While there can be multiple causes for this, more often than not these buffering issues are caused by the speed of the viewer’s Internet connection.

Enter SpeedBit Video Accelerator.  It’s a new offering from SpeedBit that claims to make even HD videos stream smooth and uniterrupted, especially for people with slow Internet connection speeds.

SpeedBit Video Accelerator is a piece of software that you download and install (it’s available for Windows or Mac) and it automatically configures itself on your computer.  Then, whenever you watch videos from over 150 popular video sites (like YouTube, Vimeo, ESPN, etc.), it intelligently “speeds up” the delivery of these videos, so you can watch without any buffering issues (it does this seemingly through a bit torrent approach of sorts).

So what’s the catch?  Well, SpeedBit Video Accelerator isn’t free.  It will cost you around $40 per year.

And while I’d love to be able to test this software myself and tell you if it’s the real deal or not, the problem is I already have a 20mps Internet connection, so I never run into any problems watching online videos, period.

But if you have a slower Internet connection and try SpeedBit Video Accelerator (they offer a free 15 day trial), please post your results here.  I’m interested in your experience.

You can learn more about SpeedBit Video Accelerator and download the free trial by clicking here.

In the post below, my student explains how in 3 months, he launched not one but two successful online businesses.  And he also shares probably the biggest “secret” to why people succeed online…or why they fail.

Here is his post:

I’m a student of Dave’s but he didn’t ask me to write this.  I want to write this.

And I don’t want any SEO love or leads for this so I am asking Dave to keep my name anonymous.

Now, some may think Dave is writing this… but if you know Dave you know he doesn’t operate like this.

Cha ching

Anyhow, I am sitting here at my desk working on some things and just had an order come through for $495.

Let me ask you, would an extra $495 come in handy for you?  Well it darn sure does for me.

The $495 order came for video based business I started in March of this year.  I teach corporate people stuff.  What I teach doesn’t really matter… the point I want to make in this article is a simple one.

And this point is to stop thinking about that big idea of yours and start doing something about it.  You see, I promise you someone or some company is waiting to send you good money for some skill you already have or can learn in less than 3 months.

3 months to a new business

That’s right.  3 months.

How do I know this?  Because just a few weeks ago I had the idea of converting a free eBook I’ve used to build my email list for the past year into a sellable audio book since I think Malcolm is right and Seth is so unbelievably wrong… but I digress.

So I asked Dave what microphone to use… he told me and I bought it for around $150.  I asked him what software to use… he told me and I downloaded the 30 day trial version (hey, I’m cheap what can I say).

I then worked my face off, as my hero Gary Vay-ner-chuk likes to say, for a few nights and recorded the 90 minute audio book.  I then had an elancer whip up a simple landing page since I can barely spell HTML.  And finally I shot and edited a 90 second welcome video for the landing page right before I launched this bad boy this past Sunday night.

How have I done?

The results?  Well, I’m converting about 5.5% of all leads into customers (Dave tells me 3% or better is outstanding) and made my money back for the mic and elance fees in less than 24 hours.

Why was I successful?  Not because I am smarter than you.  And not because I have a huge list (I have 3,000) or amazing contacts (my niche is actually pretty boring).

My secret?

No, the reason is simple… I had an idea and went for it guns freaking blazing.  I didn’t wait for someone to tell me it was a good or bad idea.  And I didn’t sit and plan for days and weeks on end.

Nope.  I had an idea and went for it.

As a result… in addition to those $495 orders for my video based business I’m now getting orders for $7.95 for an audio book I will never touch again.  In fact, Francis from the Philippines just sent me $7.95 and I live in Texas.  How cool is that?

You can do this

I don’t say these things to brag or pound my chest.  Really, I don’t or I would have used my name and linked to my websites in this article.

No, I say this to drive home a simple truth.  And that truth is that you can do this too.  Really, you can.  You just need to decide to do it.

So what are you waiting for?  You have 3 months.

Did you catch the “secret” he shared?  Good…because it’s an unbreakable, natural law; you will always accomplish more through movement than you will through meditation.  Always.  Always.  Always.

How does it work?

Well first of all, it allows you to watch HD video from the web on your TV…it doesn’t allow you to stream HD video from the web to your TV.

As a portable hard drive, you must first download video from the web to your computer, then using a USB connection, copy that video from your computer to the LaCinema Rugged HD.

Next, you plug the LaCinema into your TV using an HDMI cable…and ta-da…you can watch the videos you have downloaded.

The drive has a 500GB capacity (enough for around 700 movies), supports all common HD formats (H.264, VC-1, WMV9, MPEG-2) and works on both Windows and Mac.  The street price is $349.

To learn more about the LaCinema Rugged HD, visit LaCie’s site by clicking here.

In fact, Eric Clemons, a professor at the famed Wharton Business School, touched off a small firestorm this spring when he posted an article titled Why Adverising Is Failing On The Internet…where he detailed all the “reasons why” behind this very thing.

Still, when you explain this principle to most marketer’s, they just nod their head then say “what’s the fastest way I can get top rankings in Google?”.

As with most things, the power of something isn’t truly appreciated until it’s used as a negative.

A case in point is musician Dave Carroll from Canada.  He flew on United Airlines.  Baggage handlers broke his expensive Taylor guitar.  And after about 9 months of getting the runaround, United Airlines officially refused to pay for it.

So to exact his revenge, Dave made a video detailing his ordeal with United Airlines.  A music video called United Breaks Guitars.  He posted it on YouTube on July 6, 2009.  By July 9th, it had received over 500,000 views.

It has also attracted the attention of major newspapers and TV shows, like the Chicago Tribune and Wolf Blitzer’s The Situation Room on CNN.  All told, that millions worth of free advertising…all negative…for United Airlines.

Oh yea, it got the attention of United Airlines too.  They are now working to resolve the situation with Dave Carroll and his guitar.  They’ve Twittered about (http://twitter.com/UnitedAirlines).  And they even claim to be using his video as part of their employee training now.

In other words, one guy putting together a nicely produced video has said more about United Airlines…in a negative sense…than they could do with millions in advertising spent putting themselves in a positive sense.

Too bad for United Airlines that Dave has two more videos in production that detail his less-than-stellar experiences with them.  You can see Dave’s first video, the one that has created all the buzz, below:

Web video contests seem to be popular these days, sparked by the huge viral success of The Best Job In The World promotion.

Anyway, the folks at Tongal.com sent me a tweet about a contest they are running with VineyardVines.com.  They are looking for people to put together a short “how to” video on how to tie a tie.  Up to $2,000 in prizes are available…with $1,000 going to the top video submission.

If you know how to tie and tie (as in necktie) and are interested, you can see the official contest details at Vineyard Vines’ site here.

And if you’d like to submit your video, you can do it through Tongal’s site here.

That means without notice they can just disappear…taking your traffic with them.

Over the past year there have been reports of layoff’s, reorganization and even outright closings of some of this sites.  Now comes news that one of the bigger players, Veoh, may be the next to fall.  This is significant because Veoh is backed by some powerful forces; former Disney CEO Michael Eisner and Goldman Sachs.

Peter Kafka of All Things Digital broke the story…and you can read his full article here.

But still, to some it may come off as nothing but marketing blather; after all, I get paid to teach people this stuff.

So today I thought I’d share a video from Fox Business that I came across.  It’s a story of how one man is earning a living by making videos for web site owners.  He is smartly offering his clients more than just a video shoot (like I teach).  And he is charging around $3,000 per video (like I teach).

But he is not a student of mine.  I don’t know him and he doesn’t know me.

Yet it’s proof of what I say…you really can earn a nice living making videos for web site owners.  Here’s a video of the Fox Business piece:

Or as outgoing Joost CEO Mike Volpi said “it’s been increasingly challenging to operate as an independent, ad-supported online video platform”.

If you’re not familiar with Joost, they are (or were) a lot like Hulu…they provide user’s with access to premium web video content (TV shows and movies)…and run advertisements in these videos.  They were founded by the guys who create Skype.

So instead of going the free yet advertiser supported route, they are changing gears and providing their technology as white label solutions for media companies.  Or in other words, they are turning into a CDN of sorts (content delivery network).

It’s a smart move on their part and I wouldn’t be surprised to see other major players follow the same path in the future.

Coming from the direct response world, I’ve been naturally conditioned to tune out the hype and focus squarely on the results.  You don’t guess at what works, or go with your hunch or emotions, instead you compare methods A, B, C and D (head to head), let the public vote, go with the winner and forget the rest.

And a useful way to know what the “winner” is…while skipping the testing part…is to look at what other successful web sites are already doing.

Enter the Internet Retailer Top 500 Guide from Vertical Web Media.

In this guide, they profile the top 500 e-commerce web sites on the Internet…how much money they make, what they do with social networking, how much traffic they get from search engines, what their conversion rates are, what they do with email marketing, affiliates and much more.

It’s the bible of web retail marketing (in fact, that’s what they call it).  And the 2009 edition of the Internet Retailer Top 500 Guide is now available (all 436 pages of it).

So if you’d like to know what the “big boys” do online, what their numbers are and what you can learn from them, it’s a guide I definately recommend.  In fact, I own a copy myself.

To learn more or get a copy of the guide, just go here: http://www.verticalwebmedia.com/top500/

And in the 7 days since it’s release, uploads from mobile phones to YouTube have increased 400%…padding the 1,700% increase in mobile phone uploads over the past 6 months.

YouTube has also been encouraging people to upload videos through their mobile phones, by promising that some of these videos may appear on the YouTube homepage.  By the way, if you want to know how to upload a video from your mobile phone to YouTube, you just send it to a special email address listed in your YouTube account (more details here).

It’s too early to tell if there are any marketing benefit to shooting videos from a mobile phone and uploading them to sharing sites.  At this point, the practice seems best used for reporting breaking news, i.e. the protests in Iran

Or at worst, shooting bad footage from music concerts.  Time will tell.