Britain's 81-year-old Queen Elizabeth II embraced modern technology on Sunday, setting up her own special Royal Channel on YouTube.
The queen will use the popular video-sharing Web site to send out her 50th annual televised Christmas message, which she first delivered live to the nation and its colonies on Dec. 25, 1957.
Buckingham Palace also began posting archive and recent footage of the queen and other royals on the channel Sunday, with plans to add new clips regularly.
PHOTO: AP
YouTube, which allows anyone to upload and share video clips, was founded in 2005 and bought by Google last year.
"The queen always keeps abreast with new ways of communicating with people," Buckingham Palace said in a statement. "The Christmas message was podcast last year."
The palace said: "She has always been aware of reaching more people and adapting the communication to suit. This will make the Christmas message more accessible to younger people and those in other countries."
"The Royal Channel -- The Official Channel of the British Monarchy" -- is illustrated with a photo of Buckingham Palace flanked by the queen's guards in their tall bearskin hats and red tunics.
Its modern video clips show shots of garden parties, state visits, the queen, the many British prime ministers who have served during her reign and a day in the life of her son, Prince Charles.
The footage of the queen's 1957 Christmas TV broadcast will remind viewers that TV once was as groundbreaking a creation as Internet is today.
The Royal Channel also includes rarely seen silent news footage of the 1923 wedding of the queen's parents, then known as the Duke of York and Lady Elizabeth Bowes-Lyon.
Queen Elizabeth II's annual Christmas speech can once again be downloaded as a podcast from www.royal.gov.uk. It also is available on television in high definition.
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