Yesterday Mojang released the update that many have been waiting for since the announcement of it at Minecon last month, the 1.7.4 update that contains Twitch integration to allow players to stream Minecraft from within game.
I covered the first snapshot of this update a few weeks ago (linked at the end of this article) so I can confirm that the integration of the streaming website's features is nicely optimised to work well with Minecraft. From within the options menu you can toggle and tweak video, broadcast, server and chat settings all from within game, the chat settings being an especially good idea in my view as someone who has had to moderate busy Twitch stream chatrooms before now. You can even choose to turn off the chat showing in-game altogether if you prefer not to see what's being said.
The other major things in this update are the expected bug fixes and patches and fixing an issue with render distance not working correctly over 8.
I expect to see this new update being quite popular with the part of Mojang's customer base who are very into streaming their Minecraftian adventures. I know I'll certainly be making use of it if I can.
Snapshot article: http://www.sanitarium.fm/archives/2369
Patch notes: https://mojang.com/2013/12/minecraft-1-7-3-pre-release/
