YouTube

I feel like the proverbial latecomer to the party, but I’ve just discovered the wonders of YouTube.

This is a social Web site that allows users to upload, view, and share video clips. The tagline is “Broadcast yourself”. It was founded in February 2005 and has experienced phenomenal growth. 65,000 sub-10 minute video clips are uploaded and 100 million clips are watched each and every day. It’s estimated the company’s bandwidth costs are $1 million a month.

So what did I find so amazing about the site?

It was not the excruciating amateur home video, the garage bands, frat parties and stupid pet tricks. But buried in those million clips is content that I relish:

  • English folk rock from the 1960′s and 70′s, like Pentangle, Fairport Convention, Al Stewart and more.
  • Irish music.
  • BBC television comedies like Father Ted.
  • Scenes from my Cheshire childhood, like fishing in the canal and wandering a country churchyard.
  • Snippets of business communication, like past adverts for a specific computer company or extracts from speeches.

    • So here, as a total indulgence, is three minutes of Roy Harper, who is an obscure and wonderfully poetic chap with a guitar and an attitude, celebrating One of Those In England:

    and here is, literally, a trip down memory lane, an abstract wonder of out-of-focus home video of a Cheshire road I cycled every day from the age of 11 to 18 with the hoar-frost clinging to the hawthorn hedges:

    Explore YouTube – you never know what you might discover!

    posted by Ian on 08.24.06 @ 8:03 am | 2 Comments

    My blog is read on the BBC!

    While it’s hardly earth-shattering, I was able to gain exposure on the BBC for some of my blog content this week when I sent an email to BBC Radio Scotland’s Iain Anderson. His weeknight show is an absolutely wonderful collection of music I adore: Dylan, Baez, Simon and Garfunkel, The Pogues, even some Roy Harper.

    When I heard him discussing the fact that Homeward Bound had been written on Bradford Railway Station, I sent him a link to my blog on that topic, and he read it out, pretty much verbatim, to all of Scotland who were still awake and listening at 12:15am.

    If you’d like to hear this, choose the Listen Again button for Wednesday’s show. The content is only archived until April 5th. Then the next Wednesday show bumps it.

    Radio Scotland. Music worth listening to.

    posted by Ian on 03.30.06 @ 8:31 pm | 1 Comment

    « Previous Page
    « newer