As you know, Viral Videos are one of the most powerful marketing tools ever created. Just ask the rock band Weezer, who tapped the YouTube talent pool to make their latest video a smash hit. They pulled in all of YouTube’s most popular stars to make a cameo. Including that weeping kid who loved Britney Spears a little too much. They then uploaded it to YouTube and watched it’s popularity soar.

All forms of social media can be used to generate big exposure, not just videos. A fake news story on a boy who goes on a spending spree and plays his Xbox with hookers made it to the top page of Digg. It was later reported on Fox News as being a real honest to goodness true news story. It wasn’t but it generated roughly 6,000 inbound links. That’s some killer exposure…

Well, you don’t have to be a rocket scientist to understand the power of online video, but the ones down at NASA, who now are sending us live photos of the Martian landing mission seem to have a fir grasp. We reported on this earlier in the week, and we now have something to look at it. The Phoenix Mars Mission site is alive and kicking, and has tons of great photographs of the landing and the surface of mars.

Even the indie movie industry is getting in on the whole viral video thing. IndieFlix created a marketplace for independent films called MyFestival. It will stream video, and will let users select movies for film festivals. The most popular and most viral movies rise to the top. They will be performing a trail of the software for the Seattle International Film Festival.

Of course, not everyone sees online videos as the way of the future. Viacom is currently suing YouTube for copyright infringement, asking for over 1 million dollars in damages. We feel Viacom’s lawsuit is kind of a direct attack on the Digital Millennium Copyright Act, a law that was passed to help keep freedom of speech free on the internet. Google has gone on record saying that, “Viacom threatens the way hundreds of millions of people legitimately exchange information, news, entertainment and political and artistic expression.”

中文版视频：

你知道，病毒视频可以说是史上最成功的营销工具之一。不信的话可以问一下Weezer乐队，【他们刚刚利用YouTube视频内容成就了自己音乐电视。他们从YouTube上节选了最火的视频并做成了专辑。包括那个喜欢布莱尼到过头到哭泣的小男孩】。最后他们就把它传到了YouTube上结果点击率飙升。

任何种类的社交网络都可以产生巨大的效果，不只是视频而已。比如一则关于一个骄奢淫逸的小男孩与妓女玩游戏的虚假新闻就成了Digg上的第一名。它随后被当作一个真实消息转载在Fox新闻中。然而它却产生了6000多个入站链接。这个不是个小数目……

呃，虽然你不用为了了解网络视频的去学习火箭技术，但是那些在【NASA给我们发送火星登陆照片的人们好像蛮厉害的。。。我们本周早些时候报道了这则消息而且现在已经就可以开始观赏。凤凰火星计划网站已经成功上线，并且上面有许多关于火星登陆已经火星表面的照片。

现在甚至独立电影业也已经开始搞起病毒视频这种东西了。IndieFlix为独立电影们创建了一个新的场所叫做MyFestival.com。【它会允许用户们为各个电影节选取自己喜欢的电影，而那些最受欢迎的电影会被顶到最上面。网站的程序会首先在西雅图国际电影节上小试牛刀。】

当然并不是所有人都觉得网络视频是个好东西。Viacom目前正因为侵权问题起诉YouTube。我们觉得Viacom的诉讼是对千禧年版权法的一个直接攻击，而后者是一项保护网络言论自由的法案。Google已经发表回应说：“Viacom这样做威胁了数百万人合法的交换信息，新闻，娱乐和政治表达的渠道。这是一个重大事件，我们会一直跟踪报道的。

Digg has decided to implement Semantic Web standards in its latest update. The Semantic Web is being touted as Web 3.0, and it’s the driving force behind the next generation of web technology.

One thing Ubuntu doesn’t come with is a DVD player. But we’ve got a link to remedy that situation with an easy and free tutorial.

Silver Light is a fast alternative to Flash, and now has its own gaming SDK called Popfly. This tool looks extremely easy to use.

Moshi is a new game that allows players to create a free online pet and make friends at the same time. Think of it as Pokemon meets MySpace.

TripWolf allows you to login and see video and photographs of a destination before you arrive, giving you a visual overview of the hotel, the landscape and all the hotspots.

The video streaming website Hulu, a joint project created by Fox and NBC, plans to lift its veil of secrecy this month and let the world see the future of television, online. The videos will be television shows aired previously, supported completely by ads. A sneak preview last October left a big impression on users, wowing even the most skeptical pundits.

Well it looks like Yahoo isn’t the only website that Microsoft wants to buy. Apparently, both Microsoft and Google are making bids for the user generated news site, Digg.com. The founder of Digg says these claims are not true, but Michael Arrington of TechCrunch says his inside source still stands behind his earlier statement.

Thunderbird, a free email client, is getting its third release next month. This email application will get a major overhaul, including the addition of calendar support, instant messaging, and better searching.

Google Operating System is a great blog that gives you lots of tips and tricks for using all of Google’s web applications. Do you need to add page numbers to Google Docs? Want to create filters for Google Reader? Well, Google Operating System shows you how, and does so in a way that’s easy to follow and fun to read.

Do you have a great idea and want to raise some money to fund it? Fundable might be right up your alley. In about a minute or so you can create a Fundable collection that allows you to gather money simply and easily to finance any project — from a short film to a snowboarding trip. Check it out at fundable.com.

**中文版视频：

Fox跟Abc合做创建的流媒体视频网站Hulu，计划在这个月向公众揭开它的神秘面纱并向世人展示网络电视的未来。视频内容为首先在电视上播出过的节目，完全通过广告来运营。它去年10月的泄露版给用户留下了十分深刻的印象，甚至征服了那些最苛刻的观众。

看起来微软并不是只对雅虎的收购感兴趣。显然的，微软跟Google正在争夺那个由用户产生新闻的网站，Digg.com。Digg的创立者否认了这一传言，但TechCrunch的Michael Arrington说来自内部的消息仍然能够证实他的说法。

雷鸟，这个免费的email客户端，将要下个月放出它的第三代产品。这个email程序被进行了彻底的翻新，包括日程表，即时通讯和更好的搜索功能。

Google操作系统，是一个可以提供丰富的Google网络程序使用技巧的博客。你想知道在Google文件里如何加入页码吗？想知道如何在Google Reader里加入过滤器吗？喔，Google操作系统会用一种简单有趣的方式告诉你。

你是不是有一个伟大的想法并希望有人资助你去实现呢？Fundable也许是正适合你。你可以在1分钟左右的时间创建一个项目意向，它能使你找钱去资助任何项目变得简单容易，不论是一个小短片或是一次滑板旅行。一定浏览fundable.com。

Download the MP4 Here

You might be surprised to learn that Google’s pay per click advertising revenue is not growing as much as expected the last two years. In fact, the growth last year was flat, and it dropped 7% in the month of December alone.

In the internet marketing world, Brand for Power is doing a free teleseminar series with marketing experts on branding for your business. I’ll be one of the speakers and there are many others who worked on online branding for companies like Apple, Pizza Hut and Staples.

Digg has released a new Firefox extension that will allow you to see the current number of Diggs for every web page you visit. You can also see the last ten comments and the first sentence of the description. And it will also show any previous stories submitted to Digg from the same Domain.

Adobe is trying to bridge the gap between your online and offline data with the new release of Adobe AIR. The idea is to no longer have data available only online by making a copy on your hard drive. Like, if you need to check your Google Calendar, but you don’t have an internet connection right then. Adobe AIR will make things like that possible.

Cake Financial has just released its very own Facebook app that lets you view the stock portfolios of your friends. And these are real portfolios by the way- not examples, or ones used in a virtual stock market- it’s the real thing, done in real time. Kind of cool for investing clubs – but it makes you remember where they’re going to draw the line at too much information.

Download MP4 Here

Yahoo launches Yahoo Buzz this week to great fanfare. This Digg clone has one big leap over its competitors- the most popular sites get listed on Yahoo’s front page. The downside? So far, content needs to be go through pre-approved publishers before it’s posted, getting rid of the democratic angle that makes Digg so popular.

Got a blog? Love Google Talk? Finally you can combine the best of both worlds and enhance your connection with your blog audience by using the Google Talk Chatback widget. With a few lines of code, readers can get into instant contact with you via Google Talk.

We have news of a free tool called Digg Friend Finder, which helps you find other Digg members who post the same stories as you. This makes networking and moving your latest news article up to the front page much easier and less time consuming.

Here’s a spiffy new plugin for Wordpress that lets you see the crawl trends of the top three search engine: MSN, Yahoo and Google, right from your dashboard. This lets you monitor everything in real time, and gives you a graphical overview that makes the information easy to read.

From Search Engine Land we get a list of cool Link Building Tools, that can help you in that tedious of all tedious jobs. All of the tools are free and powerful when used together, saving you a lot of extra time and effort when building your SEO campaign.

Yahoo is about to roll out yet another web application this summer, a Digg competitor aptly titled Buzz. Just like Digg users get to vote for websites they think are important, and then those sites get ranked and listed on the main page. It doesn’t seem to bring anything new to the table, and according to some is an act of desperation on Yahoo’s behalf.

Some developers are speculating a cool new program for the iPod touch and the iPhone, enabling users to order their favorite Starbucks coffee directly from their iPhone. Currently Starbucks has already integrated all of its music with Apple’s iTunes, allowing customers to buy the music they hear over the speakers at any Starbucks and have it piped directly to their Apple device.

Web 2.0 is being leveraged to mourn those murdered in Thursday’s shootings at Northern Illinois University. As of last Friday, more than 55,000 people have joined the Facebook tribute group called Pray for Northern Illinois University Students and Family. The pages contain vigils, links to news reports and words of support for families and friends.

In lighter news, we have a link to the top five digg applications that the internet has to offer. Each of these is free and fun, and one of them even adds special effects to the digg’s homepage, giving the whole thing a new experience.

CookThink is a new website that allows users to upload and then search for recipes. The key to this whole thing is the cookthink search engine, which allows people to give ingredients and get a recipe returned with each of the ingredients used.

Download Free Line Video (mp4)

Issuu is a free web service that finally does pdf rendering right. The page display is crisp and clear, and it loads faster than Adobe’s own browser. You can upload it to a permanent web address or use the Issu widget to display the file. It’s clean and simple — you’ll like this one.

Blog TV, another YouTube-ish amateur web television site is now offering its live shows on mobile phones. The system is flash based, so if you own an iPhone, don’t expect it to work, but the streaming video does push the envelope compared to others of its ilk by adding in a chat feed and a host stream to amp up the live performance into something unique.

Who doesn’t love Gmail? Well, today we’ve got a link to the best tools and resources for every Gmail power user. From nifty skins that make your inbox look good to must have tools that turn your 6 gigs of email storage into a portable network drive.

And finally, Ask.com and Digg are collaborating to make news site called Big News. Unlike Digg, users won’t be able to vote a story’s ranking up or down. The rankings will ordered by an algorithm that includes freshness, link popularity, and impact.