Online video used to be so cumbersome and pathetic. But now I just love it. You can see pretty much anything you want. It's a brave new world.

In celebration of the majesty that is online video, I'm doing two things here at TrueHoop to make things a little more video-friendly.

The first is pretty mundane, and a no-brainer. I should have done this ages ago. I made a new category called "video" over there on the right. From now on whenever I link to or embed video, I'll stick it in that there category. That way, of course, if you want to see some good/funny/embarrassing basketball videos, you can find them in one place.

The other move I'm really excited about. At that Networked Journalism Summit on Wednesday, I learned about TV Jersey. They do a clever thing where they ask people to recommend videos from YouTube, then feature the best of them on their main site. Simple right? Instead of a blogger or some editors combing through YouTube, why not all of us?

Hope you're ready to start recommending videos.

I just started a TrueHoop group on YouTube. Anyone can join (for now, and it will stay that way unless things get crazy, which they might). Basically, what you do is join the group, and then whenever you see a basketball-related video on YouTube that you think other TrueHoop readers would like, you click the little button under the video player called "Groups." Then it'll let you assign that video, with one more click, to the TrueHoop group.

It's really easy and fast. You could start right now and be joined up and adding videos in under a minute, I'd bet.

I already stuck a few favorites in there to start things going. I'll add more as I find them. And I envision it working two ways: Just visiting that group, seeing all the videos you recommend, should be rewarding enough. Then the best of that stuff, of course, I'll be showing or linking from TrueHoop.

UPDATE: As of an hour or so after I posted this, the group already has 30+ members and 70+ videos. Fun to watch! Nice going! This is cool!