Use YouTube As a Music Player With Tubalr

Chances are you’ve already used YouTube as a music player. But how much fun was that? You had to return to the page every time a song ended, search for the next one and then load often-crude comments and clutter along with your song.

A 23-year-old software developer in Atlanta has fixed the YouTube listening experience with a simple app called Tubalr. It searches YouTube for the top songs from a particular artist and arranges them in a continuous playlist. If you’d like to mix it up, a “similar” option searches related artists on Last.fm and delivers their top videos on YouTube to your playlist. When you search the same band twice, it rearranges the playlist so you don’t get bored. That’s it.

“I was surfing YouTube and found some amazing HD music videos,” says creator Cody Stewart, “and I thought it would be a cool idea to play those back to back without having all the other stuff I didnt find interesting — mainly the 10,000s of comments about cats and dogs.”

Stewart, neither a surfer nor a Tuba player, created the app in order to show off his skills during a job search. He says he based the no-fuss interface on Google. Part of what makes the app so simple and slick is that it doesn’t make money. Unlike free playlist sites such as Pandora, the only ads you’ll see are in the videos themselves.

So far about 124,000 searches have been completed by 2,000 user on the app. Not bad for a project that started as resume fodder.

Source :  Mashable.com

Google launches “Youtube for Schools”

Google has launched a YouTube for Schools service to make educationally relevant videos available for use in school. It's a great idea, but for it to actually be used in schools, the authorities will have to modify their filters to allow teachers to access at least this portion of You Tube.


Most schools have some type of filters in place designed to block pornography and other inappropriate material, and it's common for these filters to also block social media, including all of Facebook, MySpace and YouTube.

It's not that kids are staying away from social media just because they can't use it at school. They're using it at home, at friends' houses and -- via their mobile devices -- anywhere they happen to be. Their non-school hours are filled with use of technology and social media. Maybe schools ought to put a sign at the front gate that reads, "You are now leaving the 21st century."

Completely blocking domains like Facebook.com or YouTube.com denies kids access to some incredibly useful material. There are thousands of Facebook pages dedicated to a wide variety of subjects that can be used in schools. If you search for "Facebook education," you'll find links to numerous ways that Facebook and other social media can help teachers supplement their existing materials. One article that comes up in that search, "100 Ways You Should be Using Facebook in Your Classroom" lists some incredibly useful projects like encouraging kids to follow news feeds relevant to course material, share book reviews, practice a foreign language, create their own news source, keep up with politicians, post class notes, brainstorm and lots more.

Even more than Facebook, Google's YouTube can be an incredibly useful resource in school. Sure, there are plenty of inappropriate videos on the user-supplied service. But there is also a wealth of resources from a very wide variety of sources, including the Smithsonian Institution, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, UC Berkeley, PBS, TEDTalks and the amazing educational videos from Kahn Academy, which are used in schools throughout the world. You can find some of this material -- along with tips on how to use YouTube in the classroom -- at YouTube.com/teachers.


Because many schools simply ban YouTube, these incredible resources are not available for use in the classroom. Kids can watch them at home or on the way to school via the mobile devices, but not on school computers. Preventing distractions such as videos of cats dancing on a piano or keeping kids from age-inappropriate videos in school makes sense, but not at the expense of preventing kids and teachers from accessing a vast library of educationally sound videos.

As part of the launch of "YouTube for Schools", Google is encouraging schools to open up their filters so that teachers can access YouTube.com/edu. Hopefully school administrators will see the value in this and find ways to unblock at least this portion of YouTube.

Source : hindustantimes.com

YouTube Gets Its Biggest Makeover Ever, Becomes More Google-Like

We already knew about YouTube’s redesign, which tech-savvy readers have been enabling for the past 10 days. As of now, however, the new YouTube is available to everyone.

Unlike parent company Google, which tends to roll out redesigns over a period of days, YouTube pressed the button and switched the homepage for every user worldwide at 4:30 p.m. ET Thursday.

So what’s the change all about? One word: channels. The world’s most popular online video service now sees itself as a descendent of cable TV, with millions of channels rather than hundreds — and it’s doing its darndest to encourage you to use it that way.

The first new thing you’ll see is an “add channels” button in the top left-hand corner of the page. Under that you’ll find your top 10 favorite channels, which you can “pin” to the top of the page.

“The future of the YouTube experience has channels at the center of it,” says Margaret Stewart, director of User Experience at YouTube’s headquarters in San Bruno, Calif. “It’s a container for all the world’s video, and it needs to be the best home for that.”

YouTube is also tweaking the colors of its logo and adding a soft gray background to the videos. In a sign that the service is becoming more integrated with its parent company — and that more employees are going back and forth between San Bruno and the Googleplex in Mountain View — Stewart says the redesign includes “subtle alignments with Google’s visual style.”

Part of that process, naturally, includes integration with the Google+ social network. But YouTube is also making it easier to post videos on Facebook and Twitter, too. And the channel change also came to YouTube apps on platforms other than the web. For example, it just became a lot easier to access YouTube channels on your Xbox.

There are four new channel templates that content creators can use, including one template designed for networks (with prominent featured content) and one for bloggers (with the most recent content first). Executives and designers at the company emphasize that this just the beginning of the redesign; more channel-focused changes and channel templates are coming soon.

Check out the YouTube video below, which introduces the channel redesign, and read up on the new YouTube user manual. And let us know in the comments: Has the strategy worked? Will this make you use YouTube channels more?

Source : Mashable.com

Microsoft YouTube Channel Hacked

Computer giant Microsoft’s official YouTube channel appears to have been hacked Sunday morning. All of the official videos, including recent ad campaigns, have been removed from the account. In their place are short clips soliciting advertisers, not surprisingly, as the channel has some 24,000+ subscribers.

As of 1:30 p.m. ET, four videos have been uploaded to the account, all time-stamped within the past two hours. A fifth video, most recently uploaded, seems to have been removed. The video, “Garry’s Mod – Escape the Box,” featured what appeared to be an animated gunman shooting at the inside of a construction box.

The channel’s description reads, “I DID NOTHING WRONG I SIMPLY SIGNED INTO MY ACCOUNT THAT I MADE IN 2006 :/.”

Source : http://www.mashable.com

YouTube Wants to Put You in Space

YouTube is starting a competition for students to suggest an experiment to be done in outer space and prizes include space training. As part of their newly launched Space Lab channel, YouTube wants to inspire future space travelers and those interested in the topic.

"Can plants survive beyond Earth? Can proteins observed in space reveal the mysteries of life? Science experiments aboard the International Space Station (ISS) could unlock the answers and now we're giving you a chance to ask the questions. Today, we're launching YouTube Space Lab with Lenovo, in cooperation with Space Adventures, National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA), the European Space Agency (ESA), and the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA). Space Lab is a new galactic channel on YouTube that will lift off from your laptop, taking you to interesting and awesome videos from around the world... and beyond," the Official Google Blog reported.

While the promotion is another push by Google to get more users generating content for their properties, they may have been a little more thoughtful in their name selection – the original Sky Lab crashed to earth in Australia July 1979, almost 10 years after the first man walked on the moon.

Guess Google doesn't think lightning will strike twice and this new Sky Lab will remain up in cyber space. Larry Page and Sergey Brin have shown an interest in space for some time. There was a doodle for Yuri Gargarin, the company has been working with NASA and Brin has booked to travel in space when technology allows.

No doubt the channel will be well used by science teachers throughout the global. Now we have to wait and see what experiment idea gets the space training.

YouTube Game - “Saved by the Bell”

YouTube maestros The Fine Brothers have created another 8-bit interactive YouTube game, this time targeting one of the most iconic Saturday morning sitcoms of all time: Saved by the Bell.

Following the “Choose Your Own Adventure” motif of previous Fine Bros. games for Twilight and Harry Potter, the interactive video series tasks viewers with figuring out the sordid underbelly that is the Palisades.

Just kidding. Actually, you play as perennial teen heartthrob Zack Morris and choose to help Kelly, Jessie or Screech in their moments of crisis. You know, those moments of crisis that are utterly unlike anything that actually happen in high school but seem so utterly believable when watching the show in elementary school?

The game is chock-full of references, characters and humor that will leave any SBTB superfan (like myself) laughing out loud.

Blink 182 Rewards Tune-Stealing YouTube Users With Music Video Role

Back in high school, Blink 182 was the band that everybody loved or loved to hate. Well, the boys are back with their first single in eight years (and an upcoming U.S. tour). To celebrate, they’ve created a video sourced from fan-made YouTube vids — in which their music was used sans credit.

The video is called “Blink-182 Film Festival You Didn’t Know You Entered” and it’s a part of a new advertising campaign for AT&T, which the band is shilling for. (Check out the band’s ad for the HTC Status below.)

Apparently the band and AT&T combed through YouTube for videos in which the band’s music was used sans credit and then cut them all together in this ad hoc video for “Up All Night,” the aforementioned new single.

The video may be part of an advertising campaign, but it’s also an interesting way to approach this (very mild) form of piracy. Instead of punishing fans for celebrating Blink 182′s music with amateur cameras, the band is taking that shaky footage and using it for its own devices — while simultaneously rewarding those super fans.

Like Jazz? Use YouTube To Create Your Own Jams

Too agoraphobic to make it to one of those outdoor jazz concerts? Well, then, check out YouTube Free Jazz, an interesting little digital art project that makes music from noise.

YouTube Free Jazz was created by new media artist David Kraftsow, who previously created such innovations as First-Person Tetris (an online game in which the screen rotates every time you move a piece) and YouTube Rave (which turns any YouTube video into a party).

Visit the site and YouTube Free Jazz will create a sound collage from random YouTube videos, reminiscent of jazz. You can type new keywords to create more mashups based on videos with that keyword.

It might not be as pleasing to the ear as the real deal, but, hey, it’s free.

Flashback: Google’s Sergey Brin Isn’t the Real Google Guru [VIDEO]

Apparently there was a time when Google didn’t dominate almost every aspect of our Internet lives, as a hilarious game show appearance by Google co-founder Sergey Brin demonstrates.

In 2000, Brin went on the CBS game show To Tell the Truth, a storied show where a panel of celebrities attempted to identify a contestant with an unusual occupation. In an attempt to promote his new search engine, Brin made an appearance on the rebooted version of the show along with two impostors who pretended to be the real “Google Guru.”

The result is an absolutely hilarious eight minutes where the celebrities try to identify Sergey Brin with questions about what URL stands for and even “What is a search engine?” Hey, this was right after Al Gore invented email, so we’re willing to cut these celebrities some slack.

You can check out Sergey Brin’s game show debut in the video, which we discovered via Andrew Gerrand on Google+, below.

comScore, YouTube to Launch YouTube Partner Reporting

ComScore Video Metrix released data Friday showing that 178 million U.S. Internet users watched online video content in June 2011. This means 85.6 percent of the U.S. Internet audience viewed online video that month.

But while asking comScore’s Dan Piech some questions about methodology, I got an even bigger scoop: comScore and YouTube are planning to announce YouTube Partner Reporting this summer. This new feature will break out the individual audiences for partners and their channels for the first time.

Marketers will be able to learn much more than Google Sites, driven primarily by video viewing at YouTube.com, ranked as the top online video content property in June 2011 with 149.3 million unique viewers. Marketers and media planners will also be able to learn the number of unique viewers belonging to different YouTube channels, as well as the demographics of those viewers.

This will enable CBS, Machinima, Philip DeFranco and hundreds of other YouTube Partners to monetize their content in new ways by having their audiences represented to the agencies and brands that actively use Video Metrix data.

Why so much focus on YouTube? According to comScore Video Metrix, YouTube.com represents more than 99 percent of the video viewing at Google Sites.

YouTube had more than 147.8 million U.S. viewers in June, giving it a significant lead over VEVO with 63.0 million U.S. viewers, Yahoo Sites with 52.7 million U.S. viewers, Microsoft Sites with 50.7 million U.S. viewers, and Viacom Digital with 49.5 million U.S. viewers.

It’s also worth knowing that comScore tracks both in-stream advertising videos as well as content videos. By being able to split-out the metrics associated with both types of video, comScore can provide publishers and media planners with:

The ability to determine “ad clutter” for competing publisher sites.

The ability to determine reach of in-stream advertising.

The number of video ad-impressions publishers serve on a monthly basis.

The number of content videos that are available for media planner to plan against.

One of the questions that triggered this scoop was about the frequent disparity between census-based site analytics data and panel-based audience measurement data, which has long been the Achilles Heel of digital media measurement. Because the two measurement techniques have different objectives, they employ different counting technologies, which often results in differing metrics that can cause confusion and uncertainty among publishers and advertisers.

Piech told me that comScore has implemented a “panel-centric hybrid” solution to digital audience measurement, creating a blend of these two methodologies into a “best of breed” approach called “Unified Digital Measurement.” It provides a direct linkage and reconciliation between the census and panel approaches.

This approach combines person-level measurement from the 2 million person comScore global panel with server-side metrics in order to account for 100 percent of a partner’s audience.

Participating companies place tags on their video content and ads, and these calls are recorded by comScore servers every time that content is accessed. ComScore is able to view these calls on its global panel in addition to measuring the direct server calls. This allows comScore to validate that the tags are measuring activities consistent with its audience measurement methodology.

ComScore then applies some proprietary data cleansing and validation processes, and once validated the tag counts are used to set the usage levels by site. In addition, comScore has developed a proprietary methodology to combine panel and server-side metrics in order to calculate audience reach in a manner that is not affected by variables such as cookie deletion and cookie blocking/rejection.

ComScore Video Metrix also offers international coverage, with syndicated measurement of 21 countries and custom measurement of many more. Coverage includes the United States, Canada, Argentina, Australia, Brazil, Chile, China, France, Germany, Hong Kong, India, Italy, Japan, Malaysia, Mexico, New Zealand, Russian Federation, Singapore, Spain, Turkey, and the United Kingdom.

In short, we're about to learn a whole lot more about YouTube content partners, independent and professional, bedroom and broadcast.

Experiment on Cosmic Panda by YouTube

One of YouTube's new experimental interfaces is receiving a lot of attention from both the YouTube audience and Google itself. The new look and layout, titled "Cosmic Panda," radically re-structures the YouTube interface.

YouTube's Cleaned-Up Look and Feel

Cosmic Panda integrates several of the features we've seen in smaller scale experiments on YouTube in the past, including the beautiful black YouTube player. The player page brings the core video to the front and center, with suggested videos, playlist items, and other visual elements falling beneath. Channel pages have also been updated for easier navigation and more focus on the channel's actual media.

Google's Cosmic Panda page also indicates numerous back-end changes, such as "more page designs and better editing tools to customize your channel" and the ability to "keep watching when moving between videos, playlists, and channels" when you're using Google Chrome.

This new design for YouTube also creates better thematic unity with other updated Google services. The black/gray/red color scheme matches nicely with the Google toolbar, and the cleaner look reflects the general design values present in Google+ and the upcoming versions of Gmail.

Want to Check Out the Interface for Yourself?

Just go to http://www.youtube.com/cosmicpanda to opt into the experiment.

You can use this same page to remove yourself from the experimental version at any point. Once you're part of the experiment, you can leave feedback by pushing the blue "Feedback" flag on the left of each YouTube page.

This experiment is broader in scale than any other in YouTube's recent history, and Google seems dedicated to making sure it works. "We'll be making changes to the experiment regularly," stated the YouTube blog entry officially announcing Cosmic Panda, which likely means both that the new version won't be released in the immediate future and that it almost certainly will be the default eventually.

This brings me to my last and most important question on the subject.. What, exactly, is up with Google's fixation on Pandas?