Just a few days after online video site Hulu launched a desktop application that makes it easy to find and view web videos on a television set, YouTube has followed suit. Kind of. What YouTube launched today is a speical version of its web site designed to look good and be easy to navigate on any TV hooked up to a computer with a web browser.

YouTube XL is essentially a front end for the main YouTube web site. You can watch most (but not all) of the videos found on YouTube using YouTube XL. And since it should work on any device with a web browser, you should be able to use YouTube XL with video game consoles that have web browsers, like the Nintendo Wii.

CNET reports you can't watch premium TV shows or movies on YouTube XL yet because Google is still working out licensing rights for that content.

There are a lot of ways to download videos from YouTube, a lot of ways to convert those videos, and a lot of ways to download music from MySpace. I'm used to thinking of all that as requiring a few different apps or web-based tools, but Farkie does it all. Farkie aims to be the only downloader you need for videos, music, flash games and other media on websites, and it's even got a Firefox add-on.

To use Farkie, you just have to paste the URL of the page you want to download from into Farkie's form, and let it do the rest. You'll get a list of all the media on the page (and check boxes for file types, so you can filter if there's a lot there), and you can download any of the available files via links.

It can even convert YouTube videos for you, into wmv, m4v, mov, and a bunch of other formats.

Last week "twitter for music" service Blip.fm announced that most of its music would be streaming from imeem. This week, the company added YouTube music videos, which not only greatly expands Blip.fm's music library, it also gives users a reason to hang out on the web site rather than using third party clients like Blipster. Well, a tleast until someone develops a good desktop client that will let you send and receive updates, listen to music, and watch videos.

You can now use Blip.fm as a sort of music video search engine, whether you want to share songs with friends or not. If you do want to let people know what you're watching or listening to, you can send messages with links to songs or videos with just a click. You can also link Blip.fm to your Twitter account so that your friends don't even need to be signed up for Blip.fm to know that you harbor a secret Def Leppard addiction.

[via GigaOm]

Yooouuutuuube is a fun web toy that turns a single YouTube video into a surreal grid made of copies of itself. It's a little difficult to explain without a visual, but the rows of the grid are slightly out of sync with one another, creating a ripple effect. One of the best demonstrations of how much fun Yooouuutuuube can be is this amazing Alice in Wonderland one that's been going around.

The options you can control include the frame size of the grid squares and the size of the rows and columns. While you're watching, there are pan, track and zoom controls that let you move over the whole bizarre like it was one screen. Even the lamest YouTube videos feel like art when you put them into Yooouuutuuube, but the best ones are absolutely delightful.

And before you ask: yes, it does work with the Dramatic Chipmunk.

YouTube may be the most popular site for watching internet video the world has ever known. But there's sure a whole lot of wasted space on the web site. After all, if you're watching a 480 pixel or smaller video, why do you need all that white space around it?

Sprink is a standalone YouTube client for Windows Vista or Windows 7 that lets you search YouTube and watch videos in a browser that's not much larger than the video window. In other words, you can easily watch YouTube videos while making room on your desktop for other applications like a web browser or word processor.

The application is still in development, and the CoverFlow style feature for browsing through search results is a bit sluggish, at least on my netbook with its slowish 1.6GHz Intel Atom processor.

[via Instant Fundas]

On the one hand, a browser is just a portal to the web, and so you'd think the last thing you would really need are a bunch of bells and whistles to make a browser look cool. And Google Chrome, with it stripped down interface doesn't really seem like it would have very much to highlight.

But you know what? A car is really just a vehicle for traversing the road. But most car commercials make the car itself look like the sexy thing, not the road. And the video above really does make Chrome look more exciting than the web pages you'll use it to visit in real life.

You can find the rest of the videos at the Google Chrome page on YouTube.

[via TechCrunch]

The rumors have been swirling around for a few weeks, but today the Walt Disney Company officially announced that it is becoming an equity partner in Hulu. Disney, through a subsidiary of ABC Enterprises Inc., will join NBC Universal and News Corp. as an investor and content provider. Full-length episodes from ABC primetime, ABC Family and SOAPnet will be added to Hulu's content library, as well as classic ABC shows and select shows and movies from The Disney Channel. Essentially, ABC.com's streaming content will be coming to Hulu.

With the addition of ABC, three of the four major US television networks are now partners in Hulu. This leaves CBS and its TV.com venture all by its lonesome. As for YouTube, which is trying to get into the commercial content game, let's just say this move won't help the already anemic offering.

Despite the boxee nastiness (which has been mitigated, for now), Hulu continues to take off and is positioning itself as the defacto destination for online television viewing, provided of course, you live in the US. Having one robust platform is not only easier for viewers to navigate, it is easier to sell to advertisers.

The financial terms of the agreement weren't released, though I expect those details to emerge.

[via Mashable]

There are lots of services for sharing photos and music over Twitter, but sharing YouTube videos has lagged behind a bit. Sure, you could just link someone to YouTube, but it's not the prettiest site in the world by any stretch of the imagination. Where's TwitPic for embedded videos? A new site called YouTubeTweeter gets pretty close.

Put in your username and a YouTube link, and YouTubeTweeter generates a short url and a button to post it to Twitter. The video pops up in a nice-looking overlay on a copy of your Twitter page, so it's obvious who's sharing the video. It also shows you how many people have viewed your video. Closing the video takes the user to your Twitter page, which is probably better than having them land on YouTube. It's not a perfect solution - it would be nice if it worked with embed codes from other video sites, especially - but it's a step in the right direction.

Over the last few years YouTube has successfully demonstrated that people will spend countless hours watching short user generated videos. But you know what else people like to watch? Professionally produced dramas, comedies, documentaries, cartoons, and news programs. Rival video site Hulu may not have anywhere near the audience that YouTube has, but it's choc full of professional video content (that you can only see in the US for the most part), which is much easier to monetize.

Now YouTube is stepping up its game, by offering content from TV and movie studios in a new section labeled "Shows." According to the New York Times, Google has signed agreements to distribute content from Sony, Lions Gate, CBS, MGM, and other studios.

The move will allow YouTube to place pre-roll, post-roll, and interstitial ads in video content, something it doesn't do with user generated videos.

Right now, the selection of TV shows and movies on YouTube is rather sad. Most of the content consists of old programs that you probably forgot existed, plus one new show from CBS: Harper's Island. Since Fox and NBC are the driving forces behind Hulu, it's not likely that we'll see their content on YouTube anytime soon. And there's talk that ABC could joing Hulu in the not too distant future.

YouTube is already home to more music videos than probably any other site on the internet. But YouTube and Universal Music Group have announced plans to launch a new site, called Vevo, which will be dedicated exlusively to music videos.

Vevo will be an advertising supported site, and the goal is to generate more money from views of professionally produced music videos than music studios like Warner are currently getting from YouTube. The new site will be owned by Universal and will feature higher quality videos than those found on YouTube. Whether advertisers will be willing to pay higher rates, or computer users will actually bother to visit Vevo instead of YouTube remains to be seen.

Vevo is scheduled to launch within the next few months.

We've seen a lot of attempts to offer an integrated experience social web experience, where users can easily interact with multiple sites in the same interface. Skimmer is the latest of these, and it's definitely a mixed bag. On the plus side, it's a cross-platform Adobe AIR app, and its UI is absolutely gorgeous. Unfortunately, it's still a bit sluggish and buggy -- not such a big deal, as it's still in beta -- and falls into the trap of doing a lot of things, but not doing any of them exceptionally well.

The things it does, specifically, are Flickr, Twitter, Facebook, YouTube and Blogger. Activity from all 5 apps is combined in a really slick-looking stream that forms the heart of Skimmer. You can click on any item to expand it, and Skimmer has its own Flickr and YouTube viewer modes for checking out photos and videos at a larger size. This app looks so good that you're better off with a second monitor dedicated to it.

When it comes to interacting with the individual sites, though, I found myself annoyed at some silly choices: you can see all the comments on a Flickr photo in the stream, but you can't see its title unless you switch to Flickr mode; you can retweet something from Twitter, but you can't favorite it. Unless you have that second monitor, or unless you happen to use all five of the sites Skimmer supports, you might feel too restricted by the app and find yourself heading back to your browser.

ScreenToaster is a web-based screencasting utility. You just fire up the web page, hit record, and ScreenToaster launches a Java applet that lets you record audio and video of anything happening on your desktop. It's great for recording tutorials, presentations, or showing off your video game skills to friends.

Today the ScreenToaster team launched a few updates that make the service even more useful. First, users can now automatically upload HD screencasts directly to YouTube from ScreenToaster.com. Second, you can download videos in MOV format for editing on your desktop.

There's also a new beta API available that lets web publishers incorporate ScreenToaster with their web sites. You can let your visitors record and publish videos directly on your site using the API.

These are just the latest new features. ScreenToaster also recently added the ability to download SWF files, set privacy levels, and share videos via email, social networking sites, or social bookmarking pages.

Google has launched a new mobile video player for Windows Mobile and Symbian Series 60 phones. The application adds support for additional phones, boots faster than previous versions, and streams video optimized for 3G and WiFi connections.

You can use the application to search or browse for videos and play them on your device. When you click play, videos will launch in full screen mode.

To install the application, visit m.youtube.com on your mobile device and click the download link. There's a list of supported S60 devices, but no support list for Windows Mobile. Having tried unsuccessfully to install the YouTube player on my Dell Axim X50v, I can tell you that it does not support Windows Mobile 2003SE. But I suspect if you've ot a device with Windows Mobile 6.0 or a newer operating system you should be covered.

[via CoolSmartPhone]

I don't have a good history with YouTube sites for kids. My first experience was with TotLOL, where I found the selection of videos lacking and had my wits nearly destroyed by that green gummi bear video. Today I decided I had recovered enough to brave the wilds of the kid-vid genre and check out Kideo Player.

I have to admit, it totally won me over.

Kideo Player is curated by a father of two, and his taste is videos is a lot better than the spotty results you get from community moderation. The curator has a stake in the videos he selects, because his own kids watch them. Minimizing parental annoyance seems to be a priority, too: think Sesame Street, not nightmarish gummi bear. The library of videos seems to lean heavily toward educational material: I saw sign language, Spanish lessons, and animal vids when I was watching.

Kideo Player also has a more attractive, more kid-friendly design than Totlol (the dog and cat mascots are seriously adorable), and controls that even a two-year old can use by himself. Hitting spacebar skips to the next video. That's the only thing a kid has to learn to use the site. All in all, this is exactly the video site I would have wanted if YouTube had been around when I was a little kid, and probably the site my parents would have wanted, too.