Online Video Suddenly Gets Brainy

David Kesmodel writes "Several online-video efforts are under way that offer a more cerebral alternative to the typical fare seen on the Web, the Wall Street Journal reports. The ambitious Fora.tv, for example, intends to establish relations with all of the lecture series from the nation's scores of think tanks, civic groups, bookstores and the like, and then put tapes of their speeches and panel discussions online in an easily searchable fashion."

Comments

Won't work

[slusich]

No one wants an online video service unless it's filled up with whiney emo kids complaining about how badly their lives suck.

Seriously, while it sounds like a good idea, implementation is everything. It'll be interesting to see how they do.

Re:Won't work

[The Great Pretender]

Not too much different to reading Slashdot filled up with whiny IT guys complaining about how badly their lives suck.

Re:Won't work

[cyphercell]

Hey! I whine about my life on myspace, around here I just complain about Microsoft! Take it back!

Why?

[MyLongNickName]

Why do we need this when we have Slashdot?

so...

[cosmocain]

those who actually ARE interested in the world's affairs get an easier method to feed their information hunger.

but i really don't believe that anoybody, who wouldn't watch news channels and use - maybe even international - websites to stay up-to-date with what's happening, will just because of a new possibility start to be interested. you can even find some informational stuff on youtube, but as long you are not interested in this kind of things, you'll still type in "boobs" instead of "global warming".

Re:so...

[Red Flayer]

but as long you are not interested in this kind of things, you'll still type in "boobs" instead of "global warming".

Maybe it's just me, but even for those of us interested in those type of things, we still find our fingers typing in "boobies" despite commands from our brain to type in $SERIOUS_TOPIC. It's the unavoidable curse of being male and on the internet.

That said, I agree that it's not likely to draw a huge amount of interest among people without prior interest -- except by referral. If someone sends me a link to a good video, I'm likely to look for additional videos from that source. This is where the high signal-to-noise ratio pays off in attracting and keeping users.

Re:so...

[danpsmith]

but i really don't believe that anoybody, who wouldn't watch news channels and use - maybe even international - websites to stay up-to-date with what's happening, will just because of a new possibility start to be interested. you can even find some informational stuff on youtube, but as long you are not interested in this kind of things, you'll still type in "boobs" instead of "global warming".

Then there's only one rational solution: to educate these people we need to tag videos about global warming with "boobs." In theory, this wouldn't be really misleading, as the more global warming occurs, the more spring/summer weather months we have further from the equator and the less clothing girls will wear during those months. Who knows, maybe some of them will even go wild on winter break.

That's better...

[JamesTRexx]

First thing I get here is the famous "Nothing to see here, move along." message. I hope that's not going to be the default when looking for intelligent videos on the net. :-P

I'm glad to see another opportunity to enhance knowledge on the net. Seeing more free course material (as in those of MIT) and getting more info from discussions etc. might just make it more accessible for people to gain knowledge and not hang around the tv all day because they can't afford a decent education.

MIT Open CourseWare

[The Media Mechanic]

MIT's Open CourseWare has online videos of undergraduate and graduate course lectures of actual math, engineering, physics professors... Many of whom are top researchers in their fields. This is about as brainy as you can get!

For example...

http://ocw.mit.edu/OcwWeb/Physics/8-01Physics-IFal l1999/VideoLectures/index.htm

Re:MIT Open CourseWare

[compro01]

one of the instructors at my collage has been doing something similar for the past 3 months or so. every lecture is posted in both video/video and pure audio (for the dial up users among us).

it's very handy when i have to miss a class, as i can just get the video and find out what happened that day.

It would be nice if

[zappepcs]

some cable station actually created a news and info channel that performed as well as my use of the Internet for news? Seriously, a couple of hosts out front and a couple dozen web searchers, a few people coordinating the display of data... 30 minutes of the news Internet style without typing or clicking... hmmmmmm

No, I don't mean something stupid, but for every story I read about, I can quickly verify with a second or third source. When a new word or entity pops up I can hit Google or Wikipedia or other sites for reference quickly....

Well, not sure how it would work, but I wish news stations would take a clue from how the Internet is used.

Re:Right ...

[cyphercell]

Who is Sanjaya?

Re:i wonder

[Drew McKinney]

It has already for some time. "Big Media" calls the phenomena of short internet videos and blurbs "infosnacking". Blogs, aggregate sites and sites like Youtube are included as sources of infosnacks.

CNN and MSNBC have both tried versions of online blogs and infosnack videos with little commercial success. A few years ago MSNBC launched its big campaign to many oohs and aahs from insiders but few people on the 'outside' paid little attention. While small internet news productions like Rocketboom took off from such content. It seems industry still hasn't caught on.

PBS did a great documentary on this called the "News Wars" - i think part 4 of 4 or 3 of 4 is where they talk about infosnacking.

TED

[DrWho520]

TED

Mediasite - 13,000 presentations

[BaumSquad]

There is already a great site for this type of smart content. YouTube for Braniacs, if you will. Check out Mediasite.com There are over 13,000 presentations available to peruse through, and even cooler, you can search within these presentations and it will find the words you search both in the OCR text of the supporting materials (powerpoint, doc cam, or whatever) and even within the spoken text! Really cool tech.

I am affiliated with the site, as I work for the manufacturer, Sonic Foundry, of the technology that creates the content that all of this is made from. But it's still way cool, and certainly the search tech is really cool, and it's really available, right now. Sweet.

Re:Right ...

[cyphercell]

Googled him after I replied. I don't think it's that farfetched to think that one of these gets to slash and/or digg, from slash/digg to youtube, youtube to myspace, and bingo we've got the seething drooling masses being incredulously idiotic in public forum at someone's expense. Course you're probably right, 99% of the time people will not pay attention to what they don't understand.

Yet another niche search engine

[michaelmalak]

YouTube has plenty of this stuff already. It's just that YouTube's search facilities are a still immature. But not impossible. You can subscribe to "channels". You can click on your favorite authors and see what they've produced lately.

It's like all those niche search engines that were supposed to compete against Google. Yes, some people use them, but not as many as the niche search engine developers would have liked.

BTW, OT, my two favorite YouTube fictional series are:

1. AfterWorld
2. We Need Girlfriends

Not free degrees, free Knowledge!

[JamesTRexx]

Not having a degree != being dumb, as is having a degree != being smart.
This is one convenient way to provide knowledge to people. Those that really want a piece of paper for proof can always do official exams.

Re:i wonder

[pfhlick]

The News War documentary is free online here. Highly recommended!

bloggingheads.tv

[jalefkowit]

Another example of brainier-than-usual video that isn't mentioned in TFA is bloggingheads.tv, which hosts hour-long dialogues between two experts on various issues of the day (mostly political, but sometimes they have science, religion & culture too).

Of course, since "experts on various issues of the day" tend not to be among the most attractive people in the world, and the video is just of them talking, I have no idea why they don't just do audio-only and save bandwidth. But if you've got a Mickey Kaus pin-up on you're wall, consider your day made!

I don't get it, how is that not a $SERIOUS_TOPIC?

[msouth]

I mean, I searched for boobies and found this.

I would think video of that would be very educational. What are you guys on about? You don't think zoology is cerebral?

new trend, but not *really* new.

[morethanapapercert]

I have been watching two sites regularly for "brainy TV". Both consist of generally very good public speakers giving a lecture or presentation about important concepts. The first I found was TED which focuses more on future concepts, developing trends in society and that sort of forward looking stuff. The second was one I first discovered on my local PBS station (TV Ontario) and later hunted down online. The show is Big Ideas which features mainly the most skilled Canadian College and University lecturers talking about the subjects that they teach.

I particularly liked Jacalyn Duffin's lecture about the history of medicine during the Rational Movement and it's relation to the scientific method in making a diagnosis.

If anyone knows of any other good webcast sites (other than the MIT open courseware project, which I already have.) please let me know.

Here's some brainy fare

[WamBamBoozle]

I enjoy the Stanford CS Colloquium.

The article doesn't actually link to the subject sites, so here you are: fora.tv and ResearchChannel.