Tag Archives: HTML5
YouTube turns 10 years old today
YouTube, founded by ex-PayPal employees, turns 10 years old today. In case you underestimate the importance of YouTube, it has created celebrities (For example, Justin Bieber was discovered in YouTube videos), empires out of teengaers, the President of the United States uses it, and according to YouTube’s own statistics page, 300 hours of video are uploaded every minute (think about that).
After being founded, it only took two years for Google to buy it out for almost $2 billion, and it is now the de facto video service on the web. It is one of the reasons we all discovered we had to get rid of Flash and adopt the HTML5 standard which is much more secure and doesn’t require third-party software to play videos in a browser. Remember the days of the QuickTime player, or – shudder – RealPlayer?
Anyway, if you’re interested, here is the very first video ever uploaded to YouTube, entitled “Me at the Zoo.” Don’t expect to be blown away, it’s more historical oddity than anything else, but a very important one nonetheless.
Important: Flash zero-day exploit uncovered
Although I usually try to avoid strong, one-sided opinions on these posts, I’m just going to come out and say it: I hate Flash. Hate it. It is now, and has always been, far more trouble than it’s worth, with it’s supposed benefits never coming close to outweighing the risks. If you’re not familiar with Flash, it’s what allows things like small browser games, some videos, but most of all banner advertisements, to run in webpages. They even try to get you to install another bad product, MacAfee AntiVirus, when you install Flash. Unbelievable. There are other technologies, such as Java, that do the same thing as Flash, but Flash is very lightweight. I won’t use the hyperbole that was used at the Register, but I completely agree with their take on it.
You know why it’s always showing you this dialog? Because there’s a recurring problem.
