Leave it to TechCrunch to deliver the state-of-the-art overview (with best of breed links) of “Download Your TV — The Current Options”.
And leave it to a blog to have great links in the comments. Like USA Today’s perspective and overview of “ethnic” broadcast audiences.
And, the fact that the Saddam trial is being carried live on the Web. Who knew?
A nice thing about blogging is that I don’t need to try to be comprehensive… Since I’ve been tracking “The Video Web” for years, I need simply to report that, just in case some of you are not aware, the ability to publish video on the Web is taking off in exciting new ways.
For openers, of course, there’s the relatively new Google Video service, and video sharing market leader, You Tube (“Broadcast Yourself”). Both of these enable you to embed the videos in your own web pages, as I did with the Seth Godin post below.
I also spoke with a friend last week who was impressed by an offer from another start up in this space which has become quickly profitable with advertising on its video sharing site. And most recently, I sparked to a TechCrunch post on a European-based, still-in-private-beta “video publishing on demand” platform called vpod.tv. (Founder Rodrigo Sepulveda Schulz is shown above.)
Lotz of momentum here. The dawning of a new era. Way too much content (much of it sub par, but lots of it interesting) too even begin to give this emerging content landscape a description. Clearly, lots of empowerment for video publishing via the great distribution platform of the Web. And, lots more to come. Stay tuned.
The video of the Steve Jobs keynote is now up on Apple’s website. The quality is quite good, and if you’ve never seen Jobs do one of these presentations, I think it’s not to be missed. If you’ve seen one, you know. Thank God, they are finally getting this video up to watchable quality.
And thank goodness, Apple is doing so well. Mr. Jobs reports record revenue, record iPod sales (14 million last quarter, 42 million total), new videos for sale via the iTunes store, demos of all the new iLife applications (including iMovie with podcasting), and the announcement of the new Intel Macs six months ahead of schedule.
Go, Steve!
Looks like a good, cost effective ($9.95) resource for those looking for a podcasting manual: Learn more about the 93-page podcasting ebook.
This is what I get for following my own links! A nice thing about the two links below which provide links to cool Web 2.0 web services/sites is that they are a kind of demonstration of where things, hopefully, are going online. A great example is digg, which is on both lists. Digg led me to The Top 10 Podcast Episodes of 2005 which is illuminating, if for no other reason, because it illuminates how cool and diverse (from Stanford University to the Catholic Insider to a Zencast with Buddhist Thich Nhat Hanh, just to name three) the podcast universe has already become. Great list.
I decided to browse some of the video podcasts on iTunes and sure enuf found a tech video program that was actually chock full of useful information and especially web links. commandN‘s holiday episode included a link that complements the one below, “Top 10 Innovative Web 2.0 Applications of 2005.” And I also appreciated the link to LibriVox.org for free audiobook downloads! Thanks, Amber, Mike, Jeff & Brian. Good show. Keep up the good work.
Groovy story in today’s NYTimes about vlogging (video blog creation and syndication). Blog tech commentator Jeff Jarvis thinks the featured “$20/day TV star” in
NY Times article could be earning $2 million a year before long and that the most interesting “news” in the story is the producer’s deal with Tivo (which is kinda interesting.)
But to me the heart of the matter, especially since most people are still baffled by this kind of media development, is this 1957 quote from film director François Truffaut: “The film of tomorrow will be even more personal than an individual and autobiographical novel, like a confession, or a diary. The young filmmakers will express themselves in the first person and will relate what has happened to them: it may be the story of their first love or their most recent; of their political awakening. … The film of tomorrow will resemble the person who made it, and the number of spectators will be proportional to the number of friends the director has.”
Sounds like a vision of the vlogosphere to me. 😉
No time to write this up this AM, but my “video-video” juices are flowing… (FYI, I produced two videos about the desktop video revolution in the ’90’s). The announcement today of AOL and Barry Diller’s deals with a start up called Brightcove of Cambridge, MA, lead me to their site and their excellent Flash presentation on why online distribution of video is the next wave. It’s EXCELLENT and highly recommended. From what I can tell, these guys very much have it together. Check it out at Brightcove.com.
As someone who has been writing about and even producing videos about the democratization of media and the infinite possibilities for grassroots media & video for over ten years now, Apple’s new ipod combined with the blogger’s self-publishing and self-syndication platforms… not to mention podcasting… had to lead to video blogs. I was just wondering what they’d be called. Well, they’re here. They’re called “vlogs” (pronounced like “blogs” but with a “v”) and it couldn’t be anymore democratic.
For example, FreeVLog.org is brought to you by the smiling faces shown here (Ryanne Hodson & Michael Verdi). Their site has tutorials on how to distribute your personal videos (or vlog) via the Internet and Blogger etc. and even the offer of free tech support via help@freevlog.org.
Their preferred “platform” includes what claims to be the “first video aggregator… and the best place to find video made by real people,” Mefedia.
To get you into the spirit, not to mention the attitude, here’s FreeVLog.org’s definition and explanation of why you might want a vlog: “A vlog is a videoblog and you want one because, let’s face it, they’re not going to put you on TV. Besides, not playing that game is what makes this so much fun. You can do whatever you want.” Get it?
If so, you might also want to link up with vlogdir.com, a vlog log or directory; VlogMap.org, which uses Google Maps and Google Earth to display vloggers worldwide; and/or videobloggers.org, another free hosting service and vlogosphere content aggregator.
When I was writing for Videography, among other events, I used to go to every Steve Jobs MacWorld keynote in San Francisco, and LOVED the show. (If you haven’t seen Jobs in action, even if you’re not an Apple fan, it’s worth the experience to see perhaps the most masterful presenter, well, er, salesman in corporate America.) But, since I’ve been trying to tune in via QuickTime from my home office, I’ve been grossly disappointed in the quality of streaming QuickTime.
Finally, with the latest Jobs webcast using MPEG4, QuickTime is delivering a very watchable experience of Jobs’ “special event” announcement of the new iTunes, the new iPod Nano and the new Motorola iTunes phone. Click here to check it out. (QuickTime 7 recommended… Yes, you can get that for Windows too.) 😉
