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For any of you who have heard me rant about widgets lately, you should know that I found some personal vindication tonight watching CNBC’s Fast Money when this little gem came on…

By the way, the show has plenty of web-extra video, including longer form clips of nearly every segment of that day’s show in their Rapid Recap.

Here’s a look at the widget for yourselves.

But for all of us in the industry, what is so tough to comprehend about widgets? Ok, you want a portable rich media unit that plays…

This wasn’t even an online video story, except that MSNBC does a great job of making clips of stories, particularly their news shows, available.

I was catching up on my Sunday morning roundtable shows before the Oscars, and had to hear this??

I just watched the clip and decided to embed it here for the hell of it. Then Ralph Nader joining the race for president became an online video story. Guess how? The second time I watched the clip, I got the same 30-second pre-roll ad for Boeing. But Mr. Nader…

Does anyone care whether we call it a “podcast” or an “mp3″ of something? I’m currently browsing the Zune Marketplace looking for some new podcasts, but I realized its mostly short versions of traditional media (The Today Show Podcast), and the usual, mass distributed webisodes like Ask A Ninja.

My question….does the “buzzword” get in the way of peope’s understanding of the medium? People are asking about widgets without knowing what they are or how to measure their success. Seems a little “horse before the cart” to me. And now…

AdAge’s Bob Garfield runs through the commercials he didn’t like.

He doesn’t like most of them. But I’m not sure I agree with his reasoning.

My quick thoughts:

Audi R8: Parody of Godfather scene where the director finds the horse head may have been the worst commercial of the Superbowl. Could have been for any product that people are supposed to feel passionately about.

Bridgestone Tires with the animals screaming being afraid of being run over was also funny. As was nearly running over Richard Simmons.

The Careerbuilder campaign was disturbing. That…

Damn. I want to cry right now. Mr. Softy offered $44 billion to pick up the battered remains of Yahoo, stepping up to the plate with the chutzpah to execute a turnaround that seemed unlikely to happen from within.

But what do they get for it? And more importantly, is it worth it? Last week Yahoo stock was trading around $18. Microsoft’s offer of $31 a share is roughly a 60% premium over that. Sure they are both getting their asses handed to them in the search arena, but does a Microsoft…

Today, ad network Burst Media put out their latest issue of their newsletter, and in it, they bashed pre-roll with some pretty nasty looking data.

Once again, we’re presented with a bunch of charts and graphs and data points on why pre-roll sucks. But once again, we have no idea about the content that was used in the study.

Bad News: Most Stop Watching Video Content If An Ad Shows, Or Worse
Among respondents, one-half (50.7%) stop watching an online video once they encounter an in-stream advertisement.

Why is this even remotely interesting when you…

A few weeks ago, AdRants’ Steve Hall blew his stack - rightfully so - about the promotional advertising floating across the bottom of his TV in the middle of the program he was watching. I can’t wait to read what he has to say about this.

Yes, I harp on the value exchange, and users keeping up our end of the bargain, quite a bit. Today is no different. Why? Because if we keep dodging commercials, we force the networks to find a way to reach us. And they are really,…

YouTube issued a press release today highlighting videos at the “forefront of politics, music, entertainment and more.” 90% of it is worthless crap.

While YouTube brought us Battle at Kruger which was pretty amazing, it also brought us “cultural phenomena,” (their words) including Chris Crocker and NORA the Piano Playing Cat. The medium made it possible for this content to reach millions of people but what is the cultural benefit?

Here’s a line directly from the release:

Otters holding hands – What is cuter than otters? Otters holding hands, of course! This YouTube video rocketed to fame on…