YouTube increases its video upload limit from 10 to 15 minutes.

YouTube users who untill now had to settle with the site's 10 minutes limit for video upload, got a good news last week when the company announced a 50 percent increase. The new limit is now 15 minutes and to help kick it off, YouTube is organizing a contest, encouraging its users to upload their own 15 minutes long video describing best their lives to the rest of the world.
Users have untill August 4th to upload their videos and a few winners will have theirs featured on its YouTube's home page.
When uploading their videos to enter the contest, users should have to tag them with
"yt15minutes."

For more, see Youtube.com

TiVo Premiere set-top box to offer Web search alongside TVs listings.

Earlier this week, digital video recorder maker TiVo, announced plans to begin selling a new set-top box called TiVo Premiere that will put regular program listings from cable and satellite companies on the same page as related material culled from the Web, according to the New York Times.
The new device will work by pulling alongside regular TV listings of a particular program, all related materials found on the Web, be it merchandises on sale on eBay Amazon, old episodes for rent on Netflix or Blockbuster and videos from YouTube.
The new device is set to go on sale in April and will be available on the company Website and at selected retailers like Best Buy. According to the New York Times, the new device will be available in two versions.
Their is a basic one that stores 45 hours of high-definition programming and will cost $300 and a second version called TiVo Premium XL that can store 150 hours worth of programming at a cost of $500. On top of the cost for the set-top boxes, TiVo will charge a monthly fees for the service starting at $12.95, New York Times said.

For more, see the NYTimes.com

Google to introduce automatic caption to YouTube videos.

As if being already the world biggest video site isn't enough, YouTube owned by Google, has announced last week that it is adding automatic caption that will bring text captions to many videos on the site.
YouTube has already several hundred thousand videos with close captioning but they are mostly from broadcast networks and some other professional Web sites. What the new initiative will achieve, is to allow anyone who upload a video on YouTube, to use the technology which is called "auto-timing", to upload as well a text file of the words spoken in the video and have them automatically turned into captions by Google.
The underlying technology for auto-timing is the same as the one used for Google Voice service which is used among others things, to transcribe text messages into voice messages.
For now, Google is adding captions on its own to videos from selected channels like the ones from PBS, the National Geographic and some Universities. The reason given for this gradual roll 0ut is that Google recognize that the technology isn't perfect and that time is needed to get feedback from the video owners and the viewers before being released to the public at large.
Also, the automatic captions will be available in English only for now, but can be translated to 51 languages using Google Translator service.

For more, see news.Yahoo.com

Corel Digital Studio 2010 offers basic photo and video editing features for novice users.

For people who shoot and edit photos or videos for a living, Corel Paint Shop Pro is a must have arsenal to have in their tool box. But if you like to shoot, edit and organize photos and videos as a hobby or just for fun, you might not find a value in all the features that comes with it. To those people, there is some good news as the maker of Corel Paint Shop Pro has come with a light version of the popular software. It is called Corel Digital Studio 2010 out this fall and normally retailing for about $100, but it is being discounted for the holidays at $59 on the company Web site until November 23, 2009.
Corel Digital Studio 2010 is according to PC World Magazine, " a suite of applications designed to give novice users, basic photo and video editing features, plus the ability to organize large media libraries, produce photo projects like calendars and greeting cards, and generate videos suitable for upload to YouTube or for burning to a DVD."
But according to the magazine, while its user interface is abbreviated and clean, the software as a whole is not working well and is not very functional.


For more, see PC World.com

Organazing tools for multiple social networks accounts.

The proliferation of social network platforms make it harder and harder to keep up with all of them if you have to navigate back and forth and open different screens. Fortunately, there are some solutions available for the most social of us.
Those solutions come in the form of desktop applications like Skimmer, offered by fallon.com/skimmer.
According to the Wall Street Journal, this free download lets you keep up with several social network sites at the same time. After registering with the service, users can log on to their Blogger, Facebook, Twitter,YouTube or Flickr accounts from a single screen and see all their contacts' updates clearly marked by a distinct icon; "F" for Facebook, "T" for Twitter etc.
Another free application is Tweetdeck available at Tweetdeck.com/beta, which "aggregates Twitter and Facebook updates in one customizable screen and allow you to see which Facebook friend is online, and chat with them," according to the Wall Street Journal.
Following multiple people on Twitter can be a challenge but thanks to tools like seesmic desktop application, the process can become less chaotic. With this application, people that you follow are divided into groups organized in columns on your screen, like one each for co-workers, friends,customers etc.
The same application can also be used to track friends and contacts on Facebook; it is available at desktop.seesmic.com.

For more, see WSJ.com