for the past few months i have been attending the NY Video 2.0 Meetup.

this week the format was a bit different. there was a panel discussion regarding online video advertising moderated by Dan Rayburn of Streaming Media. the panelists were from NBCU, OMD, DoubleClick and ScanScout.

i didn’t know the space too well (still don’t), so it was very educational. it seems there is lots of common wisdom and tendency to try and copy what had been worked in TV advertising.

without knowing much about either TV advertising or Online Video advertising, i think it is a safe bet to assume that copying the TV model will not succeed. like overture/google that came up with the search keyword ad model, there will be innovators that will optimize a model for online video.

we are probably 2-3 years away (maybe more) from seeing a model that really works. attracting more ad dollars away from broadcast and cable television.

in the meantime i am not sure the insane numbers of online video startups will be able to survive when everyone will be fighting for a limited ad-spend, and when the VC funding will (eventually) dwindle.

i am glad we’re not building our business case on video ad dollars..

we are trying to keep our phone costs to a minimum. testing a variety of services.

there are many services that are trying to help users save on making phone calls. each is a bit different and solves a specific use-case. right now the trouble we’re having is that quality sucks most of the time.

seems VoIP still has some issues

i am waiting to get skype on my iPhone. that could be great since i am within WiFi coverage most of the time. not sure about the quality though.

i love my iPhone. sometimes i just take it out to play with its iPod functions or to use its amazing browser. but it is extremely disappointing as an email device. especially after years of living with a Blackberry addiction.

1. it does not sync well with our Google Apps based email.
2. it’s not push-email
3. the alerts on an incoming email are not clear
4. there is no way to copy & paste
5. there is no way to do batch actions (e.g. mark as read, delete, etc.)
6. i am still not getting close to my effectiveness with the Blackberry keyboard, but i should get better at it

in general i find the iPhone a bit hard to operate using one hand, which is a bummer.

still i love it. and admire Apple for making it. Motorola and Nokia should do a serious house check to see when and how they lost their way.

wanted to announce that boxee took the first VC money. it did not involve any serious due-diligence. the VC just took my word on the situation. oh, and i got favorable terms, too.

the total amount is 25 dollars, in cash. it was under desperate circumstances.  i forgot my wallet at home and had no way to pay for the parking downstairs.