The largest and most popular online video resource, YouTube has announced the launch of an all new service called, YouTube Direct. This new service will enable the users to become reporters and journalists on YouTube channels, as the media outlets will be able to rebroadcast the raw videos uploaded by the users.

The all new YouTube Direct is an open source platform, built on the foundations of YouTube’s API (Application Programming Interface) will give the news, media and other information websites to use standalone YouTube upload tools on their sites itself. Along with these features, YouTube has also made it extremely easy for news organizations to expand their information distribution services as such organizations will now be able to request YouTube for videos related to breaking news. user-generated reports and other informational content uploaded by the website’s users.

According to Steve Groves (News and Politics, YouTube),

“People around the world are taking up cameras and covering news in ways big and small — from documenting global events to filming local town halls in American neighborhoods. YouTube Direct empowers news and media organizations to easily connect with these citizen reporters and use the power of our platform to cover the news better than ever before.”

The citizen reporters will be able to directly upload their videos to YouTube Direct and the news agencies can then pick the desired videos from YouTube. However, there is no exclusivity option for the videos used by media outlets. The free for all policy of YouTube is still applicable to new service and all YouTube users will have access to the videos uploaded to YouTube Direct. Some of the news agencies who have already started taking advantage of YouTube Direct are, Huffington Post, NPR, Politico, the San Francisco Chronicle, The Washington Post, and WHDH-TV/WLVI-TV in Boston.

Via Yahoo! News.

Ford pulled a very pleasant surprise amidst the crippling recession and ‘the worst market for American car manufacturers.’ The company is finally profitable, having recently reported a $1 billion profit for the third quarter period. It predicts to be “solidly profitable” in 2011.

Ford has had some dependable strategies and standard reasons such as cost-cutting, layoffs, and the cash for clunkers program. But there has also been another unusual, crucial, and extremely successful tactic: the use of social media. It seems that Ford has been gaining sales through it social media prowess.

‘This summer the company boasted that it had logged 13.2 million interactions with the public over social media.’ Having seen that ‘an uptick in positive social media interaction was responsible for Ford’s impressive profits,’ the company pursues its plans to spend ‘a full 25% of its advertising budget online this year, compared to 9% for the rest of the industry.’

Ford is cashing in on the ‘continued rise in social media’s popularity, and its online numbers reflect the buzz’: ‘more than 1.8 million YouTube views, more than 270,000 Flickr views and more than 1.8 million Twitter impressions, resulting in more than 13.2 million interactions.’ The @Ford Twitter account has 18 thousand followers.

Companies are starting to realize that the advertising game is now played online, away from the erstwhile and costly tri-media campaigns of television, print, and radio advertising platforms.

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Via Mediaite

One of the largest and perhaps most viewed online video resource, YouTube is all set to get into the high definition era of video streaming as it prepares to incorporate support for 1080p  HD video playback in the full screen mode. The video sharing website, acquired by Google Inc. has announced that, from next week onwards, YouTube will support videos to be viewed in 720p or 1080p high definition resolutions.

As per YouTube, the video website has been offering high definition video playback for some time now, with resolutions upto 720p. However, the rapid increase in the video size and quality offered by state of the art cameras has compelled YouTube to introduce the high definition compatibility in the full screen mode as well. The 1080 p resolution videos have been designed specifically for the users with high definition monitors that are capable of supporting such high resolutions. However, for most of the users, who still use traditional displays, the option of using the 720p videos will also be displayed with the high definition videos. The videos that are 1080 p resolution, but are currently being offered in 720p have been slated for re-encoding and YouTube has assured that, these videos will be available in their original resolutions shortly. YouTube management has also stated that, in the recent months, the website a growth in amount of 1080p videos being uploaded, thereby indicating the popularity and requirement of such high definition videos.

Via PC World.

Those who want to play instruments but have at home no longer have a space for them can start using video games. The video site YouTube has launched an interactive channel that allows users to “touch” them online, called InstrumenTube.

The idea boils down to a simple series of videos where a single instrument is played so that every note fits perfectly with the red timeline video. After fully charge, click on the timeline, in places of the notes you want to create different sounds or songs.

Although impractical and restricted to only a few notes, the videos are a good hobby and an interesting way to discover the sounds of each instrument. Available to be “touched” are piano, guitar, bass, bass and rattle (which, instead of notes, offering different speeds).

Another way to have fun with the site is to mix the instruments, playing them at the same time. It is a creative possibility to assemble a “band online.

There are no classes to teach aspiring musicians, but who already have some idea will not have great difficulties to “compose”. The site reports that, soon, new tools are available.

Via: Geek.

After the U2 concert on Youtube has been viewed 10 million people at dawn on Sunday, other bands seem to be interested in the vein of shows over the Internet.

Now is the Foo Fighters, a band led by David Grohl, who will make a presentation that will be broadcast on social networking site Facebook to promote the Greatest Hits collection, which hits stores next 3 days. In addition to its classic must also roll two new songs, “Wheels” and “World foward.”

Those who want to watch the show some good news: it happens this morning, at the turn of 30 days to 31 days, promptly at midnight here, 7 pm in Los Angeles, where the production takes place. So prepare. Anyone interested can stay connected on the band on Facebook.

Foo Fighters are an American alternative rock band formed by Dave Grohl in 1995. His name is a reference to the term “foo fighter”, used by airmen in World War II to describe mysterious aerial phenomena, considered UFOs. The band reached international success, releasing several hits including “This Is a Call”, “Everlong,” “Learn to Fly,” “All My Life” “Times Like These, Best of You,” “DOA” and ” The Pretender. ”

Via: Facebook.

Who to better predict the future of the Internet than Google? Thus, the Google boss has given his prognosis on what the Web will be like in 5 years. According to Google’s Eric Schmidt, ‘Chinese language will dominate the Web’ and that social media will reign supreme.

The Google CEO believes the Internet will take a different look in five years, more along the lines of Chinese content and Chinese characters, among others. The Internet will be offering seamless transition between applications. He says ‘broadband will improve so much that the technical distinctions between radio, TV, and web will disappear.’ In 5 years, broadbands will be ‘well above 100MB in performance – and distribution distinctions between TV, radio and the web will go away.’ The age of ‘super fast bandwidth in real time’ is in the offing. Social media will rule the day, as opposed to the old traditional media. ‘Figuring out how to rank real-time social content is “the great challenge of the age,” says Schmidt.

As for his company Google, he reveals that ‘Google is trying to rank real-time search info, that it’s making “significant money” on YouTube, and that a Google Netbook will hit next year.’ The Google OS Netbook will be available in 2010. This will have HTML5 local caching for offline use. As far as its manifest destiny dictates, Google’s roadmap sees a clear path from Chrome OS to Google Social Search.

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Via ReadWriteWeb

Mozilla has released a software project that should help manage the messages that come from various sources, such as personal emails, Twitter or Facebook.

Called Raindrop, the program will no longer be a n e-mail client, according to the designer Bryan Clark. Mozilla describes the product as a “mini web server” that collects conversations and messages from a variety of sources.

The purpose of Raindrop is to allow people to have a clearer visualization of the messages they are receiving, and not let the personal to be hidden inside a mailbox full of messages from Twitter and Facebook, for example. You can also control notices to YouTube, blogs and RSS feeds. Messages lists of e-mail are also listed separately from the personal messages, and emails from other services such as Amazon or eBay. Users can decide where they want certain types of files appear.

“The intelligence of Raindrop is in separating personal messages from the other,” said Clark. Direct messages and replies on Twitter, for example, are more like e-mail notifications other than the microblog. The Raindrop will separate them from other direct messages alerts.

Via:  Mozilla.

YouTube consumes “a lot less than you think ” in traffic data to Google, the company said. Even with more than 1 billion visitors per day, the cost of the video site YouTube, in terms of bandwidth consumption is low thanks to file-sharing networks, shows a survey released by security firm Arbor Networks.

The study on the global Internet traffic, by the University of Michigan and Merit Networks in the United States, generated controversy after publishing a report in Wired magazine said that the bill is paid by YouTube’s ‘near zero’ to Google .

According to a note from the site Data Center Knowledge, the YouTube account “does not cost zero, but can be lean because the video service distribution delivery costs through sharing networks partners. Moreover, its structure is part of an internal network called GoogleNet linking the Google data centers through fiber optic cables acquired by the Internet giant.

In the evaluation of online video expert, Dan Rayburn, the study was interpreted incorrectly by Wired.com, as Arbor Networks relation to cost of “traffic”, which are different from costs of “bandwidth”.

According to Rayburn, although Google can save by making a network for sharing data with major service providers, is not likely to make the same agreements with small providers.
Google does not report the amounts spent on their services, but a recent post on YouTube suggests that the company is not losing money on the video site.

Via: Data Center Knowledge.

The Irish band U2 announced in its website that will transmit a live concert in videos site YouTube on this weekend. All of the entrances for the concert of Sunday in Rose Bowl, in California, are already sold out, and the 96 thousand people’s presence is foreseen. U2 said that will be the first time in that such a big show will be transmitted live in the Internet.

YouTube already did, previously, the live broadcast of a speech of the American president Barack Obama and the music festival Outside Lands. Both events, however, cannot be compared to the transmission of the show of a band that has millions of fans around of the world.

YouTube, belonging to Google, will transmit the concert in five continents, and two replays will be made available after the live broadcast – in www.U2.com and in the channel of the band in YouTube.

The responsible band for successes as “Beautiful Day” and “Sunday Bloody Sunday” began the tour U2 360 in Barcelona in June and it guaranteed big public in the presentations, using a circular stage that can be seen from all of the sides.

YouTube possesses a relationship a little “delicate” with the industry of the recording music. They argue that the popular sites of social relationship and online videos should pay them more for the right of transmit the artists’ shows or videos that have contract with the industry.

At the same time, they recognize the importance of maintaining its presence in the sites because they help to mold the musical tastes of the young fans.

Via: Tecno.

Recently, in a bid to take a shot at the concept of viral marketing, one of the leading automotive firms, Volkswagen decided to conduct a viral video campaign, as part of its advertisement package. The theory behind this highly creative project was to test whether people would be willing to participate in activities for the environment, that they usually feel lazy about, if those tasks became more fun.

Well, the plan worked splendidly and the video series, that is comprised of three videos on YouTube is making headlines in the world of advertising and viral marketing. The entire project had been initiated and carried out by DDB, an advertising agency based in Stockholm.

According to Andreas Dahlqvist (Creative Director, DDB), “Volkswagen’s answer to the theory will be presented at a later stage on a separate website amongst other media. The site will display their whole range of environment technologies and cars—many, many fun ways to do something for the environment.”

Whether or not this immensely popular video series is able to boost the car maker’s sales, is anybody’s guess, but one thing is for sure, the online world is sure buzzing about Volkswagen and  its ingenuity.

Here are some of the videos from the campaign, to tickle your funny bone:

Piano Staircase

The World’s Deepest Bin

Bottle Bank Arcade Machine

Via Rolighetsteorin & Viral Blog.