time and met a lot of great people. I also got to hang out with a lot of people the I know from the interweb but don't get to see very often, like Steve Garfield.

On Mon. night we went to the Red Eyed Fly bar in Austin for an event called Fray Cafe. I didn't know about Fray before, but its a website with a rich history. It was one of the earliest blogs before "blog" was a word, and it featured original, personal stories submitted by people around the world. Its still going, and each year at SXSW they do a live open-mic event where people tell their own stories. It was a lot of fun.

Steve ended up telling a story about the first time he saw Elvis Costello in 1977 ("My Aim Is True" tour), but he had originally intended to tell a story about FireAnt.

It seems the Google Video Getter Greasemonkey script I wrote a while back has become very popular. It was on Digg.com, and since then I've gotten tons of inquiries and comments about it. The Google Video service is still in beta and changes regularly. As such I've had to update the script a few times to keep it functional with their changes.

Here's the latest...

Google Video now uses javascript to load the Flash Player. This kind of breaks the method used previously by my Greasemonkey script because it essentially tries to hide the HTML that the script was searching for. Not to worry though, it was a pretty easy fix. I also tightened up the code to a mere 3 lines!

Click here to install the new Google Video Getter 2

So why do you need this script? Doesn't Google offer downloads for their free videos?
... yes and no.

If you go to any free video offering on Google Video and click the Download button for "Mac and Windows" it forces you to download a Google Video Player application to playback Google's own .gvp video format. These videos do not play in other applications. I checked out the .gvp file, and its really just a text file with a pointer to a video file on the web... I copied the code and manually downloaded the video referenced and discovered it was a .avi (presumably DivX), but it would not play in Windows Media Player because it uses a DRM scheme for file protection.

There are alternative download options for the free videos though. These include videos formatted for the Video iPod and Sony PSP. I haven't really tried these, but I assume they don't have the same DRM protection since they need to be able to play on those devices.

So really, you don't need this script at all. You can download the videos formatted for iPod and PSP from Google Video. But for some reason, people often write me and leave comments asking for this script and how to make it work again.

Lucas Gonze picked up on my argument with Xeni Jardin regarding YouTube and the SNL Lazy Sunday fiasco. His deconstruction of the issue is pretty interesting:

Both Josh and Xeni are part of the bleeding edge, and not long ago it would have been very surprising to see such a stark difference in their views. What this exchange shows is that lightnet is a new fault line in digital politics. Is the work at hand about samizdat, as Xeni thinks, or about participatory media, as Josh thinks?

I confess, I had to look up samizdat on Wikipedia:

Samizdat (Russian: самиздат) was the clandestine copying and distribution of government-suppressed literature or other media in Soviet-bloc countries. The idea was that copies were made a few at a time, and anyone who had a copy would make more copies, often by handwriting or typing, because copy machines were guarded by what Mikhail Bulgakov called "the secret service" (see KGB, Soviet censorship).

This made me think of Kenyatta's post about Lightnet v. Darknet a few months back where he describes the role Darknets play in disseminating suppressed information in opressive circumstances. This is true samizdat and I agree that an underground economy can help empower the oppressed and lead to important social outcomes.... for instance, distribution of the photos from Abu Gharib could circulate through P2P networks and other Darknets in a way that protects the identities of the distributors and disseminates the information effectively.

However, redistribution of pirated Saturday Night Live videos is hardly a cause worth fighting for, and that seems to be what YouTube has really attached its star to.

Its really unfortunate when such a high-profile (read, high traffic) site like YouTube serves as a bad example. It reflects poorly on everyone working hard to enable a true participatory media culture. I think Lucas hit it on the head by saying Lightnet is the fault line here, and I think its something truly worth fighting for.

From the NYTimes:

Julie Supan, senior director of marketing for YouTube, said she contacted NBC Universal about working out a deal to feature NBC clips, including "Lazy Sunday," on the site. NBC Universal responded early this month with a notice asking YouTube to remove about 500 clips of NBC material from its site or face legal action under the Digital Millennium Copyright Act.

There are three little words that apply to any form of expression, whether you agree with it or not... those words are "all rights reserved." If there is nothing saying "permission granted" then by default it is "all rights reserved." These three words are important to any content creator, whether they happen to be NBC Universal or my cousin filming her cat.

YouTube in fact recognized that the video was plaigarized and contacted NBC to "work out a deal," meanwhile YouTube continued to host and redistribute the video after a lack of response from NBC. I guess YouTube assumed that meant they had permission? They have lawyers, right? I mean, they are a VC funded company.

This video is illegal.

YouTube received a take-down notice from NBC regarding the SNL Lazy Sunday video. That was sure a long time coming. Here's what YouTube says on their blog:

NBC recently contacted YouTube and asked us to remove Saturday Night Live's "Lazy Sunday: Chronicles of Narnia" video. We know how popular that video is but YouTube respects the rights of copyright holders. You can still watch SNL's "Lazy Sunday" video for free on NBC's website.

This response from YouTube must be firmly tongue-in-cheek. They "respect the rights of copyright holders"?! Give me a break. There's tons of infringing content all over YouTube. There's no way they could possibly plead ignorance here (they even hired the brother of one of the SNL sketch writers to be their "director of community" soon after they struck gold with this clip)... its clear that the video was infringing from the moment it was posted onto the site. Its an entire clip from SNL, not an excerpt, and certainly not fair use. Its got an NBC watermark on it.

At what point was YouTube given permission to re-broadcast this video to millions of viewers through their website? Its not like this was file sharing amongst a few friends, this was re-broadcasted on a video portal site to millions of viewers. This is like CBS recording Saturday Night Live and then airing it the next day... and everyday after that for weeks. YouTube quite obviously benefits from video plaigarism of this sort all the time... but then again they're not alone.

This clip was all over the internet. It was also on CollegeHumor.com, and yanked from there by Google Video (obvious from the CollegeHumor watermark, so its a copy of a copy on Google). It was probably on several other video hosting sites and portals (there's a lot of them out there now), as well as on several personal websites.

NBC later released the clip as a free download on iTunes (its now $1.99), and they offer it for free viewing on their website (only for PC users with Internet Explorer).

Of course, some people think that YouTube should be congratulated for their copyright infringing practices. Here's what Xeni Jardin says about it on BoingBoing:

This isn't like another television network broadcasting the skit without permission. YouTube is a service through which individual fans can share stuff they're nuts about with others. NBC issuing a C&D to YouTube makes about as much sense as NBC sending attorneys to the homes of every blogger or Livejournaler user who posted a link to a torrent somewhere

Sorry, Xeni, that's completely wrong. In the same blog entry where YouTube responds to the take-down notice they also say:

YouTube is now serving up more than 15 million videos streamed per day- that's nearly 465M videos streamed per month

So how exactly are they different from a TV network? How are they exempt from the laws and standard practices of the industry?