Sometimes it can be useful to have a page on the blog but not necessarily listed amongst your blog archives.
A good example of this would be a links page. If you look to the left of our site, under the picture of yours truly you'll see a link titled "Blogs of Interest". This links through to this page:
http://half-a-page.blogspot.com/1970/01/links.html
As you can see from the date part of the page it claims to have been written in 1970. But if you look at the sidebar you'll see no posts older than September 2007, which was when this blog was started.
So how do you achieve this? Simple. Whilst creating the post, click on "Post Options" and set the "Post date and time" to some time in 1970. Presumably blogger recognises that posts this early are impossible and so doesn't show them in the archive list, but does allow you to view the pages if you link directly to them.
Friday, 7 March 2008
The Blogs that weren't
I don't know about you, but in the time I've been running this blog (and the ones before this) I've built up a selection of blog entries that for one reason or another remain unpublished.
Sometimes this is down to the post not going anywhere. Othertimes it is just too poor (even by my standards) to inflict on the general public. Occasionally it is one that just missed its time and now would be pretty pointless to post.
So here is a question for you:
Do you have unfinished posts? What do you do with them, keep or delete? Do you ever return to them?
Answer in the comments folks!
Sometimes this is down to the post not going anywhere. Othertimes it is just too poor (even by my standards) to inflict on the general public. Occasionally it is one that just missed its time and now would be pretty pointless to post.
So here is a question for you:
Do you have unfinished posts? What do you do with them, keep or delete? Do you ever return to them?
Answer in the comments folks!
Thursday, 6 March 2008
After a traffic increase? Some genuine things to try
After the previous two posts you may be asking yourself if it is possible to increase your readership and how should you go about it?
Well, here are some things that are worth trying.
BlogRush. You host adverts of other people blogs, they host adverts of yours. This has brought a slow but steady trickle of readers onto my blog. The good thing about this is because it ties in to your RSS feed to generate the links, the readers you get are genuine ones.
BlogCatalog. A social links site, and a pretty good one too. Join up and join in the discussions and before you know it you'll be hooked. This is bringing in an increasing number of readers and is certainly worth investing some time in.
Feedburner. Strictly speaking this may not boost your regular traffic but it certainly helps with your RSS feeds. If you are curious about how many RSS subscribers you have this will also allow you to track that. As this has been bought out by Google it may well end up integrated into Blogger.
Well, here are some things that are worth trying.
BlogRush. You host adverts of other people blogs, they host adverts of yours. This has brought a slow but steady trickle of readers onto my blog. The good thing about this is because it ties in to your RSS feed to generate the links, the readers you get are genuine ones.
BlogCatalog. A social links site, and a pretty good one too. Join up and join in the discussions and before you know it you'll be hooked. This is bringing in an increasing number of readers and is certainly worth investing some time in.
Feedburner. Strictly speaking this may not boost your regular traffic but it certainly helps with your RSS feeds. If you are curious about how many RSS subscribers you have this will also allow you to track that. As this has been bought out by Google it may well end up integrated into Blogger.
Anatomy of a Traffic Boosting Scheme
"Why post about things like T-2000?" I've been asked.
"Aren't you just boosting their popularity - and your own by signing up for them?"
These are good questions. To get the answer lets have a look at how these schemes work once you have signed up.
Step 1: The Bait
This step is important. If you want the traffic you must make people think that this has already worked for you and brought in millions of hits. You have to lie to get people to sign up via your referral link. If you tell the truth (as I have) you are unlikely to get any extra hits at all.
Step 2: The Wait
At this point you can let the "magic" happen. Providing your sales pitch is persuasive enough and you can get enough people sign up via your referrals link you should see a small boost in traffic. Maybe a dozen or so over a couple of months. If your referrals do the same your traffic will get another, slightly larger boost.
Step 3: The Disappointment
Mathematically the traffic boost should increase with each passing generation of referrals. But wait! You will only be on the list for six generations of sign-ups. The actual sign-up rates are so low (you may only get a couple) that the magic million figures are unlikely to ever be reached even if you follow the rules.
Why? Well, chances are that if you are seriously considering a scheme like this then you are on a low traffic site, probably with less than 50 hits a day. The actual percentage of your visitors who will actually want to sign up via your referrals link is even lower.
If you are assuming that you'll get additional traffic from search engines then think again. Any searches that would bring people to your site are so packed with other people doing the same thing that the chances of anyone clicking on your site are somewhere between low and laughable.
. . . .
So back to the original question. Why blog about this? Well, if you believe the majority of posts on this you'd imagine that you will be gaining millions of readers and making a fortune in advertising revenue. You don't find as many posts telling the truth about these schemes.
At best you may get a small boost to your site, but probably only a temporary one. At worst you could find yourself in violation of Googles Terms and Conditions for Google Ads and have your account closed losing you what little money you have gained.
Still think it is worth your while?
"Aren't you just boosting their popularity - and your own by signing up for them?"
These are good questions. To get the answer lets have a look at how these schemes work once you have signed up.
Step 1: The Bait
This step is important. If you want the traffic you must make people think that this has already worked for you and brought in millions of hits. You have to lie to get people to sign up via your referral link. If you tell the truth (as I have) you are unlikely to get any extra hits at all.
Step 2: The Wait
At this point you can let the "magic" happen. Providing your sales pitch is persuasive enough and you can get enough people sign up via your referrals link you should see a small boost in traffic. Maybe a dozen or so over a couple of months. If your referrals do the same your traffic will get another, slightly larger boost.
Step 3: The Disappointment
Mathematically the traffic boost should increase with each passing generation of referrals. But wait! You will only be on the list for six generations of sign-ups. The actual sign-up rates are so low (you may only get a couple) that the magic million figures are unlikely to ever be reached even if you follow the rules.
Why? Well, chances are that if you are seriously considering a scheme like this then you are on a low traffic site, probably with less than 50 hits a day. The actual percentage of your visitors who will actually want to sign up via your referrals link is even lower.
If you are assuming that you'll get additional traffic from search engines then think again. Any searches that would bring people to your site are so packed with other people doing the same thing that the chances of anyone clicking on your site are somewhere between low and laughable.
. . . .
So back to the original question. Why blog about this? Well, if you believe the majority of posts on this you'd imagine that you will be gaining millions of readers and making a fortune in advertising revenue. You don't find as many posts telling the truth about these schemes.
At best you may get a small boost to your site, but probably only a temporary one. At worst you could find yourself in violation of Googles Terms and Conditions for Google Ads and have your account closed losing you what little money you have gained.
Still think it is worth your while?
Wednesday, 5 March 2008
Dramatically increase your visitors - yeah right!
This year I've decided to try and boost my blog audience. Now, I've got to admit that my stats are slowly increasing, but I'd kind of like my daily viewing figures to be in the triple digits or higher.
So I've started looking at ways of boosting my readers. Some of them like BlogRush I've already said about as much as I need to (they don't really do much). Others (like BlogCatalog) actually do seem to help bring some visitors in, providing you actually take part in the various discussions.
Well, here is another way to boost your earnings beyond your wildest dreams: T-2000 Ultra!
Let's take a look at some of the claims, and as it is a free service let's also see how it works.
Explode Your Income!
Boost Your Sales by upto 4000%
And Drive 1 million Visitors to Your
Site Every Month!
All Totally FREE!
Any alarm bells ringing yet? Apart from abuses against capital letters, punctuation marks, spelling and grammar, does any of this sound too good to be true?
Damn right!
So how does this work in practice.
Well, once you've got past the scam-style verbiage (not to mention the poor spelling) there are six adverts that need clicking on, these should be opened in a new window and will take you to someone elses site, but with a black border at the top of the page. After ten seconds or so an "Ad Code" will be generated which you use as part of your sign-up process.
Fill in the six required codes, enter your details (and those of your one-line advert) and click submit. As a side note, all the sites listed were, without exception, Make Money Online type sites. As if I'm surprised.
At this point you'll need to confirm your name and email address again before the confirmation emails are sent to you.
If you can't find the confirmation email then it's probably in your junk folder (take that as a hint folks!).
Now, it could be that this is entirely on the level and that millions of readers are going to land on my site any minute now, start reading my blogs and I'll be an overnight success.If you believe that to be the case (and I'll provide updates to this over the next 30 days) then feel free to click the referrals link below and sign up too. I certainly wouldn't recommend it though.
Warning - Referrals Link - Warning
What are you waiting for? Millions of readers are waiting for you.
As if!
Remember kids: We are willing to sign up for crap so that you don't have to!
Update:
It has been pointed out to me that this sort of thing isn't a good idea if you want to use Adsense on your site. Although you may increase your page views (although I have my doubts about that) any increase would almost certainly end in you loosing the chance of using Adsense in the future. Plus, it would be a bit dishonest now wouldn't it?
So, rather than not blogging on things like this (and personally I think that it is a story that could do with being told) I've taken off all the advertising from this blog.
Once things return to normal (and I'm pretty sure that it won't take too long for that) then I'll consider putting the ads back on.
Just like I did with BlogRush I'll make weekly posts updating on how well (or not) this is doing. If anything amazing happens between then I'll be sure to let you know.
Update 2:
Just to keep track on the stats I've added a statscounter link to the blog. I'm keeping the results hidden (for now) and will reveal the number of page impressions at the end of the 30 days.
Update 3 - 12 hours on:
Well, there has been some extra traffic - all from BlogCatalog. Even then we are only talking about an extra five or six visitors. So from the point of view of people reading this post - great! As far as the extra traffic gained by T-2000 - not so great. No extra traffic at all.
Update 4 - 48 hours on:
There has been no increase to the traffic by having the link etc on the site (although telling people not to click on it probably weights things against me) so I've cut this short and removed the referrals link.
I'll decide the future of adverts on this site later on, but for now remember, as a rule of thumb for any scheme to increase your traffic: if it seems too good to be true, then it probably is!
So I've started looking at ways of boosting my readers. Some of them like BlogRush I've already said about as much as I need to (they don't really do much). Others (like BlogCatalog) actually do seem to help bring some visitors in, providing you actually take part in the various discussions.
Well, here is another way to boost your earnings beyond your wildest dreams: T-2000 Ultra!
Let's take a look at some of the claims, and as it is a free service let's also see how it works.
Explode Your Income!
Boost Your Sales by upto 4000%
And Drive 1 million Visitors to Your
Site Every Month!
All Totally FREE!
Any alarm bells ringing yet? Apart from abuses against capital letters, punctuation marks, spelling and grammar, does any of this sound too good to be true?
Damn right!
So how does this work in practice.
Well, once you've got past the scam-style verbiage (not to mention the poor spelling) there are six adverts that need clicking on, these should be opened in a new window and will take you to someone elses site, but with a black border at the top of the page. After ten seconds or so an "Ad Code" will be generated which you use as part of your sign-up process.
Fill in the six required codes, enter your details (and those of your one-line advert) and click submit. As a side note, all the sites listed were, without exception, Make Money Online type sites. As if I'm surprised.
At this point you'll need to confirm your name and email address again before the confirmation emails are sent to you.
If you can't find the confirmation email then it's probably in your junk folder (take that as a hint folks!).
Now, it could be that this is entirely on the level and that millions of readers are going to land on my site any minute now, start reading my blogs and I'll be an overnight success.
Warning - Referrals Link - Warning
What are you waiting for? Millions of readers are waiting for you.
As if!
Remember kids: We are willing to sign up for crap so that you don't have to!
Update:
It has been pointed out to me that this sort of thing isn't a good idea if you want to use Adsense on your site. Although you may increase your page views (although I have my doubts about that) any increase would almost certainly end in you loosing the chance of using Adsense in the future. Plus, it would be a bit dishonest now wouldn't it?
So, rather than not blogging on things like this (and personally I think that it is a story that could do with being told) I've taken off all the advertising from this blog.
Once things return to normal (and I'm pretty sure that it won't take too long for that) then I'll consider putting the ads back on.
Just like I did with BlogRush I'll make weekly posts updating on how well (or not) this is doing. If anything amazing happens between then I'll be sure to let you know.
Update 2:
Just to keep track on the stats I've added a statscounter link to the blog. I'm keeping the results hidden (for now) and will reveal the number of page impressions at the end of the 30 days.
Update 3 - 12 hours on:
Well, there has been some extra traffic - all from BlogCatalog. Even then we are only talking about an extra five or six visitors. So from the point of view of people reading this post - great! As far as the extra traffic gained by T-2000 - not so great. No extra traffic at all.
Update 4 - 48 hours on:
There has been no increase to the traffic by having the link etc on the site (although telling people not to click on it probably weights things against me) so I've cut this short and removed the referrals link.
I'll decide the future of adverts on this site later on, but for now remember, as a rule of thumb for any scheme to increase your traffic: if it seems too good to be true, then it probably is!
R.I.P. Gary Gygax
E. Gary Gygax, the father of Dungeons and Dragons, died on Tuesday aged 69.
Its hard to know what to say about someone who has had such a monumental impact on our geek culture, and was instrumental in the birth of Fantasy Role Playing Games.
Without him my early teenage years would certainly have been a lot less fun.
Gary, we salute you.
Its hard to know what to say about someone who has had such a monumental impact on our geek culture, and was instrumental in the birth of Fantasy Role Playing Games.
Without him my early teenage years would certainly have been a lot less fun.
Gary, we salute you.
Monday, 3 March 2008
The Case for Adverts on Sites
There is a small but vocal (i.e. loudmouthed) section of the internet community that is dead set against adverts on any site. Apparently the thought of getting any money from your hobby is distasteful, greedy and shows a lack of pride and integrity.
Bullshit.
Now, there are some sites out there, a large number of them in fact, that are there purely to make money. I've written about them before, they are a plague on our digital landscape on a par with email chain-letters (send $1 to each of the people on the list, as seen on Oprah!) and there is nothing that can justify their continued existence.
How about for regular sites though. Why do I have adverts on my sites? Simple. It gives people a chance to show support in a meaningful way. It is the equivalent of a tips jar on the counter of your local cafe. If you like the site, click on a link, but you don't have to if you don't want to.
I've experimented with using a PayPal tips jar, which in the time it has been on my main site has yet to garner a single donation, and yet I've had plenty of people emailing me about how they like my games, and thousands of downloads from around the world (even appearing on the magazine cover DVDs), so it's not entirely down to unpopularity.
On the other hand I have had people clicking the adverts on the site. Not many, but still more than the tips jar. Before anyone gets the wrong idea about me somehow making a fortune from this, in the last three months I've ended up with $10 in the old adsense account. At the current rate it'll take a couple of years before I reach the magic $100 for a payout.
So if you want to talk about integrity just remember, I, and many people like me, are giving you something for nothing: in my case my writing (via http://half-a-page.blogspot.com) and freeware games (via http://dans-remakes.sytes.net).
You can read my stuff, download the games and share them with your friends legally and for nothing. Gratis. Free. If, however, you feel like saying "thanks", then there are measures in place to do that.
And that, to quote Stone Cold Steve Austin, is the bottom line.
Bullshit.
Now, there are some sites out there, a large number of them in fact, that are there purely to make money. I've written about them before, they are a plague on our digital landscape on a par with email chain-letters (send $1 to each of the people on the list, as seen on Oprah!) and there is nothing that can justify their continued existence.
How about for regular sites though. Why do I have adverts on my sites? Simple. It gives people a chance to show support in a meaningful way. It is the equivalent of a tips jar on the counter of your local cafe. If you like the site, click on a link, but you don't have to if you don't want to.
I've experimented with using a PayPal tips jar, which in the time it has been on my main site has yet to garner a single donation, and yet I've had plenty of people emailing me about how they like my games, and thousands of downloads from around the world (even appearing on the magazine cover DVDs), so it's not entirely down to unpopularity.
On the other hand I have had people clicking the adverts on the site. Not many, but still more than the tips jar. Before anyone gets the wrong idea about me somehow making a fortune from this, in the last three months I've ended up with $10 in the old adsense account. At the current rate it'll take a couple of years before I reach the magic $100 for a payout.
So if you want to talk about integrity just remember, I, and many people like me, are giving you something for nothing: in my case my writing (via http://half-a-page.blogspot.com) and freeware games (via http://dans-remakes.sytes.net).
You can read my stuff, download the games and share them with your friends legally and for nothing. Gratis. Free. If, however, you feel like saying "thanks", then there are measures in place to do that.
And that, to quote Stone Cold Steve Austin, is the bottom line.
Saturday, 1 March 2008
A difficult subject
I'm going to do something a little different from my usual posts here, so if you are looking for something lighthearted, or about gaming, blogging, or any of my usual stuff then have a look through the archives because. . . . . .
Well. . . . . .
This is going to be difficult for me to write, and probably more difficult for you to read, so consider yourself warned.
. . . . .
. . . . .
. . . . .
Still with me?
Ok.
Deep breath.
. . . . .
The year was 1999. At that point my wife and I had not long moved into our new mortgate commitment and were trying to start a family. When I say trying, it is more accurate to say that we'd been trying for a couple of years without any success, so when she finally became pregnant it was the biggest thrill of our lives.
We couldn't wait to tell everyone the news, and spent the time leading up to the twelve week scan on cloud nine. We chose names, started looking at baby clothes, and were looking at a future with a new child, maybe even twins. Who knows?
Life, however, doesn't always go the way you want it to.
"I'm sorry, but we can't find a heart beat."
It only took a single sentence to destroy our world entirely.
What happened next is pretty much a blur. I told the nurse that she was wrong. She had to be wrong. She couldn't be right. It wasn't fair. Our baby couldn't be dead.
I know that I cried.
We were taken to a side room where a midwife explained what was to be done next. I can't remember exactly what she said, but the upshot of it was that we had to let nature take its course, but if it hadn't within the next couple of weeks then they would perform an evacuation to remove what would have been our first child.
I do remember that she tried to console us. She said words to the effect that these things happen, especially early in pregnancy. That there had probably been something wrong with the foetus. That things just weren't meant to be this time. It would be easier to fall pregnant again after, especially in the first few months after the miscarriage.
It didn't really help.
We returned home together and spent the next couple of days in the deepest, darkest despair that we've ever experienced in our lives.
This part of the story does have a happy ending though. A couple of months later my wife did fall pregnant again, and although the pregnancy didn't exactly go smoothly, our first child was born in April of 2000.
A couple of years later, after another not-exactly-easy pregnancy, our second child was born.
We weren't planning on having any more children. And then, last week, we found that she was pregnant again. We took the test twice, positive both times. No doubt about it.
This took a bit of getting used to, but I found that I was actually quite excited about it. We both were.
Then yesterday she had "a bleed". Not a heavy one, as it turned out. Just a few spots. Certainly enough to scare the life out of us both, and have us thinking the worst.
Now this did happen on previous occasions too, so we are both still looking on the positive site that things are probably still ok. A small bleed at this time could just be the embryo embedding itself in the wall of the womb, we won't know for a while whether things are progressing well, or. . . . .
I'm not a particularly religious man, but I'm praying to whoever may be listening that things go smoothly this time.
Well. . . . . .
This is going to be difficult for me to write, and probably more difficult for you to read, so consider yourself warned.
. . . . .
. . . . .
. . . . .
Still with me?
Ok.
Deep breath.
. . . . .
The year was 1999. At that point my wife and I had not long moved into our new mortgate commitment and were trying to start a family. When I say trying, it is more accurate to say that we'd been trying for a couple of years without any success, so when she finally became pregnant it was the biggest thrill of our lives.
We couldn't wait to tell everyone the news, and spent the time leading up to the twelve week scan on cloud nine. We chose names, started looking at baby clothes, and were looking at a future with a new child, maybe even twins. Who knows?
Life, however, doesn't always go the way you want it to.
"I'm sorry, but we can't find a heart beat."
It only took a single sentence to destroy our world entirely.
What happened next is pretty much a blur. I told the nurse that she was wrong. She had to be wrong. She couldn't be right. It wasn't fair. Our baby couldn't be dead.
I know that I cried.
We were taken to a side room where a midwife explained what was to be done next. I can't remember exactly what she said, but the upshot of it was that we had to let nature take its course, but if it hadn't within the next couple of weeks then they would perform an evacuation to remove what would have been our first child.
I do remember that she tried to console us. She said words to the effect that these things happen, especially early in pregnancy. That there had probably been something wrong with the foetus. That things just weren't meant to be this time. It would be easier to fall pregnant again after, especially in the first few months after the miscarriage.
It didn't really help.
We returned home together and spent the next couple of days in the deepest, darkest despair that we've ever experienced in our lives.
This part of the story does have a happy ending though. A couple of months later my wife did fall pregnant again, and although the pregnancy didn't exactly go smoothly, our first child was born in April of 2000.
A couple of years later, after another not-exactly-easy pregnancy, our second child was born.
We weren't planning on having any more children. And then, last week, we found that she was pregnant again. We took the test twice, positive both times. No doubt about it.
This took a bit of getting used to, but I found that I was actually quite excited about it. We both were.
Then yesterday she had "a bleed". Not a heavy one, as it turned out. Just a few spots. Certainly enough to scare the life out of us both, and have us thinking the worst.
Now this did happen on previous occasions too, so we are both still looking on the positive site that things are probably still ok. A small bleed at this time could just be the embryo embedding itself in the wall of the womb, we won't know for a while whether things are progressing well, or. . . . .
I'm not a particularly religious man, but I'm praying to whoever may be listening that things go smoothly this time.
Read i.ytimg.com
I'm not sure how often this must have been showing in the Firefox status bar, but today I noticed the message "Read i.ytimg.com". That is certainly an unusual message to get.
Visiting i.ytimg.com redirects you to a secure https:// version of the url before giving you an unable to connect error.
Being a typical geek, rather than letting the matter lie I decided to find out what the message relates to. As it turns out the ytimg.com domain is owned by YouTube and I was playing a YouTube video at the time.
Apparently this server is used to serve thumbnail images into the YouTube player (YouTube IMaGe server).
Damn.
Another mystery solved.
Maybe I can make a conspiracy theory out of it? How about this: YouTube is sending subliminal messages via our browsers? Or this one: YouTube is run by aliens who are tracking our browsing habits to learn more about humanity before taking over the planet?
Can you come up with something more outlandish?
Update
If you are receiving the error "Reading i.ytimg.com" but some web pages aren't loading or YouTube videos won't play, then you will need to check your script blocking software (such as NoScript for FireFox) or anti-virus software (like Kapersky AntiVirus) and enable access to i.ytimg.com. Pages relying on it should then load and you'll be able to play your YouTube videos again.
Update 2
Youtube has a number of servers that pass various components into its player, so as well as i.ytimg.com you may see messages relating to s.ytimg.com (and possibly others too). An anonymous reader has posted the following link which returns the graphical "skin" for the youtube player as served by s.ytimg.com:
http://s.ytimg.com/yt/img/master-vfl44411.gif
Another example image here, this time the "upload from mobile" icon:
http://s.ytimg.com/yt/img/icn_mobileupload_29x64-vfl20830.png
It isn't just images either (at least not from s.ytimg.com):
http://s.ytimg.com/yt/swf/watch-vfl43900.swf
http://s.ytimg.com/yt/css/buttons-vfl33583.css
As has been pointed out in the comments, the "read i.ytimg.com" and "read s.ytimg.com" messages are purely a FireFox issue, but the non-working youtube video caused by anti-virus or adblocking software blocking these sites will affect other browsers too.
Update 3
John has pointed out that Google own the ytimg.com domain. The explanation for that below:
Link to original press release
Update 4
Ishino has let us know that Google's anti-phishing API also uses ytimg.com. See http://code.google.com/apis/safebrowsing/ for more details on this.
This is used by Google's HTTPFox Firefox plugin to avoid phishing sites, so you may start seeing messages such as GET http://s.ytimg.com/safebrowsing/rd/goog-malware-shavar_s_(number) or
GET http://s.ytimg.com/safebrowsing/rd/goog-phish-shavar_s_(number) presumably as it is checking the links with Google.
Visiting i.ytimg.com redirects you to a secure https:// version of the url before giving you an unable to connect error.
Being a typical geek, rather than letting the matter lie I decided to find out what the message relates to. As it turns out the ytimg.com domain is owned by YouTube and I was playing a YouTube video at the time.
Apparently this server is used to serve thumbnail images into the YouTube player (YouTube IMaGe server).
Damn.
Another mystery solved.
Maybe I can make a conspiracy theory out of it? How about this: YouTube is sending subliminal messages via our browsers? Or this one: YouTube is run by aliens who are tracking our browsing habits to learn more about humanity before taking over the planet?
Can you come up with something more outlandish?
Update
If you are receiving the error "Reading i.ytimg.com" but some web pages aren't loading or YouTube videos won't play, then you will need to check your script blocking software (such as NoScript for FireFox) or anti-virus software (like Kapersky AntiVirus) and enable access to i.ytimg.com. Pages relying on it should then load and you'll be able to play your YouTube videos again.
Update 2
Youtube has a number of servers that pass various components into its player, so as well as i.ytimg.com you may see messages relating to s.ytimg.com (and possibly others too). An anonymous reader has posted the following link which returns the graphical "skin" for the youtube player as served by s.ytimg.com:
http://s.ytimg.com/yt/img
Another example image here, this time the "upload from mobile" icon:
http://s.ytimg.com/yt/img/icn_mobileupload_29x64-vfl20830.png
It isn't just images either (at least not from s.ytimg.com):
http://s.ytimg.com/yt/swf/watch-vfl43900.swf
http://s.ytimg.com/yt/css/buttons-vfl33583.css
As has been pointed out in the comments, the "read i.ytimg.com" and "read s.ytimg.com" messages are purely a FireFox issue, but the non-working youtube video caused by anti-virus or adblocking software blocking these sites will affect other browsers too.
Update 3
John has pointed out that Google own the ytimg.com domain. The explanation for that below:
Link to original press release
Update 4
Ishino has let us know that Google's anti-phishing API also uses ytimg.com. See http://code.google.com/apis/safebrowsing/ for more details on this.
This is used by Google's HTTPFox Firefox plugin to avoid phishing sites, so you may start seeing messages such as GET http://s.ytimg.com/safebrowsing/rd/goog-malware-shavar_s_(number) or
GET http://s.ytimg.com/safebrowsing/rd/goog-phish-shavar_s_(number) presumably as it is checking the links with Google.
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