Mochila Now Lets You Add BBC Videos To Your Blog

If you are looking for some stock videos to add to your blog or Website, Mochila just added about 800 clips from the BBC Motion Gallery, the licensing arm of the BBC. It doesn’t include news clips unfortunately, but there are plenty of science and culture videos. If you need a nicely produced video of striped fish or how to make a Singapore Sling, you can find it on Mochila and embed it on your blog. You will have to sign up first and agree to Mochila’s licensing terms.

Mochila offers a large syndication library from 350 different content partners, including news articles, photos, and videos. You can find content from Reuters, the AP, Hearst and Getty Images and put it in a post, or mix and match items to create your own customized channel that appears in a constantly changing widget. Mochila serves ads in the widget and splits the proceeds 40 percent to the content owner, 30 percent to the Website or blog that publishes it, and keeps 30 percent for itself.

We are seeing more and more of these types of syndication platforms for spreading traditional media content out to the Web. ClipSyndicate, for instance, does something similar for news video clips from ABC, NBC, CBS, and Fox affiliates, as well as Bloomberg and AP video. Mochila cuts the licensing deals with the big media companies on behalf of bloggers and Websites, and gives them legal access to the content, with a little rev-share of the advertising proceeds thrown in. Says CEO Keith McAllister:

The core technology is around licensing. We allow content owners to set custom content licensing around their content down to the asset level.

So the BBC can set parameters around what types of sites can show its videos, and even block specific sites it does not want to be associated with. And blogger scan create their own custom content channels. It is a good model. All it needs is better content.

Crunch Network: CrunchGear drool over the sexiest new gadgets and hardware.

Cookthink: Like Pandora For Recipes

Washington DC based Cookthink bills itself as being like Pandora for recipes with a tested cooking database that returns results based on user desires.

The key pitch of Cookthink is the “cookthink it” search tool. Users enter what they are craving and Cookthink suggest a good recipe to match those cravings. Ingredients can be combined, for example if you had cravings for a pasta dish that included bacon and mushrooms, you could add all three to the search and the service will return a recipe.

Recipes can be searched using four categories of tags: mood (eg, hangover-friendly), ingredient (eg, chicken), cuisine (eg, Tex-Mex) and dish type (eg, quesadilla). For each recipe, Cookthink suggests complimentary recipes for the dish, and links are provided to relevant cooking tips and techniques.

Cookthink also offers a meal builder, with which users can create and save meals using recipes on the site.

There is absolutely no shortage of recipe sites on the web with often very little between them. Along with the rich search and feature set, Cookthink promises that every recipe on the site has either been tested in-house or by one of the members of the “Cookthinktank,” a confederation of food bloggers and cookbook authors whose recipes are searchable at Cookthink. Basically they aren’t suggesting recipes that haven’t been tested by someone related to the site.

The site is currently privately funded and will look to raise venture capital in the northern Spring.

Use RosterBot To Manage Your Kids’ Little League Team

Nothing mind blowing here, but RosterBot will be a welcome application for coaches of kids or adults informal sports teams. It’s simple, it’s free and it works, unlike existing applications (let me know if you know of an alternative that you like).

Like most of the good applications we see, it was created not from a spreadsheet but from the need to solve a problem. In this case, Canadian Ian Bell (founder of the new and improved PubSub) came up with the idea when he got tired of reading through email strings about upcoming games for his hockey teams.

In an email, Ian wrote “Lots of companies vying for domination in this space. My approach is to focus on the core value and really get good at solving the pain most people have around organizing their teams, and not worry about all the other big-ticket aspects such as photo sharing, scorekeeping, etc. Other companies are good at that but they’re mired in the process of making big sales to leagues, etc. I’m hoping I can make the appeal directly to teams, which is far less costly and more viral.”

RosterBot works for any sport, and it takes about a minute to get the team set up and invitations sent out. If you are on or coach a team that can use this, you’ll love it. Otherwise, move on, nothing to see here.

So Ian, when’s the new PubSub launching, anyway?

What’s Microsoft Offering Open Source On February 27?

First Scoble writes about something so amazing from Microsoft it makes him cry and will be world changing. Then Long Zheng spots the above page via an email pitch linking to opensourcehero that redirects here.

What open source something will Microsoft forge on February 27 that will be world changing and make Scoble cry? I read Scoble’s post again (either I didn’t read it all the first time, or he has since added to it) and pulled out some more clues:

Harvard Research Studies May Go Open Access

The Harvard Faculty of Arts and Sciences is voting today on a proposal for the university to distribute their research studies online instead of signing exclusive agreements with journals that often have small readerships but high subscription costs. Should the measure be approved, research from the arts and sciences faculty will be made available online via the Office for Scholarly Communications at no cost to readers and may open the door for Harvard Medical School to go open access as well. Currently, the school is trying to get faculty to comply with Congress' recently passed mandate requiring National Institutes of Health articles be made freely available through the National Library of Medicine's PubMed Central database. So far, many of the faculty members support the open access movement, as it provides free education for all those eager to learn. Robert Darnton, the Carl H. Pforzheimer University Professor and director of the University Library, contends in The Harvard Crimson today that the current, closed and costly system cuts into a library's budget for books and monographs, hurting academic publishers, which in turn hurts up and coming professors who must publish to gain tenure. Furthermore, the proposed measure allows authors to maintain their copyrights, so that if they so desired, they can still publish at subscription-required journals. This "opt-out" system enables authors to request for their research to be removed from the open access system.

The NY Times reports that the publishing industry and some scholarly groups have opposed certain forms of open access, arguing that the free distribution could erode the quality of research and cut into subsidies that some journals provide for educational training and meetings, since open access articles would not undergo the same rigorous process of peer review that published articles do. Some even fear that smaller journals might face closure, disappearing into the cracks of increased competition between open access and larger, more profitable publications. Still, open access proponents don't foresee the possible weakening of research ethics and quality, citing the availability of many physics journals as an example of education thriving in the free, online repository.

The Futility of Fighting Media “Pirates”—How MediaDefender Got Hacked

As if we needed yet more evidence that trying to fight piracy is a futile exercise, just look at the case of a company called MediaDefender. The company acts on behalf of media companies to monitor and sabotage the sharing of movies, music, and video games on peer-to-peer networks. It seeds BitTorrent, for instance, with fake files to try to make P2P file-sharing a hassle and annoyance. Last September, a hacker fought back by uploading to BitTorrent internal e-mails and documents outlining MediaDefender’s tactics, rendering them much less effective.

uTest Now Open for Business: Get Paid to Find Software Bugs

It’s open bug hunting season over at uTest which is rolling out its QA marketplace and community.

The startup is trying a crowdsourcing approach to testing software bugs. Anyone can sign up to test software and make some cash. uTest estimates that its testers will be able to rake in anywhere from a few hundred to a few thousand dollars per month, depending on tester-expertise and bug pricing.

It is important to note that bug prices will fluctuate in real-time based on a variety of parameters, including: Bug type (logical, GUI), type of application (Web, desktop), number of testers that fit the required profile for the testing environment, bugs left to find, and more.

Over 2000 testers from around the world have already signed-up, so it seems the company’s pay-per-bug model is resonating well across testing professionals.

EFF, ALC sue Homeland Security over laptop, gadget searches

The EFF sure has set it sights high with its latest lawsuit, with it now teaming up with the Asian Law Caucus (ALC) to sue the Department of Homeland Security over laptop and gadget searches and other alleged infringements of civil liberties at U.S. borders. Specifically, the two groups are asking for the DHS to disclose its policies on questioning travelers on First Amendment-protected activities, including the photocopying of individuals' papers, and the searching of laptops and other electronic devices. According to the EFF, that rather drastic move was prompted by the DHS's failure to meet a 20-day time limit Congress had set for responding to public information requests. Needless to say, the DHS itself doesn't seem to have a whole lot to say on the matter at the moment, and we're guessing that situation won't be changing anytime soon.

[Via The Register, image courtesy of WhiteHouse.gov]

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