This week's Trends: breaking news, music videos, and corn

Each weekday, we at YouTube Trends take a look at the most interesting videos and cultural phenomena on YouTube as they develop. We want take a moment to highlight some of what we've come across this week:

• We discovered a viral video trending amongst the 55+ crowd.
  
  
• We saw a stadium stunt that spread from Iowa in popularity.
  
  
• We looked at some of the trends around the big Col. Gadhafi news out of Libya.
  
  
• We studied how two major music videos were gaining popularity around the planet.
  
  
• We checked out a viral political spot from North Africa.
  
  
• We tracked last weekend's "Occupy" protest footage from different parts of the U.S. and the world.
  
  
• And we experienced what it would be like to kayak with blue whales:

Check back every day for the latest about what's trending on YouTube at: www.YouTube.com/Trends

Kevin Allocca, YouTube Trends Manager, recently watched "Bobby Brown - Every Little Step."

YouTube Release Notes: Updated Video End-Screen, WeVideo added to YouTube.com/Create and More...

It’s been a while since we published our last Release Notes post, sharing the latest changes to YouTube however big or small. Our scrappy engineers have still been hard at work to make your experience on YouTube even better, so we decided to resurrect this series and share a bunch of our recent changes.

Updated Video End-Screen: We’ve redesigned the end-screen that appears directly after a video finishes playing to make it even easier for you to find the next great video to watch.



Enhanced Playlist Bar: To make the experience of watching videos in a playlist better, we’ve updated the interface for video playlists, making the individual video details more visible from within the playlist and making the next, previous, auto-play and shuffle buttons more distinct.



Updated YouTube.com/Charts page: If you want to keep track of the latest and greatest videos on YouTube or know which videos have had true staying power, check out our updated YouTube Charts page. You can browse through the most viewed (standard and HD), most liked, and top favorited videos of today, this week, this month and of all time. Pulling from our ‘As Seen On’ feature, you’ll also be able to see what videos are being shared and discussed across the web. For those of you with truly niche interests, you can view charts by categories like “How to & Style” and “Pets & Animals,” and also see the most subscribed channels.



WeVideo Now on YouTube: To give you even more options to edit and touch up your videos, we’ve added the cloud-based video editing platform WeVideo as a partner to YouTube.com/Create.

YouTube Localized in More Countries and Languages: We recently added Kenya, the Philippines and Singapore to the list of countries where YouTube is localized, bringing this total number to 35. You can check out what’s popular in these countries by changing your location setting, which you can find by scrolling to the bottom of YouTube.com and clicking on Location. To further support content creators in these countries, we also launched the YouTube Partner Program here as well. Want to practice your Estonian, Icelandic, Basque, Galician, or Udu? We’ve added these new languages, making the YouTube interface available in the vernacular in 51 languages.



Smart Subscribe button: We’ve added a "smart" subscribe button on the video watch page, that will let you know if you’re already subscribed to the channel of the video you’re watching. If you so, it’ll say "Subscribed!". If not, you’ll see the standard “Subscribe” button allowing you to do so.

Nathalie Arbel, Product Marketing Manager, recently watched “K’Naan NPR Music Tiny Desk Concert.”

no sew- upcycled baby hats

Long before little Lucy arrived I had prepared my monthly post for ilovetocreate. It was back when I was in the process of nesting and I spent a few weeks creating some baby clothes and thought that some super simple hats made from upcycled t-shirts would be an easy and fun project. And now that Lucy is here I actually had a teeny tiny little model!

I always like to first raid my closet or clothing that would otherwise get donated before I purchase fabric. And since I have WAY too many t-shirts that I don't wear I decided to use a few of them.

I started by drawing out the shape of the hat.

and then cut out the front and back.

Because I was short on time (again) I decided not to sew the hat but instead use Aleene's Fabric Fusion Fabric Adhesive Pen. It is non toxic and completely washable and one of my favorite "no sew" products to use.

I applied the glue to the inside edges of the hat- the tiny applicator tip is perfect for small projects.

Of course I couldn't resist creating some rolled fabric flowers (see my tutorial here) to add to a couple of the hats.

I glued the fabric flowers to the hat and let everything dry for around 36 hours.

Last I tied a knot at the end of the top of the cap- this can be adjusted depending on the size and desired length.

I created a handful of caps in different colors and patterns.

And just like that I have a little collection of baby caps all ready for Lucy to wear!

31 Days of Love Postponed - Please Pray

Friends, would you join me in praying for Darlene and her family? Her father is very ill and they are spending time with him during the final days of his life. During this difficult time she will be postponing her 31 Days of Love Series, and will join you all again when things settle down. Thank you for your understanding and for your prayers.

Blessings,

Ruth Schwenk

www.thebettermom.com

What makes an ad worth spreading? TED to recognize 10 prime examples

Today we bring you a guest post from Ronda Carnegie, Head of Global Partnerships at TED, a nonprofit devoted to Ideas Worth Spreading from three worlds: Technology, Entertainment, Design. Carnegie explains how TED and YouTube are teaming up for the second year to present a challenge called 'Ads Worth Spreading.'

Last year, TED kicked off a challenge to the advertising industry called Ads Worth Spreading, our global search for innovation, ingenuity and intelligence in advertising. The winners can be seen on the front page of Show & Tell, YouTube’s gallery of clever and effective creative marketing.

This year, we are delighted to announce that we’re now accepting entries to TED’s Ads Worth Spreading initiative through a channel on YouTube. The YouTube channel will help promote and showcase submissions, as well as spark conversation. Even if you’re not an advertiser, you can visit the channel and comment on your favorite campaigns. Which ads are thought-provoking, funny, honest, warm, informative or creatively brilliant? We want your feedback, and the channel is our medium for hearing your voice.

One of the most common questions we’re asked about Ads Worth Spreading is: “Why? Why does TED support an initiative around advertising?” TED’s Curator Chris Anderson explains it this way -- “TED’s mission is ‘ideas worth spreading.’ The dream behind this initiative is to find companies that want to communicate ideas to their consumers in the same way that TED wants to communicate with its audience. What makes ideas powerful is that they have a life of their own; an idea can reset someone’s worldview and even begin a domino effect as they pass it on to friends.”

TED will curate a final selection of ten campaigns from 2011. The results will be announced at the TED2012 conference in Long Beach, Calif. in March, and showcased on TED.com and YouTube.

If you’re an agency, brand, producer or individual who’s created an ad worth spreading this year, now is your chance to have your work recognized. Visit the Ads Worth Spreading channel and upload or add your YouTube video to the channel before December 31, 2011.

We’re looking forward to finding 10 new winners to celebrate.

Ronda Carnegie, Head of Global Partnerships at TED, recently watched "Matt Cutts: Try something new for 30 days."

Music Tuesday: The art of the remix and an African guitar hero

This week on youtube.com/music, we delve into remixes of all shapes and sizes -- from music videos that pilfer vintage footage to create something new and unusual to the now-dominant art form of the music remix. Both take existing material and tweak it -- sometimes until it’s unrecognizable. And, as independent musicians and the people who love them head to New York City this week for CMJ, check back to youtube.com/music every day this week to see a video from the artists participating in our Indie Artists Summit. With the launch of our YouTube Merch Store, there's never been a better time to be a musician on YouTube.

Found Footage = Music Video?
Experimental filmmakers have used found footage for many years. But increasingly music video directors are adopting the practice, culling source material from decades of forgotten recordings and making short films for musicians that are by turns amusing, creepy and beautiful. Case in point: Mayer Hawthorne’s recent video for “A Long Time,” which nabs tape from a ‘70s-era Detroit dance television show. Or check out Ratatat’s video for “Drugs,” which repurposes stock Getty footage to unsettling effect. Ambient heroes Boards of Canada even turn to NASA to create their hypnotic video for “Dayvan.”



The 50 Best Remixes
eMusic’s staff take us through some of the greatest remixes of all time this week, sharing everything from dub classics to contemporary hip-hop bangers. The remix is now one of the dominant facts of modern music, and the mixing board and its add-ons are arguably the most important instruments in pop music today. But don’t just take it from us. As eMusic says, “Who invented the remix? Lots of people — and people are still reinventing it all the time. That's the point of remixing: proof that a piece of music is never finished as long as someone can tweak the parts till they shine brighter, move differently, or resemble something else altogether.”



Meet An African Guitar Hero
At 15 minutes long, today’s featured video is more of a mini-documentary than a music video. Filmmaker Michal Shapiro interviews Banning Eyre, the internationally-renowned co-founder of Afropop and champion of African music. The video begins with personal history, as Eyre talks about his early days studying with Malian guitar masters -- but it quickly moves into stunning footage of one master guitarist: Aboubacar “Badian” Diabate. Diabate’s technique is unparallelled -- he’s able to transmit the delicacy of other African stringed instruments like the kora to his instrument. Prepare to be ravished.



Sarah Bardeen, Music Community Manager, recently watched “Plastic Flowers - Upperground Stories.”

a peek inside my sketchbook- fall doodles