YouTube Not Telly

Grab your popcorn! Find a comfortable chair! Click onto YouTube! Select your movie and settle for a fun evening! With millions of pages of movies at your mouse click, you will never bore yourself with repeats! And guess what! You set the evening programme. No big biz interference in your selection! No boring commentators in your face! And best of all, no interruptive, repetitive, mind numbing advertising.

Sounds too good to be true! So good in fact, Google coughed up over $US 1.65 billion and turned three clever geeks into Web glitterati. YouTube is Time Magazine's Invention of the Year for 2006. Why? Well, as Times put it, "YouTube created a new way for millions of people to entertain, educate, shock, rock and grok one another on a scale we've never seen before."

Scrub the hype! What exactly is YouTube? Well, it's a web site that allows people to upload, share and watch their own and their friends videos. And it doesn't matter what format the clip is in 'cos YouTube converts the uploaded file into a Flash movie which can be viewed using any web browser. Each day 65 or 70,000 plus videos are uploaded to be viewed, rated, commented on or replied to in video by the millions of people around the world who seem to live on the Tube. Forget the telly, mate!

And that's just it! You can forget the TV. Type in www.youtube.com and search for your favourite soap. Chances are the latest episodes just screened in USA can be downloaded in 10 minute segments. What, napstering video content? That's what I thought too, but no, it is not a copyright infringing, sharing site like Napster. It seems that commercial material is uploaded by its producers in order to "wet the appetite" and entice viewers to their mainstream channels. Commercial TV is wooing YouTubers to shore up their advertising income streams.

So, what sort of movies are on YouTube? Categories include Arts & Animation, Autos & Vehicles, Comedy, Entertainment, Music, News & Blogs, People, Pets & Animals, Science & Technology, Sports, Travel & Places and Video Games. What age groups? It would appear that videos are made by all age groups. No surprise, the young happily make videos to share. I found a few videos made by elderly chaps, one well into his 90s who reminisced about his experiences in the Pacific in World War II. Another series of videos made by an elderly Englishman, a radar technician in World War II called Peter, inspired an equally elderly and lonely viewer to make and share his own clips. And people are enjoying watching all these clips judging by the video blogs in response.

And YouTube has the potential to be life altering. Take the video clips of a young woman reviewing techno gadgets on YouTube; so impressed was the BBC's Mike Worsley with her "upbeat and quirky" style that she has been offered a job as a presenter on the BBC Sunday afternoon television program.

Commentators on all things to do with the Internet are stunned by the potential of YouTube to revolutionise media. Suddenly they see the millions of faceless consumers jaded by a television diet of violent news, shallow soap relationships and farfetched reality shows, jilting the once popular box for the interactive experience made possible on the Web. Certainly, sharing "do it yourself" video adds a new dimension to communication. So, turn on your webcam or fire up your video recorder and I'll meet you, popcorn in hand, at YouTube!

Background information

1. YouTube

2. Time Best Invention 2006: YouTube

3. BBC signs up YouTube Gadget Reviewer

4. The Age: How YouTube became hot property.

Blogging

Sue: November
Would you like to write to the web easily? Perhaps you would like to record your travel diary while on the road so you can have it in one place when you return home. You might also like to share this diary with others. It is now easy to do this on the web through blogs or web logs.

What are blogs?
Wikipedia states: "A blog is a website where entries are made in journal style and displayed in a reverse chronological order."

Blogging started in 1997 when the term was first published. However on-line journals were hard work in those days when a knowledge of html code was necessary. Blogging became quite popular in 2001, but is now very popular with many old and young people who form active online communities of people who may never see each other, but share some of the same passions.

A different world
In this online community people build relationships after reading the writing of others. This seems quite foreign to most of us "oldies" who are used to being introduced to someone, then gradually get to know him/her, and finally begin to share a few ideas at a time. Today, bloggers get right into the ideas people have and after reading them might begin a fairly in-depth conversation with the writer as if they already know him/her.

Web Weeds and Wisdom blog
Today, I created my very first blog by putting up my Web Weeds and Words article for last month. It was quite scary to put my work there for the world to read. However, it made sense to me as you will be able to link to the resources without typing them in and you can make comments on the site. I will also be able to put up pictures when I’m travelling and that should make the articles more interesting for you.

You can find this blog at http://webweedswisdom.blogspot.com/ and hopefully the other writers will join me there.

Set up your blog – It’s free!
If you would like to set up your own blog, there are many places to blog. If you want to join an easy site, go to http://www.blogger.com/start and start by creating your account. Enter a user name, password and the name you would like displayed (it might not be a real name; ours is Web Weeds and Wisdom), and then read the terms and accept them if you wish to continue. You will choose the name of your blog, which will form part of the address of the blog. Lastly you will choose a template to set the appearance of the blog. For this one I used Scribe.

To start, put in a heading and start writing with the Compose tab up on top. When you are finished save the draft so you can come back later and proofread or change it, or you can publish it on the web. It will then be immediately available at http://the nameyouchose.blogspot.com/. I’ll bet most of you never thought you could write to the web this easily!

I then went to the settings and chose who could read these postings. I decided all could do so without logging in, so each of you could try this out. I will probably restrict this to registered guests at some future date. You may decide to keep this private or available to invited guests only in the beginning.

RSS feeds
Do you remember in October I wrote about RSS feeds? Well, you can even have an rss feed created for your blog and then those near and dear to you can subscribe to your blog and will get updates as they happen. How cool is that?

Until next month, happy blogging…

Useful Websites
wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blog
setting up a blog: http://www.blogger.com/start
Web Weeds & Wisdom blog: http://webweedswisdom.blogspot.com/

Inventors/Inventions

Sue: October 2006
Have you ever wished to invent something exciting or have you ever thought, if only a particular something existed, it would be so good. Perhaps you spend Wednesday nights watching the New Inventors wishing that you had thought of that simple device!

New Inventors
I loved the Jigolo, a tool that fits onto the chuck of an electric drill, and fits on to the hexagonal screws that are used to fasten corrugated iron sheets to roof trusses. It has frame that fits around the corrugations of the iron so it doesn’t slip. How useful would that be?

Last week a man demonstrated the Y tool for removing rusted screws, nuts and bolts. It was so simple and worked so well. I was most impressed, and, of course, I want one! Later the Inventors website went wild with people describing previous versions of similar tools that worked for a specific nut or bolt. This led me to thinking what is an invention really?

Definition
Wikipedia states: “An invention is an object, process, or technique which displays an element of novelty. An invention may sometimes be based on earlier developments, collaborations or ideas, and the process of invention requires at least the awareness that an existing concept or method can be modified or transformed into a new invention.”

Of course, Benjamin Franklin is well known as an inventor. He was the man who needed two types of glasses, so he could read and see distances at the same time. He cut his two glasses in half and fit them together to create the world’s first bifocals. He also invented the lightning rod, an odometer, an iron heater (Franklin stove).

One of the most interesting inventors would have to be Leonardo da Vinci as he had many other jobs (sculptor, painter, engineer, etc). Most of his inventions were so far ahead of his time that they weren’t build in his lifetime, but these inventions included a helicopter, a glider, an armored tank, a submarine, and many other items which are now common place.

More inventors
Thomas Edison patented more than 1,000 inventions, including the light bulb and the phonograph. Kilby (born in 1923) invented both the hand-held calculator and the microchip. Do you know that the crossword puzzle was invented by Arthur Wynne (an English journalist) in 1913?

Strange Inventions
Of course everyone needs a motorised picnic table build on a tractor so diners and food can continually move to new locations. There is actually a patent held on this invention and there are more crazy inventions to find out about on the totally absurd website.

Children and Inventing
The Smithsonian site discusses the importance of play to future inventors. There are lots of games/puzzles on the site, and children on school holidays might enjoy doing them. (The Smithsonian site itself is a treasure chest of information.)

I really enjoyed the kids’ invention page, although these were totally make-believe. There was an invention for catching store robbers with a metal detector and when metal was detected the robber was wrapped up in string and thrown in a cage to wait for the police!
Until next month, happy inventing…

Useful Websites
wikipedia site: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Invention
Smithsonian: http://invention.smithsonian.org/centerpieces/iap/
Franklin Institute: http://www.fi.edu/franklin/inventor/inventor.html
Motorised Picnic table: http://totallyabsurd.com/motorizedpicnictable.htm