New Media News Every Morning
It looks like the boys and girls at YouTube have for the first time (at least in my iLife) demonstrated how a web app can be superior to a native app on the iPhone.
Lovers of the iDevice visiting m.youtube.com will be greeted with a page that not only offers users more features than the (stagnant) native app, but also displays videos in higher quality as well. [Read more…]
Originally posted on July 7, 2010 @ 5:31 pm
Today is a good day for Google. Not only are Android phones selling faster than expected, but it looks like the courts have dismissed Viacom’s lawsuit against YouTube.
Today, the court granted our motion for summary judgment in Viacom’s lawsuit with YouTube. This means that the court has decided that YouTube is protected by the safe harbor of the Digital Millenium Copyright Act (DMCA) against claims of copyright infringement. We’re extremely gratified by this decision and the now established judicial consensus that online services like YouTube are immune from liability when they work cooperatively with copyright holders to help them protect their rights online. (Official YouTube Blog) [Read more…]
Originally posted on June 23, 2010 @ 4:52 pm
If you want to transform an otherwise “one-way” content site to a “tw0-way” community site, you have to do it one step at a time. And that’s what Google is trying to achieve with its priceless possession – YouTube. After rolling out some social sharing features, Google now deems it just about the right time to encourage more social participation not only to the YouTube site as a whole but to individual content channels created by its users. Hence, to facilitate real-time feedback and discussion on YouTube channels, Google Moderator has just been made available to everyone.
Google Moderator is a versatile, social platform that allows any YouTube user to collect comments, questions or ideas on their channels. Â What’s fun about this feature is that your channel viewers can watch a particular rise to the top via this Google Moderator commenting/voting feature. Google has been using Moderator as part of its previous interviews with President Obama as well as Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper.
In case you’re interested in using Google Moderator on your YouTube channels, here’s how Google describes how Google Moderator works:
” You set the parameters for the dialogue, including the topic, the type of submissions, and the length of the conversation. Watch as submissions get voted up or down by your audience, and then respond to the top-voted submissions by posting a video on your channel. The platform operates in real-time, and you can remove any content that you or your audience flag as inappropriate. You can also embed the platform on your own website or blog.”
To find out some more examples of how people used Google Moderator on YouTube, watch 11 more videos from users who were asked by Google to try out the Google Moderator. It’s kind of fun, actually.
Originally posted on May 27, 2010 @ 4:52 pm
YouTube is a great site for hosting your videos, no doubt about that. But the problem with it is that when you upload a personal video that you just want to share with a few people, you can do so but then that video is searchable by any video who visits YouTube and chanced upon your video. In short, the videos you upload can be found by the whole world. There was no privacy setting that will let you restrict access to the video you uploaded in YouTube to only the people that you want to share your video with, not until now.
YouTube has just rolled out a new video upload option that will enable you to “unlist” the video you upload from being found by other people. Once you’ve unlisted a video after you uploaded it to you YouTube, only the people who have the link to the video will be able to watch it. It will never be displayed in any of YouTube’s public pages. Not in search results, on your personal channel or on the browse page. Â Only you and the people you share the video link with will be able to watch it. Well, of course other people can find it if the link is shared by the people whom you shared the link with.
YouTube unlisted video is a private video. And what’s good about this is that the person you share the link with does not need a YouTube account to view your video. All they need is the link to it.
You’ll get the link to your unlisted video after you the upload process is finished. Â Once you’ve unlisted a video and share it with someone else, that person will know that the video is unlisted by the “annotation” just below it when they’ve visited the video link you shared.
So, will you be uploading your personal video to YouTube now? Will you be using YouTube as a personal video storage from now on?
Originally posted on May 13, 2010 @ 10:49 am
This is not quite official yet as YouTube has not announced yet official announced the roll out but New TeeVee is reporting that some YouTube users have spotted the new Flash Video player being used by some videos uploaded to YouTube. Â What’s interesting about YouTube’s new video player is that it now displays some performance information about the video. The overall look of the video player also looks different from the regular YouTube video player.
As for the video players new features, some of the notables include relocation of the playback button, volume slider, information about the length of the video and selector for different video resolutions below the status bar.
The video player’s volume control was also tweaked a bit that instead of sliding upwards and downwards it was made to slide out sideways instead. This is of course to prevent the volume control from interfering with the video display.
YouTube also removed the caption or annotation buttons when these features are not available in the video. Â Also, if you right-click on a video, YouTube will display an option called “show video info.” Â This will bring up an information overlay showing size, bit rate, fps, transfer bandwidth and other details about the video and its playback performance.
And the most important enhancements has to do with preventing further buffering of the video. You can now stop the video at any time and clicking on the play button will resume the video’s playback from where you stopped it. Meaning it will no longer default to the start of the video.
Originally posted on April 29, 2010 @ 7:17 pm