Australia Blog
News and rising stars from YouTube Australia
More choice for users: unlisted videos
Tuesday, 15 June 2010
Melinda teaches high school in the Bay Area and recently reached out to us with a problem. Her students just finished a video history project that she wanted to share with their parents and classmates. But she was concerned about posting the videos publicly because she didn’t want the whole world to find them (frankly, neither did her students). Melinda told us YouTube’s private sharing options -- a 25-person cap that’s limited to other YouTube users -- didn’t work for her. She needed a better option to privately share her students’ talent.
Later today, we'll be rolling out a new choice that will help Melinda and other people like her: unlisted videos.
With this feature, you can mark your videos as "unlisted." This means only people who have the link to the video will be able to watch it. It won’t appear in any of YouTube’s public pages, in search results, on your personal channel or on the browse page. It’s a private video, except you don’t need a YouTube account to watch it and there is no limit to the number of people who can view it. You’ll get a link when you upload the video and then it’s up to you to decide who to share it with. Unlisted is the perfect option for that class project, video from last summer’s family reunion or your secret Broadway audition tape.
Just remember, the video can be viewed by anyone with the link, so only give it to people you trust! For more information, check out our
Help Center page
.
Jen Chen, Software Engineer, recently watched “
8-Bit Dr. Horrible (Act 1)
”
Aussie blogger sees video as future of fashion journalism
Friday, 21 May 2010
This year, Australian fashion blogger Helen Lee of
SASSYBELLA.com
turned to YouTube to better share her experiences at Rosemount Australian Fashion Week. Here, she authors a post about what she sees as the future of fashion journalism -- and it involves lots of video.
My name is Helen Lee and I am a fashion blogger. I first started creating websites and blogs as a 16-year-old; I came to video when I was gifted a Flip HD video recorder last year. I’ve been experimenting with the medium ever since.
This year’s Rosemount Australian Fashion Week was my fourth experience at the event, but my first as a 100% independent fashion blogger. I was assigned front row seats at shows for Alex Perry, Camilla and Marc, and up-and-comers Sara Phillips and Saint Augustine Academy. That’s pretty good for a blogger -- the fashion industry is still coming into the digital space.
So what about my coverage? I turned to video this year because I wanted to
show my readers exactly what I saw
:
My videos were undoubtedly amateur and entirely dependent on where I managed to squeeze into a seat (or stand), but it was an important part of my coverage and really enhanced the online ‘brand’ of SASSYBELLA.com.
I wasn’t the only one doing the video thing this year, either. Sponsors like ghd were filming their own clips for their website and Fairfax websites were live streaming certain shows throughout the week on the Sydney Morning Herald website. This is a new trend I noticed during the international shows in February/March: most of the major fashion houses live streamed their fashion shows from their websites. (Burberry even held 3D screenings across the globe to a select group of fashion editors).
Even more interesting was seeing
a guy standing in the media pit holding a laptop
open to
live stream/record the Camilla and Marc show
. It was inspiring to see more people and media outlets explore the video and video streaming options during RAFW, especially in fashion, when watching an item of clothing move is far more powerful than seeing a still image. One blogger said she was granted instant access to a show after the designers heard she wanted to live stream it.
A sign of Australian “gate keepers” opening the door to exposing their clients to as many eye balls as possible, and not just the “right” magazine editors and newspaper journalists? I certainly hope so.
At five years, two billion views per day and counting
Tuesday, 18 May 2010
Five years ago, after months of late nights, testing and preparation, YouTube’s founders launched the first beta version of YouTube.com in May, with a simple mission: give anyone a place to easily upload their videos and share them with the world. Whether you were an aspiring filmmaker, a politician, a proud parent, or someone who just wanted to connect with something bigger, YouTube became the place where you could broadcast yourself.
Over time, these aspirations have created a vibrant and inspiring community that helped transform a murmur of interest into something far greater than any of us ever could have imagined. Today, thanks to you, our site has crossed another milestone: YouTube exceeds over two billion views a day. That’s nearly double the prime-time audience of all three major U.S. television networks combined.
What started as a site for bedroom vloggers and viral videos has evolved into a global platform that supports HD and 3D, broadcasts entire sports seasons live to 200+ countries. We bring feature films from Hollywood studios and independent filmmakers to far-flung audiences. Activists document social unrest seeking to transform societies, and leading civic and political figures stream interviews to the world.
To celebrate our birthday, today we’re launching the
YouTube Five Year channel
. There, you’ll find the “My YouTube Story” project which features people from all over describing how YouTube has changed or shaped their lives.
Please add your own story to the mix! You can upload your video
here
-- and it may be selected to appear on the channel’s video wall or map.
The channel also hosts an interactive timeline containing some of the most important moments and memes in our short history. It was tough to pick -- and just scratches the surface of all the amazing things that have happened on YouTube over the years. What else? We’ve asked a handful of luminaries like
Conan O’Brien
,
Vint Cerf
and
Katie Couric
to curate playlists showcasing their favorite videos on the subjects they know best. You can also check out
our Infographic here
; it contains lots of neat facts and figures.
Since we never could have predicted all that happened in YouTube’s first five years, we certainly can’t imagine what the future will look like. But we do know there’s a lot more to be done. For instance, we want to make it even easier for you to sort through and find the videos that matter to you. Although the average user spends 15 minutes a day on YouTube, that’s tiny compared to the five hours a day people spend watching TV. Clearly, we need to give you more reason to watch more videos! And we want to give you all the tools and support to make YouTube both your career and your community. After all, this is only the beginning of the video revolution. We’re just getting started.
The YouTube Team
Beyond the Boundary: The final four
Tuesday, 20 April 2010
And then there were four. Mumbai Indians, imperious and conquering, made it to the semi finals first. Royal Challengers Bangalore got through the day they beat Rajasthan Royals. And on Sunday, April 18, two teams - Chennai Super Kings and the Deccan Chargers - made the finals in contrasting styles.
In a
match
played at high altitude, where the thin air helps the ball travel further, MS Dhoni produced a clutch of big shots, scoring 28 of the last 29 runs and powering Chennai Super Kings to an incredible victory over Kings XI Punjab. Needing 195 to win, Raina, Badrinath and then Dhoni combined to put together a match-winning performance.
The Deccan Chargers, on the other hand,
combined
well on the field as a team to defend a par total of 145 against the Delhi Daredevils. Andrew Symonds stroked a powerful 50 but none of the other batsmen did much. On the field though, the Chargers defended with enthusiasm to take the remaining spot.
Now to the sudden death stage. An inch here, a misfield there, could settle things. Performances in the league stage won’t matter anymore. All teams are now equal.
Posted by Sajith Sivanandan
(When not attempting to get selected for IPL in the year 2020, Sajith works at Google Singapore)
Beyond the Boundary: The business end of the tournament
Monday, 12 April 2010
For me, one of the best features of the IPL is it’s format. This is a tournament that rewards consistency; only the teams with the most consistent record make it to the finals. Most cricket tournaments split teams into groups with a couple of matches in the league stage, then feature knock out stages or in some cases the (rather grandly-named) Super League stage. Almost all these tournaments fail to reward the most consistent teams with more opportunities. In contrast, the format of the IPL ensures that the four most consistent teams get the opportunity to fight for the big prize. With each team playing the other teams at home and away (for a total of 14 matches for each team), only the teams that play well throughout can hope to make it to the finals.
Just 11 matches
remain
in league play. Incredibly, seven of the eight teams have a chance of making it to the semi finals. Every match causes a change in the table. Last Friday, when the Kings XI Punjab beat the Mumbai Indians, it meant that the top four were still undecided.
Royal Challengers Bangalore won against the Kolkata Knight Riders this past Saturday and gave themselves - along with the Mumbai Indians - a great chance of qualifying for the semi finals.
It’s possible every match now will see a new team enter or exit the top four. Net run rates could well enter the equation. It’s all set up for a final week of the league stage in IPL 3.
Posted by Sajith Sivanandan
(When not attempting to get selected for IPL in the year 2020, Sajith works at Google Singapore)
Beyond the Boundary: In the blink of an eye
Tuesday, 6 April 2010
6, 4, 1, 4, 6, 4, 4. In seven balls Harbhajan Singh scored 29 runs against Deccan Chargers and changed the course of the match for the Mumbai Indians. In the next over, he plundered four 4s in consecutive balls and helped his team turn out a match winning total.
Fast forward to the match between Kings XI Punjab and the Royal Challengers Bangalore on April 2. Bangalore needed two runs a ball to win the match or 48 runs in 24 balls to be precise. 6, 4, 1, 1, 6, 5, 2 - 25 runs got taken off that Bret Lee over and the match was effectively over.
In 20-20 cricket the old cliche of “you can’t blink an eye” really does ring true. Six balls can bring about three wickets or 25 runs and just like that the game changes. One minute the asking rate looks like a mountain and three minutes later, it could be down to just a run a ball or less.
In the week just past, IPL fans enjoyed watching the YouTube highlights of the matches between Royal Challengers Bangalore versus the Chennai Super Kings and Mumbai Indians versus the Kolkata Knight Riders the most. Hope you did too.
Posted by Sajith Sivanandan
(When not attempting to get selected for IPL in the year 2020, Sajith works at Google Singapore)
TEXTp saves YouTube bandwidth, money
Thursday, 1 April 2010
It’s great news that there are
24 hours of video uploaded to YouTube every minute
, we
support 1080p
and
HD uploads are rising quickly
, but that’s also meant increasing bandwidth costs cutting into our bottom line. And so, in our drive to keep expenses under control, we’ve decided that April 1 is the perfect day to take the important step of offering a new way to experience YouTube: text-only mode, or TEXTp.
TEXTp is the result of months of intense transcoding efforts by our engineers, who toiled for weeks to ensure that a large chunk of videos on the platform could be reduced to their most basic elements. By replacing the images in the video with a series of letters and numbers, the videos are far less taxing on our system -- and have the added benefit of promoting literacy!
To give it a whirl, make sure you have the latest Flash player (10.0) and click
here
. Or you can select “TEXTp” from the pulldown menu on most videos, as so:
You can also append &textp=fool to most video URLs to test it out.
For every person who selects TEXTp and keeps it on while you watch a video, you save YouTube $1 a second, resulting in potentially billions of dollars of savings for us. So if you care about YouTube, you’ll use TEXTp today.
Patrick Pichette, SVP and Chief Financial Officer, Google
Labels
accessibility
2
australia
3
birthday
2
captioning
1
channels
1
citizen reporting
1
comments
1
competition
6
cooking
1
creativity
6
creators
1
design
2
fashion
1
festival
1
fitness
1
frontrow
1
google+
1
homepage
1
howto
1
improvements
1
IPL
4
journalism
1
life in a day
3
live
3
livestreaming
2
mapmysummer
1
music
12
music moderator katy perry
1
musicians wanted
1
nextup
1
nonprofit
1
partner program
1
playlists
1
product update
4
promoted videos
1
ratings
1
safety
2
SBS sport cycling
1
science and technology
2
sessions
2
sport
2
summer
6
sydney
1
symphony
8
tropfest
1
updates
1
vidcon
1
vivid
1
vlogger
1
your film festival
1
YouTube
24
YouTube Australia Blog
255
YouTube insights
2
youtube music
2
YouTube Partners
2
YouTube Partnerships
2
Archive
2014
January
YouTube Nation: Discover Something Great, Every Day
2013
May
March
2012
December
November
October
September
August
July
June
May
April
March
February
January
2011
December
November
October
September
August
July
June
May
April
March
February
January
2010
December
November
October
August
July
June
May
April
March
February
January
2009
December
November
October
September
August
July
June
May
April
March
February
January
2008
December
November
October
September
August
July
June
May
April
March
February
January
2007
December
November
Feed
YouTube
on
Follow @youtube
Follow
Learn more in the
YouTube Help Center
.
Follow