Raymond: Two years of videoblogging

Norway's Raymond K. looks back on two years of videoblogging.

Salon and Time's Persons of the Year

Salon Person of the Year: S.R. Sidarth. The Virginia native and son of Indian immigrants changed history with a camcorder and introduced Sen. George Allen -- and the rest of us -- to the real America.

Meantime, Time magazine names its Person of the Year: You! Yes, you. You control the Information Age. Welcome to your world.

We're ready to balance our diet of predigested news with raw feeds from Baghdad and Boston and Beijing. You can learn more about how Americans live just by looking at the backgrounds of YouTube videos—those rumpled bedrooms and toy-strewn basement rec rooms—than you could from 1,000 hours of network television.

And we didn't just watch, we also worked. Like crazy. We made Facebook profiles and Second Life avatars and reviewed books at Amazon and recorded podcasts. We blogged about our candidates losing and wrote songs about getting dumped. We camcordered bombing runs and built open-source software. ...

Why Scoble shoots in HD

Why is Robert Scoble shooting in high definition at PodTech? He just posted this explanation to the Yahoo! videoblogging list:

I'm only using HD camcorders. Why?

For one, the image I get is much higher quality overall. My $4,000 Sony can shoot in low light, has better image stableization than the $700 Panasonic cameras I used at Microsoft, and I like the widescreen format better. The images are also better sharpness before compression and I find they compress better too.

But, that's not really the reason I'm using them. I expect that sometime in the next 18 months that old-school TV distribution networks are gonna need HD content and need it bad. I'll have it.

Also, look at new school distribution networks that are popping up like Tivo, Xbox, Playstation. All are looking for HD content.

Plus, if you ever want to show your videos off in HD, say, in a conference setting, or at a future Vloggies, or something like that, having HD originals will make you shine in those places and if you are shooting some video for home use, some for videoblogging, and some for friends and/or company, you'll want HD, especially if you have an HD screen.

My video on my Sony 60-inch is stunning. Makes me look like the Discovery Channel.

Robert's using foresight here. Still, there are few of us who can afford $4,000 video cameras. Let's hope they drop rapidly in price during 2007.

Video competition winner snags $100,000

From the Current TV blog:

Last night in Los Angeles, Lucas Krost was awarded top honors in the Seeds of Tolerance competition for his film "One Nation Under Guard," which highlights the racial injustice of the US prison system and the intolerance shown to ex-prisoners once they have served their time. Lucas took home $100K (plus another $15K for charity), a Sony HD Handycam, and a snazzy trophy.

That's some serious dough. Check out the winning entry here (in Flash).

Lonelygirl tops AP's top 10 YouTube videos of 2006

Associated Press:  Lonelygirl tops AP's top 10 YouTube videos of 2006.

Youtube has long established itself as the frontrunner in the race for online video-sharing dominance, and frankly, the competition is light years away. From users trying to upload important recordings to random browsers looking for a good laugh, it's video-sharing heaven. There even have been talks about professional poker players studying YouTube videos to develop their bluffing skills and to better hone their capabilities to mask their true feelings. It may be a bit farfetched, but judging from the video that sits atop their list, it might actually be true.

It's no wonder the Internet people view its rankings as a good, if not the best, way of weighing online popularity. Far from being a reliable source of info, YouTube still managed to get a significant portion of the whole Internet activity.

Lonelygirl, the cute 19 year old every guy (and not a few girls) with Internet access ogled at in front of their computer monitors, sits atop the list, with a few other Internet memes following her. Though it was later revealed that Lonelygirl is actually doing all her videos "for show," Jessica Lee Rose (Lonelygirl's real name) and her scripted videos still left an indelible mark in everyone's heart, garnering her the top spot. Hey, if you can get people making a living out of lying and bluffing check your videos for tips, you're definitely a winner in our books.

The mystery of YouTube's home page picks

Mark Glaser's latest in-depth piece just went up at PBS MediaShift looking at the mystery behind how YouTube chooses the videos that are highlighted on its home page. YouTube explains that the Featured Videos are not paid slots, though media partners do get their videos rotated into the Director Video slots on the home page. Still, some YouTube users are upset with the success CBS has had with its videos on the site, and question the way media partners work with the video-sharing site.

"We've noticed a rash of videos and commentary claiming that 'the only featured videos we're seeing [on the YouTube home page] are paid advertising videos.' This is totally untrue -- anything you see in the box marked 'Featured Videos' has been selected by a team of editors who are constantly thinking about what might appeal to you, the users, and trying to balance the types of videos and subject matter seen here. We don't always nail it, but the intentions are never commercially oriented, we can promise you that." -- Mia, YouTube editor

Amanda's ABC videoblog

Amanda's new ABC News videoblog went live today and it'll appear every Wednesday. "As I was driving to work today, I thought about just how much javascript sucks."

And Amanda says, "I am candidly chronically my experiences working with big media here."

The New York Times has a writeup: An Online Newscaster’s Appealing Bafflement. Excerpt:

Now in the warm embrace of the mainstream media, this onetime indie figure is making online video segments on eclectic subjects. And ABC is meanwhile promising its groovy young girlfriend that she won’t have change a bit, even for corporate events: no first-lady suits, no hot-roller hair, no mannequin makeup. Ever. On her first minishow, which became available yesterday on ABC’s Web site, Ms. Congdon shows up in a taut Steely Dan T-shirt and opens with her trademark girly casualness: “O.K., this is weird.”

NBC Teams with One True Media

I'd missed this the other day, from the Red Herring:  NBC Teams with One True Media.

One True Media said Monday that NBC Universal will use the company’s online simple video-editing technology to power viewer video creation and submission for the new interactive daytime TV talk show iVillage Live.

The Redwood City, California-based online video company competes in the market of video mash-ups like Eyespot and Yahoo-acquired Jumpcut. But it differentiates itself from competitors by selling users their final product in DVD form.

Many members of the site are moms. They also happen to be the target demographic for NBC’s iVillage Live talk show.

NBC expressed interest in One True Media when it found a lot of the site’s users were posting video content on iVillage. 

Media titans plan site to rival YouTube

Wall Street Journal: Four major media companies -- News Corp.'s Fox, Viacom Inc., CBS Corp. and NBC Universal  -- are reportedly in talks to create a video site to compete with YouTube. The companies, owners of most of the major TV networks, envision a jointly owned site that would be the primary Web source for video content from the networks, allowing them to cash in on fast-growing Web video advertising.

Good luck with that one! More from ITWire and TechCrunch: The Video Startup That May Never Launch.

Today's top 20 viral videos

You can see the day's top 20 viral videos at Viral Video Chart.