It appears that Wizzard Media, previously known as a podcasting company, is getting into the video platform business. Wizzard will be showcasing its new Flash based Wizzard Media Player this week in Las Vegas at the 2008 New Media Expo (NME). The show is the industry’s annual convention for professional podcasters, online video publishers and bloggers. Under the tag line, “Get Your Content to Go,” the Wizzard Media Player is expected to attract video producers with its functionality and highly customizable features.

“The Wizzard Media Player allows for unprecedented producer control and customization. It incorporates all of the best features I have seen in other web video players and several that are innovative and unique,” says Jeff Macpherson, producer and star of TikiBar TV. “I expect a surge of content producers moving to this media player. It has been my pleasure to work with Wizzard in the development of a media player that exceeds my own lofty expectations. It is exactly what I was looking for.”

The Wizzard Media Player was designed with various unique features to appeal to both producers and advertisers with the expectation of increasing audience growth and advertising revenues. The Wizzard Media Player, launched in beta mode in July, is currently in use on content producers’ web sites around the Internet and is already being used successfully in the fulfillment of advertising campaigns.

The Wizzard Player allows content creators to embed video imported from an RSS feed on web sites, blogs and social media networks such as Facebook and Twitter. The player is highly customizable, streamlined and supports the latest video technologies (H.264) with auto-detection for the highest quality playback. Built with a robust set of audience behavior statistics, the Wizzard Media Player could be a great asset for monetizing online video content. Video views are integrated within the statistics on Wizzard Media’s hosting platform, Libsyn, and videos running advertising campaigns are captured and tracked with Nielsen NetRatings for third party verification.

Various versions of the Wizzard Player are available for producers for distributing individual episodes and entire shows, and one specifically designed for audiences to be able to share video with their friends. Virtually every aspect of the Wizzard Player is ‘skinnable,’ allowing for a range of options from basic color changes to custom menu and button options. A sophisticated set of user controls and options such as sharing via email and embed codes, version selection (high resolution, low resolution, and HD when available), full screen and mouse-over have been carefully considered to provide the best viewing experience possible.

The Wizzard Player simplifies the workflow process by providing an easy and automated method for importing RSS feeds for use with the Player. Once the initial set-up is completed by the publisher, video files are distributed to embedded Wizzard Players around the Internet.

“The goal for Wizzard is to bring the latest, cutting edge video technologies to video producers and their audiences without sacrificing backward-compatibility for legacy users,” said Dave Mansueto, Wizzard Technical Futurist and Co-Founder of Libsyn. “And, in doing so, we are simplifying the video producer’s workflow to one upload that enjoys all the benefits of total distribution.”

With SHOWTIME’s acclaimed drama The L Word signing up as a first customer, The Electric Sheep Company (ESC) today announced WebFlock, a new private-label virtual world application for improved online social interaction, media consumption and multi-player casual game-play.

The Electric Sheep Company and The L Word first innovated together in 2007 with the Emmy Award-winning “L Word in Second Life” online community. That virtual experience won rave reviews and deep fan participation, but faced barriers to entry.

“The Second Life project was a success, but was only accessible to a small portion of our online audience,” says Rob Hayes, Senior Vice President and General Manager Showtime Digital Media. “We are excited to bring the benefits of virtual worlds, such as community empowerment, to a Web-sized audience.”

“We have spent years creating virtual experiences for media companies and brands, and have struggled to match available technology with the needs of our clients,” says Sibley Verbeck, CEO of ESC. “That struggle led us to create WebFlock, and we are thrilled to work with SHOWTIME again as one of our first customers for the product.”

WebFlock is designed to solve many of the challenges faced by branded consumer-facing virtual worlds, where results have been stymied by accessibility and usability problems. WebFlock balances the need for visually rich social, media, and gaming spaces, with the requirements of mainstream audiences.

Key application features include:

Private-labeled

Every WebFlock implementation is separate and customizable, which gives companies the ability to control such things as user registration, quality (and safety) of art content, monetization including advertising or micro-transactions, integration to other Web content or profile systems, and overall user experience.

Flash-based

The front-end is built entirely in Flash, which is already installed on 98% of the world’s Web browsers. ESC made the critical decision to work with Flash because mainstream users are reluctant to download software, whether desktop applications or custom browser plug-ins.

Out-of-the-box feature set

The core WebFlock application includes key virtual world features, such as chat filtering and muting, emotes, load-balancing for massive scalability, and Web-based metrics to be able to track usage.

Highly extendable

WebFlock can be customized with unique avatars, 3D spaces, and new interactivity such as casual games or scripted objects. It can also be integrated to a company’s existing art or game content, registration systems and other Web applications. WebFlock can reside on a single Web page or be syndicated across the Web on social networking sites like MySpace and Facebook.

Software-as-a-Service

ESC charges a monthly application services fee based on concurrent users, which covers access to the software, hosting, technical support and maintenance. Customization services, such as art creation, game design, or systems integration, are priced separately.

EdgeCast Networks, the rich media content delivery network (CDN), and AnimeNewsNetwork.com, the world’s leading Japanese animation content website, publicly unveiled a new Anime video streaming service. The content is being delivered around the world exclusively via the EdgeCast content delivery network. The service will be ad supported and free for viewers.

AnimeNewsNetwork.com delivers 2.3 million unique visitors with over 19 million page views per month. Internet metrics firm Alexa puts AnimeNewsNetwork.com consistently in its top 1,500 websites worldwide.

EdgeCast Networks, utilizing their worldwide content delivery network, will power the streaming video services. The service will be among the first to leverage the new Adobe Flash Media Server 3 [FMS] platform to securely deliver near broadcast-quality h.264 video to end users on Windows, Mac and Linux environments. EdgeCast has implemented FMS security features such as RTMPe delivery, SWF verification, and token authentication throughout its global content delivery network, making this service possible while minimizing security risks such as piracy and stream ripping.

“I couldn’t be happier with the level of service we’ve received from EdgeCast Networks,” said Justin Sevakis, AnimeNewsNetwork.com director of new media. “This service would not be possible if it weren’t for the reliable delivery and support for the newest technologies that EdgeCast provides.”

The English speaking Japanese animation (“anime”) market has struggled in recent years despite a robust and growing audience, a fact largely attributed to Internet piracy. An estimated 69% of Americans between the ages of 16 and 29 watch anime regularly, according to a 2007 poll. AnimeNewsNetwork.com’s video player provides anime fans the speed and ease of Internet delivery, while giving content owners the security and quality they require.

“Many of our prospects and customers have legitimate concerns about streaming license-protected media globally, due to perceived risks about piracy or other types of misuse,” said James Segil, co-founder and president of EdgeCast Networks. “But our robust security features give content owners and distributors full control over who sees what and when, eliminating the chances of licensing violations that threaten the integrity of the service. We’re very excited to enable companies like ANN to stream licensed content with the peace of mind that everyone’s rights are protected.”

Initially the service will include nearly three hundred trailers for various anime programs, as well as editorial video produced by AnimeNewsNetwork.com such as interviews, reviews and virtual tours of the anime industry’s leading production studios.

If your an football fan I think you will enjoy this.  Play Hard Sports, Inc., the first studio in North America to develop, publish and distribute interactive fantasy sports games and entertainment over the Internet, today announced the official beta sign up program for the company’s upcoming football game. The new website, www.playhardsports.com, provides an early look and feel for the Company’s first title game, Play Hard Football, being released in fall of 2008.

These guys have a beautiful, Flash/Flex based website, it is a great destination for the casual sports gamer.  Play Hard has raised $5 million in venture capital from New Enterprise Associates.

The new site allows prospective players to sign up for the upcoming beta program and get ‘first dibs’ on a team name for the upcoming gridiron season. The site also contains a sport trivia game, a video teaser, Play Hard Knockout photos and developer diaries from the team’s Game Design Director. The site will also be home to the forthcoming Play Hard community, where sports fans can come for information and chats with active and retired NFL players, participate in online forums and read about Play Hard’s latest game developments.

“This is an exciting first milestone for us as a company,” said Jeff Anderson, CEO of Play Hard Sports. “We are redefining the online gaming market by bringing sports fans something they have been waiting for — Interactive Fantasy Sports. This beta site is just the beginning of what fans can come to expect from Play Hard.”

To sign up now and start your journey to gridiron glory, visit www.playhardsports.com

Google posted to their blog tonight that they have integrated their search algorithm with the Flash platform.  Theoretically this would mean that Flash based websites and components would now be able to be referenced via web search.  This would be the first time that rich media search like this would be possible.  And Venturebeat has announced tonight that Yahoo! has also created the same integration with Adobe.  So for the first time in a while it looks like Yahoo! isn’t starting from a mile behind Google.  Here is what Googlers, Ron Adler and Janis Stipins, are saying about the announcement:

Google has been developing a new algorithm for indexing textual content in Flash files of all kinds, from Flash menus, buttons and banners, to self-contained Flash websites. Recently, we’ve improved the performance of this Flash indexing algorithm by integrating Adobe’s Flash Player technology.  In the past, web designers faced challenges if they chose to develop a site in Flash because the content they included was not indexable by search engines. They needed to make extra effort to ensure that their content was also presented in another way that search engines could find.  Now that we’ve launched our Flash indexing algorithm, web designers can expect improved visibility of their published Flash content, and you can expect to see better search results and snippets. There’s more info on the Webmaster Central blog about the Searchable SWF integration.

Dan Frommer, from Silicon Alley Insider says, “This is good news for searchers, who might be able to find more stuff that they’re looking for. And it’s potentially good news for publishers who use dynamic Flash applications: More of their content could be indexed on Google (GOOG) or Yahoo (YHOO) than before, which could increase traffic. It’s also a smart move for Adobe, which is going to see more competition from other Internet application platforms/frameworks — and must give companies every possible reason to keep using Flash.”

I think this was a great strategic move by Adobe, since this gives it yet another leg up on the rapidly growing Microsoft Silverlight platform.  This has been a good year for Adobe so far.  They have made some of their most innovative products such as the Adobe Air downloadable component.  And it looks like they are going to keep expanding their efforts to remain the leader in the media industry.