I’ve created a website that allows easy discovery of interesting Youtube videos. It’s at FindInteresting.com.

Videos are shown in a collage of thumbnails as in the screenshot at right. It starts off with your favorite videos or a search term. Then if you click a video it will load more thumbnails on your screen, in particular: the favorite videos of the person who created that video.

To start, enter your youtube channel name to show your favorites, or enter a search term like “jazz”. Then click videos to load more thumbnails. You can hover your mouse over a video to read its title. Double click a video to load it in a popup player.

Once the player is open, you can click the link in the top right corner to watch the video on Youtube instead, where you can write comments below the video, “like” it, or add it to your favorites.

Here is a video where I explain how to use the site:

Why is this cool? For a number of reasons I think:

• Showing only thumbnails and no text allows the eye to quickly scan over hundreds, or even thousands of videos to pick out the ones that might be interesting to watch. We have a much better visual ability to pick out patterns and process large amounts of information from images rather than text. Also the fact that no text is used breaks down language barriers, especially for music videos.
• The Pop up player makes watching the first 5 seconds of a video really easy (the user can click away from the player and it will disappear, or click the X button in the popup to close it). This allows you to check out a video to determine if it is worth watching, and easily dismiss it, if it isn’t what you expect.
• When clicking a video, the favorites of the video’s creator are loaded below as thumbnails. This works really quickly to discover videos that will be interesting to you, on the principle that if you like a video, you’ll enjoy watching the videos that its creator likes too.

Since creating this site, I have spent many enjoyable leisure hours watching lots of videos and discovering some wonderful music from around the world. I really recommend trying it out, and please let me know what you think.

The site can be accessed for free at FindInteresting.com. Be sure to send comments or questions to geoff@gpeters.com – thanks!

In the Fat Jazz big band (in which I play piano), one of the tunes we are working on is called Poppin’ Fresh by Les Hooper. It turns out that Les Hooper is a prolific composer and arranger who also does work for TV, Movies, Cartoons, Commercials, and more. His web site has some incredible and amazing sounds samples. If you don’t have time to surf around, just listen to his Cartoon track (click here) and you’ll get an idea of his amazing composing skill!

It’s actually my dream to one day write music for movies and TV. I’ve been slowly putting together a portfolio. Click here to listen to a one minute orchestral intro that I wrote for a friend’s indie movie. Also listen to my Piece of Quiet composition (click here) which I think is very suitable for an emotional climax to some kind of romantic movie.