Eamonn Fitzgerald's Rainy Day

Don't worry, not video every day, just every second day. We met some movers and shakers in the net video space last week and because they were so kind in sharing their time, the least we can do is to point people in the direction of their work.

But first, a quick look back at the 12 months that changed the way we watch the world forever. In January last year, Google began to talk about digitizing video for a new product called Google Video. By February, it was live and accepting submissions. YouTube was already there but it seemed then that it might become a teen channel. By autumn, though, with net video usage growing exponentially, the inevitable happened. It's October and Google buys YouTube.

Now, almost a year to the day since the heralding of Google Video, the search engine announced that it would begin to index YouTube — allowing people to find videos on both services. The punditry believes that this means YouTube eventually will be the company's single destination for uploading and watching video. Regardless of the strategies, the fact is that in just one year web video has revolutionized how people make, share and enjoy media. And this is just the beginning. The groundwork for a video ecosystem has been prepared and we are entering the age of video discovery. As well, net video is becoming the preferred medium for politicians with ambitions and agendas.

And we're celebrating all this with a Google Video gem. It's is a Five TV documentary about Daniel Tammet whose arithmetic and memory skills are such that he can recite Pi to 22,514 places. To test his extraordinary linguistic abilities, the film makers ask him to learn a new language — Icelandic — in a week. Oh, and watch out for the scene where he is examined by Cambridge psychologist Simon Baron Cohen — a second cousin of "Borat". Runs in families. And talking of running, this video runs for 48 minutes. Link here.