Slashdot Mirror
Videoblog Revolution
mr_don't writes "Not too long ago Slashdot featured a post about photoblogs. It claimed that photoblogging is the next big thing, but really it has been around a while (notice how lots of folks posted a link to their photoblogs!). I think the next big thing will be VideoBlogging. Many have seen Peter Jackson's cool King Kong Video Blog, but you don't need whole a camera crew to blog using video. My made-on-linux video blog."
Only do this if you are a hot chick
Watch out, the main link consistently crashed Firefox 1.0/win32 (and PR-1). Opera 7 works ok.
this is the sound of tumbleweed
The next Big Thing will be when you all get a life and stop pretending that your opinion is important enough to take up space on the internet. Video-bloging is just another "thing" of no importantance. It all makes me sick, I should write an entry in my blog about it.
"Have you ever thought about just turning off the TV, sitting down with your kids, and hitting them?"
... and nobody cares.
Two excellent reasons why videoblogging is a nonstarter.
Laws are for people with no friends.
What happens when the blog gets slashdotted?
Tell the truth and you won't have so much to remember.
Isn't this just buffered webcam viewing?
Somehow the thought of actively browsing the web looking for random folks sticking their fingers up their noses and generally acting strange reminds me of a couple of years ago.
At least if these folks have gone wireless and are in public, they may behave a little more civilised.
liqbase
... of one thousand elephants stomping an ant?
C'mon boys, let's get him!
To advertise your blog on slashdot?
I don't need no instructions to know how to rock!!!!
Blogging comfortably took about 56kbps. Photoblogging required broadband of at least 512kbps. Videoblogging? Looks like I better fork over even more cash to the ISP.
I won't be doing high-def videoblogging unless I get my own ATSC transmitter tower!
Hooray for the next big bandwidth waster! Everyone needs to stream not just text describing what I did today, and not just pictures, but full-friggin-motion video showing just what I may have done today!
Seriously, whose life is 1) so exciting that video clips are required for full appreciation and 2) not too exciting to have enough time to record the whole thing on video?
Hahahahahahahahahaha.
Thanks.
Demandmedia is a collaborative video blog, based on the Scoop collaborative engine, users submit links to cool grass roots produced videos from around the 'net and users vote on which ones they like. Most of the video is of interest to those on the left end of the political spectrum.
I've had good luck with an absolutely bare bones videoblogging setup, using a Sony digital still camera that shoots video with sound. And Adam Keipner did some interesting videoblogging from the Nanotech conference in Washington a couple of weeks ago. I think we'll see a lot more of this in the future.
InstaPundit! Ahead of the Curve Since 30 Minutes Ago
...is going to be the bill from whoever hosts your web server!
/.ing a page with video files is never a good idea!
sig.
Oh, wait, did you mean without taking your clothes off? Never mind.
when video email was going to be the "next big thing"?
What php program does he use to do the video bloging?
Videobloggin will NOT be the next big thing. It's too cumbersome. Too much work to get a videoblog up. Nice for geeks, too difficult for regular folks.
Does webcam video blogging work if the server the cam's plugged into is on fire? Or do you just capture the first frame showing a small wisp of smoke escaping from the case?
No Norm, those are your safety glasses; I'll wear my own thanks...
I read you on the usenet back in Ninety Two Lying awake intent at typing in on you. If I was young it didn't stop you coming through. Oh-a oh
They took the credit for your second symphony. Rewritten by machine and new technology, and now I understand the problems you can see.
Oh-a oh
I met your children
Oh-a oh
What did you tell them?
Video killed the Weblog star.
Video killed the Weblog star.
Pictures came and broke your heart.
Oh-a-a-a oh
And now we meet in an abandoned chatroom. We see the text words and it seems so long ago. And you remember the Smilies that came through :).
Oh-a oh
You were the first one.
Oh-a oh
You were the last one.
Video killed the Weblog star.
Video killed the Weblog star.
In my mind and in my car,
we can't rewind we've gone to far
Oh-a-aho oh,
Oh-a-aho oh
Video killed the Weblog star.
Video killed the Weblog star.
Photos are becoming better catalogued, but anyone who has used Google's image search will tell you, we're still a long way off from something akin to "good."
Video will pose even bigger problems for search engines, meaning that most video clips that are posted will be ignored. Only those with something really valuable (political scandal, hot chicks, etc.) *AND* easily found will see any significant distribution and/or audience.
Just my prediction...prolly wrong.
One reason why blogging (or reading in general, for that matter) is popular, is that you can access the content at your own pace.
Watching a video requires the willingness and ability to follow the pace of the videomaker--which restricts audience. While you can skim through a bad writer's rantings and see very quickly if there is anything of value in a couple of pages of text, doing so on video is impractical.
Additionally, a good-paced video is actually hard to edit, and not something that most of us have been trained for in school, contrary to writing.
Sounds like a gimmick doomed to fail.
I can't believe no one else is catching this...
:(
:P)
"Captain's Log, Stardate blah blah blah blah blah..."
We're actually moving toward logging our days into a computer, and then when something goes wrong, investigators come in later and go through our personal logs to see what happened in the days leading up to.
Life is becoming one large, pathetic 'Trek episode.
God, I'm a geek.
(You made me wonderfully and perfectly so...I think?
Karma: Chameleon (mostly due to the fact that you come and go).
OK I read blogs.. once in a blue moon - generally from a blogging friend. They're text, I can read quite fast - therefore if I was so inclined I could read dozens if not hundreds a day.
Why the hell would I want to sit down and have to catch up with people in effectively "real time" on a videoblog? What a waste of time...
I don't read your sig, why do you read mine?
Amen to that. And please mod the parent "insightful". Or, if you want to insist on "Funny", give it the attribute "bitter irony"...
By reading that title, for a moment I thought it was some new DDR game...
Next up: smelloblogs. To be soon followed by tasteoblogs.
Bon appetite!
VideoBlogging will not work for two reasons: 1. To much bandwith used for big websites. 2. Most people have low-end webcams that don't output very good video. Sam Krupa
I think the next big thing will be VideoBlogging.
Search engines can't index keywords spoken by people in videos. The average person can't afford/won't want to pay for the bandwidth for a moderately popular videoblog. You can't quickly skim a video to see if it's interesting to you. Text is good enough or more appropriate for the majority of subjects.
Think:
Audioblogging's limitations can perhaps be alieviated by Audioblog mixing, with something like UserRadio, or playing the audioblogs at high speed.
You might be able to extend video with that, but I'd probably rather just cut the visual, so I could do other things at the same time.
Text blogging is bad enough, where lots of people with nothing worthwhile to say about write about their boring life.
Photo blogging is worse, because those same boring people take picture of ugly and uninteresting places and people. To make things worse, most people don't get out enough to provide a reasonable variety in subject and have a total lack of photography skill resulting isn awful pictures.
Now comes video blogging, where those same people unable to get a life run around with a video camera to capture uninteresting ugly people in boring places making ineptly a fool out of themselves.
For all three categories, if any of those bloggers had any skill at writing, taking pictures or filming, they would be hired to do it for a living and not waste their time updating blogs.
The only blogs of interest contain good-looking naked women best presented by professionals to make it look like snapshots. But this is a different well-established industry.
By syndicating .torrents automatically, channels of swarming mirroring can be formed to amass what could be called efficient broadcasting. On private lans, there's also no reason why you couldn't run VLC and Myth, and have a complete video network with on-demand-downloadable-by-bt type content, as well as redistribution of streaming media already out on the net (remember the internet tv article?)
This is big, and it is hot. It's not *entirely* the downfall of big media, but it is in fact the eventuality of big media as our channel list grows, and our options for consumption and means of consuming this media grow.
Some claim that this means TV and Film will die, or that all this material will end up looking like the lamest of public-access tv....
Well, public access TV looks almost exactly in production, quality, and distribution as mid-80's regionally-produced TV shows (like Romper Room, or Cleveland's SUPERHOST!)
Also, your kids are going to school and learning video production... on DV equipment in some cases.
So, it's not the end of big media... it's the start of a new decentralized wonder. It'll probably both be worse than today (ads that make Futurama's attempts at advertising parody not funny anymore), and much purer (how about a family, community, slashdot, or special interest group TV show? Commercial free?)
As a side note, some of these patterns will most likely be evident in tonight's Frontline on PBS about the "persuasion industry" ... I'll be watching that one!
Anyway, start looking into this stuff, because it is what you make it. If you want to bitch about it, well, start your own damn TV show.
Yet Another Wank-Fest . . . if videoblogging were a 'Revolution', we wouldn't need to be told about it on Slashdot. Put aside your delusions of grandeur and _do_something_ revolutionary if you want a revolution.
'I ain't a liar, baby, and I ain't proud I just want what I'm not allowed.' -- Violent Femmes, 36-24-36
When my kid will make his first steps, I'll tape it then copy the tape for whoever cares.
I agree whith other people, it's only going to be a bandwidth eater (such as webcams) for nothing.
printf($randomline(sigs.txt) \n "-- "$randomline(authors.txt));
-- myself
I wanted to take a moment to plug a couple of things... The first is my personal moblog which really isn't anything special. However, the way the photos are published is kinda unique, and I thought other people might find it nice to play with.
What I use is the rather well-known PHP-based Gallery photo management / presentation software, combined with an implementation of the Nokia Image Upload Server API as a plugin for Gallery.
It works great... I just snap a picture on the phone, go to the Gallery (on the phone) which is where you generally sort through all the pictures, pick Image Uploader then Upload. A GPRS connection is made, you are prompted for the default folder or a new one, and the image is uploaded. That's how I get all the pictures in my moblog. The only limitation is that you cannot caption the photos. The API seems to support it, but it's not implemented in the plugin, nor do the phones support it.
(I looked into this a bit, and here's what I found: Captioning isn't enabled on the server, the phone doesn't prompt for any sort of caption info, and since the phone doesn't detect the capabilities of the server, implementing it on the server won't make any difference. Ah well. At least the photos get there, and you could always rename the file, because that name will be automatically set as the caption in lieu of one.)
be Blogs with Bongos (AKA. Bwogs) or Blogs with Pianos or Blogs with Socks. C'mon, these articles are getting extremely boring. There has to be better "News for Nerds" out there than this, as this is certainly not "Stuff that matters".
Sig it.
If video blogging becomes popular, it will be on the coattails of something like Podcasting.
It is hard for me to imagine choosing to sit at a computer and watch someone talk, compared to being able to listen to them talk, anywhere, anytime, on my iPod.
Unless they are doing something interesting... well that leaves out the realms of home-reno, reality-tv, & porno, I guess (-:
Pixie
don't mess with those geekgrrls
Here's one way to make a video blog: Vara Software
Type your text, read it back to the camera.
It'll even upload the results for you.
I'm just thankful digital video and photography weren't ubiquitous when I was a teenager. Oh the events that should never be recounted. Sometimes a mental snapshot is better than the true event...
is smello blogging. Everyday people will wake up record their bo and publish it to the web.
This will be the next big thing I tell you!
I really really really want the word "blog" to die very soon. All that it has done is let people express their opinion, and, by capturing 0.000000002% to 0.0000004% of the world's attention (that is 15 to 3000 people), they think they're some sort of vanguard. No, I'm not interested in your "regional bands" or the fact that your condo is falling apart. I could care less what the "blogosphere" thinks. All this is doing is increasing the signal:noise ratio.
/. Friends should check out: My Amigos which is just a list of all the recent journal entries on any of your /. Friends.
That being said, I do not have, nor ever want, a blog. The closest I can come to accepting a blog is the occasional Penny Arcade post, but that's not really similar to a blog at all.
I also break out in hives whenever anyone uses the word "blogosphere" -- as if all the world's idiocy could be contained in an area of (4/3 pi r^3).
Now, for those of you who just love blogs, and have a fair number of
Sigh.
Small potatoes make the steak look bigger.
It takes a long time to watch the video. Photo's give instant knowledge.
My made-on-linux video blog.
My made-on-linux video blog is what? Citzens of slashdot, do not fear. I will tirelessly search for the verb of that sentence. You will be the first to know when I discover it.
Use the Firehose to mod down Second Life stories!
THE site for videoblogging as well as the yahoo mailing list where we discuss technical and creative issues. Feel free to jump in!
Jay Dedman is to be congratulated for his evangelizing, and his hard work!
And of course there is me, the geek jihadi.
(If you wanna cheat and not listen all the way through, the URL to the transcript he gives at the end (he triumphantly asserts the 'txt' extension) is http://www.idlewords.com/audio-manifesto.txt)
xkcd.com - a webcomic of mathematics, love, and language.
The following are 2 excerpts from some random person's blog (well, journal), no idea where I found it, but can someone answer this: What language is this?
***
halo... im so veri pissed wif myself dis few daes... why? haiz... lotz of things hav been happening since i laz updated dis journal... i shant mention moz of them... coz.. i dun want to.. it makes mi feel lyk killing myself... arghz.. -=pissed=-
haiz..
THe ConCerT == kinda ok.. wif some squeaks here n there... the solos, jy's n vivien's were so cool... sheryl's one, the american graf was nice.. erm, addicted to you.. kinda ok... yarh.. shiqi's one was ok.. alicia's was nice... jocelyn's was abit inaudible.. but the tone n rhythm was nice... yepz... tt's abt all rite? yarh...
dis is alot of updating alreadi... i mean.. i cant stand writing more... kk... cya.
-= why does anione hav to care?if i dun care..i dun see y anione hav to... get loz if tt's wad u want...=-
***
halo... erm... yesyes.. i noe.. long tym nv update... too lazy... band has been lyk... horrible.. arghz... k... updating now.. as much as i can.. ok.. i tink all i can tok abt is band... coz.. holis onli got band.. yeah.. so can 4get it...
printf("Goodbye cruel world!\b\b\b\b\b\b\b\b\b\b\b\b\b\b\b\b\b\b\b\b");
Yeah ;-)
Except that pretty much anybody with high-school writing skills and a functional brain can produce a decent blog, whereas TV or movies does not really allow amateurism.
It's like community-access TV channels. Ever watch those? Man, they're so pathetic... That's what video blogs promises to bring you: community-access TV crap ON DEMAND
This is funny and insightful... in a sort of black humor kind of way.
and iPodder will video blogging take off - if at all. I tried it using pMachine and a Nokia 3650 video phone and quickly realized; 1) I have a boring as s&^% life and 2) I'm one lazy Bas()*(^%.
Check it out here: www.videoblog.tv
Now there are a few new tools that will make the second problem less severe:
1) Wirecast & VideoCue by Vara Software
2) Live Channel by Channel Storm
3) RSS 2.0 with enclosures.
I disagree with the post about audioblogs. I load 'em up using iPodderX and then have an huge library of "talk pod" on my long drives. Adam Curry won't be able to take bong hits on a video blog however.
I video blog from my phone on occasion, usually when I hit something crazy when I'm out and about. I can't say that I'd use video in place of text, but I can fall back on a 15 second clip to provide more impact than a paragraph long blurb, especially from my phone
Hello Kettle,
You, my friend are as black as pitch.
With love, Pot.
The next step is obviously touchoblogs. Like many new technologies, the initial demand for this will be created by the pornography industry.
Nobody should be allowed to talk in public without a license from the government.
My Journal
Aas with dumpster diving, some people may get some unintended side benefits out of the junk published by others in blogs. But that doesn't give blogs of any form more meaning. As much as I'm not shopping to accommodate the dumpster divers, people aren't blogging for social profilers.
The only benefit of blogging is that it's harmless to others and doesn't pollute the enviromnent too much.
This kind of thing is totally useless since there's no suitable search method to find stuff inside those compressed AV files.
It's okay to archive video blogs, but on the Web just doesn't make sense yet. Unless you append each file with a bunch of keywords (which is idiotic by itself).
SexBlogs!!
Think about it... If everyone kept a sexblog... It could potentially revolutionise or destroy the porn industry...
I'm sure I'm summarising someone else's comments here but I can think of loads of reasons why this simply won't work/goes against blogging principles: 1) Expensive (broadband, camcorder, etc.) 2) It's slow 3) It's hardly something you can just dip into - you have to dedicate a certain amount of time to a video blog. 4) It's less of an impromtu note or comment, more of a staged medium. Actually, I have this issue with all video- I really don't see why Joe Blog has much reason to record video- I'm (un)forunately in the wonderful world of retail selling digital cameras/camcorders and the like, and whilst I'm happy to mention the great video modes some of the digital cameras offer (50 sec shorts), I really have a hard time selling camcorders because I just can't the point. Good quality video takes all the expertise and time that an audio track, comic strip and short-story takes to produce- but tripled. Unforunately few people bother to put this much effort in, meaning that most of the world produces rubbish that they watch once (maybe twice) and then archive to be lost. I'm all one for holding onto memories, but video diaries seem pointless to me- better a snapshot here, a few words there, and a thought, rather than five minute sequence of titles, cheesy music/low quality banter and inane smiling. (Sorry to sound so cynical!)
The only thing that saves us from the bureaucracy is its inefficiency (Eugene McCarthy)
Podcasting! Seriously. Audio blogs fetched automatically.
Go here and here.
Does not require an iPod. Really simple syndication (RSS) with encosures.
I'm using a 76 line Bash script.
Current favorite feeds (RSS - not browseable web pages!);
Some really interesting things out there...as well as garbage. I'd tell you my favorite -- hint smart show 4 on 'scene' -- though I don't want to swamp the server! For other non-tech, listen to Atomic City Fitness (health) or get angry along with Al Franken on AirAmerica (politics) (even interesting for a few hours to this libertarian).
A firewall can not protect you from yourself. Turn off what you do not need. Do not use the firewall to do your work.
This is about the fifth +5 insightful, funny troll post about what a waste video blogging is.
No bandwith is wasted when someone visits a site and downloads a video. They want to see it. Tons of bandwith is wasted every day by advertisers who movies into 80% of their visitor's browsers. Requested video is not a waste. Forced video is. Get the difference?
The real story is that it is now easy to make movies on Linux. Angula has got what you want. They in turn point to dynebolic and Chainsaw. Don't take my word for it, go get an iso or a live CD and see it for yourself.
Friends don't help friends install M$ junk.
You mean all this is doing is decreasing the signal to noise ratio?
We currently use video in the blog section to report back from the shoots that we do for our TV production "The Sea Hunters". Occasionally, if we make the Daily Show (yeah!) or are covered in some other media we'll put that up as well. Our future plans include a video blogging crew that will travel with the TV production team, both reporting on the progress of the shipwreck hunt, but also self-generating material depending on where in the world we are sending them.
Our latest video, posted today, was a Q and A session we did with Clive Cussler, one of our team members. Yes, we could have simply transcribed it and entered it as text, (we summarize it for the benefit of the robots), but when the content is compelling (which we hope the clip would be for Cussler fans) we see no good reason not to make it available as video. Is it a true blog or something else? I don't know.
Maybe our situation is somewhat unique in that we are already in the television production business, but in creating ShipwreckCentral.com we always planned for video to be a major part of the site. In the future, when we add a paid subscribers area, it will become an even greater part of our offerings. Since video is what we are about it only makes sense for us to utilize it in our blog.
When I see that Bittorent traffic constitutes a third of the Internet's bandwidth it reinforces in my mind that direct paid video distribution over the net will work. Remember when people said that Napster users would never pay for music? Then the iTunes music store came along and proved most everybody wrong, (including many slashdotters). We foresee the same type of dynamic happening with video. We'll be using a subscription model since DVD compilations are in the works, but will also incorporate some type of micropayment system for the web only offerings, perhaps Ultramercials such as Salon.com has. (If any /.ers have suggestions on that I'd love to hear them.
Hey, if you've read this far and pay us a visit, be sure to check out the interactive shipwreck map, and if you have any comments on the site (or gripes about video format) be sure to leave us word in the forums.
Most MS users have to download the most crappy, worm-infested, memory-bloated, piece of shit software put out by any commecial company to listen and watch your stuff. And it keeps getting worse each year. So help put this sorry piece of crap protocol into the sesspool of history where it belongs and quit using RealAudio.
That said, I think that video blogs will become popular...though it may be a couple years before these issues aren't as big of a problem to deal with.
A firewall can not protect you from yourself. Turn off what you do not need. Do not use the firewall to do your work.
this is nothing but a bandwidth waster. we shuold arrest these people and deport them to canada.
Seriously, what's it with all the technological revolutions these days? And since when does Cmdr Taco get to declare them? Seriously, /. has been going REALLY downhill. Taco go home! Someone hire a real editor already.
seems like a lot of the comments for this story are right on the mark - who wants to watch people in realtime?
im working on a mfa thesis (titled 'iam') at usc to try and get around that problem. with storage and bandwidth increasing, we are going to end up with more and more people moving from text to video. (sure, there are a lot of other problems with it, but i cant fix everything in a year. plus i am more interested in an experience than passing along 'data')
the elevator pitch looks like this:
iam is:
24/7 point-of-view video,
published to the web as serialized metafictional video blogs,
in a layered/drill down UI,
exploring narrative possiblities and new types of personal filmmaking.
iam thesis proposal
madeofglass.com
Before you sling arrows in the wrong direction.
Shouts to Tim Hall, who has been running his vlog since, oh, 2003.
It's more about micro filmmaking...
I've seen some pretty remarkable community access stuff. Granted it came from NY or LA, but there's some good stuff out there... and I don't must mean "Justin's Filthy Friends" or Dr. Susan Block.
...the next big thing will be VideoBlogging...
//This is so 90's ;)
[sarcasm]Yeah and then people could use tiny cameras that we will call "webcams" and then some people will even tell their lives on the web site and film themselves 24h on 24h. What an excellent original new idea!!![sarcasme/]
Yahh, hiii haaaaa! -Major Kong, from Dr. Strangelove
Most video/photo blogs are of interest only to people who know the blog authors. The way you find interesting photos on such blogs is you get an email from the author saying, "Hey, look at my new pictures from my trip", visit the link, and scan for pictures that look interesting. With a layout that takes advantage of monitor width you can scan through a lot of thumbnails quickly. Or with properly shrunk JPEGs you can put them all on one page and scroll up and down. A similar thing could be done using stills from a video that you click on to jump to a specific segment.
Anyone remember Ben Brown by chance? He was an early videoblogger with his Ben Brown show that went on for a number of episodes. (It seemed like a creative outlet for an unemployed techie.) It was pretty well known to the Metafilter/Fark crowd, at least.
He went away, but I have to say, that was a pretty good archetype for the video blogger. Just I think that video bloggers have even more of a problem in that they're not easily searchable, and one has to dedicate time to see the content more than pictures or text. It is far easier to turn people off than to turn them on because of the time a viewer needs to invest.
I have created a no-nonsense photo blogging service that makes it very easy to turn a pile of digital photos into illustrated blog entries. It takes me hardly any time after a day out with my wife and children to share photos from that day, and from prior days when I procrastinated putting them up. Friends and extended family have been happy to see the cute pictures in a timely manner, and I get to sleep sooner.
videobloggers fight back
damn str8, geek jihadi
Man, you guys are right. This videoblogging stuff is just another distraction from the real power of the internet: off-shore gambling sites. You said it better than I could, so I just did a little cut and paste and made a video blog about it: http://www.human-dog.com/exper/vidblogs/110904.htm l
I'm going out for a while now, see if I can find me one of those Linux video cameras.
Thanks!
There are people on Wikipedia who remind me of you. Back in the early days (I wasn't there then; I just remember reading some talk pages from that era), there were complaints of the nature, "We have articles about Bart Simpson but not the Amazon Rainforest! Clearly, we need to delete Bart Simpson to show where our priorities are!".
This idea misunderstands the nature of the internet. It's not like a book. There's not a limited amount of space. (Well, there is. But it's not limited enough to matter if you're just talking about text.) And it's not accessed by reading front to back. One does not "flip through" the internet and say, "Damn it! There's too much about Bart Simpson on here! Where's the Amazon Rainforest?" No, one googles "amazon rainforest" and gets the results. Simple, huh?
Now, blogging has its own benefits. Besides the amateur porn (how I love it so), I can keep tabs on how my friends are doing, catch up on an acquaintance I haven't seen in months, or publish a rant that I think really says something worthwhile. (Doesn't mean anyone has to agree, but it's up there, and that makes me feel better.)
And it's such a better alternative to forwarding email. Now, when someone I know has an annoying chain-letter to spread, they can just paste it on their blog, and I can ignore it. People only email me if they actually have something to say. Isn't that innovative?
I do agree, however, that "blog" is a stupid fucking word, used by stupid fucking people. Ugh. Like those twits who said "cyberspace" and "information superhighway" in the nineties.
--grendel drago
Laws do not persuade just because they threaten. --Seneca
Nice work Human Dog.
m l
Go on, check it out...
http://www.human-dog.com/exper/vidblogs/110904.ht
I made a video about it: http://publicaddress.typepad.com/hello/2004/11/vid eoblog_mon_a.html#comments/
Why do not this guys offer enclosure tags in their rss files?