ReadWriteWeb

Statistics show that we are watching fewer videos on YouTube. However, we are watching longer videos and subsequently spending more time on the site. YouTube is changing. But it's also looking over its shoulder at Facebook, which looms as a big threat should it acquire Viddy or Socialcam.

Video content is one of the fastest growing categories online. Television networks are scrambling to keep up, because the success stories so far have been smaller entities creating highly targeted and Web native content. The most successful video content producer right now is a company called Machinima, currently in the middle of an investment round that will include money from YouTube parent company Google. Machinima (its name is a combination of the words 'machine' and 'cinema') is a "video entertainment network for video gamers," specifically targeted at the 18 – 34 year old male demographic.

This is the first in a series of posts we're calling 'What's Next in TV.'

Today's theme is the streets of the future. Google wants to build self-driving cars, but we haven't even figured out our own human-powered transportation. Our vehicles are advanced, but our infrastructure and our fuel sources lag behind.

We're catching up, though.

Car companies are starting to demonstrate some bold future concepts. Check out Ford's 2013 model car tech system and Audi's ambitions for connected cars.

But in the meantime, parking is broken. It's inefficient, and cities are flailing around trying to fix it.

This UCSD professor was able to fight his way out of a $400 traffic ticket with a mathematical proof.

Researchers have found a deep decline in walking among Americans, and Will Oremus thinks there might even be a political divide in walking habits.

Matthew Yglesias highlights the reason electric cars are so expensive, and it'll sound familiar to smartphone watchers: batteries.

Shazam is one of the most popular smartphone apps of all time. Most people know it as that clever app that "listens" to a song and identifies the name of it. Today Shazam released the fifth major version of its iPhone app. But what's more interesting is Shazam's increasing focus not on music... but television.

Shazam is in the midst of a major pivot. Currently it earns most of its revenue off advertising from the music app. But within two years, the company told ReadWriteWeb, TV will provide the majority of Shazam's revenue. Just how big an opportunity is TV for Shazam? According to statistics from the company, it is already outpacing both Facebook and Twitter in second screen user engagement.

When I first unboxed the new 1080p Apple TV and plugged it in, I wasn't blown away. Having used a Boxee Box for the last 16 months, I've come to expect flexibility and a broad selection of content sources from my streaming set-top boxes. In fact, after several minutes of playing around with it, I was tempted to box it back up and send it back.

Then I tried AirPlay. Mirroring my iPad's display on the TV screen, I was suddenly able to not only stream any video I could find, but look at photos, browse the Web and view other apps on the big screen. If the Apple TV has a killer feature, this is it. Some of the device's biggest shortcomings - limited content, lack of a keyboard for text input, no Web browser - are instantly alleviated once you toggle that AirPlay switch.

If you want proof that "the Internet" is not a single, contiguous nebulous of interconnected addresses, look no further than your home router. Long before there was a Web, the Internet's engineers devised the concept of subnets - a way for certain, restricted addresses to be resolved locally only. While your broadband modem may have a unique gateway address, all the PCs connected to that gateway certainly don't.

Content Delivery Networks (CDNs) are a fact of everyday existence; what's more, they're enabling CDN providers to build businesses around expedited delivery. Recently, we've covered new ways in which private CDNs may be leveraged to accelerate the whole Web, with a wealth of thus-far unexplored benefits. Comcast is building one of these CDNs, and is of course deploying it for its own consumer video services. That's been in the works for over four years, but now the discovery that Comcast's XFINITY on-demand TV service for Microsoft's Xbox 360 console will use Comcast's private CDN, has some tech news services praying for a new anti-net neutrality populist uproar to drive traffic.

The Internet is awesome. Whether for its uncanny knack for revolutionizing aspects of our day-to-day lives and upending industries to way it has redefined how and when we get amused, you've got to love this globe-spanning network of information we increasingly call home.

One area many expected the Web to have more dramatically revolutionized by now is television. And, to be sure, the way we consume and talk about TV content is quite different now than it was a decade ago, and that's worth noting. But anybody who expected the Internet to dislodge legacy business models in TV as quickly as it did in say, the print media industry, still has some thumb-twiddling left to do.

Apple prefaced yesterday's launch of the third generation iPad with a minor update to a product that makes up a much smaller proportion of the company's sales. The Apple TV still sports the same external design and price point, but with an overhauled interface and crucially, the ability to playback videos at 1080p high-definition resolution.

For current owners of the Apple TV and those who are accustomed to buying content from iTunes, the new device is a worthy purchase. Although I have high hopes for whatever Apple is planning on the TV front in the long run, their connected set top box has never wowed me. That isn't to say there aren't a few enhancements that could change my mind, though.

Google TV is supposed to be Android's entrance into your living room, the pioneering cusp of the "smart TV" revolution. It appears that it has been anything but. Since its release last year, only about 4,793,000 Google TV apps have been downloaded, according to Xyologic. While nearly five million downloads may seem like a success, six of those apps come pre-installed on Google TV devices, making up 92% of the ecosystem. Only 352,000 dedicated Android apps for Google TV have been downloaded.

While the idea of the smart TV is intriguing, consumers are still warming up to adoption. We expect that to change this year as more avenues for Internet-connected televisions become available and prices begin to fall. Google TV is just a small segment of the ecosystem with Apple TV, Roku, Boxee and Samsung all coming with solutions to connecting your living room to the Web.

"If the Super Bowl is such a meaningless game, why are so many people posting updates about how they're not going to watch it?" said one of my Facebook friends, as the game approached halftime.

OK, I don't follow football. And I especially don't know anything about the Super Bowl. After the Super Bowl, I was wondering why Nicki Minaj and MIA (aside from her Cee Lo flick-off) didn't play a bigger role in Madonna's halftime show. I was also pretty relieved that Madonna made it through that entire performance without slipping, though she did come scarily close. I was truly impressed by some of the throws (Eli Manning!) and was also curious about the stories behind the football players' tattoos.

What I do know about the Super Bowl is that the Giants won (go New York!), and I got to hang out with some very awesome friends and my friend's dog, who I want to steal. I also have a few witty one-liners thanks to my more football-savvy Facebook friends because I, like most other social TV watchers, checked Facebook and Twitter during the game.