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.

Comments

Video-Blogging Software for Linux or Mac OS X?

[trauring]

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.

.plan files.

[mfh]

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.

Remember John Carmack's (of id software fame) .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.

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.