Internet search leader Google has added several free developer tools to its popular video sharing service  YouTube, which will allow greater integration of the site's videos with other Web sites and the ability to upload new videos and control YouTube accounts from any Web location, the company announced Tuesday. Using new application programming interfaces (APIs), developers can more easily customize the look of the YouTube video player when video content is shown on their own sites, in a move that finds YouTube seeking to increase its exposure by becoming a vast, behind-the-scenes Web-wide video architecture. YouTube also announced a partnership with video recorder maker company TiVo. YouTube Functionality From Across The Web The Silicon Valley-based YouTube has provided new controls to developers and webmasters, who can now go  beyond simply embedding video content in their sites by using the APIs released Tuesday to upload new videos and control the comments, playlists, responses and custom video feeds associated with their YouTube accounts without having to leave their own sites or applications. Visitors to sites using the new YouTube APIs will be able to add videos to their list of favorites and rate them without having to visit the main YouTube site, YouTube said Tuesday in a blog announcement. "We try really hard to make YouTube as open as possible," said YouTube product manager Jim Patterson. "[We] now provide a complete set of capabilities for uploading, managing, searching, and playing back user videos and metadata from the YouTube 'cloud,' managed by us," Patterson added. Five Key Features Among New Tools Among the features available through the new API services were five key improvements Patterson highlighted as helping to "generate traffic for your site, visibility for your brand, or support for your cause." The five are listed here:  | Uploading videos and any video responses to YouTube | | | Remotely adding or editing such data as titles, descriptions, ratings, comments, favorites, and contacts | | | Fetching localized video feeds for 18 international locales, such as "most viewed" and "top rated" | | | Performing custom queries optimized for YouTube's 18 international locales | | | Customizing the player interface and controlling video playback through software (pause, play, stop, etc.) | Google Adds New Developer Tools To YouTube The localization service will allow developers to include native language YouTube video interaction using any  of the 18 languages the firm currently supports. "The world just got a little bit smaller - you can access our internationalized standard feeds through the API," noted Stephanie Liu, a member of YouTube's APIs and Tools group, writing on the Google Code blog Wednesday. As an example, Liu showed how the new tools allow developers to create a list of the most relevant YouTube videos about bicycles in France, a localization prospect likely to gain favor among YouTube users worldwide. With the APIs launched Wednesday webmasters have been given options for building custom video players, in order to better integrate YouTube content into sites which have color schemes that may clash with the default YouTube player, which is based on Adobe Systems' Flash technology. The new tools come on top of a previous set of APIs YouTube released last year which allowed visitors to sites throughout the Web to search and view YouTube videos. The move appears aimed at motivating consumers to contribute new video content by making it easier to do so at any site adopting the YouTube framework, which some have called a cloud video service, and not just at YouTube. Patterson sees the new tools released by his firm being used in "powerful new ways to integrate YouTube content and community into other websites, desktop applications, video games, mobile devices, televisions, cameras," he wrote in the announcement. Partnership With Video Recorder Firm TiVo Announced YouTube may be hoping to increase its presence in online communities neither it nor parent company Google own outright, including "online destinations and web communities [users] already love and visit regularly," said Patterson. Other Web content hosting companies have tried expanding the ways users can interact with their services, such as Internet media pioneer Yahoo, which last year gave developers greater access to its photo-sharing service Flickr. YouTube also announced a partnership Wednesday with digital video recorder maker TiVo. "We're delighted to be working with the world's leading online video community so that TiVo subscribers can access YouTube's popular content on the TV via the TiVo DVR," said TiVo vice president Tara Maitra. "Being able to make available YouTube videos to the TiVo subscriber base using one device, one remote and one user interface is another major step in our commitment to combine all of your television and web video viewing options in one easy to use service," Maitra added in an announcement. Related Links:
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10:14 pm on Mar. 12, 2008 (utc 0)