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News

YouTube Direct: good news for citizen reporters?

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YouTube have just launched a new service called YouTube Direct. It’s an extension of the existing API designed to enable news websites to take advantage of the increasing volume of ‘citizen reporting’ content being published on YouTube.

The main elements:

1. Embeddable uploader

You don’t have to leave the page – the customisable uploader sits on your news corp site (or wherever). Users with an existing YouTube account can log in to YouTube through it and then choose to submit an existing video from their account or upload a new video, as demonstrated in the screenshot.

2. Moderation Console

Does what it says on the tin – it’s a fairly straightforward looking moderation system that allows you to keep track of submitted videos, preview, approve and find out more about each video submitted. Here’s a video demo of it:

Some of the big FAQs answered on their FAQ page:

Q: Who owns the videos submitted via YouTube Direct?

A: The user who submits the video on your site via YouTube Direct owns the video. The video is uploaded to his or her YouTube account and is automatically made public on YouTube.com. By submitting it through your site, the user may grant you a license to use the video according to a set of Terms of Service that you set forth, assuming it does not conflict with YouTube’s Terms of Service.

Q: What happens if the user decides to remove the video?

A: If a user decides to delete a video after he or she has submitted it to your site via YouTube Direct, then this video will be removed from YouTube, and thus will no longer play anywhere on your site that the video has been embedded or linked to. When this happens, there will be a flag visible in the moderation panel indicating that the video is not longer live on YouTube, and any reference to it on your site should also be removed.

Q: How much does it cost?

A: YouTube Direct is free, but there may be a small cost associated with your Google App Engine account, depending on the amount of traffic being served.

Looks tasty. Will be interesting to see who will use it from both content creators and broadcasters. Read all about it at http://www.youtube.com/direct

Reviews

The Emergency – going forward, onwards and upwards

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I had the great pleasure of witnessing The Emergency crew do their thing live in the Laughter Lounge this week and I’m only flippin delighted that their CD ‘Use Democracy Sensibly‘ will be in all good record stores from November 20th. I was in stitches during the Give Up Yer Ould Lies sketch which has to be seen/heard.

The offering will feature sketches from their award-winning first season originally broadcast on Newstalk as well as some extra new material and some festive treats.

Comhghairdeas to all involved and continued success for 2010!

Random

Monday December 28th is not a bank holiday

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View from my apartment last December
View from my apartment last Winter

Tis that time of year again. Time to sort your holidays for the holidays.

December 26th, besides being my birthday is the last bank holiday of the year. This year it falls on a Saturday which makes the “how many days off do I take?” question a bit more tricky to answer.

Citizens Information website to the rescue. Fair play to them, information is there in black and white and tells us that as the bank holiday falls on a weekend day, we are not automatically granted a bank holiday on the following Monday, as you may have thought. Here’s the skinny:

Public holidays falling on a weekend

Where a public holiday falls on a weekend, you do not have any automatic legal entitlement to have the next working day off work. This occurs in 2009 when St Stephen’s Day (26 December) falls on a Saturday. This means that Monday 28 December 2009 is not a public holiday. When this happens you are entitled to the normal alternative arrangements concerning employment and public holidays that is:

  • A paid day off within a month of the public holiday
  • An additional day of annual leave
  • An additional day’s pay
  • The nearest church holiday to the public holiday as a paid day off.

Your employer can require you to attend work on those days.

Random

Dolly mixture

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Beautiful Graiguenamanagh at the weekend
Beautiful Graiguenamanagh at the weekend

‘Dear Me – A Letter to My Sixteen-Year-Old-Self’ is an interesting little book I picked up for my bookworm that seems to be going down quite well. The blurb goes: “If you were to write a letter to your 16-year-old self, what would it say? In DEAR ME: A LETTER TO MY SIXTEEN-YEAR-OLD SELF, some of the world’s best loved personalities have written just such a letter.” The Elton John AIDS Foundation will receive £1 for every copy sold and there’s a blog going alongside it at dearmebooks.com where you can read and even submit other letters yourself.

The first Irish Discworld Convention kicks off in Ennistymon, Co.Clare this Friday. There’s a schedule here and a load of info here. I’m a total newbie when it comes to Discworld but loving what I’ve experienced thus far and really looking forward to the weekend.

Mike – who is among other things the tech magician at X Comms – has launched a blog and is looking for a topic for a minor research dissertation that he’s doing for the M.Sc. Management Information Systems at TCD. Some very cute guinea pig pics up there too!

The founder of the little known Wikipedia Jimmy Wales is giving a public lecture at TCD on Friday Nov 27th. Tickets and info all available here.

Got my copy of Futuretainment by Mike Walsh last week. Now if I could just find the time to devour it. Beautifully designed book and it’s got a beautiful little website to go with it. Cheers to the Cybercom team for the introduction at their Cybercom 10 celebrations last month.

Ah, watch this space. Or not.

And to celebrate the safe return of Mr. Mulley to the internets, I’ll take a leaf from his blog and leave you with a song. This was going on while I was in jazz-recovery-sleeps in Cork about a week ago, streamed live over the web. Whatever will they think of next?!