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YouTube Rolls Out “Unlisted” Video Upload Option

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YouTube is a great site for hosting your videos, no doubt about that. But the problem with it is that when you upload a personal video that you just want to share with a few people, you can do so but then that video is searchable by any video who visits YouTube and chanced upon your video. In short, the videos you upload can be found by the whole world. There was no privacy setting that will let you restrict access to the video you uploaded in YouTube to only the people that you want to share your video with, not until now.

YouTube has just rolled out a new video upload option that will enable you to “unlist” the video you upload from being found by other people. Once you’ve unlisted a video after you uploaded it to you YouTube, only the people who have the link to the video will be able to watch it. It will never be displayed in any of YouTube’s public pages. Not in search results, on your personal channel or on the browse page.  Only you and the people you share the video link with will be able to watch it. Well, of course other people can find it if the link is shared by the people whom you shared the link with.

YouTube unlisted video is a private video. And what’s good about this is that the person you share the link with does not need a YouTube account to view your video. All they need is the link to it.

You’ll get the link to your unlisted video after you the upload process is finished.  Once you’ve unlisted a video and share it with someone else, that person will know that the video is unlisted by the “annotation” just below it when they’ve visited the video link you shared.

So, will you be uploading your personal video to YouTube now? Will you be using YouTube as a personal video storage from now on?

YouTube Rolls Out Seven New Features, Google Buzz Sharing Included

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YouTube wants us to have them in our minds as we spend our weekends at home as it rolls out new features, seven of them to be exact that aims to improve our YouTube experience.  These new features are – five new languages, email alerts, new look for search results page, new sharing options, new upload interface, new player changes and enhance YouTube-for-iPad.

Let’s take a quick look at each of these enhancements.

YouTube has added five new languages – Greek, Hungarian, Finnish, Danish and Norwegian. If you want o view YouTube in any of those languages simply scroll down to the bottom of any page on YouTube, select “language” and click on any language and you’re good to go.

The YouTube email alerts feature has been made more useful Now, you can choose to receive an email alert whenever a new video was uploaded to the channel you subscribed to. Say goodbye to checking your email from time to time just to check whether new video has been uploaded. [Read more…]

YouTube Starts Rolling Out New Flash Video Player

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This is not quite official yet as YouTube has not announced yet official announced the roll out but New TeeVee is reporting that some YouTube users have spotted the new Flash Video player being used by some videos uploaded to YouTube.  What’s interesting about YouTube’s new video player is that it now displays some performance information about the video. The overall look of the video player also looks different from the regular YouTube video player.

As for the video players new features, some of the notables include relocation of the playback button, volume slider, information about the length of the video and selector for different video resolutions below the status bar.

The video player’s volume control was also tweaked a bit that instead of sliding upwards and downwards it was made to slide out sideways instead. This is of course to prevent the volume control from interfering with the video display.

YouTube also removed the caption or annotation buttons when these features are not available in the video.  Also, if you right-click on a video, YouTube will display an option called “show video info.”  This will bring up an information overlay showing size, bit rate, fps, transfer bandwidth and other details about the video and its playback performance.

And the most important enhancements has to do with preventing further buffering of the video. You can now stop the video at any time and clicking on the play button will resume the video’s playback from where you stopped it. Meaning it will no longer default to the start of the video.

Boxee Brings NHL Game Center Live to its Updated Service in Beta

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For those of you who are currently using Boxee, which is currently in beta have a reason to rejoice as Boxee announced two new exciting features of its service. First is that NHL GameCenter LIVE is now available on Boxee.  If you are subscribed to this service on a monthly or annual basis, you can now enjoy watching great Hockey games and fights in HD mode on Boxee.

The other part of Boxee’s exciting announcement is related to updates to its service which is currently in beta mode. The latest version of Boxee beta has some interesting new features such as the following:

File Identification Progress – This feature lets you to easily see how many files Boxee is scanning, has identified, and doesn’t recognize in your media collection.  You can check the status of its media from any menu sidebar or from the Media settings menu.

Manual Movie and TV Show Identification – This feature lets you tell Boxee what’s in your media collection. It allows you to change incorrectly labeled files, find and identify unresolved files and select files to label them correctly.

Facebook & Twitter in your Boxee feed – Boxee Beta now lets you see recommendations from your Facebook and Twitter friends and contacts within Boxee. You can see shared videos in your feed with an icon on the right that tells you where they are from.

New & Improved RSS Management – The new version of Boxee Beta also now lets you better manage, discover and play RSS feeds in Boxee. You can search, arrange by category or sort through the most popular, top rated, new and HD feeds available on your Boxee account. You can then use the RSS feeds app to play back your favorites.

Bug Fixes and Fixes and Fixes, and Fixes! – Of course, just like any other version updates, the new Boxee Beta has addressed hundreds of bugs and issued various fixes to these.

Netflix Now Streams TV Shows and Movies to Nintendo Wii

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Nintendo and Netflix are treating Wii users all over the world with free streaming of TV and Movies on TV sets via Netflix services. The new TV and movie streaming services are provided free of charge to Wii users with existing Netflix plans starting at $8.99 monthly.

With a Nintendo Wii connected to a broadband service, a Netflix subscription you can practically turn your Nintendo Wii into a multimedia device. We’re talking here of unlimited movies and TV shows delivered courtesy of Netflix.  You can also opt to receive DVDs delivered straight to your door step.

Certainly this new service will boosts Netflix’s clout in the home entertainment scene. The Nintendo Wii remains to be the most popular gaming consoles, thanks to its motion controls which users find useful for both exercising and gaming controls.

As for Nintendo Wii, this new service extends its purposes and functions from a mere gaming machine to a portable multimedia entertainment device. It’s definitely a win-win for both parties.

To have streaming TV shows and movies from Netflix on your Nintendo Wii, you simply need to request for a free instant streaming disc from www.netflix.com/wii. Once you have your CD, you can pop it inside your Nintendo Wii and you will presented with a catalog of movies and TV shows that you can freely watch.

via Business Wire