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How-to site 5min is expanding beyond its roots as a video portal and has launched a syndication network for its videos called VideoSeed, which uses semantic matching to deliver relevant clips to participating sites. The platform matches keywords found on syndication partner pages and pairs them up with videos in the 5min database according to title and tag information (along with relevant ads to go with the video). Clips are all played in 5min’s speciailized video player, which it launched earlier this year.

The company says that it can successfully distribute videos to syndication partners because its videos are all screened for quality and decency purposes and appropriately tagged with metadata, as opposed to the vast quantities of untagged footage that litter some more popular user-generated video sites.

And unlike some other how-to sites, 5min’s videos aren’t exclusively user-generated. Instead, the site has formed content partnerships with a number of other sites and media publications, including Ford Models, Elle, Car & Driver, Encylopedia Britannica, and Woman’s Day. Sydication partners (which will be displaying both videos from these content providers as well as 5min’s users) include Answers.com, wikiHow, and Ultimate Guitar. Through these sites 5min says that it will be reaching a whopping 110 million unique users a month, though this assumes that users will be reaching pages that feature the 5min videos (many entries in the aforementioned sites don’t have matching clips).

This is a crowded space, with competition from Howcast, Instructables, and a host of others. Provided 5min’s matching technology can live up to its promises (in my testing I could only find a few matches that displayed videos, so it was hard to gauge how accurate they were), these new syndication deals could help elevate 5min above the rest of the pack.

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YouTube sure has come a long way since launching in 2005 and being acquired by Google within a year for $1.65 billion. The company has today announced a collaborative project with a bunch of classical music institutions and artists in the context of the YouTube Symphony Orchestra program, and I think it’s awesome.

Starting today until January 28, 2009, musicians are invited to submit two videos: a personal interpretation of an original Tan Dun composition, written specifically for this program, and a talent video designed to demonstrate their musical and technical abilities. The semi-finalists will be selected by an impressive panel made up of members from the London Symphony Orchestra, Berlin Philharmonic, San Francisco Symphony, Hong Kong Philharmonic Orchestra, Sydney Symphony Orchestra, New York Philharmonic and other orchestras from around the globe.

Of course, the YouTube community gets to have their say as well; users will be invited to vote on the semifinalists from February 14, 2009 through February 22, 2009.

In April 2009, YouTube will follow up by co-hosting a three-day classical music summit featuring the finalists and classical music stars and orchestras at Carnegie Hall. Michael Tilson Thomas, music director of the San Francisco Symphony, will be conducting.

I’m particularly looking forward to the mashup video of ‘memorable entrants combined into one ensemble piece’ that will be distributed worldwide after the event.

I think this is a great way to push the boundaries of what has been done to date to marry classical music with modern technology, and give the world’s most talented musicians an opportunity to showcase their skills to a potentially massive audience.

Clive Gillinson, Executive and Artistic Director of Carnegie Hall, put it like this:

For musicians of all ages, nationalities, and instruments, the YouTube Symphony Orchestra provides a unique opportunity not only to perform on the world’s most famous stage – Carnegie Hall – but also on its largest stage — YouTube.

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If you thought Randall Stross’ attack on Tesla yesterday was in poor taste, wait until you read what Michael Wolff has to say about MySpace. In a dinner interview with BusinessWeek columnist Jon Fine, Wolff says:

…if you’re on MySpace now, you’re a [expletive] cretin. And you’re not only a [expletive] cretin, but you’re poor. Nobody who has beyond an 8th grade level of education is on MySpace. It is for backwards people.

That’s just part of a much longer interview in which Wolff goes into detail on exactly why he thinks MySpace will go the way of AOL. He also makes some blatantly incorrect statements, such as “All of the growth now in MySpace is international,” which is incorrect. In the last year MySpace has grown about 10% in the U.S., adding 7.5 million monthly unique users to a total of 76.4 million. Non-U.S. users have grown from 45 million to 54 million, a 17% increase. (source: Comscore)

And those comments about MySpace users being poor and uneducated aren’t entirely correct either. Of MySpace’s U.S. users, 52% make more than $60,000 per year, which is far from poor. 23% make more than $100,000 per year. Just 11.6% make less than $25k/year.

Facebook’s numbers are 65% and 33%, respectively, which is more impressive. But MySpace has 30 million more U.S. users than Facebook (76 million v. 46 million), so MySpace’s aggregate numbers are higher. 17.6 million U.S. MySpace users make more than $100,000 per year.

Also true of MySpace users, according to Nielsen: 63% own homes, 86% are registered voters and 28% are college graduates. Facebook has similar numbers.

And a whole lot of people smart enough to work a Blackberry device seem to like MySpace, too.

See the graph below for more details.

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Apparently at least some Australians aren’t happy with a PayPal advertisements that include legendary Aborigine David Unaipon with a motorcycle police helmet added on to suggest PayPal has heightened security. The ads, which are on the sides of buses in Australia, says the Sydney Morning Herald, are disrespectful and degrading according to Unaipon’s relatives.

The ads also apparently feature other bills as well. And PayPal, instead of just not commenting or removing those specific ads, makes a mess of it. “PayPal spokeswoman Kelly Stevens said the ads were “perfectly legal”" - which doesn’t really address the issue.

Best quote from the article: “It is very disrespectful because for a start no Aboriginal people have a helmet - we’re not bikies and we’re not Vikings.”

It’s not clear that many other Aborigines are offended. And the two Unaipon relatives seem to be in the process of shaking down the government for permission to use Unaipon’s portrait on Australian currency at all. Maybe they’re just looking for a little something from PayPal, too.

Sometimes I feel bad for PayPal and all the negative publicity they get. Then I remember how terrible their customer service is, and how many times I’ve been angry at them, and I feel a lot less bad.

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uTest, the crowdsourcing QA startup that lets companies rely on external developers to help them identify bugs, has closed a $5 million Series B funding round led by Longworth Venture Partners and Egan-Managed Capital, along with existing investors Mesco Ltd. and Massachusetts Technology Development Corp. The new round brings the startup’s total funding to around $7.8 million after a $2.3 million Series A round last year and some early seed funding.

The site offers customers a web based platform and tools for monitoring testing and QA cycles, which are available to them free of charge (they only pay for the testing completed by the crowdsourced community). Community members are paid depending on the number and type of bugs they find, and the marketprice for bug finds fluctuates depending on the number of bugs left to find, the demand for testers, and other criteria. Since launching in Febuary, the uTest community has grown to 11,000 users.

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Accoona, the highly suspect New Jersey based search/electronics retailer, has suffered what might be its final disgrace - the closure of its last business, Twing.

The company, which offered a search product, has a rich history. Founder Marc Armand Rousso has a shady past involving stock fraud, and former President Bill Clinton was a spokesperson for the company.

Most of Accoona’s $137 million/year in revenue came from distributing electronics after buying a number of retailers in Brooklyn. In 2007 they canceled a planned IPO. The reason? The underwriter pulled the plug, saying “After completing our due diligence review, we have chosen to disassociate ourselves with the company.”

Recently, the Accoona search business was sold to Masterseek, a Danish company, last month.

The company said in April they were deprioritizing all of their businesses except Twing, a forum search engine. But the Twing website is now offline, and a tipster says the technology is being sold.

Twing, which appears to be a separate corporate entity from Accoona, was said to be pitching for a small round of financing in the last few months at a valuation of $8 million.

The service had a surge in traffic this last spring, drawing, according to Compete, a peak of about 1.5 million unique monthly visitors. But much (or all) of that traffic was driven by advertising spends, says a source, and they struggled to get repeat visitors.

We’ve contacted Accoona and Twing and await a response. Unless they say otherwise, it’s deadpooled.

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<img src=”http://www.mobilecrunch.com/wp-content/uploads/2008/12/smack-300×165.jpg” alt=”" title=”smack” width=”300″ height=”165″ class=”alignright size-medium wp-image-5967″ />

Of all the complex and expensive toys that have become standard objects in our lives, mobile handsets probably get the worst treatment. Think about it: they’re the result of many hours of engineering and design and cost hundreds of dollars to obtain, yet within days of purchase they’re generally being smashed into coin-filled pockets or carelessly tossed into cupholders. How do they last a week, much less the years we expect of them?

To help answer that question, Nokia invited us down to their San Diego Test Center to check out some of the trials a new handset goes through before they make their way into our dangerous hands. Of course, we couldn’t leave our readers out of the fun - so we shot video throughout the entirety of the tour and brought it back for all to see.

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Earlier this year Vuvox, a startup that generates rich interactive slideshows, was acquired with little fanfare by eBay. Vuvox slideshows put the generic, thumb nailed images on eBay to shame, allowing users to include video, audio, and impressive photo collages into an embeddable Flash widget.

But until recently users had to go to Vuvox’s homepage directly if they wanted to include a widget as part of their auction. Now, eBay is conducting a pilot program for its automobile auctions, presenting sellers with an option to include the enhanced slideshows for free. The results are very cool, allowing prospective buyers to intuitively browse through auctions in a way that is as informative as it is attractive (you can see some example slideshows here and below this post).

eBay says that there aren’t any concrete plans to offer Vuvox in product categories beyond automobiles, citing the fact that most people spend far more time on a car listing than they would on a auction for an old book or pogo stick. This may be true for the most part, but the feature would also likely come in handy for expensive fashion items or large lots of collectibles. Users can still visit the Vuvox homepage to create and later embed slideshows into any auction, but most eBay users won’t know about this option unless it is integrated into the selling process.

Outside of eBay, users can choose to create their own slideshows for other purposes (like creating virtual storefronts linking to other sites, or just presenting their photos in a cool way). A number of media organizations, including The Washington Post, are using the technology to create enhanced stories (you can see an example here). For the time being this is all free, but that may change - expect eBay to try to monetize this somehow, perhaps by only allowing embeds of Vuvox slideshows in auctions if the seller pays a few dollars.

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File this one under “Unfortunate Ad Placements.” On a day that the Dow dropped 680 points (7.7 percent), MarketWatch ran the Jack Daniels banner ad in the screenshot above (sent to us by reader Scott Murff). The ad shows the “countdown to the close” of the market in minutes and seconds, suggesting that might be a good time for a drink. Juxtaposed with the headline “Bears Refusing To Hibernate,” it takes on additional meaning.

It becomes a commentary on the financial markets themselves: there is not much you can do in a down market but drown your sorrows (so might as well drown them in Jack Daniels).

Does the unintentional pairing with the headline make it a more effective ad or a tasteless one?

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Pownce, the media-rich Twitter competitor once labeled by the New York Times as “the hottest startup in Silicon Valley”, is headed to the deadpool after being acquired by Six Apart. The service, which was co-founded by Digg’s Kevin Rose along with Leah Culver and Daniel Burka, will be closing its doors on December 15. Users will be able to export their accounts to other services, allowing them to retain their messages and media, but it looks like Pownce users will have to turn to Twitter for their micro-blogging needs (if they haven’t already). Culver and Mike Malone (Pownce’s two engineers) will be integrated into the Six Apart team.

The news doesn’t come as much of a surprise - Pownce has long struggled in the shadow of Twitter in the microblogging space, despite the fact that the Pownce crew objects to being called a Twitter competitor. There were some major differences: Pownce allowed users to share photos, music, videos, events and offered niceties like an official AIR application, but its core functionality was still very similar.

We first heard about the site back in summer 2007, when it made it headlines as Rose’s secret new startup. Excitement built up to the point that invites were being sold on eBay, but by the end of the year it became clear that Pownce wasn’t catching on nearly as quickly as Twitter, and it seemed like it might be headed to the deadpool before it even launched to the public in January. Even Robert Scoble, who usually embraces social web services, hasn’t updated his account since July.

Co-founder Leah Culver has written a semi-sweet farewell to the Pownce community on the site’s blog.

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With the launch of multiple DSLRs including today's Nikon D3X, camera manufacturers are ready and waiting for you to buy their wares. But should you? DSLRs are perceived by beginners as the pick-up trucks of the camera world. Why buy something with high wheels and a tailgate when you are perfectly happy with a comfortable minivan or sedan? But DSLRs aren't quite they heavy duty machines we make them out to be. Point-and-shoots, while small and comfortable, are severely limited in terms of shooting ability. Manufacturers stuff all sorts of image improving features into these things including red-eye reduction, night mode, and even child mode for fast-moving rugrats. But these are crutches designed to reduce the effect of slow image sensors and wonky lenses that have to fold in on themselves to stay compact.

The FBI emailed us today - never a good sign - to let us know about their updated top ten fugitives widget. It’s a big improvement on the eyesore that they released a year ago. Get it here.

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In the waning days of his leadership at the FCC, chairman Kevin J. Martin is trying to push through some striking initiatives in his last chance to leave his mark on the agency. On Election Day, for instance, the FCC approved unlicensed use for white-space TV spectrum (aka, WiFi 2.0) that is being freed up. Now Martin wants to rid the wireless Web of porn.

One of the issues he plans to tackle in upcoming meetings this month, is a plan to give all Americans free access to the Web via the airwaves, minus the porn. Adults would be able to opt back in to get the raw, unfiltered Internet.

The proposal opens the door for the FCC to regulate decency standards on the Web, but only when it is accessed over the airwaves by wireless devices. It would reassert the FCC’s authority in this area, which harkens back to the decency standards it imposes on broadcast TV. This is a bad idea for several reasons.

1. The FCC has a hard enough time figuring out what is decent and what is not on 500 channels. It is not equipped to police decency on billions of Websites, even if it relies on automated filters to do most of the work.

2. The rule would apply to only one sliver of spectrum, the AWS-3 band, which nobody really uses yet. It would be like banning porn on fiber-optic IPTV, but not doing anything about it on satellite or cable. If children watching porn is the problem, this will do nothing to stop it.

3. Porn filtering aside, requiring winners of the AWS-3 spectrum auction to give up a quarter of the airwaves they win to set up a free slower-tier wireless Internet service will certainly make those airwaves worth less to any potential bidders. Worse, it could drive away the best potential bidders who might decide it is just not worth their effort or capital.

You’ve got to wonder whether Martin really thinks he can get this passed, or whether he just wants it as a resume stuffer. It’s the kind of thing that plays well on the campaign trail, should Martin decide to run for political office in the future. Why is he bringing this up now for what is ultimately a minor swath of spectrum? If he was serious about eradicating porn on the wireless Web, he should have tried to impose this kind of rule during the last set of auctions for the 700 MHz spectrum. But he didn’t.

Setting up a free tier of wireless Web access is the more interesting part of his proposal. Perhaps a better way to do that would be to set up economic incentives for spectrum winners to offer free tiers of service, rather than mandate it. For instance, why not offer a 25 percent discount to each bid that includes provisions for free Web access that could be supported by advertising. That way the market would sort out what portion should be free and what portion should be paid.

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It’s the season for top searches, and Ask.com just doesn’t know how to play the game. To compile these, big search engines take all the top search terms for the year and promptly throw the data out. They then compile a list of terms that they think properly reflects key trends that people are looking for, occasionally looking at the actual data for guidance. We saw Yahoo’s list earlier today.

Ask’s comes next. And it’s clear they are being way too honest. The top search is Dictionary followed by MySpace, Google, YouTube and Facebook.

These aren’t searches, they’re navigation queries. Ah well.

Here’s the complete list:

1. Dictionary
2. MySpace
3. Google
4. YouTube
5. Facebook
6. Coupons
7. Cars
8. Craigslist
9. Online degrees
10. Credit score

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The fifth annual Le Web conference in Paris on December 10-12 is approaching 1,500 attendees, says organizer Loic Le Meur, the most that have ever attended the event. Attendees are arriving from 26 different countries. We’re having a big party on the last night of the event. See you there, or watch for our coverage if you aren’t attending.

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What is fascination with Britney Spears? Maybe it’s a train-wreck kind of thing. Once again she tops Yahoo’s list of overall searches for 2008, just like she did last year.

In fact, the entire list hardly changed at all. The term “WWE” was once again No. 2. All in all, six out of the top ten search terms remained the same. The only new entrants were “Barack Obama,” “Miley Cyrus,” “Angelina Jolie,” and “American Idol.” This list doesn’t really tell you much other than that people are obsessed with celebrities. I’ve bolded the repeats below:

http://www.techcrunch.com/2007/12/03/yahoo-top-searches-2007-please-people-stop-typing-britney-spears-into-search-boxes/

1. Britney Spears
2. WWE (World Wrestling Entertainment)
3. Barack Obama
4. Miley Cyrus
5. RuneScape
6. Jessica Alba
7. Naruto
8. Lindsay Lohan
9. Angelina Jolie
10. American Idol

And for comparison, here is last year’s list:

1. Britney Spears
2. WWE
3. Paris Hilton
4. Naruto
5. Beyonce
6. Lindsay Lohan
7. Rune Scape
8. Fantasy Football
9. Fergie
10. Jessica Alba

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Trutap, a leading UK mobile startup which made the TechCrunch 40 list in 2007, is letting go almost 80% of its 30 staff after failing to hit its window for a second round of funding. A skeleton staff will keep the social apps Java application for mobiles available prior to a sale or new investment, only a month after its re-launch. The startup was orphaned after its first investor Tudor Ventures, a hedge fund hit hard by the economis crisis, put in a rumoured $6m but could not come back for a second funding round. And today the UK startup scene was also hit by news that review site Reevoo is putting a fifth of its staff jobs on an “at risk” list.

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When I was in Europe two weeks ago I fell in love with Moleskin notebooks. I know I am neither a college-age girl or a pretentious artist but these things are great. The paper is soft and thick, there's a little pouch for your documents at the end, and they survived the abuse of me running around Paris doing research which is more than I can say for most reporters notebooks I've used. But yes, they are kind of for weenies but I'm giving some cool, specially engraved notebooks away, so read on.

When CrunchBase, our free database of startup and people information, released an API we started to observe some really interesting applications being built on it. But one of the most interesting could just be Crunchvision which puts on a map the startups indexed in CrunchBase. This service was created in a couple of days by Mapeed, a French startup which provides tools for creating and serving Google maps that include a high volume of data.

If Crunchvision was built on Google maps “manually” it would show an endless number of markers that would make the map unreadable. Mapeed is able to address this issue by grouping the markers and providing a clean result that remains accessible at decent speed. In CrunchVision for example you can zoom in and still have a clear impression on the startup density by region or city. This is not a surprise, but this is a great service to realize that Silicon Valley is no longer the only hot spot for startups, although it still remains No. 1 by far.

CrunchVision is still missing a few key features including a search engine or filters enabling the creation of ad-hoc maps (maps of startup that raised money, that provide financial services…). But this is a good starting point. Especially if you are an entrepreneur and want to know who operates in your neighborhood.

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Scobleizer and our own Scott Merrill are both in Barcelona this week to see the latest from Nokia in the upcoming year. The promise, according to Scoble, is a device that will be a game changer for Nokia. Here's what he heard: When we got here a Nokia executive met me and bragged that the Internet has no clue what they will announce this week. I asked “what about the touch screen cell phone that I’ve seen rumors about?” He said that no one had gotten it right yet. The announcements are on Wednesday morning (it’s early Monday morning as I post this) so we’ll have to wait to see what they announce. He told me this is one of the only times he can remember when a big announcement has not leaked.