When I started on the C9 dev team, one of the first things I did was to remove the ability for users to post embed, object and script tags. We had a couple of people abusing this feature and I wanted to lock it right down. The downside to this move was that it prevented some forms of user interaction/posts that we didn’t really mind and in some cases would even like to encourage.

As a small step towards a more community-driven future, I added support to C9 today to allow you to embed Soapbox videos in any forum post. Simple use the following markup in your post:

[soapbox video="(soapbox video id)"]

Soapbox video on Channel 9

and it will turn it into a full blown embed tag with a link to the source material underneath. The Soapbox video id is simply the GUID that appears on the permalink url (http://soapbox.msn.com/video.aspx?vid=5699dafe-d864-4d1f-976c-d5f4d9ed78db for example) for a video and also shows up in its embed code if you take a look at that as well.