Genius marketing idea…

Matt Harding is back with 2008’s version of his famous viral video. This time made in 14 months, in 42 countries, and with a cast of thousands. Also in HD!

I was browsing through YouTube the other day, and was pleasantly surprised by the high definition (720 HD) videos that’s now available. Sure they require much more bandwidth to view in full HD glory, but the quality is outstanding.

Which then got me thinking as to how to embed such high quality videos on my blog or other webiste. Turns out, the process is pretty simple (see my blog post on the Les Grossman dance).

Here’s a quick how to:

1. Find a high definition video on YouTube (e.g. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5-kXucWIIzk)
2. Find the embed code (in the gray box on the right side of the YouTube page) and insert it into your Wordpress post or web page. It’ll be something like this:
   

   <object width=”425″ height=”344″><param name=”movie” value=”http://www.youtube.com/v/5-kXucWIIzk&hl=en&fs=1″></param><param name=”allowFullScreen” value=”true”></param><param name=”allowscriptaccess” value=”always”></param><embed src=”http://www.youtube.com/v/5-kXucWIIzk&hl=en&fs=1″ type=”application/x-shockwave-flash” allowscriptaccess=”always” allowfullscreen=”true” width=”425″ height=”344″></embed></object>

3. Add &ap=%2526fmt%3D22 to the URL parts of the embed code. So the code beocmes something like this:
   

   <object width=”425″ height=”344″><param name=”movie” value=”http://www.youtube.com/v/5-kXucWIIzk&hl=en&fs=1&ap=%2526fmt%3D22“></param><param name=”allowFullScreen” value=”true”></param><param name=”allowscriptaccess” value=”always”></param><embed src=”http://www.youtube.com/v/5-kXucWIIzk&hl=en&fs=1&ap=%2526fmt%3D22” type=”application/x-shockwave-flash” allowscriptaccess=”always” allowfullscreen=”true” width=”425″ height=”344″></embed></object>

4. And finally, because HD videos have the wider format, you might want to change the embed’s height and width to give it the nicer wide format look:
   

   <object width=”480” height=”295“><param name=”movie” value=”http://www.youtube.com/v/5-kXucWIIzk&hl=en&fs=1&ap=%2526fmt%3D22″></param><param name=”allowFullScreen” value=”true”></param><param name=”allowscriptaccess” value=”always”></param><embed src=”http://www.youtube.com/v/5-kXucWIIzk&hl=en&fs=1&ap=%2526fmt%3D22″ type=”application/x-shockwave-flash” allowscriptaccess=”always” allowfullscreen=”true” width=”480” height=”295“></embed></object>

The final result should look like this:

George W. Bush (”Dubya”) has the lowest popularity rating of all modern US Presidents. This video is pretty telling…

And here’s his resume.

For those who live in the US, it’s hard to avoid the Shamwow infomercials. In a weird unexplainable way, I’m drawn to the ad… Vince really knows how to sell stuff. I think he’s even better than the Oxy-clean guy. Anyway, here’s the original commercial.

And here’s a parody of it…

ps: Does it really who? No idea! But that infomercial… Sham WOW!