1:00 PM
There's been so much hullaballoo over videoblogging lately that I find myself wondering exactly what it'll take for me to really get into it – and this morning I figured it out.
A video iPod, or easy podcast subscriptions for my Treo.
Weblogs are awesome. Weblogs present personal data and opinions and reports in a format that's easily skimmed while you're waiting on something else. It's a single-focus partial attention medium; you can be listening to music and reading weblogs at the same time. Podcasts take weblogs and shift them to a different medium, which is awesome because now I can listen to podcasts during long drives. Videoblogging, however, requires both audio and video attention, which makes it a dual-focus medium – rendering it only suitable for partial attention when you're in a passive environment. Single attention stuff can be experienced while your active attention is placed elsewhere – you can't read weblogs while driving, but you can listen to podcasts. You can't watch videoblogs while watching television or listening to music, but you can watch them while waiting in line for something or riding on the subway.
That's where I think videoblogs are going to finally nail the "portable video" concept for phones, PDAs and any eventual video iPod. Hook up a podcast subscription model to video weblogs and autosync the latest content with my phone (and warm fuzzies sweep over me in a cascade when I imagine an automatically-updating movie trailer videoblog/podcast (videocast? vidcast?) that means that whenever I'm bored in line I can whip out my Treo and watch the latest movie trailers that I didn't even have to go looking for. How cool would that be? Same with video game trailers, free music tracks, radio stations, and friends' videoblogs. I don't have to keep up with them everyday, but they're instead designed to be there on-demand when I have a free moment that I don't want to spend studying the ads on the walls at AutoZone.
Thoughts?
I am just totally failing to understand the hype vis a vis podcasting, videoblogging, or really any of the new multimedia applications of the web. I don't want to listen to weblog posts when I can read them 10x faster, skip and skim, etc. There is already way too much good TV and film that I'm missing for me to want to add even more video to my queue, and mostly poorly-produced and edited, lowres amateur video at that. Plus there is all of the kludging that you have to do to actually make it all work semi-seamlessly.
I have assumed forever that there will be eventual convergence of all of these media types around the single outlet of electronic networks, and with interoperability with portable devices and such, but these are just the baby-steps towards that. It's cool that we're finally on the way, but most of it is just not ready for primetime yet, to my eyes.
In terms of videblogging, i think a potential winning model will be something like Flickr, except it's for video. Check out youtube.com -- I've tried it. Free. Upload you video and it streams back on demand. But I honestly don't see many people using this, or any other services that may be like it, in the dc area. I think in time, however.....especially since most digital cameras have some video capability. Cheers,