Engineering and Developers Blog
What's happening with engineering and developers at YouTube
Registrations Open for "Powered By YouTube"
Thursday, June 12, 2008
Posted by Stephanie Liu, YouTube APIs and Tools Team
Since
our big launch
back in March, we've held a few sessions here and there -- Google I/O and smaller hackathons, and it's been really fun meeting you guys in person. So we thought it was about time to have our own event here at the office in San Bruno (check out the video to see a bit of the office). This will be all YouTube APIs, all the time! The agenda is still being finalized, but we'll have "bigger picture" sessions as well as nitty gritty hacking time to get started and learn best practices. You'll have time to mingle with a diverse set of developers from different companies and the YouTube engineers and product managers.
If you're interested, here are all the details:
Thursday,
July 10
, 2008
10:30am - 5:00pm (tentative)
YouTube HQ
@ 901 Cherry Ave. San Bruno, CA 94066
Cost:
Free
Reserve your spot and register here:
http://www.youtube.com/poweredbyyoutube
Already have questions, comments, or session suggestions? Let us know in the
forum
. Hope to see you here next month!
Spotlight on: TimeTube
Wednesday, June 11, 2008
Posted by Kuan Yong, Product Manager
Many of us have created fun and exciting websites using the
YouTube APIs
, but w
hy write an app that looks like everyone else's? The creative minds at
Dipity
have shown us that video sites can be much more than just a collection of video listings and embedded players. Dipity's
TimeTube
is a great example of how you can massage the rich video metadata that our APIs provide to transform the way people browse and interact with videos. TechCrunched on May 9, TimeTube has soared in popularity. Derek Dukes, Co-Founder of Dipity, gives us the inside scoop.
Tell us about Dipity. What's your origin story? (And favorite YouTube video).
Dipity was started by 3 friends with the mission of improving the context of information on the web and integrating text, audio, video, images and maps together on interactive timelines. We started the company in April last year after realizing we'd been independently working on similar ideas and there was starting to be the beginnings of a broader meme. Since then we've worked on the core technology, added a few new people to the mix, launched the site and rolled out an API and a couple of mash-ups.
As for my favorite YouTube video, right now it's the
Chad Vader
version of
Chocolate Rain
, but I'm sure in the next couple days I'll find something else that takes the top spot.
Tell us about TimeTube. How'd you come up with it? What's next?
We got the idea for TimeTube shortly after completing work on our own set of
APIs
. As you know the best way to find limitations and bugs in your APIs is to try and build something interesting and see what falls on the floor and where you run in to limitations. It started as one of our hack days which we do every other week (our version of 20% time) and once we saw how compelling the results were, we added some features and decided to release it as a formal mash-up. In terms of how successful it's been we've been pretty blown away. After it moved quickly from 'hot in tech' to the front page of Digg, we got picked up by blogs like TechCrunch, Life Hacker and were even featured on the Net@Night podcast. From there the blog-o-sphere took over and we're still getting picked up by blogs here and there. Going forward, we're looking at different enhancements and responding to user feedback so look for updates in the future.
Tell us about the implementation. How'd you do it?
We had the YouTube interaction and timeline creation done in a few hours. The backend is written in PHP using the
Dipity API
and the
Google Data PHP client library
. We perform a
search query
with the YouTube API, iterating over the results and creating an event on a Dipity timeline for the most relevant videos (currently capped at 50). We keep a mapping of search terms to timelines to avoid duplicates. Searches mapped to an existing timeline are refreshed if the timeline is more than 24 hours old. The Dipity API and embeddable timeline widget provide for most of the heavy lifting, while a few hundred lines of PHP, HTML, JavaScript and CSS glue it all together.
YouTube in your Living Room
Monday, June 9, 2008
Posted by Satyajeet Salgar, Partner Technology Manager - YouTube
A little after I started at YouTube I casually asked my young niece, who seemed pretty impressed when I told her that I worked here, if she'd watch YouTube on television. She thought for a while before finally asking hesitantly, "But what would YouTube look like on TV?" I have a much better answer for her these days than I did then!
The YouTube Syndication team is excited that our users now have a number of options to consume YouTube on their television sets. We're proud to have helped many leaders in the consumer electronics space create YouTube experiences on TV.
Getting YouTube right on TV is extremely challenging from both a design and technology perspective. Each of our partners' engineering and design teams had similar questions:
* What would users, accustomed to a simple remote control interface for their TVs, expect given their typcially much richer interaction options when surfing youtube.com?
* How could the YouTube experience be personalized for TV?
* How could the extra computing power and memory often required to make this work on their devices be added effectively?
* What were the most important YouTube features to retain, and how would they translate to a 10-feet user experience?
All these partners used the YouTube APIs to build their products. One partner's summary of their experience with the APIs: "The YouTube API was very simple, but powerful. It enabled us to develop our user interface flexibly and quickly." Music to our ears!
Here's a quick overview of some products that enable you to access YouTube from your living room...or anywhere else you may have your television(s)!
AppleTV
: In
June 2007
this became the first product to offer a way to watch YouTube on your TV.
Sony Bravia Internet Video Link
: Last week, Sony announced the general availability of YouTube content on their Bravia TVs via the Internet Video Link. Some clips from the YouTube team at the event are linked below.
Nice tie
, Brent!
HP MediaSmart
:
HP announced availability
of YouTube as part of the HP MediaSmart platform.
Panasonic: At
CES 2008
, Panasonic announced
VieraCast
, which allows you to
access YouTube
directly from your TV. The device will be available later this month.
Samsung: Samsung launched their IPTV device which supports YouTube (currently only available in South Korea) in early May.
TiVo
:
Announced that YouTube would be available
on their devices.
Verismo
: A startup in the IPTV space, has
announced availability
of a YouTube-enabled device.
We're excited that the YouTube APIs have enabled these products and look forward to sharing information about even more products, upgrades and innovations from our partners going forward. The following may seem like a "marketing way" to say it, but it is true! We're determined to see more devices and applications
"Powered by YouTube"
so that our vision of
"YouTube Everywhere"
feels even more real to our users.
Videos from the Sony announcement in NYC:
And some photos!
Google I/O Wrapup
Wednesday, June 4, 2008
Posted by Stephanie Liu, YouTube APIs and Tools Team
Last week, the team spent an exciting couple of days at
Google I/O
. We all had a lot of fun, gave a few sessions, met a ton of people, and had good questions and discussions with developers. The best part was hanging out at the booth, talking to people one-on-one, seeing their projects, and hearing about other cool YouTube sites that are out there. For example,
Michael Geary
wrote
AnnoTube
, a
jQuery
plugin that uses the
JavaScript Player API
to synchronize related web pages or HTML to the video.
In a discussion about mobile, a developer pointed us to a
QR code generator
for YouTube videos. This site generates an image that, if you have the right software installed on your phone, will link you directly to the video URL if you take a picture of it on your phone.
If you're interested in the YouTube sessions, you can find the the videos and slides
here
. Specifically, John's
Data API overview
, and Geoff's
player APIs
session are available.
Since the codelab (about using the APIs with
App Engine
) wasn't filmed, you can find all the materials below.
The code project where all the materials live:
http://code.google.com/p/hello-youtube
The wiki that goes through the exercises during the session:
http://code.google.com/p/hello-youtube/wiki/Codelab
You can check all the code out from SVN, or just download the zip files. We also posted our slides and the standalone extensions to the client library as well:
http://code.google.com/p/hello-youtube/downloads/list
We also took some videos (of course) and photos from the booth. Below is a playlist with some of us at the booth:
The album with pics from the booth and some of the sessions:
We feel like I/O was a great success, so thanks to everyone who came out to the sessions, talked to us at the booth, and shared your enthusiasm about YouTube with us. It's always great to meet you guys in person! If you couldn't make it this year, check out one of the free
Google Developer Days
that are being held around the world later this year.
Visit the Team at Google I/O
Thursday, May 22, 2008
Posted by Stephanie Liu, YouTube APIs and Tools Team
The week has been a little hectic since much of the team is busy prepping for
Google I/O
, which is less than a week away! If you're going, be sure to check out one (or three) of the YouTube sessions:
YouTube on Your Site:
John Harding will give a full overview of the YouTube Data API and what it can do.
Design Your Own YouTube Player:
Geoff Stearns will show you how to use the YouTube player APIs to build custom controls for videos on your site.
Hands-on YouTube: Creating Applications with the YouTube Data APIs and App Engine:
Jochen Hartmann and I will lead a Code Lab on how to use the Python Client Library to quickly launch applications with App Engine.
If you're already a pro, just drop by and say hi to the team at the YouTube booth. :) There will be many other sessions too, of course. The final list is of over 80 in-depth, technical
sessions
focused on building the next generation of web apps.
If you're interested, but haven't gotten your tickets, it's not too late to
register
. Hope to see you there!
Let The Games Begin
Wednesday, May 14, 2008
Posted by Nikhil Chandhok, Product Manager for YouTube Syndication
Back in March, we launched the new
YouTube APIs and Tools
, with the goal of making YouTube an open video services platform and available for use by any website, desktop application, or consumer device. Today, we are announcing a new partnership that takes advantage of the YouTube APIs in a new and interesting way.
We are happy to announce that PLAYSTATION®3 (PS3
TM
) has integrated the YouTube APIs to allow game developers to create games that enable direct upload of in-game video captures to YouTube. This YouTube upload functionality can be incorporated not only into new PS3 game titles, but also existing PS3 titles that have the ability to receive network updates. Sony Computer Entertainment Inc. has added YouTube functionality to
Mainichi Issho
, a popular game with PS3 users in Japan. Gamers will now be able to upload their in-game video captures to YouTube. We're excited at the opportunity this presents and look forward to more and more games to be enhanced with YouTube.
The
YouTube APIs
are available to all developers and we hope that game developers everywhere will use the YouTube APIs to make video an integral part of their game experience. Whether it's showing off that fantastic touchdown pass, car slide, or karaoke sing-along, we hope that more user-generated content from games will make their way to YouTube and connect with the gamer communities.
Let the games begin!
* PS3 system software must be updated to the latest version.
* “PLAYSTATION” is a registered trademark and “PS3” is a trademark of Sony Computer Entertainment Inc.
Using the YouTube API with the PHP client library
Wednesday, May 14, 2008
Posted by Jochen Hartmann, YouTube APIs and Tools Team
In our new video, I demonstrate how to use the YouTube API with the PHP client library to upload a video to YouTube. The screencast explains the most important parts of the YouTube demo application and includes a section on AuthSub authentication.
* For a higher quality version of the video, click on the "watch video in high quality" link on the YouTube watch page.
Also, in case you missed it, Stephanie has a tutorial on the YouTube Player APIs.
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