This week, Comscore released data showing record levels (158 million viewers watch 21.4 billion videos) of online video watching in the US. The largest share, 41.9%, Â of those videos were delivered via Google with Viacom and Microsoft following with 3.8% and 3.0% respectively.
Two great pieces on the trend toward open video standards by David Talbot (OurTube “Open video” could beget the next great wave in Web innovation–if it gets off the ground.)  and Jason Pontin (On Openness-What freedom attracts.t great wave in Web innovation–if it gets off the ground.) at Techonology Review this month.
Liz Gannes, at NewTeeVee and Businessweek.com points to the fact that Apple’s recent iPhone upgrade includes the ability to adaptively stream video using standards-based http streaming. Adaptive streaming provides a better (smoother/more bandwidth managed) experience for the user and normally requires the implementation of a specialized video player (Microsoft, Adobe, Move Networks, and Swarmcast) or separate application. That means adaptive streaming is supported natively by the Safari browser that is included on all iPhones. Now web video publishers can provide this enhanced video experience for iPhone users without having a lot of extra development costs.
Technology Review has an article (Wikipedia Gets Ready for a Video Upgrade
The online encyclopedia is poised to let users find, edit, and embed clips) today that says Wikipedia is getting ready to launch a new online video enhancement to its existing platform. The upgrade will let Wikipedia contributors add media without any special video editing or video compression software. The videos will then be available as part of the wikipedia article. The next phase will reportedly allow users to actually collaborate and edit the contents of videos as well.
