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Yesterday Twitter announced a major redesign of its homepage. The new twitter.com is designed to make it easier for mainstream people to consume content on Twitter. "You don't have to tweet," said Twitter co-founder Evan Williams at the press gathering yesterday, "any more than you have to make a webpage to use the Web." In other words, Twitter wants to emphasize the content consumption aspect of its service and de-emphasize the production part.

Twitter is doing this because it has struggled to get normal everyday people to tweet. But there is hope for Twitter yet, because YouTube has proven that a Social Web service can have a consumption focus and still achieve mega success. Twitter is trying to take its site to YouTube's level of popularity.

Videos come in different sizes, resolutions and aspect ratios; the problem is, so do screens. Try to watch a video shot in a boxy 4:3 width to heighth ratio on your 16:9 HDTV, and things are going to look a little stretched out. Alternatively, you can have your 4:3 image appear in the middle of your 16:9 screen with black margins on the side or enlarge the image to fill the screen, which will necessarily cut off some content.

Resizing video has become more annoying as more people watch on mobile screens of varying sizes, but apparently Google Research has been working on a fix. Today Google Research announced an algorithm for resizing videos that will preserve the width to heighth ratio for "salient" images while squishing and stretching the "non-salient" parts of the shot.

YouTube has announced that it will begin testing of a new platform this morning will that will allow broadcast partners to begin live streaming content.

The test began at 8 a.m. PT this morning and will feature live-streaming content from four partners: Howcast, Next New Networks, Rocketboom and Young Hollywood.

If you're looking for another way to waste the next fifteen minutes, rest of the afternoon, what have you, then look no further - we give you the YouTube Time Machine.

It's all the time-wasting goodness you've come to expect from YouTube, but with controls to select what type of historical introspection or nostalgic throwback you'd like. In the mood for a choppy video of a bathhouse from 1902? How about some 4 Non Blondes from 1992? The YouTube Time Machine has it all.

Google and AOL just announced that they have renewed their global search alliance for another five years. Google will continue to power search on all of AOLs properties. For the most part, the new agreement just reinforces the existing contract, but the two companies also plan to expand their current alliance to cover mobile search and AOLs videos will now be syndicated on YouTube. According to the latest data from Web analytics firm comScore, AOL currently accounts for 2.3% of the search market in the U.S.

With the ability to reach billions of people for the price of a few keystrokes and clicks, the Web has become the way many of us make our first impressions. These days, I might know a person from their blog or Twitter account before I ever know them in real-life. If they made poor personal branding choices, perhaps I'll never want to actually meet them. Effectively constructing an online brand isn't easy, but thankfully one of the experts in the subject, Loïc Le Meur, founder of Seesmic and LeWeb, is launching his own video series to help set the foundation.

YouTube is negotiating with the major American movie studios that could
launch a global pay-per-view video service by the end of the year, The Financial Times is reporting.

This could be the video service's big break more than four years after being acquired by Google. The combined power of YouTube's popularity and Google's dominance in search technology could create a new revenue model to replace falling DVD sales. But what does it mean for the homemade videos - the cat videos, the on-the-street news footage, the Rickrolls - that are YouTube's soul?

YouTube is becoming an increasingly powerful weapon for people living in oppressive regimes to broadcast injustice. But it can be extremely dangerous to have your face broadcast in connection with a riot or protest in a place like Iran.

Naturally, YouTube doesn't want to get people killed. But it doesn't want to censor such videos either - not an easy place to be. The site is soliciting ideas about this delicate issue to stimulate discussion about the role of online video in human rights.

Friday pop quiz! Quick: If you started right now, how many thousands of years would it take you to watch all of the videos currently on YouTube? Name the country that posts the second highest number of videos. How many days worth of video are uploaded every second? What eight countries used to ban the site but have now succumbed to Lady Gaga, dancing babies and "Charley bit my finger"?

Think you know? Online Schools has the answers after the jump.

The battle between Adobe Flash and HTML5 will extend into YouTube video players embedded around the web, now that Google has announced a developer preview of video iFrames that use HTML5 when viewed in a browser that supports it. The move seems to represent a big shift in policy from multiple statements the company made just last month criticizing HTML5.

Google began experimenting with HTML5 players on the YouTube site itself in January, but offering HTML5 for the embedded players all over the web is a big step. For users, each new publishing platform that supports HTML5 instead of Flash-only means Apple devices will be able to display that content, that advanced capabilities of the new format will be available and that, according to Flash critics, our devices will run faster and with fewer crashes.