[General] Video and the Internet

Woah, YouTube.  I realised over the past couple of months, as I found it harder to stay within my 10GB full-speed threshold for my unlimited data plan (with WIND, they potentially throttle you after), that I access a lot more visual content than I used to online.  I think I might spend more time watching videos specifically than reading.  A large chunk of my Google Reader subscriptions are videos, and many of the text ones are just short snippets (like Twitter feeds).

Most of the video content I consume is related to the VlogBrothers.  Nerdfighteria is practically an empire.  I've even started branching off into watching other nerdfighters, and not just productions touched by Hank and John.

YouTube has been popular for watching music videos.  It's weird that tonight the bar next door was playing the Darkness ("I believe in a thing called love") and Carly Rae Jepsen ("Call Me Maybe") next to each other.  I ended up googling both, and found that thanks to Google's new knowledge graph, I could search there name and see a few of their popular songs listed on the side of my search results. Clicking those of course gave me listings of YouTube videos.  Wonderfully, record labels enable the videos to go on YouTube through the artist VEVO channels.  And that's when I discovered something fascinating.

The YouTube Top 100.  YouTube has popularity charts that I feel effectively compete with traditional radio charts.  They have them for non-music categories as well.  If I like, I can "play all" the top 100 music videos to listen to all the popular stuff of today.  Weird.

Typing about music videos and YouTube, I also went about finding covers to Gotye's Somebody That I Used To Know (I wonder how he feels about all the covers, and some of them rivalling his version in popularity (like Walk off the Earth's)),  and I found a new favourite, this time by Ingrid Michaelson.

That and "Call Me Maybe" have led to many interesting and/or hilarious covers, like the Cookie Monster's "Share It Maybe"

(Though I find this one sort of drags on a little... but now I want cookies :|)