I've said it before and I'll say it again, the municipal Wi-Fi obsession continues to confound me. Why cities believe it will be a panacea by encouraging innovation, improve city services and serve people who can't afford regular Internet service is a mystery. The latest city to get on the bandwagon is Boston, which plans to build a $16-million to $20-million network by raising money from businesses and foundations. It is being billed as a different and better approach because Boston will maintain control of the network rather than handing over the keys to a private entity. When did Internet access becomes a public sector responsibility? Why do so many cash-challenged cities believes they have no choice but to get into the wireless Internet access at a time when small government is all the rage? It's a mystery. For more, check out GigaOm and dailywireless.org.

Apologies for the video focus today but TechDirt has a great post questioning the proliferation of video-sharing services, which seem to be sprouting up like dandylions these days. What do you expect when the barriers to entry are so low what with low-cost servers, bandwidth and storage? Rest assured, there will be a few winners because every Web-based service sector has one or two dominant players (e.g. eBay, Google, Amazon, Yahoo) and a few mega-deals as the frenzy reaches its zenith (e.g. YouTube will get likely get acquired by Rupert Murdoch or another major media player looking for a Web "foothold"). But there will also be plenty of carnage with many video services disappear without a whimper. Then again, the silver lining about Web 2.0 is it is a giant science experiment that encourages entrepreneurship and some risk-taking given the cost of failure is so low. And that's not a bad thing.

Bob Young, who made his fortune from Red Hat, is moving into the video business with the creation of Lulu.TV - a video-sharing service with a twist: it offers a "pro" account in which  it charges content creators $14.95 a month to submit their videos. Of that, 80% is put into a pool, which is split between "shareholders" based on how many times their video is seen each month. For example, if there are one million views, and one person's video receives 10,000 hits, they would get 1% of the pool.
  In a press release, Lulu cites how a "once-struggling video-maker from Manchester" just got $3,966.17 for two videos, and how his success has led to a deal to shoot 10 comedy mobile movies. While Lulu.TV sounds, well, interesting, you have to wonder how many people are actually willing to cough up $14.95 a month for a shot at success - something the company describes as "get played, get paid". It's like online gambling, and there is little evidence the growing army of online content creators is willing to pay for the privilege of sharing their material. Without dissing Lulu.TV too much, it strikes me as an opportunistic move by Young, who has a panache for marketing. If anything, Lulu.TV puts the focus on Lulu.com, which offers a self-publishing service for aspiring writers. No doubt, Young is aware of all the buzz surrounding video, and figures Lulu.TV is a no-risk way to get in the game and, at the same time, hopefully put Lulu.com in the spotlight. If Lulu.TV works, I'd eat my (red) socks.
Update: Another twist on video-sharing is CNN Exchange - a service that will let people submit their video, audio and stories to CNN. If you think about it, Lulu.TV and CNN Exchange show how companies want to capitalize on user-generated content, but at some point - and I think Lulu.TV is a sign of things to come - content creators are going to want to be compensated for their work. For example, if CNN Exchange gets a great video of a spectacular car accident that attracts millions of TV viewers, doesn't it make sense for the videographer to get some financial reward? Scott Karp has some thoughts on who will make money from user-generated video content.