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Funny-Serious Video: Hug a Developer

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Let’s have a little fun on a Friday and watch a video, shall we?

I don’t know what you do for a living, but I am pretty sure that while a good number of just might be software developers, there are also a lot of readers like me – people who usually deal with the finished products. As consumers, we do have to admit that sometimes, we may overlook the hard work that goes into a piece of software. We might not even be aware of it in certain cases.

Now I came across a YouTube video, courtesy of a developer friend naturally, and it does give you a different perspective on the life of a developer. Whether you are working as one or you only have an inkling of what a developer does, you ought to take a minute to watch this. Now don’t blame me if you feel your eyes tearing up or if your chest starts getting a little tight along the way… 😉

As far as I know, there is no official Hug a Developer Day yet (or maybe I missed it?). What do you say to starting a movement?

For the developers out there: what can you say about the video?

YouTube Still King of Online Video, But Facebook is Growing Fast

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NielsenWire has just published their latest online video metrics report and as expected like it has been the past couple of years, YouTube is still the most visited online video site. But what’s interesting to note from Nielsen’s stats is how fast Facebook is growing as an online video channel.

First,  some facts and details. According to the NielsenWire’s report, the number of unique viewers of online video increased y 5.2% year-over-year, from 137.4 million unique viewers in January 2009 to 142.7 million the same month this year. And the fastest growing online video sites include the likes of Disney Online with 23.3% growth, MSN/WindowsLive/Bing with 15.6% and of course Facebook with 18.6% growth during the said period.

YouTube on the other hand managed to posed only a 6.7% growth but it still remains at the top of the list with a commanding 112.6 million unique viewers.

Now, as I said, it’s quite interesting to note how fast Facebook is growing as a video channel. It only goes to show that more Facebook users are sharing online video as well as watching them online via Facebook. What is ironic about this is that most of those videos were actually embedded from the YouTube site.

Perhaps, Google has not yet noticed this trend especially since YouTube continues to be the number 1 online video site. But at the rate that Facebook is growing, it might just be a matter of time before it catches up with YouTube. Unless of course Google does something to prevent this from happening. Hopefully Google won’t do something drastic in the future.

YouTube Turns On Safety Mode Video Viewing

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In its effort to provide users with a more controlled and safe environment, YouTube has rolled out Safety Mode. This is an opt-in setting that will let you screen out outright and potential objectionable contents from showing up on your YouTube account channel, which you definitely don’t want your friends and family to see when they check out your YouTube video.

I’m pretty sure at some point in your YouTube experience, you’ve seen examples of these contents. It may be newsworthy video depicting violence at its gruesome details. Since this content does not contain any sexually objectionable content, YouTube will not censor them. So, it is up to you to determine whether these contents will be displayed on your YouTube account. If you don’t want to – then comes YouTube in Safety Mode.

To activate Safety Mode on your YouTube account, just click on the link at the bottom of any video page.

Safety Mode may not be a full-proof system yet, but it is certainly a step in the right direction. It may not guarantee safe video watching at all times, but at least Google is doing something to remedy this issue and provide us all with a “safe environment”  when watching YouTube videos.

And that alone is a great achievement.

YouTube Intros HTML5 Video Player, What Does it Do Again?

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It’s been pretty busy on the YouTube side lately. Awhile ago, YouTube announced a redesigned video home page. But before that, YouTube also announced something about its current testing of a new video player – this time it’s an HTML5-based video player.

HTML5 is a new web standard which is becoming popular recently, well simply because it offers new features to everyone’s web experience. And as a basis for its new video player, the YouTube HTML5-based player will support video and audio playback seamlessly without the need for additional browser plug-in. For as along as you an HTML5 compatible browser and support for the right audio and video codec, the YouTube HTML5-based video player will give you almost the same experience when watching YouTube video using its default Flash player.

While the YouTube HTML5-based video player seemed a fully functioning player, it however has several limitations. Well, that’s understandable because it is still at an early stage of development. Specifically the video player does not support video with ads, captions or annotations. It will also require a browser that supports video tagging and h.264 encoded video. Known browsers to support HTML5 are Chrome, Safari, Chrome Frame and Internet Explorer.  Firefox is not yet supported, but YouTube promises to include it and other browsers as well, in the future.

You can try using the HTML5-based video player by visiting the YouTube TestTube site and selecting HTML5 or simply go straight to this page to opt-in for the new video player. But honestly, if you don’t have a problem viewing YouTube videos with your browsers current setting, there’s really no point in trying it out. It’s basically the same thing minus the Flash component.

But still worth a try.

Google Takes 39% of the 30 Billion Videos Viewed Online

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comscoreonlinevideo

Whoa! According to comScore, 30 billion videos have been viewed online in November 2009. So, it’s either most people are watching one of those user-generated video showing the most funny human experience or viewing movie trailers of upcoming blockbuster movies.

Drilling deeper into the comScore data, we’d learn that 39% of these videos viewed online were from Google Sites, 99% of which are hosted on YouTube. Now here’s the interesting fact, Hulu is at distant second getting only 3% of the 30 billion videos viewed online. But that is understandable since Hulu is not accessible worldwide.

So, its either time for Hulu to open up globally or have some new video site that is worthy enough of challenging YouTube.

Looking into the Top 10 Video Content Provider though, the list becomes different. Google Sites is still at no.1 with around 129K unique viewers, followed by Yahoo Sites, Fox, CBS and Hulu.

Other highlights of comScore’s online video data include:

  • The top video ad networks in terms of their actual reach delivered were: Tremor Media Video Network with 20.0 percent penetration of online video viewers, BBE with 17.5 percent, and BrightRoll Video Network with 16.6 percent.
  • 84.8 percent of the total U.S. Internet audience viewed online video.
  • The average online video viewer watched 12.2 hours of video.
  • 128.1 million viewers watched more than 12 billion videos on YouTube.com (94.3 videos per viewer).
  • 38.6 million viewers watched 333.4 million videos on MySpace.com (8.6 videos per viewer).
  • The average Hulu viewer watched 21.1 videos, totaling 2.1 hours of videos per viewer.
  • The duration of the average online video was 4.0 minutes.

7 New Features of 6 Google Products and Services

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Google has been pretty busy this week, despite the recently announced layoffs of around 200 Googlers. For those who are not affected by Google’s labor downsizing, life goes on at Google and its products and services. This week, we’ve discovered 7 new features of six Google major products and services.  All seven of these new features aim to enhance user experience and activity while using those six products and service. So, here 7 new features of 6 Google products and services. [Read more…] about 7 New Features of 6 Google Products and Services