We've got the cure. Now, instead of drunk dialing random friends, lovers, and acquaintances one at a time, what if you could dial your blog and talk to the whole world at once? It'd be like something out of Star Trek.

The future is now, folks. You can now go to your My Blogs tab, enable Post by Voice, and get a special number and code to call your blog. After you're done, the audio file from your phone call will be posted to your blog for all to listen to and enjoy. (And added to your RSS feed for podcast support.)

With this feature, you can mark your videos as "unlisted." This means only people who have the link to the video will be able to watch it. It won’t appear in any of YouTube's public pages, in search results, on your personal channel or on the browse page. It's a private video, except you don't need a YouTube account to watch it and there is no limit to the number of people who can view it. You'll get a link when you upload the video and then it's up to you to decide who to share it with. Unlisted is the perfect option for that class project, video from last summer's family reunion or your secret Broadway audition tape.

What this means is that you can get recognition for sourcing videos that your readers love and helping those clips become popular on YouTube. It's another way all that hard work you put into building your readership can pay off and generate even more traffic for your blog or site. You might even get your site in front of a whole new audience via people who encounter it for the first time on YouTube.

• Speed matters: Videos should load and play back quickly.
• Clip culture is here to stay: Short clips are voraciously consumed and perfect for watching a wide variety of content.
• Open platforms open up possibility: Content creation isn't our business; it's yours. We wanted to create a place where anyone with a video camera, a computer, and an Internet connection could share their life, art, and voice with the world, and in many cases make a living from doing so.

We decided it was time to spread the wealth. Today we're excited to announce that we're extending the YouTube Partnership Program to include individual popular videos on our site. Now, when you upload a video to YouTube that accumulates lots of views, we may invite you to monetize that video and start earning revenue from it. To determine whether a particular video is eligible for monetization, we look at factors like the number of views, the video's virality and compliance with the YouTube Terms of Service. If your video is eligible for monetization, you will receive an email and see an "Enable Revenue Sharing" message next to your video on the watch page, as well as in other places in your account:

For some, like Michael Buckley, the self-taught host of a celebrity chatter show, filming funny videos is now a full-time job.

Mr. Buckley quit his day job in September after his online profits had greatly surpassed his salary as an administrative assistant for a music promotion company. His thrice-a-week online show "is silly," he said, but it has helped him escape his credit-card debt.

Mr. Buckley, 33, was the part-time host of a weekly show on a Connecticut public access channel in the summer of 2006 when his cousin started posting snippets of the show on YouTube. The comical rants about celebrities attracted online viewers, and before long Mr. Buckley was tailoring his segments, called "What the Buck?" for the Web. Mr. Buckley knew that the show was "only going to go so far on public access."

"But on YouTube," he said, "I've had 100 million views. It's crazy."

Improved thumbnails - To make sure your thumbnail represents your video, your choices will now be selected algorithmically. You'll still have three thumbnails to choose from, but they will no longer be auto-generated from the 25/50/75 points in the video index.

Shhhhh VP be quiet. Let YouTube keep shooting themselves in the foot. It makes them feel like they are improving the website. Why let users make sure there is a steady but related center shot, when they can provide 3 perfectly good blurry possible center shots randomly?!!

I understand that you are trying to avoid situations where people abuse the system and game the thumbnails, however this new process is an extreme misfortune to partners. Thumbnails help us brand our content, just like a cover to a cd or DVD. I have spoken to many other partners and all of us are very disappointed with this announcement. Many of us do vlogs or music videos, and we are more than likely going to end up with an unattractive thumbnail mid-sentence with the subject's mouth wide open, a goofy face, or motion blur that no one will want to click on. Even with three options, that is simply not enough. Video thumbnails play a key-role in whether people choose to watch our videos or not. We as partners should have the right to ensure that our thumbnail image is interesting and choose what we want to creatively represent our content, as long as it goes with the video. Many other video sharing platforms such as Revver and Vimeo offer at least 15 thumbnail options. Ifilm, Spike.com, and Vimeo even offer the ability to upload our own choice of thumbnail. Perhaps you might want to think about offering this as a feature exclusively to partners, so that we can still optimize branding. Even a slider that would allow us to pick any frame from the entire video would be very beneficial. I ask you to please consider these options. The new system is a huge disappointment as far as branding goes. I'm really hoping you will hear our side on this. Thanks

"In addition to their official (house.gov) Web site, a member may maintain another Web site(s), channel(s) or otherwise post material on third-party Web sites," the new House rules read. They also allow members to provide links to or embed outside content on their official sites, provided they include an exit notice indicating the visitor is leaving the House.

The Senate rules also allow for links to be added to official sites. They allow senators to use any third-party site of their choice, but the senators will have an "approved list" of sites for reference.

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) called the change "a significant step forward toward bringing House rules into the multimedia age and allowing for members to effectively communicate with their constituents online."

Outsiders have long considered live streaming as a logical next step for YouTube, which dominates the market for pre-recorded Web video. Co-founder Steve Chen gave credence to the idea himself in February when he told Pop17's Sarah Meyers: "Live video is something we've always wanted to do but haven't had the resources to do it correctly, but now with Google we hope to launch something this year."

But our source says that Google (GOOG) has never really seriously considered a live video service. We're told that the notion was discussed months after Chen's statement, but that the idea was tabled, for a variety of reasons. Chief among them: It would add significantly to Google's infrastructure and bandwidth costs at a time when it's trying to prove that the $1.65 billion it paid to buy the company will, at some point, pay off.

We're told that YouTube execs estimated that if just 10% of the service's users took advantage of live streaming, the company would have to add 20% to 25% to its huge server and bandwidth infrastructure to support it. Given that advertising dollars for live streaming are even scarcer than they are on conventional Web video, that's a significant investment with minimal near-term return. YouTube's sales team is still trying to figure out how to sell the inventory it already has.

As you probably guessed, we're big fans of anything that lets people interact with online video and gives the YouTube community the chance to express themselves in creative ways. New features such as Video Annotations, which allow you to insert comments and information into the video itself, are just one example of how we're beginning to expand what you can do with your videos on the site.

It's in this spirit that we're thrilled to announce Google's purchase of Omnisio, a small California-based startup that's focused on making online video more useful and collaborative. The Omnisio team has tremendous technical expertise when it comes to advanced video tools and having this kind of talent at YouTube should help us further explore ways to enhance your YouTube experience.