What's Happening In Web Video? Flickr, YouTube, And Ask A Ninja Updates

After all the rumors surrounding YouTube going HD sometime this year, denied by the video-sharing subsidiary of Google, the platform is finally experimenting with high quality video. Over time more and more of the YouTube Community videos will have the option of being viewed in "high quality". For the moment, certain video will be chosen depending on the source file uploaded to the platform. Also recognize that you'll have the option of viewing the vids in "high quality", not high-definition...

YouTube hasn't reached the point where playback of HD vids won't take a longer time than most of us are willing to wait, so we'll most likely be waiting a while longer for YouTube HD.

To watch higher quality YouTube vids, just navigate to you Account page and select the option "always how me higher quality videos", but only if you have a fast enough connection to make it worth your while. No worries if you don't change the account setting though, as all high quality videos will have a menu option of watching the vid in normal definition or at a higher quality resolution.

Photo-sharing site Flickr, owned by Yahoo, will finally be integrating video into the mix as well, nearly a year after co-founder Stewart Butterfield announced that users would be able to upload video "soon". Rumor has it that Flickr will debut the new feature sometime in the next three weeks and that the delay was in part due to Flickr's reluctance to release anything similar to YouTube. Yahoo PR is silent on the subject so far, even when grilled by Techcrunch's Mike Arrington.

Finally, the dynamic duo behind comedic web series Ask A Ninja, Kent Nichols and Douglas Sarine, have been tapped to write an updated adaptation of the 1978 cult classic Attack of the Killer Tomatoes.

"'Attack of the Killer Tomatoes!' is the masterwork of a generation," Nichols said. "We can only aspire to recapture that magic." No changes to the original plot have been revealed, but it still is expected to revolve around killer tomatoes.

Definitely looking forward to this one if it makes it as far as the theaters.

March 16, 2008

What's Happening In Web Video? Flickr, YouTube, And Ask A Ninja Updates