Items tagged with Videos
Wherever you go in this world, there are some idiotic laws on the books. For example, in Georgia, it is illegal to carry an ice cream cone in your back pocket if it is Sunday (seriously, look it up). Not to be outdone, there is a truly baffling law in Malaysia that, if strictly enforced, would require anyone who uploads video to the web (including social media sites) to obtain an expensive license. This applies to both professional outlets and just regular citizens, the both of which are supposed to pay 50,000 MYR (~$11,725 in US currency) for a film license, even if just uploading a video to TikTok or Facebook. Whether the law would actually be enforced on individuals is not clear, but strictly...
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In an effort to expand its footprint in emerging markets, Netflix is rolling out a $3 monthly subscription plan that is for mobile devices only. This may or may not be a permanent thing—as of right now, the ultra-cheap mobile plan is part of a wider test as Netflix looks to gain ground in the streaming space with cheaper packages. The $3 per month plan shouldn't come as a surprise, not after Netflix CEO Reed Hastings recently indicated plans to test cheaper packages. Netflix is testing a mobile-only subscription for around $3 per month in a handful of countries worldwide, including Malaysia — just days after CEO Reed Hastings said it would experiment with cheaper packages in Asia...
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We have all been down the rabbit hole that is the Internet. It starts with a simple search, perhaps a lookup of the weather for the weekend, and then hours later you find yourself streaming "Little Joe Sure Can Sing" by Joe Ritchie, who you found out is actually Joe Pesci from Goodfellas fame. And woe is you if you trip into a endless sea of YouTube videos. How do you possibly climb out if that happens? We're not sure, to be honest, though Google is now throwing users a lifeline of sorts by showing you how much time you spend watching videos. This is a new feature that is rolling out to user profiles, available in the account menu starting today. The profile lets you know how long you've watched...
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The Alliance for Open Media was formed a little over two years ago in an effort to push a royalty-free video technology called AV1. It is backed by some pretty big names in tech, all of which are focused on reducing the storage footprint of online video through fancy compression technologies. Though several tech titans have thrown their weight behind the project, Apple has been noticeably absent, at least until now. Apple now shows up on the site as a founding member, joining the likes of Amazon, ARM, Cisco, Facebook, Google, IBM, Intel, Microsoft, Mozilla, Netflix, and NVIDIA. The company's previous absence was notable because pushing a standard is a lot more difficult if everyone isn't on board....
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Google is taking another step towards making the web browsing experience a more pleasant one, as it pertains to videos that annoyingly fire up automatically on some sites. Earmarked for a future build of its Chrome browser is the disabling of autoplay for videos that are accompanied by sound, Google announced in Chromium blog post. The idea is to make "autoplay more consistent with user expectations" while giving users more control over audio. The feature update will roll out with Chrome 64. Websites will still be allowed to automatically play videos, but only if the media is not accompanied by sound, of if the user has indicated an interest in the media. "This will allow autoplay to occur when...
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Terrorist organizations like ISIS often use social media services to deliver messages of hate and to recruit new members. To counter this, Google and its YouTube division have worked for years identifying videos that fall outside of the confines of YouTube's terms of service, but in acknowledging an "uncomfortable truth," Google said that "more needs to be done. Now." Following up on that sentiment, Google outlined a number of steps it is taking to identify and remove violent extremist videos. The effort starts with Google's underlying technology and presumably its fancy algorithms. Google vowed to increase its use of technology to identify extremists and terrorism-related videos. More specifically,...
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You won't find this feature advertised by YouTube (not yet, anyway), but there is a new Dark Mode being tested that is a bit easier on the eyes, especially at night. That's really the main purpose—while you may want to stay up late watching funny cat clips (or episodes of Two and a Half Geeks) on your 2-in-1 while nestled in bed, your significant other may not appreciate you illuminating the bedroom. Enabling Dark Mode is the cure you're looking for. As this feature is currently being tested, it is not widely available. It also seems to only work in Chrome starting with the most recent version (57 and up). If you want to try it out yourself, sign into YouTube and click on your avatar in the upper...
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Becoming a YouTube star is not just good for your ego, it can be financially rewarding. In some cases, that is an understatement—look at megastars such as Felix Kjellberg (better known as PewDiePie) and famed prankster Roman Atwood, both of which have earned millions through YouTube. If you have an interesting shtick, you can also make money on YouTube, though your videos will need to amass at least 10,000 hits before Google's video service will pay out. YouTube's change in policy regarding channel views and payouts is a direct result of its massive growth. According to YouTube, it is seeing cases where people are re-uploading original content that belongs to someone else in an effort to earn...
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It has been just over 12 years since three former PayPal employees got together and created YouTube, which they sold to Google less than two years later for $1.65 billion. In the time since then, YouTube has grown into an online broadcasting juggernaut. To put the service's popularity into perspective, YouTube announced its newest milestone—hitting 1 billion hours of watched video per day. That is a collective figure among all the eyeballs tuning into YouTube, whether it's to watch a funny collection of cat videos or to see New England Patriots quarterback Tom "The GOAT" Brady brush his teeth (among other activities showcasing Intel's 360 Replay technology). Whatever the case might be, a lot...
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YouTube is rolling out a new feature that is intended to help creators make money from their live streams while also giving them a way to connect with their most avid fans, ones that are willing to pay to be heard. The feature is called Super Chat. How it works is that fans can fork over funds to make their comments stand out from the crowd. The paid comments will also stick for a few hours. This is reminiscent of the beta Cheering feature on Twitch that allows viewers to pay real money to have their messages stand out from the crowd by purchasing and posting "Bits," which are essentially animated icons, or emoticons. YouTube is going in a slightly different direction. When a viewer purchases...
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Not only is New England Patriots quarterback Tom Brady the greatest of all time (GOAT) at his position—and no, that is not up for debate—he might also have a future in acting. We're not finished watching him pick apart opponents just yet, though the four-time Super Bowl champion did find time in his busy schedule to team up with Intel to create a 30-second ad spot showcasing the company's 360 Replay technology. If you're a sports fan, you may have seen this technology before, especially in basketball games. You certainly will if you tune into Super Bowl LI. The magic of presenting 360-degree replays requires a combination of multiple cameras—38 in all at Super Bowl LI in Houston—and advanced...
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There are some things that you can see from a mile way. A raging wildfire with billowing smoke, for example. Another is the inevitable demise of "Free Downloader for Netflix," an authorized third-party tool that enabled Netflix users to download movies and TV shows for offline viewing. The developers behind the tool have yanked it offline and are no longer developing future versions following a trademark complaint.While the third-party developers were not necessarily being malicious in developing such an app, Netflix would prefer to handle things on its own. The problem is that Netflix is taking a long time to give customers what they want. To Netflix's credit, it recently rolled out a download...
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Posting so-called stories to social media is one of the hottest trends right now, though it also means there exists some overlap. That's especially true with Instagram stories and Snapchat stories, two very similar things, though the former is introducing some nifty new tricks that will help it stand apart from the latter. One of those tricks is the use of links.Instagram is testing the ability to add links at the bottom of stories. Verified account holders can access the feature and add clickable URLs to their stories, which appear viewers can access by clicking on "See More" at the bottom or by swiping up. It's a clever and cleaner looking alternative to posting the actual link, some of which...
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Netflix may soon offer the ability to download movies and TV shows for offline viewing, giving subscribers a way to stay tuned to their favorite content when they're without an Internet connection, such as traveling to remote areas or bring a scary flick to watch at night while camping. It all sounds fun in theory, though in practice, you might not be able to use it. Ted Sarandos, Netflix's chief content officer, said the focus for offline viewing is on developing territories. Subscribers living in the United States, which happens to be the biggest market Netflix serves, may not have access to offline viewing right away, if at all. "Now as we've launched in more territories … They all have different...
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It's pretty remarkable how popular Snapchat has become. That hasn't gone unnoticed by the tech community at large—Facebook tried on at least two occasions to buy Snapchat, first for a whopping $1 billion then again for a staggering $3 billion, both which were turned down. Now Apple appears to want in on the action, though instead of making a bid for Snapchat, it wants to build its own version.Citing people familiar with Apple's strategy, Bloomberg says the Cupertino outfit wants to develop a video sharing and editing app similar to Snapchat as part of a broader mandate to focus on integrating social networking programs within its mobile products. Apple's taken notice of the success that companies...
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As the world's most popular social media platform, Facebook is heavily invested in technologies that amp the experience, one of which is video. You've probably noticed an abundance of notifications for live videos, after which point they become pre-recorded posts. Videos are becoming a central part of Facebook, though Facebook must be careful not to make them intrusive, which it's at risk of doing by expanding its autoplay function.As your scroll through your news feed on Facebook, videos automatically play if you linger long enough for them to load. That's a nifty function—it saves you a click—but the reason it works without feeling obnoxious is because it doesn't automatically blast audio through...
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Netflix is a pioneer in the streaming video space and helped popularize the concept of watching movies over an Internet connection. Be that as it may, it's fallen a bit behind the technological curve in recent times, at least in terms of not being able to view videos offline like you can with rivals Amazon and Comcast. That's going to change. Industry insider and Penthera Partners COO Dan Taitz says Netflix is busy working implementing the ability for subscribers to download certain content for offline viewing. If true, it wouldn't be a complete surprise, both because the competition is already doing it and also because Netflix CEO Reed Hastings earlier this year said he was open to the idea....
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YouTube has added a new custom blurring tool that will make it easier for video creators to provide anonymity where needed. This is in addition to an existing tool that gives content creators the ability to blur all faces in their video—now you can blur out anything you want in your video, even moving objects. "Whether you want to blur sensitive information such as a license plate or cover up a wardrobe malfunction without reshooting an entire scene, the new Custom Blurring tool will let you blur objects throughout your video, right within YouTube," YouTube stated in a blog post announcing the feature update.The custom blurring tool is only available on the desktop version of YouTube at the moment....
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Pakistan has ended its ban on YouTube that began in 2012 over "Innocence of Muslims," an anti-Islam movie upload that triggered demonstrations and violent protests in various countries, Pakistan among them. Over a dozen people died in protests that took place in Pakistan. The ban was to remain in place until Google allowed government officials to screen for "blasphemous content." Google didn't bend quite as far, though it did assure a senior official in the Pakistan Telecommunication Authority that blasphemous content had been taken down. The company also agreed to field reports for review and, if necessary, restrict access to YouTube viewers living in Pakistan. What Google didn't do is bake...
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After spending just over nine months in beta, Microsoft is today pushing out its Skype Translator feature to users worldwide. Given the scale of a service like Skype, though, it's going to take a couple of weeks before all users will be able to take advantage of it. We'd assume that those who participated in the preview will have immediate access. Skype Translator is Microsoft's effort to bring people together all over the world, regardless of their language. As it stands today, over 50 written languages are supported as well as 6 spoken languages (English, French, German, Italian, Mandarin, and Spanish). That's a great start, and one that Microsoft says was possible entirely due to the great...
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Could you imagine an Internet without videos? We'd miss out on Batdad's hilarious antics, Kimbo Slice would have never gotten a shot to fight professionally, and Justin Bieber wouldn't be a mega star. Come to think it, maybe it wouldn't be so bad after all, though that's getting off topic. Videos are a major part of the Internet experience, though us mere mortals are easily distracted, much to the chagrin of advertisers. Disney is looking to change that. Through Disney's Accelerator program, the company along with a couple of venture capital firms are investing in a startup called FEM Inc. You've probably never heard of FEM, though one day you might -- it consists of former Google employees and...
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If you've never watched a 360-degree video on YouTube, you should check one out, they're pretty nifty. They're so neat that Google is extending the functionality to advertisers so they can deliver more immersive ads on Chrome and the mobile YouTube app for Android and iOS devices, the company announced in a blog post today. For advertisers wondering why they'd want to go through the bother of making a 360-degree video, Google is quick to point out that existing campaigns that have been testing the feature have been "impressive" so far. Providing some empirical data to the claim, Google says that Coca-Cola's 360-degree video celebrating the 100th anniversary of its iconic bottle design outperformed...
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