youtube
Shrink That Link: Boosting Brevity With URL Shorteners
On the short-messaging service Twitter, space is at a premium: You’ve got 140 characters to make your point, and you probably don’t want to waste half of it on a super-sized link to your latest YouTube obsession. There’s an increasingly popular quick fix: a free URL shortener. On one of these Web sites, you can plug in a long Internet address, known as a “URL,” and it will assign you a much shorter one that is easier to post in e-mails, on Twitter, Facebook or anywhere else. Some link-shrinkers let you personalize the new address with a unique phrase such as your name.
20 Years After Tiananmen, China Stifles Online Dissent
alphadogg writes with this snippet from Network World: “The Internet has brought new hope to reformists in China since the country crushed pro-democracy protests in the capital 20 years ago. But as dissidents have gone high-tech, the government in turn has worked to restrict free speech on the Internet, stifling threats to its rule that could grow online. China has stepped up monitoring of dissidents and Internet censorship ahead of June 4, when hundreds were killed in 1989 after Beijing sent soldiers to its central Tiananmen Square to disperse protestors. The authoritarian government wants to ensure that date and other sensitive anniversaries this year pass without public disturbances, observers say. In recent months, China has blocked YouTube and closed two blog hosting sites, bullog.cn and fatianxia.com, known for their liberal content.”
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
Susan Boyle: A Web Star Born, a Web Opportunity Lost?
The final act of the year’s biggest pop culture sensation will not be seen on TVs, beamed out to multiplexes or heard much on the airwaves. Well, at least not in America. The phenomenon of Susan Boyle, seen by millions of Britons on ITV’s “Britain’s Got Talent,” has been a worldwide digital storm played out in sporadic installments on the Internet. Videos of her first performance in April — “I Dreamed a Dream” from the musical “Les Miserables” — have been watched more than 220 million times, according to Internet video research firm Visible Measures.
Cuban: Internet video progress ‘disappointing’
Little has happened in 10 years, Cuban said, in part because YouTube focused on ubiquity over monetization.
Wikipedia + Youtube + Flickr = ?
Have you ever been annoyed by the fact that Wikipedia has a wealth of textual information but no videos and hardly any pictures? Well, you are not alone. The good news is that with this new service, that will become a thing of the past.
Wikipedia + Youtube + Flickr = ?
Have you ever been annoyed by the fact that Wikipedia has a wealth of textual information but no videos and hardly any pictures? Well, you are not alone. The good news is that with this new service, that will become a thing of the past.
Rates Lowered For Streamed Music In the UK
An anonymous reader tips the news that the UK’s music collection society, PRS, has announced a new pricing plan it hopes may entice YouTube and Pandora back to the UK market. Pandora pulled out at the start of 2008, and YouTube began removing content from the view of UK users last March. “From 1 July 2009, firms will have to pay 0.085p for each track streamed, down from the previous rate of 0.22p. [The] head of the music streaming service We7 told BBC News he welcomed the new charges. ‘It’s brilliant. Not so much the rates but the realization by the PRS that things have to change in the digital world. Till now it’s felt like they were not listening,’ he said. … ‘They [the PRS] are getting in touch with the reality of the digital world.’ [The PRS's managing director said] ‘We’ve laid our stall out and listened to everyone who would engage with us. We’ve consulted with the 25 firms that represent 97% of our revenue over the past six months and have been given opinions from many others. We need to ensure the music artists are paid for their work, but we also wanted to make sure that the framework was in place to enable the digital market to grow.’”
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
YouTube Yanks Thousands of Porn Videos
The video site is cleaning up its servers after a coordinated attack that involved uploading thousands of porn videos in protest.
Hulu, YouTube Set To Make Headway In The UK
If Hulu and YouTube have their way, it may not be long before UK citizens are spending a whole lot more time in front of their computer screens. One fresh report says Hulu will possibly launch in the UK this September, while another claims YouTube is close to sealing some deals over full-length UK TV shows.
Every Minute 20 Hours Worth of Video Uploaded to Youtube
Time Magazine recently called YouTube one of the biggest tech failures of the past decade, which was hilarious. Hilarious in that the site is by far and away the most popular site for video on the web, and has revolutionized the way we view videos, period. Today brings another amazing stat about the site: Every single minute, over 20 hours of ….
