WorldTV

1. Paul Newman - worldtv.com/paulnewman

The world without Paul Newman is an emptier place.  The screen legend epitomized “cool” for generations of film lovers but who according to those who knew him was a generous, caring and unpretentious man who shied away from the publicity of his global fame and instead used it on many occasions to help others. Survived by his wife of 50 years Paul Newman was a class act and a true gent.


2. Animes Streaming Net - worldtv.com/animes_streaming_.net

We came across this channel after seeing our super new WorldTV embeddable player on French Animation website animes-streaming.net The channel features a selection of Manga style cartoons in their original Japanese format but with French Subtitles for the more discerning french (or French speaking) animation aficionado.

3. Mr. Bean - worldtv.com/mr._bean

Hailing for the UK Mr Bean is a worldwide comedy phenomenon co written by and starring the inimitable Rowan Atkinson of Black Adder fame.  Harking back to an age of silent comedy the buffoonery of Bean manages to amuse millions, passing unnoticed through cultural boundaries with its simple laughter evoking formula. Mr Bean described by Atkinson is “a child in a grown man’s body”

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Karma Sutra - worldtv.com/kama_sutra

An informative instructional guide to the ancient Indian practice of Kama Sutra tastefully put together in a respectful and salubrious manner that avoids any cheap tricks..


Steve Reich - worldtv.com/steve_reich

For those with a love of more leftfield music check out this documentary and live recordings style channel dedicated the brilliant modern composer Steve Reich whose strange and wonderful manipulation of sound has enchanted my cerebral cortex for many moons.

As always you can contact me at tobyschoice@worldtv.com with your suggestions.

After a small dose of sunshine my batteries are recharged and Toby’s Choice is back with a basket of goodies for your continued viewing pleasure. This weeks selection includes popular music channels from our users around the world, for your eyes and ears only.

1. The Beatles TV - worldtv.com/the_beatles_tv

Not much can be added about the Fab Four that hasn’t already been said many times over, so i’m not going to harp on about how genius they are, except to say I still feel sorry for the original drummer Pete Best and what were they thinking in that photo..


2. Pink Floyd - worldtv.com/pink_floyd

A tip of the hat to Richard Wright, keyboardist and one of the founding members of Pink Floyd who passed way this week. Wright met fellow Floyders Roger Waters and Nick Mason at college and joined their early band, Sigma 6. Along with the late Syd Barrett, the four formed Pink Floyd in 1965 and to this day Pink Floyd remain one of the best known bands in the world.


3. Super 80’s - worldtv.com/super_80’s

The 80’s is the new 70’s depending on your date of birth and I imagine the 90’s will be the new 80’s quite soon, the rule of thumb seems to be that a 2 decade gap makes something cool again… Anyway before i digress further, this is another 80’s Music channel packed full of classics from the decade of Big Hair and warpaint like makeup..


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Alaska Report - worldtv.com/alaskareport

I stumbled upon this channel last week and was ever so gently drawn into watching the various clips of folksy, Irish influenced music. Not normally my cup of tea but the musicianship and feel good factor won me over.

Kiss Television - worldtv.com/kiss_television

Rock Ballads for me are an acoustic version of wading through a field of treacle but there are some guilty pleasures here and personally speaking its one of those “so bad its good” scenarios! I’m sure we’ve all clenched a fist and sung a lyric or two to a few of the videos in this channel, lets just keep it between ourselves though shall we..


More to come next week as always you can contact me at tobyschoice@worldtv.com with your suggestions, go on, i dare you..

Charity they say begins at home but with the advent of the world wide web we can easily raise awareness to help others less fortunate than ourselves in all corners of the world.  Here are some worthy WorldTV charity channels with video clips related to each cause, in no particular order..

Greenpeace - worldtv.com/greenpeace

Founded in 1971 “Greenpeace is a global campaigning organisation that acts to change attitudes and behaviour, to protect and conserve the environment and to promote peace by..” click here to visit website The rainbow clad Greenpeace boats were made famous by the sinking of the original Rainbow Warrior by the French Intelligence Service in the 1980’s.


WWF - worldtv.com/wwf

WWF is described as “A history of a global environmental conservation organization” and with its magnetically enticing logo “in almost 5 decades WWF (formerly known as the World Wildlife Fund) has become one of the largest and most respected independent conservation organizations.” Click here to visit WWF website




Amnesty International - worldtv.com/amnesty_international

“Amnesty International is a worldwide movement of people who campaign for internationally recognized human rights for all.

Our supporters are outraged by human rights abuses but inspired by hope for a better world - so we work to improve human rights through campaigning and international solidarity.” Click here to visit Amnesty website



Unicef - worldtv.com/unicef

For the kids “UNICEF is mandated by the United Nations General Assembly to advocate for the protection of children’s rights, to help meet their basic needs and to expand their opportunities to reach their full potential.” Click here to read the Unicef Mission Statement in full and visit the site


Red Cross - worldtv.com/red_cross

“The International Red Cross and Red Crescent Movement is the world’s largest humanitarian network. The Movement is neutral and impartial, and provides protection and assistance to people affected by disasters and conflicts.” Click here to visit the Red Cross website



Toby’s Choice will be back in two weeks time as Toby is taking a well earned rest in the Balearic sunshine..

This week Toby’s Choice collects channels from Argentina, Canada, Britain, Chile and America covering a host of topics such as Music, Sport, Documentaries and plain old Revolutionaries!

1. Juan Manuel Fangio - worldtv.com/juan_manuel_fangio

Juan Manuel Fangio was the best driver ever to come out of Argentina and was the dominant force in the yearly ears of Formula One.  Watch this channel for some classic rubber burning footage from those glorious racing days where technological superiority was second to raw driving talent.

2. Isaac Hayes - worldtv.com/isaac_hayes

Isaac Hayes RIP best known for his “Theme to Shaft” has left this building for funk Nirvana and will be missed for his crazy suits, deep undertones and song writing, especially for lyrics like “he’s a complicated man, no-one understands him but his woman,,,” Genius!

3. Chè Guevara - worldtv.com/che_guevara

Ernesto Che Guevara has been a global icon for 50 years with the image to the left being one of the most used and recognized images of our generation.  A fascinating man for his dedication and harsh execution of his beliefs and a staple t-shirt for any discerning student.  (Him and Bob Marley..)

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worldtv.com/Turntablism starts with a documentary on the artistry of Turntablism = A DJ, 2 x Decks and a Mixer, a subject close to my heart. Some great music, history and incredible deck wrecking scratch skills from the best of the best.

worldtv.com/documentarytv A cracking channel from Canada which, in the interests of research of course, had me watching for perhaps longer than i should on a working day!  Documentaries about our Planet and Philosophy.

worldtv.com/ilove80s_tv This channel was created in Chile and is pop tastical 80’s music at it very best or worst depending on your musical leaning..  After a flick through I found a couple of tracks i love: Wang Chung - Dance Hall Days and Gary Numan - Cars.


I do hope you found something that tickled your fancy.  You can contact me at tobyschoice@worldtv.com with your suggestions.

Toby

We are pleased to report that issues concerning adding videos from Metacafe and Daily Motion have been resolved.

Somos contentes de informar que as questões acerca da utilizacao dos videos do Metacafe e  do Dailymotion foram resolvidas.

We are equally pleased to announce three new additions to our supported sites.  Vimeo is showing hockey stick growth and popularity and has been an early adopters “video must”.  Brazil is now a huge region of WorldTV users so we have dutifully added Dada and Leechvideo to our list of supported sites to hopefully offer a wider variety of content for our Brazilian/Portuguese channel creators and viewers.

Somos igualmente contentes de anunciar três novas adições aos nossos sítios suportados. O Vimeo está mostrando um crescimento de popularidade muito forte e foi um dos primeiros sites a utilisar “vídeo must”. O Brasil é agora uma região com uma forte concentracão de usuários da WorldTV portanto acrescentamos respeitosamente os sítios Dada e Leechvideo à nossa lista de sítios suportatos para oferecer confiantemente uma mais larga variedade de conteúdo aos nossos criadores de canais e espectadores Brasileiros/Portugueses.

Vimeo

LeechVideo

Dada.net

So why not visit your WorldTV Channel Editor and Add some URLs from these fabulous supported sites!

Então, por que não visitar o seu Editor de Canal WorldTV e acrescentar algums URLs desses fabulosos sítios!

Looking for more video content on the web?  Then WorldTV highly recommends OVGuide a super search site for all kinds of Online Video.

Voces estao procurando mais conteúdo no internete?  Então o WorldTV cordialmente recomenda a OVGuide um otimo sítio de busca de todas as espécies de Vídeos Online.

WorldTV is pleased as punch to announce that our Embeddable Player is now ready!

Following on from our experiments creating an embeddable player for Techcrunch, our tireless programmers have been putting the finishes touches and tweaks to the first WorldTV ‘Widget’ which is available now as a new Tab in your Editor.

With this new Embeddable Player you can promote your WorldTV channel by adding it to web pages and blogs. You simply select a desired size and copy and paste the embed code into the HTML of your desired webpage.

At present the Player has one dynamic skin (design) which automatically brands the Player with your current channel logo (so a good excuse to give your logo some love and attention) and throws in a nice airy, cloud animation to be a little different from the rest. We will be introducing more skin choices including a basic traditional player in the very near future - with improved options to customize.

How does the embeddable player work in practice?

The WorldTV Widget is a miniature version of your channel and will play all the videos in your playlist back-to-back or randomly, according to how you have your channel set up. Another way of looking at it is that it’s a widget for sequencing a playlist of videos, and these can be videos from our supported sites (YouTube, Metacafe etc) or FLV files hosted on any web server, or webcam videos you’ve recorded using our Webcam record feature. If you have your channel set up with our partner Qik, you can stream live video from your mobile phone to your widget as well. So it has all the key functionality of our main player.

Unlike many other embeddable players ours is configured to track viewing statistics. This means that viewers watching your embeddable player will show up in the Statistics displayed in your Editor.

As we’ve said, this is a first pass at creating an embeddable player for WorldTV and we have lots planned in the way of different designs, functionality etc. We’re already working on these things, but wanted to get this out to you ASAP.

So, don’t be shy!  Give it try?

N.B. The embed code does not currently work on MySpace due to the way MySpace restricts use of the <iframe> tag. We’re working on a fix for this.

As we are nicely sandwiched between two Olympic weeks i have decided it would be fitting to embrace the sporting theme and dedicate this weeks Toby’s Choice to the oldest and most prestigious Sporting Event in history, The Olympic Games.

Although perhaps not the stronghold of all things good in Sport it once was due to the increased use of performance enhancing drugs, the questionable location choice with China’s Human Rights record and the daft addition of certain “Olympic” events, The Olympics is still the be all and end all in World Sport and i’m still holding torch for it.

1. Beijing Yes or No - worldtv.com/beijingyesorno

Should this Olympics be in China?  A lot of controversy surrounds this Olympics with Chinas debatable record on Human Rights issues, you decide!

2. Classic Olympics - worldtv.com/classicolympics

A selection of the greatest sporting moments from the modern Olympics, relive those super human achievements where boundaries are broken and world records tumble.

3. Olympic History - worldtv.com/olympichistory

A documentary based channel that looks deep into the Greek origins of The Olympic Games,

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Olympic Laughs - worldtv.com/olympiclaughs

A different perspective on the Games for your viewing pleasure.

That’s your Olympic lot!  Remember to contact me at tobyschoice@worldtv.com with your suggestions and questions.

WorldTV smashed through the 50,000 channel mark last week and the growth shows no sign of slowing down. The interest among people to create their own TV channels from right around the globe is simply phenomenal. Thank you to all those who are contributing to the WorldTV community.

We now have channels from 182 countries, which by our calculation means there is only about 11 countries where there isn’t a channel from. Incredible!

WorldTV first launched in November as a means to allow anyone, anywhere in the World to create their own TV channel, and to offer the capabilities that were once only available to broadcasters. With the service available in 7 languages, people all around the globe are coming up with their own ideas of what a TV channel should look like. More than 400,000 viewers are tuning in to the World Page each month.

The range of channels is simply phenomenal - we’ve enjoyed watching a huge array of genres and styles from across the planet - see below for a small selection of our faves…

Comedy http://worldtv.com/george_carlin http://worldtv.com/comedy http://worldtv.com/wipe_out_tv/

Popular http://worldtv.com/best_of_american_idol http://worldtv.com/beertv

Music http://worldtv.com/elvis-channel http://worldtv.com/oldravers http://worldtv.com/wonkypop http://worldtv.com/pink_floyd http://worldtv.com/thebestofglastonbury

Cultural http://worldtv.com/evita http://worldtv.com/champagne

Environmental http://worldtv.com/savetheplanet http://worldtv.com/naturetv http://worldtv.com/the_deep http://worldtv.com/kruger_national_tv

Adventure http://worldtv.com/icarus http://www.worldtv.com/alpine_tv http://www.world.com/stuntmania

Kids http://worldtv.com/bugsbunny http://worldtv.com/70skidstv http://worldtv.com/kidsluckydip

Social & Political http://www.worldtv.com/beijingyesorno http://worldtv.com/jointherevolution http://worldtv.com/georgebushtv http://worldtv.com/proyectomatriztv http://worldtv.com/free_zimbabwe

Tech http://worldtv.com/technology http://worldtv.com/tedtalks http://worldtv.com/tcukpitches2008 http://worldtv.com/inplainenglish

Embedded Channels
http://www.hifashion.web.pt
http://tv.zonatrek.es
http://www.servicepark.org (Rally channel from Norway)
http://www.goldtraveltv.com (Travel channel from Portugal)
http://www.dgea.es (Video games channel from Spain)
http://www.hottunaint.com

With some super spiffy new features planned for future, including better channel finding tools, new player options, embeddable player options and create-your-own-tv-network functionality, the WorldTV team are beavering like bees to achieve our goal of creating a truly alternative global TV network, accessible to all, and living and loving on the Internet.

If you’ve ever fancied the idea of becoming your own media mogul, or simply want a way to gather all your favourite videos in one place WorldTV is where you can make this happen.

Thank you again to everyone who’s contributing and to all those helping shape the future of WorldTV by contributing ideas through our feedback pages.

WorldTV rock on!

This week Toby’s Choice focuses on channels for children (and their nostalgic parents).  We discovered some time ago that the WorldTV service can be a very useful tool for time starved parents needing quick access to pre-selected bespoke content for their offspring.  Well what better way to monitor your child’s viewing (whilst perhaps secretly enjoying your own past faves) than to create the channel yourself!

1. Bugs Bunny - worldtv.com/bugsbunny

Bugs Bunny has been a cartoon legend now for 68 years! and you simply cannot beat a bit of Bugs!  As you’d expect this channel contains classic BB footage featuring all his favorite enemies, wise cracks and a few carrot dangling rarities thrown in for good measure!



2. Ivor the Engine -  worldtv.com/ivor_the_engine

Ivor the Engine was an absolute classic children’s series from times gone by.  Driven by Edwin Jones through the rolling welsh countryside Ivor charmed a generation and the “che chi puff” of his steam engine is a familiar sound to any British adult over 30.  Innocent and brilliant!



3. Pingu - worldtv.com/pingu

Pingu is a modern classic that has the wondrous ability to hypnotize children into a lovely quiet state.  Once the high pitched squeaking begins kids are transfixed and oblivious to a relaxing parent and i swear if you concentrate hard enough you can understand the language of Pingu, children obviously do!!



Extra Extra!

Tarzan Lord of the Jungle - worldtv.com/tarzanlordofthejungle

I used to LOVE this when i was a slip of a lad and can’t believe i found a channel to rekindle my dreams of swooping through the jungle trees shouting unintelligible nonsense.

worldtv.com/kidsluckydip / worldtv.com/70kidstv

Two more “old school” channels with a mega mix of kids UK screened programs from the 70s & 80s including Wacky Races, Hong Kong Fuey, The Flumps, The Magic Roundabout, Captain Pug Wash, to name but few!

Now then, although English is my mother tongue i don’t want to appear too Anglo centric on Toby’s Choice so here are some more user channels from non-English speaking parts of WorldTV

Italy worldtv.com/cartoon

Brazil worldtv.com/cartoon_network_brasil

Mexico worldtv.com/cartoonvision

I’d love to hear about any other children’s channels on WorldTV, you can contact me at tobyschoice@worldtv.com

To end in the words of the great Bugs Bunny “That’s all Folks!”

WorldTV is one of 21 lucky Digital Mission winners selected by the UK Government’s Department of Trade & Investment to attend the Web 2.0 Expo conference in New York in September.

Digital Mission is organized by Chinwag on behalf of the UK Government with the idea of enabling 21 UK digital companies to expand into overseas markets and attract investment from outside the UK.

We are very excited here at WorldTV to be part of Digital Mission as this represents a unique opportunity to interact with the Tech industry across the pond, show off our service and hopefully meet a host of new influential contacts at one of the key international web events of the year.

Flying the flag for WorldTV will be our Founder and CEO Alx Klive who will be in Geek Nirvana!

Below is a list of the other lucky winners!

B View - http://www.bview.co.uk
Harvest Digital - http://www.harvestdigital.com
Head London - http://www.headlondon.com
Headshift - http://www.headshift.com
Huddle - http://www.huddle.net
idiomag - http://www.idiomag.com
KMP - http://www.kmp.co.uk
Market Sentinel - http://www.marketsentinel.com
Mippin - http://www.mippin.com
Littleloud - http://www.littleloud.com
QuickTV - http://www.quick.tv
Slicethepie - http://www.slicethepie.com
Smarkets - http://smarkets.com/
Sweemo - http://www.sweemo.com/
Tactile CRM - http://www.tactilecrm.com/
Tempero - http://www.tempero.co.uk
UGame - http://www.ugame.net
UnLtdWorld - http://www.unltdworld.com
Unruly Media - http://www.unrulymedia.com
Veedow - http://www.veedow.com