Vatican launches YouTube channel

It seems President Obama is not the only one taking advantage of new media, now the Vatican launches a YouTube channel featuring papal messages.

This is the Full Variety article:

Vatican launches YouTube channel

By NICK VIVARELLI

The Vatican has launched its own YouTube channel in what is being touted as a watershed endorsement by Pope Benedict XVI of the new-media age.
The channel, Youtube.com/vaticanit, will feature short clips of papal messages produced by the Vatican’s television center and Vatican Radio. These include the 81-year-old pontiff’s recent appeal for peace in the Middle East.
The agreement between the Vatican and Google was unveiled in Vatican City. Google managing director of European sales and media solutions Henrique de Castro stressed there would be no advertising on the channel. “Our strategy is to get people to come to our sites,” he said.
Pope Benedict is the spiritual leader of roughly one-sixth of the world’s population.
“We must find new ways to spread voices and images of hope through the ever-evolving communications system that surrounds our planet,” the pope said in his welcome message on the Vatican YouTube channel, which has audio and text in English, Spanish, German and Italian.
The pope called the Internet a “gift to humanity” and praised the benefits of such social networking sites as Facebook and MySpace in forging friendships, though he cautioned that “obsessive” online social interaction could lead to isolation.
The Vatican, which has had its own website since 1995, also recently endorsed the iBreviary, an iTunes application to put daily prayers on iPods and iPhones.

Making YouTube industry approved.

As the Actors' Guild prepares to resume talks next week with studio execs regarding labor contracts (of which one of the main focuses are actor-related revenues from the online exposure of content), YouTube seems to be one step ahead.
The video website is apparently finishing up a deal with the William Morrys Agency (one of Hollywood's top talent agencies) that would associate the company's talents to original content, produced and broadcast exclusively by YouTube.
I think that sounds quite interesting! If it's true that networks and studios are looking toward the web to show their content, now we can see how online pioneers in the video area (like YouTube) don't want to be left behind and thus are starting to create new distribution systems in an "official" kind of way.
This should be quite interesting indeed.
The William Morris Agency represents actors, writers, directors and other personalities. J.J. Abrams is included in the list, so "Lost", "Alias" and "Felicity" (you know you watched it) fans should be pleased.
You can read the full New York Times article HERE

S. Quiroga

THE PRESIDENTIAL BUBBLE

SIS DIGITAL reports after weeks and perhaps months of negoiating the newly crowned, excuse I mean newly elected President will be allowed to keep his PDA device. Under normal circumstances such items connecting the President to the outside world are stripped away by the Secret Service for security reasons. The President argued that only close family and Staff will have access to his encrypted digits.  This is only temporary as the S.S. will be closely monitoring the situation. Secret Service is concerned about potential hackers, and possibility of the President's exact location being revealed via GPS.  

Examples

See the Google phone post below for an example of the kind of news items each of you should do every week. (feel free to editorialize like I do in the example, but being un-funny isn't required)

Also, see the weekly wrap up post for an example of what types of stories are of interest and how you will be aggregating them for your group assignment when your week comes.