One of the example applications in my new book, Head First PHP & MySQL, involves mining YouTube for video content and placing it in your own web pages. In the book, the application is developed to help a guy named Owen find his dog, Fang, who was abducted by aliens. So Owen builds an application called Aliens Abducted Me, that allows people to submit their own abduction stories. And it also pulls alien abduction videos from YouTube to display so that users can help Owen keep an eye out for Fang sightings.

My friend Elvis Wilson helped us put together the alien abduction videos, which are hosted on YouTube and accessible through the Aliens Abducted Me application. And there are more to come. Yes, they're very silly, but the point is to reveal how powerful it can be using someone else's content (in this case videos on YouTube) to make your own application more interesting and useful. Here's one of the videos: