YouTube (or “Utube” for those who are too lazy to type “Yo”) is preparing to launch channels with paid subscriptions to its video lineup. Channel owners can apply to have a premium channel, and YouTube is hoping that channels with specially designed content will draw more users. It looks as though premium channel subscriptions will cost somewhere between $1 and $5, with the first channels launching as early as the second quarter of this year.

There’s no denying that Internet cat videos are here to stay, and when the now famous “Grumpy Cat” appeared on the scene, it seemed that the world of Internet cats would never be the same. But now it looks that Grumpy Cat has a new contender: Sam the Worried Cat. Or, as he is better known on Instagram, Sam Has Eyebrows. Sam quickly rose to #catsofinstagram fame and could be added to the arsenal of Internet cats with serious attitudes.

Want to watch the Colorado presidential debate online? We have you covered!

Fans of the performance of Michael Jacksons’s Thriller by the inmates of Cebu Provincial Detention and Rehabilitation Center in the Phillipines will be delighted to hear that their favorite dancers are back. Dancing to the song “Gangnam Style,” by Internet sensation and Korean rapper, Psy, 1,000 inmates performed for a wildly cheering audience.

Mother Jones has released the entire full recording of Mitt Romney speaking at a May 17th fundraiser in Boca Raton, Florida. Since the initial snippets were released Romney has remarked that he wanted the full video to be released so that the quotes from the initial clips could be heard in full context. Mother Jones was apparently happy to oblige, and NBC news released the full transcript of the full video. Here it is.

U.S. Ambassador Christopher Stevens was one of several Americans killed during attacks on the US embassy in Libya, after protesters and armed men stormed the embassy. It appears that the Internet, namely Twitter and online statements, may have been a large factor in all of this. A string of Internet events appear to have led up to the disruption, which killed a total of four Americans, including the Ambassador.

If you liked Old Spice guy Isaiah Mustafa and his “I’m on a horse” commercial (and hey, who didn’t?), you may like the new interactive video from Old Spice in which you get to make music with new Old Spice guy Terry Crews.

Amazon made an exciting announcement today that users can now watch Amazon Prime Instant Video on the iPad. It appears that Amazon is slowly acknowledging that a large portion of its Prime member base has, and is loyal to, an iPad. With many Prime members frustrated that the free book lending benefit of a Prime membership only works on an actual Kindle device, Amazon seems to finally have learned to play nice with their Kindle’s adversary with today’s announcement that Amazon Instant Video is now able to be used on the iPad.

YouTube now strongly encourages real names before leaving a comment. As the subject of cyber-bullying continues to be at the forefront of everyone’s mind, theories have been swirling that people are more emboldened to make inflammatory comments online because they can hide behind anonymity. Now YouTube is proposing to counteract that by encouraging users to use their real names when leaving comments on YouTube videos.

The video search engine Blinkx expanded its offerings today after signing a deal with AnyClip, another video search engine whose database is focused exclusively on movie clips. Through the new partnership with AnyClip, Blinkx was able to add tens of thousands of clips from various films to its searchable database. With the addition of these new movie clips, Blinkx now has over 35 million hours of video content on its site. This is big news in the video search engine business, and it sounds like a good partnershhip, but two questions: What is Blinkx? What is AnyClip?

This is what being rickrolled looks like!

Netflix CEO Reed Hastings has announced this week, through a direct email of a Netflix letter to all Netflix customers, that Netflix is spinning out their Netflix DVD by mail service into a separate service, labeled “Qwikster” (pronounced ‘Quickster’), while the Netflix streaming video service remains “Netflix”. So now if you want streaming Netflix and the Netflix DVD service, you have to subscribe to two different services – Netflix.com, which is the Netflix instant streaming service, and Qwikster.com, which is what the Netflix DVD service has become. The service will be essentially the same – still with the red envelope and all – but now called Qwikster, and with the Qwikster logo.

Netflix has announced that they are raising their rates, effective for new customers immediately, while the new fees for existing customers will be effective September 1st. The rate hike is said to be necessary to reflect the increased cost of doing business, particularly with respect to postage rates for mailing DVDs. While the new prices apply to everyone, the new pricing plans will most affect those who had the unlimited streaming plus unlimited DVD plan, as Netflix is now separating the two plans, and you must pay a fee for each separately.

Barely two years ago, networking giant Cisco purchased the Flip video camera (by buying Pure Digital, the makers of the Flip camera) and folded the Flip USB video camera business into the Cisco brand. This week Cisco has announced that they are killing the division, and killing the Flip camera, and a lot of people are pretty unhappy about it. Fortunately, the Flip camera is still available for purchase (links below); unfortunately, it won’t be supported. On the other hand, the Flip camera is so darned simple and straight-forward, it doesn’t need a whole lot of support.

If you think that politics makes for strange bedfellows, take a look at the effort to raise public awareness about cybercrime. Because we’ve seen no stranger pairing than the partnership between rapper Snoop Dogg (of Snoop Doggy Dogg fame) and Internet security outfit Symantec, of Norton Antivirus fame. In their “Hack is Wack” (“wack” as in “wacky”, even though we think it should be “Hack is Whack” as in “we’re going to whack those hackers” – but what do you expect from someone who spells it “Dogg” instead of “Snoop Dog”?) contest, average Joes and Janes can submit a rap-like anti-cybercrime message of any length under two minutes, in the hopes of winning a prize that includes a tricked-out laptop, a trip for two to LA to meet with Snoop’s management, and two tickets to a Snoop Dogg concert. Woof.