Today we are excited to announce that you can showcase your Ustream events on your Facebook Page – giving you yet another place for your fans to view your content. It is viral, it is customizable, and it is absolutely free for everyone.

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Install the Ustream Facebook Application now
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Admin Features

Dead Simple Installation
• Login with your Ustream account and we will automatically populate the application with your content.

Showcase all of your Ustream Content on your Facebook Page
• Live, recorded and upcoming events.

Customize your Application
• Banners, background images, text colors, and more.

Social Features

Build your Crowd
• Viewers can join your crowd with just two clicks to receive email notifications every time you broadcast live.

Remind Me of an Upcoming Event
• Viewers can choose to share  and be reminded via email for an upcoming event with just two clicks.

Increase your Facebook Fans
• Choose to require viewers to like your page on Facebook before accessing your live events.

Invite Friends to Watch
• Viewers can quickly share your live event to their Facebook wall or specifically choose friends to send invitations to.

We are 100 percent committed to copyright protection and believe these tools will both support the ongoing needs of copyright holders and the user experience and safety of our community.  We recognized the importance of copyright protection early in the company’s history, and today’s step in launching improved measures underscores our commitment to continue to evolve our tools.

Copyright Protection Updates:

·       Faster submission times for copyright holders
·       Advanced features such as keyword detection
·       Improved user interface for ease-of-use and management

Ustream is committed to gaining feedback from our rights partners to improve the tool further. Additional improvements will be released in the coming weeks.

Vobile

·       Vobile operates the VideoDNA Database, which is “the most comprehensive database of authorized video fingerprints, metadata and business rules from major movie studios, television networks and record labels.” (More info: www.vobileinc.com)

·       Ustream has been integrated with Vobile for six months for Pay Per View events and recently began running the Vobile service across the Ustream platform.

This will be one of two fingerprinting solutions Ustream will utilize to identify and protect video content. The second solution is currently under development with BayTSP and TVAura.

We will continue to work closely with copyright holders and technology partners to ensure copyrights are protected. If you have any questions about how Ustream is proactively protecting copyright, please contact copyright@ustream.tv.

This feature allows Ustreamers to update their fans, friends and
colleagues across multiple communities around live moments taking
place on Ustream in a single feed—something that has never been done
before. Every comment updates a user’s status on that social network
and includes a link to the live video for others to join and watch.

Social Stream allows four major networks to come together on Ustream:
providing interaction in one cohesive chat, updates in users’
networks, and allowing friends, family and followers to know what they
are doing/watching.

The new Social Stream will be available across the entire Ustream site within the next few
days. We welcome your feedback on this.

Today we are announcing the launch of the Ustream Partner Program to extend revenue opportunities to content providers.

Ustream is the first live video provider to offer ad revenue sharing by integrating Google’s new Video API.  By working with Google, we are able to serve Google in-video ads and utilize Google’s robust backend for both analytics and payments.

Partners will also receive unique monetization tools from Ustream to include the ability to run on-demand mid-roll commercials into their streams.  Certain content partners like radio shows or conferences can run mid-rolls during the natural breaks in their program.

Our vision has always been to make live streaming a profitable activity.  Now our content partners can

generate real dollars and cents.  Some of our early partners have already felt the power of “the light bulb” going on.  This is about a long-term ongoing relationship with our content partners and we’re excited to take this first step.

Partners currently enrolled in the program include Fox News Radio, Soulja Boy, Chris Pirillo, and Shane Dawson.  The amount the broadcaster will earn is dependent on the size of their viewership for both live and recorded content.

Criteria that will be used for eligibility for the program include, but are not limited to, the size of the audience, country of residence, quality of content, and consistency with Ustream’s Community Guidelines and Terms of Service.  If the partner is accepted into the program, then they will receive a congratulatory notification email detailing further details to include payment frequency and more program details.  This program is available to content partners worldwide.

For more information and to enroll, visit http://www.ustream.tv/revshare/overview

We’re excited to announce the launch of our Recording App for the iPhone 3GS, now available for free in the Apple App Store! We’ve also added a new product to the site called the “Media Stream” that provides a real-time stream of tagged videos.

iPhone 3GS Recorder Application

The iPhone Recorder can syndicate videos to five points, maximizing viewership for iPhone videos: Ustream, Twitter, YouTube, Facebook, and Ustream on Facebook. The application allows users to record and store videos in high quality, even when not connected to the internet or on the 3G network.

Media Stream

The Media Stream provides broadcasters with the ability to aggregate content on their show page from other Ustream users, based on a certain topic (hashtag). For example imagine you’re watching a conference stream with the hashtag “#CoolConference”, and someone in the crowd just uploaded a video from their iPhone and put “#CoolConference” in the video title. That video would pop up below the player you are watching – in the Media Feed – allowing you to see an entirely different part of the conference.

Each show has a hashtag associated with it – all a user needs to do to send a video to that show is include the show’s hashtag in their video title (example: Teaching my dog some tricks! #doggycam). The broadcaster can edit their hashtag from the “Your Shows” page under “Media Stream”.

The broadcaster can accept videos from everyone and manually approve them for his show page, or the broadcaster can approve certain users ahead of time so that their videos will go straight to the Media Stream. This is managed from the “Your Shows” page under “Media Stream”.

A new section has been added directly below the player on the show page that displays the newest videos in the Media Stream. When new videos are recorded they will appear in the Media Stream in real time, allowing viewers to quickly find them.

To view the themes click on “Your Shows” and the “Design” tab. Here you can view the ten themes as well as choose a custom background or define the colors for your show page. (To import your Twitter background click “Choose Background Image” and then “Import from Twitter”)

Check it out! Your theme is waiting!

Meet Davinci. Davinci is a plastic action figure. His arms can’t move, he has no internal organs, and his paint isn’t even real. Yet still, through pure dedication and passion,  he has been able to overcome adversity. Divinci runs a high class portrait service for squirrels right from a strangers back patio. Pictured below is Davinci painting yet another happy customer.

Best of all, Davinci broadcasts on Ustream for the world to watch.

If you think you’ve captured a better Ustream moment – link to it in the comments. The best one will be announced tomorrow!

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The Davinci/Squirrel Cam

Today we are announcing the CBSNews.com channel on Ustream, which
features breaking news coverage several times everyday– presidential
press conferences, Congressional hearings, and online-only content and
on-air programs such as the CBS Evening News with Katie Couric. We’re
excited about delivering this live breaking news.

Check out the CBSNews.com channel on Ustream at
http://www.ustream.tv/channel/cbs-news

We’re thrilled to unveil some big changes on Ustream! With months in the making and informed primarily by our community’s feedback, we are sharing these changes with you. Aimed at increasing the ability to discover content, improving interaction in chat and social networks, and enabling broadcast highlights, we view these changes as the foundation for new improvements to come.

We’re excited about our new design and functionality, and look forward to your valuable feedback. (Click here to see what one of our users, Chris Pirillo, had to say about our changes.) Thank you to our community that has helped us become home to some of the richest and best live content on the web since our launch in March 2007!

Here’s a short summary of a few of our new changes.

Discovering content

Aggregating an audience quickly is important for live broadcasts. To solve this we’ve integrated features that alert audiences, allowing broadcasts to amass viewers quickly and easily.

• Similar to status updates on Twitter or Facebook, broadcasters can update their Ustream status when they go live. By answering the question “What are you broadcasting?” users will be able to easily and quickly let others know what they’re streaming. These updates appear throughout Ustream and can be sent to Twitter to reach friends and followers. (For example: If you set your status update to “Showing off my new puppies!”, viewers searching for puppies will quickly find you).

• We have added categories to the Ustream header. This allows viewers looking for specific content, such as music streams, to find relevant broadcasts with one click. Each broadcaster has the power to choose the category that best fits his or her live broadcast. This provides viewers with an easier way to find content at a glance within these category buckets.

• For the first time, we’ve implemented the ability to create highlights from recorded videos. This allows viewers or broadcasters to quickly and easily identify interesting moments within recorded videos, title them, and then share them across Ustream and across their own network.

Audience Interaction

We’ve improved our chat, allowing for additional interactivity and simpler moderation.

• Broadcasters now have the ability to choose to use a social stream or chat to interact with audiences. We are launching a new feature — Social Stream — that allows broadcasters to interact with their friends and followers on Twitter in real time. Previously this was only available to users such as Ashton Kutcher, P Diddy, and Miley Cyrus.

• Follow people quickly – Simply click a username in the audience member list and click “Follow”. This allows for communities to grow quickly, friends to stay connected, and for two-way relationships to occur.

• Additional chat moderation tools, such as Time Out, Kick, or Ban, allow for greater control and more relevant dialogue.

• Our chat now has Slow Mode and Pause, which can slow temporarily pause the chat if messages are coming too fast.

We welcome your feedback! Enjoy the new Ustream!

Wirecast is a live video production tool that allows Mac and PC users to create real-time or on-demand video broadcasts for the web.   You can do video switching, overlays, movies and text and really give your broadcast a professional look.   The great part about it is Ustream HD quality is built into the software for Mac AND PC.

For less than $500, Wirecast users can quickly and easily capture live events and create professional video webcasts on computers or laptops for real-time web distribution from any location.

Wirecast is useful for a broad range of users and business needs, including broadcasting of live press or sports events, entertainment, university lectures, live business presentations, marketing or training and more. Wirecast makes it easy for anyone to share live experiences and build a global community.

You can try Wirecast for free by downloading from the links below:
Buy Wirecast for Mac OS X
Buy Wirecast for Windows 2000/XP/Vista