(This is a guest author article.)

Of late, I've noticed the increasing trend among bloggers to post embedded Flash on their blogs (mostly YouTube or Google videos). I don't mind seeing an odd video or two, but Flash is by no means a 100% supported/standards compliant web technology (even though it has become very popular) and there are many versions of browsers that simply don't support Flash (64-bit Firefox on Linux comes to mind). Embedding Flash content regularly simply reduces the accessibility of your blog for a section of your readers. Apart from the problem of browser support, do consider the bandwidth requirements of watching even a 1-minute video. It's hard for some of us to remember that a large part of the world still lives on dial-up connectivity. I know that video blogging is a popular option these days, but even so, I would prefer a link to the original video URL so that it is easier to share or download.

I am a strong advocate of open technologies and web standards compliance, so you might think that I am biased. But I still think that the point needs to be made.

I'll make it clear that I don't mind seeing videos occasionally (and even enjoy some of the more humourous ones) but I like to read original content on blogs, not watch third-party video clips. On some blogs, I find that almost all the content is made up of embedded Youtube or Google videos. It seriously reduces the personalization of your blog (unless you created the video yourself - which is a rare, but possible situation). Videos are a nice enhancement but shouldn't replace original content. Nothing annoys me more than a blog post with just embedded clips and no textual explanation for browsers without a Flash player plugin.

So the next time you have an interesting video to share, please link instead of embedding. Also please add a few words of explanation below it ("if you cannot see this video, this is about … …"). It improves accessibility and allows your blog to remain free of proprietary technology which might or might not work for the end-user.

I know that RT embeds video trailers for his movie reviews, but in his case, the content comes first and the video is an added extra, not part of the main content. Even so, I feel that linking to the original clip would be a better idea.

Update and Clarification: I just want to point out that even linking to videos will require the end user to have Flash installed to view it in the case of sites like Google Video or YouTube. My point was that *if* at all you wanted to share streaming videos which rely on proprietary technologies, the better option would be to link rather than embed because at least your site will not throw up an ugly "Plugin not Found" error message. In any case, the main point of the post was that it is better to reduce your reliance on unreliable proprietary tools/software until there is a standardization to render video and audio content on the web (just like HTML and XHTML for text and images).