YouTube Archive

I’ve always been against texting while driving, videotaping while driving or talking on your mobile device without a hands-free headset while driving. It makes me angry when I see videos on YouTube where a driver is holding a camera and videotaping themselves while driving (many times at high speeds on the highway). As Judge Judy says, it’s one thing if you want to take your own life, but when you are reckless you put so many others in the path of potential harm. It’s too bad that local police agencies don’t go after those who post their videos on YouTube showing off their “oh so important” video they just had to create while driving.

If you think driving your car while filming a video is not appropriate, what about a city bus driver driving a bus down a busy street using his elbows while operating two cellular phones? The bus driver is operating the bus in Rome and appears to be talking on one cell phone while setting up email and other online accounts on the second phone.

Here’s hoping the bus operator was able to get out that important tweet, check-in to his bus, Like his bus, or tip his important update. Those things are certainly more important than passenger safety and the safety of those around the bus.

Here’s the video from the incident — I am unable to confirm whether the driver has only been suspended or whether he has been fired.
Continue reading “Italian Bus Driver Suspended After Driving Bus With Elbows While Hands on Two Cellphones (video)” »

The big story today outside of the OMG white OMG iPhone OMG was the acquisition of the Delicious bookmarking site. Former owner Yahoo has sold the bookmarking service to the founders of online video sharing service YouTube and their new company AVOS. In reviewing about 20 blog/news posts about the acquisition, so far there has been no chatter about the acquisition price.

Back in December, Yahoo hinted that they would close Delicious service – a move I noted would hurt Yahoo within the developer/early adopter tech community. I also thought the best place for Delicious would be to be acquired by commenting service Disqus. I still think Disqus should consider expanding into bookmarking as it would make the service more sticky and could provide even more benefits to publishers.

This evening I received an email from Yahoo regarding the Delicious acquisition. There are a couple of interesting bits that got me wondering exactly what did YouTube founder Steve Chen and Chad Hurley purchase? I assumed when I read all of the copies of the press releases that the Delicious site would be put onto a blu-ray disc, handed off to AVOS, and then the entire service would be available as it is today but now hosted by AVOS.

Continue reading “Exactly What Did The YouTube Founders Acquire With Delicious?” »

Last week I was the first to report that Google Video would be removing the ability to watch hosted videos and would delete the videos effective May 13, 2011. I also created a how-to guide to help you download your Google Video hosted videos in the event that the download button wasn’t visible in your account.

Shortly after my post, Francine Hardaway posted on Twitter that she wondered why Google Video didn’t just create a simple Google Video-to-YouTube converter. Many others posted similar comments (some using expletives) both on Twitter and on CN.

Today Google announced they have created an easy way to move your Google Video hosted videos to YouTube.  The Google post notes, “we will be working to automatically migrate your Google Videos to YouTube.” You can also go ahead and migrate your videos to YouTube now. To do so, you need to make sure your YouTube and Google accounts are connected and then it’s as simple as clicking the “Upload videos to YouTube” option.

The best part about the migration tool is that Google is working to make sure your links won’t break and will be forwarded to YouTube. I am not sure if that includes embedded videos or just links to hosted videos.

It’s great to see that Google has listened to user feedback and created a quick transfer option.

(title came from suggestion from Ed Tatton)

Two days ago we wrote about Google Video basically going offline for hosted videos. On April 29, you will no longer be able to watch videos hosted on Google Video and on May 13, you will no longer be able to download the videos you have uploaded to Google Video over the last few years. Thanks to Jason Kincaid and Nimish Sawant for their links.

I like Francine Hardaway’s comment – she wonders why Google didn’t create a simple one-click “transfer this video to YouTube” option. Assuming Google doesn’t create a transfer to YouTube option, here are three ways to download your videos from Google Video. No matter which option you use, if you have a lot of videos on GV, it will take some time to grab all of them. I’ve listed the options in order from easiest to more complicated.

Option #1 – Use Download Button

In my research it seems about 50% of Google Video users have a “Download” button appearing next to their videos. I am not one of those people – no button shows up on my Google Video page. Click the download button and then after you download the video, it will change to “downloaded” to let you know that you have downloaded that video.

Here’s what the download option looks like:

Continue reading “How To: Download Your Uploaded Videos From Google Video” »

One of my colleagues in Switzerland just forwarded an email from Google (NASDAQ: GOOG) which includes a very important update regarding the Google Video service.  Two years ago Google announced that they would discontinue support for uploads to Google Video. At that time Google noted, “Don’t worry, we’re not removing any content hosted on Google Video — this just means you will no longer be able to upload new content to the service.”

It appears that might be changing. The email below (in German) basically includes the following changes:

• As of April 29, 2011, you will no longer be able to view videos hosted on Google Video
• As of May 13, 2011, you will no longer be able to download videos hosted on Google Video
• Google suggests you re-upload your videos to YouTube

Update Friday 9pm: We can now confirm that these changes are worldwide. Early this morning we reported that the changes might be for the German Google Video but the email below (now in English) confirms that the changes are worldwide.
Continue reading “Updated: Google Video To Delete Uploaded Videos on May 13” »

I’m sure there have been times when you’ve wanted to link to a particular part of a YouTube video but, if you’re anything like me, you had no idea how to go about doing so. Well, you have two options:

1. You can link to the video on YouTube and specify the minute and second at which you want the video to start playing.
2. You can embed the video and specify the second at which you would like the video to start playing.

Continue reading “Two Handy YouTube Tricks” »

Web analytics service Clicky has announced the launch of their video analytics service which is part of the overall Clicky web analytics platform. Clicky has integrated directly with video hosting company Viddler and provides the ability to track videos from YouTube and Vimeo as well.

The Viddler integration will go live sometime in August as Clicky notes that the Viddler team has some additional work on their end before the connection is made live. The Viddler integration will not require you do anything different to make sure the video stats reach Clicky.

To use the YouTube connection with Clicky, there is a bit of work involved. You can read about the changes to your blog or website that must be added on the Clicky help site. It addition, the way you embed videos is different than just copying and pasting the code directly from YouTube into your blog. The same goes for Vimeo…you would need to add some code to your templates and then change the way you insert videos into your blog or website.

Here’s an example of the stats page:

Note – we are an affiliate for Clicky but none of the links in this post are affiliate links.