Thanks for understanding. We’ll see you again soon!

Today, we once again are assisting Mozilla in the launch of Firefox 3.5, by serving their “Thank You” video on What’s New page, which users will see this after installation of the browser’s latest iteration.

Thanks to a recommendation from the Mozilla technical team, we are now serving the Ogg videos with new HTTP headers in order to facilitate the display of the video in the browser. We now have all the infrastructure necessary to encode, serve and display more than 410,000 videos encoded in Ogg with the <video> tag. At the recent Open Video Conference in New York, many attendees from various organizations met with us to help us continue to improve the new service for our users.

And finally, a worldwide advertising campaign just started yesterday on Dailymotion in support of Firefox 3.5. We hope that it will encourage you to download a more modern, effective and secure browser for surfing web sites like Dailymotion.

Dailymotion is excited to launch a new R&D platform dedicated to open video formats and web standards: openvideo.dailymotion.com. You don’t need the Adobe Flash plugin to watch videos on this platform - the only requirement is the latest version of Firefox, 3.5 beta, available here.

No plugins? No Flash?
Nope - for all content from Motionmakers and Official Users we are using the new HTML < video > tag, supported by Firefox 3.5, to display the video, and not any proprietary technology.

But wait - the video quality is lower and sound is sometimes crackly…
That’s normal…for now. The new encoding formats we’re using are Ogg, Theora + Vorbis. They’re not yet as good as other common codecs such as H264, ON2 VP6, but they comprise an open format that is not patented, is free to use, and is supported by the Mozilla foundation (http://blog.wikimedia.org/2009/01/26/mozilla-and-wikimedia-join-forces-to-support-open-video/). So don’t worry - it’s going to improve soon. We have a few tricks to improve the quality, but for the moment re-encoding 300,000 videos in this format forced us to compromise.

Why does non-Flash video playback matter?
It’s both technical and philosophical, but to make long story short, it will allow us to do new, fun things with video. Some examples are on our demo page. Ultimately, we expect this to enable innovation in user experience, SEO, advertising, etc. For more on the value of open video, read the article here.

Why do you call this”making history”?
Because:
- HTML received a major upgrade from version 4 to 5
- The new HTML lets you display video simply with the use of a tag
- Dailymotion is the first large video sharing site to participate in and promote open video formats

Do other browsers support this HTML tag?
Yes, but our code works best on Firefox 3.5 beta and is not yet optimized for other browsers. We would be happy to work more closely with developers from Webkit and Opera.

For now, the video player is simpler than our Flash-based player. But we are going to improve it little by little. Stay tuned for more.

Enjoy!

PS: Come see us talk about open video at the Open Video Conference in New York, June 19-20!

After some weeks of testing, the new player page is now online. Among the most important changes, you’ll find: an enlarged player for better high-quality and HD viewing; automatic player resizing according to video format (4:3 or 16:9); and a lightly reorganized interface. Also notice the “Playlists with this Video” tab in the sidebar. You made it quite clear that it was a feature you appreciated, so we have added it back, just below the related videos.

We hope you like it. Feel free to email feedback@dailymotion.com with any comments.

Dailymotion and One Laptop per Child (OLPC), a non-profit organization dedicated to improving education in the developing world, announce a holiday contest to support OLPC’s Give One, Get One campaign.

The contest, which runs from November 17, 2008 to December 15, 2008, calls for Dailymotion users to upload original commercials for the Give One, Get One campaign. One winning commercial will be selected from among the submissions. Along with bringing greater attention to this important campaign, the winning commercial will be aired on a major network or cable TV channel during the period of December 15th to December 31st.

To Enter:
Join the Give One Get One group on Dailymotion and add your video to the group:
One Laptop Per Child

Get inspired by the concept of connecting children around the world.
Need a prompt? How about the G1G1 tagline:
Give a laptop, Get a laptop, Change the world

You can be as creative as you want! But remember, the commercial should be kid friendly. In fact, kids are encouraged to participate, along with the guidance and support of a parent or legal guardian.

Contest begins November 17, 2008 and closes December 15, 2008. Only US residents are eligible for prize consideration.

One Laptop per Child (OLPC) is a non-profit organization established to bring the benefits of technology to the developing world today. To learn more about OLPC, visit laptop.org. Dailymotion and OLPC recently partnered to launch a child-safe Web video portal for users of the OLPC’s XO laptop. The site, olpc.dailymotion.com, uses free and open video formats. Combined with the built-in video camera and software, this makes it easy for children using the XO laptop to find and share videos.

The contest, which runs from November 17, 2008 to December 15, 2008, will select one winning commercial to promote OLPC’s annual Give One Get One (G1G1) campaign. The G1G1 program starts November 17, 2008, will be on-going through 2009. For $399, people can give one XO Laptop to a child in a developing nation and get one laptop themselves, which makes the perfect holiday gift for a child in their family or community. To make your donation, visit XO on Amazon.com.

Today we have made a full update of our Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ) section. It reflects more precisely the questions you regularly ask, and offers more complete and exhaustive answers. It now includes a search engine as well, so that you can more easily find the info you are looking for.

Our feedback form has also been reviewed, to better help you find the solutions you are looking for.

This is why today we are happy to announce the release of VideoZap. Think of it as a lightweight, image-based remote control - a “zapper”, as they called remotes back in the day.

To create your VideoZap, visit the factory page and choose your settings in the grey panel on the right of the page. Select the list of videos you want - it could be featured videos, a user’s videos, even search results (just drop the desired URL into the correct field) -  decide where you want the remote to appear, how big it should be, and how the tiles are spaced. Click “Generate code”, copy the chunk of code that appears in the box above your VideoZap, and paste it wherever you want it to appear on your website or blog (keep in mind that the destination site must support iframes).

We really like this new tool and hope you will too. As always, please leave us feedback in the comments of this post.

Enjoy!

A new navigation is then created through the dynamic subtitles redirecting to other videos on Dailymotion.
This new functionality offers a great opportunity to open videos to the whole community whatever the language! Access the available subtitles by click on the menu tab on the player.

Let’s try it!

Beneath its toylike exterior, the XO is a very advanced device with a rotating screen, dual laptop-tablet modes, a regular color display for photos and videos and a high-contrast black-and-white mode for daylight visibility. It sports wifi, is capable of creating local computer-to-computer networks, can be charged using a ripcord or solar panel, has a durable rubberized keyboard, webcam, microphone, and speakers. Above all else, however, it has a robust Linux-based OS and an user interface, named “Sugar”, designed specifically for children.

With all the bells and whistles above, the OLPC is not, unfortunately, compatible with the Adobe Flash player that Dailymotion and other video sharing sites rely on.

Dailymotion has therefore partnered with the OLPC foundation to
consider new projects involving video, and to create a dedicated space to save the videos created by XO users: olpc.dailymotion.com [3]. This page begins with the content of the Dailymotion OLPC group and hopes to bring together fun and educational videos for children from 6 to 16 years-old. If you produce videos for this audience, [4] we encourage you to contribute to and help animate this group.

Hello Children of the World!

[1] More info on the laptop and the foundation at laptop.org
[2] Yes, it costs more than $100 for the moment, but that should change…
[3] The videos are encoded in ogg, Vorbis Theora
[4] The should be appropriate for children, of course.

We are happy to announce some improvements to the video, user, and group browsing features. A sidebar menu has been added, making it easier to navigate through your Favorites, Playlists, Groups, and Friends.

Search results and channels are now displayed in an updated “grid” format, with more videos on each page. In addition, we have added the option to view them in a more detailed “list” layout. The video items themselves have changed slightly - there is now a small “speech bubble” in the upper left of each thumbnail indicating the language of the video (please keep in mind that we can’t guarantee the accuracy of user-generated metadata).

On the right hand side of these pages you’ll see three rectangular images under “Features & Partners”. Our content team will be using these spaces to let you know about new features, partnerships, and special events.

We hope you like these changes as much as we do. As usual, please give us any feedback - bug reports, praise, suggestions - in the comments here or via feedback@dailymotion.com.