Google has just launched the Indian version of Youtube, which is good news for Indians not only in India but worldwide. Viewing videos online is fast catching up here in India with the growing penetration of Broadband. By offering localized content on Youtube Google has taken one more step to dominate the yet untapped internet video market in India.

Youtube India features all the content from the global Youtube as well, but the difference between the two begins in popularity charts etc.. The top video charts on Youtube India will reflect what Indians are watching now, the featured videos are programmed to cater to an Indian audience, and Google has also signed up local partners to distribute their content through YouTube.

Check out this funny YouTube India promotional video:

YouTube has also partnered with several content creators like Zoom Channel, NDTV, UTV, Rajshri Group, Indiaglitz and Music Today to distribute them on YouTube India.

Visit Youtube India (http://in.youtube.com)

Steve Chen said that the high-quality streams will be available in the next months, but only for some of the videos. This is probably the reason why YouTube’s bulk uploader increased the size limit for a video from 100 MB to 1 GB.

YouTube probably has the lowest quality videos on the Web today thanks to the Flash 7 Technology. According to Wikipedia,

“YouTube’s video playback technology is based on Macromedia’s Flash Player 7 and uses the Sorenson Spark H.263 video codec. (…) [The video] has pixel dimensions of 320 by 240 and runs at 25 frames per second. The maximum data rate is 300kbit/s.”

Steve Chen also confirmed that in YouTube’s internal archive, all video is stored at the native resolution in which it was uploaded it. However, he said, a large portion of YouTube videos are pretty poor quality to begin with — 320 x 240. Streaming them in high-quality mode isn’t going to help much. So expect the rollout of High Quality Videos to be pretty slow from Youtube since the existing setup is working well for them, so this is just an experiment.

FlickrStorm is a better search for Flickr! It works by looking for more than what you enter to find related and more relevant images… Be suprised!

When you search for pictures on FlickrStorm a super cool AJAX interface brings up the search results. The interface allows you to directly download the pictures, keep track of pictures you’ve seen and ofcourse a very nice way of sharing photos with your friends is also thrown in. Here is a small screencast that I did while using FlickrStorm :

If you have not been impressed with the simplicity of FlickrStorm and its beautiful and attractive design, here’s another service that just doesn’t search Flickr, but also searches Amazon, eBay, Youtube etc.. Yes I am talking about oSkope.

oSkope is a visual browser that lets you search and organize items from different web services like Amazon, eBay, YouTube or Flickr in an intuitive way.

Here is a screencast that I did with OSkope. Pretty Impressive..

So this is it. Some cool new ways to browse and explore Flickr, Amazon, eBay and Youtube. Go ahead and try out FlickrStorm and oSkope today.

Not Apple TV is a flash based version of Apple TV and it has the same enviable UI that original Apple TV has. Not Apple TV works with all the popular Internet Video sites like Youtube, Metacafe etc.. Here is a screenshot of Apple TV in Action :

Not Apple TV is down while I write this so a special thanks to Tech-Buzz for the Image.

What is Youtube Desktop?

YouTube Desktop is incredibly cool with a modern design and terrific dynamic web application for searching, watching and downloading videos from the richest online video archive YouTube.

This is basically adding functionality and experience to what “should be” there. The possibilities of the site reach far beyond that. It gives you the chance to create your own environment for watching video clips, saving them and sharing them with friends.

What makes YouTubeDesktop unique?

Videos can be dragged, resized, minimized in a tray, drag’n'drop of videos between players and results, standard menus – makes Youtube Desktop the richest web application for viewing and managing video content! You will be amazed by the flexibility and fabulous design of the website. It is user friendly and easy to navigate but also has great functionality.

Some of its features include :

• Interface, designed to be used just like every other desktop application
• Fast flexible searching, displaying the results with option to resize them, so you can use the site even when sitting in your sofa and watching on a plasma TV – will look just as perfect!
• Managing Playlist – create and save any video to watch later or share them with friends
• Watching multiple videos at the same time – you can have more than one player open – all made easy using standard functionality – dragging and resizing the windows, minimizing them within the tray – never been easier!
• Download Videos as avi, mp4 (ipod), mov, 3gp (mobile), wmv, flv, exe (built in standalone player) – all converted on the fly. That gives you the chance to save all your favourite videos on your computer and watch them whenever you want.
• Drag and Drop interaction – Allows you to drag videos around to create a new player or playlist.
• Change themes – set the way the site looks according to your mood
• Share videos with friends – send url’s and recommend videos to friends through e-mail
• View your recently played videos.

Here is a small screencast of Youtube Desktop that I took. Sorry for the choppy video. This happens to be my first screencast thats why it ended up being like that.

If you want to try out YouTube desktop then drop in a comment and I will send you my beta username and password for you to try this cool thing out..

Youtube recently launched their video ads service. While the new ads haven’t been accepted that well by the general public and actually many are complaining that it spoils the youtube experience. If you are one of those then you need this handy firefox extension that hides the ads from being displayed.

TubeStop is an extension for Mozilla-based Web browsers that disables the autoplay on YouTube videos. This means that you can open multiple YouTube videos in tabs in the background without them all starting to play at once. TubeStop also disables the autoplay on YouTube videos embedded on non-YouTube.com sites (MySpace, for example). TubeStop can also prevent ads on Youtube by replacing the youtube player with the embeddable version of it, so that no ads are shown..

Update : It looks like Youtube has temporarily pulled off the Ads. I guess its because of the negative feedback.