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In 2007, we witnessed an explosion of ideas and creativity on YouTube. You showed us that online video is not just a way to share pet and baby videos (though it is certainly good for that, too), but rather it can be so much more: a showcase for aspiring artists, a megaphone for everyday people, a way to learn new skills and even to change the political process. In recognition of all of these vibrant uses of and communities on YouTube, we expanded the awards this year to include five new categories — Best Short film, Best Political video, Best Sports video, Best Eyewitness video, and Best Instructional video for a total of 12. Each category now has six nominees instead of 10 (a special nod to those of you with short attention spans). You’ll also notice that the structure of the awards and the way voting works look a little different this year. Every time you refresh the page, the order of the categories and the featured thumbnail change in a random order so there can be no bias in the way the content is viewed or presented. As you might imagine, whittling down any category to six videos was a gargantuan task and already we’ll say we’re sorry to the hundreds/thousands of deserving content creators who didn’t get nominated. But you can’t exactly blame us - you made these videos memorable and helped them rise to the top of the YouTube charts. The nominees reflect some of the most buzzed-about videos on the site, particularly the ones you bookmarked to watch later (and presumably again and again). So head over to the YouTube video Awards channel to start watching and voting for some of the videos that defined ‘07. You can vote once per day (though you may not change your vote on the same day) and you have until 11:59pm PT on March 19, 2008, to do so. Winners will be announced on March 21, 2008, at which point we’ll feature them on this page as well as overnight them a trophy like no other (and believe us when we say this). Winners will also get a special invitation to a YouTube event later this year. Good luck and have fun! The YouTube Team

The Iraq War, Five Years On
This week marks the fifth anniversary of the Iraq War. Though YouTube did not even exist when American missiles first struck Baghdad five years ago today, it has since been used by hundreds of thousands of people to document, discuss, and debate the most controversial war of this century. U.S. soldiers have used YouTube in unique ways. Some have filmed holiday greetings to send back home to family members. Others have documented what life is like on the ground, and a more creative lot have filmed music videos or raps like “Lazy Ramadi”, which has gained hundreds of thousands of views. Still others have posted videos taking a more poignant look at what’s taken place in the Middle East, like this video reflection posted by a defense contractor who shares pictures of his experience in Iraq. Protest videos have of course been popular, too, as regular people who wouldn’t otherwise have a voice have used YouTube as their personal soapbox. And not to be outdone, the coalition forces have their own YouTube channel, where they’ve gotten great attention for the riveting pieces they’ve uploaded straight from the battlefield, like this one on Baghdad’s Haifa Street that has over 2 million views. Perhaps the most touching video we’ve seen came in a very unlikely form: an opera. For seven full minutes in this must-see clip, Baritone Andrew Garland softly sings the words from the last letter that Private Jesse Givens ever wrote to his wife Melissa, his five-year-old daughter Dakota, and his unborn child Carson. There are more videos than we can acknowledge here, but check out this playlist for a look at more of the best. Yours, Steve G. YouTube News & Politics

YouTube videos in High Quality
You may have noticed that we’re now giving you the option of watching some YouTube videos in higher quality. We’re making these streams available on certain videos, based upon the source file uploaded to us, and over time you’ll find a greater percentage of the library is available to view in higher quality. This feature applies to all eligible videos uploaded from the YouTube community, and is not restricted to partner content, so everyone can enjoy this upgrade. How do you watch higher quality videos? On your Account page you’re now able to choose “always show me higher quality when available” or “never show me higher quality.” We suggest you select “always show me…” only if you have a fast internet connection, otherwise you might find that videos don’t play as quickly or smoothly as you’re used to. Higher quality videos also have a link right below the video player which will allow you to select between the normal or higher quality settings. We want to help everyone understand that YouTube will continue to evolve with the videos you’re creating. We’re especially excited about offering this upgrade in video quality to our community of filmmakers and animators, who have been requesting this feature for some time. As more of you guys produce great-looking videos, we want to make sure they can be seen in all their glory. So we’ll continue to increase quality behind the scenes and make tweaks to support your uploads. (Remember, we can now support uploads up to 1GB in size.) You may also wonder how video quality is chosen. Our general philosophy is to make sure that as many people as possible can access YouTube and that videos start quickly and play smoothly. That’s one reason why you don’t see us racing to call this “Super Duper YouTube HD,” because most people don’t want to wait a long time for videos to play. Right now the Help Center information is pretty basic, but ongoing we’ll be making more specific details available for those content creators who really want to tune their videos for YouTube. Keep creating and watching… The YouTube Team

YouTube Everywhere
We try really hard to make YouTube as open as possible. Anyone can upload and view videos, which can be embedded anywhere and viewed on all kinds of different devices. And, of course, anyone can participate in our community by commenting on videos, rating them, and sharing them with friends. Nevertheless, we worried that we weren’t open enough. So, we pulled some all-nighters and added some powerful new ways to integrate YouTube content and community into other websites, desktop applications, video games, mobile devices, televisions, cameras, and lots more. For users, the exciting news is that they will be able to actively participate in the YouTube community from just about anywhere, including the online destinations and web communities they already love and visit regularly. For partners and developers, YouTube has grown into much more than a website. It has become an open, general purpose, video services platform, available for use by just about any third-party website, desktop application, or consumer device. We now provide a complete set of (CRUD) capabilities for uploading, managing, searching, and playing back user videos and metadata from the YouTube “cloud,” managed by us. We do all of the hard work of transcoding and hosting and streaming and thumbnailing your videos, and we provide open access to our sizable global audience, enabling you to generate traffic for your site, visibility for your brand, or support for your cause. Meanwhile, we provide full access to our substantial video library, enabling you to attract users and enhance the experience on your site. It’s all free, and it’s available to everyone, starting now. Technically, we have introduced some new APIs. (This is just a geeky acronym for Awesomely Powerful Interactions, which is what users are now capable of performing from just about anywhere.) Building upon our existing APIs for querying the YouTube library and playing embedded YouTube videos, we have added the following new API services for external developers and partners: Upload videos and video responses to YouTube Add/Edit user and video metadata (titles, descriptions, ratings, comments, favorites, contacts, etc) Fetch localized standard feeds (most viewed, top rated, etc.) for 18 international locales Perform custom queries optimized for 18 international locales Customize player UI and control video playback (pause, play, stop, etc.) through software The number of possible new applications is endless. Electronic Arts has enabled gamers to capture videos of fantastical user-generated creatures from their upcoming game, Spore, and publish these directly into YouTube. The University of California, Berkeley is bringing free educational content to the world, enhancing their open source lecture capture and delivery system to publish videos automatically into YouTube. Animoto enables its users to create personalized, professional-quality music videos from their own photos and upload them directly to YouTube. Tivo is providing its users a rich and highly participative YouTube viewing experience on the television. For more details about the innovative ways these other partners are utilizing YouTube APIs, see our case studies. What will you build with our new APIs? The possibilities are endless. Learn more about the exciting new features in this release from our engineers or visit Google Code to get started now. We can’t wait to see what you create. Enjoy, Jim Patterson, Product Management The YouTube Team

This entry was posted on Friday, March 21st, 2008 at 12:09 am and is filed under Video Links. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.