We are ready to set off for a little more adventure in Minecraft.  Today, we will be taking our map out to chart some more of the world and see if we can run across a swamp.  Swamps in Minecraft have a few resources that are rare, mainly vines and lily pads.  Will we be able to find them before the skeletons, creepers, and zombies come out to play?

Still exploring our new surroundings in Minecraft.  I wanted to go take a second look around the abandoned mines to see what I could find and turns out – I found what is most likely the best chest I have ever discovered.  Can you guess what is inside it?  Let me also say thank you to those who have subscribed thus far, I do really appreciate the support.  Feel free to leave your comments and questions about the Mitchcraft YouTube series or Minecraft in general.  I would be happy to help you out either way.

I need some MEAT! That it where this episode takes off.  I’m back in my Mitchcraft world in Minecraft, trying to start up a chicken farm.  Will I be able to find the chickens? You’ll have to watch to see.  I also do a little more diggings and planning for my “hopefully” abundant diamond mines.  I have already gotten lucky with finding a lot of gold to start out – will the luck continue?  Want more? Be sure to leave a comment, like the video and subscribe if you want to see more Mitchcraft episodes.

So, what is my goal with Mitchcraft? I have decided not to go with your standard gimmick of trying hardcore mode or play until I find this, that or the other.  I am just going to play, record and let you come along for the ride.  This has also given me the change to learn a lot about both video production and how to work with YouTube – so overall I think it will be a win/win for everybody.  I get to learn some new skills and you get some more great content to check out.

Check out my YouTube channel for more information:

Have no fear though – I will continue my articles and podcast via my other projects.  This will just be one more project to add to the list. You can always subscribe here to make sure you never miss an episode or you can subscribe to me on YouTube too.  I only have 28 subscribers thus far, so I would love to have you subscribe to me there just to let me know you are watching.  Content will be kept pretty family friendly too, so bring the whole family to come and watch.

So without further interruption, on with the show:

Would you like to see more of this? Let me know in the comments here or on YouTube. Still have a few audio/video bugs to figure out – but for the most part, didn’t do too bad (considering I haven’t recorded anything in a while).

Mhykol Mines – This series gives you the basic walkthrough of somebody playing through Minecraft and covering all the basics. Mhykol does a great job at putting together videos that follow him through building up various traps, bases and other things through the game of Minecraft and keeps things interesting enough that you want to see what might come up next in his mining adventures.

Etho’s Lab – If you are more of an inventor, rather than an explorer – you might like the videos Etho has put together.  From building simple dark room traps to loot the booty from the various mobs in the game to creating complicated devices to make you time in Minecraft easier – Etho does a fantastic job at creating elaborate devices in Minecraft.  After watching a few videos you literally can’t wait to see what kind of wacky devices he will come up with next.

Coe’s Quest – Now I have touched upon Coe’s Quest before in an earlier post and everything I said back then still applies. Like Mhykol’s videos, Coe does a great job at taking you through an interesting task or adventure in every video.  If anybody was going to ask me for a basic tutorial or guide to getting started in Minecraft, I would definitely send them to Coe’s Quest.

The Yogscast – The Yogscast is far different from other Minecraft videos out there.  Taking a more entertaining route, Simon and Lewis go through various "adventure" maps that people have created and also take a look at a lot of the various mods out there for Minecraft.  The videos are always have the right balance of comedy mixed with adventure.

So there you have it. These are the four best Minecraft series I have found on YouTube as of late.  Let me know what you think or if you have found any other Minecraft series worth checking out yourself.

Just a few years back, most people would tell you that you want to create your own hub of information and keep it private, safe and hidden for only your visitors to check out.  These days though, to be discovered – you sometimes have to leave your confines and go out where the people are gathering. 

Take Your Content to the People

You want to use content aggregation websites, like YouTube an an example, and take your content there for the people to see.  Rather than diving people to your home, you are taking your content and bringing it to where the people are.  Lets say you made your own movie. Older promoters and marketing gurus might say your best way of getting noticed would be to get people to come to you to see the movie.  In modern times – you have to take the content to the people. A place like YouTube is a comfort zone for people, where they like to spend their time and they know what they are getting.  If you can get your content nested in there, it could mean you have a better chance of getting noticed.

Take your content out to as man content aggregation sites as possible.  If you are promoting a video or commercial, YouTube is the perfect place to make sure it is uploaded.  People use YouTube to search for videos – so you want to make sure your video is there too.  In turn, you are creating one more gateway for people to come in and notice you and your own domain, projects and more.

After watching a video online, you might decide you want to watch it again later – but rather than going to the website again and slowly downloading it as you watch, you would like to have a local copy.  The freeware program, VideoCacheView will let you easily recover videos from your browser’s cache.

If the video is stored in your web browser’s cache, VideoCacheView will find it and give you the option to export the file out of the cache and onto your desktop.  Once there you can archive it however you see fit.

Here is a little more about the program from the developers:

It automatically scans the entire cache of Internet Explorer and Mozilla-based Web browsers (Including Firefox) and finds all video files that are currently stored in it. It allows you to easily copy the cached video files into another folder for playing/watching them in the future. If you have a movie player that is configured to play flv files, it also allows you to play the video directly from your browser’s cache.

You can download and try this great freeware program on almost any flavor of Windows too.  Head over to the NirSoft website to download it and give it a shot.  Hope it helps you with your video download recoveries.

Looking for a way to download YouTube videos, without cluttering your browser of choice with yet another extension or add-on?  YouTube Downloader is a free program you can download and use to get this simple job done.

All you have to do  is enter the web site address of the video into the program, and hit the, OK button.  The rest of the process is taken care of internally via the program.

This might be one of the best stand alone simple YouTube video downloaders out there on the Web today.

Some of the features included are:

• Download videos from YouTube, Google Video, MySpaceTV and many others
• Allows you to access YouTube videos for which you need to be 18+ years of age
• Provides the ability to cut and select the output quality of converted videos
• Uses the FFmpeg engine to convert the videos
• Plays videos downloaded in Flash
• Extremely easy to use

You also have the choice to download and convert the files to the formats for the iPod, iPhone, PSP, Cell Phone, Windows Media, Xvid, or turn the video file into an MP3.

To download YouTube Downloader, go visit youtubedownloader.altervista.org, and hit the, “download now!” banner there.  You’ll be glad you did.

WordPress is a great publishing platform to use when you want to circulate your own collection of video or images on the Web.  Thanks to a few great plugins, you can take your dull text-based blog and really snaz it up with some great internet imagery.  Want to great a photo gallery?  Want to plug YouTube into your web site?  I have collected twenty of the best multimedia plugins for you to use with your own WordPress powered web site.

Page Flip Image Gallery – Flipping Book plugin helps you to create Image Gallery with Page Flip effects on your WordPress blog.

Post videos and photo galleries – Post your videos and photo galleries/flash slideshows easily and in seconds.

NextGEN Gallery – NextGEN Gallery is a full integrated Image Gallery plugin for WordPress with a Flash slideshow option.

WordTube – WordTube is your Media Center plugin for WordPress.

Flickr Photo Album – This Flickr plugin for WordPress will allow you to pull in your Flickr photosets and display them as albums on your WordPress site.

Lightbox 2 – Plugin used to overlay images on the current page into neat Javascript-powered overlay popups.

Smart YouTube – Smart YouTube plugin allows you to insert full featured YouTube videos into your post, comments and in RSS feed.

SEO Friendly Images – SEO Friendly Images automatically adds alt and title attributes to all your images. Improves traffic from search results and makes the tags w3c/xHTML.

Thumbnail Viewer – A minimalist image viewer with an effect similar to Lightbox JS, only much faster with a whole lot less Javascript.

Flash Video Player – The flash video plugin for WordPress allows the addition of video (and other media) to a WordPress website using standards-compliant markup

PhotoXhibit – PhotoXhibit provides an interface to set up gallery widgets using Picasa / Flickr / SmugMug / WordPress Uploads and jQuery.

Shutter Reloaded – Darkens the current page and displays an image on top (like Lightbox, Thickbox, etc.), but is a lot smaller (10KB) and faster.

WordPress Video Plugin – A filter for WordPress that displays videos from many video services. Enter [videosite id] at a post and you will see a video.

Random Image Selector – Selects a random image from a specified folder, and provides.

podPress – A dream plugin for Podcasters using WordPress.

Yet Another Photoblog – Convert your WordPress 2.5+ installation into a full featured photoblog in virtually no time.

PhotoSmash Galleries – PhotoSmash – user contributable photo galleries for WordPress pages and posts with options. Auto-add galleries or specify.

All in One Video Pack – Easily add full video capabilities to your blog.

WordPress Media Flickr – You can post with Flickr photo, on visual editor toolbar.It’s very interactive interface than other plugins.

TubePress – Displays gorgeous YouTube and Vimeo galleries in your posts, pages, and/or sidebar. Please visit http://tubepress.org for more info!

With any mixture of the above plugins for WordPress, your web site will be taken from a text-based bore to a multimedia powerhouse.  Have any other suggestions for plugins I might have missed?  Leave your thoughts in the comments!