QuickTime Active X Plugin: How to embed quicktime movies for maximum compatibility.
Youthink!: "Youthink! invites young people to explore the research, knowledge and experience gathered by World Bank experts on issues like poverty, development, and conflict" First glance looks like a good site.
Dowbrigade News:: "The technology exists now to allow you to get back from the bars at 1 am and then turn on your TiVo to watch 20 minutes of live CNN followed by a 20-minute condensation of the NBC evening news (no commercials) followed by a 20-minute compendium consisting of 5 minutes of Instapundit, 5 minutes of Scripting News, 5 minutes from Adam Curry and 5 minutes from Dowbrigade. Or perhaps more realistically (since 5 minutes of air time is a lot to fill up) 2 minutes each from our top 10 favorite video-blogs."
Daily Experience: A Video Blog: Harper Goes Crazy on the Couch A good videoblog - my style. The only thing I wonder: if you are creating a short video consisting of 2 scenes, isn't it better to have 2 separate video entries? Makes it easier to scan if every entry is a simple atomic scene.
Slashdot | Are Video Blogs Ready For Prime Time?:
- "with all the far more provocative reality TV out there, who's gonna watch Linus recompile his kernel?"
- "it wouldn't be easily searchable or easy to catalog." Partly solved by mixing video with text entries.
- "I don't have to render a video stream. I don't have to do any editing beyond proofreading, and spellchecking. Upload is near instant. Download is too. And people can read it at their liesure. What advantage does video bring to the table?" Which is, of course, exactly the question.
I am thinking aggregation may be even more important with videoblogs than with text blogs.
- "Lets say that you produce a 10 minute piece a day, and that 500 people tune in each day. Lets say that you put your video in a postage sized window and it comes out to 1MB. Thats half a GB a day.
The current rates for bandwidth at this scale are about $1/GB of transfer. You will be spending about $180 a year for bandwidth for just 500 people."
To which I respond: 4 US$ a day for 100.000 people is two beers. Change your videoblogging style. And some of the new P2P technologies will help.
ipowerweb has a good bandwidth deal: 40 Gig (and 800MB storage) starting at US$8 a month. That's 20 cents per Gig.
- "the real problems with video blogging have to do with the nature of video (and not the problem of bandwidth.)
[1] Text is random access which means that as a reader, i can scan through someone's text blog and read it as fast or as slow as i wish, and instantly skip the parts I don't want to read. Video is linear which means that in order to consume the ideas presented, you have to scan audio, text, and images in order even if you don't want to."
Yes Yes Yes. That's why I'm trying to figure out the native language of videoblogs.
- "[2] While it will take you ten minutes to produce a compelling text paragraph with links and some light editing before you post, It takes exponentially more time to create the equivalent video "paragraph."
Good observation again. That's why I'm figuring out the workflow. That's why I say "No editing".
- "Video blogs will never catch on for the same reason people hate voicemail after using email"
Andromeda "is the simple and smart MP3 server for Windows, Linux, and Mac OS X. It's great as a personal net-jukebox, as part of a public Web site, or over a private network." Might be useful. "If you have a basic Web site and are capable of copying MP3s and the Andromeda script (PHP or ASP) into a folder on your server, you can offer streaming or downloadable music on the Internet." It's a (free for evalutation, $35) PHP script. It can be configured to work with RealMedia. How about Quicktime? Not sure what the advantage really is though?
- "Video isn't the best suited medium for blogging for a number of reasons: it's very hard to skip around in to find what you want, it's a bandwidth hog compared to text or even audio, many Internet-specific nuances are lost (the lack of links is the most glaring of these, although the fact that nobody can say "^_^" is an upside), and very few of us actually have engaging personae in real life."
Again - that's why we need to find that language.
- "It would interesting to see video clips that people had captured from television or movies and analyze (in traditional text), or the clips edit together in illuminating ways ("here's a montage of shots from all the movies that feature James Cameron's recurring foot stepping onto ground/crushing object scene"). "
Unrelated News: Video Blog day, take that AudBlog!: My style videoblogging: "I left my apartment this afternoon with my sister's MiniDV camera in hand and taped whenever I had a thought.
[...]
All in all it was fun to try it out. With the shooting/capture/edits/compression taking just over 15 minutes per clip to get done, it was not bad. If you are just doing one or two it'll be fine. But it still took too long for it to be a realistic thing to do everyday. Until there's an easier way to streamline the process I'll keep this idea as a fun little thing I'll do every now and then."
This might help with videoblogging bandwidth concerns. Not P2P, but free caching. FreeCache: "While keeping their big file on their webhost, the RockLobsters change the URL on their webpage to point to: http://freecache.org/http://www.rocklobsters.com/videos/my-new-rock-video.mpg When a user clicks on this, the user downloads the file from a nearby machine on their ISP's network, and
the user is happy because it was fast."
Would this work for videobloggers? Other options are BitTorrent ("You can link to the .torrent file using an ordinary hyperlink") or Overnet ("You can embed links in webpages that will initiate downloads within Overnet.").
mnot's Web log: Five Favourite Protocol Design Papers
Getting started watching videoblogs (no guarantees about quality): joitv | demandmedia.net | silversow.com | Vidblogs.com | avoidinglife.com | video-link.com
So as I'm watching some of these blogs, a few observations:
- It takes time to watch a video blog (no easy scanning).
- Many post little movies. That's not what it's about, at least not for me.
- I like inline movies embedded in text story. Helps with the scanning.
TIME.com: See Me, Blog Me -- Apr. 19, 2004: "Garfield belongs to a small but growing legion of video bloggers, or vloggers, who are turning the Web into a medium in which someday anyone could conceivably mount original programming, bypassing the usual broadcast networks and cable outlets."
Video blogs go mobile in 3G trial: "mobile phone company Orange unveiled plans to offer customers of its soon to be launched 3G service the ability to file the next generation of blogs - video diaries."
Random thoughts:
What's the language of videoblogging? Blogging is not journalism - it's a personal voice. When searching for the language of a new medium, it helps to think about the specific strenghts and weaknesses of the medium.
The first photographers tried to imitate painting. It took decades before the language of photography was born: capture the moment. Frame the world through your viewfinder. These are the unique strenghts of photography. There are many movements within photography, many languages, but there is clearly a basic language that fits the medium best.
So what's that language for videoblogging.
Let's look at some of the strenghts of videoblogging:
- It's personal self-publishing. You can say whatever you want, no approval needed (like in a printed publication).
- It's quick. Blogging means you can get something online fast.
- It reaches people. Blogging means you can reach small or large numbers of people.
Wait a sec - we're talking about blogging here. The language of videoblogging will be based in the language of blogging.
What's specific to videoblogging? It uses video. Let's see what videoblogging is not:
- It's not journalism - although it can have elements of journalism.
- It's not movies. No extensive editing.
- It's not video art.
That doesn't really help. I spent an afternoon on Sunday talking to my friend Jay about what videoblogging really is. Here's my manifesto (for now):
1. No editing. Editing takes too long. Selection is the only editing allowed.
2. Tiny movies are moments. Long movies will kill my bandwidth, so tiny movies are a must.
3. Quantity over quality. It's blogging after all. Post as you think. Unfinished pieces.
4. Movieblogs are conversations. The strenght of videoblogging is that you create an audience. That's where using the old fashioned languages of documentary, ... falls down. The tools exist, but the distribution doesn't. No audience. So work that conversation.
Some more ideas from that conversation (which I wish I would have videoblogged):
- Developing the language will be done by insiders of the old languages (TV, movie, ...), who can deconstruct these languages, together with the very young who have the creativity to build upon the work of these pioneers. (Agree?)
- Bandwidth preservation is important.
- Optimizing the workflow is important.
- Will the third world videoblog?
- Why have the tools to make movies not being taken advantage of on a greater scale? Most cameras are being used for home movies. We thought it was the lack of distribution - with a home movie, at least you have an audience.
'
Finally: why haven't I seen Bush's latest speech with a commentary track by insightful people as a downloadable file? It'd be more entertaining and interesting than watching the live speech on TV.
The Vogma manifesto:
- a vog respects bandwidth
- a vog is not streaming video (this is not the reinvention of television)
- a vog uses performative video and/or audio
- a vog is personal
- a vog uses available technology
- a vog experiments with writerly video and audio
- a vog lies between writing and the televisual
- a vog explores the proximate distance of words and moving media
ZZ/OSS Installer - SitePoint PHP Blog: an excellent idea: a generic "installer" application for PHP scripts. But: "With the available releases, while playing "I'm a dumb user", was unable to install the installer.", and "writing installers for PHP, the installer itself also being PHP, is notoriously difficult."
I really pray they make this into a useful tool, even for small scripts (not just a developer plaything). Installing even a simple PHP script is still too hard, a few exceptions aside. This beginners tutorial explains things a bit.
Boxes and Arrows: Remote Contextual Inquiry: A Technique to Improve Enterprise Software: "Remote Contextual Inquiry captures the computer screen of a person working with their version of the software on their own computer. To get started, the usability professional contacts the end user via telephone and web conferencing."
A misleading name: it has little or nothing to do with contextual inquiry. If only the information architecture profession would get over its enchantment with cool names (just look at the name of the profession for starters!).
The article states "In addition, interactions with supporting software also can be captured", which is probably why the authors think this is "contextual inquiry". But reading a bit further, they say "you can ask directed questions throughout or at the end of the session". They totally miss the master-apprentice relationship step, which is the defining characteristic of the contextual inquiry method. Good article, bad label, which is ironic considering the (assumed) profession of the author.
Using confusing names like this just hurts interoperability with related professions and existing research and understanding.
I am currently using similar techniques for remote exploratory usability testing (this term sounds less cool but conforms more to standard definitions). It works surprisingly well, considering you are remote. We are talking to doctors in their practice - a typical example of a hard to reach group.
More News: "the 80/20 split between developer use of REST and SOAP interfaces to the Amazon catalogue"
Jeremy Allaire's Radio: "Over the past several days a number of us Macromedians conducted an experiment by using a simple FlashCom video communications applications to blog about the Macromedia DevCon developer's conference.
[...]
The experiment was a success. There were 27 video blog entries (of varying content and quality), and over 51,000 total views of all of these videos."
Some thoughts on bandwidth: first of all, P2P is the future. Right now though, I will stick with small movies, one or two per post. I'll keep them under 200K (many will be under 100K), so bandwidth should not be a problem. I pay 1.5 US$ per additional Gig, so if I go over my allowance, and have say 10.000 people see 2 videos, joint bandwidth 250K, that is (10.000 x 250)/1.000.000, which adds up to 2.5 Gig, which is 4 US$. Affordable!
InfoWorld TechWatch: The Video Blog Experiment: "There are two schools of thought on video blogging. You can treat the video as if it were a story, for example, broadcasting short interview which is edited down to tell the news. Or you can use video to illustrate or serve as a companion to a story."
Right now, I like the second approach, but I'll experiment with a variety of approaches this summer.
My first videblog entry. I'm not writing much, not because I believe videoblogs shouldn't have text, but because it's late and I need to get some sleep (I edited this text the next day). I took the videos today, a beautiful day in New York City, with my Canon Powershot SD100, a pocket size photo camera.
I then optimized them with Sorenson Squeeze (I preset the squeeze settings earlier), using the trial version - that's why they have a watermark. Uploading the movies from my camera, choosing movies and optimizing took about 20 minutes. Movie sizes are 62K, 101K, 85K, 151K, 173K (not in order). Total under 600K.
Uploading them to this blog (using moveabletype) and writing the entry took about 10 minutes. Pretty good. Gotta nail that workflow.
This set of movies is called first real springday. Dumb title. Sue me.