Viral Video and FOX Anchor's Flub

We're pretty sure FOX 5 New York anchor Ernie Anastos meant to say "plucking that chicken" or even "clucking that chicken" but something else went out over the air during a recent newscast. And you didn't have to be in the Big Apple to see it.

The live footage became an instant classic on YouTube, and Mashable reports that the video has already been seen by more than 800,000 people. It's been passed around Facebook, Twitter and even Chicago morning radio talk show hosts were talking about it Friday morning.

Here is the video, and be sure to watch the look on his co-anchor's face:

Google Search Tips on YouTube

Google posts some great instructional tools on its YouTube channel. I use this simple training video to help students better understand the different ways they can use Google search.

The first few tips are fairly basic, but later it shows how to use a timeline search for a research paper on green energy. It points out some great alternative techniques for expediting a general search. It's worth watching for a couple of minutes.

Online Video Downloads Hit Record Highs

ResourceShelf, a research site run by Gary Price and Shirl Kennedy, provides us with an interesting statistic from comScore Video Metrix about online video downloads in December 2008.

Online video downloads in the United States hit 14.3 billion in December 2008, an increase of 13 percent over the previous month.

YouTube downloads contributed largely to the surge.

The analysis doesn't go any deeper, but I'm speculating as to why we saw such a dramatic increase, especially coming off a November 2008 that included heavy election night downloads. What about December drove people to download so much video?