#20 You too can YouTube

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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 1 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 60s music videos to library dominos and kids singing about bloopers 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.

Here’s a video (created by PLCMC's Web Services) that I embedded that shows off ImaginOn’s Express Check.

Note: Due to frustrations that many users are having with Internet Explorer 6.0.2 crashing when trying to open this post, I've had to remove the embedded video. - pah!     Yup! Another reason to take the leap and discover FireFox.

Other popular video hosting sites:

• Yahoo Videos
  
• Google videos
  
• Others - top video site list

NOTE: Videos, like music downloads, are bandwidth hogs. It is recommended that you complete this exercise during light internet usage times.