Paid content on the web is difficult, but it can be done. (Digital Media Wire)

Getting Internet video into HD quality by SwarmCast. (Technology Review)

Striking Hollywood writers going to Internet for work and venture capital money. (LA Times)

YouTube adding Live video soon. (Digital Media Wire)

Akimbo dropping set-top box strategy. (Digital Media Wire)

Consumers clicking on mobile ads. (CED Magazine)

Consumers buying more digital music, but overall music is down. (NPD press release)

The NY Times reports that Warner Bros. is financing online video productions on its own rather than asking that advertisers pay production costs. The studio is introducing 24 Internet video shows including short movies, webisodes and games. Says the NY Times: “The shift underlines a growing realization among the big Hollywood studios: Web entertainment is evolving so quickly that they must take on more financial risk to keep up.”

Nielsen said that it launched a service–called KeepingTrac–that will let clients know if their commercials aired the previous day rather than waiting weeks to learn about their ratings. Ad company Carat is the first customer.

Divx Networks filed a preemptive lawsuit against Universal Music Group saying that its Stage6 video sharing site does not violate copyrights. DivX says that its YouTube-like site is protected by the Digital Millennium Copyright Act. You may recall that Veoh also filed a preemptive lawsuit against Universal Music Group, which later filed suit against Veoh.

Variety says that Apple is looking to lower the price of its TV show iTunes downloads to $.99 rather than the $1.99. Naturally, Hollywood’s not really excited about this plan. But lowering the price may initiate higher sales and allow room for premium HD content in the future at higher price points.

The NY Times’ David Pogue reviewed Vudu’s new movie delivery service delivered to TVs via set-top boxes. The box costs about $400 and since Vudu uses peer-to-peer streaming technology, it can hold lots of movies in its hard drive.

VideoEgg, an online video ad company, raised $15 million in a round of financing, led by Focus Venture. VideoEgg does overlay video advertising like YouTube’s recently announced overlay video ads.

Microsoft is temporarily shutting Soapbox, its video sharing site, to new users. After two months, Microsoft will open up the service to new users again. Current users however, will still be able to access the site and upload videos. Apparently, too many users were uploading clips from TV and movies, which is what got YouTube in trouble and sued by Viacom for over a billion dollars. Microsoft is expected to use some filtering technology to prevent users from uploading copyrighted videos.

Content delivery provider Limelight Networks filed for an IPO looking to raise $201 million. In 2006, Limelight raised $130 million in a financing round led by Goldman Sachs Capital Partners.

Angel investors provided $25.6 billion in funding to companies in 2006, That’s an 11% increase from 2005, Healthcare and medical devices accounted for the largest share of angel investments (21% percent) followed by software (18%) and biotech (18%). About 51,000 businesses received angel funding in 2006.

TV Guide announced that it was launching an online video search site next month. It would feature video from TV networks but not user-generated content like YouTube. Seems like TV Guide is trying to be relevant again especially since the company recently changed the format of its print TV Guide magazine. This new venture puts TV Guide in competition with Blinkx.

Seems like its the end for viral video company iFilm. Parent company Viacom said it was folding iFilm into its Spike TV brand and launching a redesigned SpikeTV.com. iFilm was one of the early viral video hosting sites on the Internet, which MTV Networks acquired in 2005 for $49 million.

Last week satellite radio company XM was sued by the National Music Publishers Association (NMPA) with both organizations saying that XM isn’t paying royalties for its music download service. The record industry (RIAA) sued XM last year. XM’s service called “XM+MP3″ allows subscribers to download music to their receivers equipped with hard drives.

Movie Gallery, the second-largest movie rental chain behind Blockbuster, announced that it was launching an online movie rental service later this year. Just this month, Movie Gallery acquired Disney’s failed movie service, Moviebeam.

Veoh Networks said that even though they just officially launched their video hosting and sharing site, they already are running into copyright infringement. Users are uploading full-length movies and other TV programs. But Veoh CEO says to blame the people posting the material.

In other movie news, ex-Walt Disney CEO Michael Eisner launched Vuguru, an online programming company. The company aims to produce and distribute original online videos. The first project is an 80-episode myster called “Prom Queen”.

The San Jose Mercury News writes about Intel’s Viiv program, which apparently no one’s ever really heard about. Or even knows what it is. I’ve got to agree since I have no idea what Viiv is. And I wonder if anyone really cares, too.

AppScout reports on South by Southwest (SXSW), which includes a report about the future of Internet video.

IBM announced that it has developed technology that allows the blind to “see” Internet video. It was developed in IBM’s Tokyo research lab by a researcher that has been blind since he was 14.