A couple of handy tricks when linking to youtube videos

I find myself using these tricks quite ofton when linking to youtube videos, and I figure they're worth sharing.

Lets say I'm sharing this video:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=pG342sCiYOA

There's a few tricks I can use to

1. make the link shorter
2. link to a specific point in the video more easily.

Making the link shorter

The first thing to bear in mind is that one thing Youtube did with all the acquisition money was buy a belgian .be domain name, youtu.be, purely to make shorter links.

You can use this to shorten a video link from the long form:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=pG342sCiYOA

…to the terser belgian flavoured link:

http://youtu.be/pG342sCiYOA

Linking to a specific point

You can link to a specific point in a youtube video by adding a little snippet of text to the end too. Lets say in this video I want to link to the part in this chinese parkour video featuring possible the most foolhardy jump I've seen ever, I can link directly by passing in the url the time to advance the video by, by adding a snippet like so:

#t=1m45s

I remember this like "time offset equals 1 minute 45 seconds".

Here’s an example in use with our video. I defy you to not watch that through your fingers.

http://www.youtu.be/pG342sCiYOA#t=27s

Now, go forth, and amaze your friends with your new youtube-fu.

Or, just watch some parkour.

[embed]http://youtu.be/pG342sCiYOA#t=25s[/embed]