Media

Video-sharing site Revver has announced new investors that include Turner Broadcasting and the venture capital division of Comcast.

Los Angeles-based Revver has made a name for itself within the crowded video-sharing field by offering to share ad revenue with videographers who post popular clips on the site.

Comcast Interactive and Turner Broadcasting join previous investors Draper Fisher Jurvetson, Bessemer Venture Partners, Draper Richards and William Randolph Hearst III.

The company did not disclose how much funding was provided, but said that to date Revver has received $12.7 million.

The copyright police have focused much attention on video sites such as YouTube in recent months, but music issues abound on social-networking sites such as MySpace and Bebo.

The concern is nothing new, but it has generated more talk on various forums since MySpace suffered some high-profile outages, which in turn gave rise to rumors that profiles had been deleted. MySpace denied that any accounts were lost in the blackouts, but that hasn't stopped posts from people who claim otherwise--some of which involve speculation involving copyrights.

More than a few have voiced suspicion that profiles may have been taken … Read more

Sony wants movie studios to make films available in the Blu-ray format, and now, the company's helping them out with a new Blu-ray Disc development application called Blu-print.

It's not a completely selfless act, obviously. But $50,000 will get you a commercial license for the application that lets production and postproduction companies encode movies in the format, create menu navigation, Blu-ray Disc movie pop-up menus and other interactive features with Blu-ray Disc Java from most high-end Windows workstations.

Sony says the software is easy to use and will streamline the Blu-ray Disc production process.

Developed by Sony Pictures Entertainment, … Read more

Last month the big news in Web site traffic was that MySpace had dethroned Yahoo Mail as the most-visited Web site among U.S. users. But as far as worldwide Internet use is concerned, MySpace may still be lagging behind YouTube, according to new research by Web traffic analysis company Alexa.

The numbers from the Alexa study found that YouTube consumes 3.9% of total daily Internet visits, while MySpace is close behind at 3.35%. The video site has experienced staggering growth over the past six months, growing by nearly 300% domestically. Consequently, there's been plenty of speculation … Read more

Apple Computer announced Tuesday that it has added new shows from CNN, Adult Swim and the Cartoon Network to iTunes' growing stockpile of TV content.

Since first offering full-length episodes of "Desperate Housewives" and "Lost" last year, iTunes has been steadily adding TV series from the major networks and cable channels. All the shows offered in the latest deal are produced by the Turner Broadcasting System.

Customers can now download "CNN Presents," the Cartoon Network's "Johnny Bravo," and Adult Swim's "Aqua Teen Hunger Force."

The videos sell for $… Read more

Late-night TV personality Stephen Colbert claims he has no qualms with Wikipedia. "I love Wikipedia," he said during the July 31 episode of his Comedy Central show "The Colbert Report," adding that "any site that's got a longer entry on 'truthiness' than on Lutherans has its priorities straight." Colbert, a comedian who masks as a Bill O'Reilly-esque blowhard on TV, found the free-for-all encyclopedia to be a perfect fit for his fact-despising, spin-loving character. "You see, any user can change any entry, and if enough other users agree with them, it … Read more

Contrary to user fears, MySpace is not deleting user information. Some MySpace members have been complaining for a week about profiles and other information disappearing and the site being inaccessible. A MySpace representative said Monday that the problem was being resolved and no users had lost any data. "This is hopefully the last of the issues from last weekend's power outages," she said in an e-mail. "We are not mass-deleting accounts."

A social networking Web site that targets people who are 50 and older, called Eons, launched on Monday. It features an age-relevant search engine, dubbed "Cranky;" a section called "Obits," which is touted as the largest national free obituary center; a Longevity Calculator; and a way to easily change the font size of the print on the screen.

The site will conceivably compete with Third Age, which was one of the first sites to cater to the baby boomer generation online. Eons was created by Jeff Taylor, who founded job search Web site Monster.com.

I … Read more

There are plenty of options for parents who want to keep their kids safe on MySpace, not the least of which are good old-fashioned self-education (do you know how to translate "m4d sk1llz?"**) and proactive involvement in learning what kids are up to online. But for those who remain daunted by the idea of online social networking, there's the MySpace Guardian, a free downloadable toolbar that's designed to help parents track activity on their children's profiles.

Unfortunately, there's nothing about the MySpace Guardian that offers genuinely new ways to make site use safer. It … Read more