Category: Web 2.0

YouTube Widescreen Embeds

[Update 12/4/08: YouTube has now enabled HD streaming]

YouTube has revamped their website. One of its major new features is widescreen embedding. When you find a video that you want to embed simply click on the customize button and choose a size that you want the player to be in. It really couldn’t be simpler.

As you may notice YouTube has enabled its search bar to display on top of the video before it has been activated. It’s pretty darn ugly.

Now all we need is allowing these embeds to play in YouTube HD stream quality. Oh the joy.

500k views later…

First off, please let me get this off my chest – WOW! This blog, StuffWeLike.com, has just hit a major milestone. We’ve surpassed 500,000 views. That’s a pretty impressive number after the site transformed into a blog on February 23, 2007.

Half of the reason why we made the grand move was due to this widget:

The minute that it was created, that weekend I literally revamped the entire website to WordPress. I’d say that doing that was probably one of the smartest moves that I’ve made with this website. The site definitely wouldn’t be what it is today without that switch.

Thanks for sticking by and being apart of StuffWeLike’s history. Hopefully within the coming months you’ll see even more and better content than we’ve ever produced before!

Widescreen becomes Default to YouTube – The Change Begins Now

[UPDATE 12/4/08: YouTube has now enabled Widescreen embeds.]

YouTube has officially switched from the default 4:3 ratio to a 16:9 ratio for videos playing on their website. This is definitely great for future web video content. Now there’s a reason to upload videos in 16:9 ratio. Obviously there’s a difference between 16:9 and true high definition, but YouTube is taking it one step at a time.

In the past, YouTube’s user generated videos and professionally produced videos looked practically identical. We’re finally getting to the point where we may see a rift occur between these user generated content and professional content. When YouTube began, it didn’t matter what quality you uploaded the video at because it looked like crap. Earlier in the year, YouTube enabled high quality video streams and now that it has defaulted to a widescreen display, there is a reason for content producers to actually care about the visual quality of their footage!

This will only help the internet web video industry as a whole. If there has been one reason why advertisers have been hesitant to step into the web video market, it has been because a lot of web video shows don’t look and feel like a traditional TV show. By having YouTube, the king website for web videos, shift their focus from low resolution videos to high resolution videos, the web video industry will grow and evolve.

This is a big day for not only web video content producers, but consumers as well. We’re finally getting to the point where quality matters.

StuffWeLike TV Player fixed

We were having some issues with shows on the StuffWeLike TV video player. Some shows weren’t display their videos.

If you haven’t noticed our widget before, it’s on the sidebar of the blog. It’s also on the website’s front page at www.StuffWeLike.com.

If you have any suggestions for shows that you want to see on the player, let us know by writing a comment!

You can also add our player onto your Facebook, Myspace account. Simply click on the Get Code button.

Add Stuff We Like to your page

TheWB.com Is 100% New Media Friendly

I love it when a company is proactive in being New Media friendly. Give users your content whenever and where ever is so pleasing.

TheWB.com is aiming for just that. Going public Aug 27, TheWB.com features older WB shows along with new original web series. Not only will this content be available on TheWB.com – it will also be on Dailymotion, Joost, Sling Media, TiVo and Veoh Networks! They already have a Facebook application that allows users to share The WB content.

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