Peter Van Dijck’s Guide to Ease

Endgadget’s first impressions of the video ipod: “What it needs most are more shows!”

Exactly. I’ve been waiting for this. Apple just created a huge market of people hungry for short videos. In 320×240 format. What’s gonna happen when you unwrap your new shiny video ipod? You’re gonna listen music. And watch some videos. Millions of people will do this.

After a few weeks, they’ll get bored of watching the same old commercial, big media stuff on their devices, and start looking for free, interesting short videos. You’ll discover someone somewhere is making video you just have to watch. And it will be dead easy to subscribe, letting your ipod filling up with video goodness. You’ll find yourself watching Big Media less and less. Times millions of people. This is another step towards what we’ve been talking about: Big Media will no longer be the only media. Your favourite TV show might be someone you know. I’m excited.

Apple is releasing a video ipod. This is great news for videobloggers and other indie video producers: demand for short videos will surge. Most vloggers have been producing content in 320×240 anyway, so it will fit the new ipod screen perfectly. Gotta get one now.

30G up to 75 hours of video, $299. 60G up to 150 hours video, $399. Shipping in one week. (Endgadget)

Of course, Jobs made some good deals with BigMedia: you can buy TV shows from the iTunes Music Store - Desperate Housewives, Lost and more shows from ABC and Disney. Five shows will be available to watch on iPod or computer: Lost, Desperate Housewives, Nightstalker, The Suite Life and some other Disney thang. $1.99 an episode.

The pricing is right. 2$ for commercial content.

But the idea is problematic if you believe in indie video. Apple will clearly do what they did with podcasting, and provide mostly Big Media content, with popular indie media mixed in. But where is the long tail of video? Where can I find the very specific stuff I’m interested in.

OK, that was a retoric question. Mefeedia is the best place to find long tail video.

Unfortunately the site is down right now, in the middle of a move to a dedicated server. I guess my timing was a bit off on this one.

(via Rodrigo)

PCWorld.com - Gadget Freak: ‘Must-See TV’ Hits the Web? Finding Great Online Video: “As with regular old TV, the challenge is to find stuff worth viewing.”

Damn speculation! The iPod video buzz is going crazy - supposedly Apple will come out with a video iPod in a week or two. And I just got my PSP today.

What will this mean for videobloggers? A lot of demand for short video content. Go to Mefeedia.com to find the most complete directory of videoblogs. A lot of cool stuff out there, and I’m working hard on the new version of Mefeedia to make it easier to find stuff. Which will be needed, because if Apple follows its approach of promoting commercial video content in its directory (trailers, short movies, …), like it did with audio, then iTunes won’t be the best place to find independent video. Mefeedia will.

So let’s not speculate about whether Apple will release the iPod video - they will. No way they’ll leave this market to Sony. And the “when” question is kinda boring. It might be within weeks. I’d bet on it, seeing that Christmas is coming soon and all. But whatever.

The bigger question, and the bigger revolution I think, is what will we be watching on that video iPod (or PSP or any other killer device that might come along). Will it be “repurposed” tv content? I hate that word to start with. And sure, the Simpsons are funny on any device. But if that’s all we do I’d be dissapointed.

Steve Jobs will undoubtedly have pulled the iPod trick and made deals with lots of BigCo video providers. So expect Pixar content, lots of tv stuff, all that jazz. Boooring!

I hope that we’ll start to watch independent video. Movies made by you, me and your grandmother. I mean the creative, funny, boring, niche stuff people are starting to create and put online by the thousands. I hope that your favourite show (no longer a “TV show”) could be someone you know. The long tail of video.

What will you be watching on your brand-new iPod video? I’ll be looking out for videoblogs myself.

This is too cool - a Photoshop clone stamp brush for real life!

Watch movie 2.4 min 25.1 MB
(Original post, via The Last Minute)

I saw this ad today - notice the link to the director’s videoblog.

All the cool directors are making videoblogs. Peter Jackson makes videos about the production of King Kong, the Blue Tights network is a videoblog by the one and only Superman. I couldn’t find the ad again after making the screenshot though, and no Google love for David Rodenberg’s videoblog. It’s probably behind a Flash wall or something.

I’m quite honored to be listed (for Mefeedia.com, my video project) together with sites like Wikipedia, Flickr and the likes in an article by Businessweek in the Editors picks for the Best of the Web.

Businessweek has a special: It’s A Whole New Web: “And this time, it’s Your Web. No longer content to be merely viewers and consumers, people increasingly are taking an active part in creating their online lives.
[...]
At many new Web sites and services, the creative energy of countless souls virtually crackles off the screen. They’re cobbling together their own services from customizable Web sites and Lego-style pieces of Web software.”

Indeed. And this is where it gets interesting: “Media and entertainment companies, which have profited by becoming gatekeepers, sit right in the crosshairs of Web do-it-yourselfers.”

There are some amazing sites I hadn’t heard of. “An average of 6.2 million photos are uploaded to Cyworld each day”. Holy shit. That’s what happens when cellphones really kick in.

Innovation keeps coming out of the videoblogging community: we’re now using a P2P app to gather raw videos of an event into a “press pool” that can then be remixed by others. Apperceptions: Vlog Europe Press Pool

This week’s Apple hype (the phone and stuff) was pretty dissapointing.

Today, I followed a random ad somewhere (yeah), and found this page:

Do they know something that we don’t?

I am still a big believer in the video ipod - Apple’s not gonna give away that market to Sony’s PSP without a batlle, but they want a big splash and the market isn’t ready yet. Maybe in a few months? These things go fast. And will Mefeedia then have an ipod mode, to route around that fairly fucked up Apple directory?

Don’t buy those christmas presents just yet :)

craigblog: Katrina survivors need ‘net access: “due to the seeming lack of computing facilities arranged for the neediest victims at the shelters — 40 computer stations for 10,000 victims at the astrodome seems grossly inadequate — and are wondering what else is being done to give victims internet access so that they can connect with the many thousands of amazingly generous US citizens who are looking to do what our government seemingly cannot, at least in a timely fashion.”

All the talk about setting up cybercafes and such seems naive to me. Here’s an idea, which would be logistically hard enough but should still be doable: why doesn’t someone close to the disaster and with a printer PRINT OUT ads like these from craigslist and hands them out in places where people gather?

Speculation is everywhere: will Apple will introduce a video ipod? And now Apple is cranking up the buzzmachine again. “The company sent an invitation to reporters on Monday morning for a “special event” being held Sept. 7 in San Francisco. “1,000 songs in your pocket changed everything,” the invitation reads, referring to the release of the first 5GB iPod nearly four years ago. “Here we go again.”

It will be a video device, but not exactly video ipod. A different device that does video, not music. It needs a large screen. Which means get rid of that famous scrollwheel.

• Apple won’t give the portable video market, no matter how small, away to Sony’s PSP.
• It won’t be an existing iPod shell with video capabilities, because that would just suck. Dissapointment would abound. Video on that tiny screen? It needs a big screen.
• The device will have a large screen, and will connect with iTunes 5 which will let you buy video and subscribe to video RSS feeds (iTunes 4.9 already lets you subscribe to video feeds).

Something like this?

Somehow that mockup just doesn’t seem right. Not.. revolutionary enough.

Unlike the PSP, the video ipod probably won’t be loaded with features (wireless, gaming, you name it, the PSP does it). That’s not the Apple way. It will do 1 thing (video), and it will do it well. Very well.

The big advantage it will have should be its connection to the iTunes video store. If Jobs can pull off deals with enough television shows, movies and such, and present all that video available through the store, that might be an announcement that will wow people in the Apple tradition.

Anyway, enough speculation. They might just come out with something completely different.

How many videobloggers are there? Ask Vlogstats.

Businessweek is doing a poll on the best sites of the web, and in the video category you can vote for Mefeedia.

Right. I need you now.

Vote here for whatever your heart tells you to. (Stare at this for a while first: Mefeedia)

I’d really appreciate a vote. It’s a big deal. Thanks so much!

The mefeedia usability center is a hit! It took like an hour to program together (a table and some code), and I’ve started collecting a great list of users willing to be usability testees. Many companies find usability testees by paying a marketing company 100$ a head, and the quality of people you get is often low. OK, I shouldn’t say that. But if you want your own users to be testees, why not simply ask them? I can’t believe everyone (Typepad? 37sigs?) isn’t doing this. I’ll start testing soon, and report back on that too.

I’m still taking more people in the program, so sign up now.

Most people find usability testing to be a lot of fun (when else in your life do you get someone’s total attention to whatever you have to say?) I’m starting a bunch of low budget usability tests for Mefeedia - sign up as a Mefeedia usability tester! You can be anywhere in the world for this.

What does it mean if you have a video blog log of your life, when you can look back at a specific time in your life and really see what you were doing?

“look back at your past” (Quicktime movie quote using Mefeedia. Original movie found at Rocketboom.)

The whole burlesque thing in New York is getting out of hand ;)

Watch movie Quicktime, 4 min 13.4 MB
(Original post, via missing kitten tv)

“it’s gonna be crazy” (Quicktime movie quote using Mefeedia. Original movie found at Richard BF.)

Sometimes you can be in NY (the Bronx here) and feel like you’re in South America. Watch movie 0.8 min 2.4 MB
(Original post, via diariodeviaje)

37 signals have a post today showing a video explaining features of some product. Ruby on Rails has been using video to show off the product pretty well. Since I’m working on Mefeedia, a website for videobloggers, I’ve given a lot of thought to the use of video.

There are various ways in which to use video. You can make videos showing off features. Great. You can be lucky enough to have users making videos to show off features (like here for Mefeedia). Even better - sometimes at least. And you can use video for more “soft” purposes, like to tell stories about your site.

For example, I made an Instant Archive feature for Mefeedia, where vloggers can put an archive of their videos with thumbnails on their site. I did it while talking to my users, and Michael shot a video when we came up with this. That’s the advantage of having videobloggers as users.

The video is brilliant, really showing the foundation story of this one feature, and the enthusiasm we felt. It comes straight from the heart. It is linked from the Instant Archive page.

The 5 stages of videoblogging:Watch movie 1.2 min 5.3 MB
(Original post, via We Are The Media)

As the early videobloggers, we need to tell people about this, and show them. I was just encouraging a potential videoblogger, and to show them how fast it goes, here’s the movie (10 mins later - Quicktime, about a meg).

Haven’t videoblogged in a while. I downloaded the Ourmedia uploader and it’s good. I build this Instant Archive feature on Mefeedia today, and everyone just plain loves it, and it just struck me how crazy it is that you can truly only build good things if you really, really talk to users. Here’s the movie. (Quicktime, about a meg)

Shelley: Snapshot in Semantic Time: “I also wish more folk would take the time to pull together the threads in a meaningful way like Peter Van Dijck did with the early semantic web discussions.”

We have a long way to go in enabling better conversations with our blogging tools. And better story telling. A blog post now is text and links. That’s good - especially the links. But there are many more structures that we should support, like the semantic web one I did. I had to do that manually. Or like what I was trying to support with XFML: mini structured directories that can link together. There is so much, and microformats are leading some of the way.

Of course, with video it becomes even more urgent. You can’t quote a part of a video right now, except in an experimental tool at Mefeedia. It’s hard to link to videos you like, because you don’t have a thumbnail available, or size information, and you really want to indicate size, type and such when you link. Except at Mefeedia, where I try to make that easier. It’s hard to link videos together in conversations. I’m working on that.

It’s all about mixing the ideas the social research people have about helping people to structure stories and conversations, with the ideas the web people have about web 2.0, you own your data, distribution and such. That mix will make some damn powerful stuff possible. I really hope we can break the wall of big binary video files, and make them more webby. We need that in order to have the kind of conversations blogging has enabled for text.

A 60-second animated short showing the progress of tagging on Technorati.com between January and July 2005 — from zero to 20 million tags. Animation created by the Art and Computer Science research group at Carnegie Mellon.
Watch movie Quicktime, 1 min 11.6 MB
(Original post, via Ourmedia MediaRSS Feed)

Funny first person view of the hills of San Fransisco in a car: Watch movie Quicktime, 1.3 min 4.9 MB
(Original post, via MICHAEL VERDI)

Paul and Patty rock!
Watch movie Quicktime, 0.8 min 1.9 MB
(Original post, via DLTQ.org)

We can play their game :) vlogging talking points

Openvision.tv are launching a new desktop video aggregator. It has an option in it to search videos, and you can select various sources to search - Yahoo, the internet archive, blogdigger and Mefeedia. If you search Mefeedia, you will get a lot of videoblogger results - as opposed to just the “funny videos” floating around on the internet.

I had an insight the other day when looking at AOL’s new video portal. They are aggregating television programs, movie trailers and news clips and such - which I guess makes sense for AOL to do. You’re a media company or not. And their search gets to the millions of “funny” videos floating around on the web. But look at what’s on their portal and it’s just sad. A whole bunch of boring video. Great job!

Go to Mefeedia instead, and you’ll find a tiny, tiny group of people starting to produce and syndicate original long tail video content. Real stuff. And this is the content that is going to change things, at least a bit. Message to AOL/bigmedia: it’s not about putting television on the web. That’s where they go (predictably) wrong.

But I digress - what’s cool about Opentv’s Mefeedia search isn’t just that it finds you videobloggers (which is why I call Mefeedia the “the best place to find videobloggers”), it’s that it’s based on just RSS. All I have right now on Mefeedia is RSS everywhere, no API, no nothing, and that’s enough for them to create a useful search. So I thought that’s kinda pretty fucking cool.

One of the longest running videoblogging projects: Squeeeeze.

Watch movie Quicktime, 1.2 min 6.8 MB
(Original post, via Luxomedia)

Learning Dutch: Watch movie Quicktime, 2.6 min 11 MB
(Original post, via We Are The Media)

“looking into the lens” (Quicktime movie quote using Mefeedia. Original movie found at DLTQ.org.)

“couldn’t really get a job…” (Quicktime movie quote using Mefeedia. Original movie found at Steve Garfield’s Video Blog.)

“A star wars fight on stage?” (Quicktime movie quote using Mefeedia. Original movie found at Ourmedia MediaRSS Feed.)

“finding nemo, for real!” (Quicktime movie quote using Mefeedia. Original movie found at Dailymotion.)

We go round and round:

“it’s important to try to look into the dirty face of reality” (Quicktime movie quote using Mefeedia. Original movie found at blip.tv.)

relPamyment is like syndicating your tipjar.

RelPayment: how to get paid. An overview page we wrote for videobloggers on how to use relPayment.

I am not sure if this will take off, but at least now there is a possibility. If videobloggers want to use it, they will, and if aggregators start to support it, it will be another babystep towards videoblogging viability.

The important thing to note here is that watching video through an aggregator is, in terms of cost, fundamentally different from watching text. The text is already contained in the RSS feed, so it has already been downloaded. The video isn’t. It’s an enclosure link, so for every viewer that watches it, the videobloggers’ bandwidth gets hit. The same applies to podcasting.

RelPayment is an attempt to make this “stealing of bandwidth” a little bit fairer videobloggers.

Again, I’m not sure it’ll take off. I’m not sure videobloggers are all that concerned about money. But if there’s demand from the vloggers, it might.

Metathought productions? I wish I thought of that. A trailer for a movie about media as an echochamber. Sounds familiar, bloggers?

Watch movie Quicktime, 6.9 min 15 MB
(Original post, via Everyday Films with Eric Rice)

Videoblogging in the Sahara: Watch movie 5.5 min 17.3 MB
(Original post, via the RAD blog)

The Long Tail: Filters 101: an interesting taxonomy of filters.