YouTube now lets you create animated videos, no camera necessary originally appeared on Download Squad on Fri, 25 Mar 2011 11:15:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Continue reading Google acquires video quality specialist Green Parrot Pictures, will improve YouTube's cute cat videos

Google acquires video quality specialist Green Parrot Pictures, will improve YouTube's cute cat videos originally appeared on Download Squad on Wed, 16 Mar 2011 08:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

First Hollywood film made for the Internet premieres on YouTube originally appeared on Download Squad on Mon, 14 Mar 2011 06:30:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Google's Demo Slampionship kicks off with 16 contenders originally appeared on Download Squad on Thu, 17 Feb 2011 03:55:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

YouTube Ad Blitz 2011 lets you watch, share and rate Super Bowl ads originally appeared on Download Squad on Thu, 10 Feb 2011 13:30:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

YouTube Screening Room now showing Sundance Film Festival shorts originally appeared on Download Squad on Fri, 21 Jan 2011 13:30:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

YouTube rolls out new personalized homepage to all users originally appeared on Download Squad on Thu, 20 Jan 2011 13:30:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

YouTube app for Android gets pre-roll ads, access to Vevo's music video library originally appeared on Download Squad on Thu, 13 Jan 2011 15:30:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Window Expander for Chrome lets you view YouTube videos in near-full screen without hacking Flash originally appeared on Download Squad on Thu, 23 Dec 2010 18:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

YouTube now lets you watch embedded videos later on YouTube.com originally appeared on Download Squad on Tue, 21 Dec 2010 17:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

YouTube Trends launches, now even easier to be virally hip originally appeared on Download Squad on Tue, 14 Dec 2010 07:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

It's fairly easy to download YouTube videos, but they usually come in FLV or MP4 format when you grab them right off YouTube. TinyOgg is a lightweight service that lets you grab those same videos, or just the audio, in the open source Ogg format.

It couldn't be simpler to use: you just feed it with a YouTube URL, and hit Convert. You then get a short URL; after a few minutes, this URL contains a link to an Ogg file you can download and watch at your leisure. By default, this link is made public and can be seen in the queue.

There's also a more detailed form that lets you keep the link private (so it doesn't show up in the public queue), download the file in the highest quality from YouTube (so the converter gets the best raw material to work with), and rip just the music, with no video content at all. That last one is somewhat dubious on the copyright side of things, but is very handy nonetheless.

TinyOgg lets you quickly convert YouTube videos to Ogg format originally appeared on Download Squad on Tue, 14 Dec 2010 03:45:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

YouTube makes video length unlimited for some users originally appeared on Download Squad on Thu, 09 Dec 2010 14:51:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Some people say that Flash video playback can be a tad crappy at times. This is a pretty obvious business oppurtunity for competing video products, and indeed, DivX tries to one-up Adobe with its DivX HiQ Beta 2.

It's a whole (free) bundle of applications, but the interesting one is the DivX Web Player. It's basically a player that latches onto the YouTube player and a bunch of other common video players online, and offers an alternative Play button. When you hit that button, DivX takes over and plays the source video data using its own codec.

Using the DivX codec supposedly yields a bit of a performance boost on slower systems, but caveat emptor: This is still beta. When I tried it, the alternative Play button never showed up on Chrome, and when it showed up on Firefox, pressing it only caused an error message to pop up saying "the video cannot be found". Still, if you have an older computer, you might want to give this one a try (especially once it loses the Beta label).

DivX HiQ Beta does Flash video better than Adobe originally appeared on Download Squad on Thu, 09 Dec 2010 05:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

YouTube's new TrueView Video Ads are skippable originally appeared on Download Squad on Thu, 02 Dec 2010 15:34:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Auto HD for YouTube is a fairly simple Chrome add-on, which has a similar function to the many Greasemonkey scripts that do the same thing: it makes YouTube default to high-quality playback. I've tried it out, and here are some quick thoughts:

• No auto buffering: Sadly, this add-on doesn't change YouTube's default behavior, which is to just start playing the video rather than buffer and wait for you to hit Play. So if you have a slow connection and still wish to enjoy HD, you might be better off with the Greasemonkey script called YouTube Auto Buffer & Auto HD & Remove Ads.
• Doesn't work well with channels: I've tried it out with the Pomplamoose video channel, and it just wouldn't work. The video played at 480p. Only when I clicked through to an individual video page did the add-on kick in.
• Handy options: You can have the player auto-widen, and you can set four different quality settings: "Preferred," "Secondary," "Fallback," and even "Secondary fallback." I must say, "Secondary fallback" sounds like a bit of an overkill to me, but it's available.

All in all, it does work. If you'd rather use native Chrome add-ons than Greasemonkey scripts, try it on for size.

Auto HD for YouTube lets you pre-set Chrome for 720p in YouTube originally appeared on Download Squad on Fri, 19 Nov 2010 13:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Let's say you have a girlfriend. And let's say that girlfriend is in a faraway land, and the only thing keeping you connected is that tangle of wires we fondly call "the Internet." Or maybe you've got a bunch of nerdy friends, each ensconced in his own basement, or perhaps in distant parts of the country.

These are just two situations where something like YouTube Social could come in very handy. It's a neat service for watching videos together with friends, synced in real-time, with chat thrown in for good measure.

What I like most about it is how easy it is to start with: you take the URL of a YouTube video (say, http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6G5JaicYuVU), and just stick the word "social" after "youtube." So you get http://www.youtubesocial.com/watch?v=6G5JaicYuVU.

You then get a rich (almost cluttered) interface with your video taking center stage, and a TinyURL link that you can send to your friends. They just need to click the link to join you. Now, whenever you play the video, pause it, or even scrub to a different position, their videos follow suit. There's a chat pane where you can all talk about what you're watching, too. You can also give the "remote" to someone else so that they get to control the video.

The only downside is that the service is heavily Facebook-driven. I mean, the only way to get a proper nick ("username") in the chat is to be logged onto Facebook. That's pretty annoying; other than that, it's definitely a handy service!

YouTube Social lets you watch videos with friends online originally appeared on Download Squad on Thu, 18 Nov 2010 10:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

The top Windows Phone 7 app -- YouTube -- is just a website shortcut originally appeared on Download Squad on Sat, 13 Nov 2010 20:45:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Continue reading YouTube Remote for Android -- control Google TV or Leanback from your phone

YouTube Remote for Android -- control Google TV or Leanback from your phone originally appeared on Download Squad on Wed, 10 Nov 2010 07:30:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

YouTube finishes transcoding 80% of video catalog to WebM originally appeared on Download Squad on Fri, 05 Nov 2010 08:30:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

YouTube will have AirPlay support in iOS 4.2 originally appeared on Download Squad on Tue, 02 Nov 2010 13:30:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Here's a little tidbit which was new to a few of us on the Download Squad team... When you right-click a YouTube video, there are site-specific options in addition to the Flash defaults! Some of you may be face-palming right now, so if you already know about this, feel free to move on with your life.

If you don't, definitely file this under "good to know": By default, the Flash context menu is very generic. I mean, try right-clicking on one of our Time Wasters and you'll see. The default context menu just lets you zoom in, control the quality, access Flash settings, and do some other very generic and boring operations. But the YouTube menu lets you perform a whole bunch of additional actions, such as accessing the Speed Test page, stop downloading the video (useful when the video is embedded in an RSS feed), and displaying video info.

Incidentally, Vimeo has a similar menu -- which also lets you turn HD on and off, as well as do a few other things the YouTube menu doesn't allow, such as looping the video.

YouTube tip: Use the context menu for copying the embed code, and more originally appeared on Download Squad on Sun, 31 Oct 2010 09:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Did you know that YouTube offers a spiffy online version of Trivial Pursuit? It's surprisingly addictive, too!

Each round consists of three questions, and one "Bet on Me" card. The three questions are real trivia questions, which can be quite challenging:

• From Ghosts > Geography: Which U.S. landmark is said to be haunted by the ghost of Abraham Lincoln?
• Drums > Science and Nature: What type of animal is a red drum?
• Lost and Found > Entertainment: From what city did Oceanic Airlines Flight 815 depart when it crashed on a Pacific island in the television series Lost?

Tricky stuff, eh? I know! Note that I didn't write any of the answers so that I wouldn't spoil it for you. But the fourth card is the most fun, really; it's the Bet on Me card, which shows you a YouTube celebrity (think Tay Zonday) along with a question that they were asked. You have to guess whether or not they got the answer right.

You get chips (casino chips, not potato ones) every time you get an answer right or win a bet on a YouTube celeb. At the top of the board, you can see the overall tally - The People's Chips vs. YouTube Chips.

So far, The People are winning!

YouTube Trivial Pursuit is as addictive as the real thing originally appeared on Download Squad on Sat, 23 Oct 2010 11:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

YouTube Musicians Wanted expanded "worldwide" originally appeared on Download Squad on Fri, 22 Oct 2010 06:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

YouTube for Android 2.2 gets an update, becomes standalone app originally appeared on Download Squad on Fri, 22 Oct 2010 04:30:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Dragontape

Continue reading Dragontape now lets you embed your video mixtapes on Facebook and your blog

Dragontape now lets you embed your video mixtapes on Facebook and your blog originally appeared on Download Squad on Wed, 20 Oct 2010 17:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

At first, I thought that Dragontape had something to do with dragons, but sadly, it doesn't. It's more along the lines of "drag on tape," which means that you get a long, long timeline (or "tape") and you drag YouTube videos onto it.

The goal is to create a playlist, such as this staff pick playlist featuring street music. A playlist can be up to three hours long, which is a tad extreme if you ask me, but I guess some people could use the room for self-expression.

This write-up cannot possibly do Dragontape justice, because the interface has to be seen. Through the magic of advanced JavaScript, the timeline interface floats over the currently playing video with a low-fi scan line effect, and it looks very slick.

This beautiful presentation made me curious enough to rummage through the sources (mainly because I wanted to see if it was all Flash), and I discovered that they use Yahoo's YUI JavaScript Library. This has to be one of the most creative implementations I've seen yet, and it's well worth checking out if you like music videos (or just music).

After the jump, you can find a short demo video by Dragontape.

Continue reading Dragontape lets you create and listen to YouTube-based mixtapes

Dragontape lets you create and listen to YouTube-based mixtapes originally appeared on Download Squad on Wed, 06 Oct 2010 16:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

YTTM apparently stands for "YouTube Time Machine," although that's not specifically mentioned on the site. What it does is very easy to understand, though. You move a slider to a specific year between 1860 and 2010, and you get a bunch of YouTube videos related to that year. Yes, I said 1860 (that's not a typo).

Not all hits are spot-on, though. When I chose 1972, I got a video from 1970. So, I guess you could say YMMV with YTTM (sorry, couldn't help myself there). But for the most part, the hits are relevant. I think it just takes the year from the video's name on YouTube.

You can narrow your search down by categories, such as Video Games, Television, Commercials, Current Events, Sports, Movies, and Music. I'm afraid there are not many video game related videos from the 19th century, though.

One detail which annoyed me was that toggling a filter reloads the entire page. It's as if AJAX was never invented - you click a button, and suddenly the whole page blinks out and reloads. I hope they get that fixed.

Notwithstanding this one quirk, YTTM is a nice way to travel through time. Just dial in a year, and watch the videos. When you've had enough of a certain clip, you can just click Watch next video and be transported to the next one - no searching involved.

YouTube Time Machine helps you reminisce with YouTube videos from a certain year originally appeared on Download Squad on Thu, 23 Sep 2010 15:30:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

'Ask an Iraqi leader,' courtesy of YouTube originally appeared on Download Squad on Wed, 22 Sep 2010 07:30:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

YouTube begins trial of live streaming platform, crowd goes wild originally appeared on Download Squad on Mon, 13 Sep 2010 04:30:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

YouTube adds free, full-length movies originally appeared on Download Squad on Fri, 27 Aug 2010 08:50:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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dirpy Studio is a slick way to turn YouTube clips into MP3 downloads originally appeared on Download Squad on Wed, 18 Aug 2010 10:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

It turns out people don't like clutter. Surprise! Not that YouTube's interface is all that cluttered, but sometimes I just want to watch my video without having to see it in full screen.

Well, it turns out that there's a whole genre of websites which specialize in removing all the crud and leaving the video: in other words, they generate spartan pages with your video embedded right into them, on a white or black background.

I found all three of these on the excellent MakeUseOf, which never fails as a source for a ton of cool web-related news and tools. Here goes:

• ViewPure gives you a short link, and a blank/white background. What I like about it is that it also provides a text box for creating a new page; other sites only give you a bookmarklet which you're supposed to click while on the page for the video you want to watch. Very nice.
• Silentube gives you a bookmarklet, but it actually worked also when I just appended the video URL to Silentube's URL, although it claimed that "Seemes something went wrong". If you're into bookmarklets, Silentube is a nice one.
• Quietube is apparently a fierce competitor of Silentube (at least if you go by the name). It has one-upped its rival, since my URL-pasting trick worked just fine on this one. You also get a bookmarklet which you can just click when you're on the video page.

One thing I would like each of these sites to do -- that they currently don't -- is to take the highest-quality video from the site, or at least let me choose the quality. I suspect that if I use the bookmarklet they display whatever quality I am currently watching, though.

These are particularly handy when you want to send someone a link to a video, and you want to show them just the video so they can focus on how hilarious/interesting it is.

Three simple ways to watch YouTube (and other) videos with no distractions originally appeared on Download Squad on Mon, 16 Aug 2010 12:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Continue reading AOL Lifestream continues to evolve with release of Google Chrome Extension

AOL Lifestream continues to evolve with release of Google Chrome Extension originally appeared on Download Squad on Fri, 13 Aug 2010 12:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

One evening, a while back, I put a bunch of eggs to boil and went back into my room. Over an hour later, when smoke started seeping in from under the door, I remembered with a start that I completely forgot about the eggs. Bursting out of my room into the smoke-filled apartment, I made my way to the stove and shut it off. Of course, not only were the eggs ruined, but the whole place reeked of smoke for days later, even after I've ventilated the heck out of it.

Had I used EggWatchers at the time, this would not have happened! Admittedly, there are lots of other egg timers around, but this is one of the nicest versions I've seen.

You start off by specifying whether your egg is medium or large, straight from the fridge or room temperature, and whether you'd like it "squidgy" (their word, not mine) or firm. As you walk through the wizard, your little egg avatar animates accordingly. In the screenshot you can see a medium-sized egg, straight from the fridge (that's why it's wearing a beanie), that I want "firm" (hence the "tough-guy" look).

Once you feed all of these variables into EggWatchers, its advanced algorithm computes the recommended duration for cooking your egg. It then uses YouTube to find a video which is exactly as long as it would take for your egg to be ready.

You then go drop your egg in the boiling water, come back to the computer, hit start the timer and watch a completely random YouTube video. When the video is done, that's exactly the right time for you to go enjoy your perfectly-boiled egg. Ahh, the Internet is a magical place!

[via MakeUseOf]

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EggWatchers uses the power of YouTube to help you time the perfect hard-boiled egg originally appeared on Download Squad on Sun, 01 Aug 2010 10:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

YouTube extends videos to 15 minutes, launches 15 Minutes of Fame contest originally appeared on Download Squad on Fri, 30 Jul 2010 16:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

YouTube's shiny new HTML5 embed code is now live originally appeared on Download Squad on Mon, 26 Jul 2010 15:10:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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YouTube's mobile site gets a new look, beats up on native YouTube apps originally appeared on Download Squad on Thu, 08 Jul 2010 12:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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YouTube's new Leanback: one-click online video for the lazy TV crowd originally appeared on Download Squad on Thu, 08 Jul 2010 11:25:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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YouTube comment exploit leads to copypasta vandalism originally appeared on Download Squad on Sun, 04 Jul 2010 10:25:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.