What a difference a year makes. I first got to meet Jeff and Adam from Wallstrip back at the beginning of February, when we were getting ready to launch Next New Networks, and a lot of the same things were on our minds. At the time, I was already a fan of the show, but I hadn’t yet met Howard, who sounded from their description like the Wizard of Oz, or Lindsay, who just seemed too perfect a host to be real.

As we got to know each other, the natural inclination was to see if we could all work together, and believe me, I hoped they’d join forces with us at Next New Networks — but a bigger suitor was soon calling, and most people reading this blog know about the incredible move they made to CBS.

It’s been a lot of fun to be running parallel ships here in New York this year; I feel like they’re the family next door, and it’s always great to have one of them drop in and catch up. Jeff and Adam coincidentally hired a close family friend of mine, Terrence Elenteny, whom I’ve known since he was probably twelve years old, to their production team at CBS; Howard’s become a wizard to us as well, introducing us, for instance, to Ben Relles of Barely Political; and we’re now lucky to count Lindsay as a friend as well, and been able to confirm that yes, she actually is real.

Even though I know the people behind the curtain now, I still get just as big a kick out of their show, and get a little jealous when they do a particularly good one — which is all the time. Watching their 2007 wrap up video, it’s obvious that they’re still working insanely hard and having a lot of fun — and that’s a lot to be proud of. Congrats to the family down the road, and wishing you all even more success in 2008.

It’s with great sadness that we heard from Brian Conley at Alive in Baghdad that Ali Shafeya Al-Moussawi, who was to be a new correspondent for the show, was killed in his home in Baghdad a week ago.

There are no words that can do justice to the simple fact that in that part of the world, people are dying as they try to exercise a right we take for granted — simply to report and comment on their own lives — and that another family has lost a son.

You can give money to help Ali’s surviving family at the AiB website, and you can also help support Alive in Baghdad’s work with a donation or subscription.

I was diggin’ Common long before I came across his latest video “Drivin’ Me Wild,” but now I’m an even bigger fan. Check out the t-shirt!

[one of us couldn’t resist, so we gave the n-bot the shirt, too. Get your own here.]

I’ve had a great time putting together one of our newer networks, Bride-O-Rama, and I particularly like the blog posts from True Bride Confessions. I was knocked out as soon as I heard about TBC and even more so when I saw it was part of an empire of True —- Confessions (True Mom Confessions, True Dad Confessions, True Office Confessions, and True Green Confessions.)

So while I was in Hollywood last week I thought it might be time to meet up with the force behind the truth, former Huffington Post-er and producer, Romi Lassally. She and her associate Adam Ware trucked out to my office in Burbank and we sat at the Nick Animation studios for an hour or so and got to know each other a bit.

Thanks for coming out guys. And thanks for the confessions Romi. We love them.

The ever-brilliant Micki Krimmel has written an extensive post on WorldChanging about the current online video landscape, and turned in possibly the only thoughtful and appropriate response I’ve seen so far to the news recently reported that our friend Amanda Congdon and ABC won’t be continuing their relationship for another year.

Micki’s best point is that the online video landscape has evolved and grown so much in the past year, it’s almost useless now to draw conclusions about the viability of the industry based on any one person’s career choices — though I’d add it was pretty useless more than a year ago, when people were using Amanda’s departure from Rocketboom for their own axes to grind about videoblogging and its emerging personalities — many of them were painfully wrong when they made predictions then about her or the medium’s prospects, and I think there’s a good chance many of them are wrong now.

Amanda’s taken a lot of shots by virtue of being one of the first breakout videobloggers to get a lot of mainstream media attention, which these days happens a lot more often than it did a year ago. I know that I’m obviously biased as a known conspirator of Amanda’s, but no one’s written much yet about what a challenging gig she took on at ABC, and how amazing it is that she worked for a year with them at all. I’ve watched and sometimes commiserated with her in open admiration as she forged her way with ABC — a company I’ve done some work with, and know how long it can take to change, for many good and understandable reasons — and as she helped push through a lot of positive change in that organization.

Before Abcnews.com/Amanda, there was no video content on the site simultaneously available via RSS feeds and iTunes podcasts, no flash players with pause buttons, user comments on videos, or regular interaction with the viewer community in every episode. Not to mention that there were no videobloggers working in mainstream media, and covering stories that viewers asked them to do, or soliciting their participation in making the show. The thought of a major news organization like ABC supporting anything like that format for a year, much less getting those changes made within a year, is mind-boggling, if you take a step back from it. Lots of things that have followed, like Wallstrip joining CBS, JETSET joining us at Next New, and the increasing amounts of latitude they’ve each had to make their shows succeed in their new homes, all followed a path pioneered by Amanda.

(Photo by Amanda)

If people want to critique what could have been done better, they should. I’ve always felt that the show was underserved by a poorly designed website and intrusive ad model that made it difficult to watch and interact with, though the podcast remedied some of that for me. For that, we can’t really fault Amanda, who maintains a beautifully simple and easy to use website for her personal videoblog. ABC needs to improve this if they want to build viewership on the web — and new initiatives like the great work being done by ABC Family show that they know it. But at the same time, Amanda and ABC should be applauded for an experiment that’s made both of them smarter — it made a lot of sense for both at the time, and they’re both well-positioned to do even better things next as a result.

There’s really nothing more to be said. Olympic Gold Medalist Oksana Baiul hosted Fast Lane Daily today.

Here are some behind the scenes photos for more proof. And with that, we’re out for the week. Enjoy!

This week we launched ViroPop, our new network devoted to “Environmentalism Made Fun.” From the about page:

ViroPop is the first network on the Internet to treat the new environmental pop culture with a sense of irreverent fun. Long dreary powerpoint presentations…be gone! This is the happy Green Revolution.

Right on. We have a lot of plans for ViroPop, starting with our first show, the excellent, saucy ZapRoot, hosted by Jessica Williamson, who should make a splash in the videoblogging scene, and produced by Damien Somerset (WorldChanging, Ask a Ninja, among many other credits) and independent filmmaker Sarah Szalavitz, both of whom, besides having created and brought us the show, have been collaborating with us on a number of other fronts as we ready ViroPop and more networks on the way. They’re incredibly smart and talented and respected in the community, and the show has debuted to strong reviews and great views, a sign of many good things to come.

I’m personally excited we’re doing this as I started my own path into green pop culture working as the lowly, underfoot college kid in a collective of artists and activists, Betapunks/Ecomedia, back in ‘92 (who made cool films, and threw cooler parties), and last year worked to convince organizations like the NRDC to get involved with Amanda Across America, which was a completely new way of making media about environmental issues. And that’s just me — lots of the people here at NNN have been involved in green projects, and there’s a ton of excitement and passion here, and almost too many ideas of where this network can go. Hope you’ll subscribe and stay tuned for what ViroPop has in store.

We had a pretty good idea that when we launched our first Channel Frederator original series (and the first original animated series distributed by Next New Networks) that it would go viral pretty quickly. But, here we are less than 12 hours later with over 200,000, thousands of comments, and five star ratings. I think it’s far to say that creator Dan Meth will himself now join the exalted ranks of the internet people.

A few of the comments:

“I’ve seen all these videos… I don’t know if I should feel great or terrible.”

“noooooo!!! not chuck norris!”

And then, there’s the response video from our friends at Indy Mogul:

Dan Meth is one amazing filmmaker. Thanks bud.

Gavin Logan was in New York the other day to show us an animated show he’s been working on with some friends, and a few comedy ideas for Next New Networks. Bill Sobel is a friend of ours who teaches at SUNY Albany in his spare time and he was kind enough to give us an intro to Gavin. Thanks for coming by.

Some of Next New Networks (and new media’s) best friends are at Apple, especially Pete Alcorn and Scott Simpson at iTunes.

Pete and Scott were the first big supporters of what Emil and I were doing a couple of years ago with VOD Cars and Channel Frederator. They promoted us to popularity at every turn and when we launched NNN this year they’ve been there whenever one of our new networks goes online.

So, we put together special Freddie Awards for each of them last January, but when they couldn’t make the show we decided to wait. Pete came by for a visit last week and I couldn’t have been prouder to give the award to anyone in the world.

Thanks Pete. Thanks Scott. Thanks Apple.