George Stroumboulopoulos has people stopping him to shake his hand in many American states because of The Hour’s popularity due to widespread viewing on YouTube.

The Canadian Press reports that The Hour has been getting millions of hits on YouTube since the show started uploading segments last fall. The Hour is also one of the top video podcasts in Canada on iTunes. Strombo says that the show has a wide appeal since it fills a gap in late-night TV; unlike other late-night shows, it isn’t pure comedy.

Viewers as far afield as New Zealand and Australia are also members of the shows’ Facebook group.

In other news…

MSNBC.com has launched an suite of news tools dubbed NewsWare that includes the more pedestrian e-mail alerts, how to add MSNBC to your mobile device, and RSS feeds, but they also include some mindblowing applications that make reading the news much more recreational and interactive

Spectra Newsreader

The Spectra Newsreader allows you to choose your preferred news subjects. The stories pertaining to these subjects then swirl around the screen, eventually being pulled down to your menu. You can either read the story that is in front of you, or save it to your newsreader and go on to the next. You can also change the display properties of the tool to a more traditional ticker style rather than the swirling spiral that makes your screen look like a tornado of headlines. My only beef with this was that you couldn’t actually click on a story until it had been “pulled down” to the bottom - once they get that worked out this will be genius.

NewsScroller

This tool can be added to whatever social media you prefer - MySpace, Yahoo, your Google front page, and Facebook to name a few. Adding it to Facebook is a painless process, and the ticker is graphically attractive. The one glitch encountered was that if you customize the ticker to your favourite news subjects before you add it to Facebook, you’ll have to go back and do it again once you finally do add it.

Decision ‘08 Leaderboard
This funky widget may also be added to your social media in the same style as the NewsScroller. Want an up-to-the-minute report on everything US election? Install this to ensure that you know down to the candidate how Hilary and Obama are doing. We imagine that this will be adapted and added to throughout the election process to make it more exciting.

What’s that weird Facebook thing on the left hand sidebar on cbc.ca? And why is it taking up so much real estate on the screen?

The web gurus over at cbc.ca have seen the future, and it is Facebook, or Crackbook as most of us know it. The application is called Seen This? and by adding it you get a news feed on your Facebook profile that looks like the image on the right.

If you add it off of the CBC site, and not from within Facebook itself, you will get CBC content. You can choose to add other news agencies if you wish, but why would you. Really.

Now you can access your news headlines from your Facebook profile, meaning you never have to leave Facebook unless you are interested in a story. At which point, CBC.CA web gods have smartly ensured that you end up on their site.

Facebook has moved in a few short months from an idle curiosity to our main method of communication. Now in addition to e-mail, there are Facebook messages. Facebook has also just added a chat program to ensure that your convos don’t leave the site either. Our Facebook pages have become what our e-mail used to be before it got all filled up with spam and work. Seen This? gets so much real estate on the site because the site producers know how much eyeball time Facebook is getting among web users.

Justin Beach from the great PublicBroadcasting.ca web site has done a bit of detective work and discovered that some of the most prolific protesters inside CBC groups may not, in fact, exist

CBC’s network briefly blocked employees from from visiting social networking sites like Facebook and MySpace this morning. Also, some personal blogs, like John Gushue’s and the popular anonymous Teamakers blog were not accessible.

John Mang, operations manager for B.C. radio said: “It looks like was was a technical glitch. It was certainly unintentional. One phone call and it is being fixed.”

Ray Carnovale, head of CBC’s I.T. confirmed that and said the blockage “may be something going on external to us.”

All regions should have access to all those sites again.

What I think was interesting was just how fast news spread in the Corporation. I was on-air at the time and was getting dozens of CBC folks emailing me within the space of an hour. It spread quickly within the Vancouver radio newsroom and, presumably, others.

If you’re a journalist, researcher, or editor using Facebook, you may want to heed this warning from one of our own, a reporter in Vancouver.

For an inexplicable reason, last week Facebook disabled my account.

They say they have a policy of not permitting harrassing, threatening, obscene messages, or spam.

I of course didn’t do any such thing. I have always clearly identified who I am, who I work for, and so forth. Been completely transparent. Each message I have sent has been individually written, not “spam”. (I actually haven’t used Facebook that much.)

I have “appealed” my disabled status to Facebook. They have now responded that I am prohibited - they don’t tolerate anyone sending UNSOLICITED MESSAGES!

I’m not sure what we, or I, can do about this. Facebook won’t reveal to me what the message was, or to whom, which caused them to disable me.

I have responded to them that of course many journalists use Facebook for this purpose. And I have never harassed anyone. Anyway…this is just to warn you all who DO use Facebook for finding people - beware!

A bit later…

The PR person decided to re-instate me.

She said I had been “disabled” because I had posted very little information about myself, no photo or profile available, and WAS ONLY USING FACEBOOK TO “SOLICIT” contacts. That I wasn’t using it for private purposes (eg to connect with my own “friends”). Which is true.

So the lesson is…

1. Make your photo and even profile available - if you are going to use Facebook for journalistic purposes; and
2. have your own friends.

She warned me that if I only use Facebook to solicit people for ‘business purposes’ I will be disabled again. Journalists are NO EXCEPTION.

Guess to keep clean I’ll have to start messaging you all on the Facebook cbc network.

But this does have implications for those who have Facebook accounts and who only use them for finding people for CBC stories. Be warned.

Are you using Facebook for journalistic purposes? If so, do you find it valuable?

The new blogging guidelines are out (now officially called “Self Publishing and Self Expression on the Internet” cause, you know, it’s snappier ) and while the document takes a friendlier tone, CBC journalists still require their supervisor’s permission to maintain a personal blog, post a comment on someone else’s blog or Facebook.

The restriction, though, is simply an extension of existing Code of Ethics policies.

The new guidelines say:

“…Journalists must get permission for all outside freelance and journalistic work, including written articles for self-publication or blogs….

If you work in News and Current Affairs, in particular, in addition to seeking the permission of your supervisor, you should also ensure that nothing that you are self-publishing or expressing during the course of such activities risks undermining the integrity or impartiality of CBC/Radio-Canada’s News divisions.”

The original document which was distributed to some news staff (later said to have just been a draft for discussion) required the permission of workers’ bosses to have or even maintain an existing personal blog. This was to apply to all employees, not just those involved in news.

While written in a simpler, less punitive voice, the document still occasionally lapses into CorpSpeak:

Self-publishing activities and self-expression on the Internet should also be done in a way that respects our policy on Corporate Information Technology (IT) Security and Employee Use of IT Assets. For example, “Employees are provided with access to CBC/Radio-Canada IT Assets for business use and for the purpose of performing job-related activities. Although some limited personal use will be tolerated, it is subject to this Policy and must not interfere with or detract from employees’ assigned tasks.” In this respect, all such activities should be done on an employee’s own time, using a personal computer and personal e-mail address.

(Would it have killed them to just say: “Remember that while it’s fine to use your workstation computer for infrequent personal tasks, please use your own home computer and personal email address for most of your blogging and other personal uses.”?!)

The full guidelines are after the jump.

So, what do you think?

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