All Things Digital

Here’s the latest election spoof video from the folks at JibJab Media, called “Time for Some Campaignin.’”

At the end of the video, BoomTown included the face of our favorite Internet CEO under siege, getting kicked around by politicians–and not billionaire investors and software giants–for a change. (Customizing faces is an option on all JibJab’s Sendables products.)

Here’s the video:

Last week, I appeared at the second annual Tech Policy Summit, held in Hollywood, which covered a wide range of important issues related to digital topics and public policy.

The one on content was titled, “How New Media Is Changing Content Creation and Distribution.” Conclusion: A lot!

I did video interviews after the session with two of the three panelists: Gregg Spiridellis, co-founder and CEO of JibJab Media; and Andrew Keen, author of the book, “Cult of the Amateur” (the other panelist was Jonathan Taplin, longtime entrepreneur and now a professor at USC’s Annenberg School of Communication).

Both Spiridellis and Keen discuss the changing nature of content and how new media will pay for itself.

Here’s the video (and here is another video I made for a panel I also moderated, on privacy):

While “Here Comes Another Bubble,” the hysterical but copyright-controversial online music video created by San Francisco’s Richter Scales got all the attention, the folks over at JibJab Media also made another video set to the tune of the same Billy Joel song, “We Didn’t Start the Fire.”

Except JibJab actually asked for and got permission from Joel for the use of the song for its parody. (Props for that, I say!)

Techwise, the review of 2007 includes, the Wii, Facebook’s Mark Zuckerberg, SuperPokes and his Digital Holiness Steve Jobs of Apple and the instrument of his glory, the iPhone.

In any case, we still love “Bubble,” but here is the JibJab’s offering, which was shown on the still-writerless “Tonight Show” last night on its first night back after the writers’ strike shut it down. It is the 11th time that the Venice, Calif.-based online video-maker has appeared on the show.

How could I not post this beauty from the folks at JibJab Media, in which Walt Mossberg and I get to smack Microsoft’s Steve Ballmer and Bill Gates, as well as Apple’s Steve Jobs more painfully, with snowballs?

The video card is part of a recent deal the online video creators just inked with BermanBraun Media–an independent production company headed by Hollywood players Lloyd Braun and Gail Berman–to make personalized ads using JibJab’s comic head-cut digital short technology.

The videos, which users can create for free with an ad at the start from Diet Pepsi Max, is the first major initiative for BermanBraun’s online division using Pepsi-sponsored online content.

BermanBraun announced a deal last July with PepsiCo to support original entertainment content developed for online platforms.

You can see one with a 10-second pre-roll ad embedded here, as well as another one here called “Menorah Hora,” which stars Google’s Larry Page and Sergey Brin and Page’s soon-to-be wife Lucy Southworth (Happy wedding this weekend!), as well as YouTube’s Chad Hurley and Steve Chen.

Sure, you feel a little guilty about offing that turkey today, but did you ever think about the agonizing death-by-Cuisinart of the cranberries?

Once you watch the warped Thanksgiving video “Sendables”–a must-see showing below (click on through the blank screen and it will start playing)–from the online content creators over at JibJab Media, you’ll never look at that side dish the same again.

Happy Thanksgiving!

The Venice, Calif.-based company, which vaunted to fame several years ago with its viral hit, “This Land,” recently launched its Sendables product.

It is aimed at the $85 million online greeting-card business dominated by American Greetings and also cheesy “social expression” products (think animated smiley faces) that actually garner substantial revenue.

Sendables offers a range of these higher quality eCards for sale from 50 cents to $3 for all sorts of occasions, along with videos too, many of which are really good examples of simple online content that works perfectly for the medium.

Gregg Spiridellis and his brother Evan started JibJab together in 1999 to try to break the online content code. Here’s a video interview I did recently during a visit I had with Gregg recently at their Los Angeles offices: