Judging by this screenshot taken by an IE6 user who was watching some videos on YouTube, it appears the Google company will be phasing out support for the browser shortly. I don’t have Internet Explorer 6 installed on my computer, so I can’t verify this first hand, but illogical it seems not and a simple Twitter search shows multiple people confirming the news. Heck, some are even downright ecstatic over the news.

The online video behemoth is pointing to ‘modern’ browsers like Google Chrome (twice on the same page even, unsurprisingly), Internet Explorer 8 and Firefox 3.5 as alternatives.

With the impending move, YouTube follows in the footsteps of that other Web 2.0 poster child, Digg, which recently hinted at wanting to cut support for the browser too. Digg’s User Experience Architect Mark Trammell at the time wrote that the site is strongly considering removing essential features like digging and commenting for IE6 users. He explained that while IE6 users make up around 5% of site traffic, it only accounts for 1% of diggs, buries, and comments.

YouTube so far hasn’t officially communicated about the desire to drop support for IE6, but it’s conceivable that like Digg it would rather have its developers spend time optimizing the service for newer, better browsers than wasting man hours on the oft-despised Microsoft browser. We recently reported that Internet Explorer is losing market share to Firefox and Safari at a rapid pace.

Source: TechCrunch

Continuing its quest to bridge the world’s of broadcast television and the Web, Syndicaster is adding several online distribution options for local TV stations, including the ability to publish video clips to YouTube, AOL (via Brightcove), Yahoo and other sites. Syndicaster is an online editing and video-clip management service that allows TV stations to any broadcast news clip and repurpose it for the Web by publishing it to their own Websites or through its sister service ClipSyndicate (both Syndicaster and ClipSyndicate are divisions of Critical Media).

Now Syndicaster is adding one-click distribution options to the major video sites so that local TV affiliates or station groups can post their videos to AOL Money & Finance or their YouTube channel, and manage it all from one place. One feature that TV customers will appreciate is the ability to set embargo windows for each service, allowing a TV station to publish hot news immediately to its own site, then 24 or 36 hours later to video partner sites where it makes the most money, and then maybe finally to YouTube.

Syndicaster has also recently added an on-location feature which allows TV reporters and crews to upload clips directly from wherever they are capturing the footage, and making that footage available as Web video clips even if it never gets airtime. Affiliated stations can also go to Syndicaster to find footage and use it either on the Web or on-air, depending on their arrangements with each other. When that airplane crashed in Buffalo, NY recently, a local station put all of its footage on Syndicaster, and other affiliated stations around the country used it to grab video footage for their own on-air reports.

Syndicaster charges a flat subscription fee of about $850 a month per TV station or news organization. With 60 paying customers, that comes to about $50,000 a month a few months after launch, with a lot of runway for growth. Syndicaster is exploring ways to bring its online editing and video distribution platform to consumers, but so far it is stumped in that area. CEO Sean Morgan admits:

Look, I don’t know how to make money on the consumer. I’d like to make money on this. We are getting great traction from broadcasters. Bringing it to newspapers is obviously the next path forward.

In May, the company plans to expand its reach to newspaper sites with Syndicaster for Newspapers. As news organizations of all stripes make video a bigger component of their online offerings, Syndicaster is hoping to become the industry standard for ingesting, editing, and distributing these videos. Maybe the A.P. should look into it.

Source: TechCrunch – by Erick Schonfeld

Disney has agreed to post short-form video content on YouTube, a deal that might come as a bit of a disappointment to those who had hoped to watch full-length ESPN sporting events or episodes of ABC’s “Gray’s Anatomy” on YouTube.

But those people shouldn’t lose heart. This could be the start of something bigger.

Disney announced on Monday that it would launch “multiple ad-supported channels featuring short-form content from ESPN and the Disney/ABC Television Group.” Under the terms of the deal, Disney can sell its own ads that run with its content if the company chooses. Disney’s material will begin showing up at YouTube sometime in April.

PaidContent broke the news. The news blog’s Staci Kramer wrote that YouTube and Disney are discussing long-form content but that a deal is not yet done. Hulu, the video portal owned by NBC Universal and News Corp., is trying to secure Disney material.

What’s interesting is that it appears YouTube’s long-form deal would eliminate Hulu’s chances of landing full-length Disney shows, according to PaidContent.

CNET reported late last year that YouTube had shed its image in Hollywood as an enemy to copyright content and was in a position to obtain long-form content. MGM has already begun posting a few feature films on YouTube.

As for the short-form deal with Disney, I’m not sure having ESPN and ABC channels advances the ball much. Many of Disney’s competitors already operate YouTube channels. The move appears to be more of a test. YouTube’s hopes of becoming more Hulu-esque and becoming a platform for full-length features and TV shows could be threatened if the big film studios and TV networks retreat from the Web. Much has been written lately about whether the major entertainment conglomerates are being pressured by cable companies to cut back the amount of ad-supported content they post online.

The cable companies say this is contributing to the decline of cable subscribers.

Another concern of network and studio suits is whether it’s possible to generate a reasonable return from Web ads while managing to avoid overloading viewers with commercials.

Some studios are also concerned about YouTube’s ability to protect full-length features from piracy. An entertainment industry source said some studio heads worry that YouTube lacks any copy protections on its video streams. The source said once the DRM issues are solved, YouTube could be “a real competitor for the likes of Hulu.”

verybody’s doing it. Even YouTube has succumbed to Twitter mania. Below every video if you click on the “Share” link you will find three options: MySpace, Facebook, and now Twitter. You can expand the box for even ore sharing options, but those are the main three and Twitter was just recently added.

Clicking on the Twitter button opens a pop-up window that takes you to your Twitter account and fills in a Tweet telling your followers to “check out this video,” along with the title and URL. The URL is not shortened, but YouTube is working on that. (Youtube URLs are short anyway, so it is not a huge issue). Adding Twitter as one of the key sharing options is a no-brainer. Now, if they could actually embed the videos in the Twitter stream like you can on Facebook and MySpace, that would be something.

YouTube announced some other tweaks today as well. The upload status bar is now fully rolled out. You can watch lectures and educational videos on YYouTube EDU, and it updated its mobile landing page and simplified the process of uploading a video from your phone to YouTube.

As of Monday, YouTube is unavailable in China, an unexplained move apparently made in response to the existence of a video of Chinese soldiers beating Tibetan monks, says the BBC.

Leslie Harris, president of the Center for Democracy and Technology, responded that:

China’s actions fail to live up to international norms. China’s apparent blocking of YouTube is at odds with the rule of law and the right to freedom of expression. Anytime a country limits or takes down content online , it must be forthright and specific about its actions and do so only in narrowly defined circumstances consistent with international human rights and the rule of law.

Google declined to criticize China, saying only: “We don’t know the reason for the block and are working to restore access to users in China as quickly as possible,” in the words of spokesperson Scott Rubin.

The Committee to Protect Journalists criticized the move, calling on China to explain itself and remove the block immediately.

We are deeply concerned that millions of Chinese Internet users have been deprived of an important information resource without being told why,” CPJ Deputy Director Robert Mahoney said. “The blocking of YouTube is a sign of escalating restrictions on media freedom that we have witnessed this month in China. Authorities must explain why YouTube is inaccessible.”

And the Global Network Initiative made a similar statement:

Freedom of opinion and expression is a human right and guarantor of human dignity. The right to freedom of opinion and expression includes the freedom to hold opinions without interference and to seek, receive and impart information and ideas through any media and regardless of frontiers.

Broad public access to information and the freedom to create and communicate ideas online are critical to the advancement of knowledge, economic opportunity, and human potential.

The video of the attacks on the monks was graphic and brutal, according to the BBC’s report.

The graphic video was released by Tibetan exiles and showed hundreds of uniformed Chinese troops swarming through a Tibetan monastery. It included footage of a group of troops beating a man with batons.

In another scene a group of men, including a monk, were beaten, kicked and choked, while they lay on the ground. Some had their hands tied and appeared to be unconscious.

The date and locations of the film have not been confirmed.

Without acknowledging any action, China said it was acting legally.

We encourage the active use of the internet but also manage the internet according to law.

Source: ZDNet

Gmail has four new items in its labs section, all of which enhance the links people have included in their messages. You’re now able to flip on support for Yelp, Flickr, Picasa Web albums, and YouTube. Doing so will turn a link from one of those sites into a full-quality preview of the content you’d find on that site.

For instance, if someone has included a YouTube link, it simply shows up at the bottom of a message, just as if they had included it as an attachment. (You are less likely to get Rickrolled, that way.) The same goes for Yelp reviews, and individual photos and albums from Picasa and Flickr.

Gmail had previously done this for information embedded within messages, including package-tracking numbers, dates, and addresses, all of which led to a related Google service. However with the addition of Yelp and Flickr, Google is opening this up to third parties.

In fact, the official Gmail blog is encouraging interested parties to submit their own site to be added as a preview, which could lead to a whole new subcategory within Gmail labs.

With this addition, it also brings the tally of Gmail labs add-ons past 40. It may be time for a better way to sift through all that information, especially if the company intends to add more of these site preview options. In a meeting I had with Google back in December, Gmail product manager Todd Jackson had said this was something that was being considered.

YouTube has just launched an expansion to its Annotations feature that gives users the ability to invite their friends to help spruce up their videos using text boxes, labels, and interactive buttons. In the past I’ve been somewhat critical of these annotations, primarily because they can be really annoying in the wrong hands. But tonight YouTube has also introduced a oft-requested feature that will turn off all annotations entirely, allowing users to peruse videos in their unadulterated form if they wish to. You can find the option under your account’s ‘Playback Settings’ menu.

YouTube originally launched annotations last June, and introduced a new interface in January that made the process more intuitive. Tonight’s new sharing feature presents video uploaders with a link that they can share with friends to invite them to help annotate their video. Anyone who accesses the video through the special link will be able to use the same annotation interface, though the original video owner will retain final control over what appears (they can also reset the link should it become too widespread).

For tight circles of friends this will probably be a welcome addition and could lead to some fun interaction, though if the sharable link got posted to a message board or public chat room I can imagine a video getting cluttered up pretty quickly (though you can always delete these later). In any case, it’s nice to see that YouTube isn’t resting on its laurels as it continues to expand its feature set, and is willing to implement user requests like that ‘off’ button.

Source: TechCrunch – by Jason Kincaid

On YouTube, Vidal posted a humorous video tribute to John Williams, the man who scored the soundtracks for such blockbuster films as Indiana Jones, and Star Wars. In his clip he included some of Williams’ music. By now, everybody knows that YouTube removes videos that violate copyright law. What’s different about Vidal’s work getting pulled is that when he posted it in October, he was permitted to use Warner’s music.

Until last month, YouTube had an agreement with Warner Music–one of the four largest recording companies–that allowed video creators to include the label’s content in their clips. Last month, talks to renew the deal broke down and that means YouTube and its users no longer have access to Warner’s library. For this reason, the case is much different than YouTube’s high-profile fight with Viacom or run-of-the-mill piracy that once flourished on the site.

In 2007, Viacom and YouTube failed to come to terms on a licensing deal and Viacom requested that YouTube pull its content. In that case, there was no prior agreement. Most of the people who posted Viacom’s films or TV shows to YouTube did so without authorization. In this situation, YouTube fans used Warner Music’s songs for two years with the label’s blessing. Now, through no fault of their own, the videos that YouTube users made in good faith are being yanked.

“I don’t understand who I’m harming,” said Frank Stallone, a 41-year-old former DJ who is quick to point out that he is not the less-famous brother of the box office draw. Stallone’s video was removed for using 45 seconds from “Forget Me Nots,” a 1982 song from Patrice Rushen. “If anything, people are hearing the 45-second tease they haven’t heard in a while and they’ll want to go out and buy the song,” he said.

Warner Music declined to comment, but YouTube had this to say: “While we work with music labels and publishers to keep music on the site, sometimes our negotiations don’t pan out,” said a spokesman for the company. “In those cases, we try to give people options when they receive a copyright claim. Instead of automatically blocking videos, we give uploaders the choice to dispute the claim (in the case of Fair Use, for example), use our AudioSwap tool to replace the track with one from our library of pre-cleared music, or to replace the video with a new version with no sound.”

If nothing else, the situation serves as a warning to those who think that because YouTube obtains rights to music or films one day, the agreements will last forever. That’s just not how these deals work.

That hasn’t stopped some YouTube’s fans from posting angry videos denouncing the situation at YouTube. Most of the protest videos take aim at Warner and the other three top recording companies. While all four of the big labels are in discussions about renewing licensing agreements, Warner is the only one scuffling publicly with YouTube.

In fact, sources close to the situation say YouTube is close to finalizing a new agreement with one of Warner’s chief rivals: Sony Music.

If nothing else, the situation illustrates how Web services and entertainment companies are learning hard lessons as they cover uncharted ground. It’s doubtful that Warner Music or YouTube intended to alienate their customers. Presumably Warner Music wants more concessions from YouTube and the Web’s No. 1 video site wants to pay less. What they likely didn’t consider when they penned their initial contract was what would happen to users if they failed to agree on a new deal.

Vidal, a 22-year-old from the Canadian province of Ontario, is more than happy to help them understand.

Vidal makes his living by creating YouTube videos. He’s a member of the company’s YouTube Partners program. This allows him to sell some of the advertisements that accompany his clips and pocket the money. He says that his videos see about 3.4 million to 4 million views per month and his YouTube is his only source of income. As for how much he makes, Vidal only will say it’s enough for him to live comfortably.

Vidal hit the jackpot with his tribute to Williams. YouTube featured it on the site’s front door. He says for a time the clip was generating a million views each day and was nominated for a “People’s Choice Award” at CBS, parent company of CNET News.

But on January 18, Vidal’s cash cow went down.

YouTube sent him a notice that said Warner Music had claimed his video had infringed on the label’s copyright. Vidal doesn’t dispute that the label owns the rights to the music he used. “I’ll share the money I made with them but I just want my video back up.”

But he has so many questions about whether his video truly violates copyright law and if so, what part of the video infringes? That’s the other problem raised by the quarrel between Warner Music and YouTube. When users are dragged into it, there’s few places to get answers. Vidal said he called Warner Music and talked to about half a dozen people in the eight days since his video was removed. He has yet to hear back why exactly the video was pulled down or whether he and the record company can strike a separate deal.

To its credit, Viacom set up a support hot line to help answer questions and address disputes when it began pulling content from YouTube.

That’s what Stallone, the former DJ, says he needs. He says he doesn’t think using 45 seconds of a song is breaking any law, but he doesn’t have anywhere to go to get legal help. Also, he said he was discouraged by some of the language in the takedown notice YouTube sent him. Specifically, this passage: “There are very few valid reasons for disputing a claim,” YouTube wrote in the notice. “Submitting an invalid dispute can result in penalties against your account.”

Stallone wants to know how he’s supposed to determine what an invalid dispute is?

YouTube users should not assume copyright holders are always correct when they accuse someone of a violation, according to Fred von Lohmann, senior attorney for the Electronic Frontier Foundation, a watchdog group that advocates for the rights of Internet users. In the Viacom case, for instance, the company acknowledged erring in a small number of cases.

In another case, a Pennsylvania woman is suing rocker Prince and Universal Music for accusing her of copyright violation for including a brief snippet of Prince’s music in a video of her baby. Universal and Prince dropped their copyright claims against the woman and her video has returned to YouTube.

YouTube on Monday unveiled a new feature which may prove useful to poor spellers or people suffering from “comment regret.”

Users of the Google-owned video-sharing site can new delete their own comments from the thread which accompanies videos on YouTube.

“Whether you misspelled “pwned,” back in the day when you were just a n00b to the internets, or you simply said something you wish you could take back — now you can remove your commentary at any time,” YouTube said in a blog post.

“Of course, we always encourage everyone to think things through before posting comments anywhere on the site. But if you don’t get it right the first time, now you can simply delete your comment,” it added.

To remove a comment, a user goes to the “Text Comments” section below a video and clicks on the “Remove” button.

Users can only delete comments they themselves have posted.

Source: Yahoo! – (AP)

“Today is a day that writes a new page in history for the Holy See,” Vatican Radio said in describing the launch of the site, http://www.youtube.com/vatican

The Vatican said that with the YouTube channel, it hoped to broaden and unite the pontiff’s audience — an estimated 1.4 billion people are online worldwide — while giving the Holy See better control over the pope’s Internet image.

The pontiff joins President Barach Obama, who launched an official White House channel on his inauguration day, as well as Queen Elizabeth, who went online with her royal YouTube channel in December 2007.

For the Vatican, it was the latest effort to keep up to speed with the rapidly changing field of communications and new media. For a 2,000-year-old institution known for being very set in its ways, it was something of a revolution.

At the same time, though, the pope warned he wasn’t embracing virtual communication without some reservation.

In his annual message for the World Day of Communication, Benedict praised as a “gift to humanity” the benefits of social networking sites such as Facebook and MySpace in forging friendships and understanding.

But he also warned that virtual socializing had its risks, saying “obsessive” online networking could isolate people from real social interaction and broaden the digital divide by further marginalizing people.

And he urged producers of new media to ensure the content respected human dignity and the “goodness and intimacy of human sexuality.”

The 81-year-old pope has been extremely wary of new media, warning about what he has called the tendency of entertainment media, in particular, to trivialize sex and promote violence.

But Monsignor Claudio Maria Celli, who heads the Vatican’s social communications office, said the pope fully approved of the YouTube channel, saying Benedict was “a man of dialogue” who wanted to engage with people wherever they were.

In that way, he is merely following in the footsteps of Pope John Paul II, who avidly used mass media and information technology to get out his message. John Paul oversaw the 1995 launch of the Vatican’s Web site, http://www.vatican.va which today includes virtual tours of the Vatican Museums and audio feeds from Vatican Radio.

While John Paul wasn’t a big computer user, he did tap out a very public online message in 2001, an apology for missionary abuses against indigenous peoples of the South Pacific.

Under John Paul, the Vatican also jumped on the text-messaging bandwagon, sending out daily texts with the pope’s prayer of the day.

The Vatican’s press office even alerted the world of John Paul’s April 2, 2005, death by sending an e-mail with a text-messaged alert to journalists.

Asked if Benedict himself surfs the Web, Celli quipped: “Knowing him, that he’s a man of research, a man who is up to speed with things, I’d have to respond affirmatively.”

One of his advisers, Cardinal Crescenzio Sepe, the archbishop of Naples, has gone a step further: He has his own Facebook profile. So does Cardinal Roger Mahony, archbishop of Los Angeles.

Celli said the Vatican was mulling over a similar presence on Facebook.

While the YouTube initiative was novel, it was in keeping with the Church’s history of using whatever means available to communicate: parchment, printing press, radio, television and Internet, noted Monsignor Robert Wister, professor of church history at the Immaculate Conception School of Theology at Seton Hall University in New Jersey.

What is significant about the YouTube initiative, he said, was that “it’s a way of communicating the church’s message beyond the members of the Church.”

In all, YouTube owner Google, Inc. counts over 1,000 institutions and other content producers that have their own channels. Google says hundreds of millions of online videos are watched every day on YouTube.

Celli said the Vatican was launching the channel in part to have some control over the pontiff’s online image, which he said already was being used on sites respectful of the papacy and others that are not.

A search of “Pope Benedict XVI” Friday turned up videos of a fake pope dancing and juggling and images of the real Benedict doctored to show him dressed as a superhero, Darth Vader and Yoda.

While there is little the Vatican can do legally to shut down blasphemous or pornographic sites, Celli said it can at least control the content of what it puts on its own channel.

“We just want to put the images at the disposition of the public in the correct way,” said Vatican spokesman Rev. Federico Lombardi.

He said no money exchanged hands to launch the channel and the Vatican wouldn’t earn anything with publicity.

He said for now, there were limited plans to use YouTube’s interactive options, saying the Vatican would receive messages but not respond to them.

The Vatican will update the YouTube site daily with papal news items produced by the Vatican television station CTV and Vatican Radio. They will be translated into Italian, German, English and Spanish.

Google’s managing director for media solutions, Henrique de Castro, said Google was working to ensure the site was available in China, where authorities occasionally block foreign news sites. On Friday it was, but church authorities have accused Beijing in the past of blocking the faithful’s access to the pontiff’s messages.

Source: Yahoo