Well, it had to happen sooner or later, but we are proud to announce our very own YouTube channel, specifically for Hogsback Media Networks related content.

In trying to build up features and content for this site, one of the obvious media modalities to consider is videos of things and subjects relevant to New Media 2.0, which is Hogsback Media Networks’ primary business focus. After considering all the options and doing the cost-benefit analysis thing, it was decided to rather go the YouTube route, than hosting videos on our own server infrastructure, which would cripple our servers and chow through the bandwidth, if and when a certain item or items or posts becomes popular.

So, the solution: Registering for a YouTube account, they are owned by Google, so they have the world’s biggest and best and fastest distributed data center architecture serving up streaming videos. And it is all free! Gravy!!!!

If you have a gmail account already or using any of Google’s other services (docs and spreadsheets, calendar, maps, reader, scholar, books, etc.) you can just log in with that and start creating your YouTube custom profile, channel, favourites, tags, etc.

Do a search for videos you’re interested in, say Web 2.0 or wordpress or blogging, and you are presented with an overwhelming selection to choose from. Set up a playlist and channels: playlists are really categories and you can set up how many you need for each subheading of videos you’re interested in, e.g web 2.0, startups, technology, venture capital, photoshop, linux, blogging, wordpress, etc. Click through to go to the video itself and you are presented with a menu to Share, Add to Favourites or add to Channel or Playlist.

In such a way I built up a selection of Web 2.0 and tech startup related videos in one place, created a channel for all of it and then used the Google code generated for this purpose to host on one’s own website or blog. The interface was a bit unsuited for the main blog to integrate with, so i created a subdomain on hogsback.net, appropriately named youtube.hogsback.net. Head over there now and see what I have loaded into the channel so far; videos range from Mike Arrington of TechCrunch interviewing many of the most well-known Silicon Valley startup founders on their understanding of the term Web 2.0 to a board room session where angel investors speak of what they need to see regarding your financial projections when trying to raise startup capital.

All that and more and new videos will be added after I have chosen more that is relevant to Hogsback Media Networks and it’s clients. This is of course also part of the portfolio of value added services we can incorporate into a client’s marketing strategy. Whether you choose videos on YouTube uploaded by others and sharing and commenting on them, or whether you have your own created videos illustrating your message or brand or poduct, this is a very valuable enhancement to any brand or product and it’s marketing and PR strategies in todays New Media world.

So please head over to youtube.hogsback.net and feast your eyes

NB. Fast broadband/ADSL  connection preferable. Click on Menu and each video with a short description underneath appear in the right sidebar, use the right arrow to scroll through the selection and read the captions, then click on which ever video you want to see, and that’s it.

The whole issue of getting all the different social networking/bookmarking sites’ profiles into one page has now become a sort of personal mission for me, both because it makes it easier to manage and also because of the potential it has of becoming a personal publishing platform.

Like your own personal media network, where you decide what content from which sources you want to share and how and when and where and why such sharing should be taking place at all.

I have been trying to do this for a while now with Facebook, StumbleUpon, del.icio.us, digg and basically just testing out all the different capabilities and functions and special features of each service. I will post more detailed uses of each site after a bit more testing and using and research.

Then of course comes the part where all of this has to be linked and connected up together and I find that Facebook works best for that purpose. There are of course whole tech startups devoted to exactly this, but I find the idea of yet another social networking service to aggregate all the other social networking services on one page a bit silly. I have received my Beta Registration acknowledgment for Twine though, and if all the reviews and write-ups about it so far are true, it should be exactly the kind of thing that is needed to make sense of all the disparate and scattered SNP’s (social networking profiles) into one profile to bind them, one profile to rule them all and in an intelligent manner binding them into One profile to rule them all. (apologies to JRR Tolkien)

For all of this of course you need a good web browser and here, without any hesitation or dispute, i will recommend Firefox, and the stumbleupon, del.icio.us and facebook add-ons (toolbars). Unfortunately Firefox has become a bit bloated of late and freezes regularly and uses too much processing power, so I switched to Seamonkey, which is more lightweight and very fast.

It is easy to, from within Google Reader, click on a link of a news article you like or find interesting, photoblog it with stumbleUpon, bookmark it with del.icio.us, and all of it is updated and cross-updated on your Facebook, StumbleUpon, del.icio.us and digg blogs all at the same time or however you have configured or set it up. Our company of course specializes in exactly this as a service to our clients.

Gmail is every web worker’s number one ally, then there is Google Docs and Spreadsheets, Google Reader, Calendar and Maps etc to collaborate on projects with those that share your interests or guest posters/contributors etc. And if you log into secure encrypted SSL Google mail (https://mail.google.com), your Docs and Calendar and Maps are also automatically through encrypted SSL tunnel. And it is all free!!!

With Google Reader you keep track of the most important feeds from around the ‘blogosphere’, specifically those in your own field or sphere of interests and tastes.

What you highlight or bookmark or share depends entirely on your ability to pick newsworthy or interesting items that other people would be interested in seeing or if you have a certain story or project or slant, this can form the basis for the theme of ‘your own personal publishing empire’. With regular, quality content you build up regular and loyal visitors and with more and more regular visitors comes the ability to charge premium rates for ads (custom designed animated ad banners of advertising partners).

For more info on any of these strategies for your company or brand, feel free to mail mario [at] hogsback [dot] net

And now for the news at 11. A new type of online money making scam has emerged from our friends in Nigeria, it seems. This time they break into people’s webmail accounts and send emergency pleas for money to your list of contacts, claiming to have been robbed while travelling in Nigeria.

Note to all people out there who has aspirations to become a netizen, there are no rules that will protect you from stupidity and these kinds of bottom-feeders. This guy was using Yahoo, don’t the yahoos over at Yahoo.com know to protect their user’s from this type of thing.

I have been using SSL encryption to log into gmail and i feel completely safe and secure, just bookmark your homepage to https://mail.google.com and login with your details and change your password and it is A for away. It’s like internet banking secure, promise!!!

       From the New York Times article:
E-Mail Scammers Ask Your Friends for Money

By David F. Gallagher

Tags: crime, phishing, spam

Nigeria continues to develop and export the world’s most innovative Internet scams. In one bizarre variation that seems to have ramped up in recent months, the scammers are taking a page from Facebook and leveraging the power of social connections.

Here’s how it works: The scammer somehow breaks into a victim’s Web-based e-mail account. He then impersonates the victim and sends an emergency plea for help to everyone in the account’s address book, asking them to wire money to Nigeria. The e-mail includes some variation on a story about getting mugged or losing a wallet while on a trip to Nigeria.

This happened recently to Drew Biondo of Port Jefferson, N.Y. He said he was at home early one morning when his wife alerted him to an e-mail she had received from his Yahoo address about his Nigerian money troubles. He scrambled to try to regain control over his account, but trying to find a phone number for an actual human at Yahoo was “ridiculously difficult,” he said.

Mr. Biondo, a public relations executive, used the Yahoo account for work e-mail and had about 600 people in his contact list, many of them journalists. He said he soon experienced “an influx of phone calls from every reporter I’ve ever spoken to,” including some he had not heard from in years. “I credit this Nigerian scammer with one thing: he made me feel good inside because these people cared enough to drop me a phone call.”