YouTube has once again found itself banned from Turkey for having clips available that insult the first president and founding father Mustafa Kemal Ataturk, marking the second time in less than a year that the popular video sharing website has been banned in Turkey for the same reason.
A Turkish court blocked access to the popular video-sharing Web site YouTube because of clips allegedly insulting the country's founding father, Mustafa Kemal Ataturk, according to reports Sunday. It is illegal in Turkey to insult the revered figure, whose portrait still hangs in nearly all government offices nearly 70 years after his death.
Users trying to access the Web site from Turkey were met with notices in English and Turkish saying it was banned under an Ankara court order issued Jan. 17.
In March 2007, YouTube was banned for two days in Turkey for the same reason until the offending videos were taken down.
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technorati tags: youtube, Turkey, Mustafa Kemal Ataturk
Turkey bans YouTube... Again
The Cloverfield Hype... and Slusho
Web-savvy movie lovers have been buzzing about Cloverfield for months, thanks to a viral marketing strategy-meets-alternate-reality game.
Starting in early July 2007, a mysterious movie trailer began showing in theaters nationwide during screenings of Transformers. The film, which opens today, had no name, but the trailer was stamped with a date of 01-18-08 and said it was produced by J.J. Abrams, of the TV show Lost.
The curious headed online to try to track down information about the film.
Under Abrams' filmography on the Web site imdb.com, a clue was discovered — a listing for a project titled Clover, aka the Untitled J.J. Abrams Project, with a synopsis: "a giant monster movie (referred internally as The Parasite) which is shot using home video cameras from the point of view of real people who are experiencing the attack on New York City."
Followers of the movie-to-be debated what the monster could be. Was it the return of Godzilla or Voltron? Leviathan? Or a new monster?
Message boards lit up as clues were discovered, including the Web site 1-18-08.com, which contained a single photo of two women looking up in horror — at what, of course, was the question.
Other Web sites, including www.slusho.jp, raised more questions than they answered. What did this drink, with its "deep-sea ingredient," have to do with the creature that attacked New York, and why was one of the characters in the film wearing a Slusho T-shirt?
By the end of July, MySpace pages of characters in the film were discovered. Amusingly, they were blogging in real-time and have continued to do so up until the film's release. On Jan. 4, for instance, the main character Rob Hawkins blogged on his MySpace page (www.myspace.com/robbyhawkins) that he'd just been hired as vice president for marketing and promotions for Slusho and was moving to Japan in mid-January. The movie documents the ill-fated night of Rob's going-away party on Jan. 18.
Here's a trailer of the movie uploaded on YouTube:
For links to all the Cloverfield-related Web sites, and to catch up on the buzz, check out the fan site www.cloverfieldclues.com.
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technorati tags: cloverfield, slusho, cloverfield movie, youtube
Bill Gates' Last Full Day at Microsoft
For those who don't know it yet, Microsoft's Bill Gates announced his retirement plan at CES 2008 in Las Vegas. Included in his last keynote is a funny video of what he would probably do on his last day at Microsoft. Here's just one of many videos uploaded on YouTube, this clip has the clearest audio that i've found so far. enjoy :)
Other than appearances by colleagues like Steve Ballmer, Robbie Bach, Kevin Turner, Ray Ozzie and Craig Mundie.. there are also celebrities like Brian Williams, Matthew McConaughey, Jay-Z, Bono, Steven Spielberg, George Clooney, Jon Stewart, Hillary Clinton, Barack Obama, and Al Gore.
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technorati tags: Bill Gates video, last day, Microsoft
YouTube on Your Boob Tube
As YouTube becomes an ever more popular pastime, major television makers are scrambling to add Internet capabilities to their newest TV models.
Matsushita Electric Industrial Co., the world's biggest plasma maker, has lately teamed up with Google to launch new plasma television series that allows users to search and watch videos from YouTube as well as to share and view photos from the online Picasa Web Albums.
At the 2008 International Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas, Matsushita, which produces Panasonic-branded products, unveiled the latest Panasonic VIERA PZ850 line of plasma Internet-connected high-definition television sets, which will be available to consumers this spring in the United States.
Google and YouTube will provide Matsushita with special servers for transmitting high-quality images for large-screen TVs. The latest Matsushita Net-enabled TVs will allow users to click into the YouTube and Picasa Web sites by pressing a button on the remote control.
{ source: forbes.com }
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technorati tags: youtube, television, google
Trailer for the Batman movie sequel - The Dark Knight
For those of you like me who's also waiting for next year's sequel to Christopher Nolan's successful reboot of the Batman franchise, here's a new trailer on YouTube to get you more excited.
Titled "The Dark Knight," the next movie will feature the return of Christian Bale as millionaire playboy by day turned repressed psychopath by night Bruce Wayne aka Batman. Portraying the evil Joker will be Heath Ledger, an actor known for his versatility and not being shy in taking any kind of roles. Mrs. Cruise Katie Holmes will not be in this movie, turning down a salary estimated at between $1 million and $2 million. Other returning lead actors are Michael Caine (Alfred), Gary Oldman (Lt. Gordon) and Morgan Freeman (Lucius Fox). Aaron Eckhart will be appearing as Harvey Dent, more known as district attorney turned madman Two-Face. This somehow gives a hint of an outline for a possible third film.
Some interesting facts about "The Dark Knight":
Head to IMDB for more trivia. The Dark Knight is expected to be shown sometime July next year. For more updates regarding the movie, you can visit their official website at thedarkknight.warnerbros.com
Marvel of course also has movies lined up next year, one of the anticipated is IronMan starring Robert Downey Jr. click here to view the trailer
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technorati tags: batman, the dark knight, dark knight trailer, batman sequel
Microsoft on Google's territory to promote Vista & Live
Would you believe it? Just saw on TechCrunch that Microsoft has taken its marketing push for Windows Vista and Windows Live into enemy territory by offering short demonstration videos on Google's YouTube.
Currently the WindowsVistaAndLive channel has 9 clips uploaded showing different features of Vista and Live which users can take advantage of - like online photo sharing, video calling, management of email accounts etc. This just shows that even Microsoft acknowledges the powerful market position of YouTube on the internet.
MS has even left comments open on all videos so viewers can share their reactions, most comments i've read so far are negative posts like:"Vista sucks hard. Get a mac if you want to get more done without it crashing on you."
"Fix Vista already MS!! Or better yet, make XP look sexier- now that would be a fix."
" i like how vista tried to look all pretty like OSX, but they forgot to actually make it work well first"
" quick TABS in explorer? geee i wish safari had that."
"Vista is just too buggy right now until they fix all the major problems. I'm not an apple fanboy...I'm just saying Vista isn't ready yet and XP SP3 is perfectly fine. Why change something that isn't broken?"
There are also positive comments.. like.. uhmm.. wait, i just saw one right here.. uhmm.. ehrr.. okay.. well, yeah there are also positive comments.
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technorati tags: google, youtube, microsoft, WindowsVistaAndLive Channel
God save the Queen.. and Her YouTube channel as well.
Britain's 81-year-old Queen Elizabeth II, considered an icon of traditionalism, launched her own special "Royal Channel" on YouTube Sunday.
The queen will use the popular video-sharing Web site to send out her 50th annual televised Christmas message, which she first delivered live to the nation and its colonies on Dec. 25, 1957.
"The queen always keeps abreast with new ways of communicating with people," Buckingham Palace said in a statement. "The Christmas message was podcast last year."Indeed the internet's technology makes messages like these more accessible to younger people and those in other countries. YouTube has been used to deliver important statements and events, making the youth aware of what's happening around.. like the Presidential Debate in the US, and the Wowowee cheating rehearsal here in the Philippines. So don't be surprised if next time you see the Pope delivering his Christmas, New Year or Easter message through his "Paypal.. ehrr.. Papal Channel" as well :)
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technorati tags: Queen Elizabeth, youtube, Royal Channel Read more...
More TV viewers turn to web
More television viewers are turning to the Internet to watch videos, films and TV episodes, according to a new survey.
Harris Interactive conducted the survey and Joan Barten Kline, a spokeswoman for the company, said in a statement:
"Viewing videos online seems to inspire a sense of adventure, particularly among younger viewers." More than one-third of viewers overall and half of those 18 to 24 said there is something they really enjoy about discovering a cool video online. "They seem to take particular pride in their finds online and share them with friends," Barten Kline added.
More than 42 percent of YouTube viewers said they visit the site frequently, up from 33 percent last year.
Apart from YouTube, which most people favored because they felt it had almost every video they could find, 43 percent said they have watched a video on a TV-network Web site, followed by 35 percent on news sites and less than 30 percent on search engines such as Yahoo and Google.
This is no different here in the Philippines, most pinoys are now turning to web videos to catch up with tv shows, telenovelas, or cartoon series they failed to watch on TV. Looking at Alexa.com you can see that YouTube is currently 3rd most visited site in the Philippines, another popular video site here is Crunchyroll.com which is like a one-stop video shop for all things anime. This site also has a large collection of asian tv dramas that viewers can watch for free.How about you, any video sites that are eating your precious time lately? How much of your time is spent on watching TV compared to viewing web videos?
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technorati tags: youtube, TV viewers, web videos Read more...