Stupeflix announced today, at the Business Video Expo, that they are changing the way they connect to developers and allow access to the Stupeflix video creation suite API. Whereas it was somewhat cost prohibitive in the past, they are now lowering the price of both access and video rendering to commoditize video creation.

This is just a quick note, mostly because there just aren't a lot of details to share with this story--but it's still pretty cool news. Google engineer and Google Plus team member, Shana Gitnick, has shared a new Google+ feature that should make video fans happy: the ability to record a video with your webcam and share it on Google Plus with the click of a button. So now instead of syncing a YouTube video or uploading a video from scratch..

I interviewed Senior Counsel for Vimeo, Michael Cheah, who shares his thoughts about why The Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA). Vimeo is running messages on January 18 th (today) highlighting the issue and will invite users to tell Congress to reject SOPA.

This week in our look at the Reel Web we talk about how mobile viewers are watching our videos longer than desktop views are and how Facebook dominates Twitter in video sharing. Also, we review YouTube's new "Slam" voting feature and what they're doing to start fixing the publishing issue that's all too common for content creators.

The power of online video was reaffirmed recently by the deaths of two men who chose to use the medium as a documented expression of thoughts that we take for granted in everyday life. One week before Ben Breedlove's passing on Christmas Day, he posted two videos expressing his run-ins with death and his faith in the afterlife through a series of text on flash cards.

I interviewed Orabrush’s Chief Marketing Officer Jeff Harmon, to talk about how they used YouTube to sell over a million units of their tongue cleaner and sign major deals with big box stores, and why they say you have to “screw viral videos” if you want to be successful with today’s online audiences’ increased social expectations.

Video is becoming such an important part of web content that we're seeing individuals and groups of all skill levels jumping into video creation and video marketing. So while Final Cut Pro or Adobe Premier may be dominant video editing software choices for professionals, there are millions and millions of new video producers who don't quite have the skill set for the high end tools. If you're a video creator looking for a great intermediate video editing solution that has a few more bells and whistles than the bare-bones offerings but not the overwhelming options of the professional suites, Camtasia Studio 7 offers a powerful yet simple option

Online video contests are growing in popularity and complexity and are now far more savvy than the upload a YouTube video and get people to like it ,etc. A crop of online video contest platforms have sprung up and more are coming all the time.

There's a very cool infographic making the rounds called YouTube Killed TV. It's filled with excellent graphical representations of some really impressive--and in some cases, mind boggling--statistics about the video sharing site. The only problem I have with it, of course, is the exaggerated claim in the title, particularly since the infographic does nothing to prove TV has been killed by anything, let alone by YouTube.

The single most-talked-about online video topic all week long was the capture and death of Libyan leader