Slashdot Mirror
Are Video Blogs Ready For Prime Time?
Markmarkmark writes "Is video blogging ready for prime-time? Can Internet talking 'blog-heads' beat the talking heads on Fox? Is the next Andy Rooney-type commentator going to be a /.er? With new technology and a little creativity, this MSNBC article today thinks so. 'The big problems have been setting up lights and a camera in my study properly, so that I don't look dead, or hung over.'" The article is about the software / hardware it takes to set up a microstudio; the author does not really explore much about the video-blogging implications -- but you can.
That would make a good video blog
Is it possible that this whole "blogging" craze has been the fastest flash-in-the-pan to hit the technology world yet? Dare I dream that the even the uber-geeks and posers have already come to the conclusion that "hey, you know what? I'm not really that exciting, and nobody cares what I had for breakfast today"?
"Blogging" has graphically illustrated for me the old adage, "Just because you can, doesn't mean you shouldn't."
Like woodworking? Build your own picture frames.
Let's all have a whine about the word `blog'
Umm... no thanks.
"To any truly impartial person, it would be obvious that I am right."
Don't camgirls with LiveJournals already do something like this?
I have trouble looking at myself in the mirror. Even thinking about people being able to see me talking in a demur tone to a webcam just makes me shudder. Through the internet is nightmarish.
I think text blogs (not even pictures) are much better - it depends on your ability to describe things well, and it puts a comfortable anonymity for you *and* your reader. Who was it that said "After TV is in every american household, you will never see another president in a wheelchair"?
Granted, often a picture is worth a thousand words - but I don't think video blog is worth the bandwidth / storage area. Even pictures needs to be sorted out to the last 5% of the cream before they are put on magazines, etc - video is just nasty. Slide show, maybe - video, no. (Just how many people go back and watch, minute my minute, their old family videos? exactly)
And yes, I blog; pretty regularly too, so maybe I don't speak with authority, I have (some) experience in this
My life in the land of the rising sun.
I just ate a bagle. It was pretty good.
I know for sure it aint my life, could it be yours? If so, why? (100 words or less :)
I like the idea. What I'm thinking about is what happens when ten thousand people start blogging and a million watches their blogs?
Can the current Internet take that kind of an onslaught?
.: Max Romantschuk
The big problems have been setting up lights and a camera in my study properly, so that I don't look dead, or hung over. But those are hardware problems, not software. The software worked perfectly right out of the box.
His initial concern is for his appearance, doesn't sound like "news for nerds" to me....
--My sig is bigger than your sig--
Does this mean we'll get Jennicam! with sound.
Joy!
People used to read. Then came television and people chose to watch the story.
But at least we geeks had computers. They were arcane and baffling to most people. We had JCL. We had 80 column cards. We had numbers in bases 8 and 16 we dared to call "octal" and "hex". We had RCPM and BBSes and MODEMS. And we had nearly everything in text.
Now command lines aren't needed because of GUI interfaces (which seem easier at first but are a pain to use to get anything serious done). Don't get me wrong, I love good graphics (like watching the approaching storm on weather.com), but video weblogs will be another step towards turning the internet into interactive television. Watch screen. Move mouse. Click. Watch screen.
I'm tired. Would someone read Slashdot to me?
Terrycloth Lobster
A million people are going to watch some no-brain spout his pointless opinions? Lets face facts - if they were talking sense, they`d either have a job, or they'd be too busy with their social life. The unemployed won't be able to afford this tech, and the mentally ill already think their tv sends out messages as it is:
http://www.five.org.uk/
Otherwise, what's next? Slashdot video postings? Shudder.
Now 2 the Ranting Gryphon can come to us in high-def, color-corrected video. Looking forward to all that bandwidth going right down the crapper.
N4st0r, trixx0r h0bb1tz0rz! Th3y st0l3 0ur pr3c10uzz!
I'd definately want to see the faces of the "F1r57 p057!!!!111 l337 dUUdz!!11" people.
can we use a digital camera, connect it with firewire?
what do we use to capture the video and convert it to divx?
I feel that any kind of camera, digital camera or video camera attached to my computer i anyway is bound to end up in my naked ass being posted around the world just after I've had a shower or something!
"Pushing little children, with their fully automatics, they like to push the weak around"
Let's see....i'm a 17 year old guy who goes to a magnet high school who dj's (with turntables), plays the bass clarinet, sings in a band, is a radio show host, is an avid filmmaker and 3d modeler/animator, and has a small computer building business. I recently got arrested for assualt even though it was in self defense and I was the one who called 911 (there were some good scenes in there), and had to do community service. I've also been in love with this girl for four years and we started going out over the summer and we've been going out ever since - and she's the homecoming queen, and I'm having trouble getting intimate with her. Oh, I also have 3 cars. A 1986 mercury grand marquis, a 1970 mercury marquis convertible (with the license plate NIX CAR), and a 1991 bmw 750iL (NIX V12). I plan on moving to california next year. Ah, I love my life. (sorry that was over 100 words)
I belong to the ______ generation.
Ever read "The Light of Other Days" by Stephen Baxter and Arthur C. Clark?
ob.sig: My Cool Gadgets and Technology blog
Why isn't it "Can they beat ABCNBCCBSpMSNBC? Because this site is run by a bunch liberals. Wait'll Mike Savage hears about you.
FOX is nothing but a video weblog, with its poor editing, lack of focus, stream of feelings babbling. It's Doc Searls, but with cute but bubbleheaded babes. And it's killing Dim Blather and the Temple of Doom.
According to a not-a-camgirl-really-your-honour acquaintance, the only lighting she uses is an A4 sheet of paper to bounce some light up from under her face. She probably regrets telling me this, however, as I now have a recurring item in my calendar to tease her about it fortnightly.
-- Proud descendant of semi-nomadic cattle-herders.
But at least we geeks had computers
:)
That's right. Any now everyone has computers. The Internet isn't just for geeks anymore. Geeks will move on to other projects or seclude themselves somewhere that regular people wouldn't want to go. Slashdot for example!
Like blogging, if this becomes mainstream, don't expect to see the geeks being the #1 users, or even the target market.
Ignoring the implications of bandwitdh usage by a video blog, just think about the interface with the user. Video is unforgiving - it travels one direction in the 4th dimension. Once a part of a video is shown you have to futz around with a little slider bar trying to get back to the place where you left off if you miss anything.
A traditional text blog leaves the reader in charge. They can read a bit, then take a bite of their sandwich, then their coworker can bug them for something, then they can go back to the blog with no harm and no foul.
weblogs are short, text based, easy to skim or ignore. Video you have to sit through it. You can't compile a big list of the videos and look at them at a glance. Its a different medium from tv.
Just because you can provide video doesn't mean its the best format for weblogs.
Even with video phones I think you will still find more people SMS than audio call, and more people audio call than video call.
A million people are going to watch some no-brain spout his pointless opinions?
You're missing the point. The question I raised had nothing to do with the probability of people wanting to watch these blogs. I'm simply hypothesising, and wondering if the net can take it or not.
.: Max Romantschuk
Sorry, I have a dirty mind...
-thedanceman- @ http://www.WatchMeDance.com runs a video blog site of him dancing around. It's funny stuff.
I've been looking into blogging , because it gives
:D
me a way of keeping a diary of sorts that has just
enough of a technology edge that it'll keep me
interested enough to keep writing in it.
Mon - Fri : "Went to work today , came home
watched some tv"... and that bit about looking
undead or hungover , well I usually look one or
the other
Weekdays = undead
Weekends = hungover
So I have just caught up with the new technology of blogging through my mobile phone and now there is something new that I have to adapt to?
Seriously, I see blogging a bit like writting a diary. Somehow doing it in video doesn't fit in my braincells. Video blogging is something completely new I guess. Something that might totally change the meaning of bogging (probably making it worse, cause making professional videos ir much harder than making professional writing IMHO)
I don't care how you moderate me, that article was rubbish. At best it was an advertisment for some video editing software and the fact that computers and cameras are now cheap enough for anyone to get in to making terrible vid-clips of bits of their lives that no one else cares about.
Yaaawn...
We want real news!
Dan. -- So what if it's spelt wrong, nobody's perfect
Video blogs will never catch on for the same reason people hate voicemail after using email. While it may be a more fully featured sensory experience, a major feature is lacking; Scanning.
When I go to a web page, I can scan down it in a fraction of the time it would take to read the text. Voicemail and Video can't match that. Video can, if you are watching it for visual content instead of audio content. While you can "zzzzip" through messages on some voice mail systems, you still don't get what you could get from scanning a text message.
With video blogs, you would be forced to either watch for as long as it took the author(?) to record it, or miss parts. That is part of the "killer app" of email and current blogs that video blogs can't shake a stick at.
-Pete
Soccer Goal Plans
Personally I'd rather read things like blogs and news websites than watch video or listen to audio. If you want to know why just play any of a number of video games or computer games where the dialogue track sounds like it was recorded by the programmers...most people just don't have that interesting a voice!
A lot of the comments I've seen so far have been to the effect of "how interesting can a geek on video be?" Probably not very, but consider the source of the article. It's worth noting that the article is by Glenn Reynolds, the most popular true blogger (as opposed to quasi-journalists like Drudge) on Earth. While he's certainly got a geek side - his "chief interest is in the intersection between advanced technologies and individual liberty", and he's been executive chairman of the National Space Society - he's a law professor, established commentator, and author. Tens of thousands of people visit his instapundit.com for his commentary on technology, culture, and politics news every day.
This is the area where video blogs are likely to take off, for the same reason that standard weblogs shot up in popularity in the past two years. People are increasingly concerned with the state of international relations and public policy, and increasingly dissapointed in the established media's ability to keep up with events and to provide coverage that is compelling, insightful, and (perhaps most importantly), honest about it's bias. Many of these people have turned to weblogs to fill this information gap, and I think the same will be true of video blogs. I'd even venture to predict the possibility of the most popular video bloggers "going pro" - just like Reynolds when MSNBC offered him an online slot, perhaps we'll see major news networks give video bloggers space in their online, or maybe even broadcast, video feeds.
--
CPAN rules. - Guido van Rossum
...richie - It is a good day to code.
instapundit.com (Glenn's original blog) has topped 200,000 daily visits on at least one occasion, and his readership is growing monthly. His fellow top-teir bloggers boast similar numbers. And they're just talking about boring ole' politics and such. "Millions" might still be a long way off, but I don't think it's all that farfetched.
--
CPAN rules. - Guido van Rossum
The big problems have been setting up lights and a camera in my study properly, so that I don't look dead, or hung over
What about when you _are_ hung over?
Regardless of whether video blogging technology is possible, how useful will it be? To answer that, I thnik the whole idea of blogs needs to be questioned.
It might be fun to write blogs, but how many people are actually interested in them. Most blogs I see are just narcisistic capsules describing the innermost thoughts and feelings of some guy I don't know.
The problem with blogs is they are unstructured --- if you want to make a website about goldfish, make one about goldfish with nice links and structure. Don't just keep appending news --- no-one will be interested in scanning through it all to derive some information about a particular topic.
Video blogs make the situation worse --- searching is impossible and you'll end up with scores of media documents, once again about some average bloke's activities of the day.
This is like those guys who strapped cameras (before they were "webcams") to their head in the mid-90s and transmitted every unexciting moment of their unexciting day as a mathematics graduate student, before people Jennycam et al realised there is only one type of "video blog" that will successfully captivate web users.
I'm really surprised nobody has brought up Ferris Bueller so far. You know, all the scenes where he speaks to the camera?
Frankly, I would differentiate between something like a personal web page or diary or whatever other exhibitionist crap someone wants to put up on the internet (gawd I hate the term 'blog') and the kind of infotainment we're talking about here.
I see lots of parallels to public access TV. You could get some pretty quality, amusing and informative stuff (like someone reminding you that life moves pretty fast, so if you don't stop and look around every
once in a while, life might just pass you by) but a large majority of random pointless drivel running about.
Rant rant rant. And that didn't all just have a point...
Cole's Law: Thinly sliced cabbage
...the lights or the camera setup that are at fault!
Chaeron Corporation
As I think it's only a matter of time before we're all paying by the byte for bandwidth in one fashion or another, I also believe that stuff like video blogs and other low value/size ratio internet artifacts will go away as well (like banner ads and other graphics that will be aggressively filtered out once you've got to pay for each one you look at...)
So, no, I don't think video blogs are the wave of the future...
Please Rate my comment (and help support Fre
Oh and what is so advantageous of a video blog? My reading is way faster than the blogger would talk and if anyone wants to put images or video showing something (a picture is worth 100k words, apparently), they can easily place a picture or a link.
Well, I know I like these fine ladies just plenty.
As others have said, this article is at best an advertisment for said video software.
I hope Slashdot does not go down the same route. I have recently stopped reading The Register after a spate of blatent "Paid Articles".
They're just about seeing that other people live the same ordinary lifes as you do and have the same problems as you have. It's to make you feel better.
because that what it would be..
boring webcams exist already.. so to be anything different from them these 'video blogs' would have to have something intresting-> be more like tv-show than just mumbling that you took a dump at wc..
world was created 5 seconds before this post as it is.
I freaking hate andy rooney. That old bastard did nothing but bitch about useless consumer products.
He just reminds me of Abe Simpson wandering through a store...
"Look at these army toys! They break the first time I step on them!" [crushing army toys under slipper]
I used to watch 60min every week. I never watch it anymore.
This is left as an exercise for the reader.
I see this a lot on Slashdot - "who reads blogs?". The people who ask apparently are only familiar with a few obscure blogs, and never bother to actually visit any major blogs and check their sitemeter stats. Here's a suggestion: before asking the question, check something like the Technorati Top 100. Take a look at the blogs listed there, the number of links into them, and their pageview stats (if they keep track of them). Then make up your own mind about whether anyone reads blogs. And who knows, maybe you'll find something there that actually interests you!
--
CPAN rules. - Guido van Rossum
Yeah, all serious graphic artists use the command line version of Photoshop.
Free Hans!
Maybe video blogs aren't ready for prime time quite yet, but remember the words from H.M. Warner at Warner Brothers in 1927:
Who the hell wants to hear actors talk?
As far as I know, I set up the first video blog ever. I hesitate to offer my dinky little DSL connection up to slashdotting, but here goes:
http://ceicher.homeunix.com
I've been in operation nearly 2 years. I run this off an ancient G3/400 Mac with Quicktime Streaming Server, and import video from nonDV sources (i.e. my TiVo) with a Canopus ADVC-1000. I've done many projects, like a week-long live broadcast showing me painting at my easel, but my main focus is on TV. I noticed bloggers are always commenting about "hey, did you see that thing on TV last night?" and I wanted to show a fair use clip rather than just hope people saw it and knew what I was talking about. Streaming allows me to claim Fair Use since I am rebroadcasting but not allowing copies to be downloaded.
What gets me is the new wave of "video blogging" focusing around putting yourself online as a talking head. It's a huge waste of bandwidth. I can get someone's point in text a lot quicker than I can wait for them to stammer out their point live on video.
Is the next Andy Rooney-type commentator going to be a /.er?
Maybe the first will be Internet "rock star" Jon Katz ? He is nearly as relevant as Rooney.
"His initial concern is for his appearance, doesn't sound like "news for nerds" to me.... "
You're right. Nerds don't care for their apperance.
"Slashdot effect" for the masses. You only need to have a small community, far as big as Slashdot, and do it yourself Slashdot effect for vblog sites! Just point to them in your main page and measure your own popularity counting seconds before the other site get slashdotted (hey! you can even could say something like [my-own-site-name]ted, expanding english and popularity).
Just remember, most things that are in primetime are in reruns by the summer.
Now whether people would watch some weird geek's video blog is another story :)
Karma: pi (Mostly due to circular reasoning in posts).
I just started to use the audio blog feature on blogger. It is still in the early stages of implementation, but seems to work. I told me girl friends about it and she thought it was silly. I told my buddy about it and he thought that it might have some good use for posting to his site to explain homework assignments for his students (he is a college level professor).
The whole talking head aspect is interesting to show folks what you look like or to pan around the room while talking, but it isn't really that practical...other than for wow factor. But someone might really enjoy it and have a good reason to have it.
Herein lies the rub. Imagine sitting at work during a break or some other time, and looking at somebodys full-media blog: "Hello my name is Ashtead and I have been eating peanutbutter and jelly sandwiches for breakfast ... "
Sounding loud and clear over the cubicle farm.
Besides, I tend to laugh when finding some funny web-page, and some of my colleagues already want to know why I am laughing for no apparent reason (to them anyways). Are they now having to wonder who all these other people in here are?
There will be no more looking at and listening to these things at work anymore!
Which could possibly be a good thing, considering ...
SIGBUS @ NO-07.308
On the other hand not only was it not convinient to make, but it wasn't convinient to listen to either. For me it is really hard to listen to Geeks in Space while working. I end up paying to much attention to the show. Also, you can't just run through it really fast like a blog. So it seems the format is inconvinient on both ends.
Lasers Controlled Games!
i think we're missing the picture here -
;-)
Video Weblogs dont just have to be video of geeks droning on. They dont have to be huge clips of video we're forced to watch to gleen a few moments or info.
We need to think of video weblogs (and since vlog is shorter, I'll use that) in the same light we do photo blogs and regular ole' text blogs - they need to be edited. Editing is more than just remebering to turn the camera on and off every now and then. Editing is a visual syntax that has been developed for the last 100 years or so by filmmakers and now the more digitally minded . Its techniques are available to anyone willing to give it a try. brad @ joeuser.com edited a little clip last december as a response to the instapundit and others on the vlogging bandwagon and even though he disagrees with vlogging - his response was really well done and damn funny!
We need better standardized methods for index the video, so that its possible to find the bit you want (sure its doable, we just need to make it easier). remember metadata? why arent we applying it to these video clips? Just because the video players we're using on our computers mature enough yet or be using correctly to make vlogging more credible, doesnt mean the whole idea should be abandoned.
alright, i'm done, now some snarky shit gets to tell me how stupid i am
hi to john and any ex-DELO (go on, you know who you are)
"The current rates for bandwidth at this scale are about $1/GB of transfer"
I host my site at ipowerweb and their rates are $7.95/month for 30GB of traffic. That's about $0.27 per GB of data, not $1 as you claim. If your other figures are accurate, you can have 1000 daily visitors on a video blog for $96 a year.
OddManIn: A Game of guns and game theory.
Tell me, what's the value of literacy? Why is writing considered important? I thought it was because it was the best way to accurately store information from one generation to the next. Also, with printing presses, it's easier to pass along to others in larger quantities.
I can't see written language going away anytime soon, but if we have technology that can preserve and pass on information better, what the hell is the problem of using it to it's full extent?
If I can be in the Kitchen and cook and completely control the computer through voice interaction (open browser, go to slashdot, tell me the headlines, read article from link, etc..) and not be forced to be in from of a monitor, that's a bad thing?
If NLP advances and machines can translate languages and to speech synthesis better and I can listen to Russian stories without learning Russian, that's a bad thing?
If my family on the other side of the world (yes, people move around more, especially for education) cant find time to communicate because of different schedules but they can leave video messages for me, that's a bad thing?
If kids that can't read yet can interact with the computer to learn to read or gain knowledge because of a good GUI, that's a bad thing?
Maybe I missed the point of your post. Maybe you need to learn that not all change is bad.
In times like these, it is helpful to remember that there have always been times like these. - Paul Harvey
The Internet Archive currently uses it for distributing live concert recordings, so it should work great for video too.
"...(which seem easier at first but are a pain to use to get anything serious done)."
You're right. Can I have my next version of Photoshop in CLI mode only please? Using the mouse to design graphics is much harder than hand coding colors and pixel coordinates.
//'The big problems have been setting up lights and a camera in my study properly, so that I don't look dead, or hung over.'"//
I really really doubt that these are your biggest problems with doing journalist reporting properly. Do try to keep in mind that there is an entire culture to news reporting that has grown in it's own studios for decades.
It does take skill to deliver the news properly. I remember working at Cisco and seeing the terrible talking head video on demand and crappy IOS update talk shows. They delivered information but looked completely clueless.
If you are going to do this study up first. Please?
We had the EXACT same idea and created a boadcast blog... but instead of video, we chose to use streaming MPEG4 audio. For content management, we use manilla.
The end result is a very refined, web radio show.
We got the company that hosts our portal to offer MPEG4 streaming AND Manilla hosting packages that will allow you to create your own radio or television web log very easily and with little training... not to mention for a a REALLY decent price. If you're interested in doing any of this, you should check it out.
MSNBC is a retard. Along with AOL, the MPAA, etc., they're doing all they can to kill the Internet as anything other than a click-NOW-to-buy network.
... still the most salient and accurate prophecy ever written about the commercialization of the Internet.
Re-read Death From Above
less so for awkward geeks...or pretty much anyone who isn't a hot chick.
Why would I want to listen and watch, when I could read instead? It is quiet, nobody around me will be disturbed. I can read faster than most people talk, and it is never unclear. I can paste a part of it to someone else, or I can print it.
What is this obsession with movie media? I have already abandon the TV news since text on the internet is easier to digest for me. I can ignore the stories that don't interest me, and I can read whatever I'm interested in.
To all the people that are saying it's not feasible to run a video blog because the cost of bandwidth is too much or most people don't have the necessary bandwidth available, you need to rub both of your braincells together just a little faster:
use p2p.
A text blog can still be maintained, and the video could be made available there, whether it's streamed or a downloadable binary. You could even provide a transcript. But produce the video and release on a p2p network or three. Out of the 60 million people on kazaa, someone's likely to be interested, right?
BLOCK STRUCTURE breathing apparatus required for special maneuvers!!
His whole point is that things like Photoshop (and the graphics created by it) should go away.
It should all be text (or maybe ascii art-- he's not as clear on his stance here).
bug.gd: error search engine. Humanity working together to solve all errors.
As someone already mentioned- p2p is the way to distribute stuff like this. I was thinking of actually using edonkey links on a web page that pointed to the video sequences. If at least I keep my vblogs (catcchy) shared, then people should be ablo to get them eventually.
What I fear is that many of these vblogs would end up like one of those sequeneces off SF shows where the heroes review the last few log entries on some space station or whatever in order to understand "what happened here", except they will be far more boring...
Final Log Entries SF version:
"September 21st. I have been experimenting on the strange samples Dr. Weisman brought back from the crater. They seem to have some strange properties- more work is needed.
September 23rd. I don't know how to say this, but it seems as if the samples are multiplying- not just with time, but almost as if my observing them causes them to thrive. I can't really believe the test results- nothing like this has ever been seen before.
September 26th. The samples are speaking to me! They now form a mass approximately 4 feet high! I have been keeping my findings from the other scientists for fear of alarming them.
September 27th. 'Bob' (my name for the sample-mass, which is now 7 feet tall) has killed Dr. Weisman. I fear I may be next as Bob is becoming difficult to reason with. His constant claim that humanity is 'a bunch of lamers who deserve death' unnerves me."
Final Log Entries Geek version:
'April 3rd. I had this really great idea to build a model of the Tokyo Tower out of lego. I have downloaded the specs from the net and worked out how many bricks I need. Now I am saving up to buy them.
April 4th. I got bored of waiting until I had saved up, so I used my mom's credit card to order the bricks. I'll work out how to tell how I've borrowed the money later. Now to wait for my bricks!
April 17th. My bricks finally arrived! Mom was a little suspicicous when she answered the door to the package guy, but I told her I had taken advantage of an offer on paperclips from the internet.
April 28th. My Tokyo Tower is nearlly complete! I have had to ban my mom from my room so she doesn't see it. It reaches nearly to the ceiling- check it out!
March 5th. Horror! Mom got her credit card bill and went insane! She came up to my room and stomped all over the Tokyo Tower- it was like something out of Godzilla. I have been banned from the internet so this will be my last log."
graspee
Isn't a blog technically a frequently updated page mostly consisting of links and a bit of personal spin? How could you do that on video?
That said...
There might be something for giving some of these commentators a more vocal voice. The NOW thing in blogging is politics and social commentary. The blog format is great for it, and in fact, it pretty much changes everything. Little obsucure stories that might otherwise be glossed over, if they are important and engaging enough, are suddenly thrust into the mainstream eye. They change everything. Joshua Micah Marshell, Atrios, Brad DeLong, even Glenn Reynolds, it is rather amazing the amount of data and stories that are analyzed and released in a nicely cooked format. Not to mention that the skills of the average blogger are far and away far above those talking heads on TV, who forget what it is like being in the trenches.
Again, that said, do not expect to see video blogs for the longest time. The father of political blogging, as far as I am concerned, Bartcop is just getting into a radio format, let alone video. As well, the closest thing currently to this is the Joey Joe Joe Show. Actually, I remember this old show, "Does Humor Belong In Technology", that may have been a perfect example of an audio blog. A live shoutcast done with IRC live feed back. dhbit.ca it seems. No longer a radio show, more like a small Slash style site. That may have been the first. It was damn good too. Too bad they stopped doing shows.
TV personalities have to generally be attractive, and if not, at least have decent personal hygeine, which pretty much precludes any of you jokers from gaining mainstream popularity. Given, also, your lack of sense of humor and tendancy to take yourselves far too seriously, I fully expect some yutz to respond to this with flames, meta-discussion, and examples of ugly, un-hygenic people in popular culture. Anything to make me wrong.
IF you're THAT VAIN
Video blogging isn't that bad of an idea. Even if you made a short 5-minute realvideo clip each day and streamed it from your standard HTTP server, it would only take up 5-10 MB of space, ISP transfer costs aside.
To me, 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.
[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." And adding graphics and links within a text layer of a quicktime movie is really really advanced stuff. It's not the kind of stuff I see most people doing anytime soon.
That is why I'm a lot more excited by things like the WiFi2TV project that plugs the functionality of the internet into an existing video network. Although that also presents a number of problems. We'll have to see how that one goes.
now, that is X Free! *cough* 86
(yes this can be compared with sex)
...is the world ready for me to start going postal if I am forced to hear or read this obnoxious word, "blog" any more?
Thank you. Thank you. And i'm not psychic. They just stole my idea :)
I'm looking forward to trying out voice recognition with Photoshop... I can already feel the key sized dents in my forehead starting to form after trying to verbally describe an operation with the lasso tool. After more than 20 years of computer use, I guess it's time I did something "serious"... I keep forgetting that code monkeys are the only people whose work on computers rises to the level of "serious". That's a bit like suggesting that the only people who can make serious use of a car are mechanics. Honestly, sometimes I'm ashamed to be a geek.
Someday a real rain is gonna come...
No, sorry, I was overgeneralizing. I was thinking in terms of using the OS. I prefer shells, etc. Of course stuff that requires graphics works better with a graphical interface.
But that was not my point. My point was that reading and writing seem to be going the same direction as basic math skills.
Terrycloth Lobster
I suppose it will be no big deal that the only material available to the growing illiteratti will either be new spoken or older stuff that the literate choose to offer. After all, their ability to read and write should give them the authority to choose material for people.
Hey, that's what the Church used to do!
Or at least that's what I read.
Terrycloth Lobster
Serious Magic's software is really amazing, but is Windows-only. It relies on DirectX and DirectShow to work, so it is unlikely it will be ported to other platforms (and they say such on their web site).
Does anyone know of other software out there with similar features, that works on Linux or Mac OS X?
Some of it's very cool features:
- on-screen teleprompter
- real-time green-screen compositing
- cable news-style overlay text/graphics
I haven't found anything similar out there.
The concept of blogging isn't new, by any means. It's basically the UNIX finger service adapted for mass use on the web/AIM/whatever. There were even finger-to-web CGI scripts in 1995 that accomplished this same exact thing. Hell, I even wrote one of them for my personal use.
.plan files? Back at the height of Quake I/II/III development, I would suspect that the number of requests to his .plan files approached 100,000 a day. Many other notable people in the gaming industry had similar setups.
Remember John Carmack's (of id software fame)
I suppose it's really a catch-22, since famous/notable people generally do not share personal information on the internet. But that's exactly what it would take to generate a substantial volume of hits/reads per day.
The dangers of knowledge trigger emotional distress in human beings.
Wow, just what the American "news" scene needs - more punditry and even less time for reporting.
---If you can't trust a nerd, who can you trust?
Ever read "The Light of Other Days" by Stephen Baxter and Arthur C. Clark?
yes
Instead of Big Brother we get gazillions of networked Little Brothers
The million little brothers have a lot of decentralized and unsearchable low quality videos that'll probably be deleted sooner than not. Facial recognition and similar tech will be of age around the same time it'll possible to fabricate the same quality video with 3D animation software for less expenditure in resources. Not to say that the two will balance out...
Vblogs sound like a good match for multicasting, where you distribute your video every hour on the hour, instead of whenever a user just happens to drop by. If video blogging is the killer app which jumpstarts the demand for IPv6 (and multicasting), I'm all for it.
the debate so far of linear vs scanning sort of touches on the concept of push vs pull media . the good thing w/ text blogs being that one can pull down whatever you want & skip the fodder. but...
blogs are starting to be abused by advertsiers -- see the Raging Cow ad campaign here and here. And this is only going to get worse with vlogs -- as blogs shift from pull to push.
It would be easy to do this on any firewire equipped Mac (pretty much everything), even in OS9.
All the tools you need come free with the OS - iMovie and umm... that's it.
Hook up your firewire (IE1394/iLink) MiniDV camera to your Mac, click "capture" and you're away.
You can edit, title, mess, add music and the exporting options are excellent.
It took my humble 600MHz iBook 45 minutes to encode a 3 minute video file in Quicktime (H.263 codec, u-law sound), so something with a bit more oomph (say, a powerbook) would cut this in half or more.
You can export to DV tape for home archive, and even encode at different rates to suit your audience. All you need is a broadband connection and a fair bit of space for hosting, plus a generous monthly bandwith allotment depending on how popular you get.
You could put up each video with a quick html file that contains keywords and info on the content to aid in cataloging and searching.
I agree, the content provision is difficult given the non-trivial cost of bandwidth, but I can see it happening.
Yeah, but having to tune into someone else's schedule is contrary to the whole point of the internet.
I suppose you could have a system where you could flag a Blog for caching, and it'd assemble the thing and let you know when it's done, ala TiVo. Then maybe have a daily multicast of each blog. But then you'd have to pick your blogs in advance.
As someone who works full-time in compressed video delivery technologies, video Blogs seem like a solution in search of a problem.
My video compression blog
...with multiple contributors rather than just one, like Instapundit. It's not much different from BoingBoing. Slashdot just has a much more active comments section.
- Consult the dictionary frequently to avoid mispelling
Does anybody else get an article about some guy getting kicked out of a mall for wearing a peace shirt instead of the vblogging as promised?
Already happening. FoxNews, MSNBC, et cetera.
I see even classic Slashdot is now pretty much unusable on dial up anymore.
The reason blogs are so interesting to read for many people, is that they feel a little private. Granted they are written for a public audience, but when you read them, you feel as if you are glimpsing into somebody elses private journal. So, untill video journals are around, I doubt you will see too much interest in a video blog.
Secondly, can somebody tell me how to pronounce blog? I hate the sound of 'blog', so I always pronounce it as a b-log, but then nobody can understand me. Is it really pronouced 'blog'? What a stupid sounding word.
(blog definition taken from my friend's blog.)
MSNBC is a retard. Along with AOL, the MPAA, etc., they're doing all they can to kill the Internet as anything other than a click-NOW-to-buy network.
Yup, they're retarded, but they're not trying to kill the web -- they're trying to turn it into television -- the only thing they understand.
Just more corporate marketroid brochure babble. Spare us.
I've been video blogging for 2 years. the manifesto is ate sktopvogging.html
everything requires a decent install of quicktime, version 5 or better.
most of the issues raised in this thread are moot.
http://hypertext.rmit.edu.au/vog/manifesto/ and the vogs are at
http://hypertext.rmit.edu.au/vog/ and part one of a tutorial (which also explains a bit about why video one a web page on a regular basis is not really a video blog but just tv) is at
http://hypertext.rmit.edu.au/vog/desktopvogging/d
I know you're kidding, but it depends on how we define "serious".
If "serious" is "Make a good-looking picture", definitely, pick Photoshop or GIMP or whatever.
If "serious" would be "Convert 1258 images to JPEG and generate thumbnails for them", I wouldn't hesitate to pick ImageMagick (which is a command-line tool).
Again, let's pick the right tool for the job. =)
Well, of COURSE I'm kidding. Jeez, it really sucks when you have to explain the joke to people. I was trying to illustrate the absurdity of the parent post's blanket statement. I guess I failed.
Free Hans!
This tool was just released for this purpose exactly. All you need is a webcam and microphone and you can create, save and send these messages. http://www.userplane.com/apps/videoRecorder.cfm