YouTube

Jun 21 2009   10:21AM GMT

YouTube Says, Downloading Your Own Videos is Legal

Posted by: William Peterson
YouTube, MP4, Flash Video, download

Based on dozens of incoming posts about “Now Download Your YouTube Videos Legally” for last two days, I’m so confused at the first sight. Since these Flash videos on YouTube are not streaming via Real Time Messaging Protocol like Hulu, we’re always downloading these videos into our browser cache when watching them online. So are these totally illegal? Certainly not. And copyright infringement happens only if the downloaded videos are reused as commerical, I guess.

Then I read carefully about such advancement on YouTube offical announcement. LOL! The simple story is, now you can download your uploaded YouTube videos as MP4 files thru a button “Download MP4″. Holy crap, downloading your own uploaded videos is usually the right thing on earth. Jesus, it’s not legal or not. It’s just a free MPEG-4 video conversion feature provided by YouTube!

Actually, the upside here is MP4 formats are widely accepted by iPod or most video players, so such free conversion is relatively useful. However, those “so-called illegal YouTube downloaders”, such as vixy.net, have better options for downloading our own videos.

Some friends usually asked me about the copyright issues on YouTube videos. I donno. But just watching the videos on YouTube, whatever online streaming or downloading to local disk, is definitely legal as we’re free to see anything unknown. Right?

William Peterson

Feb 20 2009   9:58AM GMT

Enrich Your Presentation: Yet Another Note about Video Sharing on PowerPoint

Posted by: William Peterson
YouTube, PowerPoint, presentation, Multimedia, Video Sharing

Rolling back to a year ago, right here I alleged that “Why Not Add YouTube Flash Video in Your Next PowerPoint Presentation“, as well as something more about rich media in presentation topics, such as “Best Practices for Playing and Controlling More in PowerPoint Presentations” or “Make Your Live Homepage in PowerPoint Slides. Maybe my old tips of YouTube video on PowerPoint is kinda obsolete now, and luckily Microsoft PowerPoint Team released its own illustrated tutorial on a blog post “How to insert that funny clip you found online“. Yeah, not late to learn more about this, as video sharing is still hot on the air.

Certainly the core technologies on this is simple, if you know Developer tab and Controls in PowerPoint. Something new I got, is now we can embed and play 720p HD (High Definition) YouTube video. It’s still easy to catch up: add “&ap=%2526fmt%3D22” at the end of the URL of the video file, making it look like “http://www.youtube.com/v/zlfKdbWwruY&hl=en&fs=1&rel=0&ap=%2526fmt%3D22″. Enjoy our video sharing in every presentation!

William Peterson
Presentation Veteran

Jan 5 2009   7:00AM GMT

Mouse Over Multimedia: Add Interactive Content to Your Site with Apture

Posted by: William Peterson
Multimedia, interactive, Apture, snaP, contextual content, media, YouTube, WikiPedia, Flickr, video clips, Web, Web Presentation

You may know snaP shots to add a quick preview of outgoing links, but actually snaP was used as advertising more than contextual content, as I know. So the unexpected pop-ups that occur when you accidentally scroll over text links become irritating irrelevant advertising sometimes. Apture is a little different. It gives independent publishers the power to find and incorporate relevant multimedia items, such as video clips from YouTube, photos from Flickr, Wikipedia articles, music, podcasts, and much more from around the web directly on to your site with a single click of a button.

Tablefy has a brief look at the pros and cons of Apture, and we really consider the free service as a unique product and well worth checking out. You may experience with examples or watch the video tour below:

William Peterson
Presentation Veteran

Sep 14 2008   11:26AM GMT

Look upon the Never Rivalry: Pushing Silverlight to Flash Presentation

Posted by: William Peterson
Web, YouTube, IT professional, RIA, Rich Media, Enterprise, Web 2.0, Technology, Learning, Adobe, Silverlight, Microsoft, Flash, Review, Business, community, Corporate, Online Apps, Flash Video, Webcam, Web Presentation, Business presentations

The NBC’s Olympic Games in Silverlight boomed Microsoft’s rich media technologies a lot, but it still stands outside the stage where Adobe Flash dances. Microsoft is not the god, neither is Adobe. Actually Silverlight did well in many specifications as newly developed kit for the Web, while Flash seemed old and out of some emerging developments. To fight the mainstream, let’s look around what Silverlight.

In the developer Niraj Swaminarayan’s Silverligh vs. Flash - An Analysis Report, we can see that some parts are not that crucial for most Web developers. So I take my hands to the opinion that, the so-called rivalry is really not that important like lots of observers said. YouTube can be a Silverlight based video sharing community as well as Flash offers.

I’m concerning about the impact on my favorite Webcasting industry where the Silverlight platform could not step in currently. If Silverlight lives better and better as expected, what’s the critical issues we’ll face when replacing with Silverlight? The IT infrastractures for a business do not require the value of emerging technologies. That’s why Windows Vista could not become the mainstream with its 2 years’ experiences. Certainly it’s not a bad idea to take Silverlight presentation in the future.

William Peterson
Presentation Veteran

Aug 27 2008   1:23PM GMT

YouTube’d Everything, That’s Our Web 2.0 World, Right?

Posted by: William Peterson
Web, YouTube, IT professional, Rich Media, Web 2.0, Technology, PowerPoint, Flash, Review, Online Apps, Webcam, Web Presentation, Slidecast, SlideShare, Scribd, Business presentations

We know, YouTube has been an icon of Web 2.0 community for long time, and making everything YouTube is what we’re doing currently. Actually, we cannot put anything but video clips on YouTube. But we can visit his brothers and sisters. SlideShare and Scribd are the well-known ones among them.

SlideShare - YouTube of Presentations
It’s the most mature community to share our PowerPoint slides from one-time use to slidecasts. As I ever criticized Web presentations, SlideShare community is really popular upon its well-done construction and promotion. Currently it is the standard de facto and the icon as Web presentation in our Web 2.0 world.

Scribd - YouTube of Documents
I introduced it before when it was just launched: Meet Scribd’s iPaper: Flash-based Viewer Platform Built for All Web Documents - PDF, Word, PowerPoint, Excel and More . Certainly we cannot refuse such a great offer to store and share your various documents, from text and image files to PDF and Microsoft Office 2007 files. That’s almost everything in our Web 2.0 world.

We shouldn’t ignore the other parts of Web 2.0, such as social bookmarks; however, YouTube has led us start Web 2.0 in a rich format, which is the everything in our Web world.

William Peterson
Presentation Veteran

Aug 21 2008   2:47PM GMT

Experience the Office Enhancements Directly from the Labs, Not Bill’s Shows Any More

Posted by: William Peterson
Google, YouTube, IT professional, Office, SharePoint, Technology, PowerPoint, Microsoft, Review, Business, PowerPoint 2007, Office 14, Solutions, Business presentations

Like all Gfans can reach Google’s technology playground at Google Labs, we the guys who’re usually working on Microsoft’s Office suites have the opportunity to explore the productivity horizon as well. Microsoft^® Office Labs is such the community directly from its technical labs for the fans to try, experience, and discuss.

Here I recommend two great artworks from the so-called labs.

pptPlex
http://www.officelabs.com/projects/pptPlex
An amazing PowerPoint 2007 add-on. It makes your PowerPoint 2007 presentations showing on an Interactive Canvas. You and all audience will be really inspired by the new thinking of presentation performance in PowerPoint 2007. You may check a video guide at YouTube at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YvsdRFRBxhA.

Search Commands
http://www.officelabs.com/projects/searchcommands
Totally handy tools for Office users. Search Commands helps you find commands, options, wizards, and galleries in Microsoft Office 2007 Word, Excel and PowerPoint. Just type what you’re looking for in your own words and click the command you need.

William Peterson
Presentation Veteran

Jul 20 2008   8:46AM GMT

Make Shows in Trends: Business Presentations in YouTube Way

Posted by: William Peterson
YouTube, IT professional, Enterprise, Technology, PowerPoint, Microsoft, Flash, Review, Business, Corporate, Flash Video, Business presentations

Let us think of more useful ways to wake up the popularity to make and judge the old business presentations. Nobody can ignore the incredible power from the best-ever online community YouTube, even Obama wants his final presidential victory. Not in your business style for YouTube? Just remember, every firm is a potential IT-based organization in this Internet era.

It’s not any “YouTube+PowerPoint” ways like SlideShare, which can not beat up any points with the real YouTube community. “Hi buddy, you cannot upload your presentations to YouTube, whatever they’re PowerPoint files or Flash animations!” This verdict is like saying that all presentations must be in PowerPoint or Flash formats. Actually, video presentations have been favored by millions of peoples before the PowerPoint and Flash were born. Just put all your old presentations to the front stage. Some tools might be practical this time. TechSmith’s Camtasia Studio (you must know the great one tool) can completely recording and publishing PowerPoint presentations, or some handy manual enables you to create YouTube contents with nothing other than PowerPoint and Windows Movie Maker. Besides, any trends-hunter has made the exact kit for this requirement: PPT2YouTube.

You may say “it’s totally not business way”, but it would never be bad to do so whatever the people in YouTube watch and comment your presentations. Business should not waste such great online resources to make up the gap or create more new opportunities.

William Peterson
Presentation Veteran

Jun 5 2008   4:17AM GMT

Perfect Presentation Online - Your SlideShare PowerPoint Slides with YouTube Video Narration Together on Omnisio

Posted by: William Peterson
Web, YouTube, IT professional, Technology, PowerPoint, Flash, Review, Business, Tips, Flash Video, Business presentations

Once you’re back from various conferences, uploading your video recordings on presentation to YouTube, and uploading PowerPoint slides to SlideShare could be the best way to share your masterpiece socially, so that people who could not make it to the conference, are able to run through your presentation. How about put them together on your blog?

Just embed them with the codes from YouTube and SlideShare on your blog. But it’s not perfect - your PowerPoint slides and the audio-video recording are embedded separately and your readers will therefore have to watch them repeatedly in two different ways. Fortunately, this age-old problem can be solved in minutes with Omnisio - a free service that lets you synchronize pre-recording audio-video with a PowerPoint presentation. Now you can just upload your PowerPoint presentation to Slideshare, video to YouTube and then synchronize the two with Omnisio.

It’s not a service promotion; just experience this yourself on Omnisio.

William Peterson
Presentation Veteran

May 17 2008   3:49PM GMT

Live Up Yourself as Flash Video with Flash Media Encoder

Posted by: William Peterson
Web, YouTube, IT professional, Technology, Adobe, Flash, Online Apps, Flash Video, FLV, Webcam, Live, Solutions, Business presentations

Forget off the latest beta version of called Adobe Flash Player 10 with advanced 3D and GPU capabilities, you’ll like to build your own live streaming station site with latest Adobe Flash Media Encoder. Just visit:

http://www.adobe.com/products/flashmediaserver/flashmediaencoder/

Adobe Flash Media Encoder 2.5 software is designed to enable you to capture live audio and video while streaming it in real time to Flash Media Server software or Flash Video Streaming Service (FVSS). When high-quality streaming is your priority, Flash Media Encoder 2.5 can help you broadcast live events and around-the-clock broadcasting such as:

Sporting events
Concerts
Webcasts
Educational or promotional events

As I know, most IT news sites deployed Flash media server products as its webcast solution, and the solution is really recommended and awarded. However, for individuals, stored Flash video like YouTube way might be more acceptable, so Flash Video Encoder is preferred.

William Peterson
Presentation Veteran

Apr 28 2008   9:45AM GMT

YouTube Video in Google Presentation, As Expected

Posted by: William Peterson
Web, Google, YouTube, PowerPoint, Google Docs, Flash, Review, Google Apps, Flash Video, Business presentations

Caught from Official Google Docs Blog last Friday, Google Presentation took Speaker notes and YouTube videos in.

As we expected the feature of YouTube videos in Google Presentation long long time ago, Google finally simplify the adding YouTube in Presentation way with its adopted YouTube. About the traditional methods to add YouTube Flash videos in PowerPoint presentation, please read my complete guide.

Videos can help you make a point, command the attention of your audience, or even add humor to your presentation. Now in presentations, you can insert one or more YouTube videos onto your slides and play the videos while you’re presenting.

William Peterson
Presentation Veteran