YouTube has introduced multiple Creative Commons options for video uploaders and video remixers. This opens up thousands of clips to be used in videos and allows creators to offer more liberal licensing to other users of the site.

Creative Commons

The Creative Commons licensing system has been around since 2002 and allowed content creators to easily license their works on the Internet. There are six different Creative Commons licenses available, ranging from Attribution Alone to Attribution + Noncommercial + ShareAlike. All of which make various demands of those using the licensed works.

Creative Commons has been used extensively on photographs, with Flickr now hosting almost 200 million images licensed under the system. But video hasn’t really made the most of the Creative Commons licensing system. At least until now.

Continue Reading…

Ustream continues to add subscription options as it attempts to make the freemium model work. At least the latest one – Premium Memberships – is a lot cheaper than Ad-Free Broadcasting.

Ustream – From Strength-To-Strength

Ustream continues to grow from its humble beginnings in 2007. It now has millions of users streaming many more millions of hours of live programming. Not all of it is watchable, admittedly, but the mere fact it’s there and being broadcast is testament to the success of the site.

Charlie Sheen recently generated lots of publicity (but not all that many viewers) by hosting his own show on the site in the immediate aftermath of his firing from Two and a Half Men. But the bread-and-butter of the site is its hordes of ordinary people broadcasting their lives on the Internet.

Continue Reading…

There are multiple options for people looking to video chat online these days, from MSN Messenger to Chatroulette and everything in between the two. But AOL AV others something few others do: simplicity.

AOL AV

Those of you out there who want to expose yourselves on the Internet for others to see, intimately or otherwise, now have another option for doing so. AOL AV is a free video chat service which requires no sign-in or username, and no software download. It does, however, require Flash.

Leaked last week by some naughty bloggers, AOL AV has now launched in beta. And very impressive it is too. AOL AV allows four people to chat (video, audio, and text) together at one time without hoops needing to be jumped through.

All you need to do is visit the AOL AV site, click ‘Start a Video Chat’, click ‘Allow’, and there you are. To bring other people into the chatroom you just share the shortened URL with anyone you want to, be they friend or stranger.

Continue Reading…

Yahoo’s Yahoo! Connected TV platform may be set to get some licensed video-on-demand content from Disney. That’s the same Disney which has blocked Google TV from accessing its content. Then again, this content may not be that good.

Connected TV Platforms

Connected TV platforms are coming at us thick and fast, with the likes of Apple (Apple TV), Google (Google TV), and Boxee (Boxee Box) having released their own in recent months, and that’s just a small selection of those now on offer to consumers.

Yahoo! Connected TV has been with us for a while, and is currently available in 70 different models of television. However, the apps available on it up to now have mostly been widgets (read Web apps) such as those for Facebook, Twitter, and Amazon. In other words, not video content.

Continue Reading…

The television industry is treating Google as the devil thanks to Google TV, with most networks and many video websites blocking the set-top box and associated devices from accessing them. But Google isn’t backing down, with CEO Eric Schmidt extolling the virtues of his company’s innovation.

Google TV

Google TV launched in October after months of speculation. The Logitech Revue set-top box and a range of Sony TVs and other devices enable viewers to bring online video into the living room in a big way. At least that was the idea.

The problem is that all connected TV platforms need content to thrive. Unfortunately for Google, ABC, NBC, CBS, Fox, and Hulu have all blocked Google TV from accessing their online video feeds, and there doesn’t seem much hope that they’ll change their minds anytime soon.

Not that Google is worried. Yet.

Continue Reading…

As predicted/expected (though not this quickly) Netflix is now offering a streaming-only subscription option in the United States. Is the company set to become the default streaming service in the U.S., with Google TV and the big networks needing this ready-made middle man?

Netflix Streaming-Only

Just a few days after CEO Reed Hastings described Netflix as “primarily a streaming company,” a new option for subscribers has been launched. Those who want to drop the DVD-by-mail portion of the service can now do so.

As originally noted by Engadget, Netflix has quietly changed the pricing of its plans slightly. The three cheapest tiers (offering unlimited streaming and one, two, and three DVDs at a time respectively) all now cost $1 more than they did previously. The rest have remained the same.

However, there is also a new Watch Instantly plan costing $7.99 which removes the option of receiving DVDs by mail entirely. This is very close to the amount Canadian subscribers pay for a similar service launched last month.

Continue Reading…

Those of you planning on buying a Google TV-powered device in the near future will now be able to make full use of YouTube Leanback, which has now been fully rolled out. And it’s actually pretty damn easy to use, even from 10-feet away.

Google TV Arrives…

The first Google TV products are on sale this weekend in the U.S., with Sony’s impressive yet expensive range of Google TV sets, and the Logitech Revue Google TV set-top box now being available to buy.

There’s no guarantee consumers are going to go for Google TV at this early stage of proceedings, but that isn’t stopping Google forging ahead with its plans to really push itself and its online video properties into the living room.

Continue Reading…