YouTube Introduces Weekly Talk Show

The "Partners Project," which started last month, is being positioned as the talk show of YouTube, featuring contributors who have drawn online audiences of millions. Among the first guests were an aspiring actress, Justine Ezarik, who created "iJustine" to share videos about her life; and Dane Boedigheimer, who started "The Annoying Orange," an animated series about talking fruit.

Source:  nytimes.com

How to Crop YouTube Videos in Seconds

Both SnipSnip.it and Splicd bring users an easy way to quickly crop out sections of YouTube videos by simply inputting the video’s url and timestamp.

Using both SnipSnip.it and Splicd, you will able to alter and crop (or deep link) your favourite news blooper in seconds to display only the best part. Obviously none of this is groundbreaking stuff but considering the amount of videos you've personally received with time stamp notes appended, it stands to reason that these services might not be common knowledge among social media enthusiasts.

If you've been guilty of sharing lengthy videos that only contain a second or two of relevant information, these services may be perfect for you and they’re both free. It might also be of some value to bloggers, by using SnipSnip.it / Spicd, only vital information is shared, a bit cleaner than adding time stamp instructions into the video's caption.

Essential social networking tools

If you’re like many people these days, you spend a growing amount of time on one or more of the Internet’s social media sites - YouTube, Facebook, Twitter, or blogs. While hanging out on these sites used to fall squarely into the realm of pastime, that’s no longer the case. Many of the best social networking sites fulfil serious business or personal development needs. That’s why finding ways to use them more efficiently can pay big dividends by allowing you to focus on the rest of your life while keeping up with your social networking tasks. Here are some tools that can help.

Live Writer

If you’re a blogger, you need a tool that lets you blog offline and update your blog when you’re ready - regardless of whether you have direct access to the blog at the moment. Windows Live Writer (http://bit.ly/XIUQ) fits the bill. This tool, free to registered Windows users, ties in to most blogging sites and blogging software - including WordPress - and gives you a slick, word processor-like interface in which to compose blog entries. When you’re ready to publish an entry, either on the spot or at a later date when you’re connected to the internet, just click the Publish button, and you’re done. A nifty scheduling feature even lets you set up a post to be published at a specific day and time - so you might, for instance, compose a blog post to be published a week from now to coincide with some event.

If you happen to maintain and update several blogs, you’ll be happy to know that Live Writer lets you add multiple blog accounts and update one or more of them from the same writing session. Plus you can use the tool’s table editor and spell checker to format and proofread your work, just like in a word processor.

TwitterFeed

Many use Twitter to inform their followers of updates to other sites that they maintain. For instance, people who regularly blog often use Twitter to alert followers to new postings. TwitterFeed (http://twitterfeed.com) helps you automate that chore.

TwitterFeed takes advantage of the RSS (really simple syndication) feature of many web sites to make “tweets” on your behalf. To set up TwitterFeed, you simply provide the RSS feed URL to the site of your choice, allow TwitterFeed to access your Twitter account, set a few options, and you’re done. From that point on, TwitterFeed will keep your Twitter account active - with or without you.

YouTube downloaders

YouTube is brimming with useful videos on almost any topic. The only trouble is that you typically have to be on YouTube to watch them. With YouTube downloaders, you don’t have to. These tools allow you to download a YouTube video to watch later or even re-use in another format, assuming you have the rights.

There are many YouTube downloaders from which to choose. YouTube Downloader (http://bit.ly/HePLJ), for example, is a simple freeware application that downloads YouTube videos and converts them into a format of your choice. Included are formats for iPhone and iPod as well as standard desktop-compatible formats like AVI and WMV.

Literally dozens of other free apps on the market do essentially the same thing. For an conversion tool that you don’t have to install, try Kiss YouTube (http://www.kissyoutube.com), which lets you simply paste a YouTube URL into a box and then click a download link once the video has been converted. Firefox users should give the Video DownloadHelper plugin (http://bit.ly/9pLo0t) a try.

Messaging tools

There’s one thing that most social networking sites have in common: they let you keep in touch with others by posting messages.

Why not, then, have a tool that lets you update all of your social networking sites at once? That’s the idea behind Ping.fm (http://ping.fm), and the service works remarkably well.

Just create an account on Ping, allow the site to connect to your Twitter, Facebook, or other social networking site, and then type a message in the message box, including a URL if you wish. Click Ping It!, and Ping sends out your message to all of your social networking sites at once.

Ping also allows you to set up custom posting groups. So, for example, you can create a custom Ping that will send out a message only to your Facebook and Twitter account and not to your LinkedIn account. Ping supports Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, Google Buzz, and dozens of other social networks, in addition blogging sites like Blogger.

Search engines

Traditional search engines - which rely on store and retrieve technology - aren’t good at indexing up-to-the-minute changes on social networking sites. Collecta http://collecta.com) is.

Collecta specialises in “real time search,” and it focuses on those sites where information is continually updated - specifically social networking sites, news sites, and blogs.

What’s more, Collecta continually updates its search results, and you can see those results being updated in real time. It’s a far cry from the constant refreshing you would need to do at most search engines.

Collecta isn’t the only search engine doing real-time search.

IceRocket (http://www.icerocket.com) and OneRiot (http://www.oneriot.com) have similar missions, scouring the “realtime Web” and presenting you the results.

How To Add a YouTube Video to Your Web Site

First locate a video you'd like to add to your page on YouTube, look to the top right (usually in two small form fields) on the page. One form field is labled URL, which is the address of that page itself. The other is labled Embed, and by simply clicking your mouse within that field, all the text in that field is highlighted. You then right mouse click in that field, and select Copy from your browser's drop down that will appear when you right click in the field.
Here's what the embed code for the video above looks like:

Then, open the source code of your web page, and using a tool such as NotetabPro or Expression Web, paste it into your page (either right click again where you want it, and select Paste, or place the mouse cursor where you want it, and hit Control and V on your keyboard at the same time. The embed code will be thusly deposited into your web page. Save the page, upload it to your web server using an FTP client, and view it in your browser!
It works in Firefox, MSIE, Chrome, and just about any new browser out there. Most browsers come preinstalled with Flash, and if not, the visitor will usually be prompted by the browser to download the appropriate software. If you can see the video above, then you can see any video from YouTube. There are other video providers, and most use the same method of letting users embed video.

YouTube Makes Major Changes

YouTube has launched a complete redesign of its video pages and its video player, ensures simplicity and video discovery. And it removed the five-star video rating system. Currently the new design is opt-in,later it will be made default.

Many menu items and options have been removed.
The actual player has changed as well. No longer is there an “HD” button, but the option to choose your resolution, from 480p to 720p or 1080p HD.

- There is no longer a five-star rating system. There is now a “like” and a “don’t like” button, which YouTube says better reflects how users interact with their videos.

- Many of the options are now under the video. You can save items to playlists, share to your social networks and flag the video.

- If you click on the viewcount, YouTube video analytics will appear below. This was available before, but a lot more people should find this feature.

- Comments have been simplified and cleaned up.

- The “Broadcast Yourself” tagline has been removed from the logo, although the final decision on whether to remove it has yet to be made.