Watercolor, ice climbing, underwater basketweaving — you can pay someone to teach you (or your kids) anything these days — and now, how to YouTube.

A couple years ago, we wrote about Pitzer College offering a media studies class on YouTube. There’s also Kansas State cultural anthropologist Michael Wesch, who’s become something of a social media celebrity for his video reports on the web, which often focus on YouTube. But if you’re looking for a little summer extra credit or personal growth, check out these online video workshops, both of which hit our inbox in the last day.

In both these instances, you’ll have to go to New York (but c’mon, NYC is lovely in the summer). First, “From You to YouTube” is a summer camp for young adults ages 12 to 18. Forget campfires and archery, bring your working knowledge of Mac computers. Held at the Manhattan Edit Workshop in August, the camp costs a hefty $2,000.

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Quick: What’s the newest hybrid sensation that combines video games, television programming and social aspects? Is it:

X: 1 vs. 1oo on Xbox Live
A: Twittering With The Stars
B: Donkey Kong’s Digg for Dollars

If you said “X”, then you’d be right. Of course, savvy Xbox players might have been tipped off since the X, A and B controller buttons are used to answer questions in the Live version of 1 vs. 100. Microsoft launched the game in late May, but I just got around to participating in a session last night. Players simply show up at the pre-scheduled “on air” time and play for free. In my 30-minute episode, over 15,000 people were logged on and collectively we were “The Mob.” Each of our Xbox Live avatars were shown in the mob and we could even control our virtual selves to a point; pressing the Y button repeatedly shows excitement, while moving the left stick can be used to taunt.

Unlike the original television show, you can answer questions incorrectly and still stay in the mob. You don’t, however, gain points for wrong answers and there are incentives for speed as well as answering consecutive questions correctly. The more incorrect answers in the mob, the more points you earn with a correct answer. Questions are answered in sets of 10 and during the commercial break, you can see how you stack up by viewing your stats.

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Can the folks at Netflix actually see the future or something? Because it’s seriously impressive how narrowly out of reach they made the margin of improvement for their recommendation algorithm contest. Established in late 2006, the Netflix Prize promises $1 million to the first entrant that can improve its predictions of how members will feel about movies by 10 percent. And since then, leading teams have edged closer and closer to approaching that limit, but stalled out just 10ths of a percent away from the prize.

Now, a combination of four top teams has apparently finally crossed the magic 10. BellKor’s Pragmatic Chaos submitted today a 10.05 percent improvement on the recommendation system. Other teams have 30 days to try to displace them, but if not, we finally have a winner!