YouTube Now Lets You Search for and Assign Creative Commons Licenses

Creators and remixers now have have a great new option to share and play with content, without worrying about copyright. YouTube has introduced a feature in its Video Editor that allows users to assign a Creative Commons license (CC-BY) to their videos. To mark videos with a CC license, simply click the radio button labeled "Creative Commons Attribution license (reuse allowed)" at the time of uploading, or go to My Videos,  select edit for the video for which you wish to assign the CC license, scroll down to Broadcasting and Sharing Options, and select the CC option.

Those wishing to find content they may use under a CC license can find it in the Video Editor by simply clicking the CC tab at the top of the page. You can conduct a keyword search, with only CC-licensed videos appearing among the search results. To add a video to your storyboard, click on the 'plus' symbol (+) and remix away!

For more information, including important details about the rights and responsibilities involved, see YouTube's page on Creative Commons. You can view the terms of the CC-BY license at the Creative Commons Web site.

YouTube Offers Online Video Editor

It won't replace Final Cut Pro, but now you can perform simple edits on video clips in your YouTube account.  For more information see the announcement on YouTube's blog and the overview at the Getting Started: YouTube's Video Editor page.

As described by YouTube,  the Video Editor lets you:

• Combine multiple videos you’ve uploaded to create a new longer video
• Trim at the beginning and / or ending of your videos
• Add a soundtrack from our AudioSwap library
• Create new videos without worrying about file formats, and publish the new video to YouTube with one click (no new upload is required)

This is sure to be a popular tool and I am guessing that YouTube will eventually add more features to supplement this basic functionality.  If the comments on the blog posting are any indication, there is great demand for simplifying video production, editing, and delivery.

To dive right in and start playing around with the Video Editor, head directly over to the editor page. 

Web 2.0 ... The Machine is Us/ing Us

Almost all of us have heard the term "Web 2.0," perhaps ad nauseum. If you are not sure what this term means, don't worry -- you are not alone. Here is a must-see short video created by Michael Wesch, Assistant Professor of Cultural Anthropology at Kansas State University: Web 2.0 ... The Machine is Us/ing Us. While Wesch released the final version in March of 2007 (eons ago in technology time), it is still remarkably fresh. In less than five minutes, Wesch has captured the essence of Web 2.0 and its social and cultural implications. It's well worth your time!

Spice Up Your Image Searches with Cooliris

If you haven't yet tried Cooliris to search for images and videos, you are in for a treat. Cooliris is a free and easy to use plug-in for Firefox (Windows XP/Vista, Mac, and Linux), Internet Explorer, and Safari (Mac), which "transforms your browser into a lightning fast, cinematic way to browse online photos and videos." The "3D Wall" interface provides a gorgeous and seamless way to scroll through thousands of search results from the Web or images stored on your own computer.

Cooliris works with hundreds of Web sites. These include image search sites like Google Images, Yahoo Images, and Ask Images; photo sharing sites such as Flickr, Picasa, Photobucket, and deviantART; professional stock photo sites including Getty Images and iStockphoto; video sites like YouTube; social networking sites such as Facebook, MySpace, and Bebo; and many others.

After installing Cooliris, there are two ways main ways to launch it. You can visit a supported site directly and perform a search. Here you may mouseover images or videos in search results and click on the Cooliris icon that appears; this takes you to your search results in the Cooliris 3D Wall environment. Or you may simply click on the Cooliris icon on your browser's toolbar and perform a search within Cooliris.

Once in Cooliris, a search box allows you to repeat a search in selected sites like Google, Flickr, Picasa, and YouTube. An option to search "My Computer" is a new and much anticipated feature. A Preferences menu lets you customize Wall and Slideshow settings. While creating and logging on to a Cooliris account is not necessary, you can e-mail others about images you find and save favorite images for future reference.

There are some features that I hope Cooliris will incorporate soon. A built-in save function is not yet available. In the meantime, Cooliris provides a quick link to each image's source page, where you can easily save the image to your computer as permitted. An advanced search feature within Cooliris would also be useful. For now, you can conduct a search for large images in Google, for example, and then launch Cooliris to quickly scroll through those results.

More information about features and compatibility can be found here. The Self-Help page also provides six ways to optimize the functionality of Cooliris.

Library of Congress: "YouTube, and Now We Do Too"

Following the success of its Flickr project, the Library of Congress has launched a YouTube channel. Matt Raymond's LOC blog post describes current content and future plans. Now featuring over 70 videos, including the first moving image ever made (Thomas Edison's sneezing man), LOC plans to continue adding files to its YouTube channel over time. As the world's largest repository of audiovisual materials (over 6 million films, broadcasts, and sound recordings), they have plenty of material to share. Raymond reminds us that the American Memory collection provides these and hundreds more videos, of which there are many higher resolution versions available for viewing online.

Start Playing a YouTube Video at the Point of Your Choosing

Have you ever wanted to view a portion a YouTube video starting from any point other than the beginning of the posted video? Here's a great tip I came across in the Resource Shelf newsletter:

You can append to the YouTube URL (Web addess) the minute and second where you would like the video to start playing. The required format is #t=2m50s, where the minute and second values are your choice.

To illustrate, the URL http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=io3BrAQl3so becomes http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=io3BrAQl3so#t=2m50s. Voila -- it's that simple.

Image: from Creative Commons - Get Creative, posted on YouTube under a Creative Commons license.