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In a joint announcement on Thursday, YouTube and CNN unveiled their plans for co-sponsored Democratic and Republican presidential debates that aim to bring the standard televised events into the digital age of mashups, remixes and viral buzz. Not only will video content from the events (as well as other CNN debates) be made available for sharing and distribution online, but the debate questions themselves will come in the form of videos sent in by YouTube users.

(Video: YouTube's call for submissions)

In a dial-in press conference, representatives from both companies explained the new process and answered questions from reporters--on hand were Jon Klein, president of CNN U.S.; David Bohrman, CNN's senior vice president and Washington, D.C. bureau chief; Chad Hurley, YouTube's CEO and co-founder; and Steve Grove, YouTube's news and politics editor.

All four projected eager enthusiasm that this new debate format would bring a more democratic angle to the way campaign dialogue is conducted. "This is how debates would have been done since the beginning of time, had the technology been available," Klein extolled. "It's really powerful, and it really brings the country to the presidential candidates in a very visual and contextual way," added Grove.

… Read more

In a press call on Thursday morning, CNN and YouTube will unveil the details for the cable news channel's upcoming presidential debate coverage, claiming that the two are "teaming up to provide an unprecedented debate format offering voters a larger role than ever before in debate history."

The press event will feature Jon Klein, president of CNN U.S.; David Bohrman, CNN's senior vice president and Washington, D.C. bureau chief; Chad Hurley, YouTube's CEO and co-founder; and Steve Grove, YouTube's news and politics editor.

The traditional ownership format of televised presidential debate content, … Read more

HeyCast is a new service from the folks that made HeyWatch [review], the online video conversion service. It lets you grab videos from popular hosting sites such as YouTube, Google Video, and Apple's Quicktime movie trailers site, and clump them together into a handy RSS feed you or anyone else can subscribe to in iTunes or other feed readers. The feed isn't just your standard RSS though--HeyCast grabs the Flash videos, converts them, and makes them available for offline viewing on your computer or portable devices.

I gave it a go this morning and came across a few … Read more

According to Trend Micro, a Trojan horse that downloads a certain YouTube video could compromise your computer. The video appears to be an episode of Afterworld, a Web TV series about a society where technology is dead. Security vendor Websense has also been tracking this Trojan horse and has traced the video to a .su domain, which was originally assigned to the former Soviet Union and still remains in use today.

The use of online media files to infect end users with malware is not new. A worm last October used a JavaScript flaw in Apple Quicktime to spread on … Read more

YouTube just rolled out a change to its embedded player. Now, when you mouse over a playing video, everywhere but on YouTube.com itself, you get a fancy list of related videos across the bottom of the player, like the Mac OS Dock. There are also next and previous arrows on the sides of the player now.

Formerly, you had to wait for a video to end before you got the list of relateds. With this new feature, you don't have to wait anymore. Bored with what you're watching? Zap on over to another vid in a heartbeat. … Read more

Looks like YouTube is bringing sexy back. Former boy band sensation and current pop star du jour Justin Timberlake has signed Esmee Denters, an 18-year-old Dutch singer who got her start by building up buzz on the ubiquitous video-sharing site, to his new record label.

Timberlake, 26, founded Tennman Records in a joint venture with Interscope Records last month; Denters is the first artist signed.

But despite her karaoke-like start, Denters is no "Numa Numa" kid--she can actually sing. She's been performing in several European countries already after gaining a fan base through videos where she sang … Read more

This announcement slipped through the cracks yesterday but is one of the more interesting partner dealings with YouTube we've seen in a while (besides that AppleTV bit last week). YouTube is now hosting several channels for Hearst-Argyle, a television company that owns 26 local TV stations in the United States. YouTube will be sharing revenues with Heart-Argyle based on viewership, similar to what's been done with some of the other partnered content providers like the BBC and several sports leagues.

There are already five dedicated YouTube channels that now host a variety of content, ranging from local news … Read more

On stage at D5, on what will later be known as Google Day, Walt Mossberg asked Google CEO Eric Schmidt about the the $1 billion Viacom lawsuit against YouTube. "It was probably just a mistake," he said.

Some mistake.

Schmidt began his upcoming legal defense on the stage: "It's really about the DMCA. It's pretty clear that there's a safe haven for sites like ours."

Walt asked if Schmidt believed in intellectual property. He does, but said that the law says that in this case responsibility for enforcing copyright should be shared, and … Read more

Update: The video is back. All is explained on the D5 site. Here it is:

The intro for Viacom CEO Phillipe Dauman at D5 came from Stephen Colbert (a Viacom employee), via tape. It was very funny. But not nearly as funny as the fact that the video, which was then posted to the D5 site, was quickly removed after Viacom's lawyers demanded it.

And let's be clear: It's not like this video was an episode of the Colbert Report. It had no ads and it never aired on a Viacom channel. Furthermore, Dauman said on stage … Read more