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The BBC's iPlayer, the downloadable app for watching BBC content on PCs is relaunching soon, following the successful beta test that garnered more than 10,000 users in the U.K. The player will give users a few ways to access BBC programming, including downloading single episodes or watching entire series the month after it goes off the air. The move enables viewers to catch missed content before it makes the long jump to DVD, and potentially catch up on shows they might have missed without resorting to seeking out pirated content. It's also one of the few … Read more

YouTube has added a new feature to its TestTube section as of last night, called Active Sharing. With this feature enabled, YouTube will keep track of videos you watch, for both archiving and real-time interaction with other users. If you're watching a video with other Active Sharing-enabled users, you'll be able to see their names with a little green dot next to it to signify they're watching too. Clicking on someone's profile name will show you the last five shows they've watched using the service.

Active Sharing joins the other TestTube projects, Audio Swap [hands-on] … Read more

Hillary Clinton won't be the next lonelygirl15, but there's no question that she and all the other 2008 presidential candidates will have their turns on YouTube.

The question that has been posed, CNET News.com reports, is whether the Democratic and Republican National Committees will allow video of the candidates' debates into the public domain.

"In 2008, this will really be a year of YouTube, where the little guy can hold politicians accountable for their words and that's why we need presidential debate content to be in the public domain or Creative Commons, and not captive … Read more

Ryan Fitzgerald is just an ordinary guy in Southbridge, Massachusetts, who had the extraordinary idea of publicizing his cell phone number on YouTube. The unemployed store clerk says he started the experiment to see how many people would call and to see if he could offer a sympathetic ear to any and all callers. He posted the above video on YouTube last Friday, and he has since received more than 5,000 calls and text messages. His follow-up YouTube video indicates that he has received all kinds of calls, from people who just wanted to say Hi, to people who … Read more

It seems like outed Lonelygirl15 actress Jessica Rose's 15 minutes of fame aren't quite up yet. The fictional YouTube video blog series has a United Kingdom-based spin-off coming up, and Rose has a small role in an upcoming Lindsay Lohan movie.

It's also been recently announced that production has recently wrapped on Rose's "first major theatrical role," in a movie called Perfect Sport that's slated to be released (in one capacity or another) this fall. It doesn't look particularly "major," though; it's created by a year-old production company called … Read more

The Electronic Frontier Foundation has dropped a lawsuit that it filed against Viacom on behalf of a group that posted a parody video of The Colbert Report on YouTube, which Viacom demanded be removed citing U.S. copyright law.

The lawsuit, filed in March in federal court in San Francisco, accused Viacom of misusing the law and infringing on the free-speech rights of the makers of the video--activist group MoveOn.org Civic Action and Brave New Films. When contacted by CNET News.com last month, Viacom claimed that it had not asked YouTube to remove the video. However, Viacom later … Read more

On Friday, we reported that YouTube erroneously deleted a video of presidential candidate John McCain singing an impromptu ditty about starting a war with Iran.

McCain had joked about it during a a campaign stop in South Carolina last week, singing: "That old, that old Beach Boys song, Bomb Iran. Bomb, bomb, bomb, bomb, anyway."

There was a song called "Barbara Ann," first performed by The Regents and made popular by the Beach Boys.

But a group called Vince Vance and the Valiants actually released the "Bomb Iran" song during the 1979 hostage crisis, … Read more

Suzie Reider, YouTube's chief marketing officer, told an audience at the Advertising Research Foundation's Rethink conference this week that YouTube will launch in a few weeks its first user study, according to trade publication Advertising Age.

"By Q3, we'll have a tremendous amount of metrics and data around every video," Reider told the audience. "There's lots you can glean from looking at who's … Read more

YouTube has announced a new series on content for political candidates, called Spotlight. Candidates will be able to ask the YouTube community a question and monitor comments and video responses sent in from users. They'll then get a chance to respond to the group discussion later in the week. The goal is to provide an open forum for users to know candidates a little better, and for people to ask questions directly--an option that's historically been out of reach (outside members of the press or those involved in campaign events). The project is also taking advantage of a … Read more