Voting is now open for the 2009 Podcast Awards. It’s the fifth year for the annual event, which has the goal to “recognize the best podcasters in the world by allowing the people (Listeners and Podcasters) to nominate, and then vote for their favorite podcast.” Voting for the slate of podcast nominees is open through [...]

Online book mega-retailer Amazon.com today announced the “Your Amazon Ad Contest.”  The competition solicits customer-created television commercials, the best of which will win a $10,000 Amazon gift card. “One need only look at the customer reviews for Tuscan Whole Milk and the Three Wolf Moon T-shirt to see how many creative and talented customers we [...]

YouTube has announced that it’s looking for video bloggers to discuss some of the little-used features of the site, and that it plans to feature some of these user-generated video: Every week we release new tools, or enhancements to current ones, to help you make better videos, connect with one another, and understand your audience. [...]

Video sharing site Openfilm has announced that it will recognize top filmmakers with a $500 reward every month. Openfilm is an online community of independent filmmakers, film schools, festivals and audiences, which launched in July 2008. Ten winners are selected every month, based on various criteria including technical execution, the quality of narrative and acting, [...]

The Disposable Film Festival celebrates the artistic potential of disposable video: short films made on non-professional devices such as one-time use video cameras, cell phones, point and shoot cameras, webcams, computer screen capture software and other readily available video capture devices. You can see examples at the DFF site. Here are the details:

Metacafe and Microcinema, a leading international rights manager, are teaming up on a juried online and offline film festival, MetaFest 2008. MetaFest hopes to combine the best of interactive online video-viewing with the best of the live-audience offline film festival experience. Selected films will have a theatrical premiere in San Francisco in November 2008, will [...]

Conan O’Brian wants you to make your own Late Night commercial. One winner will get a shopping trip to the NBC Experience Store in New York City with Late Night stage hand Steve Graham, who will use his employee discount to get you 25% off all merchandise. Plus, the winner will also receive complementary round-trip [...]

The New York Times has published an article that looks at costs of running contests for user-generated advertising, suggesting that it’s actually more costly than traditional advertising, and that most amateur ads are terrible. “That‚Äôs kind of a popular misnomer that, somehow, it‚Äôs cheaper to do this,” said David Ciesinski, vice president for Heinz Ketchup. [...]

Comedy Central and AtomFilms have announced the second annual online video competition, Comedy Central Test Pilots, this summer. Test Pilots will give viewers the chance to create their own short form comedy pilots, with the best being voted on by viewers at Comedy Central. The winning pilot will earn its creator $5,000 and a chance [...]

Ozzy Osbourne wants you to direct his next video, for the track I Don’t Wanna Stop from his upcoming album Black Rain. He’s offering prizes for the best music video, including a Sony HD video cam. Here are the details: Here’s what we’re looking for. Ozzy wants a video for his new single “I Don’t [...]