The Southwest Observer is an online newsource for the residents of Mount Greenwood, Beverly, and  Morgan Park which are all Chicagoland neighborhoods.  What is interesting is that they recently launched a live video streaming feature to their news using Qik technology.  I find this to be not only exciting but an extremely powerful method to engage residents within their local communities.  While ASBN.tv plans to do this on a much larger scale due to the size of cities in it’s portfolio, the grassroots principle is the same…..lifestyle close to home.  Read more here regarding the Southwest Observer and you will see that this trend will only increase as print media takes a new face online:  http://www.southwestobserver.com/news/observer-live

Here we go!

Spread the MUSIC…

Looks like the guys at Fora.tv got some nice seed monies.  Congrats to the Fora.tv team!  Below is a recent story published on Mashable.com:

May 7, 2008 — 09:10 AM PDT — by Paul Glazowski —

FORA.tv, a site described as a sort of “YouTube for thinkers,” has grown over many months of its relatively young life to comprise a collection of video content of political, cultural, technological, scientific, and business flavors, with heavy emphasis on intellectual depth ordinarily not found in the sound-byte-strewn medium of various other video networks on the Web. And in so doing, the company has, since its initial receipt of a $2 million seed investment, has attracted a good amount of press and attention, and even some fairly noteworthy sponsorships with companies like Pfizer and Chevron.

Now, according to Andy Plesser of Beet.TV, the startup has managed to secure another $4m in funding. The company’s Series A round, which just recently closed, was led by return investors William Randolph Hearst III, Adobe Ventures, and others.

While some may look askance as the financial connections FORA has established with demonized corporations for the purposes of sponsorship, the site seems to have been built largely with an unbiased mindset, playing host to content featuring faces ranging from Arianna Huffington of The Huffington Post to Newsweek’s Howard Fineman to former US secretary of state Henry Kissinger, to name just a few.

FORA, founded by Brian Gruber, who also acts as president and CEO of the company, naturally doesn’t purport itself to be a particularly popular venue for content. The YouTube-for-thinkers analogy is simply a mark of its firm focus on media delivery. But it has nonetheless shown to attract an audience of “highly-educated and influential” people, says Beet.TV, noting that its ability to procure sponsorships with multinational and multi-billion-dollar corporations of the pharmaceutical and energy sectors shows that intellectual demographic it sees is one that proves quite valuable to advertisers. Just as, say, aSmallWorld, a social network whose userbase is largely quite wealthy, offers to advertisers.

Link to story: http://mashable.com/2008/05/07/foratv-funding/

  ASBN.tv congratulates Joseph Varet and Morgan Hertzan in there recent sale of their startup LX.tv for an undisclosed sum.  Rumor has it that it was in the 10 million rage.  Joseph and Morgan were former MTV execs that left Viacom back in 2006 to launch a number of niche channels.

ASBN.tv is proud to announce the recent acquisition of CrankON.tv  Stay tuned….more to come!

The world is rapidly changing and so are our entertainment needs. The traditional family room model of sit and watch on a TV set seems yarns ago. Today we are mobile and and unconfined. Everyone in one household can be watching something different and be in different areas….at home….in the car….in a hotel….wherever.. Content has become so mobile that “WE” control it and it does not control us. At ASBN.tv we are working on ways to deliver raw content to you whereever YOU are. We will not be the millions of sprouting clones you see aggregating and passing along the same content. We will show you something unique when we come out of our shell (beta). Our Geo cities will be about YOU and your city in an all encompassing

Due to an overwhelming response of our Users we decided to add more requested features to platform and of course spice of the user interface. As we embark into 2008, our web design team has been aggressively working on the soon to be released Beta 2.0 of our proprietary GEO platform. It is our current objective to be selecting a few cities in our footprint to test our new interactive design and functionality. You still have some time to gives us your two cents so post away.

The world’s largest accounting firm, PricewaterhouseCoopers has launched a personal site utilizing video at PwC.tv! This is a company that generates a world revenue exceeding 25 billion dollars and is the third largest privately owned organization in the United States. It is great to see such a powerhouse company leverage the use of the extension .TV to compliment their .COM site in a more video centric fashion.

Mon Jan 7, 2008 8:02am EST

Major Consumer Electronics, Technology and Broadcast Companies Announce the Formation of dotTV Consortium dotTV(TM) to Develop Standards for Next-Generation Interactive TV Viewing Experience

SEOUL, South Korea, Jan. 7 /PRNewswire/ — A group of major consumer electronics, technology and broadcast companies today announced the formation of dotTV, an industry consortium whose mission is to build a next-generation interactive TV viewing experience leveraging social networking and online video to engage viewers. As viewers increasingly demand an anytime, anywhere, any-device viewing experience, dotTV seeks to bring the interactivity of online media and social networking to the TV and set-top box. Members of the consortium include broadcasters KBS (Korean Broadcasting System), EBS (Educational Broadcasting System), and SBS, technology providers Irdeto and VMark, Inc. and major consumer electronics makers Samsung and LG.

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Why miss the 124th National Horse Show when you can watch it online. To get your tickets now, click here to purchase.

When: December 5th through December 9th

Where: Palm Beach Polo Equestrian Club (Wellington, FL)