Tag Archives: YouTube

Google launches audio search feature

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Google’s labs have created a new audio search function, which allows the user to search the audio of video clips on YouTube by keyword, an announcement on the Official Google Blog has said.

GAudi, as the service has been dubbed, will produce a list of search results for a term and the times at which they occurred.

The most useful function: you can skip forward to the point in the clip at which your keyword crops up.

The audio indexing tool builds on Google’s launch of video-to-text transcription for political videos in YouTube’s politicians channel, as part of its US presidential election services.

YouTube partners Pullitzer Center for journalism contest

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As Journalism.co.uk reported last month, YouTube has created a competition for ‘non-professional, aspiring journalists’ as part of its new journalism programme.

The Pullitzer Center has now come on board to support the Project:Report contest, which aims to ‘tell stories that might not otherwise be covered by traditional media’.

The winner will receive a scholarship at the center and a $10,000 grant to produce a video report from anywhere in the world.

The first assignment of the competition (there will be three rounds in total) asks YouTubers to profile someone in their community and produce a video report in English of no more than three minutes.

Submissions will be reviewed by a panel from the Pullitzer Center and 10 successful entrants will move onto the next stage. This phase will be judged by YouTube users, who will select five finalists.

The closing date for the first round is midnight (EST) on October 5.

Washington Post and Newsweek prepare websites for convention coverage

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WashingtonPost.com and Newsweek.com are to use a combination of live streamed video from mobiles and ‘social media’ correspondents to cover this week’s Democrat convention and September’s Republican convention in the US.

According to a report from Poynter.org, the WaPo site will feature seven hours of live video content from the conventions a day.

Reporters for both sites will stream live coverage of the conventions using mobiles to a special Convention ’08 channel complete with a live discussion forum for readers, whose questions and comments will be fed back to reporters and interviewees.

A raft of ‘non-traditional’ correspondents will also feature on WaPo.com during the conventions including Ariana Huffington from The Huffington Post, Markos Moulitsas from Daily Kos and Steve Grove from YouTube.

YouTube success for Deadline Press & Picture Agency

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Footage of a penguin at Edinburgh Zoo receiving a knighthood from the Norwegian army has helped push Deadline Press & Picture Agency‘s YouTube channel into the top 100 most viewed on the site.

The Deadline News TV channel was rated 97th most viewed in the UK this week thanks, in part, to the clip, which has at time of writing attracted 29,654 views.

The success of the agency’s video offering, which was launched in May, has been echoed by the growth of its recently established blog, which acts as a portfolio for the agency’s work.

The blog recently made it into WordPress’ top 100 fastest growing blogs, amassing 21,743 page impressions across 117 posts by August 6.

“We’ve been getting consistent hits to Deadline News TV since it was launched and what’s clear is that the audience keeps growing,” said Scott Douglas, Deadline founder, in a press release.

“We might be relatively new to the online arena, but it seems we are doing something right and we will continue to develop that further.”

Innovations in Journalism: vtap – driving the ‘video-anywhere revolution’

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In our Innovations in Journalism series, Journalism.co.uk asks website and technology developers to pitch their projects to us. This time it’s Veveo with vtap, its personalised video service for mobiles.

1) Who are you and what’s it all about?
We’re Veveo – founded in 2004 by a team of executives with a history in multimedia, networking and mobile technologies.

Veveo’s mission is to be a driving force behind the ‘video-anywhere revolution’. The company’s flagship product, vtap is the first significant proof of concept. It offers consumers an easy way to browse, discover, keep and share videos from any source on any imaginable topic on the mobile device(s) of their choosing.

vtap indexes videos from all over the internet, including user-generated content (YouTube, DailyMotion) and professional sources (BBC, CNN), as well as blogs and corporate websites.

Basically, anywhere that video appears on the internet vtap indexes it and it is searchable for users.

To set up a personalised feed, users have to register (which is a simple process requiring only an email address and password).

They then enter search terms, which will bring up results or topics. These ‘topics’ can then be added to a feed, which allows users to log in and view relevant content at any time. This can also be viewed on their mobile phone.

By each video there is a ‘share’ button which enables users to send the video to another user, they just need to know the other person’s user name.

2) Why would this be useful to a journalist?
vtap is a great way to keep up-to-date with news and current events in an easy-to-view format. Because content is pushed to you on any device, you can keep up-to-date wherever you are.

3) Is this it, or is there more to come?
vtap is under constant development by our research and development team in Bangalore so there will be additional features in the near future.

We’re also working with mobile operators, mobile manufacturers, TV providers, consumer electronics manufacturers and content creators to deploy vtap solutions.

4) Why are you doing this?
Veveo believes that video content is the easiest way to get the content you want on a mobile, whether that’s news or entertainment.

To do this Veveo believes that users should be able to easily search videos from all over the web, and save and share what they find to create a personal TV channel.

This level of personalised service enables consumers to access the most relevant video content wherever they are, on any device.

5) What does it cost to use it?
vtap is a free service.

6) How will you make it pay?
vtap will be funded by an advertising model, details of which are yet to be announced.

Video: ITV correspondent John Ray arrested covering Beijing Olympics

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ITV correspondent John Ray has been arrested by officials in Beijing, Reporters Without Borders (RSF) reports.

Ray was covering a pro-Tibet protest near the main Olympic site and was arrested despite identifying himself as a journalist.

The YouTube video below shows Ray in a police van reasoning with police officers before being driven away.

The camera still rolling, Ray repeatedly shouts ‘I’m a journalist’. “This is press freedom,” he says.

Press agency Deadline reaps online rewards

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“The simple fact was that we had no need of a website. It would have cost thousands of pounds to produce and wouldn’t have made an iota of difference to our business supplying the daily newspapers,” said Scott Douglas, founder of Deadline Press & Picture Agency.

But since setting up a YouTube channel for the agency’s video content and launching a WordPress blog featuring articles in May, Deadline’s online content has shown strong traffic growth.

The site made it into WordPress’ list of the 100 fastest growing blog sites on the platform at 94.

The blog has recorded 21,743 page impressions across 117 posts, while Deadline News TV has attracted 40,221 views for 40 videos as of August 5.

The agency has implemented a solution, harnessing the power of third-party websites, which is low cost, but high impact

“Our blog site immediately plugged a gap by allowing us to showcase our work every day – and reach an audience who may not otherwise see it. Our journalists and photographers still put in the old fashioned legwork to get pictures and stories. It can be frustrating when those are not picked up by the daily newspapers,” said Lauren Crooks, news editor with Deadline.

“Now we can ensure our stories, pictures and video reports will always find an audience.”