YouTube have announced the winners of the first YouTube awards yesterday.

Ask a Ninja Video

Not surprisingly, Ask a Ninja came out tops in the Best Series category. Two other YouTube videos that I remember as being very good, but forgot about during voting time was Here it Goes Again in the most creative category, and Kiwi! in the most adorable category (I still feel for the sweet thing)

Now all we are waiting for is the first pictures of the awards themselves.

Cute Linux in “I am an Apple, I am a PC” Parody Advert on YouTube

What was just a rumor yesterday has been confirmed, Microsoft will be releasing the XBOX 360 Elite version (but only in limited stock format ~100 000 units).

So what makes the 360 Elite so special from its premium partner; well the 120 gigabyte hard drive (as opposed to the normal 20 gig), and the HDMI enabled output and connectivity, and the cherry on the top: the 360 Elite is Black!

Early guestimates are indicating that this will upset some of the early adopters of the current 360 models, but with only limited numbers, I foresee great difficulty for most people to get one even if they can afford the $479 price tag.

[Originally spotted at Engadget]

For all the users using the personalized Google homepage, they now have the option to customize the background with a theme. It seems Google finally realized that people like to make things there own, even though the plain white background has been fine for most users for almost a decade now.

My personal favorite out of the currently six available themes : Sweet Dreams

[Google Blog entry]

YouTube announced the YouTube Video Awards yesterday. The video-sharing website is allowing viewers to vote for their favorite video based on seven categories.

Maybe I should start making more videos.

[Linked from BBC]

Not a day after I listen to a TWiT podcast almost entirely about Twitter, and about 20 minutes after I read an article about the huge uptake of Twitter, does Tom, one of my close friends, invite me to it.

I feel a bit like a sheep. With a MySpace account (Which I never use), a LiveJournal account (which I should update more often), a Blog, a Virb Account, a Flickr account, a YouTube account and a Digg account…

Ok, I’m not part of every single Web 2.0 social network available and I AM part of the web 2.0 generation, so it is sort of a given that I belong to a few of these sites; I mean, feeling a little like a sheep following the flock didn’t stop me from joining the club. Maybe I should start my own social network, maybe my idea will take off and make money for me too.

Thanks to Leo for warning me about the mobile phone bill… before I activated the feature in Twitter.

My websites DNA, using a cool tool found here

Google makes big news two days running; on one side being sued for copyright infringement, and the second for assisting users privacy. Here is my breakdown of the two articles:

Viacom sues YouTube (and Google) for copyrighted video clips

Viacom inc. (the owners of MTV and comedy Central) is suing YouTube (Google) for $1 billion claiming copyright infringement.  Aside from this being a ridiculous amount of money it will also put the Digital Millenium Copyright Act (DCMA) ’safe harbor’ clause under the microscope.

YouTube has so far not implemented any copyright detection systems into it’s video service, but has always removed copyrighted content at the request of the owner timeously, even when Viacom labelled some videos copyrighted ‘Viacom’ when in fact they belonged to other parties.

Google seems firm in it’s stance that they and YouTube are within their legal rights with regard to copyrights.

Google Privacy move

On the flip side of the coin, Google has been praised by privacy groups for it’s move to make users search information anonymous. Currently Google keeps user search information (IP address, cookie info and search string text) indefinitely; with this announcement Google says that any information that they have no legal obligation to keep (like say ‘how to Commit Murder’) will be anonymised after 18 to 24 months.

Currently the only criticism of this move by the web search engine is the time that they do keep the information.

For me, Google seems to own my life, a little anonymity wont hurt a bit.

The BBC has anounced a partnership with YouTube to provide two channels of short-form BBC content for the online video provider.

A step in the right direction for YouTube, and for the BBC, I think.