Computer and Web Articles

Several weeks ago I shared with you a fun yet rather addicting new venture of Google’s, Google Earth. This week I’ll share with you another, the recently revamped Google Video.

Google Video proudly touts itself as a way for internet users to quickly search for and watch material from educational videos, user-submitted videos, archived TV programs and more. What’s great is that more and more highly respected contributors have begun submitting their content to Google Video, including CNN, C-SPAN, The Discovery Channel, UNICEF, KQED, HGTV, The Weather Channel, ABC and NBC.

One of the coolest features offered by the newly reworked Google Video is the faster viewing/searching capabilities. When you search for a topic, say “funny cat,” you’re shown nice, big thumbnails of video snippets that allow you to watch 10-second previews of the full videos right there on the search results screen.

In the past, visitors to Google Video had to download a “Google Video Viewer.” Between forcing visitors to download a viewer, the viewer not being usable by Mac users and all the issues visitors were experiencing getting the viewer to work, things were a mess.

Thus, as of a few weeks ago, Google Video dropped the Video Viewer and began to use Flash to display its videos. Smart move. As an added bonus, now that the Google Video Viewer has been dropped, you’re now able to watch videos in a larger viewing area that’s completely resizable to fit your browser window. Cool.

To make your video-viewing experiences ever sweeter, Google has added in volume control, a timeline with slider, and controls for play, pause, move forward and move backward. (I can’t believe they didn’t have these before!)

Upon first visiting http://video.google.com, three random videos are displayed. Sometimes they’re great, many times they’re not. If you’re in the “just-browsing” mood, however, click the “similarly random videos” link for more entertainment. I don’t necessarily guarantee quality entertainment, but it can be quite fun all the same. (In all honestly, I’ve found many of the worst homemade videos I’ve ever seen in my life by clicking on various selections. Keep this in mind!)

Upon my first visit to Google Video, I clicked one of the three random selections and learned how to tie a karate belt (http://tinyurl.com/7p4rv). I’ve kept that tidbit of information tucked away in the back of my head in case it comes in handy someday.

Oh, and if you’d like, you can go ahead and submit your own videos to be added to the ever-expanding Google Video database. Head over to https://upload.video.google.com for all the details.