Campus Daily Guides offers information about local restaurants, sporting events, movies and music specific to college campus communities. Working with college newspapers and Zvents, a local search and advertising network, Campus Daily Guides will be available at 25 of the largest college campuses in the U.S. including Ohio State University, Arizona State University, University of Colorado and the University of Kentucky.

"mtvU’s Campus Daily Guides marry mtvU’s programming with all of the resources students need within the college bubble," said Stephen Friedman, GM of mtvU.

"With access to millions of local listings and resources, we’re simplifying students’ experience and providing national, regional and local advertisers a powerful connection to this hard to reach audience."

Users of the site will be able to contribute content by adding their own reviews, ratings, comments, and photos. Users and local artists can add and promote their own events. Content is provided by Zvent’s, which has more than 250 media partners.

The Campus Daily Guides feature targeted banner ads and free and paid event listings.

By the end of 2008, mtvU will launch a total of 50 Campus Daily Guides on major college campuses.

"As part of the Zvents network, mtvU’s Campus Daily Guides will ultimately reach millions of college-aged students with a local search experience that makes it easy for anyone to find what they’re looking for, and also enable local merchants to market their businesses to this important demographic," said Ethan Stock, Zvents CEO and founder.

MTV And ROO Bring Video To College Papers

Each of the network’s student-run publications will have free access to a customizable, private-label video player and a variety of on-demand content channels covering news, sports and entertainment from providers such as The Associated Press and Reuters.

The ROO content team will work with mtvU to create and acquire original video exclusively for this network. The video player will allow online student papers to distribute their own video content and they will have the option to partner with a university’s TV station to offer is programming worldwide.

The video players will be designed to resemble the same look and feel of each college newspaper site. Publications that use the plug-and-play applications will be able to take advantage of a new video advertising revenue stream.

The College Publisher platform is the only online publishing system focused entirely on college newspapers.

"College students are probably the most discriminating, demanding and sophisticated consumers of video in the market today," said Robert Petty, CEO of ROO. "They watch online video more than any other group and their expectations for content and technical quality are extraordinarily high."

Cisco makes hardware that delivers most if not all of the Internet content people see at any given time, depending on where they are. Their networking equipment resides in server rooms and hosting centers worldwide.

Hardware reliability can be a double-edged sword. If it doesn’t physically break, a typical Cisco router can function for a long time. That presents CEO/president John Chambers and the executive team with a dilemma – how to drive new hardware sales.

While the company profits on the various support agreements it sells, hardware makes a big difference on the bottom line. Today’s visit by President Bush and California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger, while a couple of heavy hitters themselves, won’t be enough to push up a Cisco stock price that has flattened in the low $20s.

Creating demand means creating a supply of content that will move more effectively over newer networking equipment; that seems to be the intent behind the first annual “Digital Incubator” Cisco announced this week.

A call for content submissions to mtvU’s ber broadband-only outlet resulted in the ten most original and innovative entries being selected to receive grants of up to $25,000 and a national spotlight on mtvU, mtvU ber at mtvU.com, and mtvU’s mobile carrier partners, Cisco said in a statement.

“The new forms of storytelling, gaming, and interactivity emerging from the convergence of broadband technologies and entertainment offer endless inspiration for this group of students and for others who will follow their lead,” said Dan Scheinman, Senior Vice President, Corporate Development, Cisco Systems.

The competition ended with ten efforts being greenlit for broadcast on ber. People may view these projects online. Who knows, something there may be the creation that moves broadband usage, and purchases of shiny Cisco hardware, to a whole new level.

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David Utter is a staff writer for WebProNews covering technology and business.