You know how video is the latest and greatest thing on the internet?

I hate it when marketers use it for promotion.

I'd much rather get a PDF file that I can skim through than having to sit and watch/listen to someone talking in a video for half an hour or more.

If it looks like good information, then I can go back and read it more thoroughly but if it isn't I don't have to invest a lot of time.

I need to actually watch the video to see if it's worth watching, at which point I can't get my time back if it isn't.

I'm sure I miss a lot of useful information because I'm just not willing to invest the time before I know if it's worth it. But the people who use those videos to promote stuff are also missing out on sales - from me at least - because they don't offer me a better (ie. faster) way to digest the information.

One of the things I've never understood is why the Flash player doesn't let you speed up the playback so you can get through the video faster.

Quicktime does this, and that's one of the reasons I like it when people offer a downloadable video file in Quicktime format. I can watch it at double-speed and get through it quicker.

Well, today I got an email from John Jonas about how to Speed up online videos.

"Perfect," I thought "Just what I've been waiting for."

So off I went to grab the software called MySpeed and wouldn't you know it?

Windows only.

I guess I'll have to wait a little longer for something like this for the Mac, or do my video watching in a virtual Windows machine.

But if you're like most of the rest of the world and use Windows, you might want to check it out. You could get back several hours a week, just by watching marketing videos at double-time.