Twitter and Facebook Access for US Troops
US troops are to be allowed to use social networking websites such as Twitter and Facebook following a review of internet use and security.
Defence department officials say the benefits of using social media now outweigh the risks to security. The ruling means that a number of sites blocked by the Pentagon in 2007 – including YouTube – will be unblocked. However, commanders will be able to temporarily block access to safeguard missions or save bandwidth.
Correspondents say social media and the internet are becoming increasingly important for the US military. The web is used for recruitment, public relations and for communications between troops and their families, among other things.
US Defence Secretary Robert Gates has said that social networking can help the Pentagon interact with US military employees, many of whom are in their early 20s and regular users of online services.
Source: BBC News
Posted in: General
YouTube Introduces Automatic Captions for Deaf Viewers
According to this BBC article, YouTube’s parent company Google has announced on its blog that automatic captions are to begin to roll out across the site.
The machine-generated captions will initially be generated in English. At first they will only be found on 13 channels.
These include National Geographic, Columbia, as well as most Google and YouTube channels.
The software engineer behind the technology, Ken Harrenstien, is deaf.
Currently YouTube offers a manual captioning service but video makers tend not to use it.
“The majority of user-generated video content online is still inaccessible to people like me,” Mr Harrenstien wrote in the Google blog.
His solution combines automatic speech recognition with the current caption system.
The translation is not always perfect (in a demonstration the phrase “sim card” becomes “salmon” in text), but Mr Harrenstien says that the technology “will continue to improve with time”.
Posted in: General
One Billion A Day Turn To YouTube
According to this BBC article YouTube now gets over a billion hits a day, according to a new video blog post by the founder of the website.
Chad Hurley’s blog marks the third anniversary of YouTube’s controversial acquisition by Google.
The site was bought by Google in 2006 for $1.65bn – a price it later described as “a premium”.
Earlier this year YouTube was at the centre of a content row over the amount of royalties it paid to musicians for hosting music videos.
Six months later the dispute was resolved when Google agreed to pay UK royalty collecting body PRS for Music an undisclosed lump sum.
Music videos reappeared for British YouTube visitors in September.
Mr Hurley co-founded the website in 2004 with Steve Chen and Jawed Karim.
They met while employees at online pay service PayPal.
“We wanted to create a place where anyone with a video camera, a computer, and an internet connection can share their life, art, and voice with the world, and in many cases they can make a living from doing so,” Mr Hurley said, reflecting on YouTube’s original aims.
Posted in: General
Social Media Has Overtaken Porn As The #1 Activity On The Web
This video from Socialnomics looks at the social media revolution.
Give it a watch…there are some facts that will surprise you, no matter how engaged in social media you might be.
Posted in: General
Tips For Optimizing Your YouTube Videos
This video by Gideon Shalwick (Become a Blogger) offers a pretty in-depth look at 7 ways to optimize your YouTube videos.
7 Great Tips For Optimizing Your YouTube Videos
- Create outstanding content
- Optimize your YouTube Channel
- Use keywords cleverly and in the right places
- Add URL’s in the right places
- Link to your videos from where ever you can
- Provide plenty of social proof for your videos
- Ping your YouTube channel as soon as you add new content
Posted in: General
European Podcast Awards – and the Winners are…
The winners of the first European Podcast Awards have been announced.
Choosing from ten participating countries across Europe and over 750 nominations, a panel of judges awarded the inaugural European Podcast Awards to five winners from Germany, England and Spain.
The European podcasts of the year 2008/2009 are:
- Schlaflos in München [Sleepless in Munich] / Germany
- The Naked Scientists / United Kingdom
- Comunicando Podcast [Communicating Podcast] / Spain
- CoffeBreak Spanish / United Kingdom
- ComputerClub 2 / Germany
David Prest, BBC producer and the English member of the panel of judges, says: “The award does a much needed job all over Europe in recognising excellence in podcasting. These podcasts are clever, creative, imaginative and extremely valuable programmes with high production values.”
About the European Podcast Awards:
More than 750 nominated podcasts from 10 countries were judged by a combination of online voting and an international jury in four categories. Entries were evaluated on the basis of consistently defined criteria and awarded up to 625 points. Point totals were then used to determine national winners and the leading European entries. Jury members hail from all represented countries and include radio producers, journalists and podcasters.
Posted in: General
YouTube blocks UK music videos
YouTube is blocking all premium music videos to UK users after failing to reach a new licensing agreement with the Performing Right Society (PRS).
Thousands of videos became unavailable to YouTube users from late yesterday.
Patrick Walker, YouTube’s director of video partnerships, stated that the move was “regrettable”. Steve Porter, head of the PRS, said he was “outraged… shocked and disappointed” by YouTube’s decision.
In a statement, Mr Porter said the move “punishes British consumers and the songwriters whose interests we protect and represent”.
The PRS has asked YouTube to reconsider its decision as a “matter of urgency”.
Posted in: General
New video and audio podcasts for the IDeA
One of our latest client projects went live recently – audio and video podcasts for the Improvement and Development Agency for local government (IDeA).
The podcasts were recorded at an event in Manchester exploring how the integration of workforce strategies can support partnership working. The day also included a review of the key learnings from the integrated workforce strategy project.
To see the podcasts ‘in-situ’ on the IDeA’s web site click here.
Posted in: General
Record 13% monthly growth in US online video viewing
Internet traffic measurement company comScore recently released data from their December 2008 “comScore Video Metrix” service, indicating a huge jump in Internet video-viewing among US Internet users. A record 14.3 billion online videos were viewed during the month, representing an increase of 13 percent over November’s viewing stats.
YouTube led the Internet video portals, accounting for 49% of the incremental gain in December videos viewed versus the previous month.
In December, Google sites ranked as the top U.S. “video property,” with 5.9 billion videos viewed (41% online video market share), thanks to YouTube.com, which accounted for more than 99% of all videos viewed at the property.
Fox Interactive Media ranked a distant second with 445 million videos (3.1%), followed closely by Yahoo! sites with 330 million (2.3%) and Viacom Digital with 291 million (2.0%).
Hulu continued its growth trajectory, climbing 6 percent over its November viewing numbers, to 241 million videos viewed.
Despite ranking fifth among video properties for number of videos viewed in December, it should be noted that Hulu scored the longest average duration for individuals’ online video viewing, just over 10 minutes.
Nearly 100 million YouTube video viewers (98.9 MM) watched 5.9 billion videos, for an average of 59 apiece.
In terms of unique viewers of Internet video, nearly 150 million U.S. Internet users watched an average of 96 videos apiece in December 2008. Google sites crossed the 100 million online video viewer mark during the month, representing two out of every three Internet users who watched video. Fox Interactive ranked second with 56.9 million viewers, followed by Yahoo! Sites (42.8 million) and AOL LLC (31.5 million).
Other notable findings from December 2008 include:
- 78.5 percent of the total U.S. Internet audience viewed online video
- The average online video viewer watched 309 minutes of video, or more than 5 hours
- 98.9 million viewers watched 5.9 billion videos on YouTube.com (59.2 videos per viewer)
- 48.7 million viewers watched 367 million videos on MySpace.com (7.6 videos per viewer)
- The duration of the average online video was 3.2 minutes
- The duration of the average online video viewed at Hulu was 10.1 minutes, higher than any other video property in the top ten
Posted in: General
Time Magazine's Top 10 Viral Videos of 2008
Time Magazine in the US recently announced its top 10 viral videos of 2008.
The number 1 was Where the Hell is Matt? (2008) – check out the video below or peruse Time Magazine’s Top 10 list to see if it includes any of your favourites.
Time Magazine’s Top 10 Viral Videos Of 2008:
- Where the Hell is Matt? (2008)
- Western Spaghetti by PES
- Christian the Lion
- Hamster On A Piano (Eating Popcorn)
- Barack The Vote – Obama Loses Election
- Super Mario Rescues The Princess: Seth MacFarlane’s Cavalcade
- The Onion: Pretend You Give A Shit About The Election
- Star Wars according to a 3 year old
- You Can Vote However You Like
- MadTv No Frills Airlines
Posted in: General
