Send virtual love this Valentine’s Day

Scrambling to make last-minute dinner reservations and to order a bouquet of long-stemmed red roses before your local florist is left with only withered strands of baby’s breath? You don’t even need to leave your computer to send your own personalized message of love this Valentine’s Day.

With Unlisted videos, you can send a message to your sweetheart without anyone else knowing you’re sometimes referred to as “Honeybear”. When you upload your video, mark it as “Unlisted”. Then you can share it with only those people who have the URL.

There are also a number of free web applications that can help you create original personal videos from text and images and easily upload them to YouTube, like Xtranormal, Stupeflix, Animoto, and One True Media.

Cool video Valentine got them to agree to an actual date? Whether you’re a regular Casanova hoping to keep things exciting this year or an awkward first-timer trying to make a good impression, a search for ‘Valentine’s Day’ on YouTube returns over 250,000 videos dedicated to making every aspect of this day perfect for you and your significant other.

The YouTube community provides a wealth of videos that you can access to help you make the date a success. Learn how to set the right mood with tips on creating your own floral arrangements, candle centerpieces, romantic dinners and Valentine's day chocolate mousse. They can also help you look your best with make-up and wardrobe tips.



We all know that there’s more to a great date than ambiance and food, so the most novice dater can spice things things up with tips on dancing, flirting and even kissing. Searches on YouTube for ‘how to kiss’ are up 61% since 2008.

If things don’t go so well, you can also look for ways to make breaking it off slightly less painful. And if you’re like millions out there spending Valentine’s Day alone, this video will help you make sure the best date you have is then one with yourself.

Rachel Snare, Account Manager, recently watched “Chocolate Mousse for Valentine’s Day.”

Dashing through the snow...with NORAD, YouTube and Google

Every Christmas Eve, children all over the world ask themselves—and their parents—questions about Santa’s magical journey. How does Santa visit so many children in one night? Will he eat the cookies I left out? How does he fit all those presents into his sleigh? These childhood mysteries are part of what makes the Santa tradition so special.

There’s one timeless question that we’re proud to say we can help answer: Where in the world is Santa at this very moment? Thanks in part to recent advances in warp-speed GPS technology and some very clever elves (elveneering?) NORAD Tracks Santa is once again prepped and ready to go.

Starting tomorrow, December 24 at 2:00 a.m. EST, visit www.noradsanta.org to follow Santa as he journeys around the world delivering presents to children in more than 200 countries and territories. There are a few different ways to find the jolly man in his unmistakable red suit over the course of the day, so feel free to track him using any of the following methods:

• Subscribe to his YouTube channel: Santa’s home on YouTube is at http://www.youtube.com/noradtrackssanta. That’s where you can find videos from his journey throughout the night. This “Commander's Holiday Message” offers a peek of what to expect:

• See Santa on a Google Map: On your home computer or laptop, visit www.noradsanta.org and choose your preferred language. You’ll see a large Google Map on the page displaying Santa’s current location and his next stop. Click the video icons to watch “Santa Cam” videos, and click the gift icons to learn more about each city.

• Watch Santa fly with the Google Earth Plug-in: From www.noradsanta.org, click on the link Track Santa in Google Earth. You'll see Santa steering his sleigh right on the webpage. If you don't have the Google Earth plug-in, you can get ready by downloading it ahead of time.

• Follow Santa on your phone: Track Santa from your mobile phone by opening Google Maps for mobile and searching for [santa]. Or, visit m.noradsanta.org on your phone’s browser.

Get real-time information about Santa’s location: Use Google’s Realtime Search to get updates from social networks, news and micro-blogs like Twitter at @noradsanta, and keep up with news about his journey on this Facebook page.

For any techie questions you might have, we’ve also put together some helpful tips and tricks about all the cool ways you can experience Santa’s journey. And now that you know how to follow Saint Nick on Christmas Eve, it’s our tradition to tell the story of how this all started...

NORAD (North American Aerospace Defence Command) first began to track Santa in 1955 when a misprinted advertisement in a Sears & Roebuck catalogue mistakenly led callers expecting a Santa-hotline to the NORAD commander-in-chief's telephone. Embracing the spirit of the season, NORAD used its satellite and radar capabilities to offer callers sleigh-location updates, and has tracked Santa's whereabouts on Christmas Eve ever since. Then in 2004, Google started tracking Santa on Google Earth as a 20% project, which in 2007 grew into a partnership with NORAD, adding the mapping technology of Google Maps and Google Earth to the NORAD experience. Over the years, other Google teams have also joined in the holiday fun (YouTube, Google Voice’s www.SendACallFromSanta.com and Google SketchUp).

As we approach this year’s Christmas Eve adventure, Santa was able to take a break from the preparations to visit the New York Stock Exchange this past Monday. His helpful elves kept everything at the North Pole on schedule while folks from Google and NORAD attended the Closing Bell ceremony, and stood alongside Santa from Macy’s going over last minute details about tomorrow’s big ride:

Santa with NORAD, Google and members of the Marine Toys for Tots Foundation 

that’s me, the tall guy in the back row clapping)

So don’t forget to visit www.noradsanta.org tomorrow morning starting at 2:00 a.m. EST when Santa embarks on his flight. From all of us here at Google and YouTube, happy holidays and here’s to a very happy New Year!

Brian McClendon, Original Google Engineering Elf, recently watched “Picasa 3.8 Face Movie.”

‘Tis the season to send a personal video greeting!

Chestnuts are roasting on open fires and it’s the time to start thinking about holiday greetings for friends and family. If licking stamps isn’t your thing, send the gift of good video tidings by uploading your own unlisted video or creating an original video production with some new video web applications, tailored for the holidays.

Upload a personal video greeting and share it with an Unlisted link
Get the family together, put on a funny hat or sweater, and gather ‘round the webcam! You don’t have to broadcast your greeting to the entire YouTube community (unless you want to). When you upload your video, mark it as “Unlisted”. Then you can share it with only those people who have the URL. We just launched a new notification on the video watch page that lets people know the video is unlisted.


If you don’t have a video camera handy, have no fear. Check out these three free web applications can help you create original personal videos from text and images and easily upload them to YouTube.

Produce an original animated video with Xtranormal
If you can type, you can make a movie with Xtranormal, trust us. Simply compose a script and have holiday characters animate the message for you.



Make cool video slideshows with Stupeflix
Tell your story with unique video creation tools like instant preview, maps, text-to-speech.
It’s free and easy to try: no signup required, videos under 60 seconds are free.



Share your video greeting in minutes with Animoto
Animoto’s three new holiday video styles will be the greetings people remember. It’s fast, free, and ridiculously easy.

I hope you’ll have fun with these tools and enjoy a happy holiday season full of video!

Anna-Christina Douglas, Product Marketing Manager, recently watched “The Peanuts Holiday Collection - Snowflakes”.

YouTube Holiday Solutions Center to the rescue

With Thanksgiving around the corner, another holiday season moves into full swing. Every year at this time, we see searches for cooking videos and turkey recipes surge on the site, and it’s one reason we’ve aggregated many great culinary videos on a single channel, the YouTube Holiday Solutions Center, which is back for its third year.

For 2010, we’ve spiced up this holiday destination with even more recipes and how-to tips, including:

This tasty and easy-to-follow stuffing recipe from Howcast...



Ideas to decorate your home for the holidays from Real Simple Network...



A guide to building a gingerbread house with the family from Epicurious.com...



We’ll be updating the channel daily, so make sure to check back regularly. We might just have that solution you’re looking for.

The YouTube Holiday Solutions program is brought to you by Target.

Lee Hadlow, Marketing Programs Manager, recently watched “How to Carve a Turkey.”

Release Notes: Community-designed Doodle, global Halloween films, easier bug reporting, virtual keyboard...

With it being Halloween season and all, we've got an especially spoooooky edition of Release Notes for you.

First-ever user-designed Doodle: You may have noticed that once in a while, we change our homepage logo to match a special occasion -- for example, we've done it for Earth Day, the finale of YouTube Play, and yesterday's one billionth subscription milestone. But this Halloween we're especially jazzed because the Doodle you'll see on the homepage was designed by xperpetualmotion, a YouTube community member and Rhode Island School of Design student. Here's how she came up with the icon you see below: "I tried out a lot of different Halloween imagery before deciding on the classic 'holes cut out of a white sheet' ghost. It makes me smile every time, because what else could this kid possibly have under there that makes him that shape? I wanted the logo to be something fun and clever, and I hope everyone loves it as much as I do!" We certainly do! Thank you, Karen.

YouTube's first user-designed Doodle, by xperpetualmotion

Global Halloween films: If you're in the U.S., U.K., Canada or Australia, we've got some exciting news to add to your seasonal mirth: our friends at Crackle made sure their Halloween offerings could be viewed by horror fans around the world, marking the first time a studio's made several full-length movies simultaneously available in multiple territories on YouTube. Click here for regional viewing dates for Underworld: Evolution, Idle Hands, Mary Reilly, The Blob and The Bride.

Report a bug: No, we don't mean the creepy crawly kind, but the kind that may indicate something's broken. If you come across a problem on the site, scroll down to the new "report a bug" link at the bottom of any YouTube page. Clicking it will allow you to take an easy screenshot of the page and add further details in the pop-up box:

New "Send feedback" form

African language launches: YouTube's now available in Amharic and Swahili. Click on the language link at the bottom of the page to change your language settings.

Type non-English text with the virtual keyboard: We've made it easy for people to find videos in non-Latin script-based languages; the on-screen keyboard is available in 26 languages (Amharic, Arabic, Bulgarian, Croatian, Czech, Danish, Dutch, Filipino, Finnish, Greek, Hebrew, Hindi, Korean, Lithuanian, Norwegian, Polish, Portuguese, Russian, Serbian, Slovak, Swahili, Swedish, Vietnamese, Slovenian, Romanian, Ukrainian). To use the virtual keyboard, switch the language of the site to one of the supported languages and click on the keyboard icon in the search box.

Here's where you can turn on the virtual keyboard

More efficient 3D player: Our new player for 3D videos is much faster than the previous player, especially for HD resolution. Try enjoying your favorite 3D clips in high resolution and full screen with no lag.

The BooooooTube Team

UPDATE (8pm PT):  We just received this video from Karen, to go along with her Doodle: