Vlog update
: Some updates from the world of the vlog:
: Sony Screenblast, where I host my video weblogs — thanks to their unlimited-bandwidth generosity — contacted me out of nowhere because an exec there saw the vlogs. They let me know that they’re working on a next version of Screenblast that will be even better and will be hospitable to webloggers. Details later.
But note now that a big entertainment/gadget company recognizes the power of audience content — and multimedia audience content — and they will be helping people not only take pictures and videos (with Sony equipment) and edit them (with Sony software) but also share them (with Sony Screenblast hosting).
: Bandwidth is a problem for video content creators. Sony is one solution to the problem. P2P is another. Peer-to-peer sharing of content suffered a setback thanks to Napster — the phrase has bad corporate coodies now — but that doesn’t mean that P2P does not have great potential. It does.
I think that limited P2P networks will become a primary means of distributing multimedia content. These networks will be controlled so that only authorized distribution will occur but they will make that distribution far more efficent (and, for the creator, inexpensive). There is a lot happening in this arena now:
> The Open Content Network is trying to set up grass-roots distribution (of content with a Commons license). So far, there is only one client and a few bits of content (I’ll try to look at putting mine up there, just to experiment).
: Streaming magazine reports that Radio Free Virgin uses P2P distribution from Blue Falcon to greatly reduce its bandwidth costs. The only problem is that Radio Free Virgin sucks rotten ostrich eggs (over-complicated, over-priced); I uninstalled it after a minute.
: Adam Curry put the first episode of his TV show — a Dutch Osbournes — online using Bittorrent, a P2P distribution network. Now he wonders whether Bittorent is still around (and after I downloaded the entire damned 325 MEG file, I still couldn’t watch it because Curry recorded it in some strange non-MPEG, non-DIVX format that no player can play).
So this is still, obviously, rough. But the moral of the story is the same: P2P distribution can and will help enable distribution of all our multimedia content.
: I didn’t even notice that the Washington Post’s latest story about weblogging — at the end — gives a nod to the vlog.
: I noticed the story through an odd route: My Technorati cosmos pointed me to an Austrian blog, Blaze.at, which reported and translated the details of vlogging at Buzzmachine. How did Blaze find it? Via that Post story (above). But the Post only mentioned “vlogs” and obviously, a Google search pointed Blaze to me. Here’s the odd note there: I have good Google Juice “vlogs” and “vlogging” but not for “vlog” or “video weblog” (an unsubltle hint to link to me in conjunction with those words to juice the juice). It is on these tenuous threads that knowledge is shared.
: I haven’t vlogged lately, which opens me to accusations that this is just another weblog flash-in-the-pan (we all know many of those, don’t we?). But the truth is that I’ve been busy with other things and haven’t had anything to say worth recording lately (note the higher bar; it’s easier to be trivial in text). Others are vlogging — see the cheerleader report, below. And there’s more where that came from. I’ll vlog soon but in the meantime, that’s the update.
: Update: Adam Curry prognosticates on RSS multimedia enclosures and bittorrent.
