tubes

The best April Fools' pranks are absurd but also have a kernel of believability at their core just big enough to reel people in.

While the notion that YouTube has been a 8-year-long contest and Google is finally choosing a winner and shutting the site down tonight is pretty hard to swallow on its face, Google did shock many people by announcing the shutdown of Google Reader recently. Perhaps Larry and Sergey are beginning to go all Howard Hughes on us?

That's how the below video just put out by YouTube operates. The basic premise is that YouTube has … Read more

SAN FRANCISCO--YouTube today added a way for developers to publish live videos from their mobile applications.

A new set of application programming interfaces, or APIs, introduced today by the company at the Game Developers Conference, lets developers push out a video stream of an app for live viewing.

In practice, this means game developers can add some code into their existing games, then publish gameplay live from a smartphone or tablet.

Such a system has been in place for a handful of desktop gaming titles, including Call of Duty: Black Ops II, and has resulted in hundreds of thousands of … Read more

Of the 750-plus channels Roku has to offer, there's one big guy missing from the pack: YouTube.

Considering its front-and-center presence on other platforms -- like Apple TV and Samsung Smart TVs -- its conspicuous absence might seem odd. But, Roku's CEO offers a logical explanation, noting that "YouTube insists on using HTML5 for its UI," and seemingly refuses to build a Roku-specific app.

YouTube's absence hurts so bad that even third-party developers have created channels almost exclusively designed to stream YouTube, only to be pulled days or weeks later.

As of this writing, there … Read more

It used to be a new business pitch. Now, it's a Hollywood movie.

It used to be an intimate affair. Now, you're having to keep an eye and an ear on the fact that it'll be a visual and aural feeding of 5,000 supposed friends.

Now, it seems, if you're committed to going down on one knee, you have to be down with who is going to script the event and who is going to direct it. You might even need a few co-stars to make the production big enough.

Indeed, as the San Francisco Chronicle proposes it, … Read more

Video Tube Free for YouTube is exactly as it sounds: a free app for browsing, sharing, and interacting with content on YouTube. While YouTube has since released an official app that offers most of the same features in a very similar interface, there are still a few reasons to recommend Video Tube, even if you also use the YouTube app or the YouTube mobile site.

Video Tube works right out of the box without the need for logging in or registration. In fact, Video Tube has no options to log in in its free version, instead allowing you to save … Read more

Google wants to "Keep" your notes.

Yesterday Google introduced Keep, the new mobile and Web-based note-storing service that looks to take aim at products like Evernote. Boasting a simple, easy-to-use interface, Keep will work with Google Drive so that all notes are synced across different platforms. Users can edit their notes from either their phone or the Web and the information will be saved everywhere. You can also use voice dictation and photos to help enhance each note you take.

The BlackBerry Store has topped 100,000 apps, 30,000 of which were just added in the last … Read more

YouTube is clearly eyeing paid subscriptions, though it won't reveal if such an option has gotten the green light.

Speaking with reporters in Los Angeles yesterday, Robert Kyncl, a YouTube vice president, said that paid subscription channels are "incredibly important" in order to create "additional revenue streams" for content creators, the Wall Street Journal reported today. YouTube has reportedly already been chatting with producers about offering channels that would require a fee.

Possibly debuting as soon as next quarter, the first of such channels would charge users between $1 and $5 a month and initially … Read more

What does 1 billion monthly YouTube users signify? It means that nearly one out of every two people on the Internet worldwide goes to YouTube.

That's a serious amount of people.

Google's video hosting service announced today that for the first time, it's driving these colossal numbers -- more than a billion unique users on the site, every month.

"If YouTube were a country, we'd be the third largest in the world after China and India," YouTube wrote in a blog post today. "Our monthly viewership is the equivalent of roughly 10 Super … Read more

The music industry is pinning great hope on subscription music services such as Spotify, a segment that's growing faster than any other part of recorded music industry. And now comes news that Amazon is looking to jump into the fray.

The Verge, citing multiple sources, reports that Amazon is holding informal talks with the music industry about launching an on-demand service similar to Spotify, which is the largest such service with 24 million active users and 6 million paid subscribers.

This development comes as Google is trying to launch a pair of subscription music services this summer, one tied … Read more