New Media Center

Here’s a neat trick to use next time you want to show a YouTube video in class, or in your home theater (h/t to WebWare). You need to have the Firefox web browser and an add-on/plugin called YouTube Cinema. So you can go from this:

To this:

You can still view a given YouTube video in a normal fashion (with all the distracting images and adverts) by either clicking a button in the lower right corner labeled “Go To Site”, or you can hold down the Ctrl key while clicking the link to the video, which will prevent YouTube Cinema from kicking in. Then if you want to watch in cinema mode, right-click somewhere on the page and choose “Play in Cinema” from the menu. You can also play around with the background color used to display the film. By default it uses a dark-green color. I personally would go with black. It doesn’t appear to be an instant change, but will take effect on the next viewing.

YouTube may start to include a similar feature in all of it’s videos. It already has a “turn down the lights” button on some videos, including the Star Trek Original Series videos (for example). Also, it doesn’t appear to work with High Definition videos, and it also doesn’t work on videos where embedding has been disabled. You can display videos using the high quality setting and you can even make the video slightly larger than the normal size. It also will work with a playlist of videos, so you could conceivably watch an entire movie that has been broken up into parts and uploaded to YouTube – not that such things exist. Popcorn anyone?

Sarcasm notwithstanding, the sentiment in the above video is held by many people – “YouTube is a site of millions of sucky videos.” I have, in the past, argued against that statement here, here, here, and here. Until recently, a valid argument for YouTube’s suckiness would have been that high quality video was not an option. Today, that is no longer an issue and it’s ushering in a whole new incentive to get YouTube into new arenas such as the home theater market, and mobile computing realms. So what new places is YouTube popping up? Would it be a gross overstatement if I said “everywhere”? Without addressing further the argument of there being good and valuable content on YouTube, here is a list of some of the interesting places that YouTube is rearing its far-from-ugly head.

New LCD and plasma panels – Manufacturers are starting to experiment with the idea of networked flat panel TVs. YouTube is one of the services included in Panasonic’s Viera Cast TV, and Sony’s Bravia Internet Video Link Module, an add-on that attaches to Sony’s Bravia televisions.

Streaming Media set-top boxes – These devices are connected to the Internet, either through WiFi or wired Ethernet. Apple TV was one of the first to offer YouTube as an option for video content, in addition to playing movies, music, photos and podcasts from your iTunes library. Vudu is a set-top box for movies on-demand and adds YouTube access.  Netgear, makers of networking hardware, is dipping its toe into the YouTube pool, and Tivo looks to have a pretty robust implementation as well.
Update: Add a Kodak box to the list.

iPhone – Though Apple is now boasting that it has had over 500 million apps downloaded and 15,000 apps are available in the iTunes store, there is a built-in You Tube application for the iPhone. It connects directly to YouTube and plays the h.264 versions of the videos. The quality and the experience is first rate, unless you’re trying to access it over the slower EDGE network, then the fun subsides quite quickly. Oh, and Windows Mobile (ick!) has a YouTube Player too.

Computer (well duh?) – I know, you can go to youtube.com and access the videos, but the popular Miro software will search and play YouTube videos, in addition to managing video podcast feeds.

DVD players and game consoles – Soon, in addition to watching your Blu-ray movies and Netflix Watch Now content, owners of the new line of LG networked Blu-ray players will also be able to connect to the YouTube service. Also, recently announced was the addition of YouTube interfaces for Sony’s PS3 and the Nintendo Wii.

PowerPoint – I’ve talked about this before, but just in case you don’t know, it is fairly simple to Embed YouTube videos in PowerPoint.

SlideShare presentations – Speaking of PowerPoint, the great SlideShare service now offers the ability to insert YouTube videos in between the slides in the online version of your presentation.

Plugins for WordPress – Again not anything new, but a reminder that there are easy plug-ins available for the WordPress blogging (excuse me, web publishing) platform to embed your YouTube videos into posts. Anarchy and Viper’s Video Quicktags are two examples. There is also a built-in YouTube Plugin for Microsoft’s Windows Live Writer, which I still use (and am using now) to write my blogs posts, even though the WordPress interface is much improved with version 2.7.

Now that’s a lot of places to put your lame videos!

Myth #1 – You need an iPod to podcast

In theory you don’t really need to even own an MP3 player, let alone an iPod. Podcasting gets it’s name from the iPod (Start with the word Broadcasting, take out Broad and substitute Pod). It’s the idea that you are broadcasting to an iPod, but you are actually broadcasting to any MP3 player or even just a person’s computer through the web. It is also not LIVE broadcasting, it’s more like a magazine subscription.

Myth #2 – You need an iPod to listen to podcasts

As we said in Myth #1, you can listen to podcasts on any MP3 player, UNLESS, the podcast is ONLY available in AAC format from iTunes. Even then there are some portable players that support some AAC files (Microsoft’s Zune, Sony’s PSP, and the SanDisk Sansa).

Myth #3 – When I make my recording and save it as an MP3 file, that’s a podcast, right?

Well technically, no. Though many people say that they are recording a podcast, the podcast is actually the recording plus the backend mechanism that syndicates the recording. The ability to subscribe (using RSS) to this special type of broadcast is the reason we call them podcasts.

Myth #4 – Podcasting is complicated

It certainly CAN be, and to get very high quality and high production value podcasts takes lots of know-how. However, there are many ways to make it a very easy and enjoyable process (the satisfaction of broadcasting your production is VERY rewarding).

What you (and your subscribers) need:

• A web-hosting site (do a Google search for web hosting), or a specialized site such as Podbean.com (which hosts podcasts). Hey, if you are a UMW student or faculty member, how about UMW Blogs?
• iTunes – or other “podcatcher” – Here are instructions and a screencast on how to subscribe to a podcast using iTunes.
• iPod or other MP3 player, or a web page
• Microphone/Recording device*
• Recording software* (like Audacity)

*Notes: A USB Headset microphone we recommend – Logitech USB 350. If you’re using a Mac, GarageBand is a great program for creating a very professional sounding podcast. For recording hardware we have used and recommend the Marantz PMD660 or similar, and the Edirol R-09 or similar. You can even record using an iPhone!

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Just a quick post to tell folks about two nifty plugins (add-ons) for Firefox that make Google searches more . . . well . . . interesting (especially when you search for Edupunk). The first is Search Cloudlet which will include a “tag cloud” in your search results that allows you to refine said results more quickly. You can instantly see which related tags are most common and narrow your results accordingly. When you click on individual tags, you essentially add keywords to refine the search. By switching your cloud from Tags to Sites, you can select from sites that are most commonly associated with your search term and narrow the results by website. It’s fun, fast, and can lead to more serendipitous results. You can also search by top level domain names (.net, .com, .edu), or turn it off within the page if it does get in your way.

The other plugin is Googlepedia, which as you can see from the photo above, inserts a Wikipedia entry right into the Google results page. It nicely replaces the useless paid advertisements space to the right with a useful Wikipedia result. God help you if you search for Edupunk (and no, I don’t mean edulink).

You probably are and this site is for you. It’s a site that will introduce and talk about cool, and free, technology tools. That will include websites and web services and software that you can obtain for . . . um . . . free. So check out Stuff for Starving Students – it’s highly nutritional.

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Here is a Glog that I created for the Spring 2009 Orientation session. Our “technology showcase” featured a service called Glogster.com where you can create online posters that include many different types of media. Here is the example that I used in the presentation:

The full resolution version is available at http://rushaw.glogster.com/new-media/

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