We really prefer Vimeo.com around here, but that doesn’t stop people from uploading video to YouTube — meaning you have to live with the results.

You can make YouTube slightly less painful, however. Old news — the setting popped up a few weeks ago — but if you’re like me and haven’t changed your settings yet, now’s the time. Here’s how:

You’ll need to be logged in. Go to Account > Account (the header on your My Account Page) > Video Playback Quality and choose “I have a fast connection.” You don’t need a terribly fast connection, because the upshot of all of this is that you bump up to 480×360. (Yeah, I know — be still my beating heart. Vimeo, Blip, and others already have HD, and YouTube has 480×360.)

Oh, and it gets worse: not all videos have been converted to the new format.

And worse still: the content uploader apparently has no control over this whatsoever.

Did I mention how much I hate YouTube? Still, it’s worth the 30 seconds it takes to change the setting.

For more discussion:

Watch Higher Quality YouTube Videos [Wired.com How-to Wiki]

Videohelp Forum Thread

Anyone with uploading tips for taking advantage of this, or how we can lobby Google to give us something that doesn’t suck — just let us know.

Satellite Jockey is Rick Silva, a 28 year-old Brazillian VJ who uses Google Earth as the source of imagery for live multimedia art. He just played Futuresonic in Manchester, UK, as well as SONAR and other fests. It sounds a bit gimmicky on paper, but check out the results: very nice, glitchy 3D work that transforms Google Earth’s imagery into something abstract and beautiful. I think you’ll see a lot of new sources of imagery and ideas, and much more 3D, as the live visualist language expands.

Satellite Jockey
Satellite Jockey video clips

Via L.A.’s The Lava Flow, which lists plenty of other events of interest if you’re in Southern California.