Dean Collins has an insightful post - and not just because he mentions Scouta : VH1 podcasts.

Well consider this, if the general public are now being targeted for general non-geek podcasting how much more of an extrapolation can it be that people are “podcasting” television shows direct to a hard drive equipped set-top box fed directly over raw IP Internet.

All you need is some type of xml editorial guide, recommendation or just a very good EPG that allows you to view text/meta data and these “raw videos” or probably more likely a feed that is loosely ‘collectively’ a channel that has similar shows one after the other sequentially or grouped together under a common brand (or even common sponsor/advertising group).

Your personal video ‘butler’ will ’spider’ appropriate content in a way far better than you could searching aimlessly for yourself.

Lachlan at Read/WriteWeb wrote up a great profile of Scouta today. Many thanks, we’re glad you think it’s a great service.

This is just the kind of modeling system that I advocate to everybody who will listen. It costs the user nothing. There’s no extra work for you. No bonus clicks or monkey-dancing to get the application to start working for you. You can just use it and the benefits start to accrue.

This is now much clearer on the brand spanking new homepage. Launched only this past weekend, it allows users to experience recommendations without an account. I logged out and cleared my cache, but the homepage didn’t take too long to start recommending more and more Pearl Jam clips to me. Given I started the Pearl Jam group on Scouta on the weekend as part of my testing for this review (and because Pearl Jam rock!), I think that’s a sterling indication of what this application can do for you. Obviously, the recommendations get smarter and smoother for members, as they have a longer history of more actions to work with.

It’s great to hear that our little site is doing such a great job of recommending the right stuff.

We also hear you about the downsides. We’re really eager to all sorts of feedback, positive and certainly the negative. We’re constantly working on Scouta each week to improve it and make it as useful as possible.

All up, we’re stoked with another great rap!

This month has been an interesting one at Scouta. Aside from the obvious recent features released, the honor of attending Ross Dawson’s Web 2.0 event, and being ranked 6th in Australia.

What’s really grabbed my attention is we are now starting to see some fascinating statistics popping out of Scouta about popular content.

Firstly, let me point out, Scouta isn’t about top ten results. We focus on individuals, and their tastes and interests, however, we also know that the “Wisdom of Crowds” can produce some interesting results.

So this month I can tell you that Fergie’s new single, Big Girls Don’t Cry has been a lot more popular than Linkin Park’s What I’ve Done. How do I know.

Here’s Scouta’s Google Analytic charts showing both favorite videos as viewed in Scouta.

Now here’s a pie chart with Scouta’s popular content, showing the percentage of total page views. The blue shows our welcome page at 17%. Next up in Fergie in green with 6.14%. Linken Park’s video is the yellow at 2.23%.

The mystery for me - which someone might be able to clear up - is why SNL’s Chris Farley and Patrick Swayze’s Chipp ‘n Dale sketch is number three with 2.70%.

We’ve just pushed out a few changes in our RSS feed generation that should make them work a bit better. There were a couple of cases causing RSS validation issues which we’ve sorted out. Please let us know at feedback@scouta.com if you are still having any issues with feeds.

Just as a reminder, here’s where you can find RSS from Scouta:

• Rated favourites per user at http://scouta.com/username/items. Insert any username you like, including your own. So, for example, my favourites list as RSS is http://scouta.com/members/gra/items
• Recommendations provided by Scouta at http://scouta.com/username/recommendations. Another example: see my personal recommendations feed at http://scouta.com/members/gra/recommendations
• The favourites in any group at http://scouta.com/groups/groupname/items. So, to get the faves in the Science group, try http://scouta.com/groups/Science/items. Setting up feeds for you favourite groups keeps you up to date.
• You can find the current top ten recommended items at http://scouta.com/top_10. We’re not really into driving everything from the top ten, but, well, maybe you like it?

You can, of course, take these feeds and stick them into desktop or web RSS reader applications or iTunes to give you a unique personal view of Scouta.

So, please have a play. And there’s more coming to feeds soon, including full Media RSS where we have the metadata available.

[Update: we just pushed out another little change to make RSS links work a little better.]

Today we released a feature that’s been on the cards for a long time. We’ve called it Scouta Play.

Before launch we realized we needed something pretty snazzy and fun to show people what Scouta could do. You see, recommendations aren’t that simple to explain because they’re a relatively new concept for most of the world.

So we decided to create a little magic on the front page that would allow you to play a video or podcast, and then rate it. Depending on how and what you rate, Scouta would then recommend more.

Anyone can now experience Scouta’s recommendations without creating an account. Zip over to the Scouta front page and you’ll see what we mean. You can select to display videos, or podcasts, or both, and play them right then and there. If you like something, rate it good, and Scouta will start learning what you love.

If you like playing with the new front page, it’s worth creating a Scouta account. Member’s ratings are stored, so over time Scouta gets a better understanding of what you love, and the recommendations will be more accurate.

Anyway, have a Play and let us know what you think.

By the way, thanks to members abigsplash and sfarmer76, this release is named Indigo.

We’ve just opened our Brighton, UK workspace and office!

I’ve been living in Brighton for just over a year now, working out of the house and on the occasional train. But now we can raise the flag in the JOLO (Just Off London rOad) aka New England Quarter of Brighton, across the street from the over sized Victorian-era St Bartholomew’s church. Those bells are getting louder. What?

We’ve moved in with widget startup Snipperoo, sharing a light and airy co-working space with a big central table and great big windows.

Huge thanks to Ivan and Jay for fully putting out the welcome mat. I think this is going to be a fun and productive place.

Here’s the address:

Photos: I’ll take some soon. In the meantime, see this tag on flickr for a few office and local area piccys.