My old friend, Hal Josephson, sent me the link to a site that lists web sites where there is an underlying model that rewards content owners.

Scott Kirsner is doing this as part of research for a book, "The Future Of Web Video".

"The folks at Mashale have posted a great list of 33 online video sites. They run the gamut from the ones you know, such as YouTube and Joost, to ones you might not know of. " from www.randomculture.com .

33 Ways to Watch Free TV Online June 18, 2007 — 09:58 AM PDT — by Stan Schroeder

It’s time to toss the old tube to the dumpster. Well, not if you have one of those 47” plasma ones, but…you know what we mean. The future of media is the Internet, and television is no exception. Instead of browsing through the channels with your remote, you could be browsing through the free online TV providers on your computer - hell, if you like, you can watch them all at once (in really tiny windows). It’s time to reach out and see how much free online TV we can find..."

There has been a lot of coding work happening this week at the Vquence office. Beta of the website - still not ready to actually be launched - is upgraded tonight.  Still hoping for a launch last week of June....

On the business front what is becoming increasingly interesting for me is that a lot of the seeds for both biz dev and investment that I planted months ago are starting to take root. People are starting to get back to me from months ago - friends who have kept the faith and been talking to people about what we are doing.

In the last few days I have been getting calls from Singapore and Las Vegas (among other places). Friends telling me that they have people interested in investing in the company. And these are friends I haven't spoken to in months. Perhaps it is important to remember how important friends like that are in your life!

And so I feel that we are nearing a tipping point. On Monday when I was recovering from jet lag I was thinking that the company was (as we used to say in the music business), one song short of a hit album. But I think maybe the market just needed to start getting to know our material better. And its always infinitely better in music if you have an entire album that is your hit. (Thinking Pink Floyd here!).

I think Vquence is about to hit prime time. We are getting a much better focus on what companies' pain points are. And which partners we need to work with. The major media companies just need a lot more development work that the smaller companies. Smaller media companies have that urgency of growth that makes them both great customers and very demanding customers!

But I am really looking forward to closing some of the deals we have got cooking! Exciting times...

On Monday I am going back to California. I have meetings planned with several VC's to talk about Vquence - and at their request too. And also want to try to close at least one potential customer and establish a working relationship with an agency that is a specialist in online campaigns that cross from the US into China. The agency I have in mind is The New Group who I worked with before when I was consulting to Dolby. They did the creative on the Dolby Headphone campaign in Japan. And it was very effective.

The key now is to start pulling together some of the disparate threads that enable a real understanding to evolve of the business ecosystem for online video.

As I meet people in the business development process I am coming to understand how many opportunities there are and also how totally different the needs are of the partners and clients that are emerging.

Seems sometimes like it is not so much about convergence as about divergence.

Seems like everyone I know is sending me links to the stories in the media in the last couple of days about News buying Photo Bucket and Flektor. For a combined $270M US.

Clearly News is trying to own a significant and strategic corner of the game, and who can blame them. If they can keep the audience involved from one place to another it makes total sense financially.

In the mean time over at Vquence we are running. Now that we have the alpha done, we need to get the beta bug free and out! Late June is the projected time line...