YouTube. All you need to know is that links arrive in emails on a Friday afternoon with a hilarious video of someone falling over yes? Well, not quite. There’s a lot more to YouTube even if you only want to watch videos.

The book explains how to use the YouTube site with the various tools and other links that appear when watching a video. Signing up to YouTube is highly recommended, you can log in with a Google account if you already have one.

Once logged into YouTube it is then possible mark videos as favourites to share with other people and then to

One useful tip that was new to me was the QuickList feature. Video thumbnails have a small + symbol in the bottom left hand corner. Click on this to add the video to the Quicklist, which then appears as a link on the top row of the YouTube page. This list only lasts for that visit to YouTube so there’s no need to clutter the Favourites list with videos that might not be of any interest.

Creating content for YouTube is covered as well with tips on what software is available and the best settings to use to keep the best quality when the videos are converted by YouTube. Videos don’t have to look like they were made by a professional director; a webcam is quite acceptable for a video response.

Saving videos to watch offline is also explained, with some warnings that this can be a bit of a grey legal area. Still even big names like RealPlayer offer the ability to save YoutTuve videos although this particular program isn’t mentioned. Helpfully there are also links to programs that can convert videos from the flv format used by YouTube to something more suitable for mobile devices.

This is a good book if you want to get the most from YouTube. It’s reasonably priced and comprehensively covers what’s available from YouTube.

Title: YouTube 4 You
Author: Michael Miller
Publisher: Que
Price: £12
ISBN: 978-0-7897-3698-7