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Jivox is an online video distribution and monetization outfit that is launching, now propelled by a $2.7 million seed funding round led by Opus Capital.  They call themselves a “powerful new way to tell your customers about your business beyond the visual and geographic limitations of search engines and banners.”

If you’re familiar with Spot Runner, a service that allows you to take commercial donuts (or in web designer terms, templates) and wrap them in your company’s pertinent info, and them run them on cable television, it’s a bit like that, although purportedly cheaper. The company’s press data kit doesn’t make it clear if the advertisements created are run on cable television and affiliated advertising networks exclusively through Jivox. Spot Runner prevents you from exporting your commercials to your local machine and requires that you use their company for placement - and Jivox may be following that path or another, we’re not sure.

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We talked a bit about the Bitstrips service the other day, after our Kristen stopped by their booth and was inspired enough to put together a post talking a bit about how the service worked. Pete today stopped by the Bitstrips booth at the Austin Convention Center during the SXSW festivities.

They put together a pretty decent likeness, it appears - so I’m sure the adventures of Pete will continue now beyond the pages of Mashable into toon-town.

Meanwhile, I remain in East Texas, manning the Mashable ship. I can almost hear all the fun I’m missing from over here.

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Timothy Lee and Jim Lippard today both touched on a topic that’s very near and dear to my heart - better government accountability through better technology.  There is a site entitled Rate My Cop that is apparently coming under fire from the Arizona police departments who consider the site an invasion of officers’ privacy.  The site doesn’t include any personally identifiable infomration like pictures, addresses or personal data other than the names of the officers and the department they work for.

Still, though, the Tempe police department is livid.

“If everybody went home everyday and you had the whole world ranking your job, we do make mistakes, but other days we do great things,” said one Tempe police officer.

Here’s how the site describes itself:

Welcome to RATEMYCOP.com, the online watchdog organization serving communities nationwide. RATEMYCOP.com is not affiliated with any government agency; we are an independent, privately managed organization.

Our mission is to compile information on cops' performance and to provide a forum where users can freely share individual accounts. Good, bad or indifferent. Most of all, we would like to hear your stories. Your appreciation and your disapproval. Did you witness a cop doing a good deed, or were you involved in an unfortunate altercation? Tell us about it. Tell others about it. Let it out. Don't feel intimidated by the badge to remain quiet.

While we respect their authority we are also free to question it. You have the right to remain informed.

This is what I see as a healthy example of governmental transparency, even though it is being done by way of citizen involvement, rather than through voluntary governmental action. As Techdirt’s Timothy Lee notes, “When a police officer screws up, the result can be innocent people being harrassed, humiliated, arrested, injured or killed.”

The bottom line is that as American citizens, our tax dollars pay these generally brave men and women’s salaries. As their employers and as American citizens, we deserve and are engage our rights to free speech in talking and chronicling publicly their actions.  Not only should they be held to a higher level of accountability, as Lee notes, but as Wendell Phillips famously quipped, “Eternal vigilance is the price of liberty—power is ever stealing from the many to the few…. The hand entrusted with power becomes … the necessary enemy of the people.”

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The Association for Downloadable Medahas announced today the formation of a advertising agency liaison to the group.  The fourteen member Ad Council is made up of media professionals from major leading interactive advertising agencies. The purpose of the council is to act as an advisory board for the ADM to aid them in creating standards and guidlines for podcasts, online video and streaming media.

In case you’re unfamiliar with the ADM, they’re an organization of folks generally in the podcasting world (with significant spillover into other industries like PR, advertising and certain hardware manufacturers whose products all start with “i”). This is one more step towards the achievement of their earliest stated goals of the group was to create the standards they’re set to disclose at ad:tech in April.

Podcasting News had the run-down of the named members of the newly created Ad Council:

• Jonathan Adams, Vice President, Group Director, Media Digitas (Publicis Groupe)
• Kendall Allen, Managing Director, Incognito Digital
• David Berkowitz, Director of Emerging Media & Client Strategy, 360i
• Jason Burnham, CEO, Burnham Marketing
• Jocelyn Griffing, Senior Vice President Online Media at ICON International, an Omnicom Company
• David Herscott, President, MEA Digital
• Tom Hespos, President, Underscore Marketing LLC
• Alyson Hyder, Director, Digital Marketing Services, Avenue A-Razorfish
• Jennifer Kim, Vice President, Integrated Strategy, Sigma Group
• Susan MacDermid, Senior Vice President, Real Branding
• Stephen Smyk, CEO, Performance Bridge
• Jeff Adelson-Yan, Managing Partner, Levelwing Media

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Revision3 is pushing its mobile effort for distributing video now, and it’s signed on transpera to power this mobile initiative. The new Revision3 mobile service will be available to mobile consumers across networks and hand-held devices. Transpera is a relatively new video company, having emerged onto the mobile video scene last summer.

The company has a distinct focus on mobile video, and develops ways in which brands and content owners can connect directly to the end users and consumers for marketing and distribution services. One way in which Transpera looks to provide added value by leveraging the viral nature of video and make that a prominent availability for mobile users.

Such a cross-platform strategy for video consumption and delivery is what Transpera hoped would make it attractive to other services, and it looked like it worked with Revision3. The Revision3 website has recently been relaunched with new featured content, and has been partnering with a couple of other services like Miro and Meebo in order to make its content more widely available as well.

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Facebook had planned on having a Facebook Developer's Garage this afternoon at 3 pm, where a few developers were set to present their experience in creating applications for Facebook's open platform, and other members of the audience could ask questions and learn more about the platform. After the Zuckerberg-Lacy Keynote revolt yesterday afternoon, however, Zuckerberg decided to use the Developer's Garage as an opportunity to address the debacle, and have an open Q&A session.

That made a lot of folks happy, and pretty darn excited about getting into the venue where the Developer's Garage is being held. I came an hour early to set up shop and see what Mark had to say in response to yesterday's keynote. I didn't get in early, but I got in.

After hearing an intro to the Facebook platform, an overview of the Facebook Fund, and some firsthand experience from Slide, drop.io and Joyet, Zuckerberg finally came on stage and opened the floor to questions from developers and other members of the audience. We all waiting for that one brave soul that would indeed ask Zuckerberg how he felt about yesterday's keynote, and he responded as such (my paraphrased version): Sarah Lacy asked some interesting questions, some of which are fascinating, but it seemed like the audience wanted to hear more about the Facebook features, the direction of Facebook, and the thing's we're doing for the developer and user communities.

Well, that's spot on, Zuckerberg.

The audience here at the Developer Garage was happy to ask about Zuckerberg's personal life (how Facebook has changed his personal life), about Facebook's past acquisition and how it will fit into Facebook's video, how privacy of feeds will be addressed, and if Zuckerberg could please grant more access to Facebook's API do developers for more robust and integrated applications. In response, Zuckerberg thinks his life is pretty cool since Facebook took off, while he's not sure how the acquisition will fit in, but he noted the importance of privacy as an ongoing goal for Facebook, and nicely diverted the request for a more accessible API.

Robert Scoble asked about Facebook's stance on the ability for third-party apps to export semi-private information like contact data and birthdays, and Zuckerberg noted that Facebook is devoted to protecting users from apps that scrape data, which is why Scoble's profile was in fact shut down. Equally important, however, is the follow-up question Scoble presented to Zuckerberg: what about the regular user (i.e. not Scoble) that can't email Facebook directly, and have their profile reinstated?

Zuckerberg spoke about the appeals system that Facebook has in place, which may not get back to you as quickly as it did for Scoble, but will eventually work out in the end (with the best interests of the end user in mind, of course). In all, I think it was a good move for Zuckerberg to present himself up for an open Q&A (no drama here) in order to appease the mob crowd that all but took over SXSW yesterday afternoon.

What do you think? See here for Brian Solis’ in depth interview, with Sara Lacy, after the storm.

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