New Media Center

If you ever wished that the websites that you bookmark could be available to you wherever you connect to the web, then the Delicious service is just what you need. Once you sign up for an account you can copy web addresses (URLs) from websites you’d like to save, and paste them into the Delicious “Save a new bookmark” form. Additionally, you can tag those saved bookmarks with keywords to help you keep them organized. The social angle of the website happens as other people you know obtain a Delicious account. You can see what others in your network have bookmarked, and you can save bookmarks for other people in your network. In essence you are sending a recommendation of a website for your friends, family, or colleagues to take a look at. When you return to the Delicious site, any bookmarks that have been recommended to you by your network, will be in your Delicious Inbox.

Another powerful feature that is built into the Delicious service is RSS feeds by tag. So let’s say that you tag some bookmarked sites with “education”, the links to those sites can be re-published as a dynamic feed on another website. If you wanted to get really specific, you could have students in a class tag their bookmarks with something like “umweduc220s09″ for the Spring 2009 Education 220 class at UMW. Students in that class could thereby share those found resources with each other.

Delicious not only let’s you save website bookmarks, but you can also save links to media files as well. If you save a bookmark to a media files such as an .mp3, Delicious will provide a small player program for you to listen to the media file. Delicious also provides some tools that you can use to help you manage and save your bookmarks easily through the use of some tools. The Delicious Bookmark tool for Firefox is a great example of a way within the Firefox browser to search and manage your saved bookmarks. It will even keep track of your most visited bookmarks so you have quick links to those most often used resources and websites. There is also a Delicious Bookmark tool for Internet Explorer. Though we do recommend Firefox for lots of reasons. The Delicious service can be as simple as an online bookmark site, or as fancy as a creating a personal podcast using the tools and techniques described above.

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Burn is a free, Macintosh program that allows you to burn data files to CDs and DVDs. It has similar capabilities to the commercial programs Roxio (Roxio Toast is available for the Mac) or Nero, you can also create audio CDs, create and burn ISO images (an ISO image would be a multiple file disc saved as a single file), and create bootable discs. There is an equivalent free Windows program is called CDBurner XP.

Official Burn website

http://burn-osx.sourceforge.net/Pages/English/home.html

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Apple’s iMovie HD (version 6) is the venerable video editor that users were so fond of that Apple offered it as a download after releasing iMovie ‘08, which was not well received. The current version is iMovie ‘09, which is included with all new Macintosh computer purchases or available separately in the iLife suite. iMovie HD is no longer available for download. If you still have iMovie HD available to you, it is a very capable editor and one to consider before you upgrade to something like Final Cut Express.

The video above is the introductory video from a playlist that you can use as a guide for how to accomplish basic tasks in iMovie HD. Each video will play in turn (with a slight delay between videos). You can view an alternative version of the playlist that allows slightly easier navigation of individual videos.

iMovie HD 6 Getting Started Manual (PDF)

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DivShare is an all-purpose file storage site that allows users to share photos, videos, documents, music and audio. You can share your files with a private web address (URL) or you can embed them into your own web pages. Like YouTube and SlideShare, you sign up for a free account and you get 5 GB (gigabytes) of space, and you’re allowed to share 10GB worth of files every month. There is even an iPhone version that allows you to view your documents on Apple’s ubiquitous device.

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Do a search for “download youtube videos” and the results you get will offer up countless websites with instructions, services, tools, and videos dedicated to the subject. You would think that it was popular to download videos from the YouTube site, and you would be right. I’ve written numerous times on the subject of YouTube, outlining the benefits, but mostly I point out what a valuable resource the site is. Want to find a clip from a popular movie? Consult YouTube. Want to view that obscure music video from the 80’s? Consult YouTube. Want to watch your state’s governor deliver the latest information that will affect you? Consult YouTube.

Over the past year and a half I have written a few times on how to take YouTube videos and incorporate them into PowerPoint presentations (here, here, and here). Two of those methods involve downloading the videos and converting them to video formats that PowerPoint will recognize. One of them involves using the YouTube video live in the presentation. I received a comment on my post on Embedding YouTube in PowerPoint 2007 from “John” that was just a republishing of a section of YouTube’s Terms of Service:

5. Your Use of Content on the Site

In addition to the general restrictions above, the following restrictions and conditions apply specifically to your use of content on the YouTube Website.

1. The content on the YouTube Website, except all User Submissions (as defined below), including without limitation, the text, software, scripts, graphics, photos, sounds, music, videos, interactive features and the like (“Content”) and the trademarks, service marks and logos contained therein (“Marks”), are owned by or licensed to YouTube, subject to copyright and other intellectual property rights under the law. Content on the Website is provided to you AS IS for your information and personal use only and may not be downloaded, copied, reproduced, distributed, transmitted, broadcast, displayed, sold, licensed, or otherwise exploited for any other purposes whatsoever without the prior written consent of the respective owners. YouTube reserves all rights not expressly granted in and to the Website and the Content.
2. You may access User Submissions for your information and personal use solely as intended through the provided functionality of the YouTube Website. You shall not copy or download any User Submission unless you see a “download” or similar link displayed by YouTube on the YouTube Website for that User Submission.

I don’t know whether anonymous John was trying to be helpful, or snotty, but there are several points I want to make about YouTube downloads. First, EVERY TIME you watch a video at YouTube’s site, or even embedded on another site, you are downloading it to your computer! You have no choice. You are not streaming it, you are using a technology known as Progressive download. Here’s proof (screencast “YouTube Video and Progressive Download“) Now if I download a video, then republish it in a PowerPoint video, then OK, you got me. However, if I’m sharing that presentation with students for their further enlightenment, then I have the start of an argument for Fair Use. Then depending on what content it is and how much, I hope to make my argument stronger. John posted his comment on the post that described the ability to embed a live video into PowerPoint, so if there is no live Internet connection, no video appears in the presentation. It is no different than embedding a video on another web page. It makes for a more seamless way of doing a presentation with web video, as opposed to switching out of Powerpoint and opening a web browser, then switching back to PowerPoint and continuing the presentation. Sorry John, the Terms of Service don’t apply here, or at best, it’s extremely muddy.

Which gets me to my next point. YouTube needs to rethink their download terms. Let me reiterate that the technology that YouTube uses to show videos breaks their own Terms of Service. They have begun to allow certain organizations the ability to offer “official” downloads and provide a download button. In an article from February, YouTube announced that they were exploring ways to offer videos offline. They were testing “testing free downloads of YouTube videos from Stanford, Duke, UC Berkeley, UCLA, and UCTV“. An example is “The Role of Creativity at Stanford“, a video from Stanford University that has a button to allow you to download an MPEG4 version of the video. YouTube is even experimenting with Creative Commons licenses, but I can’t see yet where an average YouTube member can implement these licenses. It is only open to approved partners, and the partners program isn’t a program you gain instant access to. YouTube is moving way too slowly for the average producer, and seem to bend over backwards to appease media companies with their shoot first, ask questions later take-down policy.

YouTube needs to catch up with Flickr in offering a streamlined way of licensing through Creative Commons. Instead, I see the monitization train coming on full speed ahead. Here’s an example of one of those partners participating in a test of revenue generation by offering downloads of their video, for $0.99. Copyright infringement is still rampant on YouTube, but I argue that it is good for the most part. If people are watching all ten parts of The Wedding Singer on YouTube, then more power to them. If they are using a program to download the videos and stitch them together again and burn them to DVD, then hire them as a New Media Specialist. Either way they are never going to make a good customer for purchasing the original DVD anyway. Now there are legitimate reasons to take down videos from sources that are already putting their content out on the web for free such as Comedy Central. They want the advertising revenue for their site, that makes sense, but come up with new models for other types of content. A good start is a link to the iTunes store for those obscure 80’s music videos.

Now I’m not saying that YouTube is doomed to fail (they’re obviously wildly sucessful), but they need to take a more balanced approach. YouTube is doing some good things with their YouTube EDU and non-profit sections. Now it’s time to make it easier to get the content out into the hands of the people who can make a difference, change things for the better, and do what the pioneers in this industry did in the first place – build on other people’s work. A little download help, please?!?

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