YouTube

We heard last summer straight from YouTube chief Salar Kamangar that Google’s video service considered introducing subscription-based content that would rival traditional cable channels and see users paying a fee to access some partner channels. Today, a report from Ad Age, quoting “multiple people familiar” with YouTube’s plans, shared some additional details.

According to the report, YouTube will not only charge somewhere between $1 and $5 per month for access to certain channels, it will also charge for some “content libraries and access to live events, a la pay-per-view, as well as self-help or financial advice shows.”

YouTube has reached out to a small group of channel producers and asked them to submit applications to create channels that users would have to pay to access. As of now it appears that the first paid channels will cost somewhere between $1 and $5 a month, two of these people said. In addition to episodic content, YouTube is also considering charging for content libraries and access to live events, a la pay-per-view, as well as self-help or financial advice shows.

Ad Age’s sources said the service could launch as early as the second quarter of 2013 with around 25 channels and a 45-55 revenue split for content creators:
Expand
Expanding
Close

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=iCkYw3cRwLo#!]

YouTube is once again doing its annual “YouTube Rewind” to shed some light on the top-trending videos of 2012. Google updated its YouTube Rewind Channel to include the last year’s worth of the most popular YouTube videos alongside some stats for each. For instance, Google noted the KONY 2012 30-minute documentary was the most shared video in the world during March, but PSYs’ Gangnam Style was able to top the majority of lists after approaching 1 billion views and becoming the most viewed YouTube video of all time in less than half the year.

YouTube’s top trending list globally is below, followed by the list for Canada, but you can head over to the YouTube Rewind Channel to see the top-trending videos for your country.

Top Trending YouTube Videos:  

1. PSY – GANGNAM STYLE (강남스타일) M/V 
2. Somebody That I Used to Know – Walk off the Earth (Gotye – Cover) 
3. KONY 2012 
4. “Call Me Maybe” by Carly Rae Jepsen – Feat. Justin Bieber, Selena, Ashley Tisdale & MORE! 
5. Barack Obama vs Mitt Romney. Epic Rap Battles Of History Season 2. 
6. A DRAMATIC SURPRISE ON A QUIET SQUARE 
7. WHY YOU ASKING ALL THEM QUESTIONS? .. #FCHW 
8. Dubstep Violin- Lindsey Stirling- Crystallize 
9. Facebook Parenting: For the troubled teen.
10. Felix Baumgartner’s supersonic freefall from 128k’ – Mission Highlights 

Top Trending YouTube Videos in Canada:
Expand
Expanding
Close

Google announced today on the YouTube Creator blog that it is today rolling out new features for sharing videos on YouTube, Google+, and elsewhere. Now, when uploading a video to YouTube and sharing it directly with social networks, YouTube will allow you to customize the message displayed alongside your video, as highlighted in the image above. Google explained:

Now, when you upload your videos to YouTube, you can write your own post to your fans… Where will this post appear? In YouTube feeds, the text will be merged into the upload feed item (exactly the same as if you were to upload a video, then make a channel post about the same video, but without the extra effort).  This also works with the scheduled publishing feature, offering you even greater convenience… As the video and post will be shared to your other connected social accounts as well, you no longer have go to each site to manually customize a post for each video.

Google also noted that it would add users’ public YouTube videos to the Videos tab on their Google+ page if they have opted in to connect the two accounts:
Expand
Expanding
Close

Google is getting rid of anonymous reviews in its Google Play store and informing users that from now on store reviews “will be posted publicly using your Google+ name and picture.” There doesn’t appear to be an option at this point to not use your Google+ identity, which means we might get a bit of backlash from users. However, it also means more accountability and potentially better reviews. The update was first spotted on the web version of the Google Play store, as pictured above, but it is apparently making its way out to mobile users too.

Expand
Expanding
Close

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZXblqVPvSpM&feature=youtu.be]

ReutersTV posted this video of Google Executive Chairman Eric Schmidt speaking at the RAND Corp.’s “Politics Aside” conference in Culver City on Nov. 19. During the 32-minute-long interview, Schmidt discussed Google’s position on free speech, privacy, and described the process of removing potentially inappropriate user-generated content on YouTube.

.

As the television race heats up, Google said it is working on an open alternative to Apple’s AirPlay—a technology first introduced in iOS 4.2 that allowed users to share photo, audio, and video to the Apple TV.

Google had a similar streaming product to the Apple TV this summer—the Nexus Q— that allowed for sharing of content via an Android device to the TV. However, the product flopped and didn’t see the light of day for many customers. Additionally, in Google’s move to try to compliment streaming to the TV, the folks at YouTube launched an AirPlay-like feature last week that allows users to beam YouTube videos from their Android device straight to the television.

Speaking to GigaOm, Google Product Manager Timbo Drayson made it clear that Google has big plans in the space and wants to move forward. “We really want to move the whole industry forward,” Drayson told the publication.

How will Google move the industry forward? It may just partner with as many partners as possible. It worked with Android, so why wouldn’t it work here? Drayson said Google is “actively working with other companies” to implement a new AirPlay-like standard. Remember, Google also has its Google TV platform that this could play nicely off.

Furthermore, GigaOm examined how Google plans to move past just beaming video:

And it’s not just about remote control functionality and beaming a video from your mobile phone to the TV we are talking about. The new protocol makes it possible for data to flow in both directions, Drayson explained, which would enable developers to build second-screen experiences that correspond to what’s happening on live TV as well. Also on the roadmap: beaming content from your laptop to your TV screen.

Related articles

• YouTube’s Android app now steams video to Google TV from Android device (9to5google.com)

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=TNOsB8tRmWU]

Yesterday, we told you about the updated YouTube apps for Google TV and Android that bring a new synced experience, but today Google announced two other big new features for Google TV: Voice Search and PrimeTime.

On the Official Google TV blog, Google walked us through the new features that will roll out to LG devices first starting this week. The most notable new feature is the addition of voice search, allowing users to not only perform Google searches with their voice, but also open apps, press play on a YouTube video, or speak a command, such as “CNN”, to navigate directly to a channel.

Google also explained that questions, such as “how to tie a bow tie,” would bring up instructional videos on YouTube. Part of the new voice search experience is a new visual search results page:

Try “search movies with Jeff Bridges” and see results in our new, more visual search results page.

Google is also introducing a new app called “PrimeTime” in the update that is essentially a rebranding of the old TV & Movies app it added last year:
Expand
Expanding
Close

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CdD8s0jFJYo]

From November 2011

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y29tpFjWyUE&feature=plcp]

November 2012

Expand
Expanding
Close

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4wIZp_E2CxQ&feature=player_embedded]

YouTube is all about live streaming lately, and now the video-sharing platform has announced COD (ahem—slang for “Call of Duty”) players can soon stream their gameplay when Activation launches the latest title for its popular franchise next week.

“Call of Duty Elite takes the live streaming experience even further, letting viewers on Elite see the player card of the user that is streaming,” announced Activision in a press release. “With just a couple clicks, viewers can dig deeper to see such information as class loadouts, recent match data, as well as career stats across supported Call of Duty games on Elite.”

The partnership essentially allows gamers to watch exploits in real-time multiplayer Call of Duty: Black Ops II matches for free. The deal is coushiony for Google and Activision, too. The Internet Giant gets engaging content to bulk its website, while Activation lands premium promotion.

Call of Duty: Black Ops II launches worldwide on Nov. 13, presumably at the $60-something price mark, for Xbox 360, PlayStation 3, and Windows PC. The title will also release in North America on Nov. 18 for the new Wii U.

Pre-orders are available at Amazon: 

• Call of Duty: Black Ops II (Amazon Instant Video Credit) | $59
• Call of Duty: Black Ops II [Hardened Edition] (Amazon Instant Video Credit) | $179+
• Call of Duty: Black Ops II Digital Deluxe Edition (Amazon Instant Video Credit) | $59
• Call of Duty: Black Ops II Care Package | $338+

Get the press release below for more details.

Expand
Expanding
Close

Googler Ami Fischman, a self-dubbed “Watt Wrangler”, just announced a new battery-saving Chrome Stable release.

“We recently enabled GPU-accelerated video decoding for Chrome on Windows,” wrote Fischman on the official Google Chrome blog. “Dedicated graphics chips draw far less power than a computer’s CPU, so using GPU-accelerated video decoding while watching videos can increase battery life significantly.”

Fischman noted test results show batteries last 25 percent longer with GPU-accelerated video decoding switched on. So now, Chrome users on Windows can watch more YouTube videos, as Fischman noted, without worrying about dwindling battery life.

Chrome users can even access website permissions, such as geolocation, much more easily with the new release:

This saves you from having to dig through settings pages to find these permissions. Now, simply click on the page/lock icon next to a website’s address in the omnibox to see a list of permissions and tweak them as you wish.

This latest release also includes an option to send a “do not track” request to websites and web services. The effectiveness of such requests is dependent on how websites and services respond, so Google is working with others on a common way to respond to these requests in the future.

Expand
Expanding
Close

Beginning at 4:30PM EST, we’ll be getting the full break-down of Google’s earnings for the third fiscal quarter. In an odd turn of events, Google released its earnings early this afternoon due to a screwup with its SEC filing. The screwup caused Google to close down its stock for the better part of the afternoon, causing a steep drop. Google may discuss the situation on the call… stay tuned after the break:

Check up on Google’s numbers from earlier this afternoon.
Expand
Expanding
Close

http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=S95J5BowMmk

Google just announced some extremely aggressive-priced Samsung Chromebooks starting at $249 at major U.S. retailers:

The new Chromebook is a great computer at any price, but it’s an incredible computer at $249. It’s one of the lightest laptops on the market. You can easily carry it around all day—it’s 2.5 pounds, a mere 0.8 inches thick, with more than 6 hours of battery life for the typical user. And with 100 GB of free storage on Google Drive*, you can get to all of your stuff anytime, anywhere.

Even with its compact design, it’s packed with performance—it boots up in less than 10 seconds and resumes instantly. High-resolution videos (in 1080p) are beautiful to watch and when using the touchpad, you’ll notice smooth scrolling due to a hardware-accelerated user interface. And as you‘d expect from a Chromebook, it’s easy to share with others. Everyone—mom, dad, grandparents, tech lovers, tech haters—can have separate accounts where all of their stuff is kept safe. Finally, if you’re an active Google user of products like Gmail, Drive, Search, Maps, YouTube, Play or Google+ Hangouts, everything just works seamlessly.

The new Chromebook weighs a little less than 2.5 pounds, but it boasts the same 6.5-hour battery life. The screen, however, is 0.5-inches smaller with a 1,366-by-768-pixel resolution. The most notable difference in Google’s thinner Chromebook is the Samsung Exynos 5250 dual-core processor inside, and it features a Cortex-A15 chip that reportedly runs 1080p video and ChromeOS pretty well. GigaOm’s Kevin C. Tofel even noted the overall performance is “comparable to the Intel-powered Chromebook I have, but perhaps a half-step behind; at least in my few hours of using the device.”

This is finally a compelling offer at $249—as long as the hardware is fast. It looks like a base-line MacBook Air (and will surely draw criticism for that) for a quarter of the price. Again, so long as it performs, I don’t think Google will have a problem selling them to its intended audience: grandparents, kids, and as second or third computers for those who are heavy Google service users, and companies that need cheap mobile workstations.

Update: More reviews are starting to come in and unfortunately many are complaining about slowness. Not surprising for a $249 machine but clearly not for power users.

A gallery is below.

Expand
Expanding
Close

Little Nemo first appeared in the New York Herald on Oct. 15, 1905 as the protagonist kid of the “Little Nemo in Slumberland” comic strip, and Google is commemorating the tale’s 107th birthday today with an interactive doodle on the homepage.

Windsor McCay’s early 20th-century newspaper cartoon lasted nine years, while Little Nemo later inspired a slew of spin-offs such as the 1989 animated film “Little Nemo: Adventures in Slumberland” (YouTube video below).

Google’s visually breathtaking doodle transports Web surfers to the fanciful world of Slumberland. Folks can follow Nemo as he falls from his bed into a starlit-realm of dreams and continues tumbling for seven more panes until he ends up back in bed—tussled and amazed. It is certainly one of the search giant’s most stunning doodles ever.

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pGAt0GQ703U]

Google’s full artwork for the doodle is below, while “Little Nemo: Adventures in Slumberland” is above.

Expand
Expanding
Close