Darren Straight’s Blog

Video search platform, ClipBlast!, has struck an alliance with MSN Video, wherein ClipBlast! will automatically index MSN Video content as it becomes available.

By indexing new clips from MSN Video on www.clipblast.com, ClipBlast! will enable viewers to browse news, sports, lifestyle and entertainment content streamed from more than 50 sources, including NBC and MSNBC, Food Network, HGTV, National Geographic, MTV Networks and Conde Nast publications such as Vanity Fair.

MSN Video features exclusive online entertainment events, including coverage of the Golden Globe awards and the Live Earth concerts. Other offerings include everything from user-generated video to content produced especially for MSN Originals. MSN Video welcomed more than 10.3 million unique visitors in July 2007, according to Nielsen/NetRatings.

Karin Muskopf, product manager at MSN offered, ”ClipBlast! gives people a new way to find exactly what they want from MSN Video. This powerful search platform brings the entire Web under its roof, and we’re delighted to be recognized by ClipBlast! as an important platform provider.”

Gary Baker, Founder and CEO of ClipBlast! explained, ”With extensive content relationships of its own, MSN Video delivers a wide variety of content from its network to ClipBlast!. We’re bringing people the entire Video Web, and letting people find the latest content on MSN Video is a key part of that process. Forging relationships with top-notch platform partners like MSN Video makes our search/browse/watch capabilities that much more compelling.”

To learn more, visit http://www.clipblast.com.

Microsoft and 20th Century Fox have announced that starting this Monday the 2nd of September, the first two seasons of the popular american animated tv show Family Guy will be available on Xbox Live Marketplace.

Xbox 360 owners will be able to purchase each of the episodes from the first two seasons as well as the straight-to-DVD film “Family Guy Presents Stewie Griffin: The Untold Story” for 160 Microsoft points, or about $2, which is comparable with the pricing of TV episodes on iTunes and other VOD platforms.

“Family Guy” represents the first Fox product to make it onto Xbox, which lacks an overall deal with the News Corp.-owned studio. In the battle of the electronic sell-through outlets, score one for Xbox over main rival iTunes, which hasn’t yet landed rights to “Family.”

“This is our first one,” said Jamie McCabe, executive vp at 20th Century Fox. “We hope to have other content on there, but right now with the launch of ‘Halo 3′ and the launch of the new season of ‘Family Guy’ coming out, the timing really worked well for this one.”

In addition to being its initial foray into Xbox, this also is first time the Seth MacFarlane-created series about the irreverent Griffin clan has been available for downloads on any platform, McCabe said.

Unfortunately since the Xbox Live Marketplace (XBLM) is still only available in the US, owners of Xbox 360 consoles outside the US will not be able to enjoy the same 20th Century Fox offering. Hopefully that will all change by the end of 2007 though!

Hey all - did you miss me?

I’m now back from Festival Republics Carling Weekend Reading and Leeds Music Festival 2007 and what a great time it was, though I must say I didn’t enjoy the Sunday night riots in the camp sites too much, there were quite a lot of gas canisters exploding on fires and groups of people trying to sway the security towers, some of this was quite near to where we were camped in green, though luckily not to near, the majority of it was in the brown campsite, it apparently happens every year on the last night. Though Reading Veterans say it’s getting worse which is why quite a few of them are not bothering coming again.

However though I admit I didn’t like these riots, I’m not going to let it stop me from coming next year, which is why I have already bought my pre-sale Reading Festival 2008 Tickets for next year!

This time I’ll make sure I bring some sun tan lotion though as I got quite burnt! Also I might bring one of them foldable/collapsible trolleys for carrying bags, as it was quite a walk from Green Car Parking to our tent in Green Camp on the Wednesday Night when the ferry boats stopped running 3 hours or so before they were supposed to stop.

Anyhow now that I’m back I better start catching up on my emails, blog comments and latest tech news as well as a ton of other stuff…

Roll on Carling Weekend Reading and Leeds Music Festival 2008!!!

By the way why not check out here my Reading Festival 2007 Flickr Photo Set.

It’s been reported by efestivals that The Mean Fiddler Music Group has sold most of its venues, and rebranded itself as ‘Festival Republic’.

The venues - the Borderline (300 capacity), Jazz Café (300 capacity), The Garage (500 capacity), the Old Fiddler, Harlesden (600 capacity), G-A-Y Bar (310 capacity) and G-A-Y Late Club (300 capacity) - have been sold to Mama Group. Mama owns seven Barfly music venues around Britain, and as part of the deal to buy these venues also acquires the right to trade under the Mean Fiddler name.

What was the Mean Fiddler Music Group now becomes known as Festival Republic, which will re-focus resources on its existing festivals - the Carling Weekend Reading & Leeds, Latitude, Rise (with the Greater London Authority), St Patrick’s Day, Fleadh, and its involvement with Glastonbury Festival - and the expansion of festivals as well as the two venues it retains (the Astoria and the Astoria2).

Mean Fiddler was started by Vince Power in the eighties, but was sold two years ago jointly to the world’s largest live music group US firm Live Nation (formally part of Clear Channel), and Irish veteran promoter Denis Desmond who has UK festival interests including V Festival through his company MCD.

Reading and Leeds Festival 2007 is less than 10 days away and I’m so excited I can’t wait. I’ve got most of the stuff I am taking now. Just got to wait for my tent to be deliverd as well as the tickets as I won the tickets in the Windows Live Sessions Fan Competition last year so once Microsoft/MSN have recieved them they will have to pass them on to me.

Hopefuly they will arrive in time for the wednesday as I plan on entering the festival grounds early - that is with my early entry pass I bought!

Talking about the Windows Live Session Website, I got word last month that a new one is in the making, or better said the gadget which is used on your Windows Live Space, this time it will be more web2.0 style!

It’s been confirmed by NME (however still no word from mean fiddler) that+44 have cancelled their appearance slot at the Carling Weekend: Reading And Leeds Festivals.

The band are also cancelling their upcoming European tour dates to focus on the follow up to their 2006 debut album ‘When Your Heart Stops Beating’.

In a statement the band said: “We want to start writing new songs and we are really excited about the direction we have planned.”

“So we’re going into the studio instead of playing these few dates. We hope our fans will forgive us for the cancellation; in the end, this will make for an even better live show when we come back.”

The band were also due to play London, Wolverhampton, Bristol and Leeds ahead of their festival appearances, however that too has been canceled…

Got to love this Second Life Parody from DRAFTFCB.

Windows Live Spaces has teamed up with Xbox! So you can customise the look and feel of your Windows Live Space with two all-new Halo 3 and Xbox themes. Show your true gaming spirit and pimp your Live Space with either one of these fantastic backgrounds.

Simply click on the link below and your profile will be updated. If you don’t already have a Live Space, check out the Windows Live Spaces homepage http://spaces.live.com/ and start building out your page now!

Click to View Xbox Theme

Click to View Halo 3 Theme

MSN India, Worldspace Satellite Radio, and music maestro A R Rahman, have announced the launch of 5 Worldspace stations on MSN India.

With this, music lovers will have 24×7 access to the five Worldspace stations, including Farishta (Hindi film classics), Gandharv (Hindustani classical), Sparsha (Kannada), Spandana (Telugu), and Shruti (Carnatic music) at http://www.in.msn.com/worldspace for a monthly fee of $9.9 (Rs 400 approx).

Users can play any/all of the five channels basis their choice, and receive weekly and monthly program guides along with RJ profiles for particular channels. All they need is bandwidth in the region of 64 kbps.

According to Worldspace and MSN, the monthly fees are on the higher side because this is the only ‘legal’ online streaming channel where moneys go to the concerned artistes, and copyright fees end-up getting paid.

“We believe that with this initiative, we will help bridge the needs of Indians across the globe to be closely connected with their roots and Indian culture, and provide them a platform to savor songs online even when they don’t have access to Worldspace Satellite Radio,” said Velu Shankar, senior advisor - content and programming, Worldspace India.

“This association is part of our commitment to our users in bringing the best of entertainment online. Users now can listen to their favourite music online,” said Jaspreet Bindra, country manager India - online service group, Microsoft.

“While music on the net is gaining popularity today, users in India do not have many radio stations online to listen to the music they love. Now, users in India can log on to MSN India and listen to music that is relevant to them,” said Krishna Prasad, executive producer of MSN India.

While the offline service is reasonably popular, the association with MSN India is an exercise in increasing the reach of Worldspace through the online medium. For MSN too, it’s as much about increasing reach, as it is about giving consumers something unique and exclusive vis-a-vis competitors in the online space.

Sonific LLC, a leading provider of music widgets for social media sites, have recently announced the availability of playlists for its SongSpots music widgets. Following this release, a www.Sonific.com user can build and share fully customizable playlists with up to 25 full-length tracks containing any of the over 200.000 songs provided by Sonific, on-demand and in any order, without any restrictions, free of charge.

Sonific’s SongSpots music widgets can simply be copied and pasted into personal web spaces on over 40 platforms and many Web2.0 applications, including iGoogle, Myspace, eBay, Facebook, Friendster, Yahoo360, Blogger, Xanga, Vox, Wordpress, Typepad, Netvibes, LiveJournal, AIM Pages, Smugmug, FreeWebs, Multiply, Slideroll, Windows Live, and Ning, instantly adding a fully personalized music experience to web-sites, user profiles and online communities.

Unlike most online radio services that are operating based on compulsory web-casting licensing schemes that govern the blanket use of master recordings, Sonific licenses all recordings directly from each participating artist or record label. Therefore, Sonific’s service is not hampered by the often quite stringent licensing restrictions that prohibit some of the most user-appreciated features such as fully interactive playlists and the on-demand play of individual songs.

I myself have been a Sonific user since around this time last year when it went into beta, so it’s great to see how far Sonific’s SongSpots music widgets have come. If you havent tried creating your’e own yet why not head over to http://sonific.com and sign up. If you would like to see some sites/blogs etc which host them then why not check out http://sonific.com/home/examples. This list is much bigger now than what it used to be when I was one of the few on it and I’m guessing the list isn’t updated as much anymore as there’s so many people using Sonific now.