360 Degree YouTube Video

Apparently I've been living under a rock at the bottom of a well for the past few months because I have only just discovered that YouTube now supports 360 videos. What does that mean you ask? It means this:

Watch it on your phone if you'd like your mind to be blown more than it currently is.

If you're like then this video probably melted your brain all over your keyboard. I had no idea that 360 degree camera's even existed let alone be a technology that would be supported by a company as colossal as google. After a bit of googling I found that there are quite a few models of 360 camera's available to the tech savvy consumer:

There's the Ricoh Theta, a device that looks as pretentious as it sounds, and costs around $350.00 which with tax included I think we can all agree is the price level equivalent of a terrible pun.

Next coming in at a bit depth of 4 pixels is the Kodak SP360. Priced at $300.00 it may look like an interesting tool to add to ones cinematic arsenal. It also looks like a muffin from the future which is all I've every wanted from a camera.

There are a few more interesting models I've found that I won't go into detail on , but I will say this: The death of the frame is neigh all hail the future muffin.

Youtube now contains an audio library of free music

We have encountered the same problem at some point; you search for a video and by the time you finally find the exact video you were looking for, it has been removed due to some copyright infringement of the audio. Youtube realizes that this is a problem and is now trying to do something about it.

Youtube now contains an audio library of royalty free tracks to choose from. Currently there are only 150, but I'm sure it is growing daily. These songs are available for any use, not just Youtube videos. They can be downloaded forever to your computer as an Mp3 file.

Although this is an awesome tool for anyone in the media industry, it still has major flaws. 150 is a relatively small number, even for a free audio library. The songs can only be played with a start and stop button, with no option for skipping to another part of the song.

Obviously a paid service would better streamline the process of selecting an audio file, but lets be honest, who pays for music anymore? This is an awesome resource that I am very excited about using in the future, and I'm sure Youtube will be providing frequent updates to the library and video process.

http://www.youtube.com/audiolibrary?feature=blog