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In a joint announcement on Thursday, YouTube and CNN unveiled their plans for co-sponsored Democratic and Republican presidential debates that aim to bring the standard televised events into the digital age of mashups, remixes and viral buzz. Not only will video content from the events (as well as other CNN debates) be made available for sharing and distribution online, but the debate questions themselves will come in the form of videos sent in by YouTube users.

(Video: YouTube's call for submissions)

In a dial-in press conference, representatives from both companies explained the new process and answered questions from reporters--on hand were Jon Klein, president of CNN U.S.; David Bohrman, CNN's senior vice president and Washington, D.C. bureau chief; Chad Hurley, YouTube's CEO and co-founder; and Steve Grove, YouTube's news and politics editor.

All four projected eager enthusiasm that this new debate format would bring a more democratic angle to the way campaign dialogue is conducted. "This is how debates would have been done since the beginning of time, had the technology been available," Klein extolled. "It's really powerful, and it really brings the country to the presidential candidates in a very visual and contextual way," added Grove.

… Read more

In a press call on Thursday morning, CNN and YouTube will unveil the details for the cable news channel's upcoming presidential debate coverage, claiming that the two are "teaming up to provide an unprecedented debate format offering voters a larger role than ever before in debate history."

The press event will feature Jon Klein, president of CNN U.S.; David Bohrman, CNN's senior vice president and Washington, D.C. bureau chief; Chad Hurley, YouTube's CEO and co-founder; and Steve Grove, YouTube's news and politics editor.

The traditional ownership format of televised presidential debate content, … Read more

HeyCast is a new service from the folks that made HeyWatch [review], the online video conversion service. It lets you grab videos from popular hosting sites such as YouTube, Google Video, and Apple's Quicktime movie trailers site, and clump them together into a handy RSS feed you or anyone else can subscribe to in iTunes or other feed readers. The feed isn't just your standard RSS though--HeyCast grabs the Flash videos, converts them, and makes them available for offline viewing on your computer or portable devices.

I gave it a go this morning and came across a few … Read more

NBC announced on Tuesday that they will be distributing an internet TV show through Netflix' new Watch Now system. In case you didn't catch the news about Watch Now, Netflix now lets subscribers watch select movies via a video player on the Netflix website instead of having to wait for them to come in the mail.

While it is cool that NBC is doing a web series for Netflix on classic movies, that really is not the important part of this news. This is not the first time that Netflix and NBC have worked together. In the past, NBC … Read more

SECOND UPDATE: Check the end of this post for some more information from Facebook and ViddYou.

I think most of the Web has reached the consensus that Facebook Platform, the social networking site's new initiative to open up its service to third-party companies' specially-designed applications, has been a resounding success. Anecdotally, I can say that "techy" people I know, who had originally dismissed Facebook as a glorified address book, are now starting to think that it has a whole lot more street cred. And I know some people who are more or less addicted to some of the new features (throw a sheep at me, will ya?)

But whispers have been spreading that perhaps Facebook--generally known for being methodical and well-organized, choosing to roll out features incrementally rather than going for huge revamps--might not have predicted just how popular the new Platform would be, and wasn't ready for the onslaught of bandwidth activity. Yesterday, there were some rumors going around that Facebook had had to sell a full 10 percent of its shares in order to purchase enough hardware to handle its rapid user increase. Looks like the original story was reported on the Web site of the U.K. newspaper The Times and was then pulled. (Conspiracy theorists may point out the fact that The Times is owned by Rupert Murdoch's News Corporation, which also owns Facebook's chief rival MySpace. Personally, I think it's more likely just a case of some reporting that turned out to be based on unsubstantiated rumor.)

If true, basically, it would indicate that Facebook, often singled out as a red-hot potential acquisition target, wasn't as financially stable as the tech community would have thought. Tough to believe, since we've had every indication that the company is extremely well-funded, financially efficient, and has pulled in adequate advertising revenues. So, like most others following the social networking scene, I dismissed it as speculative gossip.

And I still think the original claims in The Times were untrue, but some more concrete signs have indeed indicated that Facebook wasn't fully ready for the whirlwind success of the Platform. While logged onto Facebook this morning in an attempt to engage in a SuperPoke war with one of my friends, I saw this:… Read more

BEVERLY HILLS, Calif.--In the inaugural draft of the Championship Gaming Series, a new professional video game league, the biggest surprise may have been first: a woman was the first player chosen.

It's not, of course, that there aren't top-notch women video gamers, because there are, and many. There are even sponsored all-women teams. But it's no secret that the majority of hard-core gamers are male.

So when San Francisco OPTX General Manager Kat Hunter chose Dead or Alive player Vanessa Arteaga with the draft's first pick, a lot of people here at the Playboy Mansion, … Read more

Heavy, the online video site with a distinct focus on the Jackass demographic, announced Tuesday that it will be using the IP Intelligence technology from Digital Element in order to "geotarget" its advertisements, language, and video content based on where a visitor's IP address is located.

This means a couple of different things. One, by knowing where its visitors come from, Heavy can run locally targeted advertisements, which can make it a more appealing buy for advertisers. This, as we've seen with many of Google's locally-oriented applications, can be very lucrative.

And two, imagine the … Read more

Camcorders have come a long way since the old VHS monsters we used to lug around. The last couple of years have brought us DVD and Harddisc based camcorders which is nice, but I have noticed a troubling trend. Camcorders have become so cheap that many companies are taking away some of the features that are a must for filming sports motion. They are dumbing down the camcorders and stealing some of the features that we sports junkies must have for analysis. Whenever filming sports in motion if you want to slow it down and analyze it you must have … Read more

When Electronic Arts and Apple announced at the Worldwide Developers Conference Monday that the publishing giant would be bringing a host of its biggest-name games to the Mac, it signaled that the platform is being taken increasingly seriously by the video game industry.

EA said that it plans this summer to release hit titles like Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix, Need for Speed: Carbon, Battlefield 2142, and that later in the year, it would publish a series of sports games, including Madden NFL '08 and Tiger Woods PGA Tour '08 for the Mac.

The Mac has long … Read more