YouTube is a great place to see some of the most interesting and hilarious videos on the web. In my experience, many of the best YouTube videos were shown to me either in person, or through various social networks. This is how videos go viral, and YouTube wants your help in bringing more viral videos more »

Google continues to redesign everything in its path. Next on the list is YouTube, and chances are the new design has been pushed to you already. This isn’t a mass rollout of the Cosmic Panda experiment that took place some months back. YouTube has gotten a complete facelift that brings the video content you want to see front and center. In some ways, the new YouTube is reminiscent of Facebook in that the most recent activity is in the center of the page, whereas the navigation controls are restricted to the left side of the page.

On October 31, the cost for renting a DVD through Redbox will increase. Don’t worry, it isn’t anything like the 60% Netflix price hike. It’s more like 20%. Instead of paying a $1 to rent movies, the price will be $1.20. It sounds worse than it really is. The price for renting Blu-rays and games will stay the same at $1.50 and $2.00 a night.

McDonald’s will enhance the dining experience for millions of its customers by introducing its own video content on the McDonald’s Channel. The McDonald’s Channel will begin life in California and may branch out into other states if the venture proves to be successful. Maybe now you’ll skip the drive-through and step inside for some television entertainment instead.

Hot on the heels of the Netflix and DreamWorks licensing agreement comes news about a deal reached by Amazon and Fox. Amazon Prime customers will have the ability to watch Fox television programs and movies sometime this fall.

The infamous Netflix price hike went into effect earlier this month. Subscribers were not happy at all about Netflix splitting up its unlimited streaming and DVD renting services while charging full price for both. Many subscribers decided to cut back by only having an unlimited streaming option. Netflix was expecting this and was actually surprised people were angrier about this. It appears users decided to let their dollars do the talking as Netflix has cut its expected subscribers by a cool million.

On Wednesday, YouTube started to roll out new video editing features. Videos that have been previously uploaded to YouTube (with some exceptions) are now capable of being edited to a greater degree than they were before. Instead of just adding annotations, subtitles and other similar text-based things, YouTube users can now tweak their video’s color intensity, stabilize shaky footage, trim videos and add complete visual effects.

For what seems like the longest time, Netflix has only been available on select Android devices. With today’s Netflix for Android update, the service has come to a large number of Android devices. From now on, you don’t have to have a specific Android phone to enjoy Netflix. You only need an Android phone that is running on either Froyo or Gingerbread.

One of Google+’s best features is Hangouts. Hangouts is a video conferencing feature that allows up to 10 people to participate in a video chat at the same time. While everyone is chatting, a YouTube video can be shown to everyone in the chat. Now, you don’t have to search for a YouTube video from within Hangouts.

Sites such as Ustream and Justin.TV have built a reputation on live broadcasts. YouTube on the other hand triumphed as a site that hosted pre-recorded videos. YouTube Live will address live videos for the first time in the site’s history. YouTube has dabbled in live broadcasting in the past, but now the site has started rolling out YouTube Live to certain partners. As the months go on, thousands of accounts will be granted access to YouTube Live.