Google Search results for "Tony Pinto"

OK, so it’s not an AMAZING feat of strength, but it has been a goal of mine for some time. It started about a year ago when I first noticed the domain www.tonypinto.com was available. I was lucky enough to buy it for less than $10 bucks!

Then I created this WordPress blog, started Tweeting as @tpinto3 (had @tonypinto at one point, but lost it), and began to comment on other blogs, with links back to my site. I also created a Google profile that links all of my social media, including Facebook, LinkedIn and Foursquare.

The journey continues, but I’m just glad now that whenever somebody types “Tony Pinto” into Google, they find me right up at the top.

Can you say the same for yourself?

They do.

So for anyone looking for an easy way to watermark YouTube videos without getting into video production or buying a one-off piece of software, this is probably a good solution.

Here’s a screenshot showing the annotation on the video embedded in my blog:

Using YouTube Annotations to Watermark Videos

Since Annotations are just an overlay on top of the videos (I think), web savvy individuals can probably get around this by downloading the YouTube video and uploading it to another video streaming service. And it happens all the time.

However, if you aren’t too concerned about it and you would just like to include a link to your blog or some other information (or add some “pop up humor” to your videos), YouTube Annotations can be a really fun and easy way to do it. You have some control over the size, shape, and color of the annotations, as well as the duration and some other aspects.

You can also create an annotation that links back to YouTube page (channel), where you can encourage people to subscribe to your videos. Just be careful about using arrow-shaped annotations to point to the Subscribe button, since the button won’t be present if your video is embedded on someone else’s blog or web site. Instead it might be pointing to an advertisement or other unrelated link.

Annotations are really easy to create. Once you are logged into YouTube, click on My Videos > Annotations and read the brief instructions. It might take a little bit of experimenting to find something you like, but the results could be very powerful, especially if you have a lot of “fans” showing off your videos. It even works on Facebook!

YouTube Annotations on Facebook

You can also create Captions for people with disabilities. But this post is already long enough…

I can’t believe all of the incredible tools available for bloggers these days. I just downloaded WordPress 2 for the iPhone, and wrote this post ON my phone.

OK, so it took waaaaaay longer to do it this way, and I know people have been doing this for a while, but it’s my first time so I’m feeling quite empowered.

I also just realized that this allows people to blog from virtually anywhere. Including places like the bathroom. Cool. I mean, gross!

But still, it’s pretty amazing considering that 10 years ago most people didn’t even have cell phones.

P.S. I later edited this post and added the screenshot using a web browser.

I found a nice Twitter Plugin on WordPress.org, which I installed and hooked up to my personal Twitter account (@tpinto3). Nothing really exciting happening over there either (not yet, anyway), but you have to start somewhere, right?

Now I’m looking for just the right skin. The default “themes” that came with the latest WordPress install were OK, but I’ve seen some really slick stuff out there, and not all of it is custom development. In fact, there are over 1,000 FREE WordPress skins that you can download and freely use.

Amazing! You just have to be slightly technical enough to get the files in the right place. Need help? Let me know. (Scratch that. I just discovered that you can search for and upload/install themes from within WordPress itself. Nice!)

You can also sometimes find out where someone got their theme by scrolling to the bottom of their blog and looking for the “powered by WordPress” link, along with the name of the theme that is currently applied. For example:

And if you click on either the name of the theme, or the designer’s name, you’ll typically be taken to some place where you can get the theme for next to nothing (often even free!).

Well, that’s about enough for today. I guess there were a few nuggets in there. Who knows, maybe I’ll actually keep this post.