Alan Brody’s iBreakfast this morning had an interesting panel on ad exchanges, with executives from ContextWeb, DoubleClick and Right Media. Google and Yahoo acquired the last two earlier this year.

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Have you ever wanted to cry into the camera about Britney or yell about teen Jamie Lynn's baby announcement? Have you considered dropping a mentos into a coke? What about talking about maps? Well if that's you, Magnify.net has the product for you!

We covered the private beta release of NY-based Magnify.net's "video blog in a box" setup which basically allows anyone with a webcam to start a video blog in 5 minutes or less. I think of this tool as being similar to Wordpress.com for text blogging. Unlike Wordpress.com, publishers can share in the revenue generated on their video blog. It's very easy to use from my testing.

You use a webcam to create a video channel on the network and can add in other videos to complement your own live action movies. Today they are showing off Jeff Hibbard and his mobile weblog. Frankly the videos were boring as heck. No one wants to watch a guy drive a car or eat at a Denny's. Side note: I am absolutely against people videoblogging while driving, it's just wrong.

Magnify.net has also released the following stats on service usage: passed 1 million unique visits in the month of November and there are currently over 22,000 dedicated channels online on Magnify.net.

Check out our previous Magnify.net coverage including the nextNYers interview with CEO Steve Rosenbaum.

A new cell phone program will help commuters using the PATH train figure out when their next train is coming. ChoRong Hwang, a student at New York University’s Interactive Telecommunications Program, has developed an application called Mobile PATH that users can download to their cell phone. She says it can tell them how long until their next train arrives by within 40 seconds. The program places a timetable in your phone, which syncs up to its clock. While this means that somebody in a subway station could use the program because it doesn’t require a signal, it also means that if there is some kind of delay, it would not show on the phone. Currently, the program only works for the Journal Square/33rd St. line, and cell phones must be “Java Powered.”

KickApps Founder and Chairman Eric Alterman discusses how a KickApps-enabled website provides visitors with a complete rich media community experience. By offering site users and administrators a vast array of easy to use media management and administrative tools such as programmable widgets, programmable video players, social networking capabilities and access to user generated content, site owners can ensure that only the best material makes it on to the web.

• Provides a complete suite of social media tools for web publishers
• Largest provider of social media experiences
• Creating strategic partnerships with ad networks, publishers and social media platforms

Katarina Skoberne talks about OpenAd’s plans in New York. Last Summer the ad creative exchange worked on a campaign for Gillette in Puerto Rico. Gillette parent Proctor & Gamble is reportedly testing OpenAd for the US market.

NY-based Xerpi is what I call a "favorites manager". When you first load Xerpi, it might look like a startpage (e.g. netvibes, pageflakes, schmedley, yourminis, etc.), but it's actually a favorites manager. When you signup for an account, you can select either a blank page or a pre-defined starting point. I selected Technology and was presented with about 10 links total. They need to increase this and create 50-100 links so that the page seems full and also offers some good start points for newbies.

They've also created several public xerpi-pages including an iPhone Resources page and a Free Things to do in NYC page. Xerpi is much more mainstream-targeted than Delicious.

They currently generate revenue by the Google search engine on the site. I am assuming they could also do sponsored Xerpi pages and also sponsored panels within the Xerpi application.

I'd like to see a panel for the various browsers that lets me keep Xerpi open as a panel while browsing. This would make it easier than having to keep switching back and forth to the Xerpi app in another tab or window.

Here's my video review:

I’ve written summaries of most of the sessions at SIIA’s Ed Tech Business Forum including the two previous posts, below. Those that I missed were covered by Ileana Rowe, and all of them are (or will be) posted on SIIA’s website here: http://www.siia.net/etbf/2007/presentations.asp. The presentations covered myriad topics in the business of educational technology including:

• Investing in Educational Software
• Acquiring Innovation
• Capitalizing on Innovation
• Profiles in Innovation
• Seeing Innovation at Work
• Taking Innovation to Market
• Corporate Positioning to Impact Revenue and Value
• Making a Business Out of Disruptive Technologies
• Generating your First 1000 Customer Sales
• Using Associations to Support Your Business Strategies

Though most of the written summaries are not verbatim transcripts, if you look at them with the PowerPoint slides you can glean some clear insight into the changing opportunities in educational technology, as I did while attending the conference. Finally, I know I’m not alone in sending a special thanks to Karen Billings and her staff for all their work that made the event possible.

Last week, the City Council revealed its new website after months of delay. But while most agree that it is a good step, the site has received mixed reviews from people dealing with the intersection of technology and government.

The Councils’ new site is meant to be more stable than the old site, which was notorious for crashing. It offers more details on committee hearings, including direct links and briefings. An RSS subscription is now available for the committee’s calendars, and there are plans to add RSS features throughout the site in the future. Council members also have the ability to update their own pages as they see fit, and can add such features as voting records, calendars and press releases if they choose. The Council’s communications office is training staffers and even Council members on how to do so.

Cathilea Robinett, the executive director of the Center for Digital Government, said the new web site is very sophisticated for a council site. “This is an excellent use of technology with several innovative features. Congratulations to the New York City Council for a citizen-centric and citizen-friendly site.” The center publishes a yearly survey ranking American cities on their use of technology to reach out to constituents. (New York City has not been in the top ten large cities since 2002, when it ranked fourth.)

Councilmember Gale Brewer, chair of the Technology in Government Committee, was happy about the new site as well. She says that it is now much easier to find legislation, and finds the additional information available for committee hearings useful. But her enthusiasm was tempered by what the site didn’t have.
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NY-based KickApps is announcing this morning a new partnership with Advertising.com to monetize video content built on the KickApps social networking platform. Social networks using KickApps can select advertisements as either pre- or post-roll messages. I assume this means videos that use the KickApps video player.

Revenue share percentages were not disclosed. I like this deal because it helps small publishers to earn more and provide better ads than with smaller advertising networks. In fact, most of the smaller ad networks can't even support video ads.

Since their $11 million funding round in August, KickApps has continued to make press-worthy announcements.