YouTubeDesktop.com – the slickest YouTube browser yet?

YouTubeDesktop.com - the slickest YouTube browser yet?A few minutes ago an email dropped into my in-box from YouTubeDesktop.com — a product that I’d never heard of before — inviting me to try out their private beta. Claiming to be “something special”, that many developers had said was “programmatically impossible”, I willingly put down my coffee and fired up Firefox.

The idea behind YouTube Desktop is to bring a desktop application experience to navigating and viewing YouTube videos through a web browser.

YouTube Desktop

Windows can be dragged, resized, minimized in a tray, and videos can be dragged ‘n’ dropped between players and results. Key features include the ability to create playlists — again via drag ‘n’ drop — share video links with friends, and perhaps controversially, download and save YouTube videos to your PC — avi, mp4, mov, 3gp, wmv, flv, exe, “all converted on the fly”.

YouTube Desktop player

The end result, say the developers, is that YouTube Desktop provides a more convenient and easier way of browsing through the enormous amount of content available on YouTube.

Two areas where YouTube Desktop may run into legal trouble, however, is with their name — which could cause trademark issues — and the way the site enables users to save YouTube videos to their PC. With regards to the latter, as we’ve previously noted, many video sharing sites, including YouTube, have terms and conditions that may prohibit third parties from offering such a service.

Verdict

There’s no doubt that YouTube Desktop is impressive technically, with some complex AJAX going on under the hood, which worked flawlessly in Firefox on a Mac (I haven’t yet taken the time to try out the site on other platforms and browsers). Also, by using a desktop metaphor, the application is incredibly easy to grasp because you feel right at home dragging ‘n’ dropping videos into a playlist or minimizing and resizing windows on the fly. Whether or not this makes YouTube Desktop more efficient at navigating the enormous amount of content on YouTube, I’m not so sure, as you’re still left with categories and a search box as your primary means of locating videos. Having said that, the site’s UI does feel a lot less cluttered than YouTube itself.

last100 is edited by Steve O'Hear. Aside from founding last100, Steve is co-founder and CEO of Beepl and a freelance journalist who has written for numerous publications, including TechCrunch, The Guardian, ZDNet, ReadWriteWeb and Macworld, and also wrote and directed the Silicon Valley documentary, In Search of the Valley. See his full profile and disclosure of his industry affiliations.

51 Responses to “YouTubeDesktop.com – the slickest YouTube browser yet?”

  1. Hi Guys,

    Wow, we didn’t expect such a fast response !

    So what we are going to do is let the first 101 emails into the PRIVATE BETA. Please add “YES PLEASE” in the subject so we can deal with the responses quicker.

    Only email us if you can ACTIVELY take part.

    Hurry up before it’s too late.

    Regards
    YouTube Desktop Team

    e : support@youtubedesktop.com
    w : http://www.youtubedesktop.com

  2. Ryan Wagner says:

    This looks pretty cool…can’t wait to try it out.

  3. David Mackey says:

    Seems pretty cool. Definetly need a better way to surf YouTube.

  4. Ryan McCahan says:

    And of course the obvious “robbing advertising impressions and thus money from YouTube while sucking up bandwidth” problem. Any counter for that?

  5. Smoggin says:

    Yes Please!!! Let me get an invite!!!

  6. Anonymous says:

    The username is tester
    The password is testing

  7. Tony Cruz says:

    I’m in!

  8. Gopinath M says:

    Wow..thatz a great idea. I love this player. Will post an article soon on my blog. Thanks for the info.

    Tech Thoughts

  9. Jess D says:

    Yes please! If you don’t know my email, it’s:

    shaderone.jd@gmail.com

  10. Guess WHAT?! says:

    This is 100% fake.

  11. John C says:

    YES PLEASE

  12. Qguy says:

    What the hell!!! its asking me for a username and password.100% fake ,if its even for real dont you think youtube will keep quiet.

  13. dave says:

    I would love an invite!

    Thanks!

  14. y kim says:

    YES PLEASE

  15. ProphetPX says:

    YES PLEASE
    i want to join the beta

  16. SubDude says:

    YES PLEASE!
    Mo Beta!

  17. prempanicker says:

    Would love to check this out and write it up

  18. Emily says:

    Hmm interesting concept! The whole world is adopting Youtube.

  19. Mime90 says:

    Kind of reminds of veoh tv but a little better though

  20. hr says:

    so what’s their point? to be bought by youtube or to be hired as Interaction Designers or maybe developers? I mean, they have just done a re-design of youtube. It’s as if I do my own design of apple.com and tell people to go to my site to check for apple products, instead of going to the official one, just because mine looks cooler.

    silly

    PS: technically cool, but practically useless.

  21. Ganesh says:

    YES PLEASE!

  22. PonchoLopez says:

    MadCat is a multipurpose application that allows you to browse the web, while enjoying quality video content from around the world. MadCat can download you’re favorite Rss feeds, Democracy channels, or sniff media links out the webpages you browse.
    http://www.getmadcat.com

  23. RaymaN says:

    Please!!! Let me get an invite!!!

  24. Brian says:

    Yes please

  25. Veilen says:

    Does it enable use of remote controller? Youtube is great when you sit in front of a computer but if you want to watch some videos on a big LCD from your couch then it is another story.

  26. Bobb Dobbs says:

    Please let me test.

    Thanks

    Bobb

  27. pradeep says:

    sounds great. Would love to try this out please send me the login info pradeepm@techie.com

  28. Rocks says:

    I’d like to see this in action, sign me up for the Beta……

    Veilen : Remote control support is indeed the main thing whats lacking on any of apps.

  29. Alex says:

    YES PLEASE!

  30. Michael says:

    YES PLEASE

  31. Imperioli says:

    YES PLEASE! 🙂

  32. Sig says:

    YES PLEASE!

  33. S. Lee says:

    YES PLEASE!

  34. rj says:

    YES PLEASE!

  35. Brit says:

    YES PLEASE

  36. azzam says:

    Yes please!

    contact (at) socioclick (dot) com

  37. Bustedwings says:

    YES PLEASE

  38. Poo says:

    No please!

  39. Conrado De Biasi says:

    YES PLEASE

  40. ERM says:

    This already exists in the form of Democracy Player….whatever it’s called nowadays

  41. Gio says:

    Great webapp, I was bored and decided to give this another review http://googlereviews.blogspot.com/2007/08/youtubedesktop.html feel free added some extra screens

  42. AlCappuccino says:

    YES PLEASE

  43. Rory Brown says:

    yes please, send login info to naledimusic@hotmail.co.uk

  44. jaju says:

    good work guys. This is some cool alright. Well done.

  45. jaju says:

    good work guys. This is some cool stuff alright. Well done.

  46. Michael Staal-Olsen says:

    YES PLEASE
    YES PLEASE

    i would like to try this program out. hope that you are able to invite me someday

    YES PLEASE
    YES PLEASE

  47. Hi All,

    It’s my pleasure to announce that YouTubeDesktop has changed it’s name to iDesktop.tv, and is now fully available. Some of the new features we’ve added includes:

    – Video comments list and information about the uploader. You’ll also be able to see other videos from this user or see his/hers favourite videos.
    – Sort your results by relevance, date, rating or view count.
    – Improved downloading and conversion process, easier to use.
    – Dim the background while watching videos.
    – Our player also has some new features. You can open a player in a new browser window and you can maximize it or move it around to another multi-monitor.
    – A choice of four different video ratios, 16:9, 4:3, custom and video’s original.
    – Import information from your YouTube user account or from anyone else you subscribe to or from a Channel provider.

    The link is

    http://www.idesktop.tv

    So please, check it out. We’d love to hear your feedback.

  48. Kim Lund says:

    Yes please!

    Have some ideas for youtube browser that kick ass, please write me. Like to do serious testing of this product. Yes, we really need a very much improved interface for browsing youtube. Good work!!

  49. slot pulsa says:

    Ide di balik slot deposit pulsa Desktop adalah menghadirkan pengalaman aplikasi desktop untuk menavigasi dan melihat video 395club melalui browser web.

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