Vator.tv is a unique video-centric environment for entrepreneurs to meet funders, strategic partners and vendors.  I stumbled upon this Vator.tv video and thought some AllThings.tv readers would enjoy it.

Being an entrepreneur is exciting, but also challenging. Advice from other entrepreneurs and innovators who have experienced the ups and downs of building an organization or developing an idea into a product can be helpful and inspiring for one’s own venture. Thus, Vator TV decided to put the spotlight on some of the innovators who shared their lessons with the Vator community. In video that follows after the jump, Peter Thiel discusses the challenges he faced as he was pitching and building PayPal. Other famous entrepreneurs and investors in the Vator community, including Vinod Koshla, Mark Cuban, Tim Draper, Trip Hawkins, Chris Larson, Vivek Ranadive and Blake Krikorian share their views on what makes or breaks a company. Finally, Peter talks about how the late economist Milton Friedman has inspired him as an entrepreneur.

Video after the jump!

Cycling.tv Signs Distribution Deals with Joost & Blinkx

Announced on July 26th, Cycling.tv has signed distribution deals with both Joost and Blinx.

The cycling network is looking to broaden its reach, and gain new fans. That shouldn’t be too hard considering all the scandal going on with the cycling sport right now. The distribution deals include the provision of cycling and biking content, like professional cycling, as well as cycling.tv’s own programming. Cycling.tv streams live cycling news, and offers a wide array of content for on-demand viewing options. And what makes this deal more important for cycling.tv is the fact that you’ll no longer need ActiveX in order to watch the video content, if you watch it using Joost or Blinkx.

Joost has signed a similar deal with Indy500, which is also hoping to gain a larger audience. And Blinkx is moving more towards an Internet TV service itself, with plans to launch BBTV this fall

Source: SearchingTV on NamePros and Mashable.com

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Exclusive Big Brother 8 Footage, Blogs and Chat Rooms Available on http://www.film.com

CBS and RealNetworks(R), Inc. (NASDAQ:RNWK) , have teamed up for the eighth straight season to offer exclusive 24-hour-a-day access to live video feeds inside the Big Brother 8 house. Following tonight’s network premiere on CBS, fans can chat with one another about the episode and monitor the Big Brother 8 houseguests online via live, unedited video feeds from within the house, most of which never appears in the weekly television coverage.

Webcast coverage begins immediately following tonight’s premiere of Big Brother 8 at 8 p.m. ET. The coverage will be accessible through Real’s SuperPass subscription service at http://www.real.com/bigbrother in addition to the official Big Brother 8 Web site at CBS.com.

More from this press release on the jump…

To follow up on Kevin’s excellent article on the harsh realities facing those of us looking to develop a .tv site, I would like to add the following: Any .tv site that does not include a tv channel, will not only lack the content punch it needs to knock its stronger .com cousin off its perch, but will also, add to the number of developed .tv sites lacking a tv channel.

This hampers the .tv brand and thus the upwards pricing momentum of the .tv extension.

So let me first get the hypocrisy out the way!

We at Allthings.tv do not yet have our own channel that we make use of on a weekly or even monthly basis. We have been fortunate enough to have been able to cover the Always On conference, but short of that (without minimizing Kevin and Claude’s superb efforts) we have not yet featured any more of our own video content on Allthings.tv.

Yes, we have all heard stories of people getting discovered on You Tube. But the odds of it happening to you, given the vastness of the site and the sheer number of videos being uploaded on a daily basis, are slim indeed.

Throw in all that spam advertising to the mix and it’s a jungle out there.

That is the one huge advantage of having a Me.tv site. Your very own address. Your ocean of calm as opposed to the chaos that is the shared You Tube mega complex.

You not only have your own address, but you also have tools that have been designed to turn the pro internet surfer into an amateur web designer.

A recent statement made by VeriSign VP Raynor Dahlquist that:

“Throughout the world, the phrase ‘TV’ means world-class entertainment, which explains why major broadcast networks, sports leagues, gaming sites and training organizations have adopted the .tv extension for their business. This trend shows every sign of continued growth.”

was backed up by another finding released by VeriSign, that “.tv had 100 percent year-over-year growth in registrations”, absolutely annihilating all other extensions as far as year over year growth is concerned.

Those of us that monitor the extension with any degree of interest would not be at all surprised – either by the fact that .tv has beat out all other extensions in year over year growth, or by that huge factor of 100%.

Here are my thoughts as to why .tv has had this huge surge over the last year.

I received a pleasant surprise in my email today that I thought I would pass on to the AllThings.tv audience.

An industry colleague forwarded a press release over email to me from Rider Research (http://www.riderresearch.com), which publishes a weekly digital media newsletter. 

Rider recently produced a report called, “Video Vision 2007: A Survey of Web Sites Offering Video.”

Rider concluded that it would be a vast understatement to say that video on the Internet exploded in the last year. 

Apparently, the conclusion is based on a finding in the report that “the number of Web sites that offer entertainment and information videos increased in the last year from about 200 to over 300.”

There is no doubt that Me.tv is in its early phase of development.

There are bugs that need fixing, templates that need improving, monetization and revenue sharing options that whilst at the time of the writing of this article are not yet available, they are in the pipeline and should be available very soon.

Innovative bells and whistles are being introduced daily, yet undoubtedly Me.tv will be the first to admit that they have plenty of work to do and that Me.tv is not a completed project, but a work in progress.

The question though remains – will Me.tv turn out to be just a cool alternative of a YouTube home page; those who want a little more exclusivity and a lot less spam?

Or perhaps it will be restricted to those who don’t mind shelling out $25 for a .tv name, giddy with anticipation that somewhere down the line they can turn a small profit through monetization of the site.