Online YouTube viewing parties with YouTube Social

Posted by on Sep 23, 2010 in Cool stuff, Flash Platform | Comments Off

Here’s another great example of how powerful the Flash Platform has become… YouTube Social allows you to simultaneously watch YouTube videos with your friends in an easy to use Flash based application built with Flex by SocialVision.

You can easily invite your friends from Facebook to join your viewing party or you can just send someone the URL. Once they join the party the video you’re watching starts playing on their screen. It starts at the exact same point that you are currently watching.

Give it a try yourself on http://www.youtubesocial.com/

YouTube’s Life in a Day and Vacationer powered by Flash

Posted by on Sep 9, 2010 in Cool stuff, Video | Comments Off

Life in a Day
A few weeks ago YouTube and Ridley Scott announced a new project called Life in a Day. They asked everyone to record one day: July 24th. 80.000 videos were submitted to the project and YouTube just launched the official gallery which is viewable as a 3D sphere or a simple tiled list.

Vacationer
YouTube also launched a new branded travel channel. The new YouTube Vacationer travel channel includes videos with travel tips and advice from experts from National Geographic, Travel Channel, Howcast, and more. It features videos from Caribbean, European, U.S. and Canada, and “exotic” destinations. The interactive “Vacation You” feature allows you to create your own video for your dream vacation… Oh man… Watching these videos made me realize how much I’m in need of some vacation time… Until then I guess YouTube’s Vacationer will have to do… ;-)

Flash on!

YouTube: “Flash Platform will continue to play a critical role”

Posted by on Jun 30, 2010 in Flash Platform | 6 comments

I’m sure you’ve heard that some people are saying that HTML5 is going to kill Flash and how that is already happening with the <video> tag. YouTube, the world’s largest video site, has just published a blog post where they weigh in on the whole HTML5/Flash debate.

In the post they highlight some of Flash’s strong points including robust video streaming, content protection, encapsulation, camera and microphone access, and many more.

Check out the post on YouTube’s API Blog.

Flash on!

Android week: Watch the Google I/O keynote online

Posted by on May 19, 2010 in android | 7 comments

The Google I/O keynote is only a little over 3 hours away. I am super excited about Google I/O this year. I wish I was there… But if you’re like me and you couldn’t make it out to San Francisco you can still be a part of it.

Both today’s and tomorrow’s keynote will be streamed live on Google I/O’s YouTube channel. I can’t think of a better way of celebrating my birthday than to sit back with a nice glass of wine and watch the keynote live. I know… I am a bit of a geek :D. You can count on me doing the same thing tomorrow ;-). Trust me… You don’t want to miss this event… We have some very exciting announcements coming up and I’m sure Google also has a thing or two up their sleeves!

The keynote starts at 9:00 am PDT. That’s 12:00pm in New York, 5:00pm in London, 6:00pm in Belgium, 1:00am in Tokyo.

Oh… And just in case you missed it: I’m giving away a Google Nexus One!

The Simpsons go HD

Posted by on Feb 15, 2009 in Cool stuff | 3 comments

Last week, the very first High-Def episode of The Simpsons aired on Fox in the US. They also got a new intro. I still can’t believe that we (here in Belgium) still only have 5 HD channels. I really hope my cable provider adds more soon… Anyway… Enjoy the new Simpsons intro. On YouTube. In Flash. In HD. (Don’t forget to click the HQ button. Does anyone know how to enable this as a default in the embed code?)