What's Keeping YouTube Busy these Days: Quite a Lot

Article by George Norman (Cybersecurity Editor)

on 19 Jun 2009

We haven’t been paying much attention to the Google owned video sharing site YouTube these days, because frankly speaking we’d much rather focus our attention on something a bit more exciting, like the long list of new features in the iPhone OS 3.0 or the Extend Firefox contest that gives you a chance to win a MacBook Pro. But it seems that YouTube has been very busy recently and consequently rolled out quite a few enhancements – apart from the cache videos feature and allowing you to share videos via Facebook, Twitter and Google Reader, which we’ve already covered here.

According to the YouTube Team, there is a reason why we are seeing so many enhancements to the video sharing site: “Lately, the team has been pushing out features and fixes as they're ready in "mini-pushes" rather than waiting for the big, numbered releases that occur once a month.”

And the features mentioned above are:

Wonder Wheel
This is the same search option that has been added to Google Search back in May; it displays searches related to the query you just entered. Wonder Wheel is clearly visible in the top right-hand corner of the screen – you should see it after entering a query in the search box (alternatively just take a look at the image below).



Improved Advanced Search

For the times when you have a hard time finding the videos you are looking for, YouTube provides its enhanced Advanced Search feature that lets you add more details to the search – thinks like when the video was uploaded, where it came from, its length, etc.

Remaining Time Display on Upload Progress Bar
The uploader progress bar that was launched back in April has been tweaked a little bit and consequently it now displays the approximate time it will take to upload a certain file.

Download Your Own Videos

All video publishers out there can now download their videos from YouTube in MP4 format by simply accessing “My Videos” and clicking the “Download MP4” button.

A TV-like Experience
Watching videos on YouTube is fun, but not as fun as watching them on a large screen TV. YouTube has addressed this issue with YouTube XL, an optimized version of YouTube that you can play on any large screen. We’ve already covered this topic here, so click the link for additional details on YouTube XL.

YouTube Mobile Application with Extended Language Support
The YouTube Mobile App that enables Windows Mobile and Symbian Series 60 powered devices to stream high-quality vides has added support for 6 more languages: French, UK English, Italian, Spanish, German, and Dutch.


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