Thursday, March 5, 2009

Sources of Videos Other Than YouTube

Can't find what you are looking for on YouTube? There are certainly plenty of other sources of free video on the Internet. Here are a few of my favorite sites:

Google Video - You would think since Google bought YouTube they would have combined the two sites by now (or at least made the functionality the same). But you would be wrong! Google Video, still technically in beta, hosts videos in a similar fashion to YouTube. But the real strength of this site is the search feature. As you can see from the image below, the search box default option is to search the entire web for videos, not just ones hosted on the Google Video site. Therefore, this is a superior search feature to the one offered on YouTube which only searches videos hosted on the YouTube site.



Lab Rats - Two technology journalists, Andy Walker and Sean Carruthers, started making video podcasts in October 2005. Fortunately for us, people loved them and now the Lab Rats website contains over 100 video podcasts on technology. These videos are well written, produced professionally and contain useful information on topics ranging from Web browser security to iPod hacking. There is something here for every level of student.

5 min - 5min is a site that offers short video solutions (all 5 minutes or less) to practical questions. Their idea, as explained on their site, is simple: "...any solution can be visually explained in no more than 5 minutes. Our goal is to create the first communal Life Videopedia allowing users from all over the globe to contribute their knowledge by sharing visual guides in areas such as arts, business, fashion, sports, health, tech, food, and much more." They have a technology section which contains some very informative videos such as Wikis in Plain English and How to Retrieve a Lost Windows Password. While not as extensive a collection as YouTube, the videos at 5min are very high quality and well produced videos.

If you know of any other sites that provide useful technology videos (for free, of course), mention them in a comment to this post and I'll add them to this list.

No comments: