Redlasso is a company that made a big splash last year by offering bloggers and web publishers the chance to find and embed television clips on their web sites. And then it was hit by lawsuits from NBC and FOX and it sort of faded away into oblivion.

Now Redlasso says the suits have been settled and the company has reached an agreement with Fox News Corp to distribute clips from local Fox affiliate stations. Clips from local news reports and other content will be available. And Redlasso will split advertising revenue with Fox.

It's interesting that Redlasso will be providing local content and not material from FOX's national programming. Techcrunch infers that this means the relationship is a trial run. It could also be an attempt to figure out a new way to monetize local news content at a time when local news outlets are having a hard time keeping afloat.

[via Business Insider]

You're probably using a bittorrent client to download the occasional movie or episode of The Office by now. If you're looking to make the process of going from torrents to remote viewing a little more hassle-free, you might want to take a look at the newest version of Vuze. After conducting a user poll, it was clear that Vuze users wanted easier access to their downloads on devices like the iPod Touch, PS3, and Xbox 360.

The development team has delivered, with beta support for those devices. Turn on device support, and adding a file to iTunes requires only a simple click-and-drag - Vuze takes care of conversion. PS3 and Xbox users, your content is automatically ready to stream from your desktop to your console.

CEO Gilles BianRosa states in the official blog post that "Vuze has always supported open platforms and technologies, and we've designed our device support to embrace as many of the devices you asked for, as possible. Expect more to follow soon." Based on the results of the poll, Wii users should be next in line.

Device support makes Vuze a very compelling option for media-heavy torrent downloaders, especially less technically savvy types that don't want to be bothered with having to convert files after downloading.

To try it out, grab the new version from Vuze's download page.

[via TorrentFreak]

ScreenToaster is a web-based screencasting utility. You just fire up the web page, hit record, and ScreenToaster launches a Java applet that lets you record audio and video of anything happening on your desktop. It's great for recording tutorials, presentations, or showing off your video game skills to friends.

Today the ScreenToaster team launched a few updates that make the service even more useful. First, users can now automatically upload HD screencasts directly to YouTube from ScreenToaster.com. Second, you can download videos in MOV format for editing on your desktop.

There's also a new beta API available that lets web publishers incorporate ScreenToaster with their web sites. You can let your visitors record and publish videos directly on your site using the API.

These are just the latest new features. ScreenToaster also recently added the ability to download SWF files, set privacy levels, and share videos via email, social networking sites, or social bookmarking pages.

There are a lot of people trying to figure out how to make money online by charging for music that many internet users have come to think of as free (MP3s downloaded from BitTorrent or Limewire, music videos and concert clips on YouTube, and so on). Some folks, like Trent Reznor and RadioHead have chosen to give away music for free or ask fans to pay what they can afford in order to promote CD sales and concert tickets. Allman Brothers founding member Butch Trucks has another idea - use the internet to provide live streaming video of concerts for fans who can't make it to the shows.

This month Trucks launched Moogis, a web site that allows subscribers to watch all 15 of the Allman Brother's concerts at the Beacon Theater in New York this month live as they happen. Once the concerts are over, you can watch them any time you like for up to 6 months. The price? $125.

Compared to the price of an album of music on iTunes, that sounds pretty expensive. But compared to the price of a single front row concert ticket, it's not so bad. And the video streams are available in high definition, from multiple angles, meaning you get a better view than you would if you were in the theater. And nobody's going to spill beer on you, (unless your house is a bit rowdier than mine).

Trucks hopes to expand the service to include performances by other bands soon. And I think die-hard music fans would be willing to pay for this kind of access to performances. But I have to wonder whether the price is too high. Because let's face it, sitting in front of your computer or TV and watching a concert isn't the same thing as being there. It's hard to justify paying a price as if you were.

[via NewTeeVee]

Google has launched a new mobile video player for Windows Mobile and Symbian Series 60 phones. The application adds support for additional phones, boots faster than previous versions, and streams video optimized for 3G and WiFi connections.

You can use the application to search or browse for videos and play them on your device. When you click play, videos will launch in full screen mode.

To install the application, visit m.youtube.com on your mobile device and click the download link. There's a list of supported S60 devices, but no support list for Windows Mobile. Having tried unsuccessfully to install the YouTube player on my Dell Axim X50v, I can tell you that it does not support Windows Mobile 2003SE. But I suspect if you've ot a device with Windows Mobile 6.0 or a newer operating system you should be covered.

[via CoolSmartPhone]

SMPlayer is a frontend for the open source MPlayer media player. Like MPlayer, that means SMPlayer can handle a wide array of video formats. And the latest build brings SMPlayer one step closer to being a complete replacement for Windows Media Center with experimental support for DVD menus.

SMPlayer 0.6.7 also makes it esier to load external subtitle files, doest a better job of sorting new files added to playlists, and and allows users to configure audio and subtitle delays if necessary.

The media player is available for Windows or Linux. There's also a portable version for Windows that can be run from a USB flash drive.

[via gHacks]

The boys in Redmond are excited about the beta release of Silverlight 3, and it was the hot topic at MIX09 in Las Vegas today.

Scores of new features have been packed into Silverlight 3, including native support for h.264 and 720p HD (including full-screen) video, improved streaming performance, new 3D and animation effects, hardware acceleration support, pixel shaders, improved font rendering, and multi-touch support. Silverlight applications can also now be run outside of the browser like normal desktop applications.

Silverlight 3 has also been designed to facilitate rapid development, with dozens of new controls being added (with source code available), SEO enhancements, deep linking support, and better data support. Microsoft's Tim Heuer has broken things down for developers, and the there's a detailed "Get Started" guide from Microsoft that has been added to the official Silverlight site.

Microsoft scored some major streaming video wins with Silverlight this year, so it will be interesting to see what kind of gains on Adobe they can make with version 3. It certainly looks promising and, at the very least, it should help drive innovation on the Flash/Silverlight front.

Beta runtime downloads are available for both Windows and Mac.

Regator is a portal to the hand-curated blogosphere. There's an awful lot of crap out there on a lot of worthless blogs, but Regator sends actual human beings with editorial experience out to find the stuff worth reading in the blogosphere.

In this interview from SXSW, Grant finds out some things you might not have known about Regator. For example, it's so selective that its rejection rate is above 80%! All that, and it's still run by three people out of one house. Extreme bootstrapping and quality blog content, all in one place!

Twine is a service that lets you track your interests and discover new content that you care about, based on the bookmarks of the other 100,000 users who use it. On top of that, there are a million people who just read Twine every month, which means it's on track to be bigger than Delicious soon. Learn more about the human-curated web straight from Twine's Nova Spivack at SXSW.

Chris Saad tells Grant how JS-Kit works as an advanced commenting system for your blog, including stuff like OpenID and Facebook Connect. But it's also more than that: it provides widgets for comments, ratings, polls and chat across a network of 600,000 blogs. Basically, JS-Kit is an all-purpose system to cross-pollinate your comments and other info across sites in the network. These aren't all small sites, either: I Can Has Cheeseburger and Jetblue are some of the well-known sites that are on board with JS-Kit.

Grant Robertson catches up with the Data Portability project to see what they've accomplished in the past year. Turns out it's quite a lot. Internal governance mechanisms are in place, so the project can go forward and get more sites on board with its vision of interoperability and user control of data. If you don't know what Data Portability is and does, this video is a good primer.

For the last decade or so people have been talking about how eventually the TV screen and computer monitor will merge. Over the last year or two, we've actually started to see that happen. More and more people are watching TV on their computers either using TV tuner cards or internet video from sites like Hulu. And computer apps like Boxee and set top boxes like Vudu are making it easier for people to watch internet content on their televisions.

Today both Boxee and Vudu announced new services. Vudu is partnering with internet radio station Pandora to allow users to stream personalized music stations over their TV/home entertainment system. And Boxee has launched an application for the iPhone that lets users turn their phone into a remote control for Boxee.

The Boxee iPhone Remote is available in the Boxee App Box, which was launched a few weeks ago. Boxee has been in the news a lot lately due to the company's battle with Hulu. After a bit of back and forth over whether Boxee users should be able to watch Hulu videos using the full screen Boxee browser for the TV (instead of visiting Hulu's web site using a computer), the folks at Boxee seem to be focusing on building a larger community of developers and applications around their platform. This weekend Boxee also announced support for Blip.tv content through a plugin available at the Boxee App Box.

Download Squad's fearless lead blogger, Grant Robertson, has got his hands full in another interview from SXSW. Grant gathered a group that represents everything you need to run your small business or freelance practice, from tracking your expenses, to invoicing clients, to managing your contacts. Check out this interview to learn more about what Shoeboxed, Freshbooks, Outright and Batchblue can do for you.

UPDATE: Check the comments on this post for some excellent clarification from Ben Curren of Outright about how all these services work together. Thanks, Ben!

Grant talks to the team from Rudder, a new financial-tracking service that sounds a lot like Mint.com. The Rudder guys tell him how they distinguish themselves from Mint by focusing on planning for the future instead of tracking the past. Learn about the cool features that let Rudder turn finances into a game that you play with yourself. Can financial management seriously be fun? Find out in this video.

Threadless is more than a t-shirt company, as Grant Robertson found out when he chatted with Jeffrey Kalmikoff. Jeffrey explained how Threadless works, and how they've managed to build a community of nearly a million people who submit and vote on awesome new shirts. And that's just registered users, not including the thousands who just use Threadless to buy the hottest new designs. Stay tuned to Download Squad for more interviews straight from our team at SXSW.