This is something that I haven’t seen before. Apparently YouTube videos now support links and annotations. It makes them almost like a super low-fi version of Flash. I would encourage you the examples below right here, but the annotations don’t appear in the external version of the YouTube player yet, so be sure to click on the videos below to watch them at YouTube.

The most popular ones in the YouTube-o-sphere appears to be a series of magic tricks produced by werneroi. In terms of margic they are only so-so, but the way in which YouTube is letting you now “annotate” videos and provide inline links is interesting.

wereroi was even kind enough to post a video giving people step-by-step instructions on how to use these annotations.

Perhaps more magical is the “community effect.” It didn’t take long before someone posted a video explaining how this card trick works:

Now if only people would do the same for David Blaine. The closest thing I’ve got is this (but not too safe for work on the language side):

“What if I get pulled over?”