The Web as Memorial

Until the writers’ strike in Hollywood is over–who knew it would go on this long?–BoomTown has decided to offer suggestions about stuff to watch.

One of the most interesting wrinkles on the Web over the last several years has been the near instant ability to create tribute videos for all sorts of reasons, most of which are an amalgam of pictures or snippets of videos that are set to music.

That’s been especially true in the cases of those who have died and especially with celebrities.

The death of Heath Ledger, of course, has been no exception. There are currently about 4,500 videos related to the actor that have been posted on YouTube, for example, over the last week alone. Some of the tributes have already garnered hundreds of thousands of views.

Here are two of the top videos, along with a music video Ledger directed himself for a Ben Harper song called “Morning Yearning,” at the bottom: