The first site most people think of when pondering the relatively recent fad of internet video sites, would almost assuredly be YouTube. The sheer quantity of user submitted video at YouTube could easily keep your typical streaming video viewer busy for inordinate amounts of time. However, with popularity and ease-of-use comes saturation, which is the main reason I’ve shyed away. Unless there’s something very particular I’m looking for, I try avoid the waste of bandwidth that YouTube is predominantly comprised of.

In my quest (if you can even call it that) to find alternatives to the obvious, I’ve stumbled upon some amazing sites featuring everything from internet television (Revision3) to the video centric social networking site Vimeo which even has streaming HD content. After spending a little too much time at the latter I decided to post a few of my favorites from the first twenty pages of the “Staff Picks” section.

Video 001 | What Matters To You // Me

This video was the winner of a recent Vancouver Film School / YouTube Competition and is a wonderful example of “Digital Design”

What Matters to You // Me? from Jr.canest on Vimeo

Video 002 | Davey Dance Blog | Dublin

I don’t know why I enjoyed this one so much. Maybe it’s the lack of acknowledgment from the people walking past, or perhaps it’s Davey’s slick moves, or maybe it’s the fact that I love the Talking Heads. Whatever the case it’s well worth checking out.

“Davey Dance-BLOG. A project started while traveling Europe during Spring 2007. Armed only with an ipod and a Canon PowerShot, Davey picks a location and a pop song. Then Davey records an improvised dance.”

Davey Dance Blog -47- DUBLIN – Talking Heads “Houses in Motion” from Pheasant Plucker on Vimeo

Video 003 | Ghislain Poirier | Hit & Red

An animated music video for Ghislain Poirier’s song Hit & Red from the album No Ground Under on Ninja Tune.

Ghislain Poirier – Hit & Red (official) from departement on Vimeo

Video 004 | MUTO A Wall-Painted Animation

An ambiguous animation painted on public walls.

MUTO a wall-painted animation by BLU from blu on Vimeo

Video 005 | Regarding the Nature of Luminance in Ubiquitous Darkness

Finally, even if this video was as bad as some of the mobile phone uploads found on YouTube (which it is most definitely not) I think I’d have to include it strictly because of the uniqueness of the aspect ratio used (6950 X 720).

Regarding the Nature of Luminance in Ubiquitous Darkness from Karen Abad loves Dinosaurs. on Vimeo

On a final note, I don’t really hate YouTube that much, I just think that variety is the spice of life, so a few alternatives won’t hurt anyone. I think I’ll cancel my cable now.

And now let’s take a look at 60 excellent examples of style switcher designs created by the participants of our contest. Please notice that only those designers have participated in the contest who followed exactly the rules we’ve published in our announcement post.

The main reason for my entry into the contest, aside from the shiny new Apple Display, was because I was already in the process of implementing a style switcher over at Minimal.ca. It’s most definitely not as flashy or beautiful as some of the other entries, but it serves it’s purpose for the time being. So thanks to Smashing Magazine for including Minimal.ca among all the other great entries featured in the post. The sliding “foliage-o-meter” from Komodo Media is particularly intriguing.

I stumbled upon the talk with David Eggers yesterday and found it to be quite inspiring. Mr. Eggers is a publisher, philanthropist and advocate for students and teachers. Considering both my mother and girlfriend are teachers (along with about 1/3 of the people I grew up with) this talk really hit home. They are surely some of the most important people in our community as well as some of the most under appreciated.

So without further ado (as much as I detest that phrase), here’s the video, and if you’re anything like me, it will be the first of many you watch from TED.com

With that in mind, here’s a glimpse of what some of the new features are:

The Blog

I’ll assume that since you’re reading this, you’ve found the blog section without too much trouble. This section will serve as an outlet to whatever amuses me, which will most likely focus on design and development.

VirbTunes Feed

I recently signed up for an account over at Virb°. Although I really haven’t had a chance to dive into what this site has to offer, it appears to be a much more mature and polished MySpace. My main reason for signing up was because of a feature I noticed on one of Virb°’s developer’s blog: VirbTunes!

VirbTunes is a small application that works with itunes to feed your most recently listened to songs into your Virb° profile. A pretty neat function if you’re a Virb° user, however the thing that grabbed my attention was the ability to display the VirbTunes feed on a website other than Virb°.

Enter Virb° Transport: “… a quick and simple Javascript embed tag that allows you to put Virb° modules on the websites of your choosing …”. So after adding the Javascript you can now see what I’m listening to in as close to real time as you can get.

Oh, and it will allow you to feed more than just music…

Twitter Feed

Social networking popularity is off the charts. So in order to stay with the times, here’s another way to stay up to date with what I’m doing. After signing up for an at Twitter and linking my “tweets” to my Facebook status, I decided to implement a Twitter feed into the site to facilitate your stalking*. You can check out the finish product on the About page.

* I don’t really think you’re stalking me

Style Switcher

This will be the last of the new features for the time being, and it’s the only one that I haven’t actually started to implement yet. However, aside from adding a couple more style sheets, it’s a fairly quick and easy procedure. I know this because I just finish one over at Minimal.ca