Watching YouTube Videos on Your Microwave

There's a microwave that has been getting some attention this week. It's called CastOven, and it plays YouTube videos while you cook your food. Not only does it play videos, but it plays videos specifically catering to the amount of time you have the microwave set for.

The CastOven was created by two designers from Keio University in Japan, Keita Watanabe, Ph.D. and Shota Matsuda. Their description of the CastOven reads as follows:

CastOven is a future microwave oven, which plays a You Tube movie clip to fit into your cooking time. Watching movies, playing video games, and browsing web pages are fun, but all of them require certain amount of time of us to spare. For example, one would hesitate to purchase a new roll playing game, because it would take him some tens of hours to clear the game. We think differently. One should not make his activities adjusted to a length of contents, but the contents should make adjustment to it.

Our effort around the concept of “Ubiquitous Society” was over. We have been taking a novel step along the idea of “how those products and services have users spent their time?” The next business market is placed at the core, where a time as a flow of user’s activities.

Seeing it in action is a little more impressive. Watch the following clip to see how it works:

Here's a look at how it's put together:



CastOven has already won a couple of awards: Best Demonstration at the Workshop on Interactive Systems and Software and the Outstanding Performance Award and Jury's Special Award at the Mashup Awards 5.

The CastOven doesn't appear to be a product that is available to buy at this point, and there is likely more work to be done on it, but it is a pretty interesting concept. Wouldn't you agree? Share your thoughts here.

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YouTube Promoted Videos Branches Out Again

It should now be easier than ever for advertisers to get their videos in front of YouTube users in different countries.  Today, YouTube's Promoted Videos program launched in the Czech Republic, Ireland, Israel, Poland, Russia, and Sweden.

In return for a little money, Promoted Videos allows advertisers to have their clips stuck at the top of YouTube's "Related Videos" lists.  The clips get a yellow background to help them stand out, too.

YouTube hasn't shared any specifics, but it's easy to believe that the Promoted Videos program is successful.  Following a period of time during which it was only available to advertisers in the U.S., it became available in seven more countries on October 14th and in another two on October 27th.

Now, the total's at 16, which would be pretty impressive even without the fast expansion.  What's more, Jay Akkad, a product manager, wrote on the YouTube Biz Blog, "We hope to roll out Promoted Videos to additional countries early next year."

Promoted Videos may not take YouTube to profitability all on its own, but it looks like the program is at least helping it bring in some revenue and cozy up to advertisers.

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> YouTube Cofounder Discusses Site's Future

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YouTube Unveils Video Targeting Tool

Some people tend to shrug their shoulders when presented with options.  Others know exactly what they want.  For this second set - or at least the members of the second set who work for advertising agencies - a new Video Targeting tool from YouTube promises to be of great use.

A post on the YouTube Blog explained, "Video Targeting is modeled after similar Google planning tools and pretty much does what it says: it gives advertisers more control of their ad campaigns by letting them choose specific YouTube partner content they'd like to target."

The post then continued, "The tool is flexible and helps advertisers discover videos relevant to their campaign and their target audience: it suggests videos based on keywords (like politics or fashion), viewer demographics (like age and gender), interest-based categories, or some combination of the three.  Or, if an advertiser has a video in mind, they can see if it's available to target specifically."

And as an example, a popular clip that critics of YouTube have singled out at for being impossible to monetize was shown in a screenshot.

Here's one important note, though: at the moment, Video Targeting is in beta, so it may be a while before advertisers that don't have a special relationship with YouTube have the opportunity to give it much of a spin.

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YouTube May Expand Into TV Show Biz

It's no secret that YouTube's trying to catch up to Hulu in terms of offering premium content; the site's administrators often make a big deal out of movie and TV show additions.  What is under wraps - or at least hasn't been publicized in press releases and blog posts - is that YouTube might also be interested in charging for access.

According to Peter Kafka, "[I]t envisions something similar to what Apple and Amazon already offer: First-run shows, without commercials, for $1.99 an episode, available the day after they air on broadcast or cable."

And although negotiations between YouTube and content owners are preliminary, according to Kafka's sources, "both sides seem optimistic, since models for such deals already exist."

Plus, since Hulu is also likely to place some content behind a pay wall, YouTube wouldn't be putting itself at too much of a disadvantage.

Of course, there's no guarantee that this experiment would be successful.  YouTube became so popular by virtue of being free, and the introduction of fees could just turn more people onto less-than-legal alternatives like the Pirate Bay.  Still, Kafka said that YouTube will probably be "one of several outlets trying to get consumers to pay for TV on the Web in 2010."

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