John Allsop asks Where are the Aussie Startups? on the webdirections weblog.

I’m glad to see him asking if we’re getting our own culture, because I think in some respects we are. I certainly interact with a bunch of other entrepreneurs around Australia on a weekly basis. It seems that there is now a greater focus on startups around the country, with the press and venture capital firms, taking a harder look.

Our main issue in facilitating our own startup culture is our spread across the country. Anyone want to fund an Aussie Startup conference, and have us all meet face-to-face once a year?

I received an email from YouTube at the end of last week. They were notifying me that they were removing a few videos I had posted of the Red Bull Air Race that I had taken with my camera phone as a “citizen journalist” for PerthNorg when the air show was in Perth (see the brief story here).

This is to notify you that we have removed or disabled access to the following material as a result of a third-party notification by IMG Media claiming that this material is infringing

However, the videos they removed were taken in public. Anyone in Perth could have done the same, because the planes were flying over the Swan River in front of the entire city of Perth.

This highlights two things. Firstly, YouTube are in a world of pain if they have to send out ridiculous DMCA Complaints like this one. I can only imagine the overhead to the business that this is causing.

Secondly, it raises a much larger issue with respect to copyright. Are IMG Media, the people that organize the Red Bull Air Race, suggesting that they own the copyright to all free public displays of the Red Bull Air Race? What type of precedent would that set.

I, like several hundred thousand other people, enjoyed watching the free public display over the city at the end of last year. I didn’t buy tickets, I signed no agreement. So, how can they claim I violated copyright when I only recorded something that was visible to thousands.

YouTube provided information in their Help Center on how I can “send us a counter notice.” So I responded in the required format. We’ll see what happens.

Update:
Jodie asked that I provide my email to help others in the future. I’m not a lawyer, so I’m not completely certain this is the correct format for the email. But here it is:

to copyright@youtube.com
date 22-Feb-2007 23:54
subject Counter-Notification

With respect to your Copyright infringement notice sent via email today.

I refer to three videos:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EtcnafjZyZo
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O_lqbw0l9Qk
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EtcnafjZyZo

I only believe that the material was removed or disabled as a result of mistake or misidentification of the material to be removed or disabled. I videoed this footage myself on a Nokia mobile phone in a public place where anyone could watch or video the event, with no contract restricting such.

Name: Richard Giles
Address: ————————————

I consent for any judicial district in which the service provider may be found, and that I will accept service of process from the person who provided notification under subsection (c)(1)(C) or an agent of such person.

Please let me know if you require anything further.

please accept this as an electronic signature.

Richard Giles

There is an interesting article at the new York Times today about the new video search engine Blinkx.

Blinkx allows you to search inside the content of a video, not just the text associated with it. It’s a great idea, and will make searching for relevant video easier.

Blinkx’s speech-recognition technology employs neural networks and machine learning using “hidden Markov models,” a method of statistical analysis in which the hidden characteristics of a thing are guessed from what is known.

Amazing technology, from some very smart people.

The thing that gets me every time though, is search isn’t the only answer.

The difficulties of knowing which videos are where challenge the growth of Internet video. “If there are going to be hundreds of millions of hours of video content online,” Mr. Chandratillake said, “we need to have an efficient, scalable way to search through it.”

If there are hundreds of millions of hours of video content online, then it’s going to be next to impossible to search it quickly and easily. That’s why Scouta provides recommendations. Why search for a video when Scouta makes the suggestions based on what you’re interested in.

I discovered an interesting startup community through Nic Brisbourne’s blog, The Equity Kicker: Startupping.

Nic points to Mark Moore, founder of One True Media, who explains the approach we’ve taken with Scouta.

I’m preaching to the choir here but the best decision a startup can make is to get the initial product out quickly, take feedback, and iterate rapidly. I understand that not all companies can work in this mode (some require longer time to create and iterate due to complexities around the product, etc) but the closer you can work to this methodology than the better chance you will have for success. In my experience, I have found that what you envision in your original business plan will not be true after six months. This is because you will understand the market better and have a better feel for what will really be successful after being in business for a while.

I have to say it’s not an easy step. We’ve got so many features that we’d like to add though, that if we held off until we had them all in place, we may never launch. But it can feel like a risk when you think you don’t have everything you’d like members to have access to. However, it’s amazing how feedback from members can change the priorities.

So, make sure you send us feedback. Scouta is out there to make our members happy. Let us know anything and everything: feedback@scouta.com.

We’ve received some great coverage over the few days since launch. I’d like to thank the people that have blogged about Scouta’s birth, and the media coverage we’ve received.

Scouta’s main aim is to provide highly relevant recommendations for each member. We think of it as enhanced word-of-mouth, like a best friend that knows exactly what you like.

But how do new members get the most of Scouta?

We thought we’d whack together a brief how-to that focused on making the most of it.

When you join Scouta you are provided with your own “My Scouta” page. This is where you see all your own information, including your member name, bio, profile, and importantly any Favorites you bookmark, or your personal Recommendations.

But these are usually empty when you start. So what should you do?

Favorites

Favorites are the bookmarks of online audio and video that you love. To get the best out of Scouta you should only add the ones that you are passionate about. Scouta gives a lot of weight to things you bookmark, because we figure you must really enjoy them to make the effort.

It’s also important to link directly to the source of the audio or video. So that means the actual MP3 file, AVI file, YouTube page, Google Video page….you get the idea.

So far, Scouta will also automatically add an embedded player for a range of file types: any MP3, and video from YouTube, MySpace, Google Video, Veoh, Metacafe, Revver, iFilm, Grouper, Guba, Jumpcut, MSN Soapbox, Liveleak, Brightcove, and Superdeluxe. More are coming.

But what if you can’t immediately think of anything worth-while bookmarking. You can still browse Tags or Groups to see what other members are paying attention to. When you find bookmarks you like, you can rate them as “Good,” and they’ll be added to your own Favorites.

Recommendations

Recommendations only happen when Scouta begins to learn about your interests and tastes. It’s also like any good friend, the more your tell them, the better they are at making great suggestions. So Scouta will only provide recommendations as your either add bookmarks, or you rate other people’s favorites. The more you do, the better it will get.

It’s also going to get much smarter as we tweak the system.

Bottom line: add bookmarks, and rate things you enjoy or hate.

Groups

When we first built groups, and deployed it with our friends testing the beta, I was amazed at how useful they were. I always thought they’d be great, but when I started to use them myself, the penny dropped.

You can setup a group on a topic, like Battlestar Galactica, Entrepreneurs, or Music Videos.

You can also set up a Group for a bunch of friends or family, and if you like make it completely private, so only people you invite can share the videos.

So there is a brief bunch of tips to help you get started using Scouta. There is much more to it, but we’ll leave a few of the other features for a future article.

It’s taken just over a year, and Scouta is finally a reality.

Over the later part of last week we worked hard on setting up some key elements, and then sneakily migrated the system across on the weekend. It was interesting to see if anyone stumbled across the site without a formal announcement.

Today however we let a lot of people know. So it’s official: Scouta is alive.

It is now that Scouta will come of age. What will be amazing to see is how a community builds around the system, feeds off the recommendations, tags, and groups. This is when the fun really begins, and we get to see what a community can really do.

So, please take a look, and feel free to send us some feedback: comments, suggestions, general love, or a friendly hello. We’ll be listening and doing our best to respond in kind.

Baris Karadogan, Partner at ComVentures, has an interesting post on his blog about interactive television, and how it’s seen by main stream media. He lists the reactions to the question, “Are you guys saying that Interactive TV is finally coming?” They all have a range of responses that wash out to excuses.

His response is a lot different.

Then it was my turn. I said: “Let me answer your question with a question. Why do you want interactive TV?” There was a silence in the room. “If you want to interact with your TV, why can you switch your bigscreen TV to the PC mode and get all the interactivity you like from the Internet. When you are done, go back to your TV.” 10 years ago people used to say, “the TV is a lean back experience and the PC is a lean forward experience”. Hence there was no way to use the PC while in the living room. I think the PC has become a lean back experience in a big way. Look at what’s happened: 1) TV screens are big enough and with enough resolution that you can surf the web fantastically lying on a couch 2) Laptops are smaller, cheaper and can be easily hooked to your big screen TV with a long enough VGA cable or hopefully one day with wireless HDMI. 3)Products like Apple TV bring your PC content on to your TV already 4) The game consoles are PC’s that are hooked up to your TV.

I’ve been streaming video to my old Xbox to watch on my plasma tv for years, and I’m looking forward to the Apple TV. I’ve also done a little surfing on my Nintendo Wii. So I’d say that I’ve been leaning back and forward in my lounge room for years.

Yesterday I mentioned Google’s supposed suggestion that it wasn’t ready for television on the Internet.

Kapustka, at Giga Om, has dug into the article a lot more and discovered the quote is out of context.

“Some remarks from Vincent Dureau’s well-received speech at the Cable Europe Congress were quoted out of context in news reports,” said a Google spokesperson Friday. The further background explanation from Google is that Dureau was responding to a question and was trying to address a potential bottleneck Google does see, which they say exists between Google’s own content-delivery infrastructure and the cable set-top box in your home.

Google’s infrastructure scales just fine, they said, and there is no problem watching TV on the Web. Despite what you may have read.

Mark Cuban is quick to point out that Vincent Dureau, Google’s head of TV technology, said “The Web infrastructure, and even Google’s [infrastructure] doesn’t scale. It’s not going to offer the quality of service that consumers expect.”

What I don’t think Cuban understands, and what Vincent has left unsaid, is that people are willing to suffer a lack of quality in exchange for greater flexibility. The quality of television shows downloaded via peer-to-peer are about as good as video. Sure they’re not HD quality, like Cuban’s HDNet video (in other words, read everything Cuban says knowing that he is heavily invested in high definition video). However, when you’re deeply engrossed in a show you don’t notice how crystal clear an image is, or isn’t. Even YouTube viewers are willing to forgive crappy quality for the flexibility of seeing a hugely diverse range of content.

In the case of peer-to-peer the shows are also not streamed, but then they can be watched whenever the consumer wants. If a one hour show takes several hours to download, it really doesn’t matter, because you can download it when you want–like in the middle of the night–and watch it at your leisure. In other words, bandwidth doesn’t have to keep up with video “streaming.”

So unless new technologies improve bandwidth or video compression, we’ll not be “streaming” high definition video. But I’d argue that we don’t necessarily need to stream anything. When you can subscribe to a video service–a la videocasts–and watch whenever and wherever, it still offers much more flexibility than broadcast: like HDNet.

I’ve also got to wonder why Google has a “head of TV technology” if they don’t think they can jump into the video business.