Voxmedia Wire

AMANDA CONGDON is a big star on really small screens - like the 4½- inch window she appears in on computer monitors every weekday morning or the 2½ inches she has to work with on the new video iPod. Ms. Congdon, you see, is the anchor of a daily, three-minute, mock TV news report shot on a camcorder, edited on a laptop and posted on a blog called Rocketboom, which now reaches more than 100,000 fans a day.

TV Stardom on $20 a Day (New York Times)

People like you are creating, uploading, subscribing to, and sharing a vast and varied catalogue of video content online, and getting well-known for it, all with unprecedented ease. Vlog Nation, it seems, has arrived. And what’s more, it has officially hit San Antonio. With the recent opening of Node 101, a space for free vlog instruction and production located in the downtown Blue Star Arts complex, Michael Verdi — creator of Freevlog.org and one of vlog culture’s high-profile founding parents — scored the first drops in the bucket toward River City vlog awareness.

Picture this (San Antonio Current)

A video-blogger from Bergen in Norway is turning his camcorder on politicians, ahead of Norwegian parliamentary elections on Monday.Twenty-seven-year-old Raymond Kristiansen weaves quickly in and out of the crowds of locals and tourists on the streets of Bergen. He carries with him a small, hand-held camcorder that seems like a natural extension of his arm.

Vloggers get political in Norway (BBC News)

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)

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)

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)

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)

Vlogging is short for video blogging, also known as vodcasting. When Apple enabled iTunes to subscribe to Podcasts, they opened the door to “syndicated” feeds. Almost all blogs provide syndicated feeds–through RSS, Atom, and the like–and some feeds provide “enclosures.” It is within the enclosures that the audio portion of any given podcast is provided. But enclosures aren’t limited to audio. They can contain video, too. Vlogging is the practice of attaching video to RSS and Atom enclosures.

What Is Vlogging and How to Get Started (O’Reilly Digital Media)

After blogging came photo blogging and then, suddenly last year, video blogging. Video bloggers, also known as vloggers, are people who regularly post videos on the Internet, creating primitive shows for anyone who cares to watch. Some vlogs are cooking shows, some are minidocumentaries, some are mock news programs and some are almost art films… Right now it seems that video bloggers can’t agree what vlogs are exactly, and some of them want to keep it that way. “What’s the rush to define it now?” Mr. Verdi asks in his video manifesto.

Watch Me Do This and That Online (New York Times)