SuTree.com

By now there’s a good chance the more web-savvy of you will have heard of "Web 2.0". It’s a bit of a buzzword really, but one of the main things that defines Web 2.0 is the fact that it’s the users who make the sites what they are, not the authors. Think of sites like youtube, flickr or wikipedia and you’ll start to see what I mean. These days content is king, and people are keen to learn and absorb information.

It’s with this in mind that Joseph Maaravi founded sutree.com, an online video sharing and learning resource. The principle of sutree is simple; if you want to learn, chances are there’s a video to teach you what you want to know. Or maybe you fancy yourself as something of an expert on a subject and want to share your knowledge? Both are welcome and encouraged. Think of it as a knowledge community, similar to instructables.com but with video rather than photographs.

Video tutorials are indexed and tagged and sorted into categories, so it’s simple to find what you’re looking for. A few clicks later and you can be watching your video either streamed directly from the site, or by linking to the original source – wherever on the web it might be. Videos are aggregated from many of the larger, more well-known sites as well as some smaller ones you might not be familiar with.

It’s an addictive site and one which it’s very easy to spend a lot of time on. You may go there looking for something in particular, but end up watching many more videos than you’d intended, and more often than not, on subjects you had no particular interest in before. I can testify to that first-hand, in the process of writing this review I’ve been sidetracked several times and ended up losing the odd half-hour here and there. I may have gone there looking for a bit of martial arts information, but ended up learning how to light a fire with a can of drink and a chocolate bar (seriously!).

With it being a community-based site, there are plenty of options for social interaction. Commenting and rating of existing content is simple, as is adding new content. In fact the more prolific contributers will find they can have videos automatically added via RSS feeds. There are widgets available for your own blogs and sites to find related videos for visitors, and there’s a unique option to ‘wrap’ links. In a festive example, supposing you know someone due to host a family dinner, but nervous at the prospect due to their abysmal skills in the kitchen. Just ‘wrap’ them up a bunch of links perhaps showing them how to cook the perfect turkey, how to do the same for the vegetables. Maybe they’ll be serving cocktails, let’s find an example of how to mix a Long Island Iced Tea. Heck, while we’re at it, why not show them how to make a table centerpiece while we’re at it. The wrapping option means you can send one neat bundle of links to videos with everything someone might need to know contained within.

With a little over 11,000 videos indexed at the time of writing, and with that number growing every day, there’s a good chance you’re going to find out what you want to know. Even if you don’t, a search soon shows you the members who have some expertise in that field, so a friendly message may have you pointed in the right direction. There are even online courses available to take. The only downside I found as a user was the redirection to external content providers sometimes felt a little disjointed. It’s a small quibble for something as valuable as sutree though, and as such comes highly recommended.

For its ease of use, wealth of collated knowledge and just being such a good idea, TSDAdam gives sutree.com a BBM Review rating of….