A little while ago, Ionut noticed that Google Video added a “Blog Buzz” section to its front page. The Blog Buzz shows videos that bloggers have been talking about and linking to recently.
So for example when The Lisa does a Friday Recap and links to this “Zeroes” parody of Heroes, our blogsearch team takes that blog post and other posts from around the web and then computes some buzzworthy videos to highlight. Huzzah! 
I’m glad that our Video team added this, but I’m even more happy that the blogsearch folks are computing this data. Why? Google’s user interfaces are great for getting an answer quickly, but sometimes they can be a little.. functional. A little bit of fun flare is stickylicious and gives you more things to browse.
Now if you want, you can burn an extra few minutes getting sucked into watching even more videos. For example, I recently came across this awesome “fat rant” video (hint: it’s a healthy fat person railing against people who care more about weight than health). See also the Health at Every Size approach to life, but the video is a great way to get the basic idea.
Here’s a less serious example. Thanks to the Blog Buzz section on Google Video, I found out about the twirl a squirrel phenomenon and dropped a little cash to get one. It arrived tonight, but it was dark by the time I got it hooked up. I’ll let you know how my twirl-a-squirrel works. Muhahaha!
By the way, Twirl-a-Squirrel is still more humane than these methods of squirrel removal.
{ 19 comments… read them below or add one }
So, how long will it be before we see your next SEO video featured there?
I would love to see a video of young Adam Lasnik talking about Duplicates . Wonder why everytime I see Adam, there are always few females around him. Matt, it seems you have employed a sharp competitor
Ok. There was something wrong with the link in my previous comment.
Here is the Duplicates link again.
Any idea when Google Video will be rolled out in more countries? I would like to be able to view the next video you do without flying back to the states!
Now I become more and more used to spend my time on google video for fun.
Ahem. Let’s try some word substitution.
1. A little bit of fun [burning stick of magnesium powder] is stickylicious and gives you more things to browse.
2. A little bit of fun [skirt that spreads outward toward the bottom] is stickylicious and gives you more things to browse. (Unintentionally racy)
3. A little bit of fun [distinctive and stylish elegance] is stickylicious and gives you more things to browse. (flair)
And yes, it should be FeedFlair.
nice feature. it’s cool to see “buzz” and most popular videos.
Michael Martinez and Harith, that’s easy:
http://www.google.com/uds/solutions/videobar/index.html
Hmm. Maybe I should talk about the new blog bar and news bar..
That twirl a squirrel feeder is brilliant! Do keep us posted on if it works or not, I have been observing squirrels for years and they can adapt to pretty much anything.
Apparently if you shave the tail of a squirrel they can’t balance any more.
Ha ha ha ha. Twirl a squirrel. I just watched the video online. That’s too funny. Great invention.
forget the twirl a squirrel, where can you buy the squirrelapult? I’m in for 2!
Duelling squirrelapults, Ryan?
In our case it would have been twirl a rat. We used to have a rat that would climb up four stories, with death defying skill, (not unlike batman and robin on the old T.V. show), and eat from the bird feeder. Now if we would have had twirl a rat from four stories up…..
dk
Isn’t it a great mental picture? Can’t you just picture 2 little makeshift forts in the woods with squirrels flying over the walls?
Twirl a squirrel! that is the coolest idea!!!!!!!
Ok now i need to build a house based on that concept so i can..
Twirl a neighbor
Twirl a salesman
Twirl a bill collector
Twirl a team of squirrels
Twirl myself when i am in a drunken stupor
Good God thats a fantastic video right there.
The ‘Fat Rant’ video – I mean.
I still think this FLV plugin for wordpress is nice: word press
Haven’t noticed anyone using it, though I’ve posted here about it a
few times. I still suggest providing an alternative video format for
syndication though. I’d be happier with FLV if it was easier to deal
with that way. We’re stil working on FLV playback for Windows FireAnt.
But I don’t often see it syndicated probably because of the issues I
shared in a previous post.
That’s very cool for web UI as long as, as you say an alternate
donnloadable format is used. I doubt I’ll ever use it though. I
didn’t see anything about codec… so I assume you just have to
export your video as an FLV or SWF and the codec doesn’t matter so
long as it’s a standard macromedia one…visit web site for more on the subject. but I assume Sorensen (sp?)
is best… Does anyone know if QT or any editing software besides
macromedia will export this.
Oh, btw, on the flash player page it says YouTube uses the player
though not the wordpress plugin I’m sure.