Catching up with the times

Being largely out of touch with the movements of the online world for seven months leaving a good deal of catching up to do on return. One of the major names to have dominated 2006 has been Youtube. This is a site I'd heard of prior to my trip but only briefly glanced upon. Throughout the year the media have continually giving mention to Youtube in relation to content, the buy-out by Google and legal issues regarding content; all great promotion of course.

I seem to lack the type of friends who forever forward interesting, bizarre or hilarious Youtube video links (most I suspect are working too industriously these days) but during my trip and much more so since my return I've been exploring what this massive collection of video clips has to offer. It's impressive; more or less any music video you fancy, a good many concert recordings and even relatively little known bands are up there, such as 'Show of Hands' (see above).

There are clips of seemingly anything and everything. Teenagers singing into webcams or sharing their angst, a group of lads doing a spoof white-water rafting video on the river in my home town, favourite football goals (sigh), creative reworking of movie trailers turning The Shining into a family movie and Mary Poppins into a horror, the list goes on and on into the far distance. As with everything on the internet the quality is very variable, ranging from a finely crafted piece of work to someone droning on and inflicting their face upon us while doing so but it's no worse for that; if anything it harks back to the earlier days of the internet and gives it an interesting multimedia spin.

Youtube is a fine use of broadband internet speeds which most people now enjoy, adding an extra dimension to the online content which the normal man on the street can upload. Digital camcorders in one form or another are pretty much the standard these days making content creation within the grasp of seemingly anyone who has the time and inclination. It remains to be seen what will become of Youtube under its new ownership as some copyrighted content has already been removed in response to complaints by musicians and their solicitors. However for now it's pretty much all out there and worth exploring.