Digitivity » YouTube

SaveTube: How to Download YouTube Videos Without Java

Digitivity — Sun, 23 Oct 2011 16:30:00 +0000

It’s a big annoyance trying to save YouTube videos. Why would you want to save one? Well for one thing, it can be a lot more convenient to play it from a desktop multimedia player. For some users it takes up less CPU than the browser-based Flash player, important for phone users. Finally, if a video’s important to you, it’s good to be able to have a local copy before YouTube bans it for some or another reason.

SaveTube is a really easy way to download YouTubes. You just add a bookmarklet to your bookmark bar, click on it, and you get a download link allowing you to directly download the video in various formats. No Java, no going to another website to perform the download.

http://savetu.be/

Feather Beta: How to Make YouTube Faster

Digitivity — Mon, 17 Oct 2011 17:31:00 +0000

Posted in Images

Is YouTube slow for you? YouTube’s testing out a new beta mode called Feather. It’s supposed to be a lite version of YouTube with the fluff removed for a faster response. Think of it as YouTube the way it used to be. Anyway, you go to the Feather URL, here: http://www.youtube.com/feather_beta Click on Enable. Now [...] Related posts:

IOC Bans Olympic Luge Death Videos on YouTube: Copyright / Copywrong

Digitivity — Tue, 23 Feb 2010 18:35:07 +0000

As you might have heard, Georgian luge slider Nodar Kumaritashvili died in luge training at the Winter Olympics in Vancouver on February 12.

The International Olympics Committee has been using copyright to suppress videos of the event.

If you look at the result for the top YouTube hit on on Google video search for “luge death“, that video has been deleted by YouTube due to a copyright claim by the IOC.

That’s the same story for a lot of the results for the videos you get if you search for “luge death” on YouTube.

The IOC has also been trying to remove a video put up by blogger Steve Pate at Not Just the News Network. However, the videos were still up at the time of this post.

Interestingly, the Huffington Post and CBS News seem to still be hosting the video, with the former also showing pictures.

My comments

By all accounts, the luge track was ridiculously dangerous, and faster than it had ever been before. With lugers reaching speeds of 95 miles per hour, many commented that they were being treated like crash-test dummies. (See the picture at NJNN.)

This was a tragic death but the IOC’s attempts to suppress the videos of it are pathetic, wrong, and immoral. The IOC has just gotten so used to controlling anything and everything remotely connected to the Olympics, the word “Olympic”, or any competitors, that I think it’s on autopilot as far as automatically using DMCA (Digital Millenium Copyright Act) notices regardless of the newsworthiness of a brief excerpt, which is all that the NJNN blog used.

First of all, the only reason that the IOC could possibly think that they could tell someone to post or not post content relating to the Olympics is the copyright laws. In the US, anyway, the copyright laws are based on the copyright cluase of the Constitution

To promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts, by securing for limited Times to Authors and Inventors the exclusive Right to their respective Writings and Discoveries.

So how does the Olympic committee censoring the luge tragedy videos promote the useful arts?

I reject the idea that the video needs to be banned out of respect for the luger’s family. If anything, the video needs to be spread far and wide to show the Olympic organizers’ culpability in putting up unbelievably low barriers on the sides of the luge course.

Isn’t it strange that there’s supposed to be a separate category of people (reporters) who are authorized to view primary sources, and they they’re supposed to tell us what happened, but we can’t see for ourselves? That worked for the newspaper and TV era, but with the Internet, there’s no reason at all for people not to be able to see the actual news occurring and make up their minds for themselves instead of hearing newsmen debate current events.

Finally, under Canadian law (Steve Pate is Canadian, and NNJN is a Canadian site), there is explicit permission under the law to use brief excerpts under “fail dealing” (the Canadian version of “fair use”).

Other blogs following the story include TechDirt and Michael Geist. Discussion at Slashdot. Direct download link for the video.

Google Adds Sex Free Safety Mode for YouTube

Digitivity — Wed, 10 Feb 2010 17:22:55 +0000

Google introduced what they’re calling Safety Mode for YouTube. YouTube’s community guidelines are already pretty strict, but Safety Mode takes it a step further.

Videos that will be filtered in the new Safety Mode include:

Videos with a sexual theme meant for mature viewers
News videos featuring violence

Turning on Safety Mode

There’s a link to turn on Safety Mode at the bottom of every YouTube page.

You can lock Safety Mode on by logging in, and then turning Safety Mode on (which, again, is at the bottom of every page).

The setting is browser-specific, and also profile-specific. So if you (or other users) use multiple browsers, you have to set Safety Mode to “on” in every browser. It doesn’t matter if the person using the browser is logged in or not; Safety Mode will stay on until you log in with your password and turn it off.

Using Safety Mode

If you have Safety Mode on,

Search results won’t feature objectionable content, though the fact that results were filtered will be noted.
Comments aren’t shown by default.
If you show comments, objectionable words are replaced with asterisks.
You won’t be able to see filtered videos a friend sends you until Safety Mode is turned off.

My comments

Google’s recently been increasing the amount of advertising on YouTube. It looks like Google is creating a safe for work atmosphere which is also a safe for advertising environment.

Resources

Google announcement of Safety Mode
Google Help on YouTube Safety Mode
http://digital.venturebeat.com/
http://financegeek.com/
http://techcrunch.com/
http://googland.blogspot.com/

Backupify Social Media Backup Free Account Offer Extended

Digitivity — Fri, 05 Feb 2010 16:14:31 +0000

I wrote the other day about social media backup with a new service called Backupify.

It was offering free accounts till January 31.

Now the offer has been extended until the 15th of February.

Granted, sometimes companies like to extend offers many times just to get everyone that could possibly be interested in their product. But since it’s totally free, there’s no reason not to sign up.

See my previous blog post about backing up Google, Facebook, Twitter, and WordPress for details on how Backupify works.

Resources

Backupify

Back Up Gmail, Facebook, WordPress, and Other Social Media with Backupify

Digitivity — Sat, 30 Jan 2010 17:40:48 +0000

These days many people prefer to have their applications in the cloud, instead of hosting them by themselves.

For example, people who use Gmail prefer accessing e-mail through a web browser instead of downloading their e-mail and viewing it with an e-mail program.

But what happens if Google loses your e-mail? The answer, for some, might be Backupify, a new cloud backup service.

Coincidentally, today is the last day they are offering free accounts, and today is the day I found out about it. So before you read the rest of this article, go and sign up for an account here: https://secure.backupify.com/signup

Note: Although it asks for your personal details (including address and phone number), all you have to enter is your name and e-mail address to get signed up.

Why you need to back up your social media accounts

How much did you pay for your Gmail account? For your Twitter account? Facebook? $0?

Well, how much liability do you think they have if they lose your e-mail, your tweets, your updates? Right, zero dollars.

While it’s true that these services have all kinds of great servers hosting your data, it’s also true that problems do occur. If you get a lot of advantage from your social networking presence, you’ll likely not want to take the risk of losing all of your hard work.

Cloud services that Backupify backs up

Backupify backs up:

Flickr
Twitter
Delicious
Zoho
Google Docs
Photobucket
WordPress
Services in Beta
Basecamp
Gmail
Facebook
FriendFeed
Blogger
Hotmail

It will back up the following cloud services later:

Youtube
Xmarks
RssFeed
Tumblr

After you sign up, you’re sent to the Settings screen:

Backupify Settings

Just click on a Manage for a given service to back up your account on that service.

Backing up Twitter

For example, to back up your Twitter account, click on Manage for Twitter, and then provide your account credentials:

Backupify: Backup Twitter

Backupify goes out to Twitter, downloads your tweets, and backs them up.

You can choose to back up daily or weekly.

Backing up WordPress

Backupify can back up your WordPress blog, too. To do this, you first have to install a WordPress plugin.

How Backupify works

Backupify uses account information that you give to access your accounts. For some kinds of services, it doesn’t send a username/password over the wire, but rather depends on something called a token to avoid having to exchange authentication information.

To the extent possible, Backupify keeps your data in encrypted format. It’s true that you have to trust them to a certain extent. If you don’t trust them, don’t give them any of your user account info.

It’s worth mentioning that, according to Alexa, Backupify is about the 15000th most popular website in the United States, so it’s not just a fly-by-night operation.

My comments

Although I haven’t decided to what extent I want Backupify to back up my social media accounts, I’ve gone ahead and signed up for the free account, which, again, they say the last day for is January 31.

Thanks to Bob Buskirk, whose article on Backupify I just caught today.

Resources

Backupify

Will Conan O’Brien Move to the Web After Getting Dumped by NBC?

Digitivity — Tue, 19 Jan 2010 15:26:56 +0000

So who needs a time slot?

After being pushed out by NBC to make room for Jay Leno, what will Conan O’Brian do next?

How about a radical move of going web-only?

That’s what the New York Times Bits Blog surmises.

With the $40 million dollar settlement, I think it’s certainly a possibility. (OK, much of that money is for his show’s staff, but he still has enough so that he doesn’t have to work.) He has enough money to pursue ventures that may or may not immediately pay off. And YouTube offers revenue sharing.

And for those who say people don’t want to watch TV on a small screen. Ahem. That’s mostly old people who say that. Anybody born after the IBM PC seems to be just fine with watching YouTube clips on a 320×480 cellphone screen.

If Conan does go to a web-only format, I think that could do a lot to change the way entertainment is sent to viewers anymore.