Filed under: reader

Users to YouTube: let us record your videos

If YouTube wants to be the future of broadcast, then it also has to support the DVR of tomorrow. That’s the main argument of a new online petition urging Google to allow third-party tools and services that record content from YouTube, which has attracted more than 170,000 signatures in just three days.

The petition was launched in reaction to reports that Google has been sending cease-and-desist letters to YouTube-MP3.org, Music-Clips.net and other sites, demanding to take down offerings that allow users to download the audio tracks of YouTube videos. In the letter, a YouTube lawyer referred to the site’s Terms of Service, which don’t allow the downloading of content that isn’t made available for download by YouTube itself.

The petition, on the other hand, argues that downloading MP3 files from YouTube is simply an act of recording media, comparable to the DVR or even the cassette recorder. From the petition:

“For decades people were allowed to take a private copy of a public broadcast. You could record the radio program with a cassette recorder or make a copy of your favorite movie by using a video recorder. All these techniques have been opposed heavily in its early years by the big media companies who didn’t want the public to have such technology… Several years later history is about to repeat: Google has teamed up with the RIAA to make the same claims against all sorts of online recording tools for their 21th century broadcasting service: YouTube (“Broadcast yourself”).”

Contacted for this story, a YouTube spokesperson sent me a brief statement reiterating the Terms of Service argument:

“We have always taken violations of our Terms of Service seriously, and will continue to enforce these Terms of Service against sites that violate them.”

Video conversion and downloading tools for YouTube aren’t exactly new; numerous sites and apps have made use of the site’s MP4 streams to offer high-quality audio and video downloads in the past. Some of those also have gotten cease-and-desist letters before, but this recent wave seems to have received a bit more attention in part because the folks are the center of it are more media-savvy. The petition was started Friday by Philip Matesanz, who happens to also be the founding admin of YouTube-MP3.org as well, and his site now also features a prominent link to the petition.

However, there’s also an underlying trend here that makes this more of a pressing matter for YouTube – and it’s not necessarily any pressure from the record industry, as the petition alleges. As YouTube is stepping up its efforts to monetize content on the site, it has to make sure that its video views are actually counted, and that ads are displayed when people play any of its clips. Both isn’t possible when users download YouTube clips through third-party services.

Related research and analysis from GigaOM Pro:
Subscriber content. Sign up for a free trial.


from GigaOM http://gigaom.com/video/youtube-mp3-download-tools-petition/?utm_source=feedb...

Ultimate Tips for an Easier Life in Excel, Part #1: Shortcuts

Ugh, Excel. It’s one of the most widely-used software applications that ever existed. Whether you’re a Finance, Administrative or Sales professional, employers today are hiring those who can produce deliverables quickly, often in Excel.

As of earlier this month, our community had answered more than 1,000,000 questions in the Smarterer Excel test. Yet for most people, Excel still looks intimidating with its seemingly complex formulas and a big learning curve.

We want to help you become an Excel ninja with a series of posts in the next few weeks, where we will cut through the clutter and drill down on the most practical techniques.

For Part 1 of this series, here are 3 tips for any beginners:

#1. Use Excel for something fun.

It may seem like a spreadsheet is just for school projects or boring accounting ledgers, but it could actually be a fabulous organization tool for anything fun in your life. Divya Bahl, blogger for HerCampus.com, used Excel to keep track of her adventures in trying different restaurants when she first moved to NYC. By categorizing her list the way she envisioned her journey, the experience was less overwhelming than searching on Yelp and much more personalized.

Excel is a prerequisite for most professions today, so why wait to learn it over something not as fun? Practice makes perfect.

#2. Unplug your mouse.

We know this sounds crazy, but imagine having to click through the ribbon a hundred thousand times over your career. That could add up to thousands of hours which you could’ve spent on a vacation or pursuing a new interest. For many competitive entry level jobs such as Investment Banking, productivity in Excel plays a large part in the hiring decision. @IBDBlogger, a blogger who specializes in career advice for bankers, drew from his experience that forcing your hand muscles to practice the shortcuts was a worthwhile investment.

It’s common knowledge that ctrl+c and ctrl+v are shortcuts for copying and pasting. Beyond that, which keystrokes are actually used often out of the 200+ that exist? We recommend learning the following shortcuts first, in order to get comfortable with maneuvering and performing basic operations (Windows, Excel 2007 only):

  • F5: go directly to a specific cell. Nothing wastes more time than scrolling down or to the right to look for a specific cell.
  • Ctrl + arrow (up, down, left or right): go directly to the end of a block of data. Many times you need to get to the bottom of a data set. This saves time from scrolling and clicking.
  • Ctrl + Shift + Arrow (up, down, left or right): select an entire block of data instantly. No need to drag the mouse and miss a cell.
  • F2: edit content in cell. Get in the habit of using this instead of double clicking. Imagine not having to move your hand to the mouse and risk clicking the wrong cells.
  • Alt + = : auto create sum formula and add all values on top. Most of the time you have a simple table that sums a list of numbers. Not having to type the formula can save you a lifetime.
  • Shift + spacebar: select entire row. You may often want to clean out an entire row, copy the row or insert a new row on top. Now you don’t have to scroll all the way to the left of the screen to do it.
  • Ctrl + spacebar: select entire column. Similar to selecting an entire row; with this, you don’t have to scroll to the top.
  • Ctrl + z: undo. It’s easy to mess something up. Undo lets you go back easily.
  • Alt -> E -> S -> V: Paste Special Value. To keep things simple in the beginning, you may like to play with a copy of some data without tangling with the existing formulas or formats. This will provide you the value of the cell with a fresh start. When maintaining advanced data analysis between multiple workbooks, this will become very handy.
  • Ctrl + Page Up or Page Down: Move to the next or previous worksheet easily without moving your hand to the mouse.

#3. Keep everything neat.

Nothing hurts the eye more than a messy spreadsheet, where you can’t immediately decipher the categories or the content of individual cells. Formatting a sheet, however, is very time consuming without the practical shortcuts. Here, we recommend:

  • Ctrl + B: bold fonts. Simplest way to create headers for your data block.
  • Ctrl + Shirt + &: adds border around the cell. For the most basic spreadsheets, adding border to highlight a summary value is often enough.
  • (select entire column) Alt -> O -> C -> A: auto-adjust column width based on content. No need to drag the tiny line of a column trying to fit the content!
  • (select entire row) Alt -> O -> R -> A: auto-adjust row height based on content. No need to drag the row.
  • Ctrl + 0: hide the entire column. No need to select entire column and right-click for the menu in order to hide it.
  • Ctrl + 9: hide the entire row. Same as above.
  • Ctrl + !: format as Number with 2 decimals
  • Ctrl + $: format as Currency
  • Ctrl + %: format as Percentage
  • Ctrl + /: format as Scientific

If you tackled all of these and are looking for more shortcuts, Bill Jelen, the renowned “Mr. Excel” and Microsoft MVP, offers a video showing many keystroke tricks.

Follow us on Twitter @smarterer to stay tuned for our Part 2, Powerful and Essential Formulas.

 

from BostInno http://bostinno.com/channels/ultimate-tips-for-an-easier-life-in-excel-part-1...

Twitter releases "transparency tool" to reveal government requests

In the vein of what Google has done for a few years now, Twitter released a “transparency tool” on Monday. The company showed the public for the first time exactly how many times governments ask for user information or ask for content to be taken down. The tool also shows how many DMCA takedown requests are made. The new tool's release comes on the same day that a New York criminal judge denied Twitter's motion to quash a subpoena request for an Occupy Wall Street protestor's data.

Not surprisingly, requests from the United States government top the list, coming in at 679 (out of 849 requests made in 2012). Twitter complied in whole or in part with 75 percent of those requests. The report shows that the company did not comply with any government content removal requests. The transparency tool measures requests between January 1, 2012 and June 30, 2012.

By comparison, American authorities requested over 3,800 items via court order from Google in the second half of 2011. Google says it complied with 40 percent of the American requests.

Read 5 remaining paragraphs | Comments

from Ars Technica http://arstechnica.com/business/2012/07/twitter-releases-transparency-tool-to...

Ask Stack: What is the best way to divide work between developers?

This Q&A is part of a biweekly series of posts highlighting common questions encountered by technophiles and answered by users at Stack Exchange, a free, community-powered network of 80+ Q&A sites.

Robert Harvey asks:

My team and I are rebuilding a site we developed around ten years ago, and we want to do it in Agile. After I've spent a lot of time reading (probably not enough), I am having trouble with the question of how to divide work between developers.

I'll be more specific and say that the site is divided into separate modules which don't have much integration between them. What is the best/most accepted way to divide the work between the developers?

Read more | Comments

from Ars Technica http://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2012/06/ask-stack-what-is-the-b...

Boxee, Comcast agree to a workaround for encrypted basic cable channels on third party boxes

Boxee usually doesn't get along with the existing media / pay-TV conglomerates, but now it's telling the FCC it has come to an agreement with Comcast. The solution agreed to lets live TV-friendly Boxee access encrypted basic cable channels thanks to a DLNA-controlled high definition digital transport adapter that would connect to the box via Ethernet, with an eye towards no longer requiring an adapter at all down the road. Multichannel News quotes Boxee CEO Avner Ronen as saying it was "good to work with Comcast" on a deal that gives third parties like his company continued access to basic cable. The benefit for Comcast and other cable companies is that they could progress with encrypted all-digital solutions that would open up bandwidth for things like higher speed internet, something Boxee was arguing against previously. What this means for existing standards like CableCARD or the long awaited AllVid is unclear, but if it's one step closer to a legitimate option to ditching the cable box, we'll take it.

Boxee, Comcast agree to a workaround for encrypted basic cable channels on third party boxes originally appeared on Engadget on Sun, 01 Jul 2012 00:44:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Permalink Multichannel News  |  sourceLetter to FCC from Comcast / Boxee  | Email this | Comments

from Engadget http://www.engadget.com/2012/07/01/boxee-comcast-agree-to-a-workaround-for-en...

BBC introduces Red Button to the internet, thinks they'll be great pals

BBC to introduce Red Button to the internet, thinks they'll be great pals

Since 1999, the BBC's Red Button feature has delivered alternative camera angles, sports scores and the like over broadcast spectrum, but it's now set to become internet enabled. Channel surfers shouldn't expect a full-blown web experience, however, as the Beebs stresses it's not about to include everything and the kitchen sink in terms of functionality. Rather, their Connected Red Button aims for simplicity. Punching the clicker could bring up the iPlayer to catch previous episodes of shows or save recipes from a cooking program for later viewing on a computer or smartphone. Companion screen experiences such as the Antiques Roadshow app, which is slated for a September release, are also part of their web-connected roadmap. Mum's the word on when these new features might roll out, but we're promised the BBC's Olympics coverage will give us a taste of what's to come.

BBC introduces Red Button to the internet, thinks they'll be great pals originally appeared on Engadget on Sat, 30 Jun 2012 11:46:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Permalink   |  sourceBBC  | Email this | Comments

from Engadget http://www.engadget.com/2012/06/30/bbc-to-introduce-internet-connected-red-bu...

Hulu lands major HBO deal… in Japan

Hulu just announced a major content partnership with HBO for its Japanese subscription service that will make episodes of shows like Entourage, Sex and the City and The Sopranos available to Japanese audiences. Shows will be available on Hulu Japan for a limited time, and the release will be staggered: Viewers will be able to watch the first season of Sex and the City starting in July and through September, with episodes of the second season becoming available in August and the third season popping up on the service in September.

Hulu’s SVP of International Johannes Larcher announced the deal on the company’s blog, where he also said that the content offered by Hulu Japan has grown by 300 percent since its launch less than a year ago. From his blog post:

“The amount of content available to subscribers overall has increased by more than 300% since the service launched in September 2011. There are now more than 800 films and nearly 6,900 TV show episodes from 24 content providers. And we have continued to heavily invest in creating original subtitles for TV shows that have never before been available in Japan, including new series like “Sons of Anarchy”, “The Office” and “It’s Always Sunny In Philadelphia.”

Hulu’s Japanese service is subscription-only, and the company lowered its price earlier this year to increase demand. Larcher said that Hulu now has 19 people working in Japan.

U.S. users of Hulu shouldn’t hold their breath for HBO content coming to the service any time soon. The shows added to the Japanese catalog are all part of the DVD window, and HBO has been successfully established its own online service HBO Go in the U.S. – and access to that offering is limited to cable TV subscribers who also pay for HBO access as part of their cable bill.

Related research and analysis from GigaOM Pro:
Subscriber content. Sign up for a free trial.


from GigaOM http://gigaom.com/video/hulu-lands-major-hbo-deal-in-japan/?utm_source=feedbu...

Twitter Plans New Measures to Reduce Hate Speech and Trolling

image via darkgovernment

Plans to introduce new measures that will limit the visibility of hate speech and trolling on Twitter are underway, the Financial Times reports. Leadership has sought to maintain its devotion to free speech — a premise on which the company was founded — yet management has become increasingly discontent with the flood of hate speech and trolling that inundate the social service. Twitter’s governance hopes to strike a happy medium between the two goals.

The pseudonym debate

One proposal is to hide replies from users who lack credibility — those with no followers, profile information, or photo — but management is concerned that this could subdue two of the biggest factors making Twitter so socially influential: free speech and anonymity.

Said Twitter CEO Dick Costolo via the FT:

The reason we want to allow pseudonyms is there are lots of places in the world where it’s the only way you’d be able to speak freely

The flipside of that is it also emboldens these trolls … how do you make sure you are both emboldening people to speak politically but making it OK to be on the platform and not endure all this hate speech? It’s very frustrating.

Tweets must flow

Twitter’s “tweets must flow” mantra has enabled incredible social movements like the Arab Spring, but also allowed for relentless streams of hatred towards public figures.

One such incident came at the end of April after the Boston Bruins lost a Game 7 playoff game to the Washington Capitals on an overtime goal by African-American player Joel Ward. Immediately after the game ended, the “Twitterverse” was inundated with racist and discriminatory comments.

In the United Kingdom, a student was sentenced to 56 days in prison after sending a racist tweet to Barclay’s Premier League soccer player Fabrice Muamba.

Finding a middle ground that maintains Twitter’s ideals yet limits abuse won’t be easy. But, as appalling incidents continue to occur, Twitter increasingly feels the need to make changes.

from BostInno http://bostinno.com/2012/06/28/twitter-hate-speech-trolling-changes/

BlueStacks Allows You to Run Android Apps on a Mac

BlueStacks announced a public alpha version of their Android App Player for the Mac today at Google I/O.

The company had originally released a beta version of their App Player for Windows back in March. The software allows users to run Android apps directly on their Windows PCs, and the newest version begins to extend that functionality to the Mac.


While the Windows version allows you to run any Android app without modification, the early Mac version seems to be limited to 15 initial apps that comes bundled with the download. The bundled apps include Air Control Lite, Alchemy, Basketball Shot, Drag Racing, Elastic World, Facebook, Glow Hockey, Guns'n'Glory, Paper Toss, Pulse, Robo Defense, Seesmic, Twitter, Whatsapp, and Zebra Paint.

Their support page claims that "in the very near future", they plan on opening the Mac version up to over 400,000 Android apps:

The BlueStacks App Player for Mac OSX (alpha) supports both Lion and Snow Leopard. You can test drive a fixed set of curated apps for the first release (alpha-1). In the very near future, BlueStacks will let you select from over 400,000 Android apps to play on your Mac.
The alpha version is available as a free download from the BlueStacks website.


Recent Mac and iOS Blog Stories
Infinity Blade Delivered Epic's Best Return on Investment
Facebook Abandoning HTML5 to Speed Up iOS App
'iBank for iPad' Arrives in App Store
Apple TV Launches in Hong Kong, Malaysia, Singapore, and Vietnam [Updated]
iOS 6 Beta Allows Reordering of Icons on Apple TV

from MacRumors: Mac News and Rumors - Front Page http://www.macrumors.com/2012/06/28/bluestacks-allows-you-to-run-android-apps...

Brightcove's concept for an Apple TV

Brightcove CEO Jeremy Allaire is excited about the Apple TV and its future. The head of the video publishing powerhouse recently presented the idea of an apps-driven platform that relies on AirPlay to share content between the Apple TV and other Apple hardware. iOS devices, Allaire says, will become "the next-generation TV set-top box" and will bring "hundreds of thousands and soon millions of rich interactive applications and experiences onto your TV set."

To bring this new way to interact with the TV one step closer to reality, Brightcove has introduced the App Cloud Dual-Screen Solution for Apple TV. The technology will let iOS users use AirPlay to stream a show to their HDTV, while simultaneously interacting with information about the show. You could, for example, watch an episode of History's Mountain Men and read trivia about the adventurers in the show at the same time. The solution includes a software development kit that'll let developers easily create dual-screen AirPlay-enabled apps. You can watch a demonstration of the technology in the video below.

[Via AllThingsD]

Show full PR text
Brightcove Unveils App Cloud Dual-Screen Solution for Apple TV

June 26, 2012 / Brightcove Press Release

Media publishers empowered to easily develop rich iPad and iPhone content apps that simultaneously control full-screen content experiences on HDTV

BOSTON, June 26, 2012 - Brightcove (NASDAQ: BCOV), a leading global provider of cloud content services, today unveiled the App Cloud Dual-Screen Solution for Apple TV. The new solution enables media publishers to develop rich content apps for the iPhone and iPad that simultaneously control content, data and information presented on an HDTV while displaying synchronized content on the iPad or iPhone. The unique dual-screen solution leverages Apple's AirPlay technology, which allows viewers to use applications that simultaneously present content, interactive options and data on both the touch device and an Apple TV.

With Brightcove's new App Cloud Dual Screen Solution for Apple TV, media publishers can capitalize on the growing consumer trend of using mobile devices while watching TV. A national survey of more than 2,000 Web-enabled smartphone users conducted by Razorfish and Yahoo! found that "80 percent of respondents are mobile multitasking while watching TV."[1] Brightcove customers can now leverage this trend by offering their audiences a variety of enhanced viewing experiences, including the ability to stream programs to an HDTV while enjoying relevant content on the app such as actor bios, past-season recaps, trivia, photos, and more.

"The App Cloud Dual-Screen Solution for Apple TV opens the door to a new kind of content experience for the connected consumer that blends the rich contextual information that fans crave with HD television viewing," said Jeremy Allaire, Brightcove chairman and chief executive officer. "App Cloud is transforming the iPad and iPhone app experience by marrying rich contextual content for mobile devices with online video viewing on the living room television."

Availability
Brightcove's new Dual-Screen App Solution will be included in the new App Cloud software development kit (SDK) and available to the open source community, enabling content owners of all kinds to accelerate time-to-market for building engaging dual-screen experiences with Apple TV and AirPlay. The availability of the dual-screen solution coincides with Brightcove's introduction of App Cloud Core, a free developer edition, also announced today at the Brightcove PLAY 2012 global customer conference. App Cloud Core enables developers to build an unlimited number of mobile applications using HTML5 and JavaScript. [See separate release]

To learn more about the Brightcove App Cloud content app platform, visit http://www.brightcove.com/content-app-platform. />
Watch Live at Brightcove PLAY
Brightcove will be live streaming the introduction of the Dual-Screen App Solution and other new App Cloud features during the Brightcove PLAY 2012 global customer conference keynote session today from 9:00 - 10:30 am ET. Tune in live at play.brightcove.com.

About Brightcove
Brightcove Inc. (NASDAQ: BCOV), a leading global provider of cloud content services, provides a family of products used to publish and distribute the world's professional digital media. The company's products include Brightcove Video Cloud, the market-leading online video platform, and Brightcove App Cloud, a pioneering content app platform. More than 4,200 customers in over 50 countries rely on Video Cloud to build and operate media experiences across PCs, smartphones, tablets and connected TVs. For more information, visit
http://www.brightcove.com.

Brightcove's concept for an Apple TV originally appeared on TUAW - The Unofficial Apple Weblog on Tue, 26 Jun 2012 21:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Source | Permalink | Email this | Comments

from TUAW - The Unofficial Apple Weblog http://www.tuaw.com/2012/06/26/brightcoves-concept-for-an-apple-tv/