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.

Why?

[MyLongNickName]

Why do we need this when we have Slashdot?

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: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.

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: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.

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.