Cybercriminals were out in full force over the Independence Day weekend, launching attacks on some of the world’s most popular online destinations: YouTube and iTunes.
Attackers on Sunday exploited a cross-site scripting (XSS) vulnerability in YouTube’s comment system to embed HTML code on a portion of the social networking site’s pages that caused pop-up messages and redirected users to pornographic websites, according to reports and security experts.
Those behind the attack primarily targeted videos of Canadian pop star Justin Bieber and posted messages stating that the 16-year-old singer died in a car crash. Pages unrelated to Bieber were also affected.
One pop-up on a Bieber video read, “BREAKING NEWS: Justin bieber died in a horrific car accident earlier this morning, please visit the CNN homepage for more info.”
Google temporarily hid comments by default within an hour of the attack and fixed the issue in about two hours, Jay Nancarrow, a spokesman at Google, YouTube’s parent company, said in a statement.
“We’re continuing to study the vulnerability to help prevent similar issues in the future,” Nancarrow said.
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As the online search giant Google has completed its acquisition of video compression outfit On2 Technologies the company was recommended by the Free Software Foundation to release On2′s latest codec under an irrevocable free license and use it to replace Adobe Flash on YouTube.
“With your purchase of On2, you now own both the world’s largest video site (YouTube) and all the patents behind a new high performance video codec: VP8,” reads a open letter to Google, posted to the Free Software Foundation (FSF) blogs.
“Just think what you can achieve by releasing the VP8 codec under an irrevocable royalty-free license and pushing it out to users on YouTube? You can end the web’s dependence on patent-encumbered video formats and proprietary software (Flash).”
Just for yucks, here’s something funny to watch that’s safe for work and around the kiddies.
Finally, we have some answers. Today we’re releasing YouTube Insight, a free tool that enables anyone with a YouTube account to view detailed statistics about the videos that they upload to the site. For example, uploaders can see how often their videos are viewed in different geographic regions, as well as how popular they are relative to all videos in that market over a given period of time. You can also delve deeper into the lifecycle of your videos, like how long it takes for a video to become popular, and what happens to video views as popularity peaks.
How does this help you? Well, using these metrics, you can increase your videos’ view counts and improve your popularity on the site. For instance, you might learn that your videos are most popular on Wednesdays, that you have a huge following in Spain, or that new videos that play off previous content become more popular more quickly. With this information, you can concentrate on creating compelling new content that appeals to your target audiences, and post these videos on days you know these viewers are on the site. (Maybe even post your next video in Spanish?) And for those of you who are also partners, the more popular a video is, the more advertising revenue it can generate.
We’ll be making new features and additional information available fairly quickly — like a specific breakdown of how viewers discovered the video — so keep an eye out as we roll out new features. As for now, you can find currently available metrics by clicking under the “About this Video” button under “My account > Videos, Favorites, Playlists > Manage my Videos.”
OK, after the XP SP3 post, time for something that brings a smile: South Park.
After years of encouraging their fans to share “South Park,” creators Trey Parker and Matt Stone have set up a viable alternative to the mass YouTube-based distribution of popular clips from the hit show: They’re just going to give the whole thing away on SouthParkStudios.com.
“We got really sick of having to download our own show illegally all the time, so we gave ourselves a legal alternative,” the duo quipped in a statement.
The site offers every “South Park” episode including the current one, which stays live for a week after its airdate and then goes dark for the rest of the month, at which point it is added to the site’s back catalog.
South Park DIGITAL Studios Press Release
“SOUTH PARK” CREATORS TREY PARKER AND MATT STONE
AND COMEDY CENTRAL LAUNCH THE ALL-NEW SOUTHPARKSTUDIOS.COM
NEW SITE FEATURES FULL EPISODES AND CLIPS
FROM THE ENTIRE 12 SEASONS OF
THE EMMY AND PEABODY AWARD-WINNING ANIMATED SERIES
NEW YORK, March 25, 2008 — South Park Digital Studios LLC, the joint venture between “South Park” creators Trey Parker and Matt Stone and COMEDY CENTRAL, a division of MTVN Entertainment Group, a unit of Viacom (NYSE: VIA, VIA.B), announced today the launch of the new southparkstudios.com, which will feature free, streaming, full-length episodes and clips from the entire 12 seasons of the Emmy and Peabody Award-winning animated series. The site which rolled out a beta version last Wednesday has already received over three million page views, over two million video plays, and more than a million streams of full episodes.
“The ‘South Park’ phenomenon began as a viral video clip. Now it continues its digital and creative leadership with the launch of an extensive site devoted entirely to ‘South Park,’” said Doug Herzog, president, MTV Networks’ Entertainment Group. “Southparkstudios.com is a true representation of Matt and Trey’s vision and is the ultimate online destination for ‘South Park’ fans – allowing them full access to every ‘South Park’ episode ever created.”
When asked about the launch of the new site, Stone and Parker said, “We got really sick of having to download our own show illegally all the time so we gave ourselves a legal alternative.”
Anne Garefino, General Manager of South Park Digital Studios, had this to say about the future of southparkstudios.com, “One goal in moving forward is to make every episode of ‘South Park’ available world-wide. Currently, full episodes are not available in the UK, Australia and a few other foreign territories but we’re not far off from making that happen. We have some contractual issues to sift through but we’re getting there.”
Southparkstudios.com will offer fans an all new “South Park” digital experience. The new site, which was designed by a creative team from “South Park” in conjunction with Schematic, a WWP Digital Company, invites fans to watch full episodes and clips of every “South Park” episode. Of all 169 episodes in the “South Park” Library, 168 are available today. Due to contractual obligations, all new episodes will be available as soon as possible after they premiere on COMEDY CENTRAL and remain available for seven days. These episodes will return to the site permanently 30 days after they premiere. Southparkstudios.com also features extensive video and behind-the-scenes information from all 12 seasons allowing users to see all their favorite “South Park” moments, comment on them and share them with friends.
In addition to the wealth of video content, southparkstudios.com worked with 65 Media to create the South Park Avatar Generator. Users can make themselves into a “South Park” character (Canadians included) with the Official Avatar Generator. They can pick from millions of combinations to create their perfect self portrait in the “South Park” world. To date 35,000 Avatars have been created.
“The interesting part of designing for ‘South Park’ is to remember that while it is a cartoon, it is not a show, or a site, for kids,” said Andrew Solmssen, General Manager and EVP, Schematic. “‘South Park’ wanted a site that was as clean and well designed as anything on the Web, so that it would showcase and put the proper emphasis on the show content.”
Toyota and Virgin are the launch sponsors for the new southparkstudios.com.
This Crysis demo includes one singleplayer level, and the Sandbox2 Editor.
A couple videos to view while you’re downloading the whopping 1.77 GB demo file.
Give me a break. I’ve seen more nudity in a Walmart Superstore and I have to tell you, the quality wasn’t anywhere near as good.
Alicia Silverstone is too hot for TV – in Houston, that is.
The actress shed her clothes for a PETA ad championing vegetarianism set to debut in Texas Wednesday, but Comcast Cable pulled the 30-second spots from the airwaves.
In the commercial, Silverstone, 30, steps out of a swimming pool, unclothed and sharing the benefits of a vegetarian lifestyle…
According to reports, the PETA ads will still run on television in Dallas.
and.. on men’s computers everywhere – for a few minutes anyway until we get bored.
YouTube Downloader is a free tool that downloads videos from youtube.
YouTube Downloader allows you to easily grab and save desired youtube video to your local computer.
Simply paste the URL of a video into the program, press Start , and the AVI file will be downloaded into the selected folder.
You dont need any players to play flash video just play it on the defult media player clasic.
YouTube Downloader is a completly FREE Software. It contains absolutely NO ADWARE, NO SPYWARE,
Features:
- Easy to use
- Save youtube video as AVI file