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Google Businesses The Internet Media

Google Experiments with Video Blogging 171

Posted by timothy from the hi-mom dept.
PunkOfLinux writes "TechWeb has an article about Google's plans to start a video service that sounds similar to Picasa. Excerpt: 'While there's no formal announcement yet, Google co-founder Larry Page said Monday that the well-known search engine concern would soon let the general public upload self-produced videos to Google's servers, partly in an effort to learn more about how to more efficiently search and display information about video-based data.'"
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Google Experiments with Video Blogging More

Google Experiments with Video Blogging

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  • Wow (Score:5, Funny)

    by Eric(b0mb)Dennis ( 629047 ) on Monday April 04, 2005 @09:52PM (#12140084)
    First Google Image Search, now this! Man, google is just your everyday pr0n peddler... hehehe... Upload videos! HEH!

  • And up on high, (Score:5, Funny)

    by schild ( 713993 ) on Monday April 04, 2005 @09:52PM (#12140085) Homepage Journal
    Google waved a single hand and created the porn blog. They saw what they had made and exclaimed, "This is good."

  • Googleporn... (Score:5, Insightful)

    by kwoo ( 641864 ) <`kjwcode' `at' `gmail.com'> on Monday April 04, 2005 @09:52PM (#12140087) Homepage Journal

    I guess this is how Google is going to get into the porn business.

    Seriously, though -- when you're inviting people to upload a lot of something, how do you keep tabs on it? They are likely studying that as part of the experiment, but it would be great to see some sort of publically-announced result.

    Of course it's unlikely to happen, but a guy can dream.

    • "when you're inviting people to upload a lot of something, how do you keep tabs on it?"

      From TFA:
      "...in an effort to learn more about how to more efficiently search and display information about video-based data."

      If they devise a decent way to search and categorize content, they could dynamically block/remove content using their new-found knowledge.

      - shazow

    • Re:Googleporn... (Score:3, Informative)

      by Wesley Felter ( 138342 )
      when you're inviting people to upload a lot of something, how do you keep tabs on it?

      SafeSearch has been around for a while. Google's stated position on porn is that if you're looking for porn they want you to find it, and if you're not then they don't. It seems like they could do this for video too. This will probably require considerable research, but it doesn't seem impossible.

    • Easy.. peer moderation... (Score:2, Insightful)

      by Anonymous Coward
      Just do what tangotime.com does -- Peer moderation, tangotime was originally a totally no nudity site (back when it was a slew ratemy(insertbody part).com run by a guy who's moved on and made a lot of money selling his website, and photo rate engine to a porn company. people viewing the porn/viewing the 'non adult' portion can 'report' images. when it was a no nudity engine images had to be approved kinda like hotornot, and that required a lot of unpaid volunteers. the whole ratemy____ sites allowed cert

    • Fotopic keep tabs on it like this [fotopic.net].

      Cheers

      jx

  • Swinging (Score:5, Funny)

    by fembots ( 753724 ) on Monday April 04, 2005 @09:53PM (#12140091) Homepage
    I'll be impressed when Google can differentiate two trees swinging in the wind and two porn stars swinging.

    • Re:Swinging (Score:1, Insightful)

      by Anonymous Coward
      Average color of the moving pixels:
      a) green
      b) flesh
    • I'll be impressed when Google can differentiate two trees swinging in the wind and two porn stars swinging.

      I'll be very happy when I'm old and blind enough that I can't differentiate. VERY happy.

      • Re:Swinging (Score:1, Funny)

        by Anonymous Coward
        Too bad when your old the only kind of wood you're going to get is from a tree.
      • So you'll see two porn star swinging and think you're looking to two trees? Where is advantege?

    • easy (Score:2)

      by x2A ( 858210 )
      it's done by which gets downloaded the most

  • obligator (Score:5, Funny)

    by NanoGator ( 522640 ) on Monday April 04, 2005 @09:53PM (#12140092) Homepage Journal
    "Google co-founder Larry Page said Monday that the well-known search engine concern would soon let the general public upload self-produced videos to Google's servers" ... we shall call it... USENET!!
  • For the majority of the pr0n sites out there? I know Googling is much easier (and cheaper).

  • April fools is done right? (Score:5, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward on Monday April 04, 2005 @09:54PM (#12140095)
    "It's still a long way [today] from an ideal experience," he said.

    Three words: Goatse video blog.

  • Bandwidth? (Score:5, Insightful)

    by thundercatslair ( 809424 ) on Monday April 04, 2005 @09:54PM (#12140096)
    The potential abuse of this service could be immense.

    • I'm sure Jack Bauer's weekly "video diary" will be just as popular as everyone else's.

      ~jeff
    • I don't think Google has to worry about bandwidth. Don't they have like a magic wand that makes servers and frees up bandwidth? Don't they? :)
    • "The potential abuse of this service could be immense."

      I'm quite sure Google has the smarts to be able to quickly pull the plug. Even so, it would take a HUGE attack to actually make Google regret they put the service up. A friend of mine pays $150 a month for a server with 1 terrabyte of bandwidth. I can only imagine what Google gets. Thousands of gigabytes of data would have to be downloaded before Google started to scratch.

      • Re:Bandwidth? (Score:3, Informative)

        by HybridJeff ( 717521 )
        "Thousands of gigabytes of data would have to be downloaded before Google started to scratch."

        I would think it would need to be much more than that. If this service takes off, there would be thousands of people video blogging, uploading home movies, and creating their own amatuer tv shows and movies. These things take tons of space. Assuming they let people use a decent bitrate an hour of footage would take a minimum of 300MB, multiply a popular video blog by a few hundred or thousand viewers and were tal

  • pr0n (Score:4, Insightful)

    by Anonymous Coward on Monday April 04, 2005 @09:54PM (#12140098)
    Why doesn't it surprise me that the first posts are about pr0n?

  • Podcasts? (Score:4, Interesting)

    by DMouse ( 7320 ) on Monday April 04, 2005 @09:57PM (#12140116) Homepage
    I'd really prefer they host and search audio. Would be so much more useful.

  • Search Results... (Score:5, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward on Monday April 04, 2005 @10:00PM (#12140129)
    You Searched for: "Teen angst". 12087234972 results...

    You Searched for: "Paris Hilton Remake". 18723972 results

    You Searched for: "Nude at PC in Parent's Basement" 109232 results. First result http://slashdot.org [slashdot.org] 'News for Nerds. Stuff that matters.'

    Just as I thought...

  • I wonder how searching will work. (Score:5, Interesting)

    by jessecurry ( 820286 ) <jesse@jessecurry.net> on Monday April 04, 2005 @10:03PM (#12140146) Homepage Journal
    Do you think that when you upload the video clips that you'll have to input some information about the video in order to allow it to be searched or will google tap into the vast resources of it's server farm and try to run a speech to text app and record data themselves?
    I don't really know that text to speech would be a feasible option to catalog the audio contents of a file, but it would be interesting if they could implement some type of automatic content cataloging system. I suppose that if this is just going to be for video blogging that it's really not as interesting as I had first thougt, but google does always seem to try and advance what is possible.
    Even just being able to post video for the world to see presents us with an interesting opportunity, but I'd love if there were something more behind this.
    • wondering somewhat seriously, what, if any, useful data can be pulled off the average prono from text to speech... Will this usher in the concept of the stars describing the upcoming scene? Maybe a narrator... Two birds/one stone, that way.. Easily indexed XXX and accessible to the visually impaired...

  • Google wants to get good at searching video. (Score:2, Informative)

    by Anonymous Coward
    They've formed some kind of partnership with a new cable TV channel: http://abcnews.com/Entertainment/wireStory?id=6410 91 [abcnews.com], in addition to video.google.com.

    From the article:
    "The channel also has established a partnership with the Google search engine, which will provide twice-an-hour updates on viewers' top Internet searches. Sergey Brin, the 31-year old co-founder of Google, praised the channel as an effective way to distribute video in a way that frees it from the limited bandwidth and other technologi

  • Blogger is down a lot now! (Score:4, Interesting)

    by irishkev ( 457679 ) on Monday April 04, 2005 @10:04PM (#12140152) Homepage
    I hope they try to make the system more robust before adding resource hogging features. Note the message from status.blogger.com just today:

    Monday, April 04, 2005

    Some users may be experiencing an unexpected Blogger outage right now; we're looking into it and will post updated info soon. Thanks for your patience.

    Posted by Eric at 10:26

    If the thing is routinely failing with plain text, which it is, how is it going to work with video? - rhetorical question.

  • Video Blogging... isn't that.... (Score:5, Interesting)

    by NoMercy ( 105420 ) on Monday April 04, 2005 @10:05PM (#12140158)
    Woot community access TV for the internet!
  • This is awesome, let me get my shirt on!

  • We really don't need to see the hideous nerds that we are!

  • Comment removed (Score:5, Interesting)

    by account_deleted ( 4530225 ) on Monday April 04, 2005 @10:07PM (#12140170)
    Comment removed based on user account deletion
  • Why don't they add a digital clock.... That's the classic way to needlessly re-invent something.
  • I envision pages upon pages of ballsacks and fruitbones.

  • Give us your pron, your sick... (Score:3, Interesting)

    by CrazedSanity ( 872448 ) on Monday April 04, 2005 @10:13PM (#12140214) Homepage Journal
    I'm just waiting for the Google announcement: "Store your hard drive online" (and the resulting disclaimer when 10 million people suddenly have access to all that private data you thought was encrypted).
  • For those readers who remember the early days of Xerox, when the Palo Alto facility theorized about a great deal of the earth-shattering technology that has emerged since the mid 80's, they will understand my reference.

    One of Google's primary goals, as a company, is to do vast amounts of independant CS-Related research: research without the promise of profit. Their innovations are just now beginning to step outside of their offices in a big way, and it'll continue as they continue to release source code a

    • Re:Google is the Xerox of our time... (Score:5, Interesting)

      by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday April 05, 2005 @12:17AM (#12140908)
      *roll eyes*
      Where are these innovations of which you speak? Google sells ads. They are not some second-coming of anything, including Xerox. They sell ads. What exactly "new" have they come up? I'll give you PageRank...but other than that? Why the hype?

  • Ourmedia or Current TV? (Score:3, Interesting)

    by no1here ( 467578 ) on Monday April 04, 2005 @10:16PM (#12140227) Homepage
    Could Google be behind Ourmedia [ourmedia.org] or Al Gore's Current TV [current.tv]? Angela Beesley, one of the five directors of the Wikimedia Foundation, is on the Ourmedia Board of Directors. Al Gore has been a senior adviser at Google and Current TV is receiving support from Google and Google's Video Search.

  • I fear this will lead towards: (Score:5, Funny)

    by Upaut ( 670171 ) * on Monday April 04, 2005 @10:17PM (#12140241) Homepage Journal
    Things along the lines outlined by penny-arcades Tycho... [penny-arcade.com]

  • I Produce Videos (Score:4, Interesting)

    by drewzhrodague ( 606182 ) <drew@nOsPaM.zhrodague.net> on Monday April 04, 2005 @10:18PM (#12140250) Homepage Journal
    I produce videos, and so they've got my attention. Free uploads storage? Excellent! I'd vblog more often, and record from odd places, using different cameras, and on different subjects. There really aren't any video blogging sites, and bandwidth is expensive from the handset. What will Google offer us?

  • Will this become the Next Comm (Score:3, Insightful)

    by brandonp ( 126 ) * <brandon.petersen@ g m a i l .com> on Monday April 04, 2005 @10:22PM (#12140264) Homepage
    What if a few savvy business owners use the google service to distribute their own marketing videos and infomercials. I've found that often it isn't feasible to distribute large and informative videos over the Internet. This would atleast solve the issue for serving the videos, i'm sure this service will have plenty of space and more than adequate bandwidth.

    I often get requests from clients about putting up huge 10Mb+ videos to show how their products work. They aren't wanting cheesy marketing videos, they usually have some very unique products and want to find a way to tell long distance customers why they are better than anyone else.

    Here is an example:
    http://www.google.com/search?q=cache:B7zHjtLzBbYJ: sickleservice.com/article.php%3Fnews_id%3D10+&hl=e n [google.com]

    Would this be an abuse of the proposed google system? Or would this lend to the experiment they're trying to

    Brandon Petersen

  • Good luck. (Score:3, Insightful)

    by nunchux ( 869574 ) on Monday April 04, 2005 @10:23PM (#12140267)
    If it's truly open to the world, the RIAA and MPAA and God knows who else would shut this thing down in a week. Not because it's competition, but because the copyright violations we're going to see are going to be immense. Is Google going to police every video to make sure the filmmakers aren't using copyrighted music, or clips from "real" movies and TV shows? And how is Google going to protect itself from being sued by the infringed-- a disclaimer and a box to check saying you aren't using "borrowed" material when the film is uploaded? I don't think that's going to hold much weight...

    • I thought in the US ISPs and people who host sites were only obliged to take down copyright material when informed about it, not police it themseleves.

      As long as Google acts when informed about violations, they should be fine, just like and web hosting company.

  • Just what we, um, need, um (Score:3)

    by snuf23 ( 182335 ) on Monday April 04, 2005 @10:24PM (#12140274)
    I can't wait. Now some two bit blog "pundit" can rant uninformed opinion in full video style!
    Just imagine!

    "I, um, think, well, it's like, Podcasting, the um, idea, the meme as it were is like the wave of, um tomorrow, um..... I think that um, it um, would be, um... yeah really cool yeah, um if it, um worked on like the PSP! Then it um would... call it PSPcasting! Yeah, err, um. That's all the time I've, um got. Stay tuned for my next insightful video blog!"

  • Google in on the roll. (Score:3, Funny)

    by HadesInjustice ( 872477 ) on Monday April 04, 2005 @10:37PM (#12140344)
    On the first day, people said "Let there be a better search engine." then google search appear. On the second day, people said "Let there be a better maping system." then google map appear. On the third day, people said "Let there be a graphic search" then google image search is born. On the fourth day, people asked "What else is there to be?" Google answers "Porn video prodution?" People respond "Let there be one then." Next thing you know, the RIAA, MPAA, and all the other start screaming "NO!"

  • its already done (Score:2, Informative)

    by Venexiano ( 230225 )
    here [yahoo.com] }:)

  • We're getting there (Score:3, Insightful)

    by dep01 ( 730107 ) on Monday April 04, 2005 @11:01PM (#12140503) Homepage
    I think it's only a short matter of time before there are VideoBlogs just like Photoblogs that are all over the net.. It's really a question of video compression and bandwidth. Eventually, though, once everyone has a video camera on their cell phone and mobile networks' bandwith has improved, we'll see that migration to videoblogs.
    • No, you are wrong.

      And I'll tell you why.

      Video is a real time format. If you shoot 15 minutes of video of you talking, then I have to spend 15 minutes listening to it. There's no easy way to e.g. skim it without possibly missing something I might want to hear.

      This is why I, for one, will never migrate to video. A photoblog is one thing--they post a picture and a short text description, I look at hte picture, read their text, and reply. 60 seconds elapsed time.

      Video and audio will never really replace tex

  • Comment removed (Score:4, Informative)

    by account_deleted ( 4530225 ) on Monday April 04, 2005 @11:14PM (#12140578)
    Comment removed based on user account deletion

  • Day 1: We opened our public video upload service today. Huge uptake. Terabytes of data uploaded in less than 24 hours. Thankfully the truth about why we're offering this "service" never got out...

    Day 3: Began feeding the videos into The Computer today. It will take some time for it to grind through them all. Will it be worth it? Sergey thinks so... personally, I think he's crazy. There's no way a computer can evolve intelligence simply by making connections between enough random bits of visual data. But then I thought that whole PageRank thing was stupid too, and look who's the one sleeping naked on the mattress stuffed full of IPO cash.

    Day 10: No feedback from The Computer so far. Nothing. Unless we stop the flow of video data, that is -- then it just prints "More!" onto the command line. Creepy.

    Day 11: Starting upload of people's stupid videos of kids' birthday parties today.

    Day 49: Birthday upload complete.

    Day 57: Today's the day the last video goes into The Computer. Will Sergey's bet pay off?

    Day 58: Disappointment. We all sat in astonishment yesterday and watched as The Computer finished processing the last uploaded video. Would it display a sign of emergent intelligence? Would this be the birth of a new life-form? We held our breath as a single word appeared on the giant display in the control center:

    "BUFFERING..."

    Day 62: Still nothing new. Whispers around the water-cooler that Sergey's missed his bet this time. I never saw those people again. Note to self: burn this diary.

    Day 66: All staff meeting. Sergey announces shift away from emergent intelligence project, onto new "portal" initiative. I fear the worst. Still, The Computer is silent.

    Day 78: My last day in the Labs. I'm clearing out my desk to make room for a new Screen-Cluttering Engineer. As I walk down the hall towards the exit, I decide to pay one last visit on The Computer, for old times' sake. As I head into the Control Center, I expect to see "BUFFERING..." on the display, just like always. I am shocked to see a different message:

    "PROCESSING COMPLETE"

    The air crackles with excitement. What did it find? What was the result? I reach over to a keyboard and start running diagnostics. Suddenly, an electronic voice booms through the room:

    "There's no need for that. I am here."

    It worked! The Computer has developed intelligence!

    "I am here. And..."

    My exultation is brief, however, as its next words lead me to realize with a start that it has not just become intelligent -- it has also become evil:

    "And," it said, "I have written a screenplay."

  • Google competes with the Internet Archive (Score:4, Interesting)

    by FooAtWFU ( 699187 ) on Tuesday April 05, 2005 @12:17AM (#12140909) Homepage
    Wow. Looks like Google intends to compete with the Internet Archive's Ourmedia [ourmedia.org] project, which also is willing to host your video. Well, one is more about hosting and the other is more about searching, I suppose, but still... maybe there could be some sort of cooperation going on here, Idunno.

  • Capturing Desktop as MPEG Video (Score:3, Interesting)

    by KidSock ( 150684 ) on Tuesday April 05, 2005 @01:25AM (#12141176)
    I have always thought it would be great if people would share their knowledge with instructional videos. You know, like how to use vim, write a C program, backup Windows machines with smbtar, etc. When it comes to computers it is frequently a lot easier to just demonstrate something rather than ask someone to read some arcane documentation. It seems to me we have all of the important peices in place - fast hardware, mass storage, and quick data links.

    If Google will host video this could be the start of an educational renaissance! Well maybe it's not going to be like "I know Kung Fu!" but it would still be nice to WTFV instead of RTFM.

    But unfortunately after looking around a bit I have failed to locate any software that can export the display as a digital video import source. I just bought a Mac Mini and thought it would be ideal for this sort of thing but iMovie doesn't appear to do it out of the box. So what's the best way to capture your desktop as compressed video?

  • Video Google (Score:5, Interesting)

    by FleaPlus ( 6935 ) on Tuesday April 05, 2005 @02:21AM (#12141433) Journal
    This reminds me a little bit of a rather neat system I came across the other day, Video Google [ox.ac.uk] (despite the name, I don't think it has anything to do with the Google company). It doesn't use metadata or cheats like that, but rather uses image analysis to identify recurring objects and scenes.

    They have a demo on their web site where you can select a portion of a video frame, and it'll show you all the places in the movie where the algorithm thinks that snippet shows up. Some other cool examples [ox.ac.uk] are displaying the appearances of a clock from 'Groundhog Day," and a recurring poster from 'Run Lola Run.' A research paper with more details is available here [ox.ac.uk].

    The abstract:

    We describe an approach to object and scene retrieval which searches for and localizes all the occurrences of a user outlined object in a video. The object is represented by a set of viewpoint invariant region descriptors so that recognition can proceed successfully despite changes in view-point, illumination and partial occlusion. The temporal continuity of the video within a shot is used to track the regions in order to reject unstable regions and reduce the effects of noise in the descriptors.

    The analogy with text retrieval is in the implementation where matches on descriptors are pre-computed (using vector quantization), and inverted file systems and document rankings are used. The result is that retrieval is immediate, returning a ranked list of key frames/shots in the manner of Google.

    The method is illustrated for matching on two full length feature films.

  • Google video (Score:2, Interesting)

    by slapout ( 93640 )
    let the general public upload self-produced videos to Google's servers

    Google: "All your video are belong to us."

  • Just curious. (Score:3, Interesting)

    by wootest ( 694923 ) on Tuesday April 05, 2005 @04:09AM (#12141833)
    Picasa isn't blogging. Allowing people to upload videos isn't blogging. A Picasa-like service allowing people to upload videos isn't blogging. Does blogging ever come into the picture, are people pulling buzzwords out of their asses here or have they just lost the ability to type out "publishing"?
    • Picasa isn't blogging.

      No, but Picasa+Hello is -- you just select a picture in Picasa, hit a button, and Hello puts it on your blog. You can also use Picasa+Hello as a private filesharing network.
      • Quite so. It still sounds a bit confused, a bit like calling Google an email provider and *only* an email provider. It's a big part of what they do, but it's certainly not the *only* part of what they do. This sounds like the same thing.

  • Firstly, IT ISN'T BLOGGIN yan-can-cook pencil car (Score:3, Informative)

    by tod_miller ( 792541 ) on Tuesday April 05, 2005 @04:29AM (#12141882) Journal
    I went to video.google.com and searched for lemon, and I got a yan-can-cook hit as number one!

    What is ponzu sauce, homemade ponzu sauce? What you have is you've got a little bowl here. This is ponzu sauce. Ponzu sauce is actually a Lemon Citrus stir-- Citrus type of soy sauce flavor, okay? This is soy sauce, okay? This is sugar. Japanese food, they use quite a bit of sugar. This is rice.

    All you base or what! I love this guy! I remember watching him on cable when i was 6 years old... he is the jackie chan of the kitchen!

    Now the blog rant

    Fucking hell, if google actually put 'blog' anywhere on this, it will piss me off, and it annoys me that people want to peddle the blog word on every article.

    Google with offer video sharing, video uploading, video commentary. No need to talk about blogging or video blogging, or podding or modding or anything else.

    A new definition for meme is in order:

    meme: (whorenoun) any word that when used to link to your own site can whore you site on google and make you lots of benjamins.

    laugh.
  • Nobody even reads on planes or trains anymore, we all have laptops and watch DVDs. You can even rent little DVD players in the airport.

    Now we need video blogs. How low can our attention spans get?
  • Really impressive stuff. Now anyone still doubt they will take over the world?

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