From bacon-infused drinks to saving money -- what *can't* you learn on YouTube?

Ninety days ago, we started Tweeting a how-to video each day, to showcase the near-infinite amount of knowledge that exists on YouTube. From high to low, life-saving to life-enhancing, there's likely to be a video about it on YouTube (see the list of tweets so far below).

Starting today, we'll count down 10 of the most popular how-to videos of all time. Follow us on Twitter to find out what they are or just to remember some true classics. Hint: one of them employs an onion in a very unusual way.

In addition, we're looking for users with specific areas of expertise -- for example, you make excellent cooking videos or you've fashioned yourself to be the "Dear Abby" of the YouTube generation -- to make tutorial videos, co-host Webinars, and/or guest blog in our Creator's Corner, a hub for new uploaders. Leave a comment with your channel name below if you're interested in participating.

Otherwise, get clicking and learn something new!

How to print your own T-shirt: http://bit.ly/159Hpi
How to speed read: http://bit.ly/2FRRi
How to look like @ladygaga: http://bit.ly/Rb9pv
How to tie a tie: http://bit.ly/JXHZo
How to make fresh pasta: http://bit.ly/TeKAS
How to make fire without matches or a lighter: http://bit.ly/pSyZw
How to open a beer with a pen: http://bit.ly/2usCi1
How to knit: http://bit.ly/16oQBg
How to cut your own bangs: http://bit.ly/Ib3pq
How to make ice cream in a bag (preschool edition): http://bit.ly/X8s65
How to do a banana kick: http://bit.ly/1JJT0f
How to count to 20 in Japanese: http://bit.ly/4gCv3q
How to peel a melon: http://bit.ly/BmXlB
How to get better mileage: http://bit.ly/2zdzm
How to create perfect red lips: http://bit.ly/15sezH
How to escape from handcuffs: http://bit.ly/jHQPr
How to flirt like a pro: http://bit.ly/2Rv5Zm
How to surf: http://bit.ly/Ga8Dk
How to train your dog to stay: http://bit.ly/xJWUb
How to make a bacon-infused cocktail: http://bit.ly/mameg
How to build your self confidence: http://bit.ly/dwZpZ
How to beat writer's block: http://bit.ly/3x5kek
How to be funny on a first date: http://bit.ly/m8Dvx
How to be a DJ: http://bit.ly/cfEj4
How to make mac & cheese, mmm: http://bit.ly/Ov8tC
How to use gel liner: http://bit.ly/TrMRD
How to give a presentation: http://bit.ly/12ny4U
How to make a how to video: http://bit.ly/6SKe8
How to do the Windmill: http://bit.ly/RdWO9
How to get watermelon nails: http://bit.ly/czp8n
How to shoot penalty kicks: http://bit.ly/5qREA
How to wrap a gift professionally: http://bit.ly/LhEpU
How to make your own bicycle crank: http://bit.ly/10fe45
How to make chicken biryani: http://bit.ly/4hqV9R
How to make wine: http://bit.ly/tdafs
How to draw a "realistic" manga face: http://bit.ly/108hUx
How to understand integrals: http://bit.ly/Bzc6B
How to look sharp for a job interview: http://bit.ly/hksI0
How to play violin - lesson one: http://bit.ly/2DnJDh
How to properly chop vegetables: http://bit.ly/1dq9I4
How to make a camisole in one minute: http://bit.ly/rLNCx
How to grow strawberries indoors: http://bit.ly/Mo5bz
How to shave: http://bit.ly/3kv7IE
How to crack a coconut: http://bit.ly/3XTfvw
How to buy a house: http://bit.ly/RSVng
How to make Rigatoni Carbonara: http://bit.ly/MsK57
How to make a BristleBot: http://bit.ly/unPlZ
How to do makeup for small eyes: http://bit.ly/1McfOw
How to make a custom beer pong table: http://bit.ly/1D5n2i
How to fuse plastic grocery bags into a reusable shopping bag: http://bit.ly/1eS6zf
How to fold a fitted sheet: http://bit.ly/4kxbJI
How to save money: http://bit.ly/3sd0u6
How to improve your memory: http://bit.ly/eCILa
How to sew a dress: http://bit.ly/13xkKx
How to backflip: http://bit.ly/1Awqto
How to curl hair: http://bit.ly/WpwdS
How to recycle beer bottles with limes: http://bit.ly/1z8yM8
How to hem pants: http://bit.ly/k7sW3
How to make a green screen: http://bit.ly/pPtJW
How to polish shoes: http://bit.ly/45dXNu
How to repair a bicycle puncture: http://bit.ly/ocqzX
How to make kimchi: http://bit.ly/3kFvLs
How to recycle used computers http://bit.ly/3SkN6a
How to make veggie sushi: http://bit.ly/oE6tZ
How to record better webcam videos: http://bit.ly/2rbn5E
How to speak French - meeting and greeting: http://bit.ly/OTfiU
How to make a "Where the Wild Things Are" Halloween costume: http://bit.ly/28qjv1
How to do yoga: http://bit.ly/1cGeeW
How to cook Cola BBQ pork chops: http://bit.ly/3eWonX
How to deliver a baby in an emergency: http://bit.ly/469fc5
How to melt away pounds: http://bit.ly/2BW8BE
How to wear different types of scarves: http://bit.ly/2sGH8s
How to Casper: http://bit.ly/1WwYHI
How to fold origami: http://bit.ly/1Q9T84
How to do self-defense when confronted with a gun: http://bit.ly/2l47Fz
How to make a camisole in one minute: http://bit.ly/rLNCx
How to make ramen noodles: http://bit.ly/16JKhC
How to care for a pet shark: http://bit.ly/1is544
How to apply fake eyelashes: http://bit.ly/2AvRV3
How to make a card: http://bit.ly/2M8YaO
How to make simple, delicious compound butters: http://bit.ly/Q2USo
How to dye your clothes: http://bit.ly/4nkbEZ
How to transform a boring school uniform: http://bit.ly/49P2I5
How to plant a vegetable garden in 30 minutes: http://bit.ly/1qdPEn
How to solder copper pipe: http://bit.ly/3Fsit2
How to make an upholstered headboard: http://bit.ly/iCh9a
How to dress appropriately (according to Tim Gunn): http://bit.ly/2Jjiux
How to make sage risotto (as taught by a kid): http://bit.ly/27jyEd

Sadia Harper, Howto & Style Manager, recently watched "How to find your bra size." … Continue

Innovation in accessibility

Creating captions for your videos on YouTube becomes much easier today, thanks to automatic speech recognition (ASR) technology.

Auto-Timing: Upload a transcript (a simple file with the text of what's said in the video), and through speech recognition technology we'll turn it into synchronized captions. Timing is the toughest part of creating captions, but now this should be much easier. The technology works best for videos with good sound quality and clear spoken English.

Auto-Captions: We use the same speech recognition technology to create machine-generated captions (which can then be translated into 51 languages). You can see auto-caps in action right now on a range of educational channels, such as UC Berkeley, Stanford, MIT, Yale, UCLA, Duke, UCTV, Columbia, PBS, National Geographic, Demand Media, UNSW and most Google channels, including YouTube's. Click on the menu button at the bottom right of the video player, then click CC and the arrow to its left, then click the new "Transcribe Audio" button. In time, we hope to expand this feature for many more YouTube videos.

Hub for parents launches

YouTube and Kodak have teamed up to launch For Mom, a robust resource for anyone raising children today. The videos housed on this channel cover everything from cooking and parenting tips, to the best toys and games for kids, to easy ways to maintain your own health and beauty routine. There are even responses to some of life’s most difficult questions, like how much to pay the tooth fairy:



Browse through For Mom (and come back often!) for more videos from YouTube partners who know a thing or two about parenting, including Better, Parents TV, Lifetime and popular mommy bloggers who expertly find humor in what's often called the hardest job on earth.

Sadia Harper, Howto & Style Manager, recently watched "Things My Kids Will Never Know."

Curator of the Month: Michael Wesch

Anthropology professor Michael Wesch has the awesome job of studying YouTube and thinking about what it all means. We asked him to curate a playlist of his favorite videos, and he came back with an impressive list of clips that exemplify how the "wonderfully playful participatory culture" you've created manifests itself on YouTube. Four of those videos are on our homepage today, but he also wrote this thoughtful blog post to accompany his picks. Reading it, you'll get a sense of how a single video or person can create a ripple that swells into something so much bigger than ourselves.

What I love about online video is the way that it has allowed more people to join a global conversation. Television was a medium whose content was controlled by the few and made for the masses. It created a one-way conversation, and you had to be on TV to get your turn. We have all been excluded from that conversation for so long, it is no wonder that so many people are now jumping in (over 1 million videos uploaded online every day by my count).

One of my first favorites was Gary Brolsma's "Numa Numa dance," which he posted on Newgrounds.com in late 2004. When YouTube came along a few months later and made it so much easier for people to upload videos, thousands of people joined the dance. A search for "Numa Numa" now brings up over 125,000 videos, most of which are people doing their own rendition of the now-famous dance. And it is still going. [Recently], Brolsma led the Michigan State Band (and the whole stadium) doing the "Numa Numa."

There is a wonderfully playful participatory culture popping up all over the online video landscape.

A few days ago, I was having lunch with a guy who told me that he and his kids (ages 2 and 6) were working on their own rendition of blinktwice4y's YouTube hit "Mario Kart Love Song". When they are done, they will join hundreds of others who have also created their own rendition. And if you love participatory culture as much as I do, you might just find the more obscure ones to be the most entertaining (like matrock records jamming it out Brady Bunch style) and sometimes heartwarming (don't you just love these kids playing it live? Or how 'bout these young kids acting out the video? You just know they will be watching this with the tears rolling and hearts warming in 30 years. Or even this wedding serenade).

And speaking of weddings, almost everybody saw the JK Wedding Entrance Dance, but the remixes and remakes are a real treat. There is of course the "Divorce Dance," the live remakes at weddings everywhere (here's one from Spain) and even babies are getting in on it.

Or remember how OK Go made their career with that amazing treadmill dance? But what could be cooler than doing it live at your high school in front of all your friends? Of course, Granbury High was not the only remake. There are hundreds, yes, hundreds of groups of high school kids who somehow wrangled together several working treadmills, rolled them into high school auditoriums all over the world, and did their thing.

Undoubtedly, some people performing on YouTube are hoping to be the next Esmee Denters. It wasn't so long ago that Esmee was just a young girl singing (beautifully) in front of a crappy webcam -- until one day she was singing a Justin Timberlake song in front of a slightly better camera, which slowly panned right to reveal that none other than Justin Timberlake himself was in the room, and that he had just signed her to a record deal.

There's still a lot of unsigned talent out there, like Megan Tonjes or mandyvbats, who was brought to my attention by the absolutely amazing work of Kutiman, a musician who brought together snippets of YouTube artists from all over the world, working in so many genres, to create such beautiful music (which to me is the real YouTube orchestra).

But my favorite online video moments are those where the participatory culture spills out into the real world. There is probably no better example than the Free Hugs movement. Now three years old, it is still going, and it's global. But of course it wouldn't be participatory culture without the clever parody, which Greg Benson of mediocrefilms performed brilliantly by offering his "Deluxe Hugs" for $2.

The tools for such clever commentary and remixing are always growing, and several of my new favorites are coming from the creative uses of Auto-Tune. The Gregory Brothers have really mastered this with their Autotune the News series. Melodysheep is now bringing his amazing talents to set the beautiful insights of the best scientists of recent years (like Carl Sagan) to some moving music.

So much of this creativity relies on the freedom to remix and build on the material created by others, a freedom that's constantly being challenged. Which brings me to one of my more serious recommendations: Brett Gaylor's RIP: A Remix Manifesto. Or for a wonderfully artistic statement within the same theme, one of the most amazing videos on all of YouTube is Us by Blimvisible.

My favorite video of all time still remains MadV's "The Message." It comes from the early days of YouTube, when so many of us were still just amazed that we could reach out to millions of people through our webcams. MadV invited us to write a message for the world on our hands. The resulting compilation may just become one of those iconic videos that our descendants hundreds of years might look back on and say, "So this is what they had to say when they first wired up all those computers and cameras throughout the world..." He's now doing an HD version if you want to join in.

If you are interested in how we try to make sense of all of this in anthropological terms, check out "An Anthropological Introduction to YouTube," where my students and I discuss many of these videos and a whole bunch more:



Michael Wesch, Assistant Professor of Cultural Anthropology, Kansas State University

Connecting citizens and journalists with YouTube Direct

… Continue

"Holiday Solutions" channel debuts

It's getting to be that time of year again, when hosting dinners, attending parties, and finding the perfect gifts are top of mind. To help you navigate through it all, we're partnering with Target to bring you a channel full of videos from YouTube partners who know how to master every element of the holiday season. The channel is called Holiday Solutions and on it you'll find videos about seasonal cooking, party planning and creative gift ideas. For example, here are a few melt-in-your-mouth recipes: In fact, Food Network chef Alton Brown is taking your questions now about Thanksgiving recipes and will answer a handful in a special video series next week. Submit your query in the comments portion of the Holiday Solutions channel and stay tuned for Brown's responses.

Sadia Harper, Howto & Style Manager, recently watched "Cooking the Perfect Turkey"

1080p HD Is Coming to YouTube

We're excited to say that support for watching 1080p HD videos in full resolution is on its way. Starting next week, YouTube's HD mode will add support for viewing videos in 720p or 1080p, depending on the resolution of the original source, up from our maximum output of 720p today.

As resolution of consumer cameras increases, we want to make sure YouTube is the best home on the web to showcase your content. For viewers with big monitors and a fast computer, try switching to 1080p to get the most out of the fullscreen experience.

Just how much larger is 1080p? Take a look at the following screenshots from this video:


Have an HD camera? We would love to see your awesome 1080p videos! Be creative and choose subjects that really show off the beauty of your camera. We will run the best examples on our homepage in a future spotlight.

And those of you who have already uploaded in 1080p, don't worry. We're in the process of re-encoding your videos so we can show them the way you intended.

Billy Biggs, Software Engineer, recently watched "Toy Story 3 - Official Teaser Trailer [HD]." … Continue

How We Think About Social

Social features like commenting, rating, video responses and even just emailing or IMing a video's link have always been a part of the YouTube experience. So that's why we spend a lot of time here thinking about how to make the site an even more social place. We're especially focused on wanting to make it as easy as possible for you to find the people you know on YouTube and to follow their activity (what videos are they rating? favoriting? commenting on?) by subscribing to their channel; it's a great way to stay up on what they're into as well as discover new content yourself. As you consume these videos and start sharing your own, you in turn "feed" your friends a tasty helping of video goodness. It breaks into this virtuous distribution cycle:




As we've built these tools directly into YouTube itself, with things like friend suggestions based on your Gmail address book and connecting your YouTube account to social networks via our AutoShare feature, we've started to see people becoming even more social. Some of this activity is hard to quantify -- every day millions of YouTube links are sent via email, IM, Twitter and other communication methods -- but we can tell you that:

• Over one million people are AutoSharing videos to Twitter, Facebook and Google Reader
  
• Each AutoShared Tweet you send out from YouTube turns into an average of seven new sessions on YouTube.com
  
• Over a million people have found and subscribed to at least one friend on YouTube based on our Friend Suggest feature
  
• Most Tweeted video yesterday? Lady Gaga's "Bad Romance"
• More than one million new subscriptions are created every day
  

We hope these numbers will only rise as we focus on giving you the tools you need to connect with the people who matter most to you. In the process, expect to be entertained and informed by the videos circulating amongst your most trusted friends, subscribers and networks. You can get started today by ensuring that you're discoverable on YouTube (click here and check off "Let others find my channel on YouTube if they have my email address") and by connecting your account to your external networks via AutoShare (click here to set that up).

What do you think "social" on YouTube means, and where would you like to see it go? Leave a comment below.

Brian Glick, Product Manager, recently watched "Michael Jackson - Beat It," and James Phillips, Software Engineer, recently watched "New Wearable Feedbags Let Americans Eat More, Move Less." … Continue

YouTube Salutes Vets and Their Supporters

Today, we're shining the spotlight on the men and women who have bravely served -- and are presently serving -- in all branches of the U.S. military. Video has become a vital tool for current soldiers who are trying to communicate their wartime experience to the public and for older veterans who want to share their stories from past battles, like Lewis Bennett, the youngest member of the 84th District in World War II:



In addition, on the homepage, we're featuring content from those institutions and organizations that provide much-needed support to veterans. For example, Iraq and Afghanistan Veterans of America has created a social network specifically for veterans and their families, while UCLA provides an adaptive sports therapy program for injured soldiers from the U.S. Army, including a regiment of rock climbing, wheelchair basketball, and table tennis. Here's a preview:

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We're Hiring Engineers!

A billion video views per day. Twenty hours of video uploaded every minute. Social and political impact. The latest in pop culture. Second only to Google in search traffic. YouTube is constantly evolving and finding the right talent to go on this journey with us is of paramount importance. Think you have what it takes to join the ranks?

We're especially interested in recruiting top engineers. In return for your mean coding skills, we offer a dynamic environment that fosters openness, creative freedom, and a ton of interesting problems to be solved. "I'd compare it to working on an open source project with friends; people want to know what you're working on, have advice and help out however they can," says Phil, an engineer who's been with YouTube for 1 1/2 years. A typical day might entail intra-cube technical collaborations, tech talks, team lunches and "Don't bother me, I'm coding" sessions. There's also the leeway to work on projects you're passionate about, great perks and, ahem, a bunch of awesome people who work hard but also love to have fun.

Check out our listings and apply today!

Fred Soriano, Recruiter, recently watched "Archon Defender." … Continue