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Today I'm pleased to present my first guest blogger. Ron Evans from Artsopolis wrote in last week and I have to say his post is mighty interesting stuff for anyone interested in how video is going to be used ever more creatively on the Web. (If you'd like to be a guest blogger, please contact me with your ideas.) Meanwhile, here's Ron:

Hi Folks,
I thought you might be interested to know that YouTube has recently
launched trials on a new feature called "video annotations." It allows
you to add small text boxes into the video itself, that can be used for
a variety of things like guiding you through the video, captions, etc.
Ever seen "Pop-up Video" on VH1? Sorta like that. This opens up some
cool doors for arts and culture…check out a couple of samples:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r57WrUTxSlg (still images)
and

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Pfh4zFTGNAA (video — need to get about one
minute into the video for them to start)
But it gets even better. YouTube now allows you to actually click on
links in the video itself to go to other YouTube content.

Here's a cute
example that shows this quite well:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mk9X_J0gycQ

Right now, they only allow links to other YouTube videos, but it won't
be long until we have the ability to link to things outside of YouTube.

It's interesting to think about applications to the arts — for example:

1. Watch a video preview, then click a link in the video itself to buy
tickets. What if the video was someone from the theater asking you to
buy tickets? The interactivity of the action and the video content
itself is now coming together.

2. Say you've got a video of a downtown tour of your arts district —
when users are watching the video, they can click on the museum in the
video and go to a video about the museum, or to the museum's homepage
for more info.

Cutting (and in some case bleeding) edge, but cool concepts to think
about…

Ron Evans

Director, Local Marketing & Technology, Artsopolis.com