Voxmedia Wire

From unbashful bloggers to proselytizing pastors, people are using inexpensive software and high-speed Internet connections to share video clips of their lives… Nationwide, a growing number of “vloggers,” or “video bloggers,” such as Prodoehl are posting primitive videos online and inviting viewers to respond with text or video reactions. The trend is new enough that it’s difficult to know just how many people are vlogging - even leading research firms such as the Pew Internet & American Life Project have no data on it. But it’s likely that the number of vloggers is still small. One indication: A recent check of the Yahoo video blogging group showed it had about 1,200 members.

Podcasts are so last year (Milwaukee Journal Sentinel)

Amid the general anxiety that afflicts both the broadcast radio industry and other old-line media companies, the podcast — an audio program that you pull off the Internet and download onto an iPod or similar device for listening at your leisure — seems as big a threat to radio as the Web poses to print media. But podcasts thus far seem to be more a device for time-shifting — saving radio programs to listen to them when you want to, rather than when a station tells you to — than an audio revolution. Thousands of podcasts are available, and many are indeed homemade shows of a sort you’d never hear on the radio. But many of the most popular podcasts are simply a new way to listen to popular programs from National Public Radio, the BBC and other big radio producers.

Podcasting’s Potential, Beyond Two-Fer Thursday (Washington Post)

It seems like a few minutes ago, you had to be a huge multi-national corporation to afford to broadcast audio and video. But vlogging is suddenly putting that power in the hands of, well, just about anyone who wants it. Now, vloggers around the world are signing up as Rocketboom.com correspondants. Zadi Diaz was a Rocketboom viewer, and is now a correspondent in Los Angeles. Diaz thinks younger people are more comfortable in front of a camera – even without training. “I think that the camera isn’t as intrusive to our generation,” Diaz says. “We kind of see cameras all over the place.” For vloggers, it’s all happening faster than they can click

‘Vlogger’ Cyber-Culls The News (CBS News)

Known as video blogs, the short clips feature subjects ranging from the personal to the political: a dad filming himself making pesto and talking to his kids, who now live in Germany after he and his wife separated; a protest over the G-8 summit; the performance of a band at San Francisco Supervisor Ross Mirkarimi’s victory party. “I have no credential as a major reporter, no organization that gives me validity, but the image itself gives me authenticity,” Wolf said. The viewer “can see what happened. You can’t argue with what happened.”

Poetic, Political & Personal (San Francisco Chronicle)

Podcasting has done what no new technology that I’m aware of has ever accomplished: It’s gone mainstream and underground at the same time. I don’t know any other word to use besides “mainstream” when I hear from the White House that President Bush’s radio addresses will be offered via podcast. And I have no other word at my fingertips than “underground” when I read a recent Los Angeles Times opinion piece that suggests that podcasting is the biggest tech craze that most of us have never heard of.

The Paradox of Podcasting (Washington Post)

Also known as “podnography,” sexcasts are audio clips that anyone can record by using a computer… Along with shows on music and politics, you can now hear porn reviews, kinky storytelling sessions and interviews with porn writers… A recent Google search for the phrase “adult podcast” showed 6,850 results. Compare that to the category “rock podcast,” which had only 3,890. In one sexcast — available at www.podcastdirectory.com — a San Francisco man describes a lurid rendezvous with a “gorgeous” woman he meets on Craigslist.

Hot, steamy and now downloadable (San Francisco Chronicle)

Two podcasting startups have won venture capital funding, a sign that both the promise and the hype is building for a grassroots broadcasting phenomenon that started just about a year ago. Podshow, led by former MTV host Adam Curry, who helped invent podcasting in July 2004, received $8.85 million in funding from Kleiner Perkins and Sequoia Capital, Private Equity Week reported Wednesday… The second company to announce funding Wednesday was San Francisco-based Odeo, led by repeat entrepreneur Evan Williams, who created the Blogger service which is now owned by Google. Charles River Ventures led the round; the sum was not disclosed. The round also included Amicus Ventures, and individuals including Mitch Kapor, Joe Kraus, Tim O’Reilly, Ron Conway, and HotorNot’s James Hong.

VCs Invest in Podcasting (Red Herring)

Since its inception in March 2005, not-for-profit Ourmedia has attracted more than 31,000 international members, and now plays host to 22,000 separate pieces of media, from travelogs to tastes of family life. More than half is video, with video blogs - or vlogs - proving highly popular. Some of it is of “breathtakingly creative”, says JD [Lasica, co-founder of Ourmedia.org].

Citizens do media for themselves (BBC News)

Packing list for your next city break: clothes, cards, passport, camera… guidebook? No, leave it at home. Just remember your MP3 player — and make sure you’ve loaded the latest podcasts, of course… Because podcasting is shaping up to be the next big travel trend… While they could never be as comprehensive as a guidebook, [podcasts] a lot lighter, easier to use, more personal — and they don’t cost anything. You can wander the streets with your earphones in, and when you want some local knowledge on, say, choosing a restaurant, or interpreting the public sculptures, you scroll to the relevant podcast, just like choosing a song on your MP3, and listen in.

Podcasting: the beginning of the end for guidebooks? (The London Times)

As a blogger on the Internet, it’s possible to post entries for all the world to read about the biggest, or littlest, happenings in one’s life. Now video bloggers, or “vloggers,” are adding a twist to the genre, documenting their lives in mini-movies. Laura Sydell reports on the growing community of people who are turning their lives into grassroots reality TV. Though it has been possible to put video on the Web for a long time, widespread adoption of broadband access has made it easier for amateurs to do. In addition, the advent of RSS feeds allows users to automatically receive updates from vlogs they like.

A New Internet Diary Frontier: Vlogging (National Public Radio)