TechCrunch starts the week with news of a deal between Auditude, MTV and MySpace
that seems a complete turnabout in Corporate America's decidedly anti
stance on users uploading and sharing music videos, all in the name of
data-rich analytics and the promise of finally monetizing the long tail
of music videos.

Jason Kincaid
explains: "The new platform will automatically identify any uploaded
video clips from a number of shows produced by MTV Networks (including
my personal favorite “The Daily Show”), and will display an overlay
when the clip is played that shows which episode the clip originally
came from, its original air-date, and links to online stores where
users can buy the entire episode."

Kincaid's verdict: "After
years of being told not to upload these videos, users will probably
take a while to warm up to the idea. But if it catches on (and it
probably will), expect to see content owners flock to form partnerships
with MySpace – there isn’t currently another video platform out there
that is able to identify and monetize content this effectively. We’ll
probably also see the Auditude platform implemented elsewhere as other
sites try to catch up."

ReadWriteWeb's got a terrific explanation of Auditude's analytical technology. Commenting on the deal's antithesis to the take-down notices we've come to expect from content rights owners, ReadWriteWeb's Rick Turoczy
writes: "The Auditude solution takes exactly the opposite tact:
identifying content as a means to extend MTV Networks' reach with the
MySpace audience. It's an incredibly innovative way to embrace the
behavior of today's Web users while giving something back to the
content owners.

"For an industry that lives and dies by audience
analysis, this new windfall of data – from a previously untapped
resource – is a veritable metrics gold mine, certain to provide reams
of reports and analysis in the short term. In the long term, it could
change how – and where – MTV Networks' programming is released and
distributed."

Microsoft still Azure cloud contender
Horrible
headline puns aside, Microsoft has the industry sitting up and taking
notice of its definite commitment to cloud computing following its announcement of Azure at its Professional Developer Conference.

Dan Farber at CNet News thinks this is evidence that Microsoft will continue to be a major force for at least the next ten years
even if this move does test the company to its limits: "Ray Ozzie has a
track record of slowly but surely getting things done and Microsoft is
famously persistent and cash rich. But building a platform, or Internet
operating system, at planetary scale supporting billions of users and
trillions of transactions per day, and having fleet Google as a primary
competitor will be a major test of Microsoft's brain trust and resolve.
Don't be surprised to find a recharged Bill Gates parachuting into the
fray as Azure evolves and the cloud war for developers escalates."

Robert Scoble provides his collection of live web conversations
around the topic, and sums up: "It doesn’t matter that Microsoft didn’t
get all that much hype this year at the PDC or that it didn’t sell out
or that other companies like Amazon, Google, and Rackspace are ahead in
the cloud game. You just saw Ray Ozzie turn the creaky old cruiseliner
hard to port and damn, it is impressive."

Social media for president
The
US presidential race has got the point where to avoid hearing about it,
you'll need to find a cave on a mountain-side accessible only by a
three-day trek atop a mule, where you proceed to take a soma holiday.
For those politico junkies who can't get enough, though, there are a
multitude of interesting new ways to follow the dash down the home
strait.

Twitter's Election 2008
watch has been filtering hundreds of Twitter updates per minute
providing a window into real time public opinion about the election. Twitter Vote Report
is actually unrelated to Twitter as a company but uses the Twitter and
Google Maps APIs to create a grassroots non-partisan live view of
voting conditions around the country. The site offers its data as feeds
in turn under a Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 United States License.  Finally, at 24 Hours In America a team of British satirists and their special guests will live-blog the event. They also have a Twitter account.

--Basheera Khan