YouTube gets exclusive Olympics access
YouTube won a cool deal through the International Olympic Committee, getting access to about three hours a day of exclusive video from the Beijing Games, which began Friday.
But American and Canadian Web users won’t be given access to that channel.
The video, featuring highlights and daily wrap-ups, will be made available to more than 70 countries that are not officially covered by Olympic sponsors. South Korea, India, parts of the Middle East and Nigeria are among the group.
It’s expected to reach about 200 million people in countries that have relatively small numbers of online-video viewers. China — which isn’t allowing the YouTube broadcast — has an estimated 180 million people who watch online video; they will be able to watch Olympics content from CCTV.com, the online arm of China Central Television, and its partners.
•NFL goes live: The National Football League will stream live broadcasts of Sunday-night football games beginning in September, making the contests widely available on the Internet for the first time. “We’re taking a big leap here,” said Steve Bornstein, chief executive of NFLnetwork.com. “We are looking at this as a learning opportunity to see what applications work online. We are trying to be innovative and creative to make the viewing experience better for our fans.”
Mixed Nuts
Tired of turning to tried-and-boring greeting cards for your friends or family?
Tripletz.com lets you create a series of three custom-designed cards, mailed sequentially for three days, in tasty little envelopes, to spell out a message to your someone special. Real mail, not e-mail. Cost: $4.99 for shipping and handling.
The cards demonstrate a broad range of creativity and clever design. In fact, all of the hundreds of cards available there are user-generated. Tripletz wants people to submit card designs. If enough customers choose the design you’ve submitted, you earn bucks from Tripletz.
•Snagfilms.com. It sounds like an R-rated site, but it’s really a clever Web haunt for people looking for free documentary video.
SnagFilms, launched in July, is half social network site, half showcase for smart feature-length documentaries. It also nicely allows anyone to embed those same videos on one’s Facebook, MySpace or personal blog pages. Unlike most video sites, it’s not open to user-generated content. Instead, professionally produced videos must be submitted and accepted. SnagFilms promises filmmakers 50 percent of advertising revenue.