Citizen journalism meets interactive TV

Hollywood Reporter:

Video blogging is going mainstream. The latest evidence of this emerging trend is a deal between Michael Rosenblum's M3 Media and the Travel Channel to produce a new series that combines this type of individual-created content in programs that are directly influenced by audience interaction.

"5 Takes Europe" is based on a reality show concept. Five young filmmakers will travel for two months armed only with a Sony Z1 high-definition camera, a laptop computer with Apple's Final Cut Pro and a budget of $50 a day.

Rosenblum has trained the quintet in a one-person production system he calls the video journalist method. Using these skills and tools, each filmmaker -- called a VJ in this context -- will maintain a frequently updated online blog complete with video content at travelchannel.com in addition to the weekly television program.

"The participants on '5 Takes Europe' have been turned into viable citizen journalists, able to act as reporters, camera persons, sound engineers and editors simultaneously," Rosenblum said. "A $5,000 edit room is now a $400 piece of software. TV production is as easy as word processing."

Viewers will be encouraged to interact with the VJs via the Web site as they watch the daily adventures unfold. ...

Rosenblum believes there is a wealth of untapped creative potential that has been blocked by limited access to equipment and distribution. "This Travel Channel series proves that one-man reporting can go beyond home video, and even the newsroom, to produce quality programming," he said. "What is more au courant than a bunch of 26-year-olds with cameras? It's edgy, it's cheap, and it will change the whole television demographic."

The six-week series "5 Takes Europe" debuts at 10 p.m. ET/PT July 23. ...

A former producer at CBS News, Rosenblum has created Video Journalism units for the BBC and Oxygen. He also founded and was president of NYT Television and Video News International.

This is terrific stuff. We expect to be working with Michael Rosenblum (pictured above) -- who coined the term video-journalist -- on Ourmedia in the coming months. As he said recently:

"Video-journalism is more than just teaching someone to shoot and edit their own video," he says, "It is teaching creative people to be 'literate' in the most powerful medium in the world today.

"Television is a medium that has been traditionally closed to all but a select elite, and as a result, what we see on television, and increasingly on the internet, is for the most part banal, insipid and uninspired. It is the natural end of turning over our primary means of communication to a handful of people, no matter how well intentioned."

New screencasting blog

Raymond Kristiansen, one of Ourmedia's moderators, just launched a blog devoted to screencasting: Screenvlog.com will show people what they can do with screencasting tools like Camtasia, which allow you to capture, annotate and add voiceovers to everything that happens on your computer screen. Very cool. Look for lots of how-tos with this tool.

Here, for example, is a one-minute screencast on how to quote Quicktime movies on mefeedia.com. No narration here, but you generally need a microphone (detached or embedded into your computer) to make this work well.

Tools give video freaks the power

Here's the final part of Katie Dean's three-part series on videoblogging in Wired News: Tools Give Video Freaks the Power. Excerpt:

Popcast hopes to make it easier for those interested in do-it-yourself media to create, broadcast and subscribe to such shows without having to worry about complicated technical details or costs.

The company, which officially launched its broadcasting tool, player and channel guide Thursday afternoon, provides a full set of free tools for ham video nuts to create full-screen, HD-quality programs, according to Rob Lord, founder of Popcast. People download the player to watch programs, and can subscribe to their favorite shows.

Publish your vlog to Ourmedia

Here's part 2 of Katie Dean's series on videoblogging: Man Cleans Freezer, Film at 11. The piece includes a quick primer on how to publish your vlog to Ourmedia.

Vlog world's greatest hits

At Wired News, Katie Dean begins the first of a three-part report on video blogging. Here come the vloggers, who have added video shorts to the user-created media mix.

Plus: The Vlog World's Greatest Hits.

Podcast with CEO of Blinkx

Well, this is pretty cool. I've been trading voicemails over the past few days with Suranga Chandratillake, the CEO of Blinkx. Suranga’s company is a broadband search engine for video and podcast feeds on the Internet.

I saw him at Supernova, and now I get to hear Phil Leigh's interview with him today on Inside Digital Media

Google removes illegal video uploads

San Jose Merc Tech Ticker:

Google has been forced to remove content from its new video search service because it was uploaded in violation of copyright law.

The recently launched video search service allows anyone to upload video files to Google's servers, which makes the content available online worldwide. Google's policy says it will only accept video uploads ``from persons who hold all necessary rights to the uploaded material.''

But since the service launched, feature movies such as ``The Matrix Reloaded'' and episodes of television shows such as ``The Simpsons'' have appeared on the site.

Mountain View-based Google said it screens content for violations of copyrighted material, but some videos slipped through the process.

It's still not clear what kind of screening process Google Video uses, or if they've outsourced this to an outside party.

Gnomedex videoblog

Videoblogger does quick cutaways with a number of attendees at Gnomedex (that's Chris Pirillo, above). Says Steve:

I'd recently been talking with a lot of people about what makes citizen media / personal media different from big media.

We are documentarians of life as we see and perceive it.

I don't go into a story with an angle. I don't have an idea where I want a story to go. I just document my experience.

Norwegian hacker posts crack for Google software

Associated Press: The Norwegian who became a hacker hero for developing software to unlock copy-protection codes on DVD movies said he needed only one day to crack Google Inc.'s new video viewer.

Google Video

Google Video has rolled out a video search page and a video viewer for users to watch it.

Their About page tells more.

Our mission is to organize the world's information, and that includes the thousands of programs that play on our TVs every day. Google Video enables you to search a growing archive of televised content – everything from sports to dinosaur documentaries to news shows.

It's very early in the game, but I don't really like the site's emphasis on traditional TV rather than grassroots media. But perhaps they're still figuring out how to categorize and catalog our media.

Internet News has more here.

Technorati tags: google

Akimbo carrying video blogs

Internet Video Magazine has this press release (not really a story) about video blogs on the cool grassroots TV service Akimbo.

Five of the Internet’s most popular video blogs are now available on the Akimbo Service, including Rocketboom, FreshWave.TV, Clint Sharp’s Vlog, Steve Garfield’s Video Blog and “The Carol and Steve Show,” and more are added each week. ...

“Citizens’ media and personal video distribution are among the fastest growing and most exciting areas of activity on the Internet, as evidenced by the massive popularity of blogs, podcasts and now video blogs,” said Akimbo Chief Executive Officer Josh Goldman. “Akimbo was founded with the goal of radically changing the economics of video delivery and enabling consumers to share their videos for viewing on TV."

Current TV's new submission policy

Current TV, the new youth-oriented grassroots video cable network co-founded by Al Gore, just devised its submission policy. Here's the policy, as released tonight by Josh Wolf to other members of the San Francisco Current TV Meetup Group. Interesting stuff.

Current License FAQ

Okay, here goes: You upload your video to the Current website.
As part of the upload, you give us a three-month option on your
piece, which means that you agree to let us (and only us)
evaluate it for up to three months. If lots of people in our
online Screening Room (opening August 1) like it, there’s a
good chance we’ll exercise that option and buy the exclusive
rights to broadcast the piece.

If we do, we’ll pay you based on a graduated scale.

If we don’t, after the three months are up you can do whatever
you want with it.

What is this pay scale you speak of?

Here’s a handy table:

First piece: $250
Pieces 2 and 3: $500 each
Pieces 4 and 5: $750 each
Pieces 6+: $1000 each

Print THAT out and stick it on your fridge!

How’d you decide on those levels?

We looked at our budget, we listened to VCC contributors, and
we used a little bit of guesswork, too. We like these levels
because they’re simple and straightforward, and they encourage
continuous contribution, not just one-off work.

If you’re a professional video producer, the first tiers of the
pay scale will seem low. But we wanted to accommodate novices
and veterans—and if you really do make great stuff, you’ll move
up the levels quickly.

Are there length requirements to qualify for that scale?

There are not! Submissions in the 3-5 minute range have
generally had the most success here, but we’ve licensed some
great 20-second pieces of video, too.

Can I upload my video to other sites, too?

No. We realize this part of the deal might seem burdensome. But
here’s the logic: We’re going to present your video in our
online Screening Room so people can vote and comment on it,
with the notion that if it’s popular or interesting, it might
be something we’d like to pay for and distribute as viewer-
created content.

If anybody else can swoop in and scoop up the good stuff, we’re
just providing a public service to other TV networks. Which
would be nice, but, you know, no thanks.

Jeez, I can’t even submit my video to a film festival?

Aha! SO glad you asked. We’re making a special exception here,
because we know festivals are such a good opportunity for
exposure and feedback. Just don’t sign any distribution deals
before checking with us first. Also note that online-only
festivals are still a no-go, but Sundance, SXSW, and others
like that are all perfectly fine.

How do I know you’re not just going to steal my awesome ideas?

When you upload, we only get an option to the actual video you’
re submitting—not the concepts behind it. You own those and we
can’t touch them. But really, if you think we are all about
copying people’s videos, we haven’t done a very good job
explaining who we are and what we’re about!

If you buy the rights to broadcast my video, will I still be
credited as its creator?

Absolutely! And we’re not talking about a little line of text
in the corner, either. The last thing we want to do is conceal
the origins of our viewer-created content. On the contrary: We
want to splash your name and your image all over your work. And
we plan to air interviews with prolific VCC producers on a
regular basis. We are all about full exposure and full props.

Why do you want rights in all media? Why not just TV?

Technology is moving fast. More and more TV is going to get
piped through the internet; more and more cell phones are going
to play video. For all those reasons, we want to distribute
your work—with your name and mug attached to it—anywhere video
can go.

If I submit a video, and you license and distribute it, and it
gets really popular, can I re-cut the raw footage and sell a
different version to other networks?

That’s quite a scheme you’ve got there. You can make a
different version, but before you offer it to other networks,
you have to offer it to us, and we have the option to buy it
for $1,500. If we pass, then you can do whatever you like with
it.

Clearly I will get releases from all the people in my video, and not use any commercial music. But are there any rights issues that might sneak up on me?

Beware of copyrighted images in the background; of people who
aren’t featured in your video, per se, but who are still
recognizable; and of ambient music. When you check the little
box that says you accept our terms, you’re saying that
everything in your video is legit and fully cleared. Think
before you check.

Hey! I’ve already uploaded a video! What happens to it?

Right now, nothing. It’s still in our system under the same
terms you agreed to when you uploaded. Sometime in July,
though, we’ll be sending you an email to ask you to opt in to
this new license. You’re free to decline, and if you do, we’ll
remove your video from our system.

Do you ever commission pieces?

Yes! We’ve already commissioned lots of excellent VCC producers
after being impressed by their Studio submissions. If you jump
in and your work rocks, you’ll definitely be in the running for
a VCC assignment.

Don’t you know who I am?? I can’t work under these conditions!

If for whatever reason you don’t like the sound of this system,
you can also pitch us the old-fashioned way. Be warned, though:
Just like at any other TV network, our acquisitions department
is small and swamped, and there’s no guarantee they’ll be able
to look at your stuff. That’s why we created the Current
Studio: to re-invent the way new content and new talent is
discovered--to make it faster, more efficient and more
transparent.

iFeeder: another video sharing site

New to the grassroots video game: the "media sharing portal" iFeeder. I uploaded a video to the site last night. 160 videos in the collection, as far as I can tell. Unfortunately, the site's About page tells you nothing about who's behind it.

Orb Networks CEO on the future of digital media

Engadget has just published my latest interview, this one with Jim Behrens, CEO of Orb Networks, who talks about the growing importance of personal media, streaming music, catching television on the road on nearly any device, and our networked, always-on, access-your-stuff-from-anywhere future.

DivX 6 released

DivX, a David playing among the codec Goliaths (I profiled the San Diego startup in Darknet), has released version 6.0 of its video format. Advanced features include menus, multiple audio, subtitles and metadata. Here's a clip from the site that has all of these integrated. DivX has also released a new simple encoding app that is drag and drop. It works particularly well with DV files.

Top video sites

No mention of Ourmedia in this British journalist's idea of the top video sites on the Web, but some other interesting sites singled out, including NewsToday (hmm), Hillmancurtis , SecondStory , BD4D (By Designers For Designers), DesignIsKinky , The View magazine, Heavy.com and Guerrilla UK.

Video content set free on Web

From CNET News.com today: Video content set free on Web.

"We see an opportunity to help kick-start the grassroots media revolution," said J.D. Lasica, [executive director] of recently launched Ourmedia, which hosts video for free. "We're still at an early stage of the multimedia-rich Web. The Web is not going to be Web logs and text; it's going to be people posting video and podcasting and taking part in the citizens' media [revolution] that's just starting to explode."

FireANT: one hot app for watching video

One of the obstacles that multimedia sites like Ourmedia or iFilm or OpenMedia Network face is that it's still somewhat squirrelly to watch video online. Takes a few seconds to get going ... hiccups now and then ... all that fun stuff.

Well, have we got a solution for you!

Jay Dedman and the crew at Antisnottv.net have created a terrific new RSS application called FireANT. Download it here in two flavors: Windows or Mac. We just rolled it out on Ourmedia.org.

Says Jay: "We really pulled out the stops for the PC version. FireANT is a monster. It reads text, audio and video. It has Yahoo Video Search and a Directory. It syncs to iTunes and the Playstation Portable" for viewing video.

They even made a video about how it works.

You can now subscribe to Ourmedia video and audio and image feeds -- with no more hiccups. Watch the video and listen to the audio file after it's downloaded to your hard drive.

TiVo for the Internet

If podcasting can be described as TiVo for audio, then the open-source Internet TV platform that the Participatory Culture Foundation plans to release by late June might be described as TiVo for the Internet.

Videoblogger Steve Garfield has a new interview with Holmes Wilson of Downhill Battle about the recently released video publishing package Broadcast Machine. And Slashdot has a thread on it. I'll be chatting with Holmes by phone later this afternoon.

Vlogging makes an impact

A newspaper article out of Minneapolis on the videoblogging phenomenon features Chuck Olsen of Blogumentary fame, Rocketboom, and a handful of other vlog sites.

Two nice photos of Chuck, which appeared in the San Jose Merc, aren't on the paper's news site, natch.

Videoblogging resources page

New at Ourmedia: A one-page PDF of videoblogging resources, handed out by Jay Dedman and Ryanne Hodson at BlogNashville.

The in-your-boxers world of video blogs

The NY Times takes a look at Rocketboom.com.

"Funny? Want to be a Weatherperson?" read the ad, posted on May 9 on the Craigslist Web site. "If you think you're funny and at least one person outside of your immediate family concurs, please e-mail a copy of your resume and head shot."

Though the "job" in question was an unpaid gig with Rocketboom.com, a no-frills video blog shot five evenings a week in its creator's one-bedroom apartment on West 81st Street, more than 300 faux meteorologists clamored to try out, and two dozen were given audition slots, first come first served.

The team behind Rocketboom, a 34-year-old Web designer named Andrew Baron and a 23-year-old actress named Amanda Congdon, were the first to admit that they really had no clue what they were looking for. Rocketboom is a gently snarky daily newscast featuring Ms. Congdon sitting behind a desk made out of a fireplace screen turned sideways, with a $10 world map as backdrop. In the do-it-from-your-bedroom-in-your-boxers world of video blogs, one of the critical virtues is not to have even a whiff of television polish about you. ...

Exactly. Au naturel, for better or worse.

Deadline for Current.tv content is Friday

Anastasia from Current.tv's Studio passes this along:

As you may have read, we’re going to launch our TV broadcast on August 1. ... We’re working hard on our programming schedule, which will include a mix of original programming produced by Current and viewer-created content (VC2) produced by you. We’ve been building up a collection of great VC2 pieces to air on the network. The Studio is on the hook to fill a significant portion of our programming slate. So, we need your help! The deadline for our current competition is this Friday. So put those final touches on your pieces and upload them to our site. The winner gets a development deal to make three short pieces that will air on Current this fall. Online voting for the five finalists -- just like last time -- will begin on June 6.

More on Current in the weeks to come.

iTunes supporting video?

Ryan G., aka thecapitalizt, says by IM:

There's video support in iTunes 4.8. Now why would apple ever want to support playing video in an application that syncd to your ipod? Drop in a video into iTunes 4.8 and see what happens.

Video search goes prime time

From last night's Yahoo! blog: Video Search Goes Primetime

It's been a few months since I blogged about the appearance of the Video Search tab on the front page of yahoo.com, and it's time to give you the latest update on our product. Tonight we've shed our "beta" tag and released Yahoo! Video Search 1.0. ...

So what's changed in 1.0? We've partnered up with some major content publishers to fortify our content offering, including MTV, Buena Vista (including the latest clips and trailers for The Hitchhiker's Guide To The Galaxy), CBS News, Bloomberg (check out the latest news on the Federal Reserve), Reuters, The Discovery Channel, Scripps Networks (the good people who produce Home & Garden TV and The Food Network), VH1, and more.

However, great video search isn't just about content from large publishers, it's also about the long tail content from smaller publishers and individuals as well. To that end, we're indexing the Internet Archive's Moving Image Archive. One of the great things about the Moving Image Archive is that it encompasses a wide range of content -- everything from the Prelinger Archives (a collection of over 48,000 "ephemeral films" from 1927 through 1987), to user-created Open Source Movies hosted by the Internet Archive, and other collections of video. (One of my favorites is the animated legos from Brick Films. Don't miss seeing their version of Grand Theft Auto done entirely in Lego).

Those of you who are budding independent filmmakers, or think you've created the next Numa Numa Dance, we're keeping you in the fold too. Besides making enhancements to our web crawl which indexes video files published online, you can also submit a Media RSS feed directly to us of the video on your website.

If you want someone to host your video content for you as well, you can have your video hosted by sites such as OurMedia, the Internet Archive's Open Source Movies, or any other hosting service that publishes video files directly to the web or with Media RSS. We applaud these hosting efforts -- it's our goal that once you publish your video content on any hosting service, we'll index the content in Video Search and help our audience find your content. Supporting an open model for video hosting gives you the most choices, so you can find the publishing solution that works best for you.

Open, independent Internet TV

Eric from Berlin and Holmes from Downhillbattle.org send along word of Participatoryculture.org, a new project and platform for Internet television and video.

At the site, anyone can broadcast full-screen video to thousands of people at virtually no cost, using BitTorrent technology. Viewers get intuitive, elegant software to subscribe to channels, watch video, and organize their video library. The project is non-profit, open source, and built on open standards. This week, they announced the project and released their current sourcecode. The software launches in June.

We hope to work with them so users can post their video to the Web via Ourmedia.org.

Video from the Current TV meetup

Alan put together a quick video (in Windows Media) from Wednesday night's San Francisco Current.tv meetup.

Paid video vs. free video

It's now Friday, and I still haven't heard from Google about the video I uploaded seven days ago and is waiting in their approval queue.

Meantime, Ourmedia's chief developer, Gaurav Bhatnagar of New Delhi, has some thoughts about the two services:

Just when Ourmedia started to make news, Google announced its own video publishing service. Google is basically going to let you sell your videos online. So though Ourmedia and Google have different goals, comparisions are inevitable. ...

There is a fundamental difference between Google Video and Ourmedia. Ourmedia is not just about publishing your media online, it also aims to develop a community around what people post there. We have forums, blogs, group blog, commenting, buddy lists etc. Ourmedia is a gathering place for media enthusiasts. It is less about selling, more about sharing. Of course, it is entirely possible to use Ourmedia to showcase your work and then sell it elsewhere. And that is great. But fundamentally, Ourmedia is not an e-commerce site. It is a social networking site. Soon, we will add groups functionality to Ourmedia. So, you can go and create a group for "Fans of Bollywood Dance-Around-Tree Songs" or whatever. The power of community is behind us. And if we can harness it, Ourmedia will be unstoppable.

Not much is known about the Google video service. From what I can make out, you can upload a video and it becomes searchable through Google search. There will eventually be a way to sell your videos online and Google will probably take a cut out of it. I don't know if they plan to have community features integrated with Google video. Google already has a thriving social network in the form of Orkut which they could use to match and exceed what Ourmedia has to offer. Even then, we have a couple of innovations up our sleeves, which will emerge with time.

Overall, I am excited to have Google in this space. It can only attract more attention towards Ourmedia. We would have to get real nerdy to be able to match Google in technology. It will be interesting to see how they handle uploads and embedding videos in web pages. We have discovered the hard way that supporting unlimited number of media formats is no fun. We recently fixed some huge upload issues we were facing. So things are running much more smoothly now.

I would be interested to know what Google feels about Ourmedia. In some ways, the two can complement each other - Ourmedia could be the place where people showcase their 'trailers' or clippings and then sell them on Google Video. On the other hand, Ourmedia provides free and unlimited storage with hardly any strings attached - something that Google might be unwilling to do.

So the next few months are going to be exciting times for citizen journalism and grassroots media. Will Microsoft and Yahoo take cue from Google and come up with something of their own? Will Ourmedia thrive along with or inspite of Google Videos? Will we be able to innovate enough to make Ourmedia stand apart? Only time will tell!

Google's foray into video

I just uploaded my first (test) video to Google under its new video upload program, so we'll see how that goes. The process was pretty similar in some ways to Ourmedia's upload process.

They ask for less metadata, but it's interesting -- and I think disappointing -- that designating rights isn't a part of the upload process. There's no option to assign your media a Creative Commons license, permitting others not only to access your work but to reuse it creatively -- to remix it, borrow from it, quote from it, build upon it.

Because the default is traditional copyright, it is presumably illegal to download a video from Google and share it, or retransmit it to another site, or use it on a commercial site (there are many works on Ourmedia that can be used by commercial entties -- because the owner assigned those rights).

There's also some noise in the blogosphere about what Google may do with your video, given their Terms of Service, which is quite a bit denser (and filled with lawyerese) than Ourmedia's terms of service: You own your own material. Ourmedia claims no intellectual property rights over the material you provide to our service.

At BoingBoing, Jacob Kaplan-Moss writes:

I've taken a look at the Video Uploader terms of service, and they contain some... suspect clauses, including the provision that Google can bill you for excessive bandwidth. Thought you might be interested...

Couple of other differences:

Google video doesn't support Flash Ourmedia does.

Ourmedia also will freely host audio files, podcasts, images, text documents, software, games and more. Google doesn't.

Overall, though, Google's foray into video is a welcome addition to the cause of spreading the personal media revolution. Now: which of the other search engines will provide free hosting for grassroots media -- and will join an open media registry so those works can be freely shared and accessed?

PVR Blog has more here.

Google wants your video

Silicon Valley Watcher:

Google wants your video

At the big cable conference in SF today, Google cofounder Larry Page said the search company plans to put out a call for personal video clips. "We're going to start taking video submissions from people," Reuters quoted Page as saying in his speech. This would be a part of Google Video, a search service that displays stills and closed caption text from broadcast video.

The announcement comes on the heels of the launch of OurMedia.org, cofounded by Marc Canter and JD Lasica, a nonprofit organization dedicated to allowing individuals to create, distribute and market their original content. So will OurMedia gain traction if Google is ready to become the free video hosting and search archive?

Heading to the Podcast Hotel

Just got off the phone with Alex Williams of Corante, who invited me to attend the Podcast Hotel and Videoblog Festival -- which he wonderfully described as a "happenin'" -- July 15-17 in Portland.

I accepted, and if I can talk my wife into it, she and our soon-to-be 6-year-old will come along.

It'll be not just a be-in -- to use another throwback '60s term -- but a hands-on workshop as well.

It sounds wonderful, and Alex tells that Eric Rice will be among the 50 or so people expected. By then, I hope to have some videoblogs and podcasts in the bag, if I ever get a free moment for my life again.

Here are the details.

Vlogs: Next big thing or niche experiment?

MSNBC columnist Michael Rogers (who headed up Newsweek's online news department for years) has part 2 of his look at vlogs (including a nice mention of Ourmedia):

Vlogs: Next big thing or niche experiment?. Readers respond to Practical Futurist column.

The answer is surely somewhere in between.

Sometimes it's interesting to see what they're saying about vlogging (after "huh"?) out in the heartland.

First, an interesting new place to post video has now launched: the long-awaited Ourmedia.org. It’s an open-source citizen-journalist project masterminded by veteran new-media writer JD Lasica and the even more veteran multimedia pioneer Marc Canter (there are probably kids learning Director today who weren’t born when Marc created its earliest incarnation years ago in San Francisco). Ourmedia had 20,000 visitors its first day, and signed up 3,000 members in its first 3 days and is definitely worth watching.

Slimming cure for digital videos

PhysOrg.com: Slimming cure for digital videos.

The future, high-speed DSL lines will no longer be the sole preserve of computer users. The TV set will also become a multimedia device, capable of downloading videos for instant viewing via telephone cables. Up until now the required data volumes have been too large for transmission with good picture quality. Researchers from Siemens and MainConcept have now developed a system applying the latest video standards to compress the huge streams of video data.

Thanks to unmediated for the pointer.

Bloggers add video to their musings

Sandeep Junnarkar in Thursday's NY Times Circuits section: Bloggers Add Moving Images to Their Musings. Software for creating and maintaining Web logs now offers tools for adding audio, photos and video - and even updates by cellphone. A look at the latest offerings.

Sharing Green Day

Watch the Grammys Sunday night? Seemed like throwback night for most of the evening -- except for the kick-ass performance by the Bay Area's own Green Day. (That's lead singer Billie Joe Armstrong at top.)

I was wondering about how the network got Armstrong to drop a cuss word during "American Idiot." The answer? They didn't. Reuters reports today:

Green Day's performance of the group's title song from its Grammy-winning and politically charged "American Idiot" was a potential flashpoint for controversy.

Lead singer Billie Joe Armstrong appeared to swallow an obscenity during the song, a rant against the media and complacency.

A band spokesman said "Green Day" played the song as it usually does and the network employed a method known as a "vocal drop," meaning it hit the mute button during the offending word.

By the way, I recorded Green Day's performance on my Panasonic DVD Recorder and can play it on the DVD+RW reader of my Sony Vaio desktop computer, but so far I can't figure out how to copy the file off the DVD and onto my hard drive in a format that my computer can read.

Anybody know?

Perhaps it's as simple as buying a program, or installing shareware, that lets you capture any video you play, as I can currently can do on my Mac with Snapz Pro X.

I may decide to share the video with a handful of close friends on one of my closed darknets (which is not an open file-sharing network, by the way), if I can fgure out how to copy it over and then reencode it into mpeg4 or another open format.

The skinny on QuickTime 7

From Adrian Miles, Down Under:

There's a brief PR page up at Apple outlining some of the new features in QT 7. The most significant is probably they H.264 codec, which will deliver much higher frame sizes for very low data rates. This will make all those people who mistake videoblogs for TV all the more happier, since now they will be able to publish their work full screen.

Also, here's the FAQ on Apple's H.264, the next generation MPEG4 codec that will be built into QuickTime 7, and is also adopted as the new DVD codec.

Steve Jobs showed it off at Macworld last month, and it's wicked cool.

Audioblog lets bloggers add sound, video

From today's San Jose Merc: Audioblog.com lets bloggers add sound, video. An interview with fellow East Bayer Eric Rice, whose Audioblog service is taking some of the pain out of video uploads.

Video of Vloggercon

The folks behind the Videoblogging conference held Jan. 22, 2005, in New York today posted the videos from all five Vloggercon sessions. A three-camera shoot with very good sound.

I wasn't able to attend, so I'm really looking forward to watching these.

The networked digital lifestyle

Mike Langberg in the San Jose Merc on Orb Media and the networked digital lifestyle:

If you buy a pay-per-view movie in 2009, delivered through the Internet, you'll be able to start watching on the big-screen TV in the living room, effortlessly continue on a small screen in the kitchen and then finish on the tiny screen of your mobile phone when you leave the house.

From any wireless device, you'll be able to listen to the digital music and view the digital photos stored on your computer's hard drive at home.

All this will happen seamlessly, without having to worry about whether the devices you buy are compatible with the services you use.

Which brings me back to Orb Media, from a start-up company in Emeryville named Orb Networks.

Here's how Orb (www.orb.com), launched Jan. 4, works in theory: You have a Windows computer at home with high-speed Internet service, either cable modem or DSL, that's also connected to your cable or satellite TV receiver box. You subscribe to the Orb Media service at $9.99 a month or $79.99 for a year, and install a small piece of software from Orb Networks to allow remote access.

From any Internet-connected device -- a notebook computer, a desktop computer at work or school, a mobile phone, or a personal digital assistant -- you can now sign onto the Orb Media service to see and hear any digital media on your computer.

You could, for example, watch a Bay Area TV station's evening news show on your laptop in a New York hotel room, display family photos on your cell phone when visiting a friend's house, or listen to your music collection on your PDA using the WiFi wireless network at a neighborhood Starbucks. You can even, from a remote location, program your computer to record a TV show for later remote viewing. ...

Brett's first videoblog

Here’s Brett Gaylor’s “misguided” first attempt at videoblogging. On skis. Not bad.

Vloggercon photos

Here are some photos posted to Flickr of yesterday's Vloggercon (videoblogging conference) in New York. And a slide show.

Videos of the proceedings will follow in the coming days.

How an 11-year-old videoblogging star is born

Jay Dedman at MomentShowing on how an 11-year-old videoblogging star is born -- and then shows us how to just be normal.

Jay points to this terrific little blog video recounting the craziness of the past two weeks surrounding Dylan Verdi, who made a blog video and then was profiled on ABC News.

Video blogs break out with tsunami scenes

From today's Wall Street Journal: Video Blogs Break Out With Tsunami Scenes.

When twenty-one-year-old Jordan Golson launched his Web diary, or blog, in early December, his conservative views on news and politics weren't exactly in demand, attracting about 10 surfers a day. But by last Thursday, he was struggling to keep his site named "Cheese and Crackers" up and running as it racked up 640,000 hits.

The difference: tsunami videos.

Mr. Golson's site -- at jlgolson.blogspot.com -- is just one of dozens of locations on the Internet hosting amateur videos of the Indian Ocean disaster. Many have been deluged with visitors eager to see more of the gripping footage than TV offers, or to watch videos over and over again on their own time. Some of these "video blogs," like Mr. Golson's, are pre-existing text blogs, which typically include commentary and views on current events.

Others have just sprung up in the last week. WaveofDestruction.org, created by an Australian blogger to host tsunami videos, logged 682,366 unique visitors from last Wednesday through Sunday morning, and has more than 25 amateur videos of the impact so far.

"The ease of putting something online is pretty much instant," says Geoffrey Huntley, the founder of Wave of Destruction. "At a media company, I'm sure there are channels you have to go through -- copyright, legal, editorial, etc. Blogging is instant."

Even before the tsunami, media watchers had predicted that 2005 would be a big year for video blogging, also known as vlogging. Jay Rosen, chair of the Department of Journalism at New York University and a media blogger himself, says the unique videos of the waves hitting shore could be a "breakthrough" event for the Web. ...

Vloggercon site

The Vloggercon 2005 website just launched, for those of you interested in video blogging.

On-the-fly playlist generation

Vimeo: a site for organizing and sharing video clips, providing on-the-fly playlist generation. Some amazing stuff flying out of the videoblogging group these days.

Enabling the personal video revolution

Michael Bazeley, Internet reporter for the San Jose Merc, chats with Internet Archive founder Brewster Kahle about the video life and blogs about it at SiliconBeat. Excerpt:

In essence, the IA has become a free video hosting service of sorts, no small matter considering the bandwidth and storage costs associated with video.

This hit home for us when we saw this week that filmmaker Michael Verdi was going to host one of his daughter's videoblog files on the Internet Archive because it was chewing up so much of his own bandwidth.

One might question whether the musings of an 11-year-old girl, however smart or charming, should be permanently stored in the Internet Archive. On first blush, that seems like a pretty low bar for entry into what could be an important historical collection of digital files.

But Kahle doesn't see it that way at all.

What seems irrelevant now may be very important to someone else years from now. Verdi's daughter's video may not appear to have much cultural or historical significance now. But years later, her descendants may want to research her life, and how great would it be to have access to this video, Kahle says. (Kahle and the Archive are also working with a group called Ourmedia that hopes to build a repository of grassroots media, including photo albums, video diaries, home-brew political ads and student films.)

"We're starting to move to the point of having personalized information libraries,'' he said. "Whether that means filling the world with Tiffany's every rambling, I don't know. But selection is often more expensive than storing the information. Making a decision about whether to select something is often more expensive than just grabbing it.''

The IA is taking in about 100 videos a day, Kahle said. Each one is screened by an IA employee before it's archived and made available on the Web. ...

Brewster has assured us that videos posted to Ourmedia and stored on the Archive's servers won't need to be curated by an Archive staffer, starting later this month. That's a critical step -- real-time videoblogging -- and that's when this thing will really take off.

Boxing Day video

Here's a first-time videoblogger's blog video (about 3 minutes long) about Canada's Boxing Day sales.

Vote on Vloggercon sessions

If you're planning to attend Vloggercon in New York later this month, you can vote on which sessions you'd like to see here.

Vloggercon 1

What started as an offhanded comment by a video blogger has now turned into Vloggercon 2005.

Members of the videoblogging mailing list have set aside Saturday, Jan. 22, for Vloggercon 2005. (Vlogger, for those not in the know, is a video blogger.)

Jay Dedman and the gang are looking for discussion leaders and thrashing out the conference details, which will be announced next week. If you're interested in participating, contact him at jay dot dedman at gmail dot com.

Online video and Ourmedia

Video blogging has just busted out into the national spotlight.

Heather Green in the new issue of Business Week: Online Video: The Sequel. Video blogs are proliferating, thanks to improved distribution technology, and mainstream companies are taking notice. I managed to get a plug in there for Ourmedia:

Welcome to the latest Net phenomenon: video blogs, or what some folks call vlogs. Thousands of ordinary (and some downright nutty) people have begun posting a cornucopia of video fare online, from self-indulgent art clips and earnest citizen journalism to sly political commentary (see BW Online, 12/29/04, "Let a Million Videos Bloom Online"). Experimentation is the rule, and eccentrics outnumber serious practitioners.

But amid the chaos, glimpses of a commercial future are starting to emerge, including a revival of online video distribution, using vlogs to sell ads, and corporate sites designed to reach out to customers and suppliers. ...

The vlog phenomenon has stirred up a wave of creativity at grassroots groups and companies alike. Online video sites, such as Undergroundfilm, are adding blogging sections. Ourmedia, an online showcase for digital content, is expected to launch early this month [January]. It will provide free storage and blogging room for creative types such as New York indie musician Sam Bisbee, whose music video will be available for free. "You see video bubbling up all over the Web," says J.D. Lasica, who runs Ourmedia. "My thought was to gather it all in one place."

Here's Heather's companion piece, Let a Million Videos Bloom Online. The grassroots movement to post visual blogs makes astonishing viewing, and vlogs' rising audiences may give them an increasing impact. Excerpt:

In Boston, Steve Garfield is practicing his own brand of citizen journalism. His video reports at stevegarfield.blogs.com/videoblog are as local as they come, ranging from coverage of this summer's Democratic National Convention to a video of a downed power line on his street. At human-dog.com, run by Chris Weagel, a St. Clair Shores (Mich.) video producer, visitors can watch a spare, silent film showing an anonymous person removing a John Kerry yard sign from its metal posts after the Presidential election and taping an upside-down flag in its place.

Ryan Hodson, a 25-year-old film editor, specializes in videos that mingle the absurd with oddly touching insights. In one clip, she tours her house. In the kitchen, the camera focuses on a pot on a stove as Hodson describes the night her roommate tried to cook Dinty Moore Stew without -- as the camera pans up to recreate -- pouring the food out of the can. In another video, she created split-screen montages of her brother racing bicycles, showing him crashing, and then out ahead of the pack.

The trio are among the pioneers spearheading a fast-evolving grassroots movement. It's an amazing process to watch as creative pockets begin to interact around the country. Garfield, Hodson, and Weagel are all part of a Yahoo! (YHOO ) group dedicated to video blogging that was formed in June by Jay Dedman, a New Yorker who works at a public-access TV station.

In turn, that Yahoo group began working in late summer with Ourmedia, a new site backed by a who's who of bloggers and grassroots media advocates. Intended to be a showplace for digital content, Ourmedia is being given free storage space by the Internet Archive, a nonprofit digital library backed by the entrepreneur Brewster Kahle.

Ourmedia is also tapping into the publishing and copyright licensing tools developed by Creative Commons, another grassroots nonprofit founded by Lawrence Lessig, a Stanford Law School professor and one of America's best known commentators on intellectual-property issues.

The links among the various groups don't stop there. Yahoo, which unveiled a video search service earlier this month, is working with Ourmedia, Creative Commons, and commercial sites such as indie-film service AtomFilms to develop a video version of Really Simple Syndication, or RSS.

We'll see what Jay has to say, but you couldn't really ask for a more glowing pair of articles. (And Heather's the bomb.)

World's youngest videoblogger

Eleven-year-old Dylan has just taken the title of world's youngest videoblogger. (At least until I can get my 5-year-old to do one.)

Jay Dedman has the details here. And Dylan's dad, Michael, says this:

Wow, this is crazy. Waxy.org and Metafilter posted a link to Dylan's video (along with lots of others) and it's been downloaded 1885 times in the last 60 hours (1657 in the last 24). It's used up 25GB of the 50GB monthly traffic I have for my website. I guess it's time to move it to internet archive. I guess she'll have a good answer when she gets back to school for "What did you do over Christmas vacation?"

Endearing, real -- and the sign of monumental things to come in the world of grassroots media.

Videoblogging meets cable TV

Jay Dedman just pinged me about the virtual party/global electronic experiment he had last night -- and shared with all of Manhattan. Says Jay on video: "What you're seeing is isight, ichat. We finally figured out you could put it on TV."

Incredibly exciting. This is the grassroots video revolution at our doorstep. Check out Jay's post:

I do a live call-in show each week on Ch. 56 at 11:30pm in Manhattan. A while ago, my friend Kenyatta suggested doing a live show using webcams.

So I decided to try it tonight.

I put out an email to the videoblogging group an hour before the show and got crazy response. The Videobloggers [responded].

Who are these obsessed people?

With webcams and iChat AV, I networked in 6 different people who were spread out across the country. (could have been global)
Taking live phone calls, my guests could speak directly with the viewers in Manhattan.

Because MNN streams all their shows, my guests could watch the show on the internet.

Using this simple technology, we basically did what a Network does with satellite feeds.

We did zero planning for this show; it kind of just happened as an experiment while I was eating dinner.

Imagine if we had a plan.

Honestly, it is extremely comforting to find other people on this planet trying to connect.

Wanting to make change and have fun doing it.

Changing the world is the coolest thing you can do.

And it starts by us just getting to know each other better.

We can do this using inexpensive cameras, the internet, and the force of our will.

Then the real work begins.

Check out our modest beginning at me-tv, our new little project.

All thanks to Chris, Daniell, Adam, Ryanne, Josh, Shannon, and Charlene for showing up tonight. ...

The video is here . Mostly, they talk about how amazing this videoblogging/video conference cablecast is. And it is.

Yahoo! launches video search

Marc Canter:

Yahoo has started an effort to get folks to upload RSS files of their video - which means that Yahoo is jumping in - head first - into the space of open standards. ...

Google is off pushing some propreitary solution onto our GODD friends down in Hollywood - I'm sure promising them a solution to that dreaded "bit torrent" download "problem they have".

Microsoft is being Microsoft - tying all their search stuff into their DRM solution - and so that leaves it to Yahoo to support and think about US.

Steve Rubel, too, cheers the move.

Thank you, Yahoo.

Broadsnatching

In Engadget, Phil Torrone writes about "broadsnatching" (or capturing video) to a Portable Media Center.

How to subscribe to video feeds

I had been meaning to blog about this since Sunday, and now Wired News beat me to it in a story headlined, Video Feeds Follow Podcasting. Excerpt:

Already, there are rudimentary applications like Vogbrowser, which offers video feeds to which people can subscribe, much like they do with RSS feeds. There are more products like this on the way.

"We think of it internally as TiVocasting," said Scott Rafer, president and chief executive of the blog search engine Feedster, which has begun offering video feeds through a dedicated site, FeedsterTV. "Video stuff is now coming into play. It's one thing to have a bunch of video files dumped into a folder on your desktop. The interesting future is when it is put into a TiVo-style mechanism."

Right now, there isn't much video content to view this way: It's mostly lectures, tutorials and clips cribbed from the Jon Stewart show. ...

That should change in time, with Ourmedia and other video aggregation sites helping out.

For now, the early grunt work is being done by people like Kenyatta Cheese, Vogbrowser's developer, and Jay Dedman, a New York television production teacher.

"With video, it's really hard to send that (feed) to your TV, which is the way most people want to watch video," said Cheese. "Given that there's an absence of that cool device, the idea is to keep it in the browser for now."

So Cheese built Vogbrowser, a server-based viewer on which the hacking-inclined can watch video feeds from aggregators like FeedsterTV and Blogdigger.

At the same time, Dedman and his colleagues are putting the finishing touches on the first iteration of a viewer called Ant.

"It'll look like iPodder, but will have a nice viewing window," Dedman said, referring to one of the leading podcasting applications. "When you subscribe to video feeds, they'll show up and you can make playlists of your favorite feeds."

Dedman said Ant should be done sometime this week. ...

Ant is out now. It's a way to subscribe to more than a dozen video bloggers' feeds. Jay told me by emal:

"I work with a group of active videobloggers. We're trying to make it easy to create, post, and view video on the internet. We've doing an incredible amount of work...blows me away what people can do spread wout throughout the world. Our latest tool, an RSS reader for video only, is buggy...but was written in a day. This is how you can see video all in one place" -- something Jay has been after for months.

Congrats on the new tool, videobloggers (Peter Vandijck coded it). It's a first step toward a grand connected future.

Ray is video blogging

Ray Garraud begins to video blog, using Audioblog.com. (Look out, mediasphere!) Good start, though next time we'll need something meatier, Ray.

Jay's search for a redwood

Jay Dedman, whom I finally got to meet at BloggerCon, goes in search of a redwood tree during his stay in California in this QuickTime video.

You can take the boy out of New York, but ...

A new emphasis on digital video search

CNET News.com: Google, Microsoft and Yahoo are quietly developing new search tools for digital video, and Google is demonstrating new technology to a handful of major TV broadcasters in an attempt to forge alliances and develop business models for a video-searchable database on the Web.

The grassroots media revolution

Jay Dedman, a key member of ourmedia, blogs about FeedsterTV, a new site that offers one way to let us watch all that Internet video in the years ahead. Writes Jay:

Right now, the only way to watch videoblogs is to go to each individual blog and watch each individual video. As of November 2004, there is no way to see videos all in one place. It's as if when I want to hear a story, I got to run around town to each person's apartment to hear the story. I want a stage where we can all come together and tell stories to each other. ...

Bonus links:

Blogdigger, offering the latest posts with media "enclosures."

iPodder.net, showcasing the podcasting revolution.

Engadget: How to podcast (which I previously linked to).

Weapons of Mass Seduction

Lie Girls: not-so-innocent "girls" telling dirty, nasty, shameless political lies. "Call now to enter our fantasy world of spin."

Get your videoblogs on TV

Jay Dedman, talking about what videoblogs should be, and how to get 'em on TV. Jay interviews Dan Melinger in this fascinating 7-minute accompanying video that shows a hard drive running Windows XP using $60 SageTV pvr software and a video capture card, all connected to the TV, allowing you to watch BitTorrent videos and videoblogs on your TV.

'(Didn't Know I Was) UnAmerican'

(Didn't Know I Was) UnAmerican is a piece of heartfelt grassroots DIY media by young activists. Thanks to Howard Rheingold for the pointer.

'Not There'

Operation Truth: "Not There," a 30-second spot about a soldier in Iraq.

Software for video hobbyists

Mike Langberg in today's San Jose Merc: Video hobbyists will want to climb Adobe's steep learning curve.

Photos of Youth Media Festival

On Thursday night, Sept. 30, I trekked into San Francisco for the second annual International Youth Media Festival, sponsored by the SalesForce.com Foundation, which has done a masterful job of promoting digital creativity around the globe.

Here's a photo gallery of 11 photos I took.

The 90-minute program, held before a packed house at the Herbst Theater in San Francisco, showcased one outstanding short film after another, all created by young people ages 10-18. Each had the audience clapping rhythmically at the amazing music or sitting captivated for short documentaries on teenage cutting (by Girls Xpress! of London), gun violence (by the Downtown Community Television Center of New York), homelessness (by a San Francisco group) or life in an Israeli development that borders Gaza (by the Gvanim Association).

My favorites were the poignant entry by Girls Xpress! and the opening finger-snapping dance movie, "Inertia," done by San Francisco's Youth Sounds Factory. Both will doubtless win some additional awards.

Outstanding. You can see the movie clips online at youthspace.net.

We hope to talk with the good folks at the SalesForce.com Foundation over the coming weeks about collaboration opportunities with ourmedia.org, just as we've been able to work with other organizations involved with grassroots media, such as Youth Media Exchange, Undergroundfilm.org, OurTV and the Wikimedia Foundation.

For neglected video, a Hollywood touch

From Thursday's NY Times Circuits section: A growing cottage industry is taking customers' raw home video and putting it on DVD, in some cases producing short movies with sophisticated cinematic effects and a musical soundtrack.

Howard Rheingold's birthday party

Here's a home movie made by Justin Hall about Howard Rheingold's birthday goings-on in July. Thanks to Marc for the pointer.

International Video Reporting Award

International Video Reporting Award: Call for entries

The International Video Reporting Award is an international competition for short, innovative, non-fiction digital filmmaking. The films must be helmed by a single person who is solely responsible for content, direction, camera, sound and editing, and who fully explores the creative dimensions of digital technology. The filmmaker should also be taking on the challenge of independent production and distribution.

The preselection committee and the jury will be looking for excellence in content, as well as for imaginative use of documentary techniques.

The International Video Reporting Award gives an overview of international trends, particularly in the USA and Great Britain, while reflecting the new developments in Germany from their first stages onward.

The Top Prize carries an award of 1000 Euros. In addition, the Michael Rosenblum Junior Award will be conferred, containing a personal two-day training with the TV creator Michael Rosenblum.

The prizes are intended for current formats (MPEG, Quicktime, AVI, DivX, Realmedia /VHS, S-VHS, Hi8, DV, miniDV, DV-Cam, DVD, VCD). The contributions must have been completed on or after January 1, 2002, and the running time should not exceed 15 minutes. Exceptions are possible.

The award ceremony will take place in Weimar, Germany, Oct. 7-10, 2004. Applications may be registered online here under "Call for Entries." All current registration forms can be downloaded as a pdf.

Address your entries to:

backup_festival
Bauhaus-University Weimar
Faculty of Media
Bauhausstr. 11
99423 Weimar
Germany

The independent jury for the International Video Reporting Award consists of established television producers, VR-Coaches and university/film school teachers. The jury members for 2004 are Sabine Streich, Michael Rosenblum, Wolfgang Kissel, Jan Metzger and Benedikt Otto.

The closing date for submissions is Sept. 15, 2004. Please send a DV/DVD-screening copy with stills and a short bio-/filmography by this date.

Video collage: a storytelling breakthrough?

I hadn't heard of "revogging" until today. If vogs, or vlogs, are video blogs, revogging is the art of using other people's videoblogs and making something new.

Shannon Noble, a "Flame artist" from LA, has created a few. His best one, which went up just last week, borrowed unrelated video snippets from three video bloggers -- Mica, Charlene, and Jay -- to create a new narrative story. Here's the movie page directly.

Mica wrote in comments:

the idea of taking these unconnected clips of video made by people youve never met - and forming them into a story of your own conception, especially one so affecting, is amazing! Its so simple yet i feel that you have busted through a brick wall like the friggin hulk. Its so good make more more.. it's a new kind of movie. it's storytelling - reinvented. i'm going to go watch it again.

It's an interesting and creative reuse of others' works -- and just the tip of the personal media revolution. We hope the Open Media project leads to many more such efforts (with the creators' permission).

Cross-posted to Darknet.

A do-it-yourself political video

I'm a big fan of grassroots, do-it-yourself political videos, and just came across a new one (thanks to Jesse Walker): It's a lie, a Bush-bashing Flash movie with a solid beat.

Anyone know if the soundtrack is a copyrighted song or original music?

A site for video bloggers

The video bloggers I wrote about one week ago now have their own website: videoblogging.info.

Leading the video blog revolution

Peter Van Dijck of Guide to Ease today posts this: Videoblogging and the co-construction of users and technology.

When Mica goes to work or visits friends in Manhattan, she takes a small digital videocamera, and shoots video of anything that captures her attention. At night, she makes little movies and puts them on her Typepad blog. Mica is a videoblogger.

Videoblogging isn’t made easy for Mica though. After lots of practice it still takes her a while to post an entry. Most videobloggers use 3 or 4 different programs to create a post. There are bandwidth concerns, and discussions about people linking to video. Because it’s complex, not many people post regular videoblog entries.

Video blogging needs to get much simpler in order to burst into mainstream acceptance. I hope to keep an eye on developments in this area, mostly through the Open Media initiative Marc Canter, Alex Cohen, Lucas Gonze and I have started work on.

At the end of his post, Peter gives us the first comprehensive collection of existing video bloggers:

• Mica Scalin posts a lot

• Steve Garfield is quickly becoming the poster boy for videoblogging, and Steve’s mom

• The Dane

• Charlene

• Jay Dedman, who's pushing videoblogging into the mainstream ( here’s a long video interview with him)

• Shannon's This Is Vlog

• Adrian Miles (MIT experiments)

• Tim Hall

• Eric Rice

• Peter Van Dijck

• Chris (the human dog)

• Juston Johnson, who started and runs Vidblogs.com, a collection of videoblogs

• Stuart Hughes, a BBC journalist and videoblogger

• Olsen (proving the very real connection between videoblogging and karaoke)

• Andreas Haugstrup Pedersen (giving an academic perspective)

• Daily Experience (trying to be a daily videoblog)

• Video-link, a Japanese videoblog

• Disinfotainment, streaming videoblog by Charles Eicher with commentary on Japanese and US media

• Videoblog.tv

• Tropism, an arty collective video blog in the Netherlands

• Vidblogs.com, another collective video blog.

A year from now I expect that list to be 10 times longer.

Peter concludes with this:

You also may want to check out unmediated.org, an excellent collective blog tracking the tools that decentralize the media, Demandmedia.net, found video from all over the web, Videoblogging.info, a new site that wants to aggregate videoblogs. ... If you’d rather read a (free) book: Dan Gillmor’s We the Media is a good start, or buy Joe Trippi’s The Revolution Will Not Be Televised. ... (And then I haven’t even mentioned moblogging video with cellphones.)

And let's not forget Raven, who streams news and entertainment 24/7 at Daytonabeach-live.com.

Vloggers show the way

From today's London Guardian: Forget the bloggers, it's the vloggers showing the way on the internet. Excerpt:

When Luuk Bouwman finished college he did what so many graduates do and decided to spend a year travelling.

He packed his rucksack with clothes and a video camera and jumped on a plane to Peru. Machu Picchu beckoned. But when Mr Bouwman got on to the Inca trail and then further into rural Peru, he took a more unusual route.

He slipped into the now ubiquitous - even, he says, in Peruvian one-horse towns - internet cafe, got out his digital video camera and began uploading the tales of his travels on to his website back in the Netherlands. Then, each week, the rest of the world was free to watch his travel diary.

Mr Bouwman is the vanguard of the latest internet trend: video logging or vlogging. One step up from the now familiar internet blogger, vloggers upload personal video clips of everything from the US Democratic convention to what they had for their tea, via rants about tax rises and conspiracy theories.

"When I went there were very few video logs on the web and most of them were very introverted," says Mr Bouwman. "I wanted to take this video web log concept and go as far away from technology as possible. So I took it right into the Amazon."

Mr. Bouwman was at an advantage to the average person who wants to take up vlogging: he had just graduated from film school.

His website (tropisms.org) has evolved into one of the slickest vlogging sites on the internet. It is a way for him and other young documentary makers to self-publish their work. ...

tropisms.org

What started as a personal video log has grown into a collective vlog with a small group of filmmakers. One of the sleekest sites on the net, it includes current vlogs from Chernobyl and Ethiopia

Steve.Garfield.com

Boston-based video producer who wants to show that eventually anyone will be able to create original video on the net. Highlights include a quirky look at the recent Democratic convention in Detroit

demandmedia.net

Eschews the video-diary vlog concept for video logs that are concerned with social change. Gives a voice to groups and individuals who would never otherwise be heard, but may be a little too right-on for some tastes

vidblogs.com

Billed as the ultimate public voyeur experiment, the site is full of short films of up to six minutes of ordinary lives.

human-dog.com

Detroit-based site with a mission to produce non-traditional video. Highlight is a series of interviews about the American draft during the Vietnam war.

A video blog discussion group

Jay Dedman of the Manhattan Neighborhood Network emailed to alert me that Jay and his friend Peter moderate a videoblog discussion group, where they discuss the ins and outs of videoblogging, including how to make videoblogging easier. There's a related wiki, too.

I've just joined. As soon as I collect at least five urls of video bloggers, I'll start a new blogroll for them.

See 'Nightline's' tribute to the fallen

Terry Liberty Parker has posted last night's Nightline broadcast honoring all the U.S. servicemen and women who have died in Iraq. Servers are busy at the moment.

Year's top video sites

Business Wire: Internet Video Magazine today announced its list of the top Web sites for watching short films, animations and videos over the Internet.

"We looked at hundreds of sites; some large and some small, to come up with our list of our favorites. We wanted a top ten list but ended up with twelve. [Actually, I count only 11.] Our readers also contributed their favorite choices as well," said Mark Shapiro, editor-in-chief. ...

In just the last year, as broadband acceptance has accelerated and movie makers have recognized the importance of using the Net to promote themselves and their movies, the number of quality online video sites has skyrocketed. Here are our top choices. ...

Our top three favorites are TriggerStreet, Brownfish and Filmwatcher. These sites offer an outstanding range of online content, as well as provide valuable support and resources for those who make their own films and videos.

Completing the list were Apple's What's On site, MoveOn's Bushin30seconds site, 3BTV.com, ReelMind, StudentFilms.com, SixtySecondFilms.com, Sonnyboo.com (run by Peter John Ross) and the granddaddy of online streaming video, ifilm.com.

Runners-up included:

- Instant Films

- UkrainaTV

- filmsbyq.com (aka digitalcinemapictures.com)

- FilmFights.com

- GuerillaFilmmakers

- AtomFilms

- Worlds Smallest Film Festival

- 7M Pictures

- MacroMedia’s Flash Video site

- PocketMovies

- All Day Breakfast

- Bryce Wilson's site

- HotDog Boy