Youtube — Tag

Rumour had it that Vodafone were rethinking their iPhone plans, and today it was announced that they did. You can now get an iPhone for just $40 per month, with a cool $699 for the phone first (8gb). How nice of them. Could be much better still though (i.e. unlimited data).

It is making me want an iPhone again. But first, I think I’ll get a Macbook.* Then I’ll wait to see Telecom release their deals, rumour has it that Telecoms GSM network will be officially launched in November with the iPhone in tow. Some iPhone users will see the Telecom network available for selection under the Network option too.

Meanwhile, I am quite content with my current Sony Ericsson W850i, except a couple of days ago when I went to hunt for drivers and found that it had been practically been completely wiped from the website. Shucks.

Back on to Vodafone, they are heavily advertising their $1 for 10MB “casual” data plan. Hooray I say, cause I use Opera Mini on my W850i to check up on Tweets and emails and the quick check up on Wikipedia. They are even advertising on some websites where you’d benefit. Interestingly, this includes YouTube. You’ll get a nice Flash ad next to the video saying that you can “carry your favourite clips in your pocket” for only $1! Sweet! Ummm, no. In fact, if you hit YouTube mobile, you’ll get a nice warning from the Google folks telling you to only enter with an unlimited plan!

* Yes, you read that right… I am going to get a Macbook. Sometime late next month hopefully.

This might be an interesting idea. Already on the PlayStation 3 you can record your singing performances and upload them to the My SingStar community (and there are some rather funny videos on there too). Now this video uploading is taking a new step, with the YouTube API being added to the PS3 SDK (Software Development Kit).

Now you can upload your in-game moves and upload directly to YouTube. That would be rather awesome in GTA IV (a recent time filler for me).

The first game to feature this will be Japanese game Mainichi Issho. Who knows what exactly you can upload in that game (looks rather crazy to me).

There is a website dedicated entirely to video game videos, GameVee.com, but I think they miss out due to the lack of upload API.

If you haven’t heard yet, YouTube New Zealand was launched the other day.

Other than providing increased marketing opportunity on the homepage (where the current welcome video is) and having faster downloads (apparently, I didn’t notice), there really isn’t that much different.

The featured videos are some local picks, I hope it’s not always like that to be honest. The Videos tab now shows what NZers are actually most watching, which would explain why the guy from the One News story about YouTube was the top most watched video at only 1,400 views.

This Leave Britney Alone video trend is getting crazy.

Did you know that YouTube does have RSS feeds available? Yes, it’s true! The only thing is, they don’t make this fact very well known, you have to know which page to go to to find out where it is. Interestingly, these RSS feeds are enclosure feeds, as in you should be able to use them in a podcast client (like iTunes) and it’ll download the shows (however, for these I recommend Miro).

I decided to create a Greasemonkey script that exposes these RSS feeds in a better location. It only works on the beta version of the pages (probably won’t make a normal version, but the beta pages are better anyway).

1. If you haven’t already, download Greasemonkey for Firefox.
2. Click here to open the script, and select Install from the notification bar at the top
3. Go to any video, and if you want the RSS feed for the user click on the RSS icon in your address bar.

Clearly YouTube/Google don’t really want average Joe user to use these, but then, does average Joe user use web feeds?

TVNZ has announced an Australasian first by making a deal with Google to put its own content on YouTube.

The channel will show clips of popular TVNZ shows such as One News, Close Up and Shortland Street from TVNZ onDemand.

This goes in line with TVNZ’s on-every-screen strategy that started with the onDemand website. However, it still needs to get a bit beyond the computer screen if that’s to happen – perhaps by removing the DRM off downloaded video from onDemand and making free shows available to download too? (Currently, free content only plays in the embedded flash player and paid content lasts seven days unless you pay up again.)

Telecom T3G customers have been able to get certain TVNZ content on their mobiles for some time now.

• TVNZ onDemand on YouTube

Two big purchases overnight. Can’t keep up!

Late last night, it was confirmed that Vodafone (NZ) had purchased local ISP iHug for $41 million. iHug is the third largest, and provides telephone, satellite and broadband services. This is an interesting step for Vodafone, as the only way to enter the market with a bang is by buying one of the largest in that market. With the advent of local loop unbundling starting here early next year, I suppose that a co-operative wired and wireless world is brewing in Vodafone’s head.

• Juha has full details.

Well, one giant had been in a certain market for a while, but failed to catch up. It has been confirmed that Google purchased YouTube for US$1.65 billion. Now, we must remember that Google was perhaps one of the first companies to have shared video and searching, but it quickly got overtaken by the start up. Google Video has only recently put YouTube style features in.

It does seem to be that if you want to make a bang in a market, you just buy into the largest company of that market.