WebProNews

Tag: Videos

  • MLB Expands Its Video Offerings on YouTube

    MLB.com’s YouTube channel is just got a lot better.

    Today, MLB Advance Media announced that they’re expanding the licensed content offerings on the channel. You can expect more highlight clips from every MLB game – available two days after the games are completed. There is also thousands of hours of new archive content available, including videos from MLB.com’s Baseball’s Best Moments library.

    The channel will also livestream two games a day – but only if you live outside of the MLB’s core distribution areas. That means to YouTube streaming for baseball fans in North America, Japan, Taiwan and South Korea. But the MLB says that this move will help expand the game in new corners of the globe.

    “Expanding our partnership with YouTube provides another platform for extending the reach of the thousands of hours of archived baseball content in our library and for delivering live baseball games via the Internet to fans in new markets around the world,” said Kenny Gersh, Senior Vice President, Business Development, MLBAM.

    You can catch the new content today on the MLB’s official YouTube channel.

  • What If Your Friends Had Pet Personalities? [VIDEO]

    Spoiler alert: If your friends acted like your pets, the one that acted like a dog would be loving, affectionate, well-meaning, but ultimately annoying. And the one that acted like a cat, well, he’d be a jerk. Because cats are jerks. Sorry, internet. It’s true. Cute little jerks.

    Check out the follow up to 2012’s cat-friend vs dog-friend below:

    [via fatawesomefilms]

  • Here Are the Winners of the Tribeca/Vine 6-Second-Video Competition

    Vine, Twitter’s 6-second video app, is seeing some impressive adoption as of late. From politics to advertising, and from comedy to game teasers. Vine played a pretty big role in feeding raw footage from the recent Boston Marathon bombings as well.

    Vine was also the inspiration for a recent competition put on by the Tribeca Film Festival. #6SecFilms asked aspiring Vine-makers to submit their best work to be judged for a chance to win a little pocket change and, well, internet glory. Tribeca says that there were over 400 entries, and that their panel whittled it down to 4 winners.

    “We’re ready to announce the winners of Tribeca’s #6SECFILMS Vine Competition! After TFF’s Programmer Genna Terranova created the shortlist, our illustrious jury members pored over it and came up with their choices. The winners will receive $600 each (a Benjamin for each second), and the honor of knowing their Vines were the best.”

    Without further ado, here are your Tribeca Vine winners:

    @KevyPizza, There Is No Sunny-Side to This Story (In the Auteur category):

    @Matt Swinsky, LazerAndDonald Close Shave (In the Genre category):

    @Jethro Ames, How to Clear Your Garage From a Scary Ghost (In the Animate category):

    Chris Donlon, The Book Beetle trilogy (In the Series category):

  • ‘House of Cards’ Spoof Kicks Off White House Correspondents’ Dinner

    If you missed the annual White House Correspondents Dinner this weekend, here’s what you need to know: Conan O’Brien hosted, and he was pretty good. As was the President, who had some good jokes about Michele Bachmann, birthers, and Michelle Obama’s bangs. He even made a joke about BuzzFeed.

    The whole thing was kicked off by a House of Cards spoof – a 5-minute skit from the set of the popular Netflix original series starring Kevin Spacey. Watch below as members of Congress and the press jockey for seating positions at the dinner:

    Oh, and while you’re at it, here’s the President:

    And here’s Conan:

  • Here’s 8 Hours Of Google’s Recent Test Automation Conference

    This week, Google held its Test Automation Conference in New York. This is an event that brought together engineers from a variety of organizations to discuss test automation. It was a two-day event, and it streamed live when it was happening (April 23-24). Now, Google has made Day one’s content available for anyone to benefit from at their leisure.

  • Latest Google Enhanced Campaigns Webinar Focuses On Mobile Strategy

    Since introducing Enhanced Campaigns earlier this year, Google has regularly been conducting webinars to help advertisers get acquainted with the changes, and to help them optimize their campaigns.

    Google has uploaded a new webinar specifically on optimizing mobile strategy:

    This week, Google launched the Enhanced Campaigns upgrade center, which provides a tool to help you transition to the new campaigns ahead of the date (July 22) when all campaigns will be upgraded automatically.

    Google also added social annotations and availability for mobile app advertisers.

  • Radiohead’s ‘Karma Police’ Like You’ve Never Heard It Before

    YouTube is peppered with covers of the classic Radiohead song “Karma Police” off their masterpiece album OK Computer. And it should be – it’s an incredible song. But I guarantee you’ve never heard that song like this before.

    The amazing cover comes from Tel-Aviv-based Rotem Shefy (vocals) and Leat Sabbah (cello). They first recorded the song last year, and then launched a Kickstarter project, which is why you see the nicely produced video below.

    For a minute there, I lost myself.

    [ShefitaANDSabbaba via UPROXX]

  • With ‘Hundreds’ of Paid Videos Uploaded, Vimeo Launches New On Demand Homepage

    Last month, Vimeo launched a full video on demand service that lets Vimeo PRO creators sell their work on the site. It’s pay-to-view, with much freedom (and profits) given to the creators. Creators get to set the price for their work, and they take 90% of the profit.

    Today, just over a month later, Vimeo is announcing that creators have uploaded hundreds of paid videos, and viewers have made “thousands” of purchases. Not too specific, but it looks like there’s at least some significant buzz over Vimeo’s newest project. With their VOD service off and running, Vimeo is now looking to make all the content easier to discover.

    To that end, Vimeo has launched a redesigned On Demand homepage.

    “Introducing: the new Vimeo On Demand home page, which puts the focus on the creative films and series distributed using the new platform. Looking for something to watch tonight? Boom. Check out “Vimeo Selects” for titles we find interesting, or browse the entire On Demand catalog by genre. You can even keep track of all your On Demand purchases in “My On Demand,” right on this page. Because it’s hard to remember them all when you’ve bought hundreds of them, right? RIGHT!?” says Vimeo’s Blake Whitman.

    The dive in paid videos began back in September of last year, when Vimeo introduced their Creator Services platform. The first service unveiled was the “tip jar,” which allowed viewers to leave tips for video creators. Vimeo promises that there are more improvements left to be made to their new VOD platform.

    Have you paid to stream anything using Vimeo yet?

  • AP Twitter Hack Gets The NMA Treatment

    AP Twitter Hack Gets The NMA Treatment

    Though Tuesday’s hack of the AP’s Twitter account that sent U.S. markets into a freefall is no laughing matter, our favorite Taiwanese animators over at NMA do their best to make it entertaining. According to NMA’s take on the event, the fake attack on the White House signaled by the bogus tweet has something to do with flatulence. The video also takes some shots at The NY Post and Fox News.

    If that’s not enough of a reason to watch, I don’t know what is:

    The AP Twitter hack has prompted an FBI investigation, and has likely sped up Twitter’s plans to add an extra layer of account security with two-step verification.

  • Google Honors Internet Pioneer Danny Cohen

    Google uploaded a new video to its Tech Talks YouTube channel: a Festschrift honoring internet pioneer, Danny Cohen. It lasts for nearly three and a half hours, and consists of numerous Internet hall of fame inductees (including Google’s own Vint Cerf) and other internet pioneers talking about Cohen.

    Cohen is known for developing the first real-time visual flight simulator on a general-purpose computer back in the sixties, as well as developing the first real-time radar simulator. Additionally, he was the first to implement packet video and packet voice when he adapted the flight simulator to run over the ARPANET.

    Those who speak about Cohen in the video include: Vint Cerf, Larry Roberts, Leonard Kleinrock, Robert Kahn, Barry Wessler, Ivan Sutherland, Bob Sproull, Chuck Seitz, Bob Parker, Larry Miller, Stephen Casner, Bob Braden, Deborah Estrin, Paul Losleben, Patrice Lyons, Eve Schooler, Bob Felderman, Neil Gershenfeld, Jim Mitchell, Ron Ho, Professor J. Finnegan, Ashok Krishnamoorthy, Barbara Tversky, and David Cohen.

    The even took place on March 2.

  • Here’s an Epic Song Full of Inane Celebrity Tweets

    Sometimes, 140 characters can be used to express something important, thought-provoking, or otherwise newsworthy. And sometimes not, as evidenced by the bulk of the musings coming from a handful of celebrities’ Twitter accounts.

    YouTuber Shane Dawson penned this epic tribute to the more inane aspects of Twitter – you know, the parts of the service that aren’t breaking news and providing insightful commentary on world events. It kind of sounds like a certain Rihanna song, and it’s pretty great. Check it out:

    If you’re looking for a less-musical but equally-awesome teardown of dumb celebrity tweets, check out Nick Offerman from Parks and Recreation reading tweets from young female celebrities.

    Keep doin what you’re doin, celebs.

  • ‘Family Table’ Author Michael Romano Talks At Google

    Michael Romano, author of Family Table, a book that takes a look behind the scenes of restaurants like Union Square Cafe, Gramercy Tavern, Maialino, Blue Smoke, and The Modern, recently gave an “At Google” talk, discussing his work.

    More recent At Google Talks here.

  • Jimmy Kimmel Out-Hipsters Coachella Hipsters

    As you probably know, Coachella’s second weekend just wrapped up, and by most accounts it was a great festival filled with great bands.

    Jimmy Kimmel decided to ask festival goers about some of the more obscure bands that played Coachella this year. So obscure, in fact, that they don’t even exist.

  • YouTube Tests New Auto-Generated Playlist of 50 Related Videos

    YouTube is currently testing a new feature called “YouTube Mix,” which is an auto-generated playlist of up to 50 related videos located in the right-hand suggested videos section.

    Once clicked, the YouTube mix continuously plays 50 videos that YouTube’s algorithms have determined you may like based on what you’re currently watching. Of course, YouTube has been suggesting related videos in the sidebar for years, but the new Mix option lets you cycle through 50 related videos without having to click around and find them on that sidebar.

    Once you load up the YouTube Mix, you can sit back and enjoy all 50 videos in the randomly-generated order. Or, you can skip around or shuffle the videos, as you can with any other hand-curated YouTube playlist.

    YouTube confirms to The Next Web that the new Mix playlist will simply generate another 50 related videos, if you happen to run out of things to watch.

    Of course, YouTube Mix is simply another tool your YouTubers to use to find new content that they may have otherwise never stumbled upon. It falls in line with other recent efforts made by YouTube to better highlight content from the sites creators. Last week, YouTube announced an update to the homepage that will increase the video visibility in the channel stream.

  • Google Talks Keeping “No Results” Pages Out Of Index

    Google’s Matt Cutts takes on an interesting question in today’s Webmaster Help video:

    What is being done to detect and remove results from larger sites when they don’t have unique content that is relevant to a query (e.g. yelp.com results with no reviews, Facebook “business” pages that weren’t actually created by the business)?

    Cutts says he likes the question, but wouldn’t just restrict it to larger sites.

    “In general, we look at the value add, or you know, whether there’s some compelling value add, even at a page level, and we try to write algorithms to reflect that, but it is the case that sometimes you will find pages that get indexed that say, you know, ‘Zero reviews found,’ and so there’s basically no content to actually base your opinion on when you visit that page,” says Cutts.

    He continues, “So even starting back in 2009, I found a blog post that I did – ‘Give Google Feedback on No Results Pages,’ and so if people – it was a complaint even back then – people didn’t like having empty review sites, where you click through and it says there are no reviews for that product. So either do a spam report or show up at the forum or you might even still be able to use the form that I mentioned in that 2009 blog post.”

    He adds, “But basically, we are happy to say, ‘Hey look, if you are even doing search, and there’s no search results on that page, that’s the sort of thing that users get really angry about – they complain about. And so that is the sort of thing that, under our technical guidelines (if you look at our quality guidelines), we do say that we’re willing to prune out those sort of search results.”

    Here is the blog post he references. Here is a link to Google’s Quality Guidelines.

  • Watch These Costumed Dogs Emit Hatred

    I don’t know if I’ve ever felt a greater amount of hatred radiating from a dog than that of each of the dogs in this video (and I’ve been bitten by dogs).

    [via The Bored Ninja]

  • Amazon’s Original Pilot Initiative Sees Early Success, Lots of Feedback

    On Friday, Amazon finally made all of those pilots they had been talking about for months available for all to view and vote on. Amazon has said that they will use user feedback to determine which of the 14 pilots launched on Friday eventually see a full series run.

    And today, they’re announcing that the initiative has seen some early success.

    According to Amazon, 8 out of the 10 most-streamed episodes over the weekend belonged to the new pilots.

    “For the past year the Amazon Studios team has collaborated with some of the best actors and writers in Hollywood to produce top-quality shows. Now we’ve handed the remote to our customers to hear what they think,” said Roy Price, Director of Amazon Studios. “In just a few days the pilots have received thousands of helpful and sometimes hilarious reviews. Keep the feedback coming – and help us decide which pilots will be turned into full series.”

    Amazon says that out of those thousands of reviews, 80% of them have been for 4 or 5 stars.

    The full list of comedy pilots available includes Alpha House, Betas, Browsers, Dark Minions, Onion News Empire, Supanatural, Those Who Can’t, and Zombieland. And the 6 kids shows are Annebots, Creative Galaxy, Positively Ozitively, Sara Solves It, Teeny Tiny Dogs, and Tumbleaf.

    Price has said that Amazon doesn’t really have a particular number in mind when it comes to how many pilots they will greenlight for full seasons. “Seven would be a lot, but zero wouldn’t be enough. So somewhere between there,” he said. The user feedback will be the determining factor, and it looks like plenty of people are interested in helping Amazon make the decision.

  • Daft Punk’s ‘Get Lucky,’ As Performed by Michael Jackson

    Well, this is one way to shake off those Monday morning blues. Thank you, internet, for this. Just imagine what could have been.

    Here’s what it would sound like if Michael Jackson was the one featured on Daft Punk’s new single “Get Lucky.” Just tweak the pitch and speed a little bit and Pharrell Williams quickly morphs into the King of Pop. As you would expect, it’s incredible.

    “So I found out just by pitch shifting Get Lucky, the track sounds a lot like Michael Jackson. The ‘He-hee’s,’ ‘Woo’s,’ ‘shamonas’ and other MJ sounds developed on their own when the track sped up,” says creator Maim Ixed on YouTube.

    For those of you who ran “Get Lucky” into the ground this past weekend with repeated plays (and who didn’t?), here’s a way to get over the repetition and keep listening to the track:

    Daft Punk’s first new (non-soundtrack) song in about eight years has seen incredible but predictable buzz since it (officially) dropped last Friday morning. It not only flew up the iTunes charts, but reportedly set the record for the biggest streaming day for any single track on Spotify in both the U.S. and the U.K.

    [Maim Ixed via reddit]

  • To Help Content Creators, YouTube Will Up Video Visibility on the Homepage

    YouTube, who has turned its attention to content creators and channels over the past year, is looking to reward them by giving them more real estate on users’ homepages.

    Starting next week, logged-in users will see a new look to the homepage. It’ll put more videos from individual channel above the fold, replacing the one-video-per-line current format with one that puts multiple videos on each line.

    Currently, here’s what the YouTube homepage looks like for logged-in users. The channels they subscribe to get one video per line in the recent activity stream:

    And next week, users will see more videos, side-by-side, on each row on the homepage:

    YouTube has also changed how updates from channels are displayed on the homepage. If a user has been watching a bunch of videos from a series, they may see an update telling them to watch the next episode in the series.

    Also:

    Also, to help someone find the next best thing to watch, we’re looking for patterns in how viewers use YouTube. We know that a lot of fans come back to watch every single video from their favorite channels, regardless of whether those videos were uploaded yesterday or last year. For those most loyal fans, we want to make sure that their favorite channels are always up top so they never miss a beat. And for those fans that watch mainly from their subscriptions, we’ll move their other recommendations further down so they can always see their favorite channels first.

    These improvements will rollout next week, and YouTube says that there are more coming “to make the homepage smarter.”

  • 85-Foot Trapeze Fall Becomes Viral Video

    A video from the Associated Press featuring a circus acrobat surviving an 85-foot fall is gaining viral steam, as more and more blogs are showing it.

    The fall apparently happened last month at a circus in Moscow. He hit the safety net, which was waiting directly below the stunt, but unfortunately he fell right through it. Somehow, he still managed to live. He reportedly suffered a fractured vertebra.

    According to the AP’s YouTube description for the video, the Kenyan trapeze artist is healing and is expected to turn to work.

  • Amazon Debuts 14 Pilots, Wants Your Feedback

    Amazon Studios has just unveiled 14 new pilots for your viewing pleasure, and your feedback will determine which pilots are developed into something more.

    Over on the Amazon Original Pilots page, you can find the pilots for 8 different comedy shows. Most of them have been announced and viewers have simply been waiting for the pilots to drop – this includes Zombieland, based on the film of the same name and Betas, a show about a Silicon Valley startup.

    The full list of the comedy pilots is Alpha House, Betas, Browsers, Dark Minions, Onion News Empire, Supanatural, Those Who Can’t, and Zombieland.

    Amazon has also launched the pilots for 6 children’s shows: Annebots, Creative Galaxy, Positively Ozitively, Sara Solves It, Teeny Tiny Dogs, and Tumbleaf.

    All of the pilots are free to watch for people in the U.S. and the U.K. German LOVEFILM customers will get the pilots in a few weeks.

    Amazon is also inviting viewers to rate and review the pilots, in an attempt to determine which ones should receive a full-series run. On the pilots page, Amazon links viewers to a survey where they can answer questions about any and all of the 14 pilots – “Overall, how would you rate the show” and “Based on what you’ve seen, would you watch future episodes” type questions.

    Not all of these pilots will receive additional episodes – but the exact number that will is still undecided. Amazon Studios director Roy Price told The Verge:

    “We don’t have any particular number of shows in mind…We would like to see a few shows come out of the process. Seven would be a lot, but zero wouldn’t be enough. So somewhere between there.”

    So, go watch, and go vote. Let’s see if Amazon can draw up some good series out of this experiment.