A Google News for video: new site brings together news videos to one place

Posted by Kelley Vendeland on February 22, 2008 at 10:05 AM

A Norwegian web developer, Onar Vikingstad, has launched NewsClipper, a sort of “Google News” for video that pulls together news video clips from websites including ABC, BBC, CBS, and CNN.

Users can sort through video clips by “most recent,” “most viewed,” or by topical categories such as politics, international, and business, and can also assemble a customized playlist of favorite videos. However, according to blogger Howard Owens, the service is not fully developed, lacking a search function and a diverse array of content.

Newsclipper also allows users to imbed any video on any site they want, circumventing sites like CNN which prevent viewers from embedding video, reports TechCrunch. There is no official word yet if this will run afoul of copyright laws.

“Technically, the video content/stream itself is coming from the TV network,” creator Vikingstad argues. “I am just embedding it. So in a way you could say I’m embedding videos that are not proclaimed to be embeddable.”

Owens suggests that Vikingstad will probably also run into legal issues because the site strips ads from the video content.

Sources: howardowens.com, TechCrunch