Within the past year online video hosting sites have exploded allowing users to easily to upload and share videos on the web. Among all the web 2.0 players in this area, YouTube is currently top dog serving up over 100 million video views a day and allowing users not only to upload their own video content easily, but also embed clips into their own sites easily. Do some searching around YouTube yourself and see what the site has to offer. You'll find everything from 1970s TV commercials and No Cookies in the Library to library dominoes to funny dogs and the more practical Finding Time in the Penn State Libraries and Using Novelist here. Of course, like any free site you’ll also find a lot stuff not worth watching too. But that doesn’t mean you shouldn’t explore and see for yourself what the site has too offer.
Discovery Exercise:
1. Explore YouTube & find a video worth adding as an entry in your blog.
2. Create a blog post about your experience. What did you like or dislike about the site and why did you choose the video that you did? Can you see any features or componets of the site that might be interesting if they were applied to library websites?
OPTIONAL: Try placing the video inside your blog using the copy and paste code for the for "Embeddable Player.” Note: you'll need to use Blogger's Edit HTML tab when pasting this code.
Other popular video hosting sites: Yahoo Videos, Google videos, Others - top video site list (July, 2006).
NOTE: Videos, like music downloads, are bandwidth hogs. It is recommended that you complete this exercise during light internet usage times. If you encounter a problem, try again at a different time of day.
OKAY! I couldn't resist adding this clip too!
